2024#
At a crossroads, the road was blocked, and a woman was crying helplessly. In front of her, a puddle of crushed flesh was gradually cooling.
This scene attracted the attention of dozens of mobile phone lenses around, which were being converted into electronic signals by the sensors behind those lenses, and then transmitted to the network.
Wei Xingxu got off the ambulance, frowning. This was the third time this month that he had cleaned up an accident scene, and each time was torture, and this time it was a child. A nine-year-old child.
The body of this nine-year-old child was already broken and scattered, leaving a tire mark made of blood and flesh on the road surface in the cold wind; the limbs that were not crushed were scattered on both sides of the mark, covered by the white cloth used by the traffic police.
The white noise that appeared in almost every urban accident trembled in the environment—amidst the noise, there was regret, sympathy, complaints, and blame.
Wei Xingxu and his colleagues began to work. First, they collected the larger pieces of flesh, and then gathered the scattered debris. As for the tire mark, it would be washed into the sewer by the high-pressure water gun of the sprinkler truck that had already stopped by the side.
Wei Xingxu was working with his head down when he suddenly found a small note in the flesh. When he spread it out, he saw seven lines of crooked words written in pencil on the paper that was already soaked in lymph, and the first line was enough to shock him: "Today I died in a car accident." Looking down, the lines were as follows:
Next year, a nuclear submarine will explode in the South China Sea
The year after, a major epidemic
Another year, the moon smiles
Yet another year, Li Qichang dies
The year after, you will hear Jay Chou
Human extinction
A prophecy? He thought, most likely it was a joke made by the unfortunate child before his death, but he couldn't ignore the first line, "Today I died in a car accident." If this note was really a prophecy, then at least the first line had already come true.
He reported his findings to the traffic police. The traffic police said they had seen this note before and had already determined that it was just a coincidence. He said, "If you were also a police officer, you would know that coincidences like this always happen in some inexplicable places. You can't delve into it because it's just a coincidence, nothing more. Otherwise, it would be extra meaningless work."
Wei Xingxu generally accepted this explanation, but he also paid a little more attention and kept the general content of the note in his mind.
In the following weeks, he occasionally recalled the seven lines of text. Although the physical brain had made some of the text blurry, the general meaning was still clear. And after these weeks, the new memories formed in his life gradually buried these contents into the lower layers of the memory network, causing them to be less and less consciously recalled.
2025#
If we were to evaluate the two animals that have had the greatest impact on human society, some might say it is the gray rhinoceros and the black swan.
On April 6th, a black swan appeared in the South China Sea, detonating a nuclear submarine.
This incident may have been purely accidental, but due to the sensitivity of the location where it occurred, there were exploitable aspects to this accident. In any case, it made a taut string almost break, enough to make even the most politically dull person feel uneasy.
Wei Xingxu was also such a person. He had occasionally read some news before, but it seemed that he never felt that the things in the news had any real connection to his own life. He always believed, or hoped, that the world would continue as usual, with wars, famines, and natural disasters happening outside his own life circle. The greatest misfortune he could witness was the tragedies caused by those accidents, and accidents always happen.
But this time was different. First, the tone of the news anchor was different, with a hint of anger, and even the speed of speech had slightly increased. In addition, the people he saw in his daily life were different, seeming to be more hurried, and everyone had a touch of anxiety. And the colors of the city also diminished, no longer as colorful, even the clothes worn by the young people in the city began to become monotonous.
It was on the third day after the black swan incident that Wei Xingxu remembered the prophecy from over eight months ago. It crawled out of the neural network of his archived memories and delivered a heavy blow to his consciousness while he was eating, almost causing him to drop his chopsticks.
He glanced at the swaying small tree in the pouring rain and cold spring wind outside, gradually recalling the rest of the prophecy. Will there be another epidemic next year? He couldn't believe it, and didn't want to believe it, but he knew he needed to be prepared for it.
He began to stockpile food and quit his job at the hospital four months later. He stopped going on blind dates and started anxiously inquiring about the name "Li Qichang," and repeatedly listened to Jay Chou's songs, trying to find some clues that would refute the last four words of the prophecy.
But by the end of this year, apart from growing confusion and anxiety, he had gained nothing.
2026#
At the end of March, he heard from his friends at the hospital about the new epidemic—it was said to be an immune system virus that could be transmitted through bodily fluids and droplets, but the government did not publicly confirm it until early May, by which time it was already uncontrollable. The story repeated itself as it had years ago, and even nonsense literature became popular again, such as "Everyone died except for the survivors" and "If the virus didn't kill you, then you would survive." People tried to alleviate and relieve their grief with jokes, but the grief of those who experienced it remained.
In August, Wei Xingxu lost his mother and father within half a month, but he didn't seem to be too sad, as he had already fully believed in the prophecy written by a child who died in a car accident over two years ago. He didn't know if it was better to wait for human extinction or to die now—either option had enough arguments to support it.
Regardless, even though he was alone, he continued to live on, and because he had stocked up on a large amount of supplies in advance, his days were relatively easy.
Whether it was the epidemic finally breaking the taut string or a plan that those in power had already decided, war broke out on the winter solstice that year.
2027#
June 21st, the summer solstice. There was no electricity, and the heat was unbearable. Wei Xingxu lay on the central square of the residential area with an old plastic fan that had a blurred erectile dysfunction advertisement, looking at the night sky. The moon tonight was still round overall, and the reflected sunlight made the surrounding stars dare not compete with its brilliance.
As he was about to experience a sense of tranquility that he hadn't had in years in the moonlight, he understood the meaning of "the moon smiles."
It was the trace of orbital warfare, and it wasn't the first time Wei Xingxu had seen it, but it was the first time he had seen it happen exactly within the disc of the moon. The explosion of fireworks outlined on the flat disc, actually forming a smile.
His eyes became moist, but the moon's smile became even more vivid after the tears. He touched his eyes and then made a sniffling sound uncontrollably. He began to cry for no reason, but after less than half a minute, he started laughing inexplicably, causing others in the residential area who were also enjoying the coolness to laugh along. Some people even screamed in the midst of this laughter.
It was also at this moment that Wei Xingxu realized that those prophecies were specifically left for him, after all, only in the position where he was now could he see that smiling face.
The next day, he received a conscription notice.
2028#
The mission was to recover a drone that had dropped in the northern part of Shi Dui Harbor, carrying a miniaturized nuclear warhead. They said it was an Iranian-made "stink bomb," which was mostly likely to leak radiation and harm their own people, a "piece of junk." But on the battlefield, this radiation was not a worrying factor, at least much more terrifying than the assassination machine worms made by the Germans.
It wasn't a dangerous mission, at least that's what the captain said; the purpose was to prevent these things from falling into the hands of terrorists, especially those who advocated human extinction.
"Human extinction." It was truly a prophecy that made people despair, and there were actually people who wanted to make it come true.
Wei Xingxu tried to explain the prophecy he saw to the captain, but he failed to convince anyone to believe him and instead almost made himself suspected of being a terrorist and foreign spy.
He kept quiet. But it also began to make him feel that the accusations against him were not completely unfounded—he was waiting for human extinction.
The vehicle passed through the deserted town. Suddenly, a figure flashed in the corner of Wei Xingxu's eye, prompting him to gather his spirits and observe with his gun raised. "Hole three, hole three." He repeated the warning twice, putting the other five people in the vehicle on alert.
The vehicle passed through the town without incident, but just before leaving the town at the exit, the car stopped.
The captain got off with the soldiers to check, and there was a puddle of blood in front of the vehicle, with a dying person lying in it, gasping for breath. His eyes had been gouged out, his tongue cut off, and his abdomen slashed open, with several sections of large intestine spilling out.
Wei Xingxu walked up to the dying man, and saw the identification card deliberately placed on his chest, which had a familiar name on it: Li Qichang. He was born on October 24, 2007, and was a Chinese from Myanmar.
"ACA's methods, those bastards." The captain took a quick look and then signaled everyone to get back in the car. He glanced at Wei Xingxu, who was still in a daze, and whispered, "Use your pistol."
2029#
There are no eternal enemies or forever friends between nations. Wei Xingxu could never have imagined that Xi'an would become the Russian-occupied zone overnight, and he was captured and thrown into a military concentration camp.
During the daily ditch digging, he often thought about the "human extinction" that would come next year, but it was just a thought, and he couldn't really understand the meaning behind it. Yes, he would die, but for him now, death was no longer something particularly terrifying. In fact, as long as the method was proper, death could happen very quickly, without causing any pain. Besides, he had long since become accustomed to pain.
News spread like wildfire, carrying unconfirmed fears—Russian troops were about to withdraw from Xi'an, but before they did, they would execute all the prisoners.
People were restless. Some said it was a rumor, while others believed in the rumor and claimed that the Russians had already done similar things in Poland and had plenty of experience. In comparison, Wei Xingxu was much calmer, as he had already come to believe that he had been chosen by the prophecy to live until next year's human extinction—he believed he was likely the last person on Earth.
As for this year, he recalled that it seemed to be related to Jay Chou's songs, but this year he had listened to Jay Chou's songs too many times, because in the prison cell, his upper bunkmate "Skinny Pig" Xu Haoran somehow got hold of an old Newman MP4 player, which was filled with Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai's songs.
It was at this time that he heard a familiar voice singing. It was coming from the monaural speaker of the old MP4 player, echoing into the newly dug pit. Wei Xingxu looked up and saw Skinny Pig standing on a mound at the edge of the pit, looking into the distance.
His body trembled, then he suddenly knelt down and let out intermittent cries. The old MP4 player slipped from his hand and fell into the pit, and the music was amplified by the echo of the earth walls, resonating in the deep pit.
...The sound of cicadas came from the playground during nap time
Still sounds good after so many years
Folding wishes into paper airplanes and sending them as letters
Because we can't wait for shooting stars...
A bullet entered Skinny Pig's right forehead and exploded at his left ear, creating a burst of blood. Two fully armed soldiers showed their heads from behind the mound, glanced at the horrified crowd in the deep pit, and threw an incendiary bomb before leaving.