Alien Relic Hunter

"I just..." said the chef who stood up.

"How many years has your restaurant... been open here?" Ke Lan stared at him, as if he was afraid that the other party would suddenly disappear.

"Four years...what happened? Sir, what on earth did you..."

Before he finished speaking, Ke Lan interrupted him again: "Before you, was this place a clinic? It was a clinic opened by a Slav named Ivan-"

"No, no, no... Sir, I think you may have made a mistake. Before my restaurant opened, this was a small commercial bank. It went bankrupt due to poor management, so I was able to buy this land at a good price. Right to use... If you are looking for a clinic, there are several in the next block." The owner of the restaurant said, "If possible, I hope you can leave here now, your behavior has been serious..."

"I know, I'm sorry." Ke Lan said with some frustration. He turned around, his arms hanging weakly by his side, and walked towards the door of the restaurant.

He vaguely heard someone behind him scolding him as a "psycho". He slowly turned his head, only to see a young girl with blond hair and blue eyes clumsily using the chopsticks in her hand, trying to pick up a piece of elastic meat. ball.

She failed once, twice, and the third time, the meatballs rolled off the edge of the soup pot and fell to the floor.

For some reason, Ke Lan always felt that the meatballs were raw, and the pot of delicious, steaming soup seemed to be boiling with bright red blood.

Is there such a dish in Chinese food? Is this a pot of "Maoxuewang"?

Ke Lan suddenly felt very irritable. He didn't want to think about these details. He just felt that the restaurant seemed to be very noisy, and he didn't want to stay here for even a second.

"Before my restaurant opened, this was a small commercial bank..." The restaurant owner's words were still echoing in Ke Lan's head. If the clinic only existed in his imagination, it would mean that Ivan, the People have never existed, all this is an illusion...

No, this is a paradox!

Ke Lan suddenly woke up. If Ivan did not exist, then there would be no matter that he was infected by the Seed of Corrosion. If there was no infection incident, there would be no need for him to go to the undersea city to look for "flesh-eating worms". Then It's impossible for him to get acquainted with Zofia... This doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense at all!

This world seems normal, but it is full of loopholes!

Ke Lan suddenly discovered that the faces of the diners in the restaurant were all blurry. Only when he focused on those people could he see their faces clearly, and those people in the corner of his eye... all of them The face is actually just the simplest outline!

Not only that, even this scene was pieced together! The plates used to serve food in the restaurant are printed with the trademark of a barbecue restaurant that I often go to; those outrageously exquisite dishes are based on scenes from old-time movies that I have watched... Even after The rusty exhaust fan in the kitchen was also copied from the wall of the grain warehouse that served as a safe house!

It's a dream! It is a dream made up of fragments of my own memory!

Everything here is something I have seen or thought about before, even the people in this scene are like this!

The owner of that restaurant, his face clearly looks exactly like Ivan!

Ke Lan quickly turned back and knocked open the kitchen again, but this time, he found that there was no one in the kitchen, the operating table was empty, some tattered kitchen utensils were piled randomly in the corner, and the ground was covered with a Thick layer of dust...

Ke Lan turned his head in shock and saw that the lobby of the restaurant was also in ruins. The decorations on the walls and ceiling had aged and faded. The tables, chairs and cabinets were even more dilapidated. The dirty glass exterior walls were still stuck with There was a notice saying "The shop is open for rent", but even this notice was yellowed and brittle.

"This restaurant has been closed for a long time." Zofia said standing at the door, "Are you planning to buy this land? Use it as the office of the new hunting group?"

Ke Lan raised his head and stared at Zofia's face... There was nothing incongruous about this face... It was exactly the same as the Zofia in his memory.

"This is a dream, right?" Ke Lan asked.

"What did you say?" Zofia asked in confusion.

"I'm trapped in this dream. I know it's a dream, but I don't know how to get out."

"...Are you having a nightmare?" Zofia asked cautiously, "But you look like this now, you are obviously awake..."

"I have to get out of here..." Ke Lan no longer paid attention to Zofia. He looked around and then stopped at the car Zofia drove.

He quickly walked over, opened the car door, found a pistol from the glove box, and then put the muzzle of the gun into his mouth.

If you beat yourself to death, you should be able to escape this dream, right?

However, just when he was about to pull the trigger, he hesitated - he thought of those ruin hunters who went crazy after coming out of the sinkhole. Some of them shot themselves and the people around them... Presumably, they Some of them found themselves trapped in a dream and planned to use this violent method to wake themselves up...

But when they pulled the trigger, they actually killed people in the real world...

Is he awake or deep in a dream...or is he half-dream and half-awake?

If you pull the trigger, will the bullet go through your brain? Will he wake up or die directly?

Ke Lan suddenly understood why those people went crazy.

He loosened his fingers and took the pistol out of his mouth. He turned around and saw Zofia standing silently behind him, making no sound and showing no expression on her face.

She didn't stop Ke Lan from committing suicide. In fact, she didn't even move.

Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she stood quietly on the street, staring at Ke Lan indifferently.

Ke Lan raised the gun towards her, took aim, and then slowly lowered it.

"I won't shoot because I don't know if pulling the trigger will really kill you... I'm just confused. If it were in the real world, your bodyguards would come out to stop me."

Zofia didn't react at all... because Ke Lan had never seen how she would react when facing his own gun, and Ke Lan had never imagined such a scene, so there was a gap in this memory. of……

Nightmares are "based" on one's own memory. It cannot construct things it has never seen out of thin air, but it can induce itself step by step toward madness and self-destruction.

However, Ke Lan failed to fulfill its wish.

[P.S. When I was writing the recent plot, I tried to substitute it for myself, and then I had a very strange dream at night...]