I Have A Super USB Drive

by <unknown>

  Chen Chen became silent and scanned their surroundings with his psionic energy again. However, he did not notice anything peculiar other than the ground underneath them that was filled with pits. He was certain that Zhao Shanhe must have repelled something when he activated the Civilization Monolith.

  "I didn't try to set you up or anything...

  "I just never expected to be attacked by some kind of dangerous foreign entity upon just arriving in the subspace. That thing seems to be able to devour the minds of its victim by exploiting the most vulnerable parts of their memory and throwing them into a dreamscape!"

  "You think I'd buy any of that?"

  Chen Chen rebuked harshly.

  "It's up to you whether you believe it or not, but every word I say is true!"

  Zhao Shanhe defended himself. "I have the Civilization Monolith so you cannot kill me but I never intended to harm you either in the first place."

  Chen Chen remembered everything. During the Blacklight virus plague so many years ago, he had the chance of going through the details of many refugees gathered outside the wall. One of them who left a deep impression of him was a young man named Lerigado. He remembered what Lerigado had to endure only to die at the wall...

  Everything he had experienced earlier must have been an account of Lerigado's life.

  "The subspace is essentially a projection of the real world."

  Zhao Shanhe was worried that Chen Chen would doubt his innocence so he explained again, "This isn't a material plane but an abstract world bordering on the edge of the balance of the universe. This means that whatever happens in the material plane is completely meaningless here and that anything can happen here due to the instability of this plane. This is why it's vital to keep your eyes shut because this world isn't to be observed with the naked eye. Any such instances that aren't supposed to occur will cause a great shift in this plane that may endanger our lives!"

  Chen Chen suddenly tensed up just as Zhao Shanhe said this. He heard the sound of footsteps coming from a distance.

  The footsteps sounded eerily familiar but Chen Chen somehow was sure that it did not belong to the robot in human skin they had encountered last night, but to a human instead...

  "I didn't expect you guys to come in here as well.."

  Both of them heard a grave, astute voice of an elderly man. Chen Chen immediately turned to the source of the voice, completely petrified.

  Zhao Shanhe trembled at the sudden appearance of this person. His expression turned intensely fierce.

  This voice...

  This voice!

  Chen Chen took a deep breath and stated solemnly, "Professor Wang Xi, you've finally made an appearance."

  Chen Chen would never forget this voice, even if it had been more than a decade. This voice played out in his mind daily like a tape recorder. It was Professor Wang Xi's voice...

  A somewhat frail and rickety figure slowly walked into Chen Chen's psionic range. He saw with his mind's eye that the professor was wearing a common blue T-shirt and he addressed the two of them directly, "Zhao Shanhe, Chen Chen, I'm sure you didn't expect our reunion to happen in a place like this."

  "Wang Xi!"

  Zhao Shanhe was so overcome with emotion that his body would not stop trembling. "How dare you show yourself! Explain why you've done so much harm to me when I've never wronged you in any way!"

  "Harm you?"

  Professor Wang Xi seemed appalled by these accusations. "I've been so generous to leave the dimension key behind for you. It's all thanks to my gracious gesture that you managed to ascend to the peak of the Earth Federation so what makes you say that?"

  "But you intentionally left your memetic inventions in the real world and nearly drove the world to extinction several times. Why did you do that?"

  Zhao Shanhe continued his accusations while constantly squinting in Chen Chen's direction, hinting that they should attack Wang Xi together.

  "Well, I suppose you only have your own incompetence to blame."

  Professor Wang Xi sighed. "You obtained the Civilization Monolith that I was originally saving for myself, and yet you couldn't figure out the workings of the antimeme. Doesn't the problem lie with you in this case?"

  Zhao Shanhe scoffed at this insulting remark.

  "Professor Wang Xi."

  Chen Chen interrupted the heated exchange between the two. "Was it also a part of your plans for me to acquire the USB drive?"

  "No."

  Wang Xi shook his head. "I only left the dimension key in a common spot and left it to fate to decide who would stumble into it and what happened next. I must say I wasn't expecting you to outperform Zhao Shanhe..."

  Chen Chen frowned.

  "Only Zhao Shanhe's obtaining the dimension key was by design."

  Professor Wang Xi scoffed. "He was meant to be the second owner. However, he could barely put up a fight against you even with the help of the Civilization Monolith. How pathetic..."

  "What's your motive?"

  Chen Chen brushed aside the irrelevant discussions. "After we acquired the dimension key, you spread the 'Weeping Angel' and other memetic entities into real life at the expense of innocent lives. What made you do so?"

  "Why would I need to have a specific goal in mind?"

  Wang Xi seemed perturbed by this and stated, "I'm everything. I'm both God and the Devil itself. If I must give you a reason to satisfy you, then it would be that the dimension key has to be bound to someone, but I want to limit the power you two can gain with the dimension key, so I did what you accused me of...

  "Back then, the most advanced storage form was floppy disks. The dimension key I first acquired at the time came in the form of a floppy disk as well and thought I could change the entire world with it, but unfortunately..."

  A touch of regret appeared in Wang Xi's eyes. He shook his head and continued. "I died once and therefore lost my ownership of the dimension key. From there on, I'd only let the dimension key find its way to its next owner, which is how it came into your hands..."

  Chen Chen could not believe what he was hearing. He looked at Wang Xi suspiciously, a part of him still doubted Wang Xi's confessions.

  Could there be some hidden meaning behind what Wang Xi was saying?

  Chen Chen pondered on what he just heard. By this point, Zhao Shanhe's patience had run out.

  "In that case, die!"

  Zhao Shanhe attacked without any warning. The black slate in his hand multiplied in size and emitted a terrific, invisible power which rippled to Chen Chen as well and sent pulses of pain into his head!

  The moment Zhao Shanhe made his move, Chen Chen felt a sharp pain burning through the center of his chest. A lightsaber pierced through the back of his chest and appeared in front!

  "Hahaha!"

  Wang Xi laughed when he saw this and glared at Zhao Shanhe with a look of mockery. After that, he disappeared, leaving behind only one final remark that echoed in the subspace.

  "Chen Chen, I shall wait for the day you bring mankind to an era of subspace travel!"

  With that, Wang Xi vanished!

  Chen Chen's expression grew cold and wrathful after this. He flicked the sweat pooling on his brow and turned around slowly, menacingly to face a startled Zhao Shanhe.

  "How, how are you not dead yet?"

  Zhao Shanhe was caught off guard by this. He clenched his teeth and flicked the lightsaber upward, slicing apart Chen Chen's chest to reveal large clumps of black substance underneath his skin!

  Zhao Shanhe prod inside with his Force and immediately noticed that there was a mass of nothingness inside Chen Chen. To him, it seemed like Chen Chen was made of a web of flesh without any distinguishable structure such as veins or bones...

  Chen Chen smiled grimly. "Just as I thought, it was you messing with my head just now!"

  Zhao Shanhe turned pale as a sheet of paper. He quickly leaped backward and invoked the black slate in his palm again. Pulses of unknown power seeped into Chen Chen's conscience and t
ried to dominate him.

  "Impossible!"

  Zhao Shanhe was petrified. The black slate in his hand quaked maniacally and yet he could not take hold of Chen Chen. "Impossible, why aren't you dead yet? You're not human!"

  "I've surpassed the boundaries of humans a long time ago!"

  Chen Chen's psionic power erupted like a massive volcano, filling the air with his murderous intent. However, as vicious as his energy was, they were unable to penetrate the barrier formed by the black slate.

  Zhao Shanhe, who was hiding behind the barrier, was awed by this sight. He slowly paced backward as he beheld Chen Chen's otherworldly might. He was inching toward a dimension crack that would lead him back to the real world. He was trying to escape!

  "You won't get away!"

  Chen Chen opened his eyes at once. His pupils dilated. He saw countless twisted, misshaped figures everywhere around them. They moaned and growled with inhumane voices and the moment they saw Chen Chen opening his eyes, their arms turned into fine, slender tentacles and reached for Chen Chen!

  "You opened your eyes! Hahaha! You opened your eyes!"

  Zhao Shanhe shrieked ecstatically. He did not expect that this Chen Chen would be foolish enough to sabotage himself and open his eyes!

  However, his joy quickly turned to fright within a second as his smile turned frozen and blank with it. He saw Chen Chen's hands reaching for his eye!

  "Plop!"

  With an abrupt pull, the neural muscles were torn off cleanly. Chen produced both eyeballs on his palms. After that, a strange light appeared within those empty sockets where his eyes once belonged and through this tunnel, Chen Chen finally got to see the shape and form of this world!

  "So, this is the subspace!"

  Chen Chen saw the mystifying black fog swirling around them. Those fog instantly evaporated upon touching his skin. The cursed effect that should kill anyone who opened their eyes in this world was completely nullified. Meanwhile, Chen Chen's psionic powers had built up to a point where they shattered the limitations of the subspace universe and erupted!

  "Boom!"

  In an instant, Chen Chen's psionic powers integrated itself with the idle power of the subspace. His psionic wave drew a ferocious tide of the subspace energy that flowed voraciously into Zhao Shanhe!

  At last, the black slate could not bear the tidal swarm of subspace power sent by Chen Chen anymore. With several sharp cracks, it shattered into pieces!

  "Ah!"

  All Zhao Shanhe could do at that moment was to emit a whimper before his body was broken apart and shattered into pieces by the subspace stream...

  Chapter 596: Retreating to Reality |

  Instead of being plunged into eternal darkness the moment he opened his eyes, Chen Chen instead opened his "eyes" that allowed him to see what the naked eyes could not observe!

  With this newly acquired sight, he invoked a subspace tidal stream that allowed him to easily kill Zhao Shanhe on the spot!

  After executing Zhao Shanhe, he noticed a cloud of bloody mist appearing from where he was killed. Amid the bloody mist, there were Zhao Shanhe's eyes wrapped inside it and his voice drowned with death rattle coming from within the depths of the clouds of mist.

  "Impossible, you must've played some tricks, why aren't you dead yet!"

  Chen Chen snickered upon witnessing this scene. He lifted his hand and prepared for another attack, but the cloud of mist was suddenly sucked into the opening leading to reality, and departed from the subspace.

  Chen Chen did not pursue his rival. He only looked ruminatively into the remnants of the mist with two empty sockets painted with fresh blood.

  "I killed Zhao Shanhe..."

  Chen Chen muttered to himself. By now, he had pieced everything together.

  It seemed like Zhao Shanhe had devised a plan all along in case things went awry for him. After he was afflicted with the antimeme left behind by Wang Xi, he managed to temporarily subdue its effects using the Civilization Monolith. The mysterious power of the black slate managed to suppress the effects of the "I See You" antimeme successfully, but Zhao Shanhe was hounded with gut-wrenching pain every day from thereon.

  Therefore, his final resort to purging the cursed antimeme was to head to the Event Horizon dimension in search of whatever clues that may help him. Before embarking on his journey, he intentionally left behind four horror movies in the dimension key:

  Ju-on, Final Destination, One Missed Call, and Ring.

  These were the collection of movies Zhao Shanhe discovered that carried the most lethal memetic entities. He left them behind to sabotage the next person to acquire the dimension key.

  There was another reason he had injected these movies into the dimension key. It served as a fallback in case things went wrong for him. If he encountered some kind of fatal accident in the Event Horizon and died in the dimension, the power of the Civilization Monolith would allow him to fuse with the antimeme and return him to the real world where he would be bound to the dimension key!

  The next owner of the USB drive would eventually open the four movies at one point or another, and would be killed by the memetic entities lurking within!

  By then, the dimension would be free for Zhao Shanhe to claim again...

  However, stumbling into Chen Chen in the Event Horizon dimension was completely out of his calculations. It was only after discovering the identity of Chen Chen when he realized the severe stakes involved, that he may very well lose his life in the process!

  On the other hand, Chen Chen recognized Zhao Shanhe immediately. To loosen Zhao Shanhe's guard, he claimed that he was afflicted by the antimeme as well. Chen Chen's ploy was superbly effective since Zhao Shanhe saw it as a chance for him to turn the situation around in his favor.

  Zhao Shanhe realized that the antimeme bound to Chen Chen may very well be the antimeme he had left behind intentionally to plague the next owner of the dimension key so he could leverage on this golden opportunity!

  Upon recognizing the cards laid out on the table, Zhao Shanhe immediately improvised on his already existing plan. He decided that he was going to kill Chen Chen while they were in the subspace and from there on, alter the course of history!

  Zhao Shanhe's plan was put into effect when he betrayed Chen Chen earlier.

  After Zhao Shanhe's body was destroyed, he retreated to the real world using the antimeme, and after his retreat, he had become incredibly weakened. He bound himself to the dimension key and fell into an extended slumber.

  After eighteen years when Chen Chen acquired the USB drive, Zhao Shanhe was awakened during one of Chen Chen's instantiations...

  From there on, the story played itself out in time.

  As for Chen Chen's action of removing his eyeballs, this was not the first time he had done something like this.

  The first time Chen Chen had done this was when he was trapped in an elusive dreamscape. After all, removing one's eyeballs was one of the major clues depicted in Event Horizon. In the movie, Dr. Will who turned into a demon proclaimed after gouging out his eyeballs:

  "Where I will be heading to, I will not need eyes..."

  This can be interpreted as that eyes were not needed in the subspace. It was only by removing one's eyes could one see the true form of the subspace dimension!

  The problem was that Zhao Shanhe possessed the body of a mere mortal and could not ever fathom mutilating himself. Meanwhile, Chen Chen had nothing to fear. His body was the body of the Consciousness Stealer. Why should he ever fear gouging his eyes out? Even Zhao Shanhe slicing his chest open with the lightsaber did not inflict any damage on him. The only result of it was that a small portion of his flesh was scalded by the heat of the lightsaber.

  Zhao Shanhe, after losing his body, could only silently bear his losses and escape in the form of an antimeme.

  "Decades ago in the timeline, I terminated your conscience myself. More than a decade later in the real-time universe, I'd have to kill you again. The workings of the multiverse a
re truly wondrous..."

  Chen Chen shook his head. The way he understood it was that Zhao Shanhe retreated with the idea that he may come back from this defeat in the distant future. Little did he know, their next encounter would lead to his ultimate death, where even his conscience could not be preserved!

  The pain in Chen Chen's eyes slowly subsided. He surveyed the world around him with his empty sockets, taking his time to explore this unknown world.

  The world stretched out before him was an endless stretch of gray that went as far as the eye could see. Countless strange and indescribable particles flickered in the air. They did not seem like stars.

  This was not the solar system nor was it the Milky Way. It was a place that did not subscribe to the conventions of the universe. There was no light or air and space and time themselves were distorted in this dimension.

  The entire space was eternally bound to darkness and chaos as countless chaotic distortions bubbled in every corner of this space. From time to time, a gray bubble would suspend itself mid-air and then burst instantly. It would cause a ripple effect of countless strange observations without explanations that could not be described in mere words.

  This space was full of never-seen-before electric wave signals and abrupt radiation. These chaotic fluctuations ate away at his consciousness. His very sanity was slowly corroding away when basked in this endless gray mist.

  This was the cost of entering the subspace and seeing the webs of reality. Upon noting this, Chen Chen understood the reasoning for the crew members of the Event Horizon losing their minds and massacring each other senselessly.

  After surveying his surroundings for a short period, Chen Chen directed his gaze to the location where Zhao Shanhe was last seen. Shattered fragments of the black slate could be seen levitating in the air. It constantly repelled the gray mist of the subspace that threatened to surround it.

  Chen Chen made a swift motion and summoned the fragments.

  The workings of this black slate were entirely profound. Even after its destruction, it could resist the effects of the subspace and repel it on its own.