Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 14: Cloudwalk Heights [Complete]

1819: An Unsurprising Reunion

If someone had asked Lin Sanjiu in the past what the worst way to live a life was, she probably would have answered, to be utterly alone.

But after spending so much time in the doomsday—so long that when she looked back, her pre-evolution days seemed as brief as the edge of a fingernail, while post-evolution stretched into an endless, unseen river—she had a different answer.

Living alone for a lifetime wasn't great, but if one had no attachments, it wasn't the worst either. Even if she had people to care about yet remained alone herself, she could still endure.

The worst way to live, without a doubt, was exactly what happened in the doomsday. Just when she had made a difficult decision, when the first buds of something new had appeared on the branches, when she had finally begun to familiarize herself with the road beneath her feet... time was abruptly severed.

She made her choices, but without any soil to take root, they drifted in the void. She never got to see what flowers would bloom, what fruit would bear. Lost friends never sent another word, and all she could do was pretend to forget them.

Each teleportation was like hitting pause on one life and starting another. Her existence became a giant framework filled with abruptly cut-off fragments of small, unfinished lives. In a way, every posthuman was like Bohemia—a life split into segments, except posthumans weren't even as lucky. At least Bohemia forgot everything.

Unfinished wishes, unfulfilled promises, people she hadn't yet seen... Even if she had been in the middle of rushing to put out a fire and was suddenly teleported away, knowing full well that the fire still raged on, she had no choice but to put everything on hold. Most of the time, she had to pretend it didn't matter, force herself not to think about it, and console herself with the lie that maybe one day, another teleportation would finally give her the chance to set things right.

But even Lin Sanjiu couldn't lie to herself anymore.

The truth was, as long as teleportation existed—whether it happened every fourteen months or was as chaotic as the Great Deluge—she would never be able to finish a song, tell a story to the end, or truly get to know someone.

Before she had entered the Brain in a Vat, she had nearly forgotten that life could be different. That for travelers, there was always a home to return to. That plans made together could be carried out to completion. That everything could be stable, continuous, and therefore meaningful.

Before the Great Deluge, a handful of lucky posthumans had managed to hold onto that sense of meaning through visas. But now, with the Great Deluge growing ever more frequent, Lin Sanjiu no longer dared to think about what the future would look like.

If they could stay. If her friends could stay. That would be the greatest salvation of all.

Because of that, the words thank you felt too light. Nothing in this world seemed heavy enough to match the weight of what Rena had done and what this discovery meant. After a long silence, Lin Sanjiu finally asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"There is," Rena replied. "You have the Ah Quan pocket dimension, don't you?"

For a moment, Lin Sanjiu had almost forgotten that the organization trying to save posthumans from teleportation was the very same Shark Nexus that had once altered memories and manipulated people. The gap between those two versions of the organization seemed so vast that standing on one side and looking at the other felt utterly unreal.

"Does it have to be him?" she murmured. "Why did you... why did you do those things?"

Rena didn't ask what things. After a brief silence, she simply said, "I need to take back the Ah Quan pocket dimension. When everything succeeds, when the time comes, it won't matter whether we restore their memories or try to make amends. But right now, the most important thing is solving teleportation. Everything else must take a back seat to that."