CHAPTER 1089: CHAPTER 98: THE MISSING PERSON

The snow kept falling. Little Tolya wrapped in a blanket, flipping through the mathematics textbook in his hand.

The mathematics textbook was yellowed and brittle, evidently having been there for many years. Little Tolya had to handle it with care. The door was shut tight. The radiator buzzed softly; it was surprising that this nearly thirty-year-old piece of machinery could still function.

The room was very quiet. There were no sounds of men and women fighting. Little Tolya could read in peace.

These books had been stored in the attic for a long time. Their previous owner was Little Tolya’s grandfather, a mathematics professor. It was said that thirty years ago, he fled from the Federation to the enemy country across the ocean.

At that time, this was something everyone envied. There was a joke circulating back then, saying the best mathematics research institution would have "Federation buildings and Russian professors."

However, the professor’s wife did not get a visa due to certain historical circumstances. Until his daughter’s marriage, the old professor kept sending money over to the Russian Federation. Those dollars were more stable than the domestic currency and were very popular on the black market. For a long time, the old professor’s children were the envy of the locals.

But that was long ago. Before Little Tolya was born, the money from the Federation stopped. Perhaps the old professor had already gone to Heaven.

As the money stopped... and with historical developments, the living standards of several families plummeted.

These were the books left unsold. The luxury items the old professor left in this country, along with his wife’s earlier medals, were mostly sold off. Only these textbooks remained, and no one came to buy them. Still, the old professor’s daughter always thought her father was a great mathematician, so these things might have some value, and she kept them in the attic.

The snow kept falling, as if the world outside the window had disappeared. Jingning enveloped the child. He felt incredibly at ease. The blanket was soft and warm, a gift from a young couple next door. That couple came from the Republic, supposedly to do business here. Also, a chubby uncle from the Federation occasionally came by to give him bread. He seemed to be a member of some charitable organization.

Truly comforting days.

Little Tolya glanced out the window. He felt the snowflakes hitting the windowpane in a rather unusual path. He stood up, wrapped in the blanket, walked to the window frame, and tapped on the glass with his hand. He dared not tap too hard. The snow on the window frame fell. More snowflakes hit the window frame, trying to fill the previous snow.

Then, the trajectory of the snow sliding off the glass seemed to form an abstract face.

Little Tolya tilted his head. He seemed to recall a piece of knowledge, "The human brain is always good at recognizing patterns as faces." He couldn’t remember where he saw these things. But...

"Atolis..." The face even spoke to him, "Atolis... are you awake?"

"I..." Little Tolya’s face twisted up. After a long time, he replied, "I’d rather not be."

"I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Atolis." It said.

"Is today’s AI really this advanced... is it? It feels somewhat... primitive though..." he murmured.

This is a virtual world. Little Tolya is a prisoner of a virtual world.

This was a world that calmed his mind.

The selected scenes here indeed represent the moments that most reassured Little Tolya. It was a winter, and his father, following the Great Shepherd’s call, joined a great, glorious, and just war. Thus, the endless domestic violence disappeared. His mother was busy queuing up for relief supplies — probably because work was really hard to find. His younger brother had died of illness earlier. It was just him here.

His childhood had only this bit of happiness.

Even now, Atolis finds it laughable to recall. How naïve he was as a child.

In reality, no kind-hearted charity would bring bread to his home. A lame script just needed an excuse for David Klein to appear. Before the age of ten, Little Tolya was a freak; no peer wanted to play with him. Although his mother seemed to love him, she would definitely beat him after drinking. Even his favorite class teacher would occasionally hit him. It was only after being recognized as a "genius" that he met adults in a moribund research institute who wouldn’t beat him.

Then, he met those... who truly made him feel at ease.

Little Tolya was placed in the Rama Project district because the Russian Federation was desperately expanding its team of experts. Over the years, as reforms proceeded, the Russian Federation’s educational institutions became increasingly... well, as David put it, "increasingly like a church school," making it somewhat difficult for the Russian Federation to assemble a sufficiently qualified Expert Group. Little Tolya was probably meant to make the team "quantity +1" while lowering the average age a bit.

David was the oldest in the team later on. He was even older than Atolis’s father by a few years. Initially, Little Tolya held some fear towards people from the Federation, but David was kind to him. And in this script, he played the man who brought Little Tolya bread.

Zhu Xinyu was the person closest to his age. Although Zhu Xinyu could barely take care of herself, she still looked after him a lot. At least compared to the adults, he had more in common with Zhu Xinyu. In his heart, Zhu Xinyu was like a kind elder sister.

Xiang Shan was always with Zhu Xinyu. He was the most respected person, and also the most comforting. Being respected usually brings fear, but Xiang Shan felt approachable.

The script placed these two next door to him.

More people who reassured him were reimagined and inserted into this segment of memory.

In his childhood, there was no bread, nor were there blankets. The radiator was usually off because the electricity bill was too expensive.

And his grandfather was not the "great mathematician" that his mother had hoped for. A great mathematician wouldn’t even have trouble managing a visa for his wife. He was just a poor university teacher, barely able to get a green card.

In that era, there were too many people like this.

"AI, why did you enter here?"

"I have been searching for you, esteemed administrator user Atolis." The snowflakes on the window formed into a face. As the mouth opened and closed, the voice appeared directly.

Hmm, it seemed to have used the audio source of Xiang Shan as material.

The AI said, "I am an AI made by Xiang Shan, a son of Xiang Shan. Searching for you is one of my routine tasks..."

"Oh... oh... I felt it. Indeed, the content of those math textbooks has been replaced. Some things are not from the last century... the 1990s. Have I been trapped here for... seventy years?"

"Two hundred years."

Atolis was greatly shocked: "Didn’t Yawgmoth give me the latest textbooks? I thought he wanted me to work for him for free."

"What do you mean? I’m sorry I cannot understand."

"Wouldn’t he bring the most cutting-edge problems for me to think about and study? I surely thought so." Atolis continued in disbelief: "The Turing degree self-isomorphism problem? Can system engineering theories like the K-server problem drag on for two hundred years? Xiang Shan seemed to have asked me to research it... Was the research data from that time not preserved?"

"As far as I know, that data was updated at least... three years ago."

"I also know it was updated three years ago. I knew it after recovering my memory. But this shouldn’t be the most cutting-edge."

"I’m afraid..." The AI said, "I have found no more advanced data in my database."

"My... God..." Atolis ran his hands through his hair, extremely frustrated, "What kind of hell is outside... What has that bastard Yawgmoth turned it into?"

"What do you remember now?"

"Yawgmoth attacked me. Maybe."

Atolis’s memory of the outside world stopped at this point. After Xiang Shan disappeared, Atolis returned disheartenedly to the surface of Earth. He didn’t even join the celebrations and left his powerful prosthetic body, using a regular civilian prosthetic to join the surface reconstruction work. He had enough of war.

He had just built his small home, met his neighbors, and was preparing to install an antenna for stable network service.

Before the antenna was installed, a spacecraft descended from the sky. A Martial Artist jumped out from inside and knocked him unconscious.

It was probably Yawgmoth.

He seemed to have hibernated for a long time. But hibernation cannot go on endlessly. He must periodically exercise his nerves. Perhaps for this reason, Yawgmoth created such an Illusory Realm for him.

He’s just a prisoner.

"So where am I in real coordinates?"

"Between the space architectures of Mercury orbit and Venus orbit." The AI answered, "I found you. I will report to Xiang Shan. Is there anything you want me to convey to him? Father will surely come to save you. Do you have anything..."

"Don’t save me." Atolis said, "It’s meaningless. Although I don’t know what it’s like outside, if Yawgmoth can imprison me for two hundred years... he surely holds a great advantage, right? Given his mental state when he attacked me, it must be terrible outside. My mind is already very tired. I don’t want to face it anymore. Just let me stay here alone. Yawgmoth probably wouldn’t kill me. He put so much effort into suppressing my memory awakening process, to keep me in this state, he probably can’t bear to kill me."

"My father Xiang Shan, he misses you very much."

"So he is still alive? Not a posthumous work?" Atolis nodded, wrapping his blanket tighter, "Will you kill my Biological Brain?"

"I am a service-type AI. In this state, I will not kill."

"Alright, just let me stay like this."