Xie Mingzhe had a nightmare. In his dream, a huge beast was chasing him. He ran forward like a madman. Just as the beast opened its blood-red mouth to swallow him whole, Xie Mingzhe opened his eyes in terror and looked around. The ceiling above him wasn’t the familiar one of his college dormitory and there were no familiar roommates around. He was alone in an unfamiliar room.
He remembered going out to celebrate his roommate’s birthday last night, but his roommate got drunk and blacked out. He ended up carrying his roommate back to the dorm room to sleep. It had been three in the morning, so why wasn’t he in his dorm bed when he woke up?
Xie Mingzhe was stunned and carefully looked around.
This place had snow-white walls and appeared to be a hospital room. He lay on the bed, a monitor-like device with tangled wires connected to his body next to him. The monitor’s LCD screen displayed numbers that he couldn’t understand.
Could it be that he had fallen sick in the middle of the night and was brought to the emergency room by his roommate?
Just as he was wondering about this, a nurse in a white coat pushed open the door. Her eyes widened when seeing him, almost as if she was seeing a ghost.
Xie Mingzhe took the initiative to say, “Hello, excuse me…”
Before he could finish, the nurse ran out in a panic, shouting, “Dr. Qin, the patient in Room 7, who has been in a vegetative state, has woken up!”
Xie Mingzhe was confused. “???”
A patient in a vegetative state? He had been drinking with his roommates last night. How could he be in a vegetative state? Did this nurse not recognize her patient?
Just then, a middle-aged doctor, around forty years old, hurriedly pushed open the door. He carried something resembling an ECG monitor.
Xie Mingzhe smiled politely. “Hello, doctor. Can I ask what illness I actually have?”
The doctor fiddled with the instrument in his hand and glanced at him. “You’ve been in a coma for a month. Lie down, I will examine you.”
In a coma for a month?
The nightmare and unfamiliar surroundings upon waking left Xie Mingzhe’s mind in a daze. He was forced to lie down obediently for the doctor to examine him carefully.
The doctor came to a quick conclusion after the examination, saying emotionally, “It is truly a medical miracle that you can wake up despite the severe brain damage.”
Xie Mingzhe looked puzzled. “Severe brain damage?”
He had never heard of drinking turning someone into a vegetative patient. Had he drunk fake alcohol?
The doctor looked at him in surprise. “Don’t you remember? A month ago, you accidentally fell from the third floor and suffered a severe brain injury. You were already in shock when you were brought to the hospital. We performed surgery and saved your life, but you have been in a vegetative state ever since. You slept until today.”
Xie Mingzhe, “……”
He fell from the third floor? His dorm room was clearly on the seventh floor.
Xie Mingzhe forced a laugh and touched his nose. “Doctor, please stop joking! Why was I brought to the hospital last night? Was it alcohol poisoning? I don’t remember drinking that much. Oh, right, where is my roommate?” He started looking around.
Worry flashed in the doctor’s eyes when he heard the boy’s incoherent ramblings. He instructed the treatment device next to him, “Number 777, check his mental power. See if his mental threshold has recovered.”
The square treatment device immediately activated, quickly transforming into a robot. It extended metal arms, pressed down on the boy’s head and placed two electrode-like objects on his temples.
Xie Mingzhe stared wide-eyed. The robot’s face, a 20 centimeter wide LCD screen, was showing strange numerical values. After a moment, it announced the results in a mechanical voice. “The peak mental power is 200, the EEG curve is normal.”
Dr. Qin turned to look at the boy with a complicated expression. “How could this be?”
Xie Mingzhe, head pressed down by the robot, was also completely bewildered. How could this be? He wanted to know as well!
Then Dr. Qin seemed to remember something and said excitedly, “Such a case is truly rare. I will arrange for a thorough examination right away!”
The doctor hurriedly left with the treatment equipment.
The confused Xie Mingzhe was left alone on the hospital bed.
He wanted to blurt out the classic three questions: Who am I? Where am I? What should I do?
Before he could finish asking, the doctor pushed open the door again. This time, he was carrying several robot-shaped devices. The doctor gently pressed a button and the robots started to rapidly work. Xie Mingzhe was surrounded by them like a laboratory mouse, unable to move. He could only lie flat on the bed, powerless to resist the robots that tormented him.
Xie Mingzhe realized that something was very wrong.
First of all, he had always been healthy and had a good alcohol tolerance. He was completely sober when he returned to his room last night, so it was impossible for him to be brought unconscious to the hospital by his roommate in the middle of the night. Secondly, the environment of this hospital was quite different from the hospital he remembered. The monitors by the bed and the robots that the doctor brought with him all looked very advanced. They didn’t seem like products of his era.
Xie Mingzhe’s back suddenly trembled. He had read a lot of time travel novels. Could he have traveled through time?
The doctor quickly finished the examination and smiled at him. “You are really lucky. The probability of a person in a vegetative state like you waking up is less than 1%. I have carefully examined your body and everything is normal.”
Xie Mingzhe took a few deep breaths to steady his racing heart and raised the courage to ask, “Doctor, what is the date today? What is my name? My mind is a mess and I can’t remember anything.”
The doctor replied patiently, “Your name is Xie Mingzhe. Today is August 1st, 3001 in the Star Calendar. It is your 18th birthday. This is all written on your information card.” He opened the LCD information card by the bed for Xie Mingzhe to see and prove that he wasn’t lying.
Xie Mingzhe, “……”
It was clearly 2018. What type of strange era was this? 3001 of the Star Calendar?
Xie Mingzhe’s lips twitched violently. He thought about the possibility of him transmigrating and his head throbbed with pain. He couldn’t help pouncing his head hard. The doctor saw this and immediately grabbed his hands. “Don’t move. You have been in a coma for a month and have just woken up. It is normal for some of your memories to be damaged. They will recover slowly.”
Xie Mingzhe stared blankly at his pale fingertips before asking, “Do I have any relatives?”
The doctor looked at him sympathetically. “The records show that you have been an orphan since childhood.”
Xie Mingzhe, “……”
How come he was still an orphan after transmigrating?
The doctor saw the boy’s pale face and patted his shoulder, comforting him. “Don’t be discouraged. It is already a great achievement that you woke up. Focus on recovering. There will always be a way.”
Xie Mingzhe forced a smile as he said to the kind doctor, “Thank you, Doctor.”
***
Once the doctor left, Xie Mingzhe struggled to get out of bed. He went to the bathroom in the room to wash his face, trying to calm himself down.
His face was clearly reflected in the mirror.
Due to the prolonged bed rest, the boy’s complexion was sickly pale but his features were unmistakably the same as his original self. However, the boy’s face looked very youthful. He was probably around 18 years old, fresh out of high school.
Xie Mingzhe splashed cold water on his face, his head aching. He desperately hoped this was a dream within a dream, a nightmare that would soon end.
A long time passed before he looked up.
He was still in this bathroom and the boy in the mirror looked the same as himself when he was eighteen.
Could this Xie Mingzhe be another version of himself from another time and space?
The name and appearance were the same, and the memories of the original owner of this body also started to surface in his mind.
The original owner had been an orphan since childhood, relying on government assistance to survive while living a very frugal life. However, the government assistance for orphans only lasted until they reached adulthood at eighteen while Xie Mingzhe was already over seventeen. This summer, through his hard work, he was admitted to the art department of Imperial Capital College. He feared he wouldn’t be able to afford tuition, so he left his hometown and came to the capital early to work.
In this day and age, manual labor like washing dishes, sweeping and carrying bricks had been replaced by robots, making it difficult for a recent high school graduate to find a job. He lived in the Imperial Capital for a week, residing in the poorest slums while running around looking for work, enduring many scornful looks.
Then he accidentally fell from a window during a job interview. Fortunately, the floor he was on wasn’t very high so he wasn’t smashed to pieces. Nevertheless, he was seriously injured and suffered severe brain damage. He was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and remained in a coma for a month.
The Xie Mingzhe in this world was a very serious and hardworking young man, but he clearly wasn’t as lucky as his 21st century self.
The Xie Mingzhe in the 21st century might be an orphan but he became the county’s top science scorer in the college entrance examination. He received numerous scholarships that were enough to cover his entire college expenses. He was frugal during his college years. He managed to avoid spending all his scholarship money and he also saved some through tutoring and part-time jobs.
He originally planned to find a job in a second-tier city with a lower cost of living after graduating, saving enough money to buy a small apartment. Then he would live a stable and peaceful life, happily enjoying the rest of his days. Unfortunately, he went out for drinks with his roommates and inexplicably found himself in another time and space, seeing another pitiful version of himself.
He was already unlucky and even more bad luck came knocking on his door.
Xie Mingzhe rubbed his pale face hard.
The clear sensation transmitted through his fingertips and skin seemed to tell him, ‘Don’t struggle anymore. You have been reshuffled and need to start over!’
His life had finally taken a turn for the better, but now God threw him into this miserable young man. Was this reasonable?
If he committed suicide now, could he return to Earth in 2018?
Xie Mingzhe pinched his thigh hard and the pain jolted him awake. This body belonged to a living, breathing human being. He didn’t dare to risk suicide. What if he ended up in some strange place or simply died? At the very least, this world seemed technologically advanced. It was much better than being transported to some chaotic ancient era, living on leaves and wild grass.
Xie Mingzhe comforted himself and felt a bit better.
He was alive so he should first find a way to survive. He didn’t ask for much. He just wanted to be able to support himself in this world and live a peaceful life.
Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath, barely accepting the fact that he had inexplicably been reborn.
Xie Mingzhe’s life in this world wasn’t as smooth as himself on Earth.
Today was this Xie Mingzhe’s 18th birthday. The eighteen year old boy looked somewhat pitiful. Despite lying in the hospital in a vegetative state for a month, no one except the doctors cared whether he lived or died.
He had no relatives and no friends. No one would shed a tear if he died like this.
He had lived a failed life.
Still, it was okay. Everything would be different from today on.
Xie Mingzhe looked at the boy in the mirror and gently clenched his fists.
The past couldn’t be changed but he would work hard for his future!
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