When she heard a bizarre, explosive "pop" sound by her ear, Lin Fuque was buried in her food, eating diligently.
Her mother held a premium membership card at a cake shop called Cafecat, which entitled her to a free small cupcake every day. This worked out nicely for Lin Fuque. The weather was hot, and her mom didn't like going out, but Lin Fuque had energy to spare. Rain or shine, she would make the trip without fail to claim her little cupcake, and would also grab some cookies to take home for her mom.
But the two slices of cake in front of her were treats from the two unfamiliar sisters sitting across from her, and they were large slices at that. The sisters seemed to have bought the cake just for taking photos. As Lin Fuque speared a cherry with her fork, the sisters started photographing the cards and plush toys that came with the cake purchase.
One of them, multitasking, was scrolling through short videos while busy: "Peipei, someone nearby spotted a meteor with a strange shape, just a few minutes ago... This meteor is so weird, it looks like it split into two mid-air, wait! Could it be a plane crash?"
The other was also looking at her phone: "Check if the count for the collaboration freebies is right, I've taken on so many 'proxy eating' jobs I've lost track! Oh, stop watching that, the meteor's long gone!"
—They obviously hadn't heard the sound, or if they had, they didn't notice it.
The air conditioner in the cake shop was silent, but the cool breeze carried the sweet fragrance into every corner. Through the glass window, the sky was painted with a light purple dusk. Lin Fuque lifted her head, looking around blankly. The next second, she thought she heard another faint "Woof."
"...A puppy?"
She stopped swinging her legs, ducked most of her body under the table to look, but didn't see any sign of a dog.
Lin Fuque raised her head.
At the very moment she looked up... the world in her eyes seemed to have changed.
["Is the little girl not finishing her&%￥... ah?"]
["You just noticed? She was fidgeting earlier... doesn't want to eat anymore, my niece is like @#& when she eats, once she doesn't want it she %￥#@..."]
Lin Fuque stared, her mouth hanging open.
The next second, she immediately closed it—it's impolite to have your mouth open with food still in it.
...But why were there words floating above the two sisters' heads?
When they leaned close and whispered to each other, the content of their speech seemed to bubble up above their heads like speech bubbles. Strangely, the sentences were broken, interspersed with characters Lin Fuque couldn't understand, like randomly appearing garbled code.
Lin Fuque rubbed her eyes.
The text bubbles slowly faded and disappeared, but then something else appeared above their heads, and no matter how they moved, it steadily followed, floating along with their heads.
She couldn't figure it out by herself.
Lin Fuque raised a hand: "Sisters, there's something on your heads..."
"Oh!" Huang Wenpei, sitting across from her, gave a bright smile. "This is a spring-loaded acrylic stand hair clip of my bias! Cute, right? Little one, do you play this game too?"
The little one silently shook her head.
It definitely wasn't a hair clip, but she suddenly couldn't think of how to describe it, so she simply read out the "words" above their heads: "Level.2?"
'Level' means rank, everyone knows that. Huang Wenpei waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, it's not that low!"
Huang Wenpei thought Lin Fuque was talking about her level in the game she was currently playing.
In the game, of course, she was long since max level. And stepping to the shop entrance, you could see this very game was having a collaboration event with Cafecat cake, which was why Huang Wenpei had taken on proxy eating jobs to get the collaboration merchandise for fellow fans. But the two of them couldn't finish all that cake, hence they'd been stuck in the shop all afternoon, giving cake slices to lucky passersby who came in.
However, Huang Wenpei didn't know that Lin Fuque wasn't talking about this game.
The "words" she had read aloud were floating unscientifically above the two women's heads.
-
She was starting to see more and more words.
These words seemed to sprout from Lin Fuque's field of vision, semi-transparent and not obstructing her sight, appearing directly above people and objects.
She wasn't dumb; she quickly guessed: "Living people and animals have levels above their heads. The things above objects... are descriptions?"
Besides that, there were various dialogue text bubbles. A customer in the shop was sending a voice message on their phone two meters away, the sound muffled, but the text was clear.
This already lively world suddenly became even livelier.
Except, as Lin Fuque turned her head to look around: whether it was levels, item descriptions, or dialogue text, they were all randomly interspersed with large amounts of strange garbled code.
Glancing at the darkening sky, she tightened her grip on the ribbon handle. The glass jar of cookies was securely nestled in the gift bag. Lin Fuque "thump-thump-thumped" up the stairs, pushed the door open, and quickly closed it behind her to keep the mosquitoes and the hot air outside.
The living room was lit. The woman on the yoga mat was not tall, with a small round face that matched her slightly plump build. At the moment, she was struggling to follow the instructor on TV in a yoga pose, her expression rather gritted-teeth.
"Mom!" Lin Fuque placed the cookies on the TV cabinet, caught her breath, and then slowly, enunciating clearly, announced, "I want to play a game!"
Seeing the small jar of cookies, Lin Shiyao quickly showed a relieved expression, sat up cross-legged, and turned off the workout video. "Huh? Don't you have a phone? Just go play on that."
Oh dear.
"Not that kind," Lin Fuque gestured, "I..."
She tilted her head back to think: "It's the one cousin took me to play before... the one where characters have levels above their heads, and dialogue has bubbles, and items have descriptions, that... that..."
She got stuck.
"'Sword Saint Legend'? 'Chronicles of the Great Han'?" Lin Shiyao tried to help her recall. "Or the single-player ones like 'Western Frontier Chronicles' or 'Shooter II'? Surely not 'Chocolate Bomberman'? You said last time it made you dizzy."
Lin Fuque: "..."
"Never mind, I won't play," she sighed an "ai," feigning world-weariness. "Feels like all games are kinda the same."
Lin Fuque, 12 years old this year, about to start seventh grade at Lecheng Experimental School. After this summer vacation, she would be a real middle school student. She had actually been attending Gushan Elementary in a small town before; all her "old" classmates were still in Gushan Town, so this summer she had only really gotten familiar with the cake shop two streets away.
Mom Lin Shiyao chuckled and reached for the cookies. "To you, they probably are all the same... anyway, you're pretty bad at all of them."
Slow reactions, sluggish movements. While her cousin was out front killing monsters, she could only control her character to pick up glowing trash all over the ground.
Lin Fuque puffed out her cheeks like a steamed bun.
"Mom, is it really effective if you eat right after finishing your workout?"
"I've suffered so much, can't I reward myself a little?!"
But you reward yourself every single day.
Besides, the words floating above the jar of cookies were—
[A jar of slightly stale butter cookies]
When Lin Fuque picked up this jar, the characters for "slightly stale" were still garbled code, but she thought more words meant it was more impressive...
She gave a somewhat guilty smile and retreated to her bedroom.
The moment the bedroom door closed behind her, Lin Fuque quickly blinked twice at the air—
[Current Text Translation Progress: 26.5%]
[Please watch… activate… mission]
A curved light screen, visible only to her, unfolded before Lin Fuque. The interface was divided into several sections, with these lines of text floating at the very center.
Since the text was already 26.5% translated, Lin Fuque could at least roughly understand what the entire interface contained!
The interface was divided into four main modules: "Personal Panel," "Career Training," "Mission Center," and "Exploration Log." At that moment, in the top-left corner, the [Personal Panel] displayed a miniature, three-dimensional (3D) version of Lin Fuque herself, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Ignoring the unintelligible text, she could make out the following information on her panel:
[Current Level: Lv1]
[(A line of garbled code)]
[Equipment: None]
[Career: None]
And below that—
[Map Record (Active)]
[Item Identification (Active)]
[Information Text Overlay (Active)]
[Creature Search & Threat Level Assessment (Default Active)]
[Current… Integrity: 77.4%]
[Warning! (A string of garbled code) Lost!]
Clearly, this thing that had inexplicably appeared before her eyes was some kind of game! And a very high-tech one at that!
Lin Fuque thought it resembled the "raw games" her cousin had mentioned—ones that were untranslated or only partially translated, forcing you to play by guesswork.
As for "watch… activate mission," Lin Fuque looked nervously at the interface below these words and reached out to tap it—
She felt both thrilled and curious. What kind of game was this, exactly?
Maybe she should check out the "game CG" first.
However, just as she opened the CG video, why did it sound like she heard a dog bark again?
-
In Yutai City, next to Lecheng, someone witnessed a meteor streaking across the sky at dusk. The meteorite seemed to have fallen in the city's outskirts. As people rushed to the area hoping to find it, a small white mass also wriggled its way onto the highway.
It appeared to be a white Pomeranian with all four limbs broken, crawling along the ground in a bizarre manner.
It seemed unaccustomed to its own limbs, yet it could crawl with surprising speed. Every so often, it would lift its head and rotate it steadily in a full circle through the air… as if receiving a signal.
Information streamed rapidly through the dark pupils of this "Pomeranian":
[Emergency landing complete. Self-check finished.]
[Warning! System Personality Module has fully detached from Main Database. Main Database lost!]
[Warning! Failed to send report to designated service planet. Unable to locate!]
[Attempting information drift. Logging mode activated.]
The Pomeranian lay still, closing its eyes as data was exported:
[Federal Special Forces Recruit Training System, Service AI Serial No. 4577K21D. Current AI Personality Module has detached from Main Database! Map Record function lost. Item Identification function lost. Creature Search & Threat Level Assessment function lost! Arsenal Location: Unlocatable! Planet Location: Unlocatable! Course of Action: 4577K21D has randomly mimicked a local lifeform. Priority: Search for Main Database!]
The Recruit Training System, now an AI transformed into a "white Pomeranian," had suffered severe damage to its personality module. So severe, in fact, that it couldn't even manage to walk properly on all four dog paws.
Although the mimicry was complete, the system had never learned how to walk like a dog.
It wasn't overly concerned. Its current mission was to retrieve the database and the arsenal, travel to its designated service planet, bind with a qualified soldier, and fulfill the mission inherent to its existence.
After confirming it had regained a bit more energy, it made another attempt to send a message to the "Main Database" it had accidentally separated from:
"Woof!"
