Night.
Mallory woke up in a daze.
Although awake, however, his body could not move a muscle.
He felt a thick layer of snow covering his body, freezing his hands and feet, making him lose control of them completely.
An inexplicable sadness welled up inside Mallory.
He realized that he could wake up this moment, may be a return to the light, and then never wake up again.
But there was nothing he could do about it.
He couldn't even keep himself awake.
Remember, the last time he became this weak, he was able to stimulate himself to wake up by peeing hard enough to break the wound, but this time he couldn't even do that.
In all seriousness, he is not in a fully awake state, more like a pseudo-awake state that is similar to a ghost pressed bed.
Consciousness is awake, the body is out of control.
Generally when the ghost presses the bed, the body is not frozen, not so weak, the human brain is awakened, sooner or later will still be really awake. But Mallory is different, he is because of the body shock, freezing, as well as hunger, disease a combination of weakness caused by the ghost pressure bed.
Now he is left with only the ability to think.
And the only thinking, the effort to think clearly, can keep him from falling into darkness so quickly.
Inevitably, human thinking is accompanied by memories.
Memories of the first half of life, in order to think about their present and future.
The life of a person seems to be very long.
From birth, one has to work very hard to learn various survival skills.
Turning over, crawling, sitting up, standing up, talking, walking, running ...
Just after learning these survival skills, one has to start a long career of learning.
Language, math, English, physics, chemistry, biology, politics, geography, history ...
From elementary school, to middle school, to high school, and then to college.
There is no end to learning, and most of what you learn is uninteresting.
So, it feels long.
But sometimes, it feels like life is very short.
One day when I look back on my life, I realize that day after day I am doing things that I don't want to do, however, there are no more days to come.
Once Mallory.
He was no different from the other people his age who lived in that world.
The same long period of study, then graduation, then job hunting, then dissatisfaction with his current situation, then gradually lost in society and confused about his future.
He can't quite remember what happened the night before he was abducted to this place.
The only thing he can remember is that during that time, he kept thinking about life, trying to figure out the meaning of life, to figure out what kind of life he really wanted.
He didn't think he should just muddle along, he didn't want to work from morning to night, working hard to earn a barely subsistence salary. And when he wants to do what he likes, such as reading his favorite online novels, or playing a game of his choice, it's already late at night, yawning for days.
Day after day, no hope in sight.
His slightly noble character, his heartless way of acting and working, and his disdain for all kinds of unreasonable rules made him out of step with that world. After graduation, he became more bored with everything he faced.
Of course, he didn't have the idea of living lightly or anything like that, he just wanted to change.
He just wanted to change, to change himself, to seek a different life.
For a recent college graduate with no family background, this is not an easy task.
So, most of the time, he was just reflecting and thinking.
He didn't answer 'YES' OR 'NO' or anything like that on his phone, or in his computer those days, but somehow appeared on top of Stonehenge after waking up.
But he now began to wonder if it was because he had the idea of wanting to change his life that caused all this to happen now.
Regret?
It seems not.
Do you really want to go back to the original world?
Not necessarily.
Because, he has no more ties there.
Then, his purpose of trying to get points here is obviously not quite the same as others.
He just wants to lower the height of the stone pillar so that he can return to the ground and not have to be afraid at the top of the stone pillar.
As for whether he can return to his original world when the height of the stone pillar is lowered to the ground, he doesn't seem to be very concerned.
At least not very urgent.
If he accumulated enough 1000 points and managed to return to his original world and live his original life.
Perhaps he would spend the rest of his life indulging in a mystery that he could not extricate himself from.
What is going on in Film City? Who is behind all this?
The more his thoughts drifted away, the more his mind drifted.
Mallory felt that what he should be thinking about now was how to survive the cold of this night so that he could successfully survive until tomorrow.
Although trying to think, trying to keep himself awake, but in the end, extremely weak, he still fell into the endless darkness again.
...
I don't know how long it took.
It seemed a long, long time.
Mallory woke up.
He whimpered in pain.
He didn't know how many days he had been unconscious.
Since he was still on Stonehenge and hadn't been able to return to Film City, it meant he had been unconscious for two days at most.
The blazing sun shone on his body.
It warmed his body, but could not wake up his frozen limbs.
His hands and feet were swollen like hair cakes, taking on a sort of horrible black color.
He had lost all control over them.
His body seemed to be free of fever.
But that's not good.
It is likely that his immune system has completely collapsed, the central brain temperature regulation function has also been completely abolished, his body, perhaps, has become an infinite proliferation of bacteria and viruses playground.
He thought it was a miracle that he was still alive and awake.
Or rather, someone is deliberately creating this kind of miracle.
Use this miracle to torture him.
Is today the fourth day or the fifth day?
I hope it's the fifth day.
If it was the fifth day, the helicopter should be coming over soon.
Unfortunately, it wasn't.
The hot sun continued to warm Mallory's body, hanging on to his last breath and keeping him going until dark.
But the helicopter didn't come.
After dark, the temperature dropped and Mallory fell unconscious again.
...
When he woke up again.
Mallory was awakened by two mechanical claws.
They grabbed Mallory's body like cargo, placed it on a metal plate, and recycled it into the cabin.
This time it was indeed a helicopter from Film City that came over.
After Mallory was recovered into the cabin by the robot arm and the metal plate, the cabin door closed and the cabin became dark.
He knew there was a box next to him with things like bread, cookies, and drinks that could help him recover.
Unfortunately, this time his condition was worse than last time.
Last time he was just extremely weak with no strength.
This time, except for his eyeballs could barely move, his whole body had lost control, and his limbs were all swollen and ulcerated and disabled in just two or three days.
He wanted to reach for those bread, cookies and drinks are impossible.
It looked like he would have to visit his old friends first again if he survived to enter the film city this time.
Although he didn't want to be treated like a corpse when he got off the plane, Mallory couldn't hold on for long in the darkness of the cabin and soon passed out again.
~Mallory