During today's lecture, Hongxiao felt restless.
Could Yujia manage to get anything from her brother, Pengfei?
Would Pengfei remember the scene he witnessed months ago unintentionally?
Could Yujia lose the phone number?
Would the old man in the duty office reliably alert someone every time a call came in?
Hongxiao knew that even if everything went wrong, it wasn't the end of the world.
But that's just how he was wired. Uncertainty in any form, even if all outcomes were harmless, unsettled him.
Yet, the future that hadn't arrived was always uncertain. He tried to console himself.
In the middle of chemistry class, his young female teacher suddenly called on him.
Hongxiao jolted in his seat. This quiet, unassuming woman had demonstrated on her first day that she was not to be underestimated.
It was common for freshmen to be late as they couldn't find their classrooms. But this teacher would lock the door precisely at the start of the lesson, locking out several students and only letting them in after making them stand outside for ten minutes.
Could she be targeting me now? Hongxiao suddenly felt that being singled out by this teacher might lead to unpredictable, and possibly unpleasant, outcomes.
The teacher asked Huahong to join her in the adjacent lab and instructed the others to review in the classroom.
"I've decided to make you my assistant. Your main duties will involve helping me prepare before lab sessions and clean up afterward. For today's lab, I've already prepared everything. So, after class, please stay behind to help clean up. And starting from the next chemistry class, please arrive a bit earlier to help as well. It'll take some time, but your efforts will certainly be reflected in your course evaluation and final grade."
Breathless for some reason—perhaps due to the several high steps from the classroom to the lab—the teacher made her point clear.
"Okay," Hongxiao agreed promptly.
Even with delicate features and fair complexion, the teacher spoke with an authoritative demeanor.
After the lab session, when everyone had left, the teacher merely instructed him on how to clean and place the various containers, then sat down to read.
"Sorry, I've been prepping for an important exam these past few days. Thanks for your hard work today!"
"Oh." While cleaning, Hongxiao pondered why the teacher had chosen him. Initially, he thought it was due to his excellent research skills, but now wondered if she had recognized his willingness to work hard.
After busying himself for nearly half an hour, Hongxiao quickly bid the teacher goodbye and dashed to Building 9.
Today, the layout of Professor Zhu's office had transformed anew. A portable blackboard was set up next to his desk with several chairs in front.
"You're here! Good. Please go to Lab One and call everyone over," Professor Zhu seemed to have been waiting for this moment.
It was Hongxiao's first time entering Laboratory 1. It was more spacious than Laboratory 2 but appeared disorganized, cluttered with chemical containers he'd seen in class and various coils and devices reminiscent of his father's workplace.
His senior lab mates were scattered in different corners, working together on some device assembly line.
"Our little assistant's here!" Wen greeted sweetly.
"Professor Zhu wants everyone in his office."
"Alright. Let us wash our hands first."
Shortly after Hongxiao returned to the professor's office, everyone came in.
Professor Zhu pointed to the chairs in front of the blackboard, gesturing everyone to sit.
"Today, we'll have a theoretical discussion, starting with Hongxiao's experience from yesterday's experiment," Professor Zhu said, pacing before the blackboard, one hand across his chest, the other supporting his chin.
"Let's recall. Hongxiao, you said you heard music and saw someone taking out the trash from a first-person perspective. You also saw your grandfather, right?"
"That music was actually from a music video on TV. It felt like I was seeing it from the first-person perspective of my grandfather's neighbor," Hongxiao clarified.
He still kept the incident with the mysterious girl to himself.
Some things, if not mentioned at the start, become forever difficult to discuss.
"Excellent," Professor Zbhu resumed pacing. "Zou Jing, you initially found it promising that Hongxiao captured a consciousness fragment from a distant neighbor, but later felt it might be a 'memory trap.' Can you explain?"
"Sure, Professor Zhu," Jing stood up, but Zhu Di signaled him to remain seated.
"My understanding is that our consciousness resonance experiment is like taking a photo. We can assume that at any given moment, a person's consciousness—what they see, hear, and think—can be captured by a special camera. Our job during the experiment, stimulating Subject A, is akin to adjusting this camera's angle and position to capture another person's, Subject B's, consciousness at a particular moment."
Hongxiao mentally applauded. Jing, the lab's second most senior expert, had nailed the analogy.
"If yesterday's experiment perfectly adjusted the camera to capture B, Hongxiao's neighbor, from thousands of miles away, it's astonishing. But given that we don't yet understand the physical properties of primary consciousness waves, their range, and so forth, it could be explainable."
Jing paused, and then continued his analysis.
"But if we say that we captured images from several months ago, that's harder to grasp."
Hongxiao felt that Jing initially wanted to say "images from a deceased person", but then had second thoughts.
"Could it be possible that the neighbor's primary consciousness waves from a few months ago still exist, and so were captured by Hongxiao?"
Jun interjected, seemingly advocating for the authenticity of what Hongxiao witnessed.
"Unlikely," Jing shook his head. "We know light is also a wave. It's like saying I turned on a flashlight in this room months ago, then turned it off. And now, months later, I can still detect those light waves."
"That's the crux of the issue – the 'now' you just mentioned," Professor Zhu suddenly spoke.
Everyone momentarily baffled, unsure what the professor meant.
"Let me tell a brief story. In March 1955, a close friend of Albert Einstein passed away. Einstein wrote a condolence letter to the family, ending with a famous quote:
'Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion..'
A month later, Einstein himself passed away."
Silence followed as everyone pondered the profound words of the great scientist.
Hongxiao couldn't fully grasp it but felt it was a consolation for the loss of his own grandfather.
"According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the concepts of past, present, and future are not absolute. Consider two events, Event One and Event Two. For one observer, Event One happens before Event Two; for another observer, Event Two happens first," Professor Zhu explained, using his hands to illustrate the two events.
"So, for one observer, Event One is in the past of Event Two; for another, it's in the future," Jing mused.
"Correct. In 1908, Minkowski, Einstein's mentor, proposed the concept of four-dimensional spacetime based on Einstein's theory. In this spacetime, our Event One and Event Two coexist. Who's past, who's future, who's present, are merely illusions based on the observer's chosen coordinate system," Professor Zhu sketched a diagram on the blackboard.
"So what's the real situation? Which event happens in the past and which in the future, I mean, in reality?" Jun asked, intrigued.
"Good question. One interpretation is that the passage of time itself is an illusion. Things that happened in the past haven't really passed. Things that will happen in the future have already occurred. They exist simultaneously in this four-dimensional spacetime, a concept known as 'block universe,'" Judy gestured broadly, encompassing past, present, and future.
A murmur of astonishment swept through the room, everyone stunned by the theory.
"So if primary consciousness waves also exist in such a block universe, then resonating with past consciousness through our experiments is entirely possible, because the 'now' and 'before' exist simultaneously in this universe?" Jing's excitement grew.
"That's the theory. So theoretically, we could capture fragments of past consciousness," Professor Zhu concluded, adding, "If the theory is correct."
"Then based on this theory, we could also capture future consciousness!" Jun exclaimed.
Wen clapped her hands in laughter.
"Little lab assistant, if you ever tap into someone's consciousness a few months from now, keep an eye out for lottery numbers!" she turned to Hongxiao with a grin.
The room filled with laughter, even the professor's face breaking into a smile.
Only Wen could dare to crack such a joke during a scientific discussion in front of the professor.
"But another theory suggests that this block universe only contains the past and present. The future hasn't happened yet. As the future arrives, it continually transforms into the present, so this universe is constantly expanding. This theory is called 'the growing block universe,'" Professor Zhu explained, miming an expanding universe with his hands.
"So if this theory holds, we could only capture consciousness from the past or present? Can't see the future, huh?" Wen exaggerated a pout, expressing her disappointment at losing the ability to predict lottery numbers.
"Professor Zhu, I'm trying to find out if what I saw yesterday was indeed something my neighbor saw a few months ago," Wen's expression reminded Hongxiao of Yujia.
Professor Zhu nodded, pleased with the new research assistant's initiative.
"Excellent. But even if they don't remember the scene, we shouldn't simply dismiss the possibility that what was captured was real. After all, one might not pay attention to something seen unintentionally. On the other hand, even if they remember the scene, we can't jump to conclusions. The most crucial aspect of scientific research is reproducibility. We need to verify a conclusion through repeated experiments."
Hongxiao silently prayed, hoping his experience would validate this amazing theory.
Though difficult to understand intuitively, if the past hasn't truly passed, then perhaps we needn't mourn the death of loved ones so deeply.
If the future has already arrived, then perhaps we needn't fear the uncertain future.
Or even death.
Perhaps Einstein, when he wrote that letter, thought the same?