A flurry of hurried footsteps echoed through the lab as the others quickly gathered around.
"Our little lab assistant, are you okay?" Chen Wen asked anxiously.
"Could it be the oscillator's frequency triggered some kind of stimulus that overwhelmed your brain?" Ma Jun speculated as she hastily switched off the nearby instruments, as though afraid they might continue emitting harmful radiation.
Her movements were swift and uncharacteristically forceful, a stark contrast to her usual gentle and composed demeanor. It was clear she was genuinely concerned.
For a fleeting moment, Hongxiao felt a rare warmth, but it was quickly eclipsed by the chilling memory that had just consumed him.
"I saw my grandfather being murdered... by me." His voice trembled as he murmured.
Professor Zhu gently placed a hand on Hongxia's shoulder. "No need to rush. Take your time and tell us everything."
It took Hongxiao what felt like an eternity to recount the vivid scenes that had played out in his mind.
This time, he left out no detail. He felt that he had a big question regarding this new scene he just mentally experienced. He hoped—desperately—that someone could extract an answer from these captured conscious fragments.
But what question did he have, exactly? He wasn't even sure.
"You saw all of this... just now?" Zou Jing sounded incredulous.
"Yes. It felt like a long, endless dream," Hongxiao replied, briefly lifting his head to meet Jing's questioning gaze.
Then, as if the weight of what he had seen was pressing down on him, he lowered his head once more and murmured, "But it all felt real."
"But you were lying there for less than two minutes," Wen exclaimed, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Hongxiao's sadness and guilt gave way to shock. He glanced at Wen, then at the others surrounding him.
"You laid down in the oscillator and seemed to fall asleep almost instantly," Jun explained as she removed the electrodes from Hongxiao's temples.
"But then your body started twitching restlessly, and your breathing grew rapid. When you finally shouted and woke up, only a couple of minutes had passed."
Only then did Hongxiao realize that Jun had let go of his hand.
He turned to Professor Zhu with a puzzled expression, as if silently pleading for answers: What was this? Were these memories fragments of real consciousness—or merely a dream? Or a figment of his imagination?
Professor Zhu seemed to understand his unspoken question.
"If what you experienced felt like an extended sequence of memories," he said thoughtfully, "it could mean your brain resonated with a continuous chain of someone else's consciousness fragments. In other words, your mind might have accessed conscious experiences perceived by another person's brain over a longer period of time—but in a very short span for you."
"So you're saying... what I saw was real? That my grandfather was poisoned?" Hongxiao initially felt a brief moment of clarity as the cloud of doubt lifted, only to have it replaced by the crushing weight of an even heavier realization.
"Should we report this to the police?" Wen's voice trembled, and her composure seemed to falter.
Professor Zhu sighed and shook his head. "Our experimental results haven't undergone peer review, nor have they been recognized by the academic community. If even scientists would struggle to believe us, how could we explain to law enforcement, or the public, that we accessed someone's brain months after the fact and witnessed a murder?"
"So what do we do?" Wen's voice wavered, her tone teetering on the edge of tears.
"Everyone, let's objectively analyze the situation and the information we have," Professor Zhu said, placing a hand on his chin as he began pacing the small room.
"This was Hua Hongxiao's second experiment, and it marks the second instance where we've recorded evidence suggesting that Subject A—Hongxiao—might have captured consciousness fragments from Subject B, who was physically distant from our lab. And it was all mediated by our oscillator system, designed to trigger primary consciousness waves of certain frequencies! Curiously, both times, the conscious fragments seem to be related to incidents involving Hongxiao's grandfather around the time of his trip to Beijing."
"And another coincidence," Jing added, "is that both sets of fragments seem to originate months in the past."
Professor Zhu nodded. "Exactly. After the first experiment, we were skeptical, unsure whether Hongxiao was accessing someone else's consciousness or simply dreaming, or hallucinating. But Hongxiao confirmed the validity of these conscious experiences by corroborating the details with his neighbor, who was the Subject B in that instance."
He paused, meeting the eyes of his colleagues. "Now, in this second experiment, the scenes Hongxiao experienced are even more astonishing. If they're genuine, they implicate not just personal tragedy but also hidden crimes—tied to family, morality, and the law."
His gaze locked onto Hongxiao's. "And based on the conversations you've recalled between your grandfather and others, I suspect there's something even deeper at play."
The group exchanged uneasy glances. What could be deeper than family bonds and legal justice?
"However," Professor Zhu continued, "we haven't confirmed whether these latest scenes actually occurred. I think we need verification before deciding on our next steps."
"But how do we confirm this? We can't exactly track down the murderer and ask if they did it," Wen said, her voice tinged with frustration.
"Besides, I didn't see the person's face," Hongxiao muttered, wishing now that the person had stopped to look in a mirror while moving through all those rooms.
"The only way to verify is through simultaneous observation," Professor Zhu said, his brows furrowed as he massaged his temples. His words came slowly, as if he were wringing the last drops of knowledge from his mind.
"If we could get two subjects to enter a shared scene—meaning two As resonating with two Bs who happened to be in the same scene at some point of time—we could cross-check their accounts after they wake up. If their descriptions match, it would significantly validate the reality of the scene."
"Because two people are unlikely to have the same hallucination?" Jing mused.
"When can we conduct a dual experiment?" Hua asked eagerly.
Though he was almost certain what he had seen was real, he desperately wanted a way to prove it to everyone else.
"When will the second oscillator system be ready?" Professor Zhu turned to Jing.
"It's still being tested. It'll take some time," Jing admitted.
Hongxiao felt his hope falter. How much longer could he endure this crushing uncertainty and psychological burden?
"Even with two systems," Jun interjected, "how can we ensure that both subjects capture two people who happen to be in the same scene, so that the two subjects' accounts can be cross-compared later?"
"Good question," Professor Zhu said, his tone approving as he looked at Jun.
Among the lab's graduate students, Jun was the least talkative, but every comment she made cut straight to the heart of the matter.
"We've begun to understand which frequencies influence what kind of consciousness fragments. Certain parameters seem to determine where in the four-dimensional spacetime the fragments are located, while others may relate to the environment or individuals involved. Although much remains unknown, with further calculations and experiments, we might be able to synchronize two subjects into a shared scene."
Professor Zhu's eyes lit up with the possibilities of what lay ahead, but for Hongxiao, the process felt unbearably slow.
"So what do I do now? Continue with solo experiments?" he asked, the frustration evident in his voice.
"We could, but I recommend you take a break," Professor Zhu said, his expression probing. "Continuing solo experiments might yield more conscious experiences along the same line, but we can't discern whether these are genuine memories or mere extensions of your imagination. I suggest waiting until the dual system is operational."
The professor knew too well that, it would be difficult for Hongxiao to stop pursuing the leads about his grandfather's murder.
"Well... okay," Hongxiao said reluctantly, unsure whether he was convinced by Zhu Di's reasoning or simply unwilling to argue with his professor.
"Don't worry," Jing said, patting Hongxiao on the shoulder. "I'll get the second system up and running as soon as possible."
The days that followed felt surreal to Hongxiao.
His life seemed split in two: half spent attending lectures and participating in the mundane routines of university life, the other half immersed in the lab, studying theories, adjusting parameters, and operating the oscillator.
Yet his inner world was consumed entirely by the haunting scenes from his experiments, which replayed in his mind like an endless film.
Progress on the second oscillator system was slow.
And the few solo experiments conducted by his peers yielded no clear results.
There was one time when Wen mentioned that she felt like she had arrived at a concert scene.
"There were people all around me. I could hear what seemed like music, but it was unfamiliar—something I had never heard before. In the distance, on the stage, I could just make out three figures: a tall blonde man, someone with short hair and glasses, and another with long, flowing hair. Then… it just stopped. That was it."
Jun and Jing, on the other hand, never managed to describe any coherent scenes after their experiments. As Jing put it, "It felt like I took a nap and had a dream, but the dream had no storyline. The people in it… had no faces."
For some reason, Professor Zhu never personally lay down in the oscillator to conduct experiments himself.
Hongxiao dreaded the possibility that, as everyone continued conducting these inconclusive experiments, they might gradually start treating the vivid conscious fragments he described as nothing more than ambiguous dreams—or worse, figments of his imagination.
That day came all too soon.
One day, Jing asked Hongxiao all of a sudden: "How did you verify the results of your first experiment?"
"I called someone to ask on my behalf," Hongxiao replied.
"So you heard it from someone else, that your neighbor, that Fei Fei, saw the things you saw. Did you ever hear Fei Fei confirm it directly?"
Hongxiao detected a hint of doubt in Jing's tone.
The unspoken accusation stung, but Hongxiao had no rebuttal.
"No... I didn't," he admitted softly.
Jing's expression shifted into something unreadable.
"Why are you even bringing this up?" Wen interjected, her tone sharp with irritation.
"Zou Jing, can you help me with something?" Jun called out from across the room, sparing the moment from further awkwardness.
Hongxiao didn't wait around to see what happened next. "I'm heading back to my dorm," he announced, gathering his belongings and leaving the lab.
As he passed by Professor Zhu's office, he noticed the light was on. Zhu Di had mentioned he would be out at a conference that afternoon—had he returned already? The thought lingered as Hongxiao exited the building.
Suddenly, he froze, every drop of blood in his veins seeming to turn to ice. His eyes locked straight ahead, unblinking.