novelTele Chapter 10 Time
Chapter 10 Time
"What do you study?"
Jiang Ning never expected to run into Su Mian again at the Liming University subway station.
The woman had short, drooping hair, delicate features, and was about 1.6 meters tall. She was slender and her white coat made her stand out in the crowd.
……
今天是物理日2047年3月31日，意识日2047年3月11日。
The entire world has been going backwards since Physics Day on March 21, and it has been going on for 10 days now.
Just one hour after Minister Chen Xiao announced the "two sets of time" coordinates "yesterday," a huge wave of discussion swept across the global internet.
Discussions of all kinds arose, flooding various forums and live streaming rooms like a torrential downpour.
Upon closer examination, these netizens can be roughly divided into two camps:
One side supports a dual time standard, while the other side opposes it.
Most of the supporters are scholars such as scientists, psychologists, and sociologists, and even more are the "lucky ones" in the disaster. Their core argument can be summed up in one sentence: acknowledge reality.
Acknowledge reality, let the physical diary record the world, and let the consciousness diary record life; neither is dispensable.
One quote that received the most likes online was: "The world has reset, but my memory is gone. If I pretend not to remember, that would be crazy."
One psychologist stated, "If a person experiences 300 days but is told that only 30 days have passed, or if a person is 30 years old but is told that they are only 29, they will experience severe cognitive dissonance. Acknowledging the day of consciousness is acknowledging the individual's true experience."
Another sociologist, during an argument with netizens, kept emphasizing: "Every revolution in the concept of time in human history has been accompanied by pain, from local time to standard time, from Newtonian time to Einsteinian time, and this time we have just gone further."
One mother, a survivor, drew particular criticism for her remarks. She said, "My daughter asks me 'What's the date today?' every day after the day resets. I tell her it's Physics Day on March 12th, Arbor Day. She retorted, 'How come we've celebrated two Arbor Days? Am I regressing? Then why do I feel like I've grown up?' I can't answer that..."
The point of attack against this mother was not that she couldn't answer, but that she supported a double standard of time.
Many "unfortunate" people who have just lost their children cursed her for being heartless and unworthy of being a mother, saying they were not worried at all that the world's regression would eventually cause their children to disappear.
However, after posting her comment, the mother quickly disappeared into the cacophony of other arguments.
On the other hand, those who oppose the double standard on time include politicians, military administrators, and pragmatists.
One of the junior internet managers, who was forced to take on this work, complained, "We can't even come up with a shift schedule, and we have to remember two different dates. Isn't this just creating unnecessary work for us?"
Despite his complaints and objections, this grassroots manager not only received praise from his opponents but also from many supporters.
They all expressed their gratitude for the efforts of this grassroots manager.
An educator countered the psychologist's statement, succinctly stating: "Suppose the world continues to regress, and a child asks, 'How old am I?' By physical date, he's 5; by conscious date, he might be 8. How am I supposed to teach him?"
This statement drew applause from countless neutral observers, and then led to another question, with many netizens commenting, "Do I have to go back to school...?"
A legal professional earnestly stated, "If a dual time standard is established, it means that everyone has their own conscious days. I can say that I have experienced 1000 days; how can you disprove that? This kind of memory fraud will inevitably have a serious impact on existing legal provisions..."
A netizen claiming to be a military commander added fuel to the fire of this "debate," questioning: "Troops need unified orders. If someone says, 'I already carried it out 'yesterday,' what should I do? According to the physical day, he didn't make a mistake. According to the consciousness day, should he continue to carry it out?"
Another foreigner who called herself "Amy Chen" suddenly joined the Chinese Internet debate competition. She claimed to be a philosopher and a philosophy professor at a university before the world went backwards.
Her remarks were sharp: "The so-called ITRC's creation of this dual time standard is nothing more than an attempt to prove that every time a country activates an emergency response, it is correct. But in a world that is regressing, time has lost its meaning and can only be repeated."
This statement stunned all netizens. This is the first time that someone has dared to question the correctness of "every time an emergency response is activated" in public.
Amy Chen, seemingly worried that netizens hadn't grasped her meaning, added: "Time is essentially physical. Consciousness is merely the accumulation of memories, not real time. Equating memory with time is a categorical error..."
Jiang Ning recalled that when he first saw the question "What is a category error?", he didn't quite understand it. As an observer, he spent almost the entire day yesterday at home following this debate, or rather, it was more like a debate competition.
Every live stream was filled with discussions. American netizens could leave comments in the State Council Information Office's live stream in China, while Chinese netizens could argue in the White House's live stream. The screen was filled with all sorts of languages flying around.
It was also filled with insults in various languages, with people arguing with each other and even chasing after each other's parents to hurl malicious insults.
If it weren't for the fact that this was against the backdrop of a major disaster, and that the profanity had been censored, Jiang Ning would have had a fleeting sense of universal harmony.
The new regression of the world occurred at 6:20 a.m. on Consciousness Day, March 13. At that time, Jiang Ning had stayed up half the night and had just fallen asleep for less than an hour. In a daze, he felt that he had another dream.
In his dream, he remembered entering the mysterious space again, where countless purple beads swirled around him. With a gentle wave of his hand, these purple beads retreated quickly like fireflies. With another wave, they transformed into a sky full of stars.
The stars faded one by one, like the dimming of vision just after dawn following a thick fog in winter. But because the streetlights had controllers, they still began to turn off one by one according to a set program.
After the last "streetlight" went out, Jiang Ning opened his eyes.
He knew the world had regressed once again...
This feeling has persisted for several days after I first had this dream, and every time I wake up, I inevitably experience the world going backwards.
Jiang Ning got up and found his phone. Sure enough, he saw that the time had returned to the morning of March 11th, and it was just getting light outside.
时间是直接从3月13日跳转到3月11日，人们熬过了3月12日深夜到3月13日凌晨，可最终在某一个时间点，还是回滚到两天前。
Scientists have not yet discovered a pattern at this "certain" point in time, but the only certainty is that within 30 hours after a new rollback, people will inevitably experience a world regression.
This is a pattern that scientists have barely managed to summarize so far, but they cannot guarantee whether it will change in the future.
The true pattern of the starting point after regression has not yet been found.
The news report stated that it was 24 hours ago, but according to numerous netizens' own calculations, this number is inaccurate and could have significant discrepancies.
Or perhaps, people haven't found the underlying pattern.
Jiang Ning woke up immediately today.
For no other reason than he wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and see what the world was like at the beginning after the rollback.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to verify a hypothesis.