Chapter 47

“Analysis focusing on patients zero!

“Patients zero Ms. White, and Ms. Sweetness were the first victims who had the nightmare. Looking at their transportation route, they were sent straight to Omnic City Institute. They returned home in the same way.

“There were surveillance cameras when they were passing by the public roads. They had close contact with a total of 391 people. However, some of those citizens had the nightmare, while some didn’t.

“Researcher Li Shen was the first staff member who attended to them. He documented their cases and entered the dream for a test that night itself.

“However, according to the latest national review report, the third nightmare condition victim isn’t Li Shen! Instead, it was a normal citizen from another city. He’s Ms. White’s close gamer friend. He’s the real patient No.3.

“Patient No.3 had never met Ms. White offline, nor had he traveled to Omnic City the past two weeks. He merely learned about Ms. White’s update from their friend circle. He then asked her for the details and tested the nightmare by sleeping in the game before the researcher did.

“Apart from that, none of the 99% of the cases met patient zero before they had the condition…”

Li Shen sat in the research room and took the lead to be the condition’s emergency team’s leader. He was browsing the previous progress report.

He had been the first person who had learned about the condition. He was considered to be the first team member who had a deep understanding of the condition.

Initially, he had thought the cause of the condition had something to do with the gaming pod. However, since many natural sleep cases had surfaced, he knew his research direction had been off.

Natural sleep cases were directed at those cases where the victims slept naturally on their beds without using the gaming pod’s function nor other sleeping aids.

Many victims of natural sleep cases had never been to Omnic City before that happened. There was something common among them before they got the condition, which was reading the complaints on internet forums or friend circles.

The first one would be Ms. White complaining about the nightmare incident on her friend circle. The spread was not that extensive back then.

After reading the complaint on her friend circle, those who had the nightmare too complained on the internet to release their rage.

The healthy citizens who had yet to contract the condition had the nightmare when they slept after reading the complaints the new batch of victims had posted on the internet.

In the beginning, the spread out there was small. On the other hand, many internal staff members of the institute had the nightmare.

Some researchers had the nightmare, while other staff members did not have it. It depended on whether the researchers had learned about the nightmare condition’s document via the intranet.

Since a day had passed, the nightmare condition’s spread out there showed no limit of physical isolation, nor the geographical size. The speed of spreading had exceeded the speed of the institute’s research progress on the condition.

Li Shen was the first to suggest that the condition could be spread through the internet.

He was studying from that direction, reading all patients’ footprints on the internet. The more he read, the more terrified he was, and the more convinced that what he suspected was right.

The condition was spread through the internet!

The origin of the condition was unclear, but the spread had to be related to the internet!

That was too bizarre.

However, it was no surprise that such a bizarre thing happened since the condition had broken through the gaming pod’s physical restriction.

“Li Shen, the bosses value the report you submitted very much. Key words and sentences related to the condition will be blocked on the internet from now on. The result will only show a couple of hours later.”

The director sat next to Li Shen. He looked worried.

He had too experienced the condition once. It was horrible to experience death from drowning. However, that was not the point.

To a scientist, the scariest blow would be encountering something that was beyond what scientific theories could explain.

The condition’s way of spreading was against the laws of physics—that was unacceptable to scientists!

As the duo chatted, all supercomputers on Orange Planet put aside their rather insignificant computing tasks. A sea of computing resources was put into checking and blocking contents on the internet.

They detected key words and sentences, blocking everything that was related to the condition blindly even if there were no direct words used, whereby hinting words would be blocked too!

Orange Planet was a united kingdom that had just entered the interstellar era. It was highly intelligent. As soon as the machines in the country worked diligently, the blocking speed was terrifying.

In the last second, some Orange Planet citizens were still reading the condition’s threads others posted on forums.

Instead of spilling how torturous it was, the victims posted how magical and the archaeological significance the ancient city possessed in the whale’s stomach in the threads.

However, the threads were gone in the next second.

Some people had just returned from the nightmare, writing long stories about the jungle to share with others. The threads were deleted in less than ten seconds they were posted.

Even the official reports the officials posted were deleted as well. There was nothing related to the condition left behind.

A couple of minutes later, there was no trace of any words or sentences about the condition found on Orange Planet’s internet. No citizens could browse any words there that were related to the condition on the internet. At the moment, the intranets that were not shared with the world outside were the only ones that still had the condition’s information.

Later on, AIs began browsing the audio files on the internet. That was a massive task, as some people included the nightmare incident in the voice recordings they sent.

At the moment, the Orange Planet’s upper echelons and leaders were not sure if audio files would spread the nightmare. However, it was better to be safe than sorry, so blocking related audios was necessary.

Now that the condition was spreading so fast, the earlier they blocked it, the earlier they could stop it from spreading.

In a city on Orange Planet, Player ‘Oh yeah… What are you going to do about it’ frowned. He refreshed his screen and realized that the thread he had posted ten seconds ago had been deleted.

He thought there was a glitch earlier, so he posted the thread again.

His thread was deleted by the AI internet police as soon as he posted. A popped-up warning appeared.

“You’re suspected to be publishing illegal content. This is the first warning! Watch out, illegal content offenders will be arrested and detained for seven days if the same offense is repeated three times!”

There were two selection buttons at the bottom of the pop-up window. The first one was ‘I’ve read the warning and promise not to post any related content’, while the other one was ‘Decline’.

“What the hell is this? When did I do anything illegal?!” The hot-headed man clicked ‘Decline’ as soon as he saw the internet police’s pop-up warning.

“Second warning!”

The previous window was gone, while a new red window popped up again. The number of warnings changed from ‘first’ to ‘second’. There were two buttons at the bottom of the window again.

The hot-headed man had bulging veins appearing on his forehead now. He was stubborn and did not think that he had done anything that was against the law.

“What the f*ck, decline!”

“Third warning!”

“Decline!”

When the ‘Decline’ button was clicked, the red warning window stopped popping up. The world was quiet, and the hot-headed man thought he had won.

However, police sirens came outside his window a minute later.

He turned his head to look—a blue and white self-flying plane hovered at the side of his balcony.

Whoosh!

The plane door was opened, and the balcony’s fence was removed automatically. An exquisite police robot entered in big steps. It held a taser baton in its right hand and the detention order that had just been printed in its left hand. It said loudly, “You’re arrested for suspecting to be endangering public safety and cybersecurity!”