Chapter 127 - Men in Black

After watching the movie that had finished filming, Chen Chen wore a serious expression for the first time.

A vague notion occurred to him.

With this in mind, Chen Chen picked up the phone and dialed Cheng Cao’s number.

“Boss?”

“Cao, when this movie was filmed, did you keep an eye on things?” Chen Chen asked softly.

“Yes, I did as you say. I was watching the filming of each scene,” Cheng Cao replied through the phone.

“What’s up with the villains in the movie?”

Chen Chen skipped to the middle of the movie and the screen displayed the villains with stony faces, dressed in all sorts of casual clothes. “Why are these people dressed so similarly to our GS Combat Suit?”

“Initially, the villains just wore a skintight black costume, but later on during filming, the director felt that it was unrealistic. Then, after seeing my attire, he was inspired and changed to this look.”

Cheng Cao said softly, “Boss, are you worried that this costume choice will bring us trouble after the movie is released?”

“It’s not that, but…”

Chen Chen opened his mouth for a moment before finally ordering, “Cao, keep an eye on the director over there. Pay close attention to his movements and see if he’s in contact with anyone suspicious. I’ll be there soon.”

“You’re coming to where I am?” Cheng Cao was a little puzzled, but he still replied, “Very well. I’ll keep an eye on him meanwhile.”

After hanging up, Chen Chen’s eyes turned grim.

He silently dragged the movie’s progress bar backward until it reached the beginning.

In the opening shot of the movie, a date was displayed on the calendar in the laboratory — 30 May 2025.

This was because Chen Chen had set the movie three years into the future to cleave closer to reality.

In Chen Chen’s calculations, there was a less-than-one-percent chance that the director was the problem. Cheng Cao was implanted with the chip. If he was guilty of disloyalty, Chen Chen would find out at once, so that could not be the problem.

In that case, the only answer was…

Chen Chen looked down and stared sharply at the USB drive, which was plugged into the computer, with a hesitant look.

“No matter what, let’s see what happens first. If I can’t copy it into the USB drive, then I’m just overthinking things.”

Chen Chen mumbled in a low voice. Following that, he selected the movie file, pressed [ctrl+c], then opened the USB drive and pressed [ctrl+v].

A progress bar flashed up.

The screen flickered. Deadly Crisis: A Shocking Scheme.mp4 successfully appeared within the USB drive’s space, becoming the USB drive’s eighth movie.

My heavens!!!

It worked???

At this moment, Chen Chen was gripped by a sense of absurdity as if he had just seen Sadako climb out of the Hadron Collider in the Institute of High Energy Physics!

This was far beyond Chen Chen’s framework of understanding.

No, that was not right, maybe there was another reason…

Chen Chen took a deep breath and swiftly took out an NZT-48 pill. He swallowed it, then stared steadily at the screen.

One second, two seconds, three seconds…

After half a minute, Chen Chen felt that his thoughts were suddenly running smoothly. In an instant, endless conjectures flooded his mind, and previously shattered concepts were rapidly reorganized.

Chen Chen slowly lifted his head and an all-seeing sneer crept up his lips.

“So, that’s it…”

With that, he immediately opened the movie from the USB drive and dragged it to the close-up shot of the AD-001 drug while reaching out to grab it.

The moment his hand entered the screen, it was like dipping into a cool puddle. This was a familiar sensation to Chen Chen. He did not hesitate to grab that tube, then tugged gently!

At once, a transparent test tube with a silicone stopper, only about ten centimeters long, had appeared in Chen Chen’s hand!

Within this tube was a clear blue liquid. Under the sunlight, it seemed to give off a fluorescent glow. It was mesmerizing…

“Very interesting.”

Looking at the tube of liquid in his hand, which was the same in the movie, Chen Chen shook his head.

According to his previous reasoning, Chen Chen had guessed that movies filmed by someone who owned the USB drive could not be accommodated by the USB drive.

As there was a contradiction here that violated the laws of the universe — if a movie created by someone who owned the USB drive could be accommodated by the USB drive, that meant:

The owner of the USB drive could design a prop in the movie that was the size of a grain but contained immense energy. Then, they could ceaselessly extract those things. As long as the energy consumed during the extraction was less than the energy extracted, was it not possible to charge the USB drive infinitely?

This was something like a “perpetual motion machine”.

Therefore, the USB drive could not possibly extract an item that was incomparably tiny in size but had tremendous energy. Some restrictions were bound to pop up, preventing Chen Chen from extracting such an item.

Now, not only had the USB drive accommodated the movie Chen Chen made, but it also allowed the drug which could cure Alzheimer’s to be extracted from the movie. This had shattered Chen Chen’s preconceived ideas.

This was akin to someone finding a button with the stated rule: “Press this and the sun will rise in the west tomorrow.”

No one would believe this statement, but they would think, ‘It’s not like I’ll get pregnant by trying this’, and they would press the button.

Then, on the second day, the sun truly rose in the west…

“No, it’s my understanding that was mistaken.”

Chen Chen shook his head and muttered, “It’s just that there’s a possibility I may have overlooked. Once I confirm that, I can prove that ‘the law of conservation’ has not been broken.”

Thinking of this, Chen Chen suddenly opened a webpage and downloaded Men in Black again. This time, he did not download Men in Black: International, but rather, the first Men in Black that was released in 1997…

The first Men in Black was also known to be the most classic film of the entire series. Its main storyline was about a war between one cosmic civilization, the Arquilian Empire, and another, the Bugs. The prince of the Arquilian Empire brought “the galaxy” to Earth, taking refuge. However, after that, “the galaxy” was taken away by the Bugs.

Many audience members watching the movie might misunderstand something —

Many people thought that the pendant on the cat’s neck was the actual Milky Way. This was a wrong interpretation.

This was an issue of semantics. In the movie, the characters referred to the pendant as “the galaxy” not the “Milky Way Galaxy”.

In English, the full accurate name of the galaxy where Earth was should be “the Milky Way Galaxy”. “Galaxy”, when capitalized, could refer to the Milky Way. When not capitalized, it could refer to any galaxy in general.

Similar to how one would not call every star “the sun”, the Milky Way Galaxy and galaxy were two different things.

If this evidence was not enough, there was stronger evidence in the movie —

At 1 hour, 8 minutes, 40 seconds into the movie, when the female protagonist noticed the “galaxy” at the cat’s neck, it was glowing red.

However, at the ending, the long shot zooming out from Earth to the entire Milky Way showed that the Milky Way was white.

Everyone knew that, in various official human atlases, the Milky Way was white rather than red.

As for the movie’s ending, where the alien played with the marble containing the Milky Way, what did it mean?

An obvious interpretation by most people would state that the Milky Way of humans was merely a fragile marble and humans might die out at any time because of an alien’s fit of rage.

That was not impossible.

Of course, it might also be understood that the director was using exaggeration to express the theory that the universe was infinite, much like how “each world is merely a grain of sand”—

This did not mean that just because the Milky Way was in the hands of an alien, that aliens were necessarily more powerful than humans. Perhaps they, too, lived in a random piece of gravel in the human world.

In the ending of the sequel, this concept was expressed more clearly —

As there was a group of little aliens living in the cabinet, protagonist J said they should release those little aliens. Otherwise, was it not pitiful that they had to live in the cabinet?

However, at that point, K opened a cabinet door right beside them.

Beyond that cabinet door, there was an even more enormous world. The world in which the protagonist dwelled was merely a cabinet door to that other world…

In short, the meaning contained in these exaggerated, abstract scenes were up to the viewer’s own understanding.

The “galaxy” in the movie, according to Frank the Pug, was a kind of cosmic subatomic power source, which contained immensely powerful energy. If the Bugs got their hands on this energy, it would be a devastating blow to the Arquilian Empire.

The Bugs found out about this somehow, so they sent a soldier to infiltrate Earth, kill the prince of the Arquilian Empire, and seize the “galaxy”.

In the end, everyone realized that this “galaxy” had always been on the collar of the Arquilian prince’s cat…

This was the entire plot of Men in Black. At the moment, Chen Chen wanted to use that “galaxy” to confirm his theory.

At the exclusive optic fiber’s speed of 100MBps, the entire movie was swiftly downloaded. After that, Chen Chen pressed copy and pasted it into the USB drive.

The progress bar flashed across the screen.

The USB drive did not reject this comedy.

Chen Chen inwardly sighed in relief. On a whim, he quickly took out his phone and took a picture of the USB drive’s current state.

After taking a visual record of the USB drive’s current state, Chen Chen opened the movie again and quickly moved to the scene where the cosmic subatomic energy, the “galaxy”, was shown.

Then, he reached out once again, this time toward the pendant…