Chapter 1007

"……Can you tell me why we came here?"

Listening to Moreno's question, Ma Liang was silent for a moment.

She stood on this black tombstone, looking far into the vast forest, the forest sea full of green in the sun, but at this time it showed a color similar to the Prussian army uniform.

In the increasingly dense sound of rain, it rendered an indescribable silence, as well as an invisible pressure~.

The despair and struggle of the deceased who had not spoken found an outlet in the rain, tightly surrounding the two, silently examining.

In the heavy rain, Ma Liang opened her mouth:.

"The problem is that everyone in this world who can reliably contact high-level memory enhancement medical treatment is here, but the human resources of the Anti-Memetics Department are still stretched."

"We have forty colleagues in total, including you and me, but these forty pairs of eyes are hard to cover every corner of the world."

"There are too many parts of this world that have not been correctly understood by humans, which is undoubtedly a heavy shackle for all anti-meme research."

"Anti-meme biology, anti-meme paleontology, anti-meme cosmology, anti-meme archaeology... these disciplines are still in a blank state."

"Fortunately, we discovered one or two city ruins of this civilization."

"These cities have become ruins on a physical level, and are wrapped in heavy anti-meme effects, making it almost impossible to be studied, even by us."

"Those huge and simple existences, such as this giant rock, although relatively well preserved, we speculate that this may be the last batch of creations they created before they went extinct."

"Huge, simple things, like this rock, are better preserved, but even so... we think this rock is the last batch of things they built before extinction."

"They were once humans, perhaps mastering advanced technology beyond us, living tens of thousands of years ago, or even hundreds of thousands of years ago; we don't know the exact time."

"They were once humans. They may have mastered more advanced technology than us. They existed tens of thousands of years ago; maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago, we can't be sure."

"It is particularly difficult to accurately judge what kind of changes they encountered, because their entire cultural meme spectrum suffered devastating irradiation."

"Their core cultural concepts, the things they created, their symbolic significance, the values they valued, can never be known or preached again."

"We speculate that some kind of concept invaded their civilization, and they were unable to resist—a complex conceptual complex, a meme-complex world doomsday scenario."

Ma Liang paused her speech, letting the rain continue to knock on the earth.

In the brief tranquility, one could almost hear the whispers of that ancient civilization.

"So, we just forgot like this?" Moreno asked.

"The rest of us, survived that catastrophe, evolved into modern humans, you, me, and every individual living in the present..."

"We just shift our gaze, just 'continue to move forward' lightly?"

"That's right."

Ma Liang's answer was as sharp as a knife.

This is a war, an endless war between humans and anomalies.

In every separate battle, there will always be some people who die early, and some people who survive.

But the survivors are by no means cowardly; they, together with all those who died, work together to protect their civilization and protect "normality."

Moreno's body swayed slightly, and a sudden sense of dizziness made her heart feel a little relieved.

After recovering a bit, she also walked to the edge of the tombstone, looking at the forest with a straight face below.

"So... can we easily forget those who died? Is this what you want to show me? You want me to remember all this?"

Ma Liang: "That's right, remember everything. This is the first lesson you need to learn today—humans can forget anything."

"Forgetting something is nothing, because we will all die one day, and people are always limited in the face of the universe."

"But some things must be remembered. Our memory is crucial. You have to record some things so that you can remember them."

Moreno nodded solemnly.

The heavy rain forced her to hide under the canopy, temporarily using the table as a temporary workbench.

Despite this, a few raindrops jumped over the barrier and wet her notes.

She wrote down with full concentration, the handwriting was messy and complicated, and there was no lack of large-scale corrections and deletions. She was pondering, if she read these words for the first time, what kind of reaction she would have.

After a while, Ma Liang also came under the canopy to avoid the rain.

Moreno's eyes were fixed on her notes, her heart seemed not ready to accept the answer, and she asked Ma Liang a follow-up question:

"Then, what about the second thing?"

Ma Liang said:

"Perhaps, in their civilization, there was an organization similar to our Foundation, and it might even have branches like the Anti-Memetics Department."

"If that were true, their Foundation and Anti-Memetics Department failed to protect their world."

"This is a huge reality. This is a huge Foundation."

"There are countless Keter-class projects waiting to be solved here, and various Keter-class situations appear frequently. Therefore, the doomsday crisis may be more difficult for other departments."

"Most of the work we hire you to do will be basic research, including safe laboratory work... and, indeed, this state has lasted for thousands of years, or even longer."

"But the future is not necessarily so stable. This crisis may eventually become our challenge."

"Returning to the initial question, we know that anti-meme wars have occurred, and perhaps there are more that we don't know about."

"And now, undoubtedly, a new anti-meme war is brewing."

Facing Ma Liang's words, Moreno was speechless for a while, and her face showed shock and collapse.

Ma Liang was not surprised by this, because every new member of the Anti-Memetics Department would have similar emotional impact when learning the truth.

This heavy responsibility is often difficult for newcomers to bear, but it should be so.

"Welcome to the Anti-Memetics Department," Ma Liang said calmly, "This is your first day here."

……

Moreno buried her head in writing for a long time, Ma Liang waited in silence on the side, the rain was heavy, and there was no sign of stopping.

Moreno finally broke the silence and asked: "But what is that? What is that concept?"

"9429-A," Ma Liang said.

"As early as the 1970s, we isolated this meme complex and placed it on a stone slab in a room on the second basement floor in Vegas."

"Now it has basically become harmless, because its heterogeneity in contemporary human culture is too strong, and it is almost impossible to produce a significant impact. You can imagine ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs."

"I'll let you see it another day."

Moreno frowned: "You mean, it's impossible to restore its original influence?"

"In that primitive form, the possibility is slim."

Suddenly, Moreno seemed to see something.

She raised her hand and pointed to a place in the distant sky; Ma Liang followed her finger and looked, but there was only a gloomy sky and continuous rain.

"What do you see? It is said that under the action of high memory enhancement doses, some people claim to have seen ghosts."

"But I personally reserve my opinion on the authenticity of these statements..."

Moreno's tone was nervous:

"No, that's not what ghosts look like."

"It looks more like... a thin big monster, a monster, or a huge pillar made of spiders, at least twice the height of this rock."

"It's coming toward us, is this situation normal?"

"No." Ma Liang quickly opened the checklist.

"What is that thing?"

"Not clear yet."

"Is this just a means to scare new employees?"

"No, I promise you, I definitely didn't lie to you."

When an anti-meme shielding entity has the ferocious appearance described by Moreno, the possibility of it having goodwill toward humans is almost zero.

They need support!

However, Ma Liang found that her mobile phone lost signal, and the only way to communicate seemed to be through written information.