Time Slice

Lu Chen, 32 years old, is the youngest director of Beijing Anding Mental Hospital. He is calm, rational, and almost inhuman. His true identity is an observer sent by a higher civilization to the earth. His mission is to make "time slices" of key moments of human civilization--the scorching afternoon when the Declaration of Independence was signed, the roaring night when the Berlin Wall fell, and the collective heartbeat of millions of people at the turn of the millennium, compressed into information packets, and implanted into the human brain. The price is that the recipient, without exception, suffers a nervous breakdown and becomes his patient. Perfect closed loop. What could be a more hidden observation post than the director of a mental hospital who treats people who are driven mad by themselves? But at the turn of the century, cracks appeared in this closed loop. A history teacher named Sun Jianguo grabbed Lu Chen's wrist after the slice was implanted and told a secret that no human being should know - "I saw your slice." What emerged next was a cold message from his hometown: "The observation period has ended. The recycling protocol has been initiated. You are the last slice." Lu Chen finally understood that when the mantis stalks the cicada, the oriole stalks behind. He observes human beings, and his peers observe him - observing whether a higher creation immersed in a lower civilization will produce unplanned variables. Now that the observation is over, his consciousness will be made into a final slice and sealed forever. But he still has a chance. In Sun Jianguo's mind, there remain fragments of memories that glimpsed "outside time" in reverse. As long as the decoding can be completed before the human brain completely disintegrates, Lu Chen may be able to see the truth of this double observation game before being recycled.