Chapter 59: The Self-Proof Trap |
A numerical designation, a cold and impersonal label. It was as if he were being treated not as a living person, but as an inanimate object.
Qi Si had anticipated this turn of events.
He looked at the man behind the desk and seized the initiative. "What proof do you have that you are Jin Yusheng?"
"I don't have to prove anything to you," Jin Yusheng replied, pulling open a desk drawer and rummaging through the files inside. "You're just a clone. Your opinion is irrelevant to me."
"If it's so irrelevant, why are you meeting me in person?" Qi Si countered.
"You wear the face of someone I know, yet you call me 'Number 9.' You're trying to erase my identity by stripping away my name and social connections. And by constantly insisting I'm a clone, I suspect you're trying to verbally manipulate me into a crisis of self-awareness, to make me lose myself in this research facility of yours."
The more outrageous the conclusion, the more compelled the other party feels to refute it. And the moment he chose to answer the challenge, he would fall into the trap of self-proof, right where Qi Si wanted him.
Sure enough, Jin Yusheng put down the files and looked up. "I've heard this speech eight times now. I've explained it from eight different angles, and every single time, you find some new, clever way to question everything. We could waste the entire afternoon and get nowhere. I should have just recorded the whole thing and played it back for you..."
Listening to Jin Yusheng's complaint, Qi Si gleaned a crucial piece of information: the key to this instance was verbal sparring. Other methods were likely useless.
If there had been an easier way, they would never have wasted so much time talking to an idiot. They would have gone straight for the kill-and-dismember combo.
Bloody thoughts drifted through Qi Si's mind, but his expression remained calm. "Practice makes perfect. You should know what I'm going to say next. I hear you wanted to ask me some questions. Do you really think I'll cooperate if our conversation is unpleasant?"
"Of course I know you won't." A flicker of impatience crossed Jin Yusheng's face. "Number 9, if you genuinely want to know the whole story, I can tell you. But I hope you'll spare me the dime-store Freud and all the nonsensical accusations."
Qi Si had no intention of arguing with Jin Yusheng about the nature of reality. Eight versions of himself had argued for eight afternoons, and all had met their end. Only a fool would repeat their mistake.
He grunted in acknowledgment. "Go on. No matter how absurd it sounds, I'll at least try to believe you."
"Heh, it doesn't matter if you believe me or not." Jin Yusheng leaned back in his chair and began to speak slowly.
"Three years ago, Qi Si asked me to investigate Su Clan Village. I made a trip out there and ran into some official force—no idea which agency they belonged to—and I barely made it out alive. I wanted to tell Qi Si that this whole thing ran deep, that he should stay out of it..."
Qi Si interrupted. "You could use the second person. Our conversation might go more smoothly."
"None of your predecessors made that request," Jin Yusheng grumbled, but he switched perspectives and continued. "At the time, I couldn't reach you by phone, WeChat, or QQ. I thought something had happened to you, so I rushed back to Jiang City and broke down your door, only to find you lying unconscious in your bedroom."
"I was about to take you to the hospital when an invitation letter floated out from your body and pulled me straight into the game. I stumbled my way through some instance, barely had time to think. The game asked me what I wished for, and I blurted out that I wanted to save you. I had no idea the wish would be set in stone."
"I spent over half a year saving up five hundred thousand points just to get this soul-cultivation plan and this research facility from the game. After that, I had to redeem all sorts of materials bit by bit. Otherwise, with real-world technology, this level of cloning would be impossible."
"Is that so?" Qi Si gave Jin Yusheng a skeptical look. "It's clear you've run this experiment many times. I find it hard to believe all the previous attempts were failures."
"But that's the reality of it. Every clone, each one costing me a fortune in points, money, and effort, turned out to be a soulless monster." Jin Yusheng laughed self-deprecatingly, then paused for a moment before asking, "Are you going to ask me if today is January 1st, and then, after I say yes, put on a nostalgic expression and say you want to go out and celebrate your birthday?"
Qi Si silently deleted a line from his planned script and said coolly, "It sounds like my predecessors did something to break your heart."
Jin Yusheng scoffed. "The year before last, at this exact time, Number 1 told me the same thing. I was inexperienced back then and actually fell for his crap. I took him out of the facility. He swiped a fork and nearly plunged it into the back of my neck... Last year, Number 5 tried the same line. Can't you guys ever come up with a new routine?" Perhaps he was getting emotional, because the words came out in a rapid-fire burst, laced with curses, and for a moment, he sounded just like the Jin Yusheng from Qi Si's memories.
Qi Si's feelings for the creature known as a "friend" weren't much warmer than his feelings for a useful tool, so he felt not a flicker of nostalgia.
He did some quick mental math and replied impassively, "It seems creating a clone isn't easy. A production rate of only four a year. Destroyed after three days if a soul doesn't form... What a waste."
"I'm curious why you don't observe me for a few more days. This doesn't seem like a normal choice for a research facility. It sounds more like a time limit from a game instance..."
"I can't tell if you still haven't grasped reality and think you're in an instance, or if you're just trying to provoke me into keeping you around a little longer..." Jin Yusheng gave a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "But the fact is, three days is more than enough to determine the outcome. Keeping you any longer just increases the costs—both medical and security."
Qi Si pressed on. "If you know I'm so dangerous, why give me the opportunity to be alone in my room? If those researchers had been any later, I might have already tried to smash the glass container and kill myself."
"That glass container is tough. Impossible to break with human strength," Jin Yusheng said. "But those guys really are getting sloppy. They call me a delusional psycho behind my back while slacking off on the salary I pay them..."
The man before him, from his tone to his way of thinking, was remarkably close to the person in his memories. His explanations were even logically consistent.
Qi Si's eyes narrowed. He asked abruptly, "If I was already dead, why wasn't I simply erased? How could I have survived in a vegetative state all this time?"
"You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?" Jin Yusheng retorted, his tone turning cold again. "Alright, Number 9. Enough nonsense. It's time to get down to business."
He took out a tablet, pulled up a test filled with various symbols and diagrams, and handed it to Qi Si. "I need to complete your data profile across multiple dimensions: intelligence, thought processes, behavioral choices, and so on. The others are too prone to cutting corners. This is a job I have to do myself."
Qi Si glanced over the content on the tablet and laughed out loud. "Using a bunch of brain teasers to measure multi-dimensional data like intelligence, wisdom, information processing, rationality, and strategic ability... I never thought you'd fall for such a ridiculous IQ test."
Jin Yusheng stared at him, his voice icy. "You have no choice but to cooperate with me."
"Fine, fine." Qi Si relented, reciting the answers to the questions one by one in a flat, robotic monotone.
Meanwhile, Jin Yusheng picked up a stylus and meticulously recorded his responses.
After ten long minutes of questions and answers, Jin Yusheng set down the stylus. "That should do it. I have all the information I need..."
"And the results?" Qi Si asked.
"Your measured intelligence is higher than any of the previous clones. And in every other dimension, you feel almost identical to him."
"Is that so?" A smile touched Qi Si's lips again. "And you still insist I'm not Qi Si?"
"I look like Qi Si, I believe I am Qi Si, my thoughts and memories are Qi Si's, and my choices are Qi Si's. So why can't I be Qi Si?"
Jin Yusheng said nothing. He tapped the tablet's screen twice, switched it to a mirror function, and held it up in front of Qi Si.
In the reflection, the young man in white was as pale as a ghost. His neck was long and slender. His pupils, a startling shade of black, were set in the whites of his eyes like inanimate objects, swallowing all light like an abyss.
It was unmistakably a familiar face, yet it radiated an intense, overwhelming sense of the inhuman.