The Virus Loop: Saving the World and Endless Despair
I dreamt I was in an unfamiliar world, an unfamiliar country, when suddenly an explosive virus broke out. The virus was transmitted from person to person and through short-range airborne spread. The country was underdeveloped and heavily populated; this virus was an absolute disaster.
People quickly discovered the virus and began to flee, but it spread so fast that many couldn't escape. Eventually, the people of this country fled to its borders, where there was an abandoned castle. People hid there,
but in the end, no one escaped. Everyone died. The virus eventually spread there too.
I died too.
Then time reshaped itself.
I returned to the time before the virus outbreak. I realized that every time I died, time would rewind, so I planned to stop this virus. I carefully drafted a plan and discovered two crucial nodes, nodes that inevitably existed in every rewind. 1. There would be a severe medical dispute at the hospital, then the hospital would explode, triggering a massive stampede. 2. At a government building on a mountain peak, an unknown incident occurred and was reported by journalists.
So I planned to stop those two events. First, I went to the hospital. At that hospital, I met a cute female nurse. From her, I learned my destination. Out of politeness, I greeted her, showed a bit of concern, and then left.
After trying many times, I finally successfully resolved the first crucial node. But on the very day I resolved it, the second event immediately broke out ahead of schedule, and I was only one person.
I had no way to resolve both things at the same time. The disease broke out again, and so I finally broke down. I really couldn't take it anymore. Why couldn't I save anyone? What was all my previous effort even for? Why was I so incompetent?
I saw people fleeing across the land in droves. No one survived. The virus took only 3 seconds from infection to outbreak. In just 3 seconds, a living, breathing person would turn into a pool of flesh and blood.
So I decided that in the next loop, I would only run away myself. I knew where this virus would eventually stop, so I just needed to get there in advance.
But when the loop happened again, my perspective shifted. I was no longer me. I looked at this world through the eyes of a couple. They seemed to be super billionaires. Long ago, they had built their own villa in the mountains far away from crowds, with a closed-loop system, plus ample weapons and food. They seemed to have anticipated the virus outbreak and had been preparing for a long time.
They opened their self-built armory, geared up, and went out to do who knows what. Soon, they saw the first living person. It was the nurse I had spoken to before. I felt she looked very familiar, an indescribable familiarity, and then I remembered. This nurse had a younger sister. Her sister seemed to have been a test subject, and then she died. I even remembered how her sister died. On top of a laboratory, there was the culmination of countless scientists' blood, sweat, and tears. It was a vessel, a glowing yellow sphere whose surface resembled a cell's defensive layer, brimming with a sci-fi aesthetic. Right in the center of the sphere was a gap. They tied the sister in the middle of that gap, and then a massive glowing hammer smashed her directly into it. The sister must have first suffered full-body comminuted fractures before being tossed into the solution inside that glowing sphere and instantly dissolved.
That was the last time her sister saw her.
The process of the sister's death was replayed dozens of times in the dream, until I heard the couple speaking. They asked the nurse why she was here. In the end, the nurse joined the organization the couple belonged to, determined to take revenge on all the assholes who had laid a hand on her sister, and then I woke up.