He thought about it and pressed the backspace key, deleting the words.

Just after he deleted it, the Northern Base sent a message.

“Has the institute discovered a new type of variant individual recently?”

An Zhe thought a bit before replying, “Not yet.”

He replied before sending the revised sentence.

“Is the Trial Court well?”

The other side replied, “The Trial Court is working.”

An Zhe felt a bit more relaxed.

“Good luck.” He politely sent a closing remark. “Good night.”

The other side’s reply was also brief.

“Good night.”

Looking at these two words, An Zhe removed his fingers from the keyboard and took out the silver badge. His body was getting weaker more quicker and was reaching its last moments. His knuckles were stiff as he tried to hold the badge in his hand.

There was a noise from the stairs. It was Polly going upstairs but instead of returning to the room, he stood silently against the corridor’s railings, his back to the room.

An Zhe stood up, opened the door and came to Polly. The music stopped. Downstairs, the Simpson Cage was burning with flames and night came. Far away, there was a long howl from the distant sky.

Polly asked, “Aren’t you staying inside?”

An Zhe shook his head as he thought about what Tang Lan had said earlier.

“Sir, did you understand anything?”

Polly stared at him. “Sometimes I think you are more receptive than anyone else. You are special. You seem to be weaker than everyone yet you don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”

An Zhe’s eyelids slightly lowered.

He hummed. “En.”

“However, I haven’t got the final answer.” Polly reached out and fastened the first row of buttons on An Zhe’s coat. “Would you like to hear a simple story?”

“Yes.”

“It was a scientist’s hypothesis a long time ago.” In the cold wind, Polly’s voice was very mild.

“If today, you travel through time and space to a year later. There, you go through time and space back to a year ago, here. Now there will be two indentical you in front of me.”

An Zhe thought about it. “Yes.”

“You know that a unit of matter is an atom and there are electrons in the atom. There are no two identical leaves in the world but all electrons are the same. So how do you tell that the electrons are two different individuals?”

An Zhe replied after thinking about it, “They’re in different positions.”