An Zhe couldn’t describe Polly’s expression at this moment. It was like too many intense emotions were mixed together, turning it blank. Polly’s hand trembled slightly as he placed his right hand on the instrument’s joystick. “Are you sure?”

Rum’s eyes seemed hesitant or he might be trying to remember. Polly stared at him and three seconds passed before he answered, “I’m sure.”

Polly Joan watched the screen and An Zhe stood behind him. At the height of human science and technology, this experimental institution had been used to study the artificial magnetic poles. Many equipment might’ve been lost due to years of disrepair but it was still a qualified and functioning physics laboratory. In this breathless silence, he saw Polly using the joystick to pull the wave line back.

Polly asked, “At what time?”

“Just now.”

He was silent for a moment as he weighed his words. “It just blinked.”

Polly took a deep breath and turned the instrument’s recorded time back three minutes ago. Then he played it frame by frame on the small screen.

The beating and wriggling lines varied in depth. Some formed curves and some were scattered black dots like stars. They were tangled together like this, like fat. Every frame changed their shape but this change was irregular. After spending nearly half a month in the laboratory, An Zhe had long known that what the Simpson Cage captured was the frequency of basic particles interaction. Polly always described it as ‘frequency.’

However, the complexity and chaos of this frequency were beyond the scope of humanity’s existing science. Polly strove to find a way to receive and process them to make them clearer, just like a person heard a song and tried to write a score or when they constantly adjusted the frequency of the radio to receive a clear signal. It was just that this work had no progress for ages. Polly once said that facing the chaotic lines, he was like a mortal who wanted to hear the will of God, like an ant trying to interpret human language.

An Zhe watched the still-moving big screen and sometimes turned his worried eyes to Polly. He found that Rum was the same. In this protracted experiment, there had been too many failures. If Rum’s ‘clear’ moment couldn’t be reproduced then An Zhe would rather that Polly had never received the news.

One frame passed after another. The flames in the fireplace burned and from time to time, the firewood emitted a crackling sound that was especially thrilling in the silent laboratory.

A ghostly image jumped off the screen like a ghost.

An Zhe couldn’t resist holding his breath.