Rhodes Island does not exist.

It seems that just mentioning keywords is quite useful.

“Then she exposed her heart…though it was just a necklace that had grown into her body,” Skadi said. “After seeing her heart, you fainted.”

"Ah...it's the heart."

The doctor recalled the necklace that had been perfectly fitted to the girl's skin, and then realized what had happened before he lost consciousness.

"That's it, that's it..."

The doctor leaned back in his chair, gently pressing his right hand against his temple as he organized the information in his mind.

"How are you feeling?" Skadi asked from the side. "Are you feeling any better?"

“Thank you, I feel much better.” The doctor nodded. “But I still need some time… Right now, I only know what happened before, but the events outside of those times are still in my mind, and I didn’t even experience them.”

“How do you know you haven’t experienced it?” Skadi asked. “Since they’re all in your mind, it means you must have seen or experienced something related to them.”

“I don’t know either.” The doctor shook his head. “But my senses and intuition are telling me that these memories are false. They’re like answers that have been eliminated and sunk to the bottom of the water.”

“Intuition and senses?” Skadi shook her head. “While these are the highest virtues on the battlefield, aren’t they a bit too arbitrary to use them to distinguish memories?”

"That's what I thought too, but..."

The doctor turned his gaze to his right hand.

To be precise, it was the thorns coiled around the right hand.

“These thorns wrapped around my arm have been hurting terribly ever since I died.” He sighed through the pain. “From what I remember, it seems to have been a monster, but it attached itself to my body in the last moment before I died. Occasionally it would open my vision or provide an alarm, and it was also very useful for detecting danger.”

“Have you ever thought about something?” Skadi asked.

"what?"

"The doctor asked."

"If it's for detecting danger, why did it suddenly wake you up with pain just now?"

-

Thank you segment.

Thanks to Kimchi for the monthly pass and blade from sptzer.

Thanks, Carmen, for the dog food!

Chapter 207, Part 206: pgandpepper

Memory is a mysterious thing.

Its mystery lies in the fact that when you try to remember something, it gets forgotten. But if you just glance at it casually, without even intending to memorize it, it lingers in your mind.

At the same time, memories are also easily fabricated.

Because people often cannot remember the detailed information of every memory.

You might remember eating steak once this month, but if that day wasn't a holiday or anniversary, you probably wouldn't remember what day it was, let alone anything else that happened besides eating steak.

What does "minor matters" mean?

The trashy commercials playing on TV while you're brushing your teeth in the morning, the unsightly posters plastered under the bus stop signs when you leave the house, and the clothing styles of the office workers in your building that you see in the elevator at lunchtime.

People don't remember these things.

Unless the ad you see while brushing your teeth is your favorite animated video; unless the graffiti on the bus stop sign says "Stranger, have a good day"; unless the office worker in the elevator is wearing a tattered t-shirt.

But if that's the case, then it's no longer a secondary matter, but a primary one.

After all, the little things that go unnoticed are secondary.

By fabricating certain details about such minor matters, one can make it easier for others to believe that they actually did it.

So, is there anyone who can remember even the most trivial details perfectly?

The answer is yes.

However, this is a medical condition.

A condition called hyperthymesia.

Such cases are extremely rare; even a large multinational medical research company like RheinLife has only seen one, and that patient soon died painfully from the disease.

Because he cannot forget.

The inability to forget will fill his brain with all sorts of secondary information, ultimately limiting his thinking ability and leading to brain death.

—This is the explanation given by Rhine Lab.

The truth is, to this day, I have not heard any news about what happened to that patient.

It seems that Rhine Lab is indeed under the protection of the Colombian government, which is why everything is so seamless and watertight.

—Excerpt from "The Brain, Memory, and Our Lives" by Edward Wise, a rising science writer on Terra.

-

"feel better now?"

The doctor never imagined that Skadi would one day speak to him with such concern.

Of course, this did not actually originate from Skadi, but from the locking loop.

It was just that Skadi's figure in front of her overlapped with the voice of that brat on the throne.

"Much better, thank you." The doctor leaned back in his chair, holding a teacup he had picked up at some point, and nodded toward the locked circuit.

Skadi had previously asked him why the thorns pricked him when he was lost in his memories, trying to pull him out of his reverie, but he did not answer.

Because he didn't know the answer.

After that, he went back to rest.

Fortunately, the environment here is more conducive to calming down than many places on Rhodes Island, and although the anomaly called the Closed Circuit is strange in many ways, the Doctor does not feel that it is threatening at all.

Just like when I first saw lavender.

Perhaps this is the power of communication and exchange; as long as communication can be established, everything is possible.

“Then let’s get ready to leave.” Skadi, who was sitting opposite, seemed impatient. Seeing that the Doctor said she was feeling much better, she immediately stood up and prepared to leave.

However, this scene seems unacceptable to the locked circuit sitting high on the throne.

"Huh? Huh? A friend of a friend, a woman named Skadi! Why did you say such hurtful things to me? I was so hospitable, yet all you wanted to do was leave? What is it that you're unhappy with? What is it that you find annoying? How rude, so incredibly rude!"

Her reaction was quite intense, like a grain of sodium in water.

But the doctor had already foreseen the outcome.

Skadi, being cold-hearted and unpretentious, would probably be quite straightforward in telling the closed loop in front of her all her thoughts.

As for the closed loop that was basically not being thought through, it would certainly react more violently to Skadi's reply... but it might not.

After all, as mentioned before, she wasn't thinking at all, so it's impossible to predict what she'll say or do.

However, since the Doctor was able to foresee Skadi's reaction, he would certainly do everything in his power to prevent this from happening.

So he opened the lockout circuit before Skadi could.

“No, I don’t find it annoying at all.” His gaze lingered above the large mouth of the closed circuit—after all, she had no eyes, so the Doctor could only look where the eyes should be. “But we didn’t come here just to attend your tea party, so we may need to leave for a while, and we will come back to see you later.”

"A temporary departure? How lonely." The closed loop shook its head, looking just like a child. "I finally got to see two guests, and I didn't expect them to leave so soon. But it's also really nice."

really.

Her remarks don't seem like something a normal person would say.

"Happy...?" Skadi, who was originally going to make a direct statement, was stunned by the brain-dead statement about the closed circuit.

“Yes,” the closed circuit said, “because you didn’t come for my tea party, which means you’re busy and have your own important matters to attend to!”

"Because you have your own important matters to attend to, you will certainly live a fulfilling life!"

"Because you live a fulfilling life, you are happy!"

"And happy people will die sooner or later! Because there's a saying, 'to die happy!'"

"And I! I feel genuinely happy to see you all about to die!"

Listening to the words coming from the locked circuit, the doctor suddenly felt that he might have misunderstood her.

It's not that she wasn't thinking; it's that she wasn't thinking.

Can these words, which are imbued with precise logic, be uttered without thinking?

Look at this coherence, look at this causal theory.

No more.

The doctor wanted to cover his forehead.

His attempt to understand closed-loop thinking had briefly caused his brain to freeze for 0.3 seconds.

At this moment, the locking circuit opens again.

"But it doesn't matter, I won't miss you, because you'll always be within my sight no matter where you go, so I won't miss you until you leave the sixth floor."

-

Thank you segment.

Thank you to Nan Yuan Hui for the monthly tickets and the razor blades from Shuke Jiuyao Sega-san.

Chapter 208, Part 207, Jabberwocky

"But it doesn't matter, I won't miss you, because you'll always be within my sight no matter where you go, so I won't miss you until you leave the sixth floor."

— Less than three seconds after saying that, the locking circuit changed its mind.

"But I still hope you will stay!"

She jumped off the throne, her mouth curving downwards in a sorrowful arc; if she had eyes, she would surely be weeping at that moment.

"Why?" Although he knew that the locked circuit probably wouldn't give a reliable answer, the professor still asked out of courtesy to the host family.

"Because, because...she's coming!" She raised her hands, making a monster-like face, and opened her mouth wide. "I don't want to face her alone, so I always hide in the deepest part of the world with my plush friends! But this time I have real friends, so I think I can definitely defeat her! Because the power of friendship is limitless!"

as predicted.

The doctor couldn't help but shake his head.

I really shouldn't have expected her to say anything reliable.

But this time, the doctor was wrong.

"Ah, she's here! I can feel it, I can see it! She's really here! She's here again!" The locked circuit shouted, taking a half step back while covering the sides of its head with its hands, just like that world-famous painting.

"What's here? Who's here?" The doctor looked at the girl who had fallen into a frenzy and couldn't help but feel uneasy, infected by her atmosphere.

“Doctor, look over there.” Skadi walked over to the Doctor, patted him on the shoulder, and pointed in a certain direction. “This time, she doesn’t seem to be talking nonsense.”

Skadi was pointing towards the huge video wall made up of monitoring screens, but there were hundreds or even thousands of screens that made up the video wall, so for a moment the Doctor had no idea which one Skadi was pointing to.

After all, he didn't have Skadi's keen senses and couldn't capture the most important information immediately.

However, Skadi was clearly very skilled at handling things that required additional explanation, so before the Doctor could even ask "which screen are you referring to?", she had already revealed the coordinates of the destination.

"The 382nd from the top and the 654th from the left."

Cartesian coordinate system.

Thanks to this highly efficient communication method, the doctor quickly found the screen Skadi had pointed to.

The screen shows a three-way intersection. On the left is a sign for a household goods store, on the right is a sign for a clothing store, and in the middle of the intersection stands a... person.

Although the gender was indistinguishable, it was undoubtedly a complete person.

These are not comparable to the monstrous mud or the phantoms of the Hall of Midnight. They are humanoid figures like the Doctor, Skadi, and Specter.

As for the interlocking circuit, it can probably be considered one if we ignore appearances.

Unfortunately, the doctor couldn't see the face of the person appearing on the screen.

It wasn't because the person had blocked his face, but because the distance between the doctor and the screen was too great to discern the specific details in the image.

But one thing is certain: that person was definitely not faceless.

The professor emphasized this to himself.

"There is indeed a person there, but what is that person doing?" The doctor stared intently at the screen, trying to see the person's current behavior from this distance.