Reality Programming Association

Chapter 61: Chapter 25: Breaking into the Girls’ Dormitory on a Stormy Night

Most of the people around him looked like young professionals who had just gotten off work. Right now, they all appeared a bit disheveled, their damp hair plastered to their foreheads.

The train roared into the station. He followed the crowd on board, found a corner seat, and scanned the passengers in the carriage. Sitting across from him was a man in his thirties, leaning against the glass partition with his eyes closed to rest. Diagonally opposite was a guy wearing Bluetooth earphones, staring blankly at his phone. The lanyard of his ID badge had slipped out of his pocket and was dangling loosely.

Watching this scene, the voice from that TDI dream seemingly echoed in his mind once again.

”...Behavior will solidify into your instinct.”

As he watched the man opposite him nodding off with his eyes closed, he suddenly felt unable to distinguish between reality and dreams. In that white void, he had acted like a machine, reciting that dry agreement over and over again just to complete the ”500-Million-Year Button” task. But what about these people in front of him, including his reality-bound self? Was this not just another form of that ”button,” stretched out over decades?

The train jolted, and Yu Xian withdrew his gaze. He thought, ”No, in reality, I still have Xia Li, my friends, my cousin, and so many beautiful things and happy memories. Dreams are fake; reality is real.”

”Jiangcheng University Station. The doors will open on the left. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

The announcement echoed through the speakers. He followed the crowd out of the carriage. As he walked out of the subway station, he felt a brief moment of daze.

The commercial street outside JCU South Gate was usually the liveliest spot in the entire area. The smoke and shouts from the barbecue stalls, the catchy ”I love you, you love me” pop music from the milk tea shops, and the laughter of passing students typically lasted late into the night. But now, it was dead silent. All the shops had their roller shutters pulled down; it was his first time seeing the commercial street like this. The accumulated water on the road had already risen past his ankles. It was murky, with fallen leaves and garbage drifting on the surface.

He tightened his grip on his backpack, ensuring the inside was still dry, and trudged against the wind toward the campus, his feet sinking unevenly into the water.

Entering through the South Gate and taking a left led to the South District Dormitory. The terrain here was slightly higher, so the flooding was much better than outside, but the gale still raged. The plane trees on both sides were blown wildly about, and snapped branches lay scattered across the path.

A few minutes later, he arrived at the No. 7 Dormitory. This was the girls’ dormitory for the JCU School of Life Sciences—an old building with quite a bit of history. He folded his umbrella and stood in the doorway to shield himself from the wind for a moment. He sent a message to Yang Yiyi: ”Yiyi, I’m at the No. 7 Dormitory.”

She replied almost instantly. ”I’ll be right down. Take cover from the wind around the corner.”

He glanced toward the supervisor’s duty room on the first floor. Through the glass window, he saw the dorm supervisor staring blankly at the heavy rain outside. Less than two minutes later, hurried footsteps echoed from the stairwell. Yang Yiyi jogged over, wrapped in a black windbreaker. She was wearing form-fitting thermal leggings on her lower half, seemingly having had no time to change. Being over 1.7 meters tall, she stood out prominently.

Seeing Yu Xian completely soaked at the door, she seemed momentarily stunned.

”Hurry, come in.” Yang Yiyi pushed open the glass door to the lobby, letting out a rush of warm air. ”The wind is too strong outside. Let’s talk inside.”

Yu Xian hesitated. He glanced at the brightly lit lobby, then at the flooded street. Even though it was highly unlikely for anyone to be doing inspections in this weather, it was still inappropriate for a guy to enter a girls’ dormitory. If he were stopped and questioned, it wouldn’t just be awkward; it could also cause trouble for Yiyi. Moreover, with so many people in the dorm, walls had ears, making it an unsuitable place to discuss such sensational topics.

Looking around, his gaze landed on a small, detached, single-story building next to the dormitory. Colorful thermos flasks were lined up by its entrance.

”Why don’t we go to the boiler room over there?” Yu Xian pointed. ”It’s warm, and given how late it is and the weather, it should be empty.”

”Alright, let’s go.” Yang Yiyi didn’t waste any words. She pulled up the collar of her windbreaker and prepared to dash into the rain.

Yu Xian quickly opened his large black umbrella and angled it to block the sheets of rain blowing in from the side. They crossed the open space of less than ten meters, bypassed the array of thermos flasks at the entrance, and pushed open the door to the boiler room.

The small building provided hot water for the students. Usually at this hour, it would be filled with steam and a long line of girls. But today, everyone was hiding in their dorms to escape the rain, binge-watching shows or playing games. Right now, it was completely empty, save for a few rows of faucets emitting steam. The temperature inside was at least ten degrees higher than outside, and the glass windows above were fogged over.

Two rows of wooden benches sat against the wall, likely meant for students waiting in line.

”Let’s sit down and talk,” she said.

Yang Yiyi sat down next to him. She didn’t rush to press him for answers; instead, she used the boiler room’s somewhat dim, yellowish lighting to look Yu Xian up and down.

”Yiyi, do you remember the TDI project I asked you about in the library last time?” he asked, figuring out how to broach the subject without scaring her.

Yang Yiyi pulled a pack of tissues from her windbreaker and handed it to him. ”I remember. Targeted Dream Incubation—that MIT project. I even asked you last time why you were suddenly so interested in it.” She paused, as if realizing something. ”Did you brave the heavy rain to come all the way here today just for this?”

”Yes.” Yu Xian took the tissues and pulled one out. He planned to confess part of the truth, omitting any connection to the smiling suicide case and sticking solely to the TDI project itself. ”It’s because... my insomnia has been really bad lately. I haven’t been able to sleep for nights on end. I stumbled upon this TDI project online and thought I’d try it out to see if it could improve my sleep...”

Beside him, she frowned. ”You didn’t actually try it, did you? There aren’t any official channels for that project in the country, right?”

”I sort of... got an internal qualification through a friend,” Yu Xian said, vaguely glossing over the origin of the invitation code. He took a deep breath. ”This afternoon, I received their guided audio—what they call the login key—and then... I went in.”

”You went in?” Yang Yiyi’s expression shifted. ”Are you saying it actually guided you into the target dream?”

”Yeah... I entered the target dream.” He placed his backpack on his lap and took out his laptop. Fortunately, the sealed bag had kept the computer completely dry. He entered his password, plugged in his earphones, and handed one to Yang Yiyi. ”Yiyi, listen to this first. This is the ’login key’.”

Yang Yiyi took the earbud and put it in her ear as Yu Xian clicked play. Schoenberg’s *Suite for Piano*, mixed with white noise, began to play once more. Yu Xian felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Yang Yiyi listened intently, her brow furrowed. Yu Xian played snippets of it for a few dozen seconds before stopping the audio. Yang Yiyi removed the earbud, her gaze solemn.

”This doesn’t sound... much like sleep aid music,” she said, pondering for a moment. ”The melody is very awkward, and it’s mixed with some background noise. The rhythm... it seems to be mimicking some sort of biological rhythm.”

”Yiyi, this is the first thing I wanted to ask you,” Yu Xian said eagerly. ”From the perspective of life sciences, can an audio clip really pull a person’s consciousness into a specific dream? What exactly is the underlying principle?”

Yang Yiyi thought for a moment before replying, ”Based on some of our neuroscience research topics, this might be related to the ’half-awake, half-asleep’ state in the early stages of sleep. It’s called hypnagogia.”

Yu Xian didn’t interrupt, continuing to listen.

She pointed at the earphones. ”During this stage, the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the area responsible for logical thinking and reality checking—begins to shut down. However, the regions responsible for perception and emotion, such as the sensory cortex, remain highly active. Most importantly, the auditory channel is still open at this time.

”This audio might be a kind of auditory driver. It attempts to synchronize with your brainwaves through specific frequencies, such as combining sleep spindles and slow oscillations.”

Yu Xian took notes on his laptop as he listened.

”Simply put, dreaming is the brain processing fragmented memories from the day. Normally, this should be a spontaneous, random process generated by the brain,” Yang Yiyi paused before continuing. ”But this audio acts like a ’map’. Right when your brain’s hippocampus emits sharp-wave ripples—meaning when your brain is preparing to consolidate memories—it forcibly inserts a ’guiding blueprint’. It tricks your brain into constructing a dream based on this ’blueprint’.”

Yu Xian’s typing hands froze. He looked up, meeting Yang Yiyi’s eyes. She was close enough that, under the dim, yellowish light, he could almost see his own reflection in her eyes.

”Are you saying it’s like a hacker?” he asked. ”That it hacked into my brain and made it construct a dream according to the blueprint it provided?”