48 Hours a Day

“Are all of these a person’s memories?”

Black was stunned for half a minute before he asked.

“All of his memory? No, this is only a small part of it,” Mr. G said. “What you see is less than a week’s worth at most. It’s not easy to find the particular memory we need to modify. We need to constantly fish in the sea of memories. Most ordinary people do not have any patterns in their memory storage. Moreover, sometimes we have to distinguish between the target’s imagination and reality.”

As Mr. G spoke, he pointed to a screen. There, Mr. G was kneeling at the feet of the middle-aged man, begging for the latter’s forgiveness with tears in his eyes. “See? This is his imagination. He’s probably dreaming about this day. Unfortunately, he’s now lying in my memory coding room.”

Black also noticed the five people lying on the ground nearby. He initially thought they were all corpses but realized that they were merely unconscious when he walked in.

In addition, on the screen was a single bed was in the middle of the room, where on it lay the middle-aged man. He was wearing a somewhat ridiculous helmet that almost covered his entire face. At the same time, a tube had been inserted at the back, connecting all the way to a peculiar oval-shaped six-meter in diameter machine.

There were four people in blue uniforms sitting around the machine. All four of them were wearing the same funny helmets.

Black had heard of memory coding before, but this was the first time he witnessed the process. Needless to say, the four people in blue uniforms were the staff responsible for memory coding.

Just as Black wanted to observe the machine more carefully, an electronic synthesizer buzzed.

“R9041. Memory. Re-search… Keywords: board of directors, artificial reproduction plan.”

As a core member of Mr. G’s organization, Black knew more about his plan than anyone else. He knew that to successfully realize New Shanghai 0297’s uprising, he still needed to solve the problem from Shengtang Morgan’s headquarters. It was also why Mr. G went to so much trouble to kidnap the management here.

Through memory coding, branch management could be on their side from now, finding a reasonable excuse for the change of New Shanghai 0297 to deal with the board of directors at the headquarters. But he didn’t know what the artificial reproduction plan thing meant.

A second later, he noticed that the screens around him suddenly turned black, but after about five seconds, they lit up again.

This time, the scene before Black became a little difficult to understand. Everyone was looking for job opportunities in a city with an exploding population and extreme division of wealth, asking where the new city was built. In order to get a job, they were willing to accept memory coding. Shengtang Morgan’s financial report, where the middle-aged man was, had been increasing year after year, repeatedly hitting a new high.

The management team was celebrating the completion of the new project—New Shanghai 0297. Shengtang Morgan had touted this as a paradise, a place eager applicants could get multiple job opportunities. Not only would they be able to reside in this New Shanghai 0297, but if lucky, could reach the third or fourth floor, directly living the life of an elite. Throngs rushed to sign up, racking their brains to enter New Shanghai 0297. Meanwhile, the middle-aged man had also been sent here to work.

“This is also his imagination, right?” Black couldn’t fully fathom the content of the images, but he still felt a chill as if grasping at a life-saving straw. He could not wait to ask.

However, the few words Mr. G uttered next were like a hammer hitting his chest. “No, this is reality. What you are desperately trying to overthrow is exactly what the people outside are extremely envious of.”

“How is this possible?” Black found it hard to understand. “Wait, have you already known about these things?”

“That’s right,” Mr. G admitted bluntly. “I know New Shanghai 0297 is just a city made of lies.”

“Why then, are you still leading us to resist that unfairness?”

“I used to be like you, a member of this city. I played my role conscientiously in the day-to-day cycle until someone above me, due to some kind of prank, woke me up from this long nightmare, allowing me to see the real way the world worked. However, at that time, I didn’t have the ability to change everything. In order to let the current me live, I came to an agreement with Shengtang Morgan to play the role of Mr. G here and manage order for them. But now that I’ve seen the real world, I can’t stay in this false paradise forever.”

Mr. G shook his head. “What you’re pursuing is still too small. Of course, it’s not your fault because you can only see what’s in front of you. But I, I have a bigger blueprint. New Shanghai 0297 is just my starting point. Since they can use memory coding to control ordinary people to work for them, I can also use it to make them work for me. Not only the management of the New Shanghai 0297 but also the board of directors, the entire Earth Federation… and in the process, I will also need some like-minded partners.”

Black was still trying to digest the news when he heard the last sentence.

“Are you inviting me to be your partner?”

“No, he’s talking to me.”

A voice came from the door.

Black turned around and realized that Zhang Heng was standing behind him. He was shocked. Previously, he had been so absorbed by the images on the screen that he had forgotten about the battle downstairs. Even though the outcome was already set in stone, Zhang Heng’s arrival still surprised him.

As if knowing what he was thinking, Zhang Heng explained, “The battle downstairs is not over yet, but since the rest should be able to deal with the Type-VI, I took the liberty to come up.”

Mr. G nodded. “I’m very cautious myself in choosing my partners. As the only two people who’ve broken into Shengtang Morgan’s secret base in New Shanghai 0297 since its establishment, you’ve proven your ability to be my partner. Moreover, since you already know the truth about this city, you should also know the meaning of my actions. We don’t need to dwell on past grudges because the real new era still awaits us.”

“You have quite the bold idea,” said Zhang Heng. “Before this, I only knew that you had other plans, but I didn’t expect you to have such a big goal. You even wanted to use the memory encoder to control all of Shengtang Morgan’s top management.”

“The riot this time definitely can’t be hidden. The top management will send people to investigate this matter. At that time, with the help of branch management, we can easily encode their memories and make them listen to us. When they return, we can trick more top management to come here,” said Mr. G. “As long as we do it discreetly, we have a good chance of winning. As far as I know, in addition to New Shanghai 0297, there are 15 new cities under Shengtang Morgan management. We can split them 50-50.”