Selas Stone sat on the chair in the interrogation room. He slightly tilted his head up, gazing at the light bulb above. A tiny insect had flown inside the bulb and was helplessly circling the filament. The light made his eyes feel dry. The discomfort in his body made it almost impossible to think, but the more it was like this, the clearer his mind became.
"Are you still expecting the military to come and save you?" the agent across from him said. "They only treat you as a tool. Protecting you is just to prevent us from finding you so they can demand sky-high prices. But what they didn't expect, times have changed, it's not like it was during 9/11."
"Oh, by the way, you probably don't know yet, right? That car accident that destroyed your family was actually orchestrated by them. They installed a tracker on your wife's phone and then used a car accident to kill her, severely injuring your son. You think they were merciful, using alien technology to save your son, but in reality, they just needed a more useful tool."
"Threatening you with your son, then threatening your son with you. This way, whether it's an expert in alien technology research or the world's greatest hacker, they are all under their control. We are actually here to save you this time."
"The military will only use your intelligence to wage wars. But we are different. For many years, we have ruled this country, manipulating elections just to make America greater. Join us, and you and your son will have a better future..."
"What stops the human race from moving forward has never been ignorance, but arrogance," Dr. Stone said in a hoarse voice. "We can gain more knowledge through learning and teaching to solve our ignorance. However, if we have deep arrogance for things we cannot fully understand, it will ultimately destroy everything."
He bowed his head slightly and then said, "At the moment I knew the car accident happened, I already guessed who the culprit was. At that time, I thought they wanted to get Victor into the hospital, and then use the high medical expenses to force me to work for them. It's a cruel plan, but from their perspective, it's effective enough. If they really did this, I'm afraid I would indeed have no power to resist."
"However, I never imagined they would dare to take me to the Red House. Even though I had reminded them thousands of times, the box from outer space was from a highly advanced civilization beyond anything humans can imagine. Merely touching it is equivalent to opening Pandora's Box. But they didn't believe it. They thought I had uncovered the secrets of the box but just wouldn't tell them. So, they made me take the already severely injured Victor inside, thinking that only then would I use the box voluntarily, revealing its secrets right before their eyes."
"I indeed had no choice but to do so." Dr. Stone took a deep breath and then said, "They had no idea what kind of monster would emerge from the opened Pandora's Box. Not even Victor himself may be aware of how powerful he is."
"The officers believed the box to be just a weapon, just as you think Victor is nothing more than a hacker," Dr. Stone said, looking at the agent opposite, his eyes filled with red veins. "Soon you will know what kind of supreme power the tangible cosmic truths created by the cosmos's most advanced civilization possess."
As soon as his words fell, the entire prison began to dissolve.
It wasn't lifted away, nor was it shattered, but dissolved bit by bit from top to bottom like modeling in a virtual world. First, the glass on the top layer, then the thick concrete walls, various signal shielding devices, special alloy bars... all the safety measures to suppress superpower were dissolved at the same time.
The scene did not seem to occur in the real world at all; rather, it looked like a movie. Just like a movie director painstakingly using special effects to show how things constructed in a virtual world collapse. Everything disappeared for no apparent reason.
Bit by bit, slowly, they were erased from the world. It was as if a deletion progress bar appeared above everything, accompanied by the progress bar gradually filling, with garbage files being deleted one by one, and the disk storage capacity being freed. The operating system remained silent because this was a high-privilege operation in the real world, free from the virtual world. The files within the system stood no chance of resistance.
First the walls, then the floor, followed by all the furniture and items, and finally, all the agents in the prison.
Whether objects or people, they all faded and disappeared slowly from top to bottom. It was as if all objects were bound with the same fade-out effect animation, which seemed rather crude when viewed on a computer, yet in the real world, it was incredibly eerie and terrifying.
The agent sitting opposite Dr. Stone disappeared without even having the chance to let out a scream, along with the table, chairs, and light bulb in the interrogation room. With a "thud," the chair dropped to the ground. When Victor, shimmering with metallic luster all over, descended upon this empty space, Dr. Stone remembered the indescribable excitement he felt the first time he saw his son outside the maternity ward.
Victor was equally filled with mixed emotions. He had heard what his father said in the interrogation room and understood why his father had been absent for so much of his life. It wasn't that he didn't love him; he just had to fight another tougher war, and to protect their mother and son, he could absolutely not lose.
But Victor couldn't help but think, what did his father do wrong? Dr. Stone was talented and had high academic achievements, an outstanding scientist who could leave his name in human history. Why did he end up having his home destroyed, never even experiencing a bit of the usual warmth of family life after struggling his whole life?
"Calm down, Victor." Dr. Stone stood up and said, "Don't let anger cloud your judgment."
Victor finally came back to his senses but stepped back two steps, his expression icy, and said, "Why shouldn't I be angry? We did nothing wrong, but someone destroyed everything!"
His expression finally showed a bit of emotion, even on the mechanical-covered half of his face, revealing an indescribable sadness. "My mom was so young, I wanted to use the prize money from that competition to buy her a pair of gold earrings, I had even picked out the style... But everything is gone, everything is gone!!!"
By the end, Victor was already roaring.
The helicopters in the sky gradually converged, and Dr. Stone looked up. But in just that second, the control systems of all helicopters completely malfunctioned, falling like meteors in different directions.
The glow in Victor's mechanical eye grew brighter and brighter. In his vision, countless images were flickering.
The camera in the Capitol Building suddenly rotated at an angle, the indicator lights on the Presidential Palace's safe blinked, and a sharp, piercing drill bell rang out in the nuclear dispatch office...
"I know you've been donating," his father's voice suddenly sounded in his ear, "to those impoverished Black communities, to those single mothers who can't afford to feed their children. You know how hard it is for those people, just like when your mother took care of you alone."
"But even when it's so tough, they still strive to get through this winter, putting in all their efforts. Even though they are in pain, they still want to live. Back then, your mother felt tired and pained while taking care of you, but she never gave up. You have no right to choose to end it for anyone."
"If you choose to destroy the world, you will also kill the mothers of many people. In their eyes, there will be no difference between you and the hangman who killed your mother. Never choose to be a terrorist, Victor. Your mother would be very disappointed."
In an instant, all the flashing lights went out. Victor staggered back a few steps and then half-kneeled. He felt a cold chill all over his body, as if suddenly placed in a snowfield. He painfully covered his eyes, unable to believe what he had just wanted to do.
Then, he felt his father lift him up and heard his father continue to say, "Losing everything just to destroy everything will only create more tragedies. What we need to do is to take back the lost things."
"But my mom can't come back," Victor said, "She's already dead, soon it will be her anniversary... She will never be able to see me win the world championship..."
"Yes, what is lost cannot return. But there are more people walking on the path of loss, and you have the ability to prevent these tragedies and save more people like yourself. Don't you?"
Victor closed his eyes, and many scenes flashed before him: one gray building after another, with light only shining on lower floors, scarce firewood in the fireplace, those despairing, helpless faces, and the sound of collapsing cries.
When he brought them money for firewood and milk powder, the surprise and admiration in their eyes pulled him out of the abyss of despair from losing his mother, allowing him to feel alive again. He thought he merely enjoyed the respect of others, just like enjoying the cheers of spectators on the field.
Those single mothers' sad and weary faces always coincided in his memory with his mother. So when he saw them, he couldn't help but think of himself. Perhaps when he was young, his mother also aged from being too tired, cried from anxiety.
However, his mother always felt immense joy over the money his father sent, or his occasional returns.
Freud believed, "Mother attachment, father imitation." This term might sound ambiguous at first, but in fact, it refers to: if a person depends more on their mother, they observe more how their mother's emotions change for their father—what the father did to anger and sadden the mother; what he did to make her happy.
To affect the mother's heart, change her emotions, they would unconsciously imitate the father to do these things. And in family relationships, if the father always makes the mother sad, and the child imitates this side too much, when they later build their own family, they will unconsciously imitate the father's behavior to affect their partner's emotions. Conversely, it's the same.
Victor now remembers that although his father rarely returned, he sent large sums of money every month, making sure he and his mother were well-fed and clothed. Every time his mother received a remittance, she was happy, constantly praising his father, saying he was a capable man, a brilliant scientist, constantly recounting how they met, and claiming she never chose wrong. These words were filled with fulfillment.
Not to mention, when his father occasionally returned, his mother was completely immersed in happiness. Faced with the father missing important moments in his life, she always spoke for him, even at the risk of arguing with her son. His mother's feelings for his father were always filled with love and admiration.
So, when Victor felt empty and lost, his first reaction was to donate to people in those downtrodden communities. Because he knew they would be very surprised, would worship him just as his mother worshipped his father. He was imitating his father's behavior.
He thought he hated his father, but in fact, over the years, the education he received from the family shaped him to actually enjoy playing the role of his father, which was to make others feel happy through giving.
So even if the father and son never lived together for a long time, they ended up becoming almost identical people. This is the power of "body teaching" in the phrase "word and body teaching," sometimes much more useful than appearing in every aspect of the child's life at all times, and educating them with words.