One beautiful spring afternoon, in the magnificent rural countryside of the Sichuan basin, on a forest hill, walked a man, who didn't quite look like he belonged there. Indeed a Caucasian man with a full on Indiana Jones outfit, including the adventurer hat in the middle of the Chinese country side isn't a sight to be seen every other Tuesday. This particular one, was persevering his way through the vegetation with one goal in mind, get to mount Emei, and to do so by the end of the week.
Agi Rosenzweig had decided for this year's adventure to be a long and treacherous walk from mount Kunlun over in Xianjang to mount Emei in Sichuan. The goal obviously being to scale both mountains, and to travel solely by foot.
China had been on his bucket list since he started doing these adventures every year, mostly because of all the breathtaking landscapes it had to offer. And the only thing that held him back for 5 years was his unwillingness to learn a bit of the language in order to be able to communicate with the locals.
With the rising geopolitical tensions, and the fear that if he pushed this journey back a few years he would be unable to even come travel here finally motivate him to take several months off to learn.
And here he was now, enjoying life and having soon reached the end of this long escapade, which he didn't really want to see the conclusion of.
Agi was currently following a trail that was probably only ever taken by locals, speaking of whom, he encountered one a couple minutes later, at what looked to be a shrine on the left side of the road (on the right was a pretty steep fall). He looked rather old, probably a farmer from a village nearby.
He waited some time for the man to stop praying in order to start a small conversation. And when he finally lifted his head up, Agi presented a warm smile and started
«hello, I am going mount Emei, where... where way?*», the old man looked at him confused for some time before laughing a bit:
«Oh, it is not often we see a stranger around here, much less one who speaks some Mandarin hahaha. Mount Emei is quite far, impressive, just keep following the path, it's that way» He said while pointing the continuation of the path
Not quite getting the start, Agi just acquiesced and said his thanks, the old man was clearly quite interested in his situation, since just the act of him being here was so unusual that he might not want to let him go, and in order not to let this awkward moment last, he decided to try and formulate the reason for his presence, which the old man seemed to somewhat understand since he acted with quite a lot of surprise once again, before uttering some sentenced he had absolutely no way of comprehending.
He readily nodded once again, as an answer by default, and then offered him a cigarette, which the old man quickly accepted with a smile, and gave him some mushrooms in exchange before they both headed their merry way. He always carried a few packs with him for two reasons, the main one being that he considered it some kind of international currency. Rare were the people nowadays who didn't smoke, and most of them were urban citizens informed on the negative effects of it. He himself wasn't a chain smoker, but never refused to share a smoke with a stranger or smoke one on his own on pretty moody situation, mostly with no one around, purely because it looked really cool. The last time he did that was on mount Kunlun while overlooking the landscape, the feeling you get out of that is quite out of this world.
But anyways, Agi continued his journey towards mount Emei with a lighter heart and a happy mood. He set up his tent as the sun went down, and since quite high up in altitude, he was presented with a view he hoped never to forget. A red hued sky with few clouds and a setting sun in between too far peaks shining upon the remainder of the valley on his right, there was also no sound pollution here, only the wind and the smell of pure unadultered nature.
Dinner consisted of some noodles, canned meat and a cereal bar, and he also threw in the mushrooms he got earlier. It wasn't optimal, more than enough to keep him going tomorrow.
He slept as you probably sleep in a tent, had better, had worse, and by laziness ate a pack of uncooked noodles for breakfast.
He set up his tent a few dozen meters into the forest on a pretty flat and comfy ground in order not to be too close to the path or the very steep side of the mountain, and not trusting his senses also put up a mark in the direction he would have to follow to join back the path, and worse case scenario, he had his compass.
Agi therefore packed his stuff up and set back off, but already after a minute, things felt off. He didn't set off from the trail that much at all, so he should have already found it, but nothing, he didn't even find an elevation difference even though he was on a god forsaken mountain.
Worried, he took out his compass, but it too couldn't even find the north even after being hit a couple times. The sun wasn't much of a help either since it was mostly hidden by the dense trees all around, and before his brain could fully process all of those information in order to make a decision, he suddenly heard a notification sound, probably from his phone.
To that, he laughed a bit and felt quite dumb, of course his phone would know where the fuck he was, his heart already settled down from the short stress. He internally thanked whoever messaged him before taking out his phone.
On it, he saw no notifications, which was pretty strange since he heard the noise, and then he remembered that he had the habit of putting his phone on silent whenever possible, and being in rural Sichuan definitely counted as that.
But for all he knew it might have just been an obscure part of his brain momentarily tricking his senses in order for him to remember that he had a phone, not thinking much of it, he unlocked the phone and opened the map, only to see that he had zero internet, not even a snippet, his phone was strict, showing him the danish o .
He grumbled a bit, as his hopes were crushed as quickly as they came, because of course Sichuan countryside didn't have any damn internet.
But anyways, he refocused on reality and immediately noticed something else out of place, right in front of him was some kind of digital screen which didn't react at all to his touch and had text written on it in perfect English white on black. It read:
< You have One notification, would you like to check it? (it must be taken into account that whether you check it or not will not change you future disposition thanks to our technology, and the things you may get out of it are information, weird theories, a coping mechanism, and other such things) >
Together with an option at the bottom to accept or reject said proposal.
His firsthand reaction was to burst out laughing and blurting out
«Man I sure don't know what these mushrooms were yesterday but they sure are taking effect now fucking hell»
For all he knew the old man yesterday exchanged the couple cigarettes he offered for a handful of hallucinogenic mushrooms he might have used himself or sold away to the triad or god knows who else.
Rationalizing his situation this way, he went with the flow and agreed with the notification he read:
< Thank you! >
< While your planet is incurring some pretty consequential changes, it is the perfect moment for life to get acclimatized too. Your species being part of the ones that need to adjust separately will even be given a choice of which way you would like to adapt because of the fact that most of you are sentient. >
< We will now proceed to ask you a short series of questions which will allow you to choose in what kind of way you acclimatization will take place (note: we will not be taking any questions in return, for now) >
< First off: would you like your acclimatization to be more focused of theory or practice (an equal split cannot be selected) >
He would have chosen both if he could, but in between, in terms of adapting to something, whatever that may be, except perhaps a new current of thought, it will always be better to experience it directly, and thus, he chose practical. The next part confused him a little though:
< In which of the following domains do you wish to be practically acclimatized? (it is to be noted that each of the option except an indicated select few will have both some theory and some survival training >
The options were numerous, and even that was an understatement, every job hobby, sport, or simply activity that one could think of at the top of their head was there, to the point where some pretty goofy choices had a note next to them saying:
«may be chosen with another option», such as «walking» for example. His eyes though, drifted towards the activity that he was himself supposed to be doing right now, and in fact the only thing that every living being did for all the duration that they were alive : surviving.
Survival, the perseverance of something through its own being, the Spinozian conatus. If there was only one option to choose from in the perspective of being acclimatized to god knows what, it was this one, anyone with a brain, a survival instinct and a bit of philosophical knowledge should know that. And the screen seems to know that too since it was partially included in every single individual option. So without further ado, he chose that and proceeded to the next screen.
< You have selected survival, which difficulty would you like to choose? >
Followed by numbers from one through ten where one was the least difficult and ten the most. And Agi, via a mix of overestimating himself, underestimating the system, and not taking the situation completely seriously chose to fuck it and go with the highest, and worse case scenario, he'd suffer a bit more in order to be more prepared.
< You have chosen ten >
< Warning! This is the last step, are you absolutely certain of all your previous choices and have made no mistake while selecting them nor have you been endorsed to do so? We will allow you to go back to the step of your choice if that it indeed the case. It is also to be noted that the choices you have selected may incur heavy injuries or death, you may, following this information, once again reconsider your choices up until now >
< Will you stick to your choices and begin the acclimatization, or change one of the settings? >
This last series of message briefly ran some sweat down Agi's back, and made him reconsider, but in the end, he said:
« sheesh what a load of yapping just to ask you to pussy out man», before ultimately sticking to his choices.