Cultivate a black technology god

Chapter 198 Ariel's past (1)

The sound of shattering glass gave her a throbbing pain in her head.

The whole room seemed to be spinning.

The caustic smell of chemicals filled her nose.

She didn't actually inhale much, but the smell was pungent.

The smell seemed to come from a long-forgotten past.

Although it is far away, it is very familiar, reminding people of the old pharmacy in their hometown.

When the glassware in the old pharmacy shattered, and when the glassware in the big dining room shattered, someone sternly reprimanded:

"You broke it!"

Ariel Isabel Dorset threw the chemistry notebook into her folder and ran for the door.

The chemistry professor's eyes and the eyes of other students were all focused on her, and she felt very painful for some reason.

The door closed behind her.

She was in the third-floor hallway of Columbia University's Havemeyer Hall.

The corridor is very long, dark, and there are no people.

She waited alone for the elevator.

"It's procrastinating, it's procrastinating,"

she thought over and over again.

Well, if only I had started to leave as soon as I heard the glass shattering, I really shouldn't have stayed so long to leave the classroom.

Too procrastinating!This elevator is also like this, it is really dragging.

Ariel reached for the zippered folder.

Hey, not here.

The elevator is not there either.

The dimly lit corridor was gone too.

She was standing now in a long, narrow street.

The road is covered with snow.

The elevator never came, and she waited impatiently.

Now she is walking.

The cold wind was biting, and the white snow crunched underfoot.

She wore no goloshes, no gloves, no hat.

Both ears were numb and painful from the cold.

The light gray tweed dual-purpose suit on his body is still quite warm when he walks from the apartment to the laboratory, but now he can't keep out the ruthless cold.

Ariel tried to find a signpost, but couldn't find it.

She wanted to find a house to escape the cold, but couldn't find one.

Is there a gas station?No.

What about the drug store?nor.

The pharmacy, the chemistry lab, the dark corridor, the elevator.
There is nothing here.

There is only this nameless street with street lights like beans and no one inhabited.

She had no idea what this place was.

Both sides of the street are lined with thick wooden buildings, some painted gray like battleships, some covered with steel skins, very old and ugly.

This can't be New York.

Maybe somewhere in her native Wisconsin.

There, she had been through many snowstorms like this as a child and knew how easy it was to get frostbite.

Her dad, Harper, always made her put her hand next to the hot computer mainframe, saying it would keep it warm and cool it down.

How funny!
Just now, I was standing outside the elevator at Columbia University. How could I be in Wisconsin in an instant?
For such a brief moment, she couldn't go anywhere.

Maybe she didn't go anywhere and was just having a dream.

But when she quickened her pace, the unsightly buildings, and the snow that kept falling on her face and body, forced her to face reality.

From time to time, she wiped off the snow on her face with her cold hands, and shook her body to shake off the snow on her clothes.

She knew that she had never seen such buildings before, and it was impossible to create them out of nothing in a dream.

The building's front door was surprisingly large, not because of her imagination, but because of shipping and storage needs.

The realistic part of her mind took over again, and she understood that the place she was in was a warehouse area.

Suddenly, a black figure appeared on the snow on the other side of the street.

This is a man.

But he is like a drifting shadow, making people feel inaccessible, and like those thick buildings beside the road, he is absolutely lifeless.

Of course he could tell her where it was;
But she found it difficult to ask for help.

She was also worried that if she really wanted to ask him, he would probably misunderstand her motives and make false assumptions.

Therefore, she allowed him to move away from her, letting him blend into the night and go to the world outside the warehouse.

To Ariel, it seemed that there was neither an exit nor an entrance.

The barricade-like building blended with the fear deep in her heart.

She felt surrounded, isolated, imprisoned, trapped—both inwardly and outwardly.

Is there no help?What about taxis?What about the bus?Is there no way to get out of here?
Every time she took a bus that crossed the city in New York, she always had a strange feeling of hesitation, but now she really wanted to take a bus.

But this idea is pure nonsense.Because there are no buses here at all.Nothing at all.

She thought again of the public telephone hall.

If you can find a pay phone, it's not hard to figure out where you are, and you can call your roommate, Teddy Eleanor Reeves.

She must be worried that she has not returned for a long time.

But Ariel immediately remembered:

Shortly after he left for the lab, Teddy left for Oklahoma to vacation with his family.

Ironically, this is:

When Ariel left the apartment, Teddy persuaded her to change into a thicker coat.

But Ariel didn't heed her advice, because it was one of the days she couldn't.

In those days, especially when the weather turned cold, she always had a feeling of unease and a strange excitement inside her, which made it impossible for her to stay in the apartment for a few more minutes to change a coat. .

Ariel also wanted to call Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur.Maybe she missed her appointment with the doctor.

If it takes too long, the doctor will also worry about her.

From now on, she will probably miss appointments many times.

The word "now" is really elusive.

How much time had passed since she was waiting outside the elevator?
As long as she can recall and figure out how she got here little by little, then everything will be clear.

But before that, she was restless.

Finding the phone is as difficult as finding a mirage, but it may be the best way to return to reality.

She had to try to find the phone, and keep looking for it.

She felt like she couldn't walk anymore, but she knew she didn't dare to stop.Her legs were almost frozen, but if she stopped moving, she would freeze to death.

She has a lot of experience of what winter is like in the American Midwest.

To force herself to move around, she listened for sounds and signs of life.

However, all that could be heard was the wind.One block after another passed, but there was no signpost in sight.

Looking for a phone, the hope is even more remote.

In order to temporarily stabilize her emotions, Ariel stopped under a streetlight.

Under the dim light, she opened her handbag and rummaged carefully:

Her Social Security card, Blue Cross card, driver's license, Columbia University library card, each of which is familiar to her.

When she left the apartment, she had $50 and some coins in her wallet;
But now it's only $37 and 42 cents.

She was walking to the laboratory and did not buy anything along the way.

So where did all that money go?
Did you come here for travel expenses?

She had been waiting outside the elevator, and then she was here.

That's all she could remember.

The key to her apartment is here.

But hanging from a large red-brown hanging loop was a key she had never seen before.

She put it on her frozen palm, turned it over and over, and read the gold lettering on the key over and over again: room 1113.

Why is this key in her handbag?

What kind of key is it?

Generally speaking, it should be a hotel key, but unlike most hotel keys, there is no hotel name or address on the key, and it cannot be seen what city the hotel is.

After all, maybe it's still a nightmare?

No, this key is real, the loop does exist, and the lamppost is real.

And the ugly buildings that seemed to be squinting at her, and the snow on her legs and coat, were reality too.

And her legs are still moving, not completely frozen.

As she hurried forward, she admired the aimless rush and felt a cruel sense of humor.

But because her origin and whereabouts were unknown, the more she walked forward, the more flustered she felt.

She suddenly thought of the key to room 1113.

It can open a door in a hotel, where you can get warmth, food and rest.

Thinking of this, I feel relieved.

She walked fast, looking around at every intersection, hoping to see some vehicles.

She would definitely find a hotel.

There must be another world outside the warehouse.

Suddenly, a terrible idea came to her, and she was petrified.

What if the key was found by oneself on the street?

She doesn't remember picking up the keys, but she doesn't remember much.

What if she had lived in that house for days, weeks, months, or years, and got evicted for arrears?

In the above two situations, no matter which one it is, the room is occupied by someone else anyway.

Should the keys be thrown away?
If you don't throw it away, will you cause trouble and throw yourself into a trap?

No, where is the key, the room, the snow shelter, where is the world.

Only this uninhabited land stretches on and on.

The illusory figure of a man once flitted across the snow.

The black-and-white images that had terrified her all her life came flooding back to her.

These narrow streets never end.

All the houses were dark.

The barred windows evoke old fears.

This fear existed wherever she lived, and now it had followed her here.

Suddenly, she saw lights.

It turned out to be a gas station.

Finally found the phone number.

After reading the sign on the wall, she knew she was in Philadelphia at the moment.

She had been to Philadelphia many times in the past but had never been to this area.

The phone booth seemed to beckon her in.

But as soon as I got into this cage-like phone booth, I felt that the place was not hospitable.

She wanted to make a long-distance call to Dr. Wilbur, so she inserted a ten-cent coin, but the phone was silent.

She walked up to the gas station attendant and asked if he would allow her to use his personal phone.

"Sorry, ma'am," he replied,
"I am so sorry."

He turned and walked away, closing the door face to face.

All she saw was the back of his white blouse.

She knew it was because her fear had actually infected him.

She decided to go to the Great Forest Hotel first and make calls there.

She is familiar with this restaurant.

Whenever she is in Philadelphia, she lives there.

When she thought that she was in such a familiar Philadelphia, and when she thought of the Great Forest Hotel, she couldn't help but lose three points of her fear.

She unhurriedly went to the toilet and flushed her hands with hot water.

It was only when she was back on the street that she saw the Delaware River and Camden on the other side.

The Delaware River is all too familiar.

She also once painted a landscape of the river in watercolour, in an Impressionist way.

At that time, the cat named Capri was sitting next to her, staring at every stroke of the paintbrush, and occasionally tapped the brush holder with its paw, as if trying to remind Ariel not to forget it.

Signposts began to show up in one piece.

Front Street, Callow Hill Street, Spring Garden.
On Front Street, between Carlow Hill and Spring Gardens, with elevated driveway.

As Ariel approached the corner, she saw a city bus passing by.

The headlights were on.

"Wait a minute!" Ariel shouted wildly.

The ruddy driver stopped the car and waited for her.

Ariel slumped in the back seat by the window, her arms and legs aching.

No matter where the car went, it didn't matter to her.

Drive it, drive it anywhere, anywhere, to the ends of the earth, it doesn’t matter.

There were four other passengers in the car, three men and a woman in a beaver hat.

What were they doing out on this bad night?But is it really night now?
The cloud-filled sky had a neutral gray tone, and it was unclear whether it was night or dawn, and it looked unpleasant.

She doesn't know today's date either.

If you ask these fellow passengers, they will think her a fool.

The enigmatic key in the handbag holds all the clues.

Now it was haunting her thoughts again.

Could it be the key to the Great Forest Hotel?

She doesn't know.

She didn't know whether the bus was going to the Dalin Hotel or not.

It wasn't very far from where she got into the car, though.

Eager to find out, she went to the front of the carriage and asked the driver:

"Can this car reach the Grand Forest Hotel?"

"The nearest station is three blocks away,"

he replied,

"I'll call you then."

Through the frosted windows she made out the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Logan Freery Library, the Franklin Institute, and Fairmont Park.

She thought excitedly of the two granite monuments in the park.

One of them is a group of soldiers in relief with the inscription:

"One country; one charter. We give liberty to the slave and secure liberty to the free man."

She had painted this war memorial.She had to focus all her mind on anything, anything but that key.Except for that key, except for my life.

Except my life—was that what Hamlet said?

"You should get out of the car," the driver called to her.

Her feet landed on the ground again.

The earth, precarious with slippery roads and pavements, secure with familiar signs:
Institute of Fine Arts, Hahnmann Hospital.

Finally, there is the golden dome of the Grand Forest Hotel.

(End of this chapter)