Volume 4: Spacetime Singularity Chapter 7 Scale-free Noise
"Please stay calm! Don't walk around! For the safety of you and those around you, please stay inside the yellow line..."
Ning Yuan sat on the cold marble floor below the subway station, staring blankly at the crowd around her that was gradually becoming agitated. Now her mind was just a mess, with fear and anxiety mixed together and rolling around.
If she was seven or eight years younger, she would have probably cried.
This restless experience reminded her of a dangerous experience when she was a child. One summer, she was so engrossed in playing at the beach that she was trapped on a sandbar after the tide came in. At that time, no one could help her and she might even be in danger of her life.
She was still in primary school at the time and was so scared that she burst into tears. Even after her voice became hoarse, the sea level did not drop at all. From then on, she understood that crying was useless when encountering real danger and she had to stay calm.
If you cry from night to morning and from morning to night, can you cry the monster to death?
Ning Yu'an decided to use the adjustment method taught by his teacher in his freshman year to force himself to block out his emotions and let rationality take back control of his brain.
According to what was said in class, there are three main ways to suppress emotions in theory: distraction, cognitive reappraisal, or response inhibition. Usually, she only uses the first method, which is to shift the main focus from the most important task at hand to the secondary task, so that she can get out of the control of emotions.
During class, the teacher told them that the principle of doing so to regulate emotions is that it can activate the prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, parietal area and insula responsible for executive control and inhibition processes, allowing the brain's dynamics to escape from the subcortical systems responsible for emotion generation and emotion evaluation, such as the amygdala and ventral striatum.
She also gradually developed the habit of starting to calculate the Fibonacci sequence as soon as she began to get angry or nervous. According to past experience, she could calm down after memorizing about ten digits.
This time she counted to three hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred and eleven.
The noise inside the subway station was getting louder and louder. More people stood up and looked around. The voices of those trying to maintain order gradually became weaker and weaker amid the noisy shouting of the crowd.
Suddenly, someone left the yellow line and started walking outside. At that moment, the crowd suddenly lost control and collapsed like a water balloon being punctured.
Last summer vacation, Ning Yu'an dressed up beautifully and went to Fang Cheng's house to play. That guy used his hands and feet to introduce her to the basic concepts of critical phenomena for an entire afternoon. He also repeatedly emphasized to her that when a system reaches a critical state, noise will spread at all scales, expanding from a point to the entire system in an instant.
When she saw Fang Cheng's eyes shining, she could only cooperate and follow his thoughts. However, she could not imagine why a disturbance at a point could instantly expand to the entire system. There must be a process.
Now she finally understood what the process was all about.
The crowd poured out of the subway station like boiling steam, and the gradually gathering tide rushed towards the scattered exits. The scene seemed to be completely out of control.
Ning Yu'an found a way to the edge of the crowd as quickly as possible. After leaning her back against the wall, she placed her hands on her chest to protect her airway. This was a standard action to avoid stampedes.
The crowd continued to ebb and flow with the passage of time. Although the uniformed people around were trying their best to maintain order, it was of no avail. Ning Yu'an felt that the current situation was more desperate than being trapped in a sandbar by the tide.
Immediately afterwards, a dull loud noise was heard from the ground, followed by the creaking sound of metal bending. The tide of people began to turn urgently, colliding heavily with the people who were still climbing up the stairs.
In an instant, the sound of collapse and screams filled the entire space. Despair and fear lingered in the restless air. The crowd began to flee in all directions. Many people forced open the isolation door and jumped onto the railroad tracks to avoid the collision, but were buried by the subsequent crowds of people rushing in in an instant.
Ning Yu'an's skin and nose simultaneously felt gusts of hot air , but soon the "iron" smell was covered by a strong smell of blood. Even the breath of hell was no more than this.
The noise from the ceiling was getting louder and louder, and all kinds of pipes and steel beams were bending at a speed visible to the naked eye. From time to time, one or two light tubes and signboards would fall down and hit the crowd, but they could not stop the surge of people.
Ning Yu'an didn't know how long this state would last, so he could only close his eyes and pray that it would end soon.
At this moment, her whole body had been hit countless times by the elbows and knees stretched out from the crowd, and her arms had been cut several times by sharp objects on other people's clothes.
Various pains of varying intensities mixed together, but what people feel is numbness.
Many years after all this happened, Ning Yu'an still had an extremely strong resistance to taking the subway. Every time she entered a subway station, she felt as if she could still smell the same dirty and horrible smell as she had this morning.
Fang Cheng was floating in the sky with a deathly pale face, and now there was only .
He didn't know where to go or what to do, so he could only meet up with the girl and see if she had any ideas. Fang Cheng was now able to completely put aside his useless vanity and rely completely on a girl of his age. In the past, he would have felt ashamed.
And now he really has no tricks left. His only weapon has been thrown away. He now only has a bracelet that can carry him flying everywhere, and it seems that the bracelet does not have the ability to fly out of the earth.
While thinking about this question, he felt that his speed was getting slower and slower, and after a few seconds he stopped completely in the air. At this time, they had already flown over the layers of island chains in the Pacific Ocean, and from the air they could already see the coastline of the continent on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean from afar.
"Ah... why did you stop? Is there any danger?"
"The previous destination has expired. Please assign a new destination."
"Huh? What does this mean? Didn't you say we were going to meet up with that girl?"
"It's like this. The previous order was to fly to where the other half of the ring is, but now the signal from that part can't be detected?"
"Ahhh?? What's going on?? Another ring disappeared??"
"I don't have enough information to determine whether it has disappeared or been blocked, but now that destination is invalid. Please assign a new destination."
