Chapter 3 — Marvel?
While Merp was deep in thought, dozens of computer users began experiencing data loss. Sent emails, instant messaging conversations, file transfers, and more had all gone missing. Some of the lost content was especially sensitive—some of it was even illegal—leaving the senders terrified.
They had no idea whether the recipients had received the messages or not. When no reply came for a long time, those with nothing to hide simply sent them again, while those with guilty consciences grew more and more uneasy.
Paul had sent two messages in a row to his online girlfriend, Alice, but both had sunk without a trace. This left him utterly dejected. He pounded furiously on his keyboard and sent Alice a whole pile of aggrieved complaints, which only left Alice baffled.
"Paul, what's wrong with you? You didn't reply to me for so long, and then the moment you do, it's just a bunch of complaints. Did you send those by mistake? Were you sending them to another woman?"
Alice's words made Paul freeze.
"Of course not! You're the only one in my heart. But I sent you two messages just now, and you didn't reply. My heart was about to break! Crying o(ini)o!"
Paul hurried to explain.
"What? Why didn't I receive them?"
Alice asked in confusion. Then she took a screenshot of their chat history and sent it over. Paul stared at it in a daze, then sent Alice a screenshot of his own chat window. After looking at it, Alice replied,
"It's fine, darling. It's probably just a network problem, so don't be upset. But I still don't want to meet you yet. It's too soon!"
While the two of them went back and forth like that, Merp made a decision. He would first find a computer and use it as a platform to see whether he could do anything to it, or perhaps use it to learn through it. He also needed to investigate other things. Right now, he still had no clue whether he was still in his original world or had transmigrated somewhere else. That was something he absolutely had to figure out.
Merp weighed his options. Among the dozens of data packets he had just absorbed, some seemed rather dangerous. If he got unlucky, they might lead to powerful firewalls or antivirus software. Merp was rather afraid of that. After all, his current best guess was that he himself was just a cluster of data, and firewalls or antivirus programs might very well be his natural enemies. So he tried to find an ordinary person instead—someone whose computer wouldn't have especially advanced defenses.
After some thought, he finally chose Paul.
From the messages that guy had sent, it was obvious he was a shut-in, a total loser-type practically oozing from every word. Picking him should be much safer.
Merp remembered the route. He retraced it directly, and another streak of light happened to crash into him along the way. After absorbing it, he realized his path had been correct.
"My memory is this good? Or rather… have all these locations already been recorded by me?"
It was strange. Merp found it very strange. He clearly knew the exact route, yet he still felt uncertain. His choice was perfectly accurate, but in his mind, he still couldn't be completely sure.
"I can't make sense of it!"
He fixed on the direction and took a step.
The next instant, he arrived at the destination.
That's right—the destination.
He was now inside Paul's home computer. There was no road ahead anymore. And the moment he arrived, he saw countless streaks of light flickering and moving everywhere, except they weren't traveling off into the distance.
Instead, they continuously appeared, moved, and vanished within a fixed range.
"It looks like a place where data is processed. So for a computer, that should be the CPU."
Merp hadn't studied computer science, so he could only make a rough guess. In his impression, the place in a computer with the most data should be the central processor.
And in Merp's view, if he wanted to control a computer, then controlling its central processor should be enough. But how was he supposed to do that?
His pitiful lack of computer knowledge left him at a complete loss. In the end, he had no choice but to absorb those streaks of light and see what would happen.
Paul's computer was doomed.
He did have a firewall and antivirus software installed. In the United States, laws regarding copyright were much stricter, and pirated software was absolutely illegal. But Merp's actions didn't trigger the firewall or antivirus at all. Nor did he encounter any danger. He intercepted those streaks of light with ease, and in the process, gained a large amount of information.
Paul, on the other hand, was miserable.
"A freeze? Why isn't it responding?"
Paul shook the mouse and hammered at the keyboard, going through a series of operations in smooth succession—completely useless.
Every single command was intercepted by Merp at the CPU level, leaving Paul utterly frustrated.
"What the hell is wrong today? Losing data was bad enough, and now my computer's frozen too?"
With a mournful face, Paul had no choice but to make a decision. He performed a warm reboot by pressing Ctrl, Alt, and Del all at once.
Still nothing.
"WTF?"
Paul exploded in anger. He slammed the cold reboot button beside the computer's power switch.
A cold reboot was far more brutal, directly cutting off the power before restarting the computer. It could easily result in the loss of any unsaved data or information from before the reboot. But Paul was furious now. He had been having terrible luck all day—why had everything been going so badly?
Merp suddenly discovered that all the streaks of light had vanished.
But only briefly.
Very soon, they reappeared, and by now he understood much more. Absorbing all that information earlier had given him the preliminary ability to control a computer.
A CPU consisted of arithmetic and logic components, registers, and control components.
Merp stopped absorbing data. It was obvious that the operator should be in a state of rage right now, and after finally making his way here, the most important thing for the moment was gathering information.
He pointed in one direction.
A streak of light shot from his fingertip. It was a control instruction. First, he pinned Paul's chat window to the top—and permanently at that—so Paul wouldn't notice any other windows Merp opened.
Then he fired another streak of light.
"Let me use Baidu to check where exactly I am."
But the next moment, Merp was dumbfounded. The speed was incredibly slow, and the returned feedback indicated that the page was difficult to open.
"Am I really an intelligent system? I actually forgot this is America. I should be using Google!"
Merp hurriedly canceled the previous command and switched to Google Search instead. The first thing he checked was the time.
This time, the response was fast.
The exact date appeared immediately: February 2, 1997.
That date plunged Merp into another bout of melancholy.
"So I really did transmigrate. At the very least, I've crossed through time. I died in 2018, after all! Let's look at the trending news. I need to know whether this is still my original world or not."
He was gloomy for a few seconds. But from the moment he woke up until now, his entire existence had been one shock after another. At this point, there was nothing left to do but accept it.
The first trending news item read:
"Mr. Tony Stark once again secured the military's largest share of contracts this year with his outstanding designs, causing Stark Industries' stock price to rise yet again. Competitor Hammer Industries could only obtain what little share remained. Mr. Tony Stark stated that Stark Industries does not produce that kind of trash!"