131: A New Stage of Ability and the Troubles of "Foresight"

The warm lingering charm of the birthday celebration, like the morning mist permeating the valley, slowly permeated the daily life of "Homeland".

For Excellence, that celebration surrounded by love and blessings seemed not just a happy memory, but more like a nutrient catalyzing growth.

In the following weeks, Su Mu and Evelyn both keenly noticed that Excellence had entered a new, subtle phase of change.

Perhaps because his state of mind had become more open and stable in a sense of security, or perhaps because his continuous accumulation of knowledge had finally reached a certain critical point, his "Perception" ability, which had always accompanied him but remained elusive, began to present some unprecedented, clearer, and more astonishing new features.

The most significant change was that Excellence began to occasionally experience an extremely brief, yet exceptionally intense, feeling similar to "precognition".

This experience was not a clear prophecy in the traditional sense of seeing future images, but rather a strong intuition or induction originating from the subconscious.

It mainly manifested in two forms:

One was a sudden, intense "déjà vu".

He would experience a strong illusion of "I seem to have experienced this before" at the moment something completely unfamiliar was happening or about to happen.

This illusion was fleeting, but the impression it left was very profound.

For example, the first time he followed Evelyn into a brand-new laboratory, the moment the door opened, he would suddenly freeze and mutter to himself: "This room... I seem to have been here before... The angle of that instrument is the same as in my 'dream'..."

Another was more active, a vague "premonition" of something about to happen, usually a trivial matter.

This premonition had no specific images or sounds, more like a groundless, directional "knowing" or "feeling".

It would suddenly intrude into his consciousness, often interrupting his ongoing activities.

At first, these "premonitions" were mostly about some trivial daily matters, and the frequency was very low.

Excellence felt very novel and interesting about this, and even showed it off to Su Mu and Evelyn as a newly acquired "superpower".

For example, one afternoon, he was reading with Su Mu in the library when he suddenly jumped up from his chair without warning, pulled Su Mu, and ran to the window, saying while running: "Monitor, look! A colorful little bird is about to land on the third branch outside!"

As soon as they reached the window, a brightly feathered, uncommon bird indeed flew down and landed on the branch he pointed to, tilting its head curiously at them.

Excellence danced with joy, while Su Mu covered her mouth in surprise.

Or, for instance, when he was tinkering with his open-source hardware kit in the studio, he would suddenly say to a sensor module that looked intact: "This guy is in a 'bad mood' today, it might not measure accurately."

As a result, in the subsequent debugging, that module indeed had data drift issues, while other modules worked normally.

These small and accurate premonitions added a lot of fun to life and made Su Mu and Evelyn even more curious about his ability.

They began to encourage him to record these moments, just as they had previously recorded his "equipment failure premonitions", trying to find patterns.

However, as time went on, the situation began to become complicated.

The frequency of these "precognition" experiences increased significantly, sometimes occurring several times a day.

More importantly, the nature of the events involved in the premonitions began to change, from trivial matters to some more important, even safety-related "Node" events.

He would suddenly wake up from a nap, heart pounding, with a vague sense of anxiety, feeling that "the second step of the afternoon chemistry experiment might go a bit wrong," but he couldn't say exactly what was wrong.

As a result, the afternoon experiment did indeed have an abnormal reaction at the second step due to a slightly deteriorated reagent, which, although not dangerous, wasted time and samples.

He would suddenly interrupt Evelyn the moment before she explained a complex mathematical derivation to him, saying: "Sister Evelyn, when you explain the third equation later, you might suddenly get stuck and not be able to remember the source of that lemma."

Evelyn didn't take it seriously at first, but when she explained it, there was indeed a brief pause at that moment, and she needed to flip through the book to confirm, which surprised her greatly.

This change brought new, unprecedented troubles to Excellence.

First, and the biggest annoyance, was the uncontrollability.

These premonitions had no pattern, always intruding into his mind suddenly, interrupting his ongoing thinking, learning, or resting, making it difficult for him to concentrate.

Sometimes, while thinking deeply about a technical problem, a premonition about "the kitchen might make blueberry pie tonight" would suddenly pop up, completely disrupting his train of thought and making him extremely irritable.

Secondly, the ambiguity of the premonitions was frustrating.

They often only had a strong "feeling" or "knowing", but lacked specific details, time, location, and reasons.

It was like receiving an alert email with no sender, no body, only a flashing title, making one anxious but with no way to start.

He "felt" that something "might" go wrong, but how big was the problem? When would it happen? How to avoid it? These key pieces of information were all missing.

What made him feel most powerless was the difficulty in communication.

When he tried to warn others based on these vague premonitions, he often encountered difficulties.

If he told Researcher A "The instrument you use tomorrow might be unstable," A might laugh it off, thinking it was a child's wild imagination; if he warned more seriously "I feel like this field trip might encounter some trouble," it might cause unnecessary tension and panic, or even be questioned about whether he was spreading rumors.

He could not provide a rational explanation and could only repeat "I just feel...", which made him appear unconvincing, and even a bit "eccentric".

The turning point occurred on a Wednesday afternoon.

Excellence was playing with a puzzle in the activity room when a sudden, intense palpitation and sense of unease struck him, causing him to instantly drop the puzzle piece in his hand.

A picture clearly emerged in his mind—although not a visual image, but a strong directional feeling—about Engineer Li from the power station, and the pipeline area around the core reactor.

He "felt" that "bad things" were about to happen there, a cold, threatening feeling gripping him.

The intensity and seriousness of this premonition far exceeded the past.

Excellence panicked, threw down the puzzle, and ran to find Su Mu, breathless, grabbing her arm, and saying incoherently: "Monitor! It's bad! Engineer Li! Over at the power station! The pipeline! Something bad will happen! A very bad thing!"

Su Mu saw Excellence's pale face, his eyes full of real fear, not like his usual playful self.

She knew that Excellence's intuition was sometimes astonishingly accurate, especially when it involved safety.

Although this premonition was still vague, the strong sense of crisis made her dare not neglect it.

She immediately comforted Excellence, and at the same time, reported the situation to Wang Jianguo and the head of the security department through encrypted communication channels at the first opportunity.

The security department attached great importance to this.

They did not take it lightly because the information source was a child's "feeling", but immediately activated the emergency procedures.

On one hand, they dispatched an experienced technical team under the name of "routine safety inspection", carrying high-precision detection equipment to key areas around the core reactor pipelines for prioritized investigation; on the other hand, they notified Engineer Li to postpone the original inspection plan and strengthened real-time monitoring and security patrols in that area.

The investigation process lasted for several hours, and the technicians carefully checked every inch of the pipeline, every interface, and every auxiliary device.

Just when they were about to think it was a false alarm, a careful technician found an abnormality in an extremely hidden corner behind a large cooling pipe bracket: the outer skin of a high-voltage insulated cable had been gnawed by an unknown creature (later confirmed to be a mountain rat), causing a small opening, damaging the insulation layer, and exposing the internal metal wires.

Because the location was hidden, it was difficult to detect during routine inspections.

But once the ambient humidity increased or was subjected to vibration, it was very easy to cause short-circuit sparking, and the consequences would be unimaginable!

The hidden danger was eliminated in time, and a crisis that could have led to a serious accident was nipped in the bud.

This incident became a powerful verification of Excellence's precognition ability.

After the review, everyone broke out in a cold sweat and felt deep awe for Excellence's warning ability that could not be explained by common sense.

The "power station warning incident" quickly spread within a small circle of "Homeland".

Although the details were strictly controlled, the news of "Excellence discovering major safety hazards through intuition" still leaked out.

This brought Excellence a new, unwanted "fame".

Many people's eyes changed when they looked at him.

No longer just looking at a smart and somewhat special teenager, but with a bit more curiosity, inquiry, and even a trace of awe.

Some people began to call him "Little Prophet" or "Lucky Star" in private.

A more direct annoyance was that some people began to approach him intentionally or unintentionally to "ask" him some questions.

Some researchers would ask half-jokingly: "Excellence, do you feel that my experiment next week will be successful?"

Some logistics personnel would tentatively ask: "Little Zhuo, do you think our material supply next month will be smooth?"

Some even wanted to ask him to "feel" if the colleague they were pursuing had a chance...

These requests made Excellence feel very annoyed and very uncomfortable.

He didn't want to be treated as a fortune teller or a gypsy crystal ball.

What he longed for was to be treated as a normal learner, a researcher, exploring the world through knowledge and effort, rather than relying on this uncontrollable, incomprehensible mysterious "feeling" to gain attention.

He felt his boundaries were violated, and his normal daily life and study were interfered with.

Su Mu and Evelyn keenly noticed Excellence's predicament and troubles.

They realized that this newly emerged ability was a double-edged sword.

It might bring early warnings and opportunities, but it could also bring chaos, pressure, and the risk of being instrumentalized.

They must help Excellence learn to harness this ability, rather than being enslaved by it.

They adopted a two-pronged strategy.

Su Mu was mainly responsible for dealing with external interpersonal pressure.

She stood between Excellence and those overly curious crowds like a mother lion protecting her cubs.

She would politely but firmly refuse those inappropriate requests for Excellence: "Sorry, Excellence is in class/resting/doing an experiment, his 'feeling' is not for divination, please respect his privacy and normal life."

At the same time, she would also privately teach Excellence how to politely and clearly refuse others, how to protect his own psychological space, telling him: "You have the right to say no, your ability is a part of you, but not a tool to please others."

Evelyn focused on guiding Excellence from a cognitive and methodological perspective.

She had several serious and in-depth conversations with Excellence.

She did not deny the authenticity of this ability but tried to help him understand and frame this phenomenon from a scientific perspective.

She proposed a hypothesis: This might be Excellence's highly sensitive consciousness having an advanced, subconscious Perception of the information traces existing in the environment that were extremely faint and represented "probability flow" or "causal chain front-end perturbations" (perhaps related to some higher-order derivative effect of "constant ripple").

This Perception bypassed logical analysis and presented itself directly in the form of intuition.

Based on this hypothesis, Evelyn helped Excellence establish a set of response principles:

Discrimination and Screening: Learn to distinguish the intensity and quality of premonitions.

For those faint, vague premonitions about trivial daily matters, learn to "empty" them, consciously ignore them, and not let them interfere with current life.

Stay alert only to those strong, persistent premonitions involving safety or major matters.

Calm Observation: When a strong premonition appears, do not panic first, but calmly observe your own physiological reactions (such as heartbeat, breathing) and emotional state, and record the content and time of the premonition.

Rational Reporting: Only report the screened, important premonitions to Su Mu, Evelyn, or the designated security officer.

When reporting, try to describe the feeling objectively, avoid exaggeration, and clearly state that this is just an intuition that requires rational verification.

Focus on the Present: Strengthen normal learning and thinking training, concentrate main energy on exploring the world through reason, and let the intuitive ability recede into an auxiliary "alarm" that needs to be used cautiously, rather than a "navigator" that dominates life.

Evelyn also started a new small project to systematically record and analyze Excellence's premonition cases, including premonition content, occurrence time, subsequent actual events, accuracy assessment, etc., trying to find more specific patterns and trigger conditions from them.

Under the patient guidance and strong support of Su Mu and Evelyn, Excellence began to slowly learn to coexist with this newly emerged "troublesome" ability.

He would still feel a bit childishly proud of some particularly accurate premonitions, such as "knowing" in advance that Su Mu would bring him his favorite strawberries, and would also feel a trace of frustration for some unavoidable small accidents (such as a pen he foresaw would roll to the ground but couldn't catch in time).

But more importantly, he began to gradually understand the principle that Su Mu and Evelyn repeatedly emphasized: With great power comes great responsibility, and it also requires stronger self-control.

He realized that this ability gave him an extra responsibility, especially when it involved the safety of others, but he could not be led by the nose by the ability and lose himself and his normal life.

He needed to learn to be the master of his ability, not a slave.

The staircase of growth had taken another step up.

This step seemed to have more peculiar scenery and a broader horizon, but the wind blowing in his face was also clearly stronger, carrying unprecedented challenges.

However, with Su Mu's sunshine-like protection and Evelyn's moonlight-like guidance, Excellence was full of courage to continue climbing upward.

He understood that true strength lies not only in possessing special abilities but also in being able to use them wisely and responsibly.