16: Chapter 16 Chasing the Light, But First, the Glasses Need to Be Fixed

The next day, the parking garage chase scene for "Messenger 2077" was much larger in scale than the one in the warehouse.

The director wanted a sense of urgency, as if being "cornered by an invisible hunter." The filming location was the rooftop of a six-story parking garage—an open space filled with ventilation ducts and concrete pillars, where the sunset could dye everything a rust-red. Alex's task was to be forced from one side of the parking garage to the other by a "drone swarm" (added via post-production CG), while utilizing vehicle wrecks, pipes, and low walls to perform a series of rapid movements and thrilling jumps, finally "falling" into the building's interior through a ventilation shaft.

The stunt coordinator and the stunt team had already designed safe routes and protective gear, but after seeing Alex's performance in the warehouse yesterday, the director said to him privately: "Alex, safety first, but... if you feel some moves could be more 'Messenger'-like—more instinctive, more desperate—feel free to improvise as long as it's within the safety limits. We'll shoot a few extra takes."

That was the director's trust. Alex nodded, knowing exactly what to do.

Filming officially began. The actor playing the pursuer held a glowing prop gun to create a sense of oppression from behind, and Alex took off running. His enhanced neural reflexes and body control allowed him to clearly perceive every protrusion he could leverage and every potential tripping hazard, even while sprinting at full speed. He no longer strictly followed the pre-set marks; instead, based on the immersive feeling of being "chased," he added more improvised direction changes, sudden stops, and rolls. He even included a move that the stunt team considered slightly "superfluous"—while jumping over an abandoned car shell, he intentionally let his heel brush the edge of the roof, causing his body to sway as if losing balance in mid-air, but his arms reacted with extraordinary agility to grab a ventilation pipe ahead, swinging from it to change his landing point.

"Cut!" The director stared at the monitor playback, his eyes lighting up. "Good! That stumble into a leverage move was excellent! You really acted out the character's physical limits and quick thinking! Keep that feeling!"

The surrounding crew, especially a few young actresses and female staff members, stared in a daze. Alex's series of movements just now possessed both strength and lightness; that focus and agility, combined with his grime-streaked yet unmistakably handsome profile and his forehead hair slightly dampened by sweat...

"Doesn't he use a stunt double? Isn't he pushing himself too hard?"

"That core strength... how did he twist himself around in mid-air?"

"It's over for me; I think I've fallen for this guest actor..."

Alex didn't notice these gazes. He was immersed in the "Messenger" role, adjusting his breathing and preparing for the next shot.

The climax of the chase scene was the shot of "falling" into the ventilation shaft from the edge of the rooftop. In reality, there was a thick safety cushion below, and the shaft opening had been softened, but it required him to leap from a run, land precisely into the shaft, and display a posture of struggle and fear of falling while in mid-air.

"Action!"

Alex sprinted and jumped with all his might at the edge! His enhanced Dynamic Vision allowed him to accurately judge his relative position to the shaft and his falling trajectory the moment he was airborne. He controlled his body, simultaneously displaying the panic of an uncontrolled fall while adjusting his posture at the critical angle to ensure his feet were aimed at the shaft opening.

"Thump!" He landed accurately on the air cushion, kicking up a small cloud of dust.

"Perfect!" The director's voice came through the walkie-talkie. "That take is a wrap! Alex, come up and take a look, it looks amazing!"

When Alex climbed back to the roof via the safety ladder, he was met with applause from the set. Even the stunt team leader came over and patted him on the shoulder: "Kid, you've got real skills. Have you considered becoming a professional stuntman?"

A young actress playing a female technician took the opportunity while handing him water to whisper: "That shot where you jumped down... it was incredibly brave. There's a crew dinner after we wrap tonight, want to come?" Her eyes were filled with anticipation.

Alex politely took the water: "Thanks, depends on when we wrap up; I might have other plans." He gave a soft refusal, neither embarrassing her nor blurring the boundaries.

The day's filming concluded successfully. The director was very satisfied and specifically told him that although his screen time wasn't much, it would definitely be a highlight in the final cut.

Carrying the fatigue and excitement of the shoot, Alex returned to his apartment to find that Leo had already couriered his repaired AR glasses, along with two updated test prototypes. The attached note read: "Emergency repair + upgrade! Cooling module reset, display stability +300%! The new version adds 'Environmental Interaction Feedback'—there will be a slight vibration prompt when touching virtual obstacles. Also, we've drafted a preliminary cooperation proposal; interested in taking a look?"

Alex first tried the repaired glasses, and the display was indeed much clearer and more stable. Then he opened the simple cooperation proposal. The model Leo proposed was very flexible: Alex would participate in the project as a "Creative Consultant and Chief Tester," using the AR equipment and support provided by "Reality Maze" to create 1-3 high-quality "AR Real-Scene Fusion" short films, with shared copyrights and proportional revenue sharing. At the same time, his test feedback would serve directly as the basis for product improvement.

These terms were quite generous; it was practically giving away equipment and technical support, while also sharing money and fame. Alex knew the other party valued his ability to produce viral content and the attention-grabbing effect he brought.

He didn't agree immediately but carefully studied the proposal. Using knowledge from [Basic Business Negotiation and Contract Review Essentials], he picked out a few ambiguous points, added annotations, and replied to Leo, expressing principle agreement but noting that the details needed to be finalized.

After finishing the email, he finally had time to check the system. The exposure brought by the movie filming (even though it hadn't been released yet) and the sustained heat of his videos had caused his popularity to steadily climb to around 6800 points.

He noticed that because of his recent intensive involvement in visual processing (AR real-virtual integration) and extreme environment coping (filming, testing), two skill icons in the store had become exceptionally bright, seemingly hinting they were highly relevant to his current activities:

[Enhanced Reality Interaction Perception Deepening] - 1700 points

(Enhances spatial perception, interaction logic understanding, and creative application ability regarding AR/VR and other virtual superimposed information, allowing you to better unearth the narrative potential of combining reality and the virtual.)

[Environmental Risk Pre-judgment and Emergency Instinct Optimization] - 1200 points

(In complex or unfamiliar environments, strengthens intuitive perception and subconscious avoidance reactions to potential physical dangers (such as fragile structures, slippery road surfaces, and falling risks).)

These two skills, one corresponding to future AR creation and the other to safety in high-risk activities like Parkour and stunts, were both very practical. Especially the latter; after experiencing the AR glasses malfunction and the high-altitude jumps on set, he deeply understood the importance of safety.

But adding up to 2900 points, it would take almost half of his existing points.

Alex weighed it up. AR creation was a new direction he was about to undertake and was worth the investment. Safety was even more paramount; he couldn't skimp on that.

"Redeem [Enhanced Reality Interaction Perception Deepening] and [Environmental Risk Pre-judgment and Emergency Instinct Optimization]." He made his decision.

[Consumed 2900 points. Redemption successful.]

[Remaining Popularity: 3900 points.]

The fusion sensation this time was very special. His cognition regarding AR was no longer just at a technical level; it added a deeper understanding of "how the virtual layer dialogues with real space and how it influences the viewer's psychology." As for the risk pre-judgment skill, it was like installing a low-profile but continuous scanning radar in his subconscious, giving him a sharper "physical sense" of the structural stability, friction coefficient, and potential collision points of the surrounding environment.

He put on the repaired AR glasses and started the test program. This time, the virtual light streams and obstacles before his eyes were not only clear, but he seemed to be able to "feel" their spatial weight and movement trends. He could even predict what kind of visual and rhythmic effects would result if he interacted with the virtual objects in a certain way. This was no longer just simple "seeing," but deeper "understanding" and "conception."

At the same time, he looked around his apartment. It was clearly safe, but the new perception brought by the skill allowed him to subconsciously evaluate the hardness of furniture edges, the slipperiness of different floor areas, and even the potential impact of the wind direction outside the window on the stability of small objects on the balcony. This was an enhancement of safety awareness that acted like background audio.

"Not bad, this money was well spent." He took off his glasses, feeling that his conception for future real-virtual fusion short films had suddenly become much clearer.

Over the next few days, he followed up on the remaining scattered shots for "Messenger" while finalizing the cooperation agreement with Leo. At the same time, he began to plan in detail the filming of his first AR real-scene short film.

The first venue he selected was the abandoned railway bridge area he had tested earlier. This time, he was going to do something big: set the AR virtual environment as a "glitch space with data leakage," and he would play a "Stalker" who infiltrates it, attempting to fix or seize data. The graffiti, steel beams, and piles of debris in reality would intertwine with the light pollution, broken data barriers, and wandering scanning rays generated by AR. He needed to design a complex process that tightly integrated real-life Parkour movements with virtual interface interactions (such as "hacking" virtual panels and dodging scanning rays).

This required extremely precise action design and AR program customization. Alex and Leo held several remote meetings, picking out details bit by bit while looking at the 3D scan of the venue.

"Here, when I jump to this bridge pier, the AR needs to instantly generate an 'encryption lock' interface at my landing point. I need to complete the gesture unlock in mid-air, and immediately trigger the next data flow obstacle after landing..."

"Understood! We will optimize the gesture recognition algorithm to ensure low latency. The generation logic for the data flow obstacles will be linked to your running speed..."

The concept became more and more perfect, and Alex became increasingly excited. This would absolutely be a one-of-a-kind work that surpassed all existing videos.

Just as he was fully devoted to the new project, a small ripple from afar silently drifted over.

His song "The Outside" usage authorization application was officially sent to the routine review list of Taylor Swift's music copyright company through a copyright agency platform. There were many such applications every day, usually handled by legal departments and assistants. The vast majority would be shelved or rejected due to usage scenarios (commercial video background music), channels (emerging video platforms), or simply because they "did not conform to current strategy."

The assistant responsible for the initial screening clicked on the video link associated with the application—"Above the Reef"—as usual. A few minutes later, the assistant raised an eyebrow in slight surprise. The quality and artistic conception of this video were clearly not on the same level as typical user-generated content. The way the song was used was also quite clever; it wasn't a stiff backdrop but had become a part of the atmosphere.

Following protocol, she marked this application along with the video link with a "High Quality, Recommend Review" tag and submitted it to the higher-level manager in charge of copyright cooperation. This didn't mean it would definitely be approved, but at least it hadn't been thrown into the trash at the first hurdle.

In some office in Nashville or New York, this application bearing the name "Alex's Wonderland" lay quietly in a to-do list, waiting for some accidental browsing.

Alex knew nothing about this. He was facing the AR effect simulation diagram on his computer screen, arguing with Leo about whether a virtual data stream's color should be "Glitch Blue" or "Warning Orange" to better embody the sense of tension.

Outside the window, the night sky of Los Angeles remained brilliant. The boundary between the virtual and the real was becoming blurred at his fingertips. And further away, a faint possibility of musical resonance was slowly drifting through the complex daily processes.