What happened to Isaac?

"Are you praying?"

With a creak, the door was opened, and light came in through the crack of the door, falling on Xavier's toes.He was lying facing the wall, turned around, and looked at Bicurisita at the door: "How much time do I have?"

Bicurisita said: "I'm here to inform you about this, you don't have to die."

"why?"

"There are too many people on the death penalty list this month, and I can't kill them."

"..."

"The Environmental Protection Committee wrote 250 letters of protest, saying that the magma pools must be given time to cleanse themselves."

"So I'm just a dirty thing."

By this time, after experiencing several ups and downs, he had completely calmed down.Xavier was a little bit lost, only a little bit, both for his own death sentence and for not having to die now.He felt weird, happy to be alive and somehow disrespected.

But he should have known about the absurdity of Heaven's changing order—the official word for it—a miracle.

"Does Isaac know?" Xavier asked.

"It happened so suddenly, I probably didn't know it yet."

"Is there anyone to inform him?"

"Gast sent him a letter."

Xavier nodded thoughtfully.

"But it's not over yet, Xavier. You've got to come down to the lobby with me now, and I have some papers to fill out. Can you get up?"

So Xavier stood up with Bicurisita's hand, subconsciously wanted to pat the ashes on his body, hesitated for a moment, and simply let it go.

After a long period of "protection", even without any abuse, ordinary humans are still likely to go crazy, but Xavier is four hundred years old after all.He just became a little dull, quiet, and increasingly slovenly.

Walking through the long corridor to the crowded office hall, they went straight to the criminal case handling counter in the corner.

"Landon Xavier, eh?" The angel behind the counter looked at him from under his glasses. "Sit down, please.  …Congratulations, not everyone has the chance to escape the death penalty, and of course the main thing is Your boss—that Angel Quan named Gordon came forward to intercede for you."

Xavier said nothing, and the angel continued:

"But punishment is inevitable. It's just that you can replace the death penalty with memory cleaning. As long as you delete all the memories related to that succubus, you will be clean."

"...Sorry, what?" Xavier almost thought he was hallucinating.

"Don't you know? It should have been introduced before taking up the post. According to our current technology, amnestics are not very targeted. In your case, it is probably the memory of nearly 200 years since you met the succubus Isaac. All need to be deleted. You will inevitably lose some valuable work experience, and you may need to re-learn the common language of heaven, but we will arrange someone to take you to work and live for a period of time, don't worry too much...... "

Xavier's silent porcelain expression was shattered and cracks began to appear.He froze in place at first, only to recover when he was rudely reminded that it was time to sign. He looked at the pen stuffed into his hand involuntarily, and the sentence "I agree to unconditionally accept the memory of heaven" on the document in front of him. Clean up and make a clean start” and the horizontal line for signature at the back—as if suddenly stimulated by something, so that I suddenly stood up and said, “I don’t agree!.”

"......what?"

"I don't agree with memory erasure."

"I've never heard such a thing. Are you crazy, Xavier, the angel of power. What's there to refuse? You can't imagine how many people have squeezed their heads and wanted to change with you."

"Who the hell is crazy? How could anyone—"

The angel in charge gave Xavier a strange look: "Why not? It's just a memory, what's so rare?" need more!"

"Memory, haha, this is the most tasteless thing. I don't know how many wise angels inject various medicines every day, just to forget those memories that have accumulated too much without paying attention."

"You can't—" Xavier said, "force me, brainwash me, or do anything."

"We can't, and no one will force you," said the angel calmly, "but if you don't accept it, you will have to die."

The word "death" touched Xavier again, he panted quickly, exhaled, exhaled, gradually calmed down, and felt his hands and feet were cold.He didn't know why he was treated like this, and what was even more frightening was that he seemed unreasonable because he was surprised by this appalling practice.

"Without these memories, am I still me?"

Xavier murmured.

"Aren't you you?" said the angel. "You can always be yourself, Angel Xavier. An angel should be well-behaved and have a certain amount of grit. It's a pity that I don't see even a little bit of it in you. Frankly speaking." , I used to pay attention to your case, and I also sympathized with your experience. I believe your soul is innocent, but now you are so reluctant to bear the memory of that succubus—you shake me, maybe the judges are right Yes, this kind of reluctance is the proof of your guilt. You know, the situation is very tense now, private association with hostile forces is an act of espionage, do you want to be regarded as a spy?"

Xavier didn't refute, he didn't know what to say anymore.This feeling is like being hit hard from the back of the head with a stick and then pushed into the deep sea. You keep sinking, powerless and frightened, struggling in vain, but suffocation and trance keep coming.

He felt suddenly an outsider to himself, as if he were both here and not here.Xavier was completely speechless, but numbly looked at Bicurisita with a complacent smile and said, "You can't button your hat indiscriminately." Then he stopped the angel's hand that was about to seal the death penalty again, and said He said: "Persuade him again...need to think again..."

He felt that Bikulixita pulled him up and walked out under the eyes of everyone.

After a long, long time, Xavier felt someone calling him.

"Xavier, Xavier?"

Xavier raised his head, and in the dark protection room, he could still clearly see that the person sitting across from him was Gordon.He remained silent without saying a word, and the two stared at each other wordlessly for a long time, until Gordon broke the silence first, stretched out his hand, and wiped each corner of his eyes.

Xavier gave a dumb "ah" and touched his cheek before realizing that he was crying.Then he choked up uncontrollably, there was no sound at all, only tears kept falling.

"...I'm going to be brainwashed," Xavier said. "Is that different from murder?"

"How can there be no difference? Xavier, hey," Gordon interrupted him, "wipe your face."

Xavier took the handkerchief from Gordon.

"Don't say it so badly, how can you say it's brainwashing? Heaven has never had such cruel methods, they can only appear in hell, maybe you listened to someone's nonsense, or are you scaring yourself? The so-called memory Cleaning is just pruning your memory. Human memory is like a big tree, and you need to choose between branches.”

"prune?"

"Yes, a trim. It doesn't hurt at all. It's not as scary as you think," Gordon said. It's all over."

"In 10 minutes, half of my soul was emptied."

"They will always be filled by later memory."

"Really?" Xavier asked.

"Yeah, just like people on earth will grow permanent teeth after losing their deciduous teeth, memory is something that keeps growing. As for Isaac, you don't have to worry about him, he is much older than you, and he lived well before he met you , Of course it’s not because you are going to die or live. Maybe the situation will get better in the future, and you can continue your relationship.”

Xavier barely raised the corners of his mouth, showing an ugly smile: "How do you think I can—how can I forget so many things, all my joys and pains, those things that make up my character, and then I seem to live from scratch How is it possible to continue to live normally and in good health? And there are too many people in my memory, those friends, those people I saw on the battlefield who died but I should remember. I There was a girl in the family who I was responsible for; and Isaac, who wasn't always my favorite but I never wanted to forget him. I didn't even say goodbye to him... I should say What? I'm still here, it's just that my memory has gone back?"

"It's a pity, Xavier, but there's nothing you can do about it, and at the end of the day, you have only yourself to blame for making mistakes," Gordon said. "We believe that any mistake is shaped by inappropriate memories, just as you As I said, past experiences will affect people’s development, and angels are the same—if we can’t control ourselves, we need external forces to help us filter out the correct memories to guide us in our actions. I don’t know if this can comfort you, but actually, having accepted memories There are more angels purging than you can imagine, but none of them have disputed this yet."

"Don't talk to me in that official tone, Gordon, I beg you. I was told in that lecture that a memory cleanse would cause the memory that was washed out to disappear together—if you don't remember My own memory has been modified, where is the objection?"

Gordon was speechless at his words.He seemed a little annoyed, frowning again and again, but when he looked at Xavier, this impatient expression was replaced by a complicated look.

"Well, you're just too serious," Gordon said after a while, "you can be sarcastic to me, but what good will it do you? ... But it's also true that As you said, all angels who have undergone memory cleansing will generally be silent for a while at first, repeatedly asking others if they have lost anything, but soon, they will start a new life. After all, people are for the future But live, Langdon. After all, memory cleaning is a much more benevolent method, and no sequelae have been found so far."

"Mercy," Xavier said.

"You don't understand the situation at all. If you are sentenced to death, there is no chance of doing it again. You can choose death sentence, but I'm sure you will regret it when you stand by the lava pool- —You don’t need to know what it’s like to be melted, your subconscious will tell you what fear is. I’ve seen the bravest angels cry before their executions, and I’ve heard the proudest angels scream. … ..I can't bear to see you like that. In short, you can't make a rash decision on this matter."

"You mean, I can't even decide my own life or death?" Xavier asked softly.

"At present, I'm afraid it is. You think about it again, Xavier."

As Gordon said, he was about to open the door and go out, leaving Xavier in the darkness of the protection room again.Xavier seemed to be very tired, and lay flat on the ground like a corpse.

He murmured like a sigh: "I once really regarded you as a friend. Even if you killed me, I didn't hate you. But you, Gordon, why?"

Gordon paused.