Chapter 1 My Dream Turns Out to Be True

Far away on the horizon, the morning sun lazily rose, revealing just half its face.

The rosy clouds of dawn stretched across the sky.

Harrison Clark sat curled up by the window, watching the sunrise alone, as still as a statue.

His expression at this moment was a complex mix of emotions—melancholy, confusion, shock, and regret—all blending together to create an abstract work of art.

He turned once again to take in his room.

Clean and tidy.

A worn-out shirt hung on a wire, three mismatched bowls sat on the dining table, along with a pair of chopsticks, and various condiments.

In a cloth wardrobe, a few cheap suits and some casual clothes for autumn and winter hung alongside T-shirts.

On a small table, an old laptop lay.

This was an ordinary city worker's rented room—poor, boring, and dull.

Harrison rubbed his forehead and tried to wake himself up from this trance.

The sudden fall from paradise back to the mortal world was difficult to accept.

It took him about ten minutes to accept reality: he hadn't time-traveled; he'd merely had a dream.

Now, he was awake and back home.

This was his apartment, his temporary "home" where he tried to make a living in this city.

Last night, at some point, Harrison started having a dream.

The dream felt so real that he couldn't tell it apart from reality.

It took him several days within the dream to reluctantly accept his "time-traveling" predicament.

He had time-traveled into a future world a thousand years later, becoming a reserve soldier named Harrison Clark in the real world.

Yes, the name was exactly the same, and so was his appearance, bearing about a 70 to 80 percent resemblance.

But Harrison couldn't inherit the memory of the body's original owner, so he was completely disoriented when he first arrived and couldn't figure out what was going on.

During those few days of confusion, reserve soldier Harrison performed poorly in everything he did, lacking even basic common sense. As a result, he was tragically discharged from the military and sent back to his hometown, becoming a "welfare recipient."

These welfare recipients were those who were deemed unable to work or create any value.

They could not enjoy higher education, were not qualified to hold any job, and could only barely survive under the minimal welfare system.

Though they were barely surviving, their treatment wasn't bad; they had good food and comfortable sleep, even enjoying 200 square meters of living space.

Harrison found it hard to believe.

In his time, housing prices were soaring, and recent university graduates struggled to find a place to live in big cities unless they came from wealthy families.

Yet, in this era, you didn't need to do anything, and the most basic welfare guarantee was a free 200-square-meter house to live in for as long as you wanted.

This was clearly paradise!

The government-assigned Artificial Intelligence Assistant took care of him meticulously, attending to his every need.

All he had to do was enjoy himself!

If he wanted to watch a movie, there were countless holographic movies to choose from; if he wanted to listen to music, a state-of-the-art sound system offered an immersive experience and an unlimited library spanning across a thousand years.

If he wanted to play games, brainwave-resonance immersive games of all genres—from science fiction to history—were available to him.

A thousand years later, with the rapid progress of technology and an excess of social productivity, it was no problem to support the welfare recipients that made up nearly a third of the total population.

In Harrison's opinion, the living conditions, medical care, and other services enjoyed by welfare recipients hardly matched the term "welfare."

It was a life fit for royalty!

He would be happy to live like that for the rest of his life.

But time flew by, and a year passed. After Harrison slowly adapted to this era through constant entertainment...

Suddenly, one day, the sky turned pitch black.

People from all around the world looked up at the sky, where an impossibly massive, bizarre object hovered.

It floated silently in the sky, obstructing the sun.

It appeared metallic but defied the laws of physics with its levitation.

Next, a faint glow flickered in the center of the mysterious object, growing brighter and brighter until it filled the entire sky.

In the moment when Harrison saw that beam of light, an intense stabbing pain erupted deep in his mind, spreading instantaneously throughout his entire body, and engulfed him like a tidal wave.

The pain overwhelmed him, so he curled up on the ground, clutching his head.

The agony intensified, as if his soul was leaving his body and his heart was being crushed slowly in someone's palm.

He opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out were hoarse gasps.

He could feel countless tiny beads of blood seeping out of his skin all over his body.

Similar things were happening to the people two or three meters away from him just like him.

Harrison knew that he was going to die.

Without any warning, this bizarre event was bringing about his death, along with that of every other person in the world.

When he finally "died" and opened his eyes again, he found himself back in his own bed.

It took Harrison nearly half an hour to recover from the devastating pain, and he was deeply relieved.

Thank goodness it was just a dream and not real time-travel.

He stood up from his chair and, out of habit, snapped his fingers.

"Vivian, get my clothes..."

Vivian was the name he gave his Artificial Intelligence Assistant in the dream.

Unfortunately, after waiting for a while, there was no response.

He shook his head with a bitter smile and muttered to himself, "Well, it was just a dream. Waking up is better than living in an illusion anyway."

He glanced at the wall clock: October 27, 2019, 7:20 a.m.

"So I really only slept for one night!"

Harrison shrugged, accepted his fate, hurriedly got ready, and went to work.

He splashed cold water on his face, put on his old suit, and made himself look presentable.

As he rushed out the door, a white shadow suddenly appeared before him, like a ghost.

He nearly collided head-on with a slender woman.

She had just entered the apartment building.

The apartment hallway was very narrow, and the woman had no place to hide; she could only cry and lean back, using her hand to prop herself up against the wall, barely avoiding falling to the ground.

"What are you doing!"

She looked up, her eyes wide open in anger.

Her voice was crisp and pleasant, making it unforgettable to whoever heard it.

Harrison Clark stared straight at the girl in front of him, feeling a bit bewildered.

She was about 1.65 meters tall, wearing a slim white coat, with long hair cascading down. Under the shadow of dark circles beneath her eyes, her oval face appeared slightly pale.

It was obvious that she hadn't slept all night and had just returned to her apartment after staying out all night.

Her poor mental state did not affect her attractiveness; in fact, it gave her an indolent, sickly beauty.

Being beautiful allows one to do whatever they want, even looking good with unkempt hair and a dirty face.

As the girl saw Harrison staring intently at her without looking away, her brows furrowed in irritation, "What are you looking at?"

Harrison hurriedly shifted his gaze, asking hesitantly, "No, it's not what you think. I didn't mean anything by it. You... who are you?"

The woman sneered and rolled her eyes, "Stop acting. Aren't you the apartment manager? You must know the name of a new tenant, right? This outdated way of hitting on people has been out for ten years."

He finished speaking and moved to the side, passing through the narrow corridor and turning a corner, before going upstairs with a series of thuds.

Boom!

Her door shut tightly.

Harrison was left feeling both amused and annoyed.

He admitted that he had been staring at her, but it wasn't because he couldn't look away from a beautiful woman.

Having experienced so many high-tech immersive unspeakable games in his dreams, he had already had enough of various delicacies and was not that unbearable.

Harrison was just confused, as he was sure that this was his first time seeing her, yet he inexplicably felt that she was familiar and seemed to have met her somewhere before.

Harrison shrugged and decided not to go out for now. Instead, he went back to his room, opened his laptop, and logged into the company management system.

Harrison's job was managing the Chesterton Apartment.

He was responsible for a total of 80 apartments in the community, including the one he lived in and the one above, where that woman lived.

He could access all tenants' personal information through the management system.

The apartment buildings in the community were designed with a LOFT structure, with a floor height of 5.8 meters.

The company had modified each apartment into two standard suites, one on each level, each with its separate entrance.

The two floors shared a single front door.

Harrison rented the lower half of the apartment for himself at the employee's internal price.

The upper suite had been vacant for almost half a month after the previous tenant suddenly moved out.

A few days ago, Harrison's colleague from the marketing department arranged for a new tenant to move in. He gave the keys to his colleague, and someone moved upstairs.

The tenant seemed to have a completely opposite biological clock from Harrison, so they hadn't met face to face yet.

Harrison didn't really care, as it wasn't time to collect the rent, and he was too lazy to check the other person's information.

His memory of the past few days had become somewhat distant and vague after living in his dream world for a year.

Finally, the file was successfully retrieved, and the woman's information appeared.

"Name: Carrie Thomas."

"Age: 21."

"Summary: Freelancer, dropped out of Beiduo Music Academy's undergraduate program."

"Contract Details: One-year contract, monthly rent 2200, paid monthly, deposit 3000."

Besides this basic information, there was a watermarked photocopy of her ID card.

After reviewing the information, Harrison's mind buzzed, and his heart raced to 180 beats per minute.

"How is this possible! How could it be her!"

"This is absurd!"

"Could my dream have been real?"

Harrison chatter to himself in near hysteria.

He stared intently at the ID photo of Carrie Thomas in front of him, recalling the tired but still radiant face he had just seen, and trying to remember the image in his dreams he had seen many times before.

The images matched perfectly, undoubtedly the same person!

In his dreams, as a man living on welfare, Harrison had listened to many songs.

There was a vast music database containing countless classic songs from over a thousand years of history.

However, the later the period, the more varied the styles, instruments, and aesthetic changes in the music.

Although the songs from later periods were not bad to Harrison, they didn't match his preferences as well as those from the early 21st century.

So he particularly enjoyed songs from the early 21st century.

A few singers were especially favored by Harrison, including a female singer named Carrie Thomas.

He had listened to each of her songs at least fifty times.

In the next thousand years, Carrie would become one of the greatest musical artists of her time.

She became famous at the age of 25, and her fame skyrocketed from there.

Throughout her life, she left behind 78 works in total.

She performed 30 of them herself, and she wrote the lyrics and music for the other 48 pieces.

Almost every one of her works was a timeless classic.

Her achievements spanned thousands of years of history.

She was ranked among the top 100 artists in the world from the years 2000 to 3000 in various selections!

One hundred may seem like a lot of people.

But consider who those artists were before the year 2000.

Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Da Vinci, Monet, Picasso, Wang Xizhi, Li Bai, William Shakespeare...

Her achievements were on par with those of Beethoven in their respective millennia!

As a loyal fan of singer Carrie Thomas, Harrison had read her life story.

One unique aspect was that she dropped out of school due to her different musical ideology, eventually breaking up with her mentor.

The school she dropped out of was Beiduo Music Academy!

Her appearance and life experience served as reasons for Harrison to believe that this Carrie Thomas was the same one he knew of from his dreams.

But it turned out she was his new roommate!

And she was currently unemployed and appeared unkempt.

Still, Harrison was even more shocked to find that a historical figure from his dreams really existed in the real world and was living right beside him!

Could his dreams have been a reality unfolding a thousand years into the future!?