Chapter 1: Cosmostrophobia, Heliophobia, Apocalypse Anxiety
Chapter 1: Cosmostrophobia, Heliophobia, Apocalypse Anxiety
By the Lingchuan River in Lingchuan City,
Situated downstream near the city outskirts stood Lingchuan City Fourth People’s Hospital, also known as Lingchuan Mental Health Center.
Approaching noon, Associate Chief Physician Tao Ya in Exam Room Two was seeing her 68th patient case of that morning.
Dr. Tao Ya, always known for her gentle and careful nature, followed her belief in calm conversation and easy treatment, avoiding added stress for psychiatric patients.
Though tired by now, she still kept her voice soft and kind, slowly moving her mouse to review the patient’s exam results and medical reports.
The patient’s name was Qin Yu.
As far as she could see, this patient showed classic signs of severe anxiety disorder and persecutory delusion.
To Dr. Tao’s experienced eye, nothing about this boy’s condition seemed particularly unique.
Lately, both improving living standards and growing social pressures had swelled her daily patient numbers steadily.
The former meant more people could afford medical help, while the latter meant more fell ill to begin with.
Among these patients, severe anxiety cases were common, often mixed with added troubles like persecutory delusions and OCD.
And increasingly, the sufferers grew younger.
Just like this Qin Yu before her now.
Only twenty-three years old.
The one unusual thing about him stood out plainly on those reports:
All the bloodwork and scans showed Qin Yu was physically perfectly healthy.
His acute anxiety and fears hadn’t damaged his body in any clear way.
No chronic illnesses showed up, not even small problems many young people dealt with day-to-day.
To put it bluntly, this Qin Yu seemed healthier than Dr. Tao herself.
Normally, this seemed impossible.
Serious psychological troubles usually wrecked sleep schedules and metabolic rhythms.
Left unchecked, they’d lead to major hormonal shifts or physical symptoms later on.
Besides, during their talk so far,
Dr. Tao spotted no rigid gestures or tics hinting at physical strain.
All she’d seen were signs of intense anxiety and paranoid worries.
Had police brought Qin Yu in,
She might have suspected he was putting on an act.
Yet he’d come entirely on his own.
And from their exchanges, Dr. Tao felt certain he lacked any reason to fake illness.
Even if he truly were pretending… that alone would count as a psychological issue.
“Qin Yu… little Yu? May I call you that?”
“You may.”
“Could you share your troubles once more?”
…
“…Dr. Tao, do you believe aliens exist?”
Being a professional, Dr. Tao didn’t dismiss the question as absurd.
Over her twenty years here, she’d heard far wilder claims.
After careful thought, she gave a measured reply.
“I can’t give a definite answer. Even scientists have no consensus. Maybe we’ll learn the truth when we either meet extraterrestrials or search the whole universe. Personally, I find the odds for other civilizations likely—space is vast enough for more than Earth’s lone miracle. If life happened once, why not again?”
“Still, until we see them, whether aliens exist changes nothing for us. And meeting them remains wildly unlikely soon. Fretting over tiny chances seems pointless. Why? Do you think otherwise, little Yu?”
“My views match yours overall, Dr. Tao. Other civilizations probably exist. And first contact soon sounds improbable. But given enough time… anything possible becomes certain. Eventually we will meet another civilization.”
“When that day comes, if our tech and strength exceed theirs, fine. But if we fall behind… our future rests in their hands.”
Coming from some people, this might have sounded funny.
But Dr. Tao was a psychiatrist. To her such theories felt ordinary.
Not contradicting him, she gently explored his words:
“They might not mean harm though, right? The odds aliens would destroy humans seem lower than simply finding they exist.”
“You’re right, Dr. Tao. But given enough time… even if the first civilization spares us, what about the second? Or third? Sooner or later, it must happen…”
“Once I started thinking this way… nighttime stars began to trouble me. Each distant sun could host aliens destined to wipe us out someday. I feel… uneasy. Even disgusted. Sometimes I wish the skies held no stars at all…”
“Astrophobia? Like… The Three-Body Problem? Meaning you fear the cosmos, little Yu?”
“Yes. Pretty much.”
Dr. Tao fell quiet for a moment.
Outside work, she might’ve chuckled.
But as a psychiatrist, her first lesson had been:
Trust your patients. Not in their beliefs being factual,
But trusting that they themselves speak their truth.
Treatment must begin by accepting that—to them—the fear feels real.
So she kept her respect intact:
“You yourself called it unlikely though, little Yu. It might take hundreds of thousands of years. Frankly, our entire Human Civilization may not last so long. Why fear something we’ll never live to see?”
“Because for me, Dr. Tao, it could happen any moment. And I dread human extinction from other causes too.”
Qin Yu heaved a long, sad sigh.
An ancient parable—”the man of Qi who feared the sky would fall”—seemed mirrored in this young man.
Dr. Tao didn’t press the matter further.
After all, fearing low-likelihood disasters was classic anxiety or paranoia behavior.
She steered the chat another way:
“I understand. Have these worries ever made you ‘see’ things, little Yu? Like aliens overhead? Or other signs?”
“No… Dr. Tao. I’ve never hallucinated.”
“Any recent life changes then? Romance troubles? You look fresh from university—how’s work going? Any stress?”
“No girlfriend, no job, no stress. I can coast awhile on savings. Frankly, I’ve felt pretty okay lately. Besides the fears I shared, nothing bothers me.”
“Then why seek help, little Yu?”
“Yes.”
“So you believe this anxiety is wrong? Or… what brought you here?”
“Just talking helps. Eases my mind.”
“Ah. Anything else you’d like to discuss?”
Qin Yu sighed again, then looked up out the window. Outside, the sun was bright and warm.
“Dr. Tao, the day before yesterday, I saw on the news that after more than ten billion years, the sun might have a helium flash. If at that time Human Civilization was still on Earth, it seemed like it would be toast.”
“Fear of the sun?”
Tao Ya added a line.
“Yeah, sort of. Also, now the international situation is messy and chaotic. I really worry that one day, a nuclear war might break out, and then the world will fall into doomsday.”
“Apocalypse Anxiety.”
“Instead of worrying about that, what about the huge active volcano under North America? It could erupt one day in the future, and that seems even more dangerous. With Human Civilization’s current technology, there’s almost no chance of surviving.”
At that moment, even Tao Ya could not help but say one more thing.
From Qin Yu’s current performance, it really seemed like he had read too many sci-fi or doomsday-themed works.
“Hmm, Dr. Tao, what you said makes sense. That is indeed a worthy point to worry about.”
“Dr. Tao, tell me, how come humans are so fragile?”
“Even worse, just an extra-big virus or super bacteria could easily destroy Human Civilization in one go.”
Qin Yu sighed with emotion again.
Then, even as a professional doctor, Tao Ya felt unsure what to say next.
Only after she glanced at her record of the conversation with Qin Yu again,
she asked one more question:
“Xiao Yu, you seem very worried that Human Civilization, or humanity as a whole, might be wiped out by some future natural or man-made disasters. I want to know the reason why you think this way and worry so much in your heart.”
“From what we’ve just talked about, we both agree that most of those things have a small chance of happening. They might not even occur until well after we’ve been dead for a hundred years. Even if they happen, by then our bones might have turned to fossils. What point is there for us to worry?”
“…Dr. Tao, I worry these things will happen within my lifetime.”
“So, Xiao Yu, you’re worried that you yourself will be destroyed along with humanity’s doomsday.”
“…”
For once in this therapy session, Qin Yu stayed silent for a while.
He was not worried about dying along with Human Civilization… instead, he was worried that Human Civilization would go extinct and he would still be alive…
“Dr. Tao, do you have any advice?”
“Xiao Yu, through the earlier checks and this talk, I can confirm that your self-awareness is fine. Your anxiety hasn’t turned into body symptoms, meaning your situation isn’t really that serious.”
“Even though I can’t guarantee that these low-chance events won’t happen in the next few decades or century—and if I promised, you might not believe me—but think of it this way: before any disaster actually arrives, we should probably keep living normally. We shouldn’t waste the precious time we have now just because a disaster hasn’t come yet, right?”
“Also, there’s a saying: action is the cure for fear. Xiao Yu, you just said you have no job and have finished university, so you have a lot of free time every day. If your anxiety doesn’t ease, why not try keeping yourself busy? Fill your life with other things, and that might calm your feelings down.”
Dr. Tao spoke a long passage to Qin Yu.
Some words seemed meaningless to Qin Yu.
But the last sentence felt quite valuable.
“…Dr. Tao, you’re right. Instead of worrying, I’ll choose to act.”
“Hmm.”
“Dr. Tao, can I ask you one final question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Tell me, what kind of Human Civilization do you think is the safest?”
“Based on what Qin Yu himself suggested earlier, it should be a civilization that’s strong but hides in an obscure corner of the universe. That would be the safest.”
“Inside, no wars. Outside, no threats. Resources rich enough. Technology advanced enough… probably the safest.”
Dr. Tao gave a clear answer to her patient without being lazy.
“Hmm, that makes sense.”
Qin Yu showed a smile and nodded with a grin.
The best was that the whole civilization, after reaching a certain stage, just lies low.
Don’t wander around the universe like a street nobody; that should be safest.
“I’ll write you a couple more prescriptions. They don’t do much else, but they can help with sleep.”
Tao Ya watched as Qin Yu seemed a bit calmer and nodded with satisfaction.
Even though this session had strayed far from topic, now the result looked good.
“Alright, you can go pay and pick up the meds now.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
After Qin Yu left,
A somewhat tired Tao Ya let out a long breath.
With over twenty years in medicine, she had helped another patient.
Really good.
“Next patient!”
…
Qin Yu, walking out of the clinic, paid on his phone and checked the meds Dr. Tao had prescribed.
They were indeed sleep aids.
But this kind of medicine did nothing for him.
His sleep quality was just fine… or rather, sleeping or not made no difference to him.
The clinic of that Dr. Tao was on the fifth floor of the outpatient building.
Qin Yu walked to the corner of the fifth-to-fourth-floor stairs, where there were no passers-by or cameras.
Skillfully, he climbed onto the window of the stairway and jumped out to the outside.
A puff of dust flew up from the ground.
Qin Yu landed steadily on the ground behind the outpatient building, then turned to the side and left the hospital directly.
After becoming unkillable,
he seemed to like normal paths less and less.
Could stairs be faster than free fall?
…
In the city outskirts of Lingchuan City, an isolated three-story house in a hidden alleyway.
Back home, Qin Yu lay on a deck chair placed on the rooftop, thinking about life.
His left hand groped nearby and found his phone that he had tossed on the ground just before.
He opened a small forum he used to love browsing and took a look.
Then he opened his account and scrolled through his personal browsing history.
But even after reviewing each recent entry one by one, he could not find the thread that had changed his fate anywhere in the records.
It was not that the thread had been deleted; simply, it was like it never existed at all.
Or rather, the life-changing thread did not appear on this small forum for him to see.
It was just coincidence that he had seen the thread while browsing this small forum that day.
He had already confirmed this long ago, but he still wanted to check every now and then…
He threw the phone back on the ground casually.
Throwing back looking up, Qin Yu stared at the sun in the sky.
In his head, three thoughts battled like a heavenly war.
Protect humanity? Human Civilization is too darn fragile.
Enjoy life? Screw all that, I’ll just live it up first.
I don’t eat beef? Okay, not relevant here.
Way too boring? I want to see a bloodbath — I want to see upheaval!
And right now, all this,
probably started two days ago.