As the ga continued, Eric was starting to feel worse and worse inside.
But Dr. Neil and Dr. Eva were still working, trying to help Johnny beco an astronaut and land on the moon.
After all, they'd already signed the contract in the real world.
No matter what, they had to help Johnny achieve his dream.
Ti moved forward again, now showing Johnny in high school. That's when they learn from Johnny himself why he liked River.
It was because Johnny thought River was different.
At this point, Johnny ca off a little selfish—even his best friend Nicholas called him out on it.
"Feeling sad for River right now."
"Suddenly, Johnny's kinda annoying!"
" 1, selfish jerk!"
"But sothing feels off... maybe there's a twist coming later?"
The chat in Eric's stream was full of comnts and guesses.
But right now, Eric wasn't paying any attention to them. He was fully pulled into the story.
It really did seem like Johnny was acting selfish, maybe even a bit unlikeable.
But Eric couldn't shake the feeling that sothing deeper was going on.
Sure, this helped explain why River kept folding paper rabbits.
But to Eric, it still felt like sothing was missing. Sothing didn't quite add up.
Ti kept moving back, and now we saw Johnny as a kid.
At ho, when Johnny left for school, his mom didn't call him Johnny—she called him Joey.
With soccer as a way in, Neil and Eva pushed forward again.
But everything that ca next... was completely different.
In front of his computer, Eric leaned in a little, eyes wide open.
The screen showed a white, foggy scene. In that mory, even Neil and Eva said they could sll the stench of a dead animal.
Before they could enter the next part of Johnny's mory, there was nothing but emptiness.
That ant so of Johnny's childhood mories were damaged.
And from the look—and sll—of things, those missing parts involved sothing bloody and the death of an animal.
Since they couldn't move forward, Neil and Eva decided to stick to their original plan.
By planting the dream of becoming an astronaut in Johnny's mind, the machine could guide him to keep moving toward that goal.
But players clearly weren't happy with how Eva and Neil were going about it.
"What the hell?! They ssed up the mory—Johnny's childhood mories aren't even clear yet!"
"Why are they doing things like this?"
Eric looked annoyed. Compared to the whole "go to the moon" thing, he was more curious about the hidden story behind it.
And judging from how the ga was going, he had a strong feeling that all the answers were buried in Johnny's childhood.
But seriously, these two doctors were just cutting corners to get the job done. Was this all just for show?
Then, unexpectedly, sothing went wrong.
No matter how much Neil and Eva tried to guide Johnny or drop hints—
They added astronomy classes in elentary and middle school, swapped out the movies he watched for space-related ones—
Everything pointed toward becoming an astronaut.
But none of it worked. Johnny's later mories didn't change at all.
He wasn't even interested in going to the moon.
It wasn't just the two doctors—players were just as confused.
In Johnny's subconscious, there wasn't even a trace of a desire to go to the moon.
So why would soone like him make that his final wish before dying?
What was it about the moon that drew him in?
There wasn't much ti left—Johnny's body was getting weaker and weaker.
If they really wanted to make Johnny's wish co true, his broken childhood mory was probably the key.
Dr. Neil contacted the company to ask why this was happening.
Dr. Eva kept digging into why planting mories didn't change Johnny's desire.
Assuming the machine wasn't broken, then going to the moon wasn't Johnny's main goal.
There had to be sothing deeper behind his wish.
And River played an important part in his life.
They'd been together since high school.
But what was it exactly that changed Johnny's desires so much?
While Watts was still thinking, Neil finally got the answer.
Johnny's mory loss was caused by the large amount of beta-blockers he took as a child.
Propranolol, a type of beta-blocker, is thought to stop the brain from storing mories the usual way.
So Johnny's missing childhood mories were likely due to heavy use of beta-blockers when he was young.
But that didn't an the mories were completely wiped—they were just hidden.
To use the machine to dig into Johnny's childhood, they needed sothing to trigger them.
That's when Eric thought of sothing.
"The sll of blood? Rotting flesh? Wait! Didn't the doctor run over a squirrel in the beginning!? What if the sll of the squirrel could be used as a trigger?"
Looking at the clue in the ga, Eric suddenly understood.
It was all part of the setup from the very beginning!
"So that's it. That squirrel from the start really had a purpose!"
"You could say it died for a good cause. It was ant to die! Huge thanks to that squirrel for its contribution."
Eric said as he moved the character to the side of the road to collect the squirrel's scent.
anwhile, the chat exploded with comnts like:
"Squirrel: Wow, thanks a lot!"
"One of the most tragic characters: the squirrel!"
But aside from so jokes in the chat, most people felt the sa way as Eric.
They were curious and excited to see what Johnny's childhood mories would look like.
As the chat kept urging him on,
Eric used the scent as the mory link and successfully entered one of Johnny's more chaotic mories.
This one was all jumbled up, with different points in ti overlapping.
So on the street, you could see many little versions of Johnny running around.
One of them caught Eric's attention—Johnny playing with a soccer ball.
That ball was one of the mory links from earlier.
The two doctors searched all over the town but couldn't find anything useful.
At the sa ti, Johnny's mom had just finished talking with soone and was about to start the car and drive off.
But no one noticed that "little Johnny" was chasing his soccer ball and had ended up behind the car.
The engine started. *Bang.* The little boy was hit and fell to the ground.
What just happened? Did little Johnny get hit by the car?
Is that the reason for the missing mories?
But wasn't it because of too many beta-blockers?
Eric was confused, just like the two doctors in the ga. They all thought the kid who got hit was Johnny.
But in the next mont, the real Johnny showed up.
And suddenly, the confusion started to clear up.
(End of this chapter)
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