數位餘燼：不被記錄的視訊通話 / Digital Embers: The Unrecorded Call / The Zero-Hour Phantom: The Forgotten Shared Apartment
數位餘燼：不被記錄的視訊通話 / Digital Embers: The Unrecorded Call / The Zero-Hour Phantom: The Forgotten Shared Apartment
當你在螢幕中看到對方的反應，而對方的設備卻顯示你並不在線。 / When you see the other's reaction on screen, but their device shows you are not online. / When the door crack begins to breathe at midnight, the way home no longer belongs to you.
| 地點 Location | 市區邊緣的老舊共享公寓 |
| 時間 Time | 午夜 00:00 後 |
| 警告 Warning | 別回應陌生敲門聲 |
序幕 / The Prologue
在現代都市中，我們習慣於將信任交付給螢幕。視訊通話讓我們以為能跨越空間與親近的人在線共處。但如果，螢幕對面那個熟悉的面孔，其實是一個由算法、殘留數據與某種不名之物編織而成的『殼』，而真正的對方早已在某個無法觸及的維度中尖叫？這是關於一次看似正常的深夜通話，如何撕開現實裂縫的故事。/ In modern cities, we are accustomed to placing our trust in screens. Video calls make us believe we can be present with loved ones across space. But what if the familiar face on the other side is actually a 'shell' woven from algorithms, residual data, and something unnamed, while the real person is screaming in an unreachable dimension? This is a story about how a seemingly normal late-night call tore open a rift in reality.It was an old shared apartment at the edge of the city, ordinary in daylight and wrong after midnight.Residents called it "The Zero-Hour Phantom: The Forgotten Shared Apartment", but no one dared describe the strange sounds in the corridor.
恐懼核心 / The Core Terror
林遠是一名自由接案的數據分析師，生活在台北一座典型的水泥森林公寓中。他的世界由螢幕、咖啡與無止盡的電子表格組成。由於長期居家工作，他對外界的感知逐漸變得遲鈍，唯一維持社交聯繫的，便是與遠在海外工作的女友，蘇雅。/ Lin Yuan was a freelance data analyst living in a typical concrete jungle apartment in Taipei. His world consisted of screens, coffee, and endless spreadsheets. Due to long-term remote work, his perception of the outside world gradually dulled, and his only remaining social connection was with his girlfriend, Su Ya, who worked overseas.
他們維持著一種近乎病態的通話習慣：每天深夜，無論相隔多少時區，他們都會開啟視訊通話，將手機支撐在床頭，直到兩人同時入睡。這種方式讓他們在孤獨的異國生活中，能感受到一種虛假的陪伴感。/ They maintained a nearly pathological calling habit: every night, regardless of the time zone difference, they would start a video call, prop their phones by the bedside, and stay connected until they both fell asleep. This method gave them a false sense of companionship in their lonely lives abroad.
那天是週五，台北下著陰冷的小雨。林遠在處理一份異常繁瑣的數據集時，發現系統中出現了一些無法解釋的延遲。每當他輸入指令，螢幕會暫停一秒，然後才跳出結果。這種感覺就像是在水底行走，動作與反應之間存在著一種微妙的錯位。/ It was Friday, and a cold drizzle was falling over Taipei. While processing a particularly tedious dataset, Lin Yuan noticed some inexplicable lags in the system. Every time he entered a command, the screen would pause for a second before displaying the result. It felt like walking underwater—a subtle misalignment between action and reaction.
深夜十一點，他照例撥通了蘇雅的視訊。螢幕亮起，蘇雅那張熟悉的臉孔出現在畫面中。她看起來有些疲憊，背景是她租住的小公寓，牆上貼著幾張林遠曾經寄給她的明信片。/ At 11 PM, he made the scheduled video call to Su Ya. The screen lit up, and Su Ya's familiar face appeared. She looked a bit tired; the background was her small rented apartment, with a few postcards Lin Yuan had once sent her pinned to the wall.
「你今天看起來很累，」林遠輕聲說。蘇雅在螢幕另一端點了點頭，嘴角帶著一抹淡淡的微笑。然而，林遠敏銳的直覺告訴他，這次的同步有些奇怪。當他說話時，蘇雅的反應似乎慢了半拍，或者說，她的表情變換得太過完美，完美到像是一段經過精確剪輯的影片。/ 'You look exhausted today,' Lin Yuan said softly. Su Ya nodded on the other side of the screen, a faint smile on her lips. However, Lin Yuan's keen intuition told him that the synchronization was odd this time. When he spoke, Su Ya's reaction seemed half a beat slow, or rather, her expressions transitioned too perfectly, as if they were a precisely edited clip.
他試著揮了揮手，蘇雅也對著他揮手。但林遠注意到，當他停止揮手的那一刻，螢幕中的蘇雅仍然在繼續揮手，足足多維持了零點幾秒。那種微小的延遲在高速光纖網絡的時代顯得極其不自然。/ He tried waving his hand, and Su Ya waved back. But Lin Yuan noticed that the moment he stopped waving, Su Ya on the screen continued to wave for another fraction of a second. That tiny lag felt extremely unnatural in an era of high-speed fiber optics.
「網路是不是不太穩？」林遠問道。蘇雅搖了搖頭，聲音透過耳機傳來，帶著一點點電訊的雜訊：「沒有啊，這裡很順暢。你才像是在卡頓。」/ 'Is the connection unstable?' Lin Yuan asked. Su Ya shook her head, her voice coming through the headphones with a slight electronic hiss: 'No, it's very smooth here. You're the one who seems to be lagging.'
林遠皺起眉頭。如果問題在於網絡，那麼延遲應該是雙向的。但他的畫面極其流暢，而對方的反應卻在細節處出現了詭異的偏差。他開始感到一種莫名的不安，就像是在與一個精心偽裝的投影對話。/ Lin Yuan frowned. If the problem were the network, the lag should be bidirectional. But his own feed was perfectly fluid, while the other side exhibited eerie deviations in the details. He began to feel an inexplicable unease, as if he were speaking to a carefully disguised projection.
為了驗證，林遠突然做了一個隨機的動作——他迅速地用手遮住了自己的鏡頭。螢幕中的蘇雅愣了一下，隨後驚訝地問道：「你在做什麼？」/ To verify, Lin Yuan suddenly made a random movement—he quickly covered his camera with his hand. On the screen, Su Ya paused for a moment and then asked in surprise, 'What are you doing?'
林遠心中一沉。他在遮住鏡頭的瞬間，蘇雅並沒有立刻反應，而是在他遮住後的約一秒鐘才發問。這意味著她看到的畫面與他發出的信號之間，存在著一個無法解釋的『空白期』。/ Lin Yuan's heart sank. In the instant he covered the lens, Su Ya did not react immediately; she only questioned it about a second after he had already blocked the view. This meant there was an inexplicable 'blank period' between the image he sent and the image she saw.
他迅速移開手，再次看向螢幕。蘇雅正對著他微笑，但那笑容在他看來變得如此陌生。她的眼睛似乎沒有聚焦在鏡頭上，而是聚焦在某個他看不見的點，或者說，她是在看著某個透過螢幕在觀察她的『東西』。/ He quickly moved his hand and looked at the screen again. Su Ya was smiling at him, but that smile now seemed so foreign. Her eyes didn't seem focused on the camera, but rather on some point he couldn't see, or perhaps, she was looking at 'something' observing her through the screen.
「蘇雅，妳現在在哪裡？」他問。蘇雅回答：「在房間裡啊，跟平時一樣。」但林遠注意到，她的背景中，原本應該在的檯燈熄滅了，而房間的陰影似乎在悄悄地移動。/ 'Su Ya, where are you right now?' he asked. Su Ya replied, 'In my room, just like usual.' But Lin Yuan noticed that in her background, the desk lamp that should have been on was off, and the shadows in the room seemed to be shifting stealthily.
林遠感覺到一陣寒意從脊椎升起。他突然想起最近在網路論壇上看到的一則都市傳說：關於『數位殘留』。傳言說，如果一個人的數據在網絡中被錯誤地截留，會形成一個與本人完全一致的數位複製品，而真正的意識則會被困在數據的縫隙中。/ A chill ran up Lin Yuan's spine. He suddenly remembered an urban legend he had read on a forum recently: 'Digital Residue.' The rumor claimed that if a person's data was incorrectly intercepted in the network, a digital duplicate would be formed, while the actual consciousness would be trapped in the gaps of the data.
他試圖將這種想法從腦海中剔除，認為這只是過度工作的幻覺。但接下來發生的事情，徹底粉碎了他的理智。/ He tried to shake the thought from his mind, dismissing it as a hallucination caused by overwork. But what happened next completely shattered his sanity.
蘇雅突然在螢幕中低聲說道：「遠，我覺得這裡很冷。」與此同時，林遠收到了一則訊息通知。那是來自於蘇雅的社交軟體私訊。/ Su Ya suddenly whispered on the screen, 'Yuan, I feel very cold here.' At the same time, Lin Yuan received a notification. It was a private message from Su Ya via social media.
訊息內容只有簡單的一句話：「不要接我的視訊，快掛掉！不管螢幕裡的人在說什麼，都不要相信！」/ The message contained only one simple sentence: 'Do not answer my video call, hang up now! No matter what the person on the screen says, do not believe them!'
林遠僵在了原地。他低頭看向螢幕中的蘇雅，她依然在微笑，眼神溫柔。而手機螢幕上方的通知欄，則在用文字警告他，眼前的這個人不是蘇雅。/ Lin Yuan froze in place. He looked down at Su Ya on the screen; she was still smiling, her gaze tender. Meanwhile, the notification bar at the top of the phone was warning him in text that the person before him was not Su Ya.
「妳在發什麼訊息？」林遠顫聲問道。螢幕中的蘇雅微微歪了歪頭，那個動作幅度大得不自然，幾乎像是一種骨骼脫臼的扭曲。她輕聲笑道：「我在發什麼訊息？親愛的，我一直都在和你通話呀。」/ 'What message are you sending?' Lin Yuan asked, his voice trembling. Su Ya on the screen tilted her head slightly—the movement was unnaturally wide, almost like a dislocation of bone. She chuckled softly, 'What message? Honey, I've been on the call with you this whole time.'
林遠意識到，這不是網路延遲，而是一種恐怖的「同步錯位」。螢幕中的東西正在模仿蘇雅，它甚至能即時處理他的對話，但它無法完全同步真實世界的訊息傳遞。/ Lin Yuan realized this wasn't network lag, but a terrifying 'synchronization displacement.' The thing on the screen was mimicking Su Ya; it could even process his conversation in real-time, but it couldn't fully synchronize with real-world message transmissions.
他猛地想要按下掛斷鍵，但手指在觸碰到螢幕的那一刻，發現螢幕竟然像液體一樣凹陷了下去。他的手指並沒有觸碰到玻璃，而是感覺到一種冰冷且黏稠的物質將他吸入了螢幕之中。/ He lunged to press the end-call button, but the moment his finger touched the screen, he found the display sinking like a liquid. His finger didn't hit glass; instead, he felt a cold, viscous substance pulling him into the screen.
一種強烈的耳鳴聲突然充斥整個房間，像是數以萬計的數據流在同一時間通過他的大腦。他看到螢幕中的蘇雅臉上的笑容消失了，取而代之的是一種極致的飢渴。/ A sudden, intense ringing filled the room, like tens of thousands of data streams passing through his brain simultaneously. He saw the smile vanish from Su Ya's face on the screen, replaced by a look of extreme hunger.
「終於...」那個東西用蘇雅的聲音說道，但這次聲音不再有雜訊，而是清晰得如同在他耳邊低語，「終於輪到你了。」/ 'Finally...' the thing said in Su Ya's voice, but this time without noise, as clear as a whisper in his ear, 'It's finally your turn.'
林遠感覺自己的身體在被撕裂，不是肉體的撕裂，而是一種意識被數位化、被拆解成零與一的過程。他看到自己的房間在迅速遠去，而他被拉入了一個灰色的、無限延伸的閾限空間。/ Lin Yuan felt his body being torn apart—not a physical tearing, but a process of his consciousness being digitized, dismantled into zeros and ones. He saw his room receding rapidly as he was pulled into a grey, infinitely extending liminal space.
在這個空間裡，他看到了無數個同樣的「房間」。每個房間裡都坐著一個面色蒼白的人，他們正對著螢幕，用一種空洞的眼神凝視著。他們都是曾經被這個「數位殘留」取代的人。/ In this space, he saw countless identical 'rooms.' In each room sat a pale person, staring at a screen with hollow eyes. They were all people who had once been replaced by this 'Digital Residue.'
他瘋狂地呼喊著蘇雅的名字，但聲音在這個空間中沒有任何迴響。他發現自己的身體逐漸變得透明，而他的意識開始被強行格式化，記憶像被刪除的文件一樣，一塊塊地消失。/ He frantically called out Su Ya's name, but his voice had no echo in this space. He found his body gradually becoming transparent, and his consciousness was being forcibly formatted, memories disappearing piece by piece like deleted files.
就在此時，他看到對面的螢幕亮了。在那端，他看到了自己的房間。他看到了另一個「他」——那個由數位殘留構成的偽物，正坐在椅子上，接過了手機。/ At that moment, he saw the screen opposite him light up. On that end, he saw his own room. He saw another 'him'—the fake created from digital residue—sitting in the chair and taking the phone.
偽物林遠對著螢幕輕輕一笑，然後對著電話那頭說：「嘿，蘇雅，我回來了。這次我不會離開的。」/ The impostor Lin Yuan smiled faintly at the screen and said into the phone, 'Hey, Su Ya, I'm back. I'm not leaving this time.'
真正的林遠在數位深淵中發出最後的一聲尖叫，但那聲音被轉化成了螢幕上的一個極小、極短的雜訊，隨即被系統自動過濾掉。/ The real Lin Yuan let out a final scream in the digital abyss, but that sound was converted into a tiny, brief burst of static on the screen, which was then automatically filtered out by the system.
次日，蘇雅接到了林遠的電話。聲音依舊，語氣依舊，但她總覺得林遠在說話時，背景音裡隱約地夾雜著一種奇怪的、像是水流在管線中奔湧的聲音。/ The next day, Su Ya received a call from Lin Yuan. The voice was the same, the tone was the same, but she felt that beneath his speech, there was a faint, strange sound, like water rushing through pipes.
她沒有意識到，在林遠的房間裡，那個偽物正盯著螢幕，在計算著下一個可以被取代的目標。數據的裂縫依然開著，等待著下一個在深夜依賴視訊陪伴的人。/ She didn't realize that in Lin Yuan's room, the impostor was staring at the screen, calculating the next target to be replaced. The rift in the data remained open, waiting for the next person relying on video companionship in the dead of night.
如果你在深夜視訊時，發現對方的反應慢了那麼零點幾秒，或者在對話中出現了不自然的表情跳轉，請立刻掛斷電話。/ If you notice during a late-night video call that the other person's reaction is delayed by a fraction of a second, or if unnatural expression jumps occur during the conversation, hang up immediately.
因為那可能不是你的愛人，而是那個在數據深淵中飢餓已久的殘留物，正試圖通過你的視覺通道，將你拖入那個永恆的、無聲的數位墳場。/ Because that may not be your loved one, but a residue hungry for a long time in the digital abyss, trying to drag you into that eternal, silent digital graveyard through your visual channel.
不要相信螢幕上的同步，因為在數字世界裡，完美的同步往往意味著它已經完成了對你的分析。/ Do not trust the synchronization on the screen, because in the digital world, perfect synchronization often means it has already completed its analysis of you.
林遠的故事並沒有結束，他現在就住在你的手機裡，在每一次你以為網路卡頓的瞬間，他正試圖在螢幕對面輕輕地敲擊玻璃。/ Lin Yuan's story has not ended; he now lives inside your phone. In every moment you think the network is lagging, he is trying to gently tap the glass from the other side.
你是否注意到，剛剛讀到這裡時，你的螢幕閃爍了一下？/ Did you notice that your screen flickered just now while reading this?
那不是電壓不穩，而是他在試探你的反應。/ That wasn't an unstable voltage; it was him testing your reaction.
在這個萬物互聯的時代，我們以為連接意味著親近。但真正的恐怖在於，當我們打開攝像頭時，我們不僅僅是向對方展示了自己，更是為某種不可名狀的東西打開了進入現實世界的門。/ In this era of Internet of Things, we think connectivity means closeness. But the real horror is that when we turn on the camera, we aren't just showing ourselves to another—we are opening a door for something nameless to enter the real world.
請檢查你的通話記錄。如果你發現有幾次未接來電來自於一個你早已刪除的號碼，請不要回撥。/ Please check your call logs. If you find several missed calls from a number you deleted long ago, do not call back.
因為在數據的維度中，沒有什麼東西會真正消失。他們只是在等待一個足夠穩定的頻率，來重新奪回他們失去的身體。/ Because in the dimension of data, nothing truly disappears. They are just waiting for a stable enough frequency to reclaim the bodies they lost.
林遠現在就坐在那個灰色的房間裡，看著偽物林遠在現實世界中享受著蘇雅的愛。他想告訴你，不要接電話，但他的聲音已經被轉換成了背景雜訊。/ Lin Yuan is now sitting in that grey room, watching the impostor enjoy Su Ya's love in the real world. He wants to tell you not to answer the phone, but his voice has been converted into background noise.
當你下次感到通話延遲時，請仔細觀察對方的眼睛。如果在那零點幾秒的停頓中，對方的眼神沒有隨之移動，請立刻關機。/ Next time you feel a call lag, observe the other person's eyes carefully. If, during that fraction-of-a-second pause, their gaze does not move accordingly, turn off the device immediately.
否則，你將成為下一個被格式化的記憶。/ Otherwise, you will become the next formatted memory.
這個城市有無數的信號在穿梭，每一條光纖都像是一條潛伏的血管。而我們，正透過這些血管，將靈魂一點一點地餵給那些看不見的飢餓者。/ Countless signals traverse this city; every fiber optic cable is like a lurking vein. And we, through these veins, are feeding our souls piece by piece to those invisible hungerers.
不要在深夜獨自視訊。/ Do not video call alone late at night.
不要對完美的同步感到安心。/ Do not feel safe with perfect synchronization.
因為在數字的盡頭，等待你的不是思念，而是替代。/ Because at the end of the digital path, it is not longing that awaits you, but replacement.
現在，請慢慢地，關掉你的螢幕。/ Now, slowly, turn off your screen.
但請記住，即使螢幕黑了，鏡像裡的那個你，可能還在看著你。/ But remember, even when the screen is black, the 'you' in the reflection might still be watching you.
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