The Echo of the Confidentiality Agreement

Old Li had been out of "Singularity Interconnect" for three months. This company was known for its "disruptive innovation," but also for its strict confidentiality system. Before leaving, Old Li signed a thick confidentiality agreement. At the time, he found the terms cumbersome, skimmed through them, and signed his name.

Lately, Old Li found himself having strange dreams. In his dreams, he was surrounded by countless black cameras, and a cold, mechanical voice echoed in his ears: "Article 37 of the agreement prohibits the disclosure of company secrets in dreams." He would wake up startled, his back always soaked with sweat.

At first, he thought it was just stress. But as time went on, the dreams became more frequent, and the plots became more bizarre. Sometimes, he dreamed that he had become a string of binary code, wandering in the company's servers; other times, he dreamed that the company's mascot, a mechanical parrot, was pecking at his brain with its sharp beak.

"Am I really going to turn into a robot?" Old Li muttered to himself in front of the mirror.

To get rid of these nightmares, Old Li began to study the confidentiality agreement he had tossed into his drawer. The agreement was more than fifty pages long, densely packed with small print, like a huge and complex net that firmly bound him.

"Party B shall not disclose, disseminate, copy, imitate, reference, imply, or dream... in any form..." Old Li read word by word, his scalp tingling. He discovered that there were clauses in the agreement stipulating that Party B could not even disclose any information about the company in their subconscious, and violators would be punished with "mental cleansing."

"What... what the heck is this?" Old Li felt a chill rise from his feet. He wanted to talk to his former colleagues, but then he thought, they must also be bound by this agreement. Who would dare to take the risk?

One day, Old Li was taking a walk in the park when he saw a group of old men playing chess. Bored, he wandered over. One of the old men accidentally knocked over a chess piece, which bounced on the ground and rolled to Old Li's feet.

"Hey, isn't this 'Heavenly King Covers the Earth Tiger'?" Old Li blurted out, regretting it the moment he said it. Wasn't this the company's internal code?

Strangely, the people around him showed no unusual reaction. They continued to play chess as if they hadn't heard Old Li.

Old Li's heart skipped a beat. He decided to test them.

"I drank three cups of 'Red Sea Action' today!" He deliberately said the code name of one of their internal projects.

"Really? You have a good tolerance for alcohol, young man." The old man next to him smiled and continued to move his chess piece.

Old Li tried a few more internal company codes, and the people around him had no reaction. He began to wonder, was he really just overthinking things?

He began to make various "disclosure" attempts in his life, using the company's internal menu codes when ordering food in a restaurant, and mentioning the company's new product codes when buying clothes in a mall. But everyone behaved unusually calmly, as if Old Li was speaking an alien language.

This made him even more uneasy. He began to suspect that he was the only one who could understand these "disclosure" signals. Was he being monitored by "Singularity Interconnect?"

To get rid of this fear, Old Li decided to go to the "Singularity Interconnect" headquarters to find out the truth. He arrived at the company's gate, only to find it closed, with a notice posted on the door: "Due to poor management, this company has declared bankruptcy yesterday."

Old Li was stunned. He took out his phone and searched for "Singularity Interconnect," but all information about the company had disappeared from the internet, as if it had never existed.

At that moment, Old Li suddenly realized that he was not being monitored, but the whole world had forgotten about this company, including the codes he called "disclosures." And only he was still trapped in that absurd confidentiality agreement, bearing everything alone.

Old Li looked at the empty street and suddenly laughed, the laughter echoing in the empty air, with a hint of helplessness, a hint of absurdity, and a hint of ineffable relief. He finally understood that the so-called "confidentiality" was just a big joke, and he was the only one who took this joke seriously.