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The Making of Z.A.T.O.
我原以为自己会写很多，但结果整个事情讲起来其实相当简短。Z.A.T.O. 的诞生大概就是这样。
I thought I’d have a lot to say, but in the end this whole thing turned out relatively short. This is how Z.A.T.O. came to be.

早期概念
EARLY CONCEPT
最初的构想来自弗拉基米尔·索罗金（Vladimir Sorokin）的一篇“故事中之故事”——《瘟疫》（ПАДЁЖ）。这是一部极其阴郁的对苏联早期的讽刺作品，讲述了两名检查员来到一个牲畜大量死亡的村庄进行调查，而所谓“牲畜”最终被揭示为人类。
The initial concept was inspired by Vladimir Sorokin’s short story-within-a-story, Murrain. It’s an extremely grim satire of the early USSR, which tells the tale of two inspectors coming to a village experiencing livestock death. Said livestock turns out to be humans.
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“罗斯托夫采夫·尼古拉·列沃维奇，三十七岁，不悔改的害虫之子、移民之孙、地区医生的曾孙——没错，是个医生……两年前从马洛雅罗斯拉夫州立畜牧场被送来。”
“亲属！”凯德林猛地一拳砸在门上。
“他的妹妹——罗斯托夫采娃·伊琳娜·列沃夫娜——被作为‘活体肥料’用于高尔基市荣耀公园的植树工程。”
<……>
“看第二个。”
第二号牢笼与第一个完全相同：一样粗糙、布满刮痕的墙壁，一样低矮的天花板，铺满粪便的地面和浑浊的铁栏窗。第二号“人”倒在牢房中央，青紫的手脚伸展开来。他同样多毛、瘦削、肮脏，呆滞的眼睛直直望着天花板。嘴巴隐藏在胡须下张着，春天的苍蝇在里面嗡嗡作响。
凯德林在牢房门口盯着尸体看了许久，才喊向季申科：
“亲属！”
“施瓦茨曼·米哈伊尔·约西福维奇，二等失败主义者之子、左派社会革命党成员之孙、富裕皮货商人之曾孙。他的兄弟——鲍里斯·约西福维奇——在第十六号牢笼。他们两人都是六个月前从沃洛科拉姆斯克州立畜牧场被带来的……”
—— V. Sorokin，《瘟疫》 // 译者：我（ferry）
“Rostovtsev Nikolai Lvovich, thirty-seven years old, the son of an unrepentant pest, grandson of an emigrant, great-grandson of a district doctor, yes, a doctor… Came in two years ago from the Maloyaroslavsk State Cattle Farm.”
“Relatives!” Kedrin smashed his fist against the door.
“His sister - Rostovtseva Irina Lvovna, used as living fertilizer in the planting of the Glory Park in Gorky city.”
<...>
“Onto the second one.”
Cage #2 was exactly the same as the first. The same rough, scratched up walls, the same low ceiling, shit-covered floor and cloudy barred up window. Human #2 laid in the middle of the floor with his blue arms and legs spread out. He was also hairy, thin and dirty, and his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling. His mouth, concealed under the beard, was open and buzzing with springtime flies.
Kedrin took his time looking over the corpse from the entrance before calling out to Tishenko:
“Relatives!”
“Schwartzman Mikhail Iosifovich, the son of a second-grade defeatist, grandson of a left-wing SR member, great-grandson of a rich furrier. His brother - Boris Iosifovich - is in the sixteenth cage. They both came in six months ago from the Volokolamsk State Cattle Farm…”
V. Sorokin, Murrain // Translation by me
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这绝不是一篇适合胆小者阅读的作品，其中充满直白的暴力与令人不适的情节。而且据我所知，目前似乎也没有容易获取的英文译本。无论如何，这个核心概念在我第一次读到的时候给我留下了极其深刻的印象。
It’s not a story I can recommend to the faint of heart, since it does feature graphic violence and generally upsetting events. Although, I’m pretty sure there’s no easily available English translation for it anyways. In any case, the core idea left a big impression on me back when I first read it.

阿霞（Asya）的原始设定。
她最初的形象应该更成熟一些，年龄大约在 17 到 22 岁之间。
Original version of Asya. She was supposed to be a little older, somewhere between 17 and 22.

话说回来，Z.A.T.O. 的最初版本大致如下：
一名患有 “meryachenie/Мерячение”（一种西伯利亚地区的 piblokto 变体，即极端环境下的精神失常发作症状）的少女在一辆车内醒来。
此时，她置身于一座被暴风雪与外界彻底隔绝的城市边缘。
父母留下的一张纸条告诉她：
“一旦风停下来，立刻离开这里。”
With that said, the initial version of Z.A.T.O. went more or less as follows. A girl that suffers from meryachenie (Siberian variant of piblokto) wakes up inside a car. She’s on the very border of the city that’s been cut off from the rest of the world by a blizzard. A note left by her parents tells her to leave the place as soon as the wind calms.
然而时间不断流逝，天气却丝毫没有好转的迹象。
在饥饿、恐惧与对真相的渴求驱使下，女孩踏上了返回城市的道路。
城市异常寂静、空荡。
由于病症影响，她的记忆支离破碎，于是她不得不拼凑过去几天究竟发生了什么。
But time passes and the weather shows no signs of improvement. Hungry and desperate to learn what’s going on, the girl makes her way back to the city. It’s strangely empty. Her memory is spotty due to her condition, so she has to piece together what exactly happened over the course of the past couple of days.

旧版本的结局场景
Ending scene from the old version of the story.

随着她在空无一人的公寓间探索、逐渐恢复记忆、并搜集证据，
女孩得知：
城镇中大多数居民因为“叛罪”而被送往一座人体处理工厂。
As she explores the empty apartments, regains her memories and collects evidence, the girl learns that the majority of the town’s population got sent to a human processing plant as punishment for treason.
这个想法大概产生于 2021–2022 年，
但我很快就把它搁置了。
也许它会作为一款 RPGMaker 恐怖游戏 表现得不错，
可我始终无法真正弄懂那个引擎。
再加上我不确定该如何让这个故事拥有一个令人满意的结局，
于是这个有点“中二”、有点锋利的构想就被无限期封存了。
I had this idea around 2021-2022, but dropped it fairly quickly. It would probably work well as an RPGmaker horror game, but I could never wrap my head around that engine. Plus, I wasn’t sure how to make that story satisfying. So that edgy little concept got put away indefinitely.

故事重制
STORY REVAMP
————————
梦 The dream
在 2025 年 4 月，我做了一个梦：
上帝惩罚一名女性——
逐一剥夺她所有的高级认知功能，
直到只剩下赤裸的灵魂。
——然后，连那灵魂也随之消失。
In April 2025, I had a dream about God punishing a woman by taking away all of her higher cognitive functions one by one until nothing but her bare soul remained - and then even that soul was gone.

翻译：“等等，你刚刚让我想起了一个特别牛逼的梦。我要把我在那个超酷的梦里看到的点子拿来用一下，一定会非常酷。”
于是，一切就从那开始了。
So everything kicked off from there.

代码 The code
很多人认为作品中的“代码”母题是受到《玲音（Serial Experiments Lain）》的启发——我也能理解为什么他们会这么想。但实际上，真正的灵感来源要更加冷门，也更加愚蠢。
A lot of people assume that the code motif was inspired by Serial Experiments Lain - I can’t blame them for that, really. But the truth is that the actual inspiration is a lot more obscure and stupid.
→
我在高中和大学时期非常活跃于各种 imageboard 论坛；4chan 的 /x/ 板（灵异、超自然区）是我当时最常去的板块之一。大概十年前左右，有一张“冰山图”非常流行，上面列出了 /x/ 板最著名的阴谋论、禁忌知识之类的内容。而在冰山的最底部，有个东西叫 “绝望代码（Despair Code）”。
I used to be very active on imageboards back when I was in high school and university; 4chan’s /x/ a.k.a. Paranormal board was one of my go-tos at the time. So 10-ish years ago, there was this iceberg image going around listing /x/’s greatest conspiracies, forbidden knowledge and stuff like that. And at the very bottom laid something called the Despair Code.

冰山图底部
Bottom of the iceberg.

我就不卖关子了——那根本只是个梗。一个所有人都假装当真、像是什么恐怖禁忌、不知道就好、知道会疯掉的内梗。它的核心意思是：存在某种系统，通过潜意识层面的思维模式，让大量人长期处于痛苦与绝望之中。
I’ll spare you the intrigue, that was a meme. An inside joke everyone played along with, like it was this horrible terrible thing you’re better off not knowing, lest you go insane. The gist of it was that there exists a system that keeps masses of people in prolonged states of misery, which are maintained through subliminal thought patterns.
→
现在，看起来是不是有点眼熟：
Now does this look familiar to you:
——————
>You cannot separate the eagle from what it does; the eagle simply is
>denial 2311444
>despair 3223412
>distortion 6233322
——————
→
我当时真的挺喜欢那段 greentext 的，而“数字结构、普遍规律驱使人发疯”这种想法对我来说一直都很酷——虽然那并不是 Despair Code 本来的意思。
I did like this particular greentext a lot, and the whole idea of numerical values and universal patterns driving a person to madness has always seemed super cool to me - although it wasn’t exactly what the despair code entailed.

于是我把这个模糊的概念改造得更符合自己的审美。你看，我一直觉得“世界是一场模拟”这个想法无聊透顶；但如果说世界依照类似计算机算法的规则运转，那就非常诱人了。
So I took that vague idea and changed it to suit my tastes a little better. You see, I’ve always thought that “the world is a simulation” concept was lame as hell; however, the world operating using a computer-like algorithm did sound compelling.
→
后来我把这两个概念融合到一起——这就成了你在《Z.A.T.O.》里看到的设定雏形，并把它放进当时正在写的一部科幻故事里（没错，就是高中时代的那个）。
I smushed those notions together into the concept that very closely resembles what you see in Z.A.T.O., and implemented it into the sci-fi story I was messing around with at the time (again, that was back in high-school).
→
那部旧故事最终当然是胎死腹中。但这个核心概念一直留在我脑中。而当我做了那个梦之后，某种东西突然“啪”地连起来了——我意识到我终于知道如何把多年前的理论发展成完整的东西了！
That old story didn’t go anywhere, obviously, but the core idea still stuck with me. And when I had that dream, something suddenly clicked - I realised how I could develop that theory from many years ago!

文章 The article
Google 给我推送了一篇看起来还挺有趣的文章，主题是：我们的太阳相比同类型恒星有多么独特。
其中有某些内容真的触动了我，
于是我随手打开 Google 文档开始记录自己的想法。
最开始只是心血来潮——
但不知怎么的，写得越久，就越觉得有趣！
Google suggested an article to me that seemed mildly interesting. It was about how unique our Sun is compared to other stars of its type. Something about it really touched me, so I began writing down my thoughts in a Google doc. I did it on a whim, but somehow the longer I went on, the more fun it became!

翻译：我们的太阳竟然是一颗非典型恒星：天体物理学家证明，明亮的火焰使它在黄矮星中极为罕见
科学家们在1200光年外找到了太阳的“孪生体”：恒星 KIC 11599385，其活动模式与我们的太阳相似——明亮火焰的数量远超过黑子。
太阳，作为我们太阳系的主星，并不像大多数它的“同类”——黄矮星那样普通。
一个由德国、挪威、希腊和西班牙科研人员组成的国际团队研究了数十颗与太阳类似的恒星，发现太阳拥有异常的磁活动特征：它的表面具有远比黑子更多的亮区（所谓的火焰）。而对于同类恒星来说，情况通常相反——黑子更多，亮斑更少。