I really hadn't expected Father God to come over himself. That morning, I'd been in the yard holding a mug of popcorn and scattering it on the ground to feed the Little Crows and wild Ding Dangs. (Does this scene look familiar? Right, like feeding pigeons in a square—I'd been raising those Mini Medivas and wild Ding Dangs like pigeons for days.) Then the front gate rattled twice. When I ran over to look, Father God was standing outside dressed like an overseas Chinese returning home to visit relatives, grinning at me. "I came to drop by—could you pay my fare?"
Too surprised to react, I leaned over the gate and looked outside. A yellow-and-white taxi was parked by the roadside, and a driver-looking man stood beside it, gazing around in complete confusion. Sandora had set up a permanent Mind Interference field around our house. Once someone came within a certain distance, they would lose their "focus of awareness." That driver would probably soon forget why he had driven here in the first place.
After finding out that Father God had taken a taxi from the Bus Terminal, I hurried over and stuffed the fare into the driver's hand. The driver had already been preparing to leave. When he saw a stranger appear out of nowhere and shove money at him, he was so startled that he repeatedly waved me off. "You settle the bill when you get there. Company rules—we're not allowed to take private hires these days..."
The driver was an honest fellow. I quickly tossed the money into his car and ran back, or he would definitely have dragged me around the neighborhood until we'd covered twenty kilometers. Once I returned to the grounds of my own home, the taxi driver blanked out again for a few