The latest newspaper.
A common worker who still refused to enter the shelter and become a guinea pig returned home with the latest issue of the newspaper, without any milk.
Since last year, the Federal Government had gradually stopped supplying low-priced milk to ordinary citizens. Other items, such as one-dollar-per-pound ground beef, had also ceased to be available.
In the past, five dollars had been enough to order a month's worth of milk—one liter a day, fresh.
You could even smell the fragrance of farm soil when you opened the cap.
Much of the milk actually went unfinished. Some people did not like drinking it, or only a few members of their families drank it. In the end, a great deal of milk was poured down the drains at night.
But now that low-priced milk was gone, people had instead begun to miss its taste.
Humans were such fussy creatures. Sometimes they did not cherish something until it was gone, and only then did they begin to regret losing it.
Mr. Worker opened the white newspaper and picked up a cup of weak coffee. Just as he was about to take a sip, he put the cup back down.
"A Brief Discussion on Cooperative Security System"
It was the headline on the front page, printed in bold and impossible to miss.
Beneath the headline was a picture occupying nearly half the page. Lin Qi sat among a crowd, with the camera focused on his expression.
Calm yet solemn, he looked extremely serious, wisdom gleaming in his eyes. It was an excellent photograph.
Although the headline did not say that the idea had come from Lin Qi, anyone who saw the newspaper could more or less draw that conclusion on their own.
This idea belonged to Mr. Lin Qi.
Mr. Worker