Zhang Yuan took out his phone, opened the ride-hailing app, and used voice input to enter his destination.
"Destination: Donghai City, approximately 412 kilometers."
"Searching for carpool passengers. Please wait..."
A radar-like image spun on the screen.
This intercity bus carried ten passengers sharing the ride, and each person paid only 60 yuan. It was a great deal.
It soon entered the elevated intercity track, traveling at up to 400 kilometers per hour. That speed was beyond what an ordinary person could handle, so the bus had to be driven autonomously, with strict controls to maintain a safe distance from other vehicles.
Once, some idiot had wanted to show off his driving skills in front of his girlfriend. He switched to manual mode even though there was no emergency, and the result... Well, he was reduced to ashes. The bus had slammed into the elevated track's guardrail at 400 kilometers per hour, and not a single organ in his body had been left intact.
The guardrail, on the other hand, was made of carbon nanotubes and hadn't suffered so much as a scratch. The safety of the elevated tracks had become famous as a result.
An hour later, Zhang Yuan got off the bus and took the subway to his destination.
"You're really punctual. You didn't even arrive a minute early!" Li Zhendong opened the door.
"I fell asleep at the massage parlor, so I'm a little late..."
"Tsk, tsk. That's the perfect place for a romantic encounter!" Li Zhendong wore a leering expression. After spending so long at Aerospace City, the guy was like a bundle of dry kindling. It was as if the moment he came into contact with a woman, he'd spark and burst into flames.
Zhang Yuan said irritably, "Come on, they're all middle-aged women. What romantic encounters? Do you have to have such terrible taste? Can you stop talking about this stuff as soon as we meet..."
"Zhang Yuan!" Li Zhendong's expression suddenly turned serious, as though he were working up to something.
"What?" A chill ran down Zhang Yuan's back.
Li Zhendong excitedly waved his phone around. "I've been chatting with a girl these past few days. Something might come of it... Take a look at her photo. She's pretty cute."
"Really?"
Zhang Yuan took the phone. The profile picture showed an adorable girl with fair, tender skin, puckering her lips.
Chat history:
[Girl: Your salary must be really high, right?]
[Li Zhendong: Not particularly. Money isn't all that useful to us. The main thing is to live happily...]
[Photo of a spaceship]
[Photo of Li Zhendong floating in midair]
[Girl: Space looks so fun! I've always dreamed of going there, but the tourist fees are too expensive.]
[Li Zhendong: How can you call this fun when we're risking our lives? In zero gravity, you could choke just drinking water. There have actually been cases like that!]
[Girl: Does your father work at Space City too?]
[Li Zhendong: Of course, but I've never relied on my dad. I got in on my own.]
[...(Ten thousand words of flirting omitted)]
[Li Zhendong: Look, I'm about to board the spaceship. Would you keep me company and watch a movie? I've never been on a date in my life.]
[Girl: Haha~ Really? You don't have a girlfriend?]
The girl hadn't given him a proper answer yet, but she seemed to be warming up to him.
Li Zhendong beamed with pride. "See how good I am? Want me to teach you how to pick up girls? Here's the first trick: act innocent. Some women love that! They like virgins!"
Zhang Yuan frowned as he listened.
"Second trick: play hard to get."
"Third trick: the monkey steals the peach!"
"What... steals the peach?!"
Li Zhendong grew more and more animated, his voice rising. "Oh, I mean steal her heart... Just think about it. Even after you're gone, after you've left Earth, those girls will still remember you. Deep in their hearts, they'll keep a little corner for you, where they'll treasure the wonderful times they spent with you."
"A year, ten years, a hundred years. At the moment they die, their final words will be your name... while you're somewhere else in time and space."
"Don't you think that's meaningful?"
For some reason, Zhang Yuan felt nothing at all. If anything, he was a little nauseated...
Zhang Yuan sighed. His buddy was good at everything: high IQ, a genius, the kind of top student who could get excellent grades without even trying.
His one flaw was that... he was incredibly lecherous and loved to brag.
Zhang Yuan suddenly grinned. "You're a scumbag!"
"I'm telling your mom!"
The air fell completely silent.
Zhang Yuan repeated his words exactly. "...A year, ten years, a hundred years. At the moment they die, their final words are your name?"
"Li Zhendong! Li Zhendong! Ah, I'm dying!"
"Is that how they'll say it? Does it feel good? Does it?"
Silence fell again.
In a way, Zhang Yuan was pretty talented too.
Li Zhendong sighed as well and stared at the ceiling. "Right now, I just want to beat you to death. For real!"
At the dinner table, Li Zhendong was the perfect son. He barely said a word and just ate in silence.
Li Mama was very kind and kept urging Zhang Yuan to eat more, saying, "Once you're in space, you won't get to eat meat raised naturally," and "This big drumstick is from a real free-range chicken." It was exactly what his aunt had said.
It was true, too. There wasn't much room aboard a spaceship, and its ecosystem wasn't very suitable for raising livestock. Growing a few plants was fine, but they couldn't afford the luxury of raising pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, or fish. So people in Space City ate synthetic meat, made from animal cells grown in vats.
Li Cheng, Li Zhendong's father, had worked with Zhang Yuan's father in Space City.
He kept telling stories about designing the Earth Era.
"...Your dad, Zhang Qiming, was a real genius. Whenever we ran into a problem we couldn't solve, he'd just think for a moment, move his pen across the page, and figure it out. It was like he was high!"
"High?" Zhang Yuan couldn't help wiping the sweat from his face.
"He built more than half of the spaceship's control programs. So far, they've only found 212 minor bugs. That's really, really impressive..."
"Too bad he left us so soon. What a shame..." Li Cheng was in a complicated mood, and had even had a little to drink.
"Isn't 212 a lot?"
"You don't understand. A spaceship's control systems are all connected, one link after another, one layer on top of another. The more complex a system is, the greater the risk. The Earth Era has a safety monitoring system, an energy system, an ecological system, a materials recycling system, a communications system, and more than a dozen other subsystems, along with a few small industrial plants. The complexity of its control systems is far beyond what you can imagine!"
"Software and hardware go hand in hand. Software is no less difficult than hardware!"
The two young men didn't know what to say.
After a while, Zhang Yuan asked, "Can't the spaceship go any faster?"
Li Cheng shook his head. "Seven-thousandths of the speed of light is already very fast. We could go faster with high-yield nuclear bombs, and probably reach three percent of the speed of light, but our materials couldn't withstand the blast. And in the foreseeable future, we won't have materials that can stand up to nuclear explosions."
Li Zhendong asked too, "Dad, will they build another colony ship after we leave?"
"No. Not for the next few years, or even the next few decades... The entire Earth economy needs time to recover."
"This project cost too much and put too great a burden on people. Even with the strong support of various governments and the Deep Space Foundation, it'll take a long time to recover before the economy can slowly get back on its feet."
"There's been strong public opposition to the special aviation tax, and several countries are making a fuss about it. They'll probably scrap it..."
Zhang Yuan asked in confusion, "Does that mean we're the only group of deep-space colonists?"
"Not necessarily. Who knows what'll happen in the future?"
"The basic technology for deep-space travel has matured. Building a second large colony ship won't cost as much as the first one. Perhaps once the government has money to spare, it'll launch a second one."
"But until new technology comes along, it'll be difficult to significantly increase travel speed. Don't count on the ships after yours catching up with you."
Zhang Yuan paused as he gnawed on a chicken drumstick. He'd picked up on one important point: the Deep Space Foundation, which was rolling in money, seemed to be broke.
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