I'll Tell Your Mom!

Zhang Yuan took out his phone, opened the ride-sharing app, and voice-input his destination.

"Destination, Donghai City, distance approximately 412 kilometers."

"Searching for carpool matches, please wait..."

A radar-like icon was spinning on the screen.

This intercity bus offered 10-person carpooling, costing 60 yuan per person, which was quite a bargain.

It soon merged onto the high-altitude intercity rail, reaching speeds of up to 400 kilometers per hour. This speed was beyond the control of ordinary humans, so it had to be operated via unmanned systems to strictly maintain vehicle spacing.

There had once been an idiot who, wanting to show off his driving skills in front of his date, switched to manual mode under non-emergency conditions. The result... was, of course, total annihilation. The car slammed into the high-rail guardrail at 400 kilometers per hour, leaving not a single organ in his body intact.

The guardrails, made of carbon nanotubes, remained completely unscathed in the accident, which only served to make the safety of the high-altitude rails even more famous.

An hour later, after getting off the bus, Zhang Yuan took the subway to reach his destination.

"You're really punctual, not a minute early!" Li Zhendong opened the door.

"I took a nap at the massage parlor, so I was a bit late..."

"Tsk tsk, that's a great place for a romantic encounter!" Li Zhendong wore a lecherous expression. Having stayed in Aerospace City for so long, the guy was like dry tinder; it felt as if he would burst into flames the moment he touched a woman.

Zhang Yuan retorted irritably, "Give me a break, they were all middle-aged women, where would a romantic encounter come from? Do you have to have such terrible taste... Can you not talk about this the moment we meet..."

"Zhang Yuan!" Li Zhendong's expression suddenly turned serious, as if he were brewing something up.

"What?" A chill ran down Zhang Yuan's back.

Li Zhendong looked excited, waving his phone around, "I've been chatting with a girl these past few days, and maybe something will happen... Take a look at her photo, she's actually quite pretty."

"Is that so?"

Taking the phone, he saw the profile picture was a very cute girl, pouting her lips, with fair and tender skin.

Chat history:

[Girl: Your salary must be very high, right?]

[Li Zhendong: Not particularly high. Money doesn't have much use for us; the main thing is to live happily...]

[Photo of a spaceship]

[Photo of Li Zhendong floating in mid-air]

[Girl: Space is so much fun! I dream of going to space, but the travel costs are too expensive.]

[Li Zhendong: How can you call it fun when we risk our lives doing this job? In a zero-gravity environment, you can choke to death just by drinking water; there have actually been cases of that!]

[Girl: Is your father also a worker in the space city?]

[Li Zhendong: Of course, but I never rely on my dad. I got in on my own merit.]

[...(10,000 words of flirting omitted)]

[Li Zhendong: Look, I'm about to board the ship. Can you accompany me to watch a movie? I'm this old and I've never been on a date.]

[Girl: Haha~ Really? You don't have a girlfriend?]

The girl was being hesitant and hadn't given a formal reply yet, but it seemed she was interested.

Li Zhendong boasted triumphantly, "Now you know how good your buddy is. Want me to teach you how to pick up girls? This is the first trick: play the innocent card. Some women love that! They just love virgins!"

Zhang Yuan frowned deeply as he listened.

"And the second trick: play hard to get."

"The third trick: the Monkey Steals the Peach!"

"What... Steals the Peach?!"

Li Zhendong's tone grew more and more excited, his voice becoming louder, "Oh, I meant stealing hearts... Just think about it. Even after you've left, after you've departed Earth, those young women will still be thinking of you. In the deepest corners of their hearts, they've reserved a spot for you, where the beautiful times you spent together are buried."

"One year, ten years, a hundred years later, at the very moment they die, their final words will be your name... while you are somewhere else in space and time."

"Don't you think that's incredibly meaningful?"

For some reason, Zhang Yuan felt no ripples in his heart; he even felt a little nauseous...

Zhang Yuan sighed. His buddy was great in every way—high IQ, a genius, a top-tier student who could easily achieve top marks.

The only downside was... he was incredibly repressed and loved to brag.

Zhang Yuan suddenly grinned: "Scumbag!"

"I'm going to tell your mom!"

The air fell into a deathly silence.

Zhang Yuan repeated it exactly as he had said: "...One year, ten years, a hundred years later, at the very moment they die, their final words will be your name?"

"Li Zhendong! Li Zhendong! Ah, I'm dying."

"Is that how they'll call it? Does it feel good? Does it feel good?"

Silence returned.

To a certain extent, Zhang Yuan could be considered a talent.

Li Zhendong also sighed, staring at the ceiling: "Right now, I just want to beat you to death, beat you to death with my own hands, seriously!"

At the dinner table, Li Zhendong was a well-behaved son, not saying a single extra word, just eating his meal in silence.

Li Mama was very kind, constantly urging Zhang Yuan to eat more, saying that "once you're in space, you won't be able to eat natural meat anymore," and "this big chicken leg is real free-range chicken," exactly the same words as his aunt.

This was indeed a fact; space on the ship was limited, and the ecological environment wasn't great. Growing some plants was fine, but it was impossible to luxuriously raise pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, or fish. Therefore, what people ate in the space city was synthetic meat, which meant animal cell tissue grown in petri dishes.

Li Zhendong's father, Li Cheng, was a colleague of Zhang Yuan's father at the space city.

He was chatting non-stop about some stories from when they were designing the Earth Era.

"...Your old man Zhang Qiming was truly a genius. Problems we couldn't solve, he would just slap his head, twirl his pen, and figure it out. It was like he was on drugs!"

"On drugs?" Zhang Yuan couldn't help but wipe the sweat from his face.

"He built more than half of the ship's control programs, and to this day, only 212 minor bugs have been found. That is truly, truly difficult..."

"It's a pity he left so early, a real pity..." Li Cheng's mood was complex, and he even drank a bit of alcohol.

"Are 212 bugs considered few?"

"You kids don't understand. The ship's control engineering is link after link, layer upon layer. The more complex the system, the greater the risk. The Earth Era has over a dozen subsystems, including safety monitoring, energy, ecology, material circulation, and communications, plus a few industrial factories. The complexity of the control engineering is far beyond your imagination!"

"Software and hardware complement each other; the difficulty of the software is no less than that of the hardware!"

Neither of the two young men could find a way to respond.

After a while, Zhang Yuan asked: "Can the ship not go any faster?"

Li Cheng shook his head: "Seven-thousandths of the speed of light is already very fast. Unless we use high-yield nuclear bombs for propulsion, we could reach 3% of the speed of light, but our materials cannot withstand the explosive force of nuclear bombs... and in the foreseeable future, it is impossible for materials resistant to nuclear bombs to appear."

Li Zhendong also asked: "Dad, after we leave, will they build the next colony ship?"

"No, not for the next few years, or even the next few decades... The entire Earth economic circle needs a period of recovery."

"This project was too labor-intensive and costly. Even with the strong support of various governments and the Deep Space Foundation, it will take a long time to recuperate and slowly regain its vitality."

"Regarding the special aviation tax, there is strong public opposition, and several countries are making a huge fuss about it. It is estimated that it will be canceled..."

Zhang Yuan asked in confusion: "Are we the only batch of deep space colonists?"

"Not necessarily. As for future matters, who knows?"

"Basic deep space voyage technology is already mature. Rebuilding a second large colony ship won't be as costly as the first. Perhaps, once the government has some spare money, it is still possible to launch a second one."

"However, until new technology appears, it will be very difficult to significantly increase the travel speed. Don't count on the ships behind you catching up to you."

Zhang Yuan gnawed on his chicken leg and paused for a moment; he had deciphered a key piece of information: the filthy rich Deep Space Foundation seemed to be out of money.