The Property Donation

The self-driving electric car sped down the road as Zhang Yuan steadied his emotions.

It was already the twenty-third century, an era that placed extreme importance on intelligence. But "looks" still mattered in social interactions. Attractive people had certain advantages in life, regardless of whether they were men or women.

Zhang Yuan thought... he looked pretty good. He wasn't just being conceited; his friends and family all said so. And his decent luck with romance from childhood onward indirectly proved it, too.

As for why he didn't have a girl by his side, it was because he'd aspired to become an astronaut since he was young, and had consciously suppressed those desires.

"I've got plenty of girls chasing me..."

There was less than a month left of his vacation. In such a short time, the most that could happen was a mutual hormonal attraction; there was no way they could form a deeper emotional connection.

Of course, finding a girl for a purely physical encounter wouldn't be difficult. If he made it clear beforehand that it was just for fun, plenty of "modern women" would still be willing to have a little fling with the "astronauts." Who knew? It might even give them something to brag about to their friends later...

In this open-minded era, few people cared whether their future spouse was a virgin.

Still, Zhang Yuan didn't like casual hookups.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated.

He opened it and found a junk text.

He'd never bothered to clear his messages, so the screen was covered in unread notifications.

[Four of your phone contacts have marked you as their "secret crush" on Yuemo. Since you haven't registered, we're notifying you by text... Download here...]

A soft advertisement. So annoying. It was the twenty-third century, and they still couldn't get rid of this stuff.

"Whatever."

He wasn't some seasoned lady-killer. Since he couldn't completely rid himself of all attachments, there was no need to burden himself with more emotional baggage before he left.

After dismissing the notification, Zhang Yuan felt much better.

The driverless car rolled along at an unhurried pace. Traffic moved in an orderly fashion, almost every vehicle traveling at the same speed. No one cut in or forced their way into another lane.

Artificial intelligence was far more reliable than humans at driving. Manual driving in anything but an emergency had become illegal.

Zhang Yuan wasn't a trust-fund kid, and the driverless car wasn't his. It was just a shared taxi from the side of the road. It came whenever he called, so it was practically no different from owning a car.

The screen inside the car was showing a documentary about the history of space exploration.

"...We've come this far, through mud and hardship. Exploration and development will always be the central themes of our era..."

He watched the documentary with interest.

It had to be said: technological progress had been far slower than people in the old days had imagined.

When the Americans first landed on the moon in 1969, many scientists had optimistically predicted that humanity would colonize the moon by 2000 and occupy the solar system by 2020, becoming a true interstellar civilization.

Humanity would find the aliens of legend, clash with alien civilizations, and create artificial intelligence that would develop self-awareness and rebel against mankind...

Sadly, none of that happened.

The entire twenty-first century passed without a thing.

There were no brain chips, no singularity ushered in by strong AI, and no technology for immortality.

The cost of holographic imaging technology remained sky-high. AR glasses, which had tried to replace phones, were popular for a while before being abandoned as inconvenient. Battery capacity could never meet demand, and room-temperature superconductors remained uninvented...

Never mind the warp drives, wormholes, time travel, and antigravity from science fiction.

With life so comfortable, humanity seemed to have reached the limits of its civilization. Progress in information technology gave people the false impression that science was still flourishing, lulling them into complacency.

Sadly, some of the most crucial technologies remained beyond reach.

Finally, toward the end of the twenty-first century, the world ran out of oil, triggering a terrifying global energy crisis.

The two world wars that followed set human society back a hundred years!

The entire twenty-second century was bleak. People later called it... "the Gray Era"!

The deep-voiced narrator spoke in a rich, resonant tone: "Fortunately, we made it through. We explored the unknown and found a new direction..."

"Controlled nuclear fusion!"

"...The successful ignition of an artificial sun, along with the flourishing of space industry, space botany, and nanomaterials science, has ushered human civilization into a new golden age!"

"In the latter half of the twenty-third century, we will embark on an unprecedented era of interstellar colonization!"

The documentary was stirring, if somewhat exaggerated. It was certainly enough to impress ordinary people.

Zhang Yuan shook his head, then smiled.

Nuclear fusion had indeed given humanity an inexhaustible supply of energy and transformed people's lives, but that didn't mean it could make everyone tremendously wealthy.

That was because oil wasn't just a source of energy. It was also an important industrial raw material.

Take a few simple examples: without fertilizers and pesticides, humanity's food production would be cut by more than half.

Where did fertilizers and pesticides come from? Naturally, they were petroleum derivatives.

Without acrylic, polyester, nylon, and vinylon, clothing prices would soar. Most people wouldn't be able to afford clothes and would have to go around naked.

Where did these synthetic fibers come from? The answer was petroleum derivatives.

Without petroleum-derived solvents, chemical feedstocks, lubricants, and other products, over 90 percent of industrial factories would shut down.

The saying "Oil is the lifeblood of industry" wasn't an exaggeration.

Although nuclear fusion provided inexhaustible energy, there were still costs for extraction, power transmission, and maintaining power plants. Using industrial methods to force inorganic materials into organic compounds with electricity remained far too expensive—much more so than extracting oil in the old days.

Even now, people in many poor countries still couldn't get enough to eat, because they lacked alternatives to petroleum products.

Fortunately, the flourishing field of space botany was gradually curing humanity's "oil dependence."

Many industrial raw materials, such as polymer fibers, ethylene, benzene, and methane, could be replaced with products derived from mutated plants grown in space. Those plants could also be cultivated on a large scale on Earth.

As the president of one small country had once cried out: "Praise space botany! At last, it has freed us from the crisis of survival! Praise!"

An hour later, the driverless car passed through the agricultural and industrial zones before entering the city.

"Dear passenger, you have arrived at your destination. This trip lasted one hour and two minutes. Your fare is 43 yuan..."

A gentle electronic voice sounded. Zhang Yuan paid, got out, and returned home.

"Home really is the best."

First, he took a cold shower. Then he opened his computer, logged in to the notary office's website, and eagerly clicked the "Property Donation" button.

After thinking it over carefully, he uploaded a photo of his property deed.

A line of information appeared on the webpage: "2236-9 Beiping Street, Donghua City. Floor area: 163.3 square meters. Estimated value: 2.865 million Federal Credits."

Donate the house to a social welfare organization!

Zhang Yuan took a deep breath. He felt a little reluctant, as if he'd become one of those legendary tycoons who casually threw money around to show off...

"So be it. I'll donate it. That's just how noble I am!"

It wasn't really that he had such good morals.

Zhang Yuan had no elders above him or children below him. Since he'd decided to leave Earth, it wasn't as if he could take his property with him onto the spaceship.