Harem of Three Thousand Beauties?

After flirting with the foreign beauty, Zhang Yuan felt...

Not bad!

As for that "animal rights association," it was pure nonsense, just an excuse to make a quick getaway.

As Zhang Yuan munched on a grilled octopus skewer, he couldn't help sighing to himself. Alas, I won't be able to eat these much longer. What a shame...

The technology for synthesizing meat from cells in a petri dish had been around for a long time. After years of research, synthetic meat had become cheaper than natural meat, as well as more environmentally friendly and healthier. It was hugely popular among people in the Third World.

But synthetic meat always had a soft texture. It was a bit like a meat patty, lacking the springiness of muscle and the satisfying chew of cartilage. It just didn't taste that good.

As he ate, Zhang Yuan thought about his conversation with Professor Wang Zhong.

They had talked for quite a while, and not just about academic matters. They had also discussed various aspects of the Earth Era, including its work system and economic system.

An undergraduate like him, whose grades had been decent but who hadn't done anything exceptional, would be classified as a Grade Two or Grade Three worker, with a base salary of just 1,100 New Credits a month.

If he published a few decent papers and proved his academic worth, he could land a more advanced job and raise his salary to 1,300...

Competition was that ruthless.

"If I work under a good advisor and get some decent experimental results, I can get a raise too."

"If I can complete some high-quality patents and bring in revenue for the Deep Space Foundation back on Earth, I can get another raise..."

"Is this the new economic system they came up with? Hmm, it feels a little strange, but it sounds pretty effective."

Ideals could inspire people for a while, but not forever. The Earth Era was a small, independent society, so it naturally needed a complete economic system to encourage its staff to work hard.

The "money" here wasn't the Federal Credits used across Earth, but the currency aboard the ship, known as New Credits.

As long as they didn't make any serious mistakes at work, everyone received a set amount each waking month, according to their work grade. In essence, it was a kind of bond issued by the government.

New Credits could be used to buy food and clothes, or pay for entertainment and other services aboard the ship. They could also be used for transactions between individuals.

Of course, since the supply of goods was limited, salaries couldn't be very high. Three or four thousand was the most anyone could expect, so the wealth gap wouldn't be all that large...

Besides this economic policy, there was a second one: the conversion policy between Federal Credits and New Credits.

The Deep Space Foundation, which would provide follow-up support for the "light route," might run short of money. To raise those funds as quickly as possible, the Foundation was calling on the astronauts to make donations, whether of personal assets or intellectual property.

Donating assets wasn't mandatory. Everyone could contribute what they could afford.

Assets on Earth could be converted, to a certain extent, into New Credits for use aboard the ship.

The conversion plan was still being worked out. Everyone would be notified once it was ready.

Alas... This might be a little strange, but everyone should understand, right? Helping the Foundation means helping ourselves.

The 500,000 people aboard the ship all had at least a touch of idealism in them. They were going to an unknown planet to establish a human colony. They'd have to endure hardship and toil, and might even have to give up their lives. All the difficulties had been laid out in advance, and everyone had prepared themselves.

Did they really expect to live better than they had on Earth?

If they wanted comfort, they should have stayed on Earth.

In any case, Zhang Yuan had already donated all his family's assets, so he had a clear conscience.

But there was one more thing he cared about: work grades aboard the ship. The higher the grade, the more ship privileges one had, and the more important the position—and the higher the salary.

People always needed to find themselves a goal. Zhang Yuan didn't want to become an insignificant, dispensable nobody aboard the ship.

However, work grades couldn't be earned through donations. They could only be obtained through personal ability and achievements, calculated fairly and impartially by a complete "impact factor algorithm."

The highest-ranking position was "captain." There were only a few candidates for it, and they would be difficult to replace.

Zhang Yuan knew all too well how difficult it was to get the ship to make the journey to a planet twenty light-years away.

Even though Earth's civilization had done everything it could to prepare, the entire journey would still be arduous.

The captain had to coordinate and plan, allocate resources, and train the next generation of successors. On top of that, the captain had to shoulder immense psychological pressure. The claim that even a pig could be captain was basically the kind of thing only a pig would say.

Below the captain were the ship's middle-level officials: department heads, university experts and professors, project reviewers, community committee members, and so on.

At the bottom were, naturally, workers like them—ship maintenance crews and factory workers. They had been brought aboard in surplus numbers. To put it bluntly, it wasn't that they were unimportant; there were simply so many of them that even if half died, it wouldn't have much effect on the ship's operations...

By this point, Zhang Yuan had more or less worked out his plans for the future.

His undergraduate grades had been decent, but among the best students, he was only average. So his best bet was to write a few good papers and improve his social standing.

"In this new society, knowledge is king. The social atmosphere is great."

"If I can write some decent papers, they'll make it easier to find an advisor. They'll also prove what I'm capable of and earn me a higher social standing."

But what should he write about...

What kind of paper could he write?

He racked his brains and wracked his memory, but for now, he couldn't come up with any particularly good ideas.

There was no real benefit to churning out a paper just for the sake of it. Professor Wang Zhong would only give him a good scolding, and that wasn't what he wanted.

Lost in thought, he spent more than ten minutes getting to his temporary dormitory, panting heavily as he arrived.

The dorm room lights were on, and one of his roommates was inside. Like him, he was an astronaut who had arrived early.

"Knock, knock, knock." He rapped on the door.

"Come in!"

The moment he stepped into the room, Zhang Yuan nearly jumped out of his skin.

The floor was covered in all sorts of mechanical contraptions. There were red ones, white ones, yellow ones, and all kinds of oddly shaped robots.

Some were still careening around like toy cars, "smacking" into the walls.

"Careful. Don't step on them."

A plain-looking young man was crouched in the corner, with some greasy-looking substance smeared on his face.

Zhang Yuan quickly dodged one. The little car crashed into a table leg again, and a few parts fell off.

He carefully made his way around the robots and set his seafood noodles on the table. Curious, he asked, "Hey, are you making robots?"

"No, I'm trying to choose..."

"These are all my favorite creations. I'm trying to decide which ones I can take into space with me. It's giving me a headache!"

The young man said this with a troubled expression.

At the same time, he seemed a little pleased with himself, his eyes constantly watching Zhang Yuan's reaction.

Zhang Yuan smiled and nodded in understanding. "A harem of three thousand beauties, but you can only take one with you. That must be tough, huh?"

Each person was allowed to bring twenty kilograms of belongings. No more.

These machines were made of metal. Any two of them would easily weigh more than twenty kilograms combined.

"You can say that again. I've been agonizing over it for hours!" the young man said miserably.

Zhang Yuan had no intention of commenting on this behavior.

Everyone had their own hobbies, and there was nothing wrong with that. Anyone who could build robots had to be pretty impressive.