The Kid Next Door

After leaving the subway station and walking east for about ten minutes, he reached his aunt's home.

"...You're really leaving Earth? You're the only child in your family! If you were my son, I'd give you a piece of my mind!"

Sure enough, his aunt's eyes were brimming with tears. She couldn't bear to see him go and said all sorts of things to persuade him to stay.

Faced with relatives who cared so much about him, Zhang Yuan gave an awkward smile, unsure what to say. He turned his gaze toward the window.

His aunt lived on the 192nd floor. Looking out, they could see a very distant stretch of scenery.

Donghua City was very well planned. The outermost ring was made up of agricultural and industrial zones, with the urban district in the middle. The buildings were spaced far apart, ensuring every household could get sunlight.

"The plans are already set. If I back out now, I'll be a deserter and face very severe punishment. This is my dad's wish, too. If he were still alive, he'd definitely support me..."

After recalling countless days and nights of hard work, how could he give up now?

"You won't come back?"

"Yeah. I won't be coming back..."

His aunt's eyes reddened. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

To hide her sadness, she hurried into the kitchen to cook, wiping her eyes with her sleeves now and then.

Meanwhile, his uncle sat on the sofa with his legs crossed, cracking sunflower seeds and watching TV.

He said cheerfully, "A real man should set his sights far and wide. Going into space is a good thing! It's not like he's dead. I don't know what your aunt's getting so worked up about!"

"Look at this news report. If I weren't so old and my education weren't so limited, I'd sign up myself!"

The TV blared loudly. The screen was showing a documentary about the Earth Era spacecraft, full of grand slogans like "witnessing history," "restarting civilization," and "humanity's first." It had his uncle so fired up that he wished he could set out among the stars himself.

"Ah, I'm getting old. I wish I were as young as you."

Half an hour later, the food was ready. The atmosphere at the table was a little somber. His aunt kept urging Zhang Yuan to eat more, saying strange things like "you need a full stomach before you set off" and "you won't be able to eat chicken, duck, or fish once you're in space."

To ease his family's worries, Zhang Yuan took the initiative to talk about his plans.

"...Apart from routine maintenance work on the spacecraft, we'll have plenty of free time. So I plan to learn as much as I can before going into hibernation. Ideally, I'll finish my master's and doctoral courses before we reach our destination..."

"Will there be teachers on the spacecraft?"

"Of course. There are five hundred thousand people on board! Most of them have specialized skills, and many are more qualified than I am."

"And there are plenty of top experts, too, like university professors and senior engineers from companies. They're all very capable... There are even people at the level of academicians!"

His uncle nodded and sighed. "That's a good plan. You have to keep learning for as long as you live. Qingqing, did you hear that? Without an education, you can't make a living in this society. Whatever you do, you need knowledge! This isn't the old days anymore..."

The girl sitting beside Zhang Yuan was his aunt's daughter, Ye Qingqing. Suddenly getting a lecture directed at her, she couldn't help pouting.

Zhang Yuan wasn't a top genius, but he was a model of hard work and perseverance—a good student in his relatives' eyes. Ye Qingqing naturally resented always being compared to a "good kid."

In a voice so soft only she could hear, she muttered, "I don't need trigonometry to sell vegetables..."

Ye Qingqing didn't really dare to argue loudly, afraid her father would hear and scold her again.

By now, the anti-intellectual claim that "education is useless" had long since been rejected by the public.

A simple comparison said it all: staff in the major space cities and lunar bases earned an average of around 600,000.

The average income in Xia Kingdom was about 60,000.

The gap between their average incomes was tenfold!

Xia Kingdom was already one of the wealthiest countries on Earth.

If you didn't study, then sorry—you couldn't go into space, and you'd "most likely" end up a low-income earner.

All in all, to ordinary people, working in a space city or lunar base was a very respectable thing.

"By the way, when will you go into hibernation? Didn't the TV say that most of the voyage would be spent in hibernation, and that each person would be awake for no more than ten years on average..."

Zhang Yuan thought for a moment. "Well... it depends on your abilities. If you're particularly capable, you can apply to enter hibernation later. Ordinary people will probably go into hibernation after the Jupiter resupply stop. They'll sleep for a few hundred years, wake up for a few years, and then go back into hibernation. Everyone will take turns working, and that's the only way we'll make it through this difficult stretch."

"It'll take three thousand years to reach our destination."

"Three thousand years..."

His aunt's eyes reddened again. By then, they would have been dead for ages, their bones long since turned to dust.

No one knew what the future would bring, and no one would bother thinking about what might happen three thousand years from now.

His uncle sighed, too. "Ah, let's eat. Let's just eat."

Zhang Yuan was filled with emotion.

Every astronaut had to face this choice. They had to leave behind their home planet, leave behind everything, leave behind all of this...

Time aged everyone, and the past could never be recovered. These five hundred thousand people would become witnesses to Earth's history, watching with their own eyes as Earth passed through the next three thousand years.

It sounded thrilling, but in truth, it was a profound cruelty.

They would be abandoned by the entire age they lived in.

Some might wonder why there were five hundred thousand people like this.

It sounded strange. It really was strange.

Because... a mushroom that lived only from dawn to dusk could not know night and day, and a cicada that lived only through summer could not know spring and autumn.

If you never left Earth, you would never know how vast the stars were.

Looking at Earth on the scale of the universe, you would realize that humanity's home was incredibly small—so small it made your heart race, as though it could be destroyed with a snap of the fingers.

Just as Professor Qi Yuanshan, founder of the Deep Space Foundation and father of nuclear fusion, had cried out a hundred years ago in a voice that shook the world: "What does space exploration have to do with profit!"

The mood grew quieter and quieter, until only the sounds of people picking up food and eating remained. Suddenly, his uncle said, "Uh, Qingqing's taking the college entrance exam next year. Can you recommend any good majors? Something with good job prospects."

Zhang Yuan had gotten into Z University, probably the best school an ordinary person could reach through hard work. He had also interned in a space city, so he knew what things were like there.

Ye Qingqing raised her head. She was in her second year of high school, had a rather carefree personality, and wasn't very fond of studying. Judging by her grades, she knew her own limits and didn't expect to get into a particularly good university.

In her mind, not studying would be a great liberation. As long as she didn't have to study, life would be easy and happy.

Even selling vegetables at a market would be better than studying.

Zhang Yuan thought for a moment. "She should choose a major based on her interests."

His aunt said a little sheepishly, "She doesn't really have any particular interests or hobbies..."

That was perfectly normal. Most people in their second year of high school had no idea what they wanted to do in the future and no detailed plans for their lives.

They simply studied when their teachers and parents told them to. They only spent a few hurried days planning their futures when it was time to fill out their university applications.