The homeless man on the bench was mentally ill. Old Bruce only had to watch him for a minute to be sure. Even so, Old Bruce walked over, sat beside him, and listened to him ramble about all the hardships he'd suffered.
It all started when his house caught fire, leaving him homeless. The house burned to ashes, and the insurance company refused to pay out. Then he was hospitalized after the fire, taken there by ambulance.
His house was gone, but he still had to keep paying his bank loan and property taxes. Three days in the hospital had left him with $450,000 in debt. The hospital had far too many incomprehensible charges.
Even crying to a doctor cost money.
"Can you believe it? They charged me six thousand bucks just for calling an ambulance!"
Old Bruce said nothing.
He'd hardly ever been to the hospital, much less called an ambulance. He was a doctor himself and could treat his own illnesses at home.
"To pay it all back, I worked three jobs a day and got only four hours of sleep. And then what?"
"The debt kept growing day by day!"
"All I ever did was pay interest. It was completely pointless..."
The homeless man spoke with such sorrow that Old Bruce could only pat him on the shoulder.
"Being homeless in Gotham is a lot better now." The man smiled.
"You can get up whenever you want!"
"When you're hungry, you can go get free food. When it's cold, you can get socks and blankets, too."
"If you want to make a little money, you can sell some plasma."
"..."
"You're not from Gotham?" Old Bruce asked.
"Of course not."
"If I were a local, how would I have ended up like this?"
"Most of the homeless people in Gotham came from other cities. I came all the way from the West Coast."
"You listening to all this because you're thinking of becoming homeless, too?" the man asked, looking at Old Bruce's disheveled appearance.
"It's fine. You just have to let go of that insignificant pride of yours." The homeless man began sharing his wisdom with Old Bruce.
"Is your wife getting ready to divorce you, or are you sick?" he asked.
"Neither."
"Then you can't keep up with your loan payments?"
"I'm not planning to become homeless," Old Bruce said.
"See that guy?" The homeless man on the bench pointed to a vagrant washing his face with water from the garden fountain.
"He became homeless because he couldn't pay off his student loans."
"I know why every person around here became homeless."
"Batman..."
"Everyone comes to pay their respects to him."
"Did he die, or did he lose faith in the world?"
"Batman was born to fight crime," Old Bruce said.
"Is that so?"
"You don't understand how chaotic Gotham was when I was young," Old Bruce said. "You should be grateful to Batman that you can live on the streets of Gotham in peace now."
"Back then, you could be homeless one day, then end up in a Gotham gang the next."
"Selling herbs used to be illegal, too! Look at it now—it's legal! It's a respectable business," the homeless man said.
"..."
"Go take a few laps around Fifth Avenue and see for yourself!"
"It's full of people who look like zombies."
Old Bruce left.
He drove around Fifth Avenue to see what was going on.
Gotham now had fewer than two hundred criminal cases a year. In a city of ten million people, that was an astounding figure. Gotham had become a good place. So where was the problem?
Old Bruce drove around Fifth Avenue a few times. There were even more tents here than around City Garden, and their occupants looked just like the bench-dwelling vagrant had described: like zombies.
What was he supposed to do about this?
Old Bruce couldn't figure it out.
He needed to gather more information.
Gotham seemed to have fallen into decline once again, yet people were still obeying the law...
Old Bruce arrived at the Wayne Enterprises headquarters and called a board meeting with a stormy expression.
He was going to launch a new project.
"Bruce, you want to get into the internet?"
"It's not difficult," Old Bruce said.
"I want to build a video platform where everyone can share their daily lives online."
"They'll even be able to make a little money from the videos they upload," Old Bruce said.
"Virtual economies on the internet aren't Wayne Enterprises' specialty, Bruce. We're an industrial company."
"But we have the technical foundation. This project will be no trouble for us at all. I know that for a fact," Old Bruce said.
"All right. How much are we investing?"
"Ten billion," Old Bruce said.
"Have you lost your mind?"
"I haven't lost my mind. I just want it done as quickly and as well as possible."
"Wayne isn't making as much money as it used to, Bruce," a board member reminded him.
"I'll be involved in this project from start to finish." Old Bruce stood firm, and in the end, the board approved yet another one of his impulsive decisions.
Three months later, Old Bruce's idea became reality. Wayne Enterprises launched an app abbreviated as , and within three days it had been downloaded tens of millions of times.
Lu Bian often shared his daily life with the group through videos and photos, and the other members did the same. Old Bruce had borrowed their way of sharing, and now the project was live. From the feedback he'd seen, Gotham's internet users seemed to like it.
The app's algorithm hadn't been developed by Old Bruce and Wayne Enterprises' programmers. They had borrowed the Evolutionary Algorithm provided by Shi Tianwu, too.
The Evolutionary Algorithm Shi Tianwu had uploaded to the Chat Group was a universal template. You only had to adjust it to suit your needs, and it was ready to use.
The app Old Bruce had created borrowed heavily from the Chat Group's features. Users could livestream, record and upload videos, take and share photos, chat and make friends, and even make online transactions using virtual currency. Wayne had its own bank, which gave the company an advantage in online transactions.
"Oh my God, changed my life!! They really sent me money!" A single mother posted a video on the app. Sitting in her car, she cried as she spoke.
"This is my lunch today. Let's see what you guys are having." A high school student uploaded a video and got hundreds of replies within minutes. He even made a little pocket money.
All kinds of videos blossomed on G. Some people earned a few cents from theirs, while hugely popular videos could bring in thousands of dollars. The app Wayne Enterprises had launched, , swept across the entire internet like a tsunami.
Old Bruce had achieved his goal of gathering information. At the same time, he had shattered people's information cocoons.
"Friends, welcome to today's Homeless Survival Guide! I'm homeless in Gotham again today!!" Old Bruce came across a video by the man from the bench. "Yay~! Time to beg for food again~! Thanks, Mr. Wayne!!"
Before you continue