Bang!
Gunshots rang out in the open cornfield.
Murphy is collecting the harvested corn stalks with his grandfather and brother.
Upon hearing the gunshot, all three immediately tensed up and stopped what they were doing.
Donald carried Murphy and ran wildly toward the car outside the cornfield. His grandson Tom, crouching down beside them, rushed into the car even faster and opened the door to wait for them.
The family of three all got into the car.
Donald gripped the steering wheel, his aged body taking a few deep breaths. The car was already running, but he didn't drive off immediately; instead, he kept looking in the direction from which the gunshots were coming.
One minute, two minutes...
The car remained silent for five minutes before someone drove up from that direction.
I waved to them when I saw them.
"It was just an outsider who tried to drive in, but it's fine now, they've driven him away!"
The tense atmosphere immediately eased.
Donald opened the car door and let his two grandsons out, and the three of them went back to work in the cornfield.
Murphy looked up at the sky. "Things seem to be getting more and more chaotic."
"Yes, things are getting more and more chaotic, but we just need to focus on doing our own thing."
Donald went back to the cornfield and continued working.
Tom's feet crunched under the straw, muttering, "Can we really keep living our lives?"
"Sooner or later, someone will break into our area, or rather, someone has already done it. This is a grain-producing region..."
"We have a satellite phone, we can contact Dad," Murphy said.
"That wasn't Cooper's call; it's not the right time yet." Donald straightened up, pondered for a moment, and then instructed, " Tom, when you get home, take some of this year's harvest and exchange it for a new batch of bullets."
"I think we should also stock up on gasoline," Murphy said, raising his hand.
"Okay, let's do it this way. Now, let's get to work."
As the sun was about to set, bundles of straw were already piled on the pickup truck. Donald then used an extra rope to tie them all to the open cargo bed, piling them up several times higher than the cab.
The pickup truck was started again, the modified engine vibrating violently, black smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe, and the old car slowly started moving like a weak Old Ma.
Murphy sat by the window, looking out. "If only Dad were still here, he could definitely fix this car completely."
Donald, who was driving, was unhappy.
"My repairs weren't bad either, okay?"
"But Dad used to drive this car and take us chasing a drone before, now... I doubt it can even catch up with Donnie's bicycle next door."
"I will learn how to fix cars!"
Tom declared confidently, "I'll be even better than Dad!"
Murphy rolled her eyes at him. "Come on, you were the one who burned out the engine last time..."
An old man and two children sat in the old car, which was loaded with tall straws in the back, and drove slowly.
Nearly half an hour later, the three of them returned home.
However, it didn't take long for the sheriff in charge of the area to come to the door in person, and he also brought a message.
We're having a rally tomorrow night?
"Yes," the sheriff said.
"Have you heard about what happened in Pennsylvania? Just a few days ago, there was a major conflict there. Two guard units fought each other. They've become a private army now and they don't listen to anyone."
"Things are getting more and more chaotic. Maybe we'll go back to the era of cowboys in the Wild West. This is a grain-producing area, so we must unite and defend our homeland with our own guns."
"How could the guards be fighting each other?"
"Weren't they there to deal with the starving people?"
"How would I know? But it's a fact that they fought. Did you hear that foreign radio broadcast? It said the same thing and told us to be careful."
My granddaughter really likes that channel.
"Then you can have her explain that matter to you."
As the sheriff spoke, he handed over a flyer.
Donald looked down and saw a rather luxurious printed flyer, with pictures and text, and it was very neat.
Above is an automatic rifle firing, with a sentence written on it:
"Defend our homeland, with our guns!"
Donald put the flyers away.
"I'll go take a look."
The next evening.
After instructing his two children to watch the house, Donald went alone to the meeting the sheriff had mentioned.
The topic of the rally was somewhat different from what he had initially envisioned, making Donald very uneasy.
Because of the scene
The issue being discussed was no longer how to defend oneself.
More precisely, someone wanted to take advantage of this chaotic situation to gather together the households in the grain-producing areas, turn them into a group, and then... recruit soldiers and horses!
To put it bluntly, there are people in their area who want to rebel!
This area is, after all, a grain-producing region. Although their grain reserves are not as abundant as those in individual granaries, their advantage lies in their sustainability.
In addition, there is a self-organized Minuteman team responsible for patrols.
If they could get enough equipment, or even just join a guard unit, they might actually succeed...
Many young people were talking freely at the rally.
Donald, however, was in a gloomy mood.
This idea is far too risky.
He has lived for more than half a century, and all he wants is to see his two grandsons grow up and to see his son-in-law return.
After the rally ended, he practically fled home.
The first thing Donald did when he got home was to go upstairs to find Murphy and ask her to bring out the satellite phone.
"What's wrong?" Murphy looked at his grandfather curiously, handing him the satellite phone from beside the pillow.
Donald, holding the phone in one hand and fiddling with the buttons on it with the other, said, "It's time to leave. We can't stay here any longer; it's too dangerous!"
As they were talking, the satellite phone call went through.
A voice came from the other side:
"This is Amelia Brand. Are you a relative of Joseph Cooper?"
Donald quickly agreed and then stated his request.
"... It's too dangerous here now, we don't want to stay any longer, can you help us leave?"
"Okay," Amelia without hesitation, "We'll arrange for someone to take you away. I think Cooper will be happy to hear that you're here."
"How long will it take?" Donald asked anxiously.
Amelia checked all the Mutual Aid Society teams in North America using the computer system and quickly found several of the closest teams. Estimated the distance, and said, "Soon, within a week at the latest, someone will find you."
Hang up the phone.
Without pausing, Amelia put down her experiment and went to find her father, asking him to communicate with the Space-Time Branch about meeting up with Donald and his group.
"Given the current situation in North America, I think we should bring all the other people's families over."
Amelia suggested.
Professor Brand nodded in approval of her opinion.
"I will do that, but you'll need to talk to them again by phone."
"OK..."
North America is indeed getting more and more chaotic.
In Yuan Heguang's office.
Looking at the stack of reports in front of him, Zhang Tianyuan came to this conclusion effortlessly.
"Just a few days ago it was only a skirmish between two guard squads, but now it has escalated into a conflict involving more than ten guard squads, with at least five hundred dead and wounded."
"That's not all," Yuan Heguang's assistant handed over a new intelligence report, "Someone has already driven tanks into the city, and intelligence indicates that some people are even eyeing New York."
" New York?"
Zhang Tianyuan was somewhat surprised, "Isn't the other side going to do anything about it? This is their most important economic lifeline."
Although it's the end of the world and New York is in ruins, the city remains the economic center of the region, only its business has shifted from finance to freight and various resource allocation.
Much of the grain looted from Europe is still stored in underground warehouses in New York City.
In the half of society that is still barely functioning on the other side, New York is practically the center. If it were to be occupied, the effect would be no less than if the other side announced that they had lost all their granaries.
The assistant shook his head. "They're still not making any moves. They're being excessively silent on the surface, but they're secretly mobilizing resources."
"Based on our observations, they should all have gone to NASA."
"They even mobilized a team to South America, stormed into the Kourou Launch Site, the European Space Agency's main launch site, and moved almost all the abandoned equipment there back..."
Zhang Tianyuan cast a strange look at Yuan Heguang.
The other person shook his head slightly; he hadn't been able to figure out what those people were thinking.
Unlike the Snowpiercer Spacetime, after so many years of isolation, espionage activities have been reduced to zero.
Even he doesn't have any news channels in North America right now.
Of course, it is still under development.
However, this level of information is simply not readily available to them in the short term.
Zhang Tianyuan suspected that these people were trying to slack off, and even wondered if they were...
They also want to engage in Interstellar colonization.
But then I thought about it and realized it was impossible.
After all, with the limited carrying capacity of the rockets on the other side, it probably wouldn't even be enough to launch another Endurance ship, let alone carry out any Interstellar colonization.
"So what should we do now?"
Yuan Heguang said, "I will send them a message, asking them to manage the situation domestically and avoid causing a larger humanitarian crisis."
The chaos in North America came faster and may be more intense than he anticipated.
If they really let them have a good time fighting, who will develop the New Star colonies then?
Rather than having people die in war, it's better to let those people make any more contributions to all of humanity.
Therefore, Yuan Heguang quickly issued a formal document.
However, just like before, this post disappeared without a trace, receiving no response whatsoever.
The other side is pretending not to hear again.
Moreover, this time it's even more thorough than before.
Professor Brand couldn't even contact his colleagues at NASA.
They used to be able to communicate secretly via satellite.
This is not good news.
For the next period of time, the other side remained silent, as if dead.
On the contrary, the society on the other side, without any regulation, has become increasingly chaotic, and large-scale violent clashes have become more and more frequent.
After reading the briefing, Zhang Tianyuan had a sense of déjà vu, as if he were witnessing a gunfight involving hundreds of millions of people in the Day After Tomorrow Spacetime.
Fortunately, none of the parties involved in these conflicts have lost their minds and dare not attack the starving people in the granaries, so the people inside can still live a peaceful life for the time being.
However, some grain depots abandoned their neutrality and voluntarily joined the guard force, becoming part of it...
Zhang Tianyuan did not force anyone to deal with these granaries. If there were members of the Mutual Aid Society there, they would be evacuated; otherwise, no one would be sent there to coordinate in the future.
He has done more than enough.
To this day, through this special method of opening granaries and distributing grain, the Mutual Aid Society has saved nearly ten million lives, achieving remarkable results and receiving widespread praise across time and space.
The turmoil caused by the Day After Tomorrow Spacetime issue has finally subsided.
In addition, the climate in the Snowpiercer Spacetime is becoming increasingly unstable, with rain and snow covering almost half of the Earth, Navigator Space Station is sending out various weather warnings every moment.
Heavy rain, heavy snow, hail...
Fortunately, these are still within the scope of normal disasters and have not yet reached the level of the Day After Tomorrow Spacetime.
It was against this backdrop that the first wave of immigrants from the Snowpiercer Spacetime began to arrive by car, along with the engineering teams and supplies needed for railway construction.
By repairing the old railway in Interstellar Spacetime and connecting the tracks of the two spacetimes, we can use trains to migrate.
As for heavy-haul railways, construction will only begin once things have stabilized further.
Everything is moving in a positive direction.
Then...
Zhang Tianyuan then heard some news from Professor Brand that he didn't know whether it was good or bad:
"You mean they've already launched a rocket and are preparing to head to Planet No. 2?"
"Yes," Professor Brand said anxiously, "We have indeed detected continuous rocket launches, and we can confirm that they are the spacecraft of those sinners."
"After they left, NASA lifted its control, and I immediately received a message from an acquaintance who told me the whole plan..."
"Those people want to go to Planet No. 2 and establish their own colony!"
"We cannot let them escape punishment like this!"
When Professor Brand got excited, he couldn't sit still and stood up, banging his fist on the table.
Although he didn't know the whole plan, he did know that those criminals had escaped!
"Wait!" Zhang Tianyuan gestured to Professor Brand to calm down. "How did they come up with the idea of colonizing Planet No. 2?"
"Yes, because Mann has been sending back information from Planet No. 2. According to the data, it's also a potentially habitable planet."
I'm ashamed to admit it.
Because the work of pioneering New Star is too urgent and no one can spare the time, Professor Brand has been too embarrassed to ask someone to bring his student back until now.
There seems to be a tendency to leave him there indefinitely.
After all, crossing the vast expanse of space to pick up someone is no easy task, and Mann is now in hibernation, so it doesn't matter to him whether he goes early or late.
So Professor Brand simply put the matter aside for the time being.
Unexpectedly, his student has now been targeted by those criminals, who have led a large... well, anyway, a colonial army over there!