Caravan

Your suffering was the end of the world to you, but to others, it was merely the strange rattle of an unlatched trash can lid in the evening breeze.

Winter in the Great Wilderness was bitterly cold. Wearing your father's ill-fitting padded coat, you trudged along the snow line buried beneath wind and snow, stumbling forward in a daze.

This blizzard taught you one lesson: on the snowy plains of the Great Wilderness, wind and snow would bury every trace of where you had been. Here, you could only move forward.

The Aetherium Chip could barely shield you from the cold, but it could not ease your hunger. Every step you took into the deep snow made your body feel weighted with lead, leaving you struggling to move.

But just as you were about to collapse, you luckily encountered a truck caravan traveling through the Great Wilderness. They noticed you and your sister, half-buried in the snow, as well. After studying you and the baby in your arms for a while, the caravan leader had no intention of stopping, but a middle-aged woman stuffed a piece of bread into your hands.

Bai Heng accepted the bread, but did not leave.

As the caravan leader took you for an unreasonable little beggar and prepared to drive him away,

Bai Heng bit his cold, chapped lip.

"Can you take us in? I can work."

The people in the caravan were stunned for a moment upon hearing your words.

Then the caravan leader was the first to laugh, followed by every member of the caravan.

They seemed to find it amusing. Once the laughter died down, the caravan leader raised his drooping brows and said to Bai Heng,

"Hey, kid, we're merchants. Merchants, understand? We're not some charity. After the disasters in the Great Wilderness, there are plenty of children like you. If we picked up a few every time we passed by, people might mistake us for child traffickers."

He laughed as he continued,

"Besides, what work can you do? We're not some grand lords who need servants. If we let you two stay with the caravan, that's two extra mouths to feed for nothing."

Listening to their laughter, Bai Heng lowered his head and asked softly,

"Do you need help keeping warm?"

"Huh?" The caravan leader did not understand what Bai Heng meant.

Bai Heng raised his head, took an old metal component resembling a chip from his pocket, and pressed its button. A virtual display appeared before him.

After tapping the display several times, a pale red film gradually spread outward.

The caravan leader frowned. He felt warmer, as though he were sitting beside a fireplace, but before he could speak,

Bai Heng spoke first.

"This chip has a password set on it. If you enter the wrong password, it will explode immediately. Of course, I can also detonate it myself."

Hearing this, the caravan leader furrowed his brow, curled his lip, and said,

"Kid, I'm not interested in your Aetherium Chip... I just want to know why you have one of these things when they're strictly controlled by the Oasis District."

"My mother left it to me. She was from the Oasis District," Bai Heng answered calmly.

Just as the caravan leader had said, Bai Heng had rarely seen anything called an Aetherium Chip where he lived. However, he had seen plenty of game cartridges, discarded receivers, and game consoles sent over from the Oasis District.

It was not just the children of the Oasis District. Even in the Great Wilderness, where material life was extremely scarce, the spiritual nourishment known as "video games" had still seeped into everyone's lives.

The Aetherium Chip his mother left behind was clearly quite old. It was one she had used back in the Oasis District.

The codes and programs that operated the Aetherium Chip had also been taught to him by his mother from memory.

"I won't cause you any trouble. Just give us something to eat."

Bai Heng had demonstrated his value, and that value truly tempted the caravan leader.

The caravan leader agreed to let you and your sister remain with the caravan. They also carried powdered milk as merchandise, enough to feed Brownie.

At six years old, you traveled with the caravan across every region of the Great Wilderness. Sometimes, the caravan also passed through Scrap Mountain and Neon City in the Oasis District. From afar, you gazed at the towering buildings that pierced the clouds and the black drones patrolling above the city. You had thought of entering that neon-shrouded city to seek news of your parents. But the caravan members told you that people from the wilderness needed identification to enter the city. And your current identity was that of a wandering orphan, an undocumented person who could not enter the Oasis District at all.

At seven years old, you and Brownie still lived with the truck caravan. You cleared out a small space in the truck bed, and that became your home. Sometimes, when the caravan camped at outposts in Scrap Mountain or the Great Wilderness, you would try scavenging. If you were lucky, you could find a few broken dolls. After washing them clean, you would bring those old cloth dolls back for Brownie, who was just beginning to babble.

But you discovered that compared to those soft cloth dolls, she seemed to prefer lying against you and watching you clear the countless video games on an old-fashioned game console, even though she could not understand a thing at that age.

At eight years old, while traveling with the convoy, you often collected books about Aetherium Chips. Although you had never received any systematic education, through trial and error during your travels as a merchant, you figured out many ways to use Aetherium Chips.

At nine years old, you had underestimated how quickly Brownie would grow up. Four years earlier, she had still been a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, but four years later, she had become a bright and clever little girl. The only thing that had not changed was that she still loved clinging to you as much as she had four years before.

Her soft silver hair had grown down to her waist during that time. It was naturally somewhat curly, and after you tied it into a ponytail, it looked more and more like a single silver turbine.

Children that age had only just learned to speak fluently, so they always had many questions. Brownie was no exception. She often clung to you and asked, "Big brother, why is my hair silver while yours is black? Why is my hair a little curly, but yours is so straight?"

You bluntly told her that you had dug her out of a trash can.

As a result, Brownie was only sad for a little while. Then she started digging through trash cans every day. When you noticed the change and curiously asked what she was doing, she answered, "I want a little brother or sister too."

At ten years old, the government of the Punklorde Oasis Zone issued a new law. It raised the taxes levied on large caravans in the Great Wilderness, and the caravan that had supported you for five years could no longer continue. To avoid making things difficult for its members, you took the initiative to bid the caravan leader farewell and told him that you planned to go to the Oasis District—to that true city of hackers.