Outside the museum.
The wind stirred the fine white sand. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but an endless wasteland.
"Brother Qian, have you ever seen a place like this?" Zhao Meiyou asked.
"No." Qian Duoduo assessed their surroundings. "It... looks like a desert."
"Brother Qian, I’m a bit illiterate and don't know much about astronomy," Zhao Meiyou said. "But I have a feeling we might not be on Earth right now."
He pointed toward the distant horizon.
There were two moons in the sky.
"It’s a possibility." Qian Duoduo looked up at the twin moons. After all, if a place like the Rum Tunnel could exist within the ruins, being off-planet wasn't that strange. "However, under certain conditions, two moons can appear from Earth as well."
Before Zhao Meiyou could ask what those conditions were, a massive whistling sound erupted from the high heavens. Like a meteor trailing a long tail, something plummeted from the sky. It wasn't until it landed nearby that Zhao Meiyou realized it wasn't a meteorite, but a spacecraft.
Qian Duoduo thought for a moment, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. "Hide," he whispered.
His form vanished. Zhao Meiyou felt a warm, solid touch on his lips as the scent of tobacco spread; they had both entered a state of invisibility.
Qian Duoduo pulled him along. "Let’s go take a look."
They weren't yet sure how much Ruins No. 000 restricted an Archaeologist’s abilities, so they didn't dare act rashly. They crept toward the craft, and just as they were wondering how to get inside, a loud *thud* echoed. The outer hull split open from both sides, and someone stepped out.
Simultaneously, they heard the sound of bells.
For some reason, Zhao Meiyou found the ringing familiar. His attention was immediately seized by the figure emerging from the hatch. Judging by the stature, it looked like a youth. Lotus flowers and gilded hairpins were layered atop its topknot, and decorative patterns were painted onto its porcelain-white cheeks. The ringing came from the gold and red bells fastened around its bare ankles.
Zhao Meiyou turned to Qian Duoduo, keeping his voice extremely low. "Brother Qian, is that a person?"
It was no wonder he asked. The youth only had the lower half of a face; the upper half was embedded with a massive ocular implant—a black external box fused between the bridge of the nose and the hairline, across which countless lines of dark green code were rapidly scrolling.
It wore no clothes, and its sex was indistinguishable. Its body was merely a vague silhouette polished from ceramic.
Qian Duoduo pondered for a moment. "It should be an android. Manufactured around the 2030s... of the 22nd century."
"The 22nd century?" Zhao Meiyou immediately recalled that this was the era when human technology had reached its most brilliant peak.
"Only the 22nd century possessed this kind of technology. Back then, bionic bodies were already perfected, which led to an archaizing trend—deliberately emphasizing the 'non-human' status of androids through their appearance. It was very popular at the time." Qian Duoduo watched the youth descending from the craft, evaluating it. "Judging by the decorations, its manufacturing cost was astronomical."
They watched the youth together, waiting for its next move, both of them tense.
The youth walked to the center of the desert, looked around, and suddenly jumped into the air, limbs splayed out like a starfish. "Son of a bitch!" it roared. "Why is this place so goddamn dilapidated?!"
Zhao Meiyou & Qian Duoduo: "...?"
The android’s emotional system was clearly advanced to an extreme degree; even from a distance, one could hear the sheer dissatisfaction in its voice. "...Damn your ancestors! I traveled thousands of miles to get back, and it’s broken like this?! Who did it? Where’s the United Government? Did those bastards finally go bankrupt?!"
It rattled off a string of terms interspersed with ancient regional curses. Even Zhao Meiyou couldn't understand all of it. "Brother Qian, what is this 'United Government' it’s talking about?"
"A global organization of humanity. Founded in the 20th century, dissolved in the mid-22nd," Qian Duoduo explained. "If this is an android investigator sent to explore deep space, then the time it left Earth must have been prior to 2149, because the United Government dissolved on January 1st of that year."
"An android investigator? Deep space exploration?"
"I have a theory." Qian Duoduo stared at the shouting, streaking youth in the distance. "The 22nd century saw a long period of 'Space Fever.' Human colonization and development once reached the edge of Orion. At the same time, a massive number of ships were sent into the deeper reaches of the universe for scientific research. Most of those crews were androids."
Zhao Meiyou: "...And?"
"And," Qian Duoduo said softly, "is it possible that some research teams, due to unforeseen circumstances or an excessively long mission, have finally returned to their homeland... only to find a hundred years have passed?"
At that moment, the youth’s roar echoed across the desert again—
"Earth! Oh, mother of mine—how did you get so trashed?!"
"Where are the humans?! Did humanity go and fucking extinct *again*?!"
Zhao Meiyou: "..."
Sure enough, even from an android’s perspective, humanity was either seeking death or currently on the way to it.
Once they determined the youth was harmless, Qian Duoduo tried to make contact. However, he found his hand passing directly through the youth’s body like a phantom. At first, he thought it was some high-level shielding mechanism, but when Zhao Meiyou tried touching the spacecraft, the result was the same. They could enter the objects, but they could not interact with any physical matter.
By the same token, the android seemed unable to see them.
"This is quantum residue." Qian Duoduo had seen this phenomenon before. "Some ruins remain unentered by Archaeologists for so long that the quantum state becomes 'Schrödingerian.' It synthesizes its own reality, which outsiders cannot touch."
Zhao Meiyou’s illiteracy remained consistent—he didn't understand the jargon, but he caught the main point: for now, they could only watch this android youth have its virus-like breakdown; they couldn't interfere.
The two of them soon figured out a few things. The craft the youth arrived in was merely a scout ship; a much larger starship was currently floating in orbit, which was why they could see two moons.
The starship contained a complete, self-sustaining ecological cycle system, a vast library of species' genetic data, and a research force that had been in stasis for fifty years.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—this mission was of such high priority that it included a team of pure humans alongside the androids. Qian Duoduo found a way to check the ship’s flight logs and realized why it had only just returned: the ship’s life support system had malfunctioned, forcing all humans into cryosleep. Only one android pilot was left awake. Due to limited fuel, they could only limp back at one percent of their maximum speed.
However, the android youth clearly hadn't expected the Earthly home to look like this. It was now the 23rd century; the Orion War and the Great Catastrophe had just ended. Whether there were any living people left on Earth—or if the environment could even support life—was a major question. To be safe, it didn't wake all the humans in stasis. Instead, following the serial numbers, it woke only one person.
Researcher No. 000, code name: Waipo Qiao.
Zhao Meiyou watched the person rising from the stasis pod and said in wonder, "Brother Qian, did the United Government back then hire child labor?"
The person wore a form-fitting sleep suit made of a gel-like fabric that traced a very soft silhouette—it was a girl.
Unless humans from centuries ago had mutated to be immortal and youthful, this girl was, at most, in her early teens.
"In the 22nd century, human brain development reached unimaginable heights. Geniuses were common," Qian Duoduo said, unsurprised. "Archaeologists have found records of 'brainwave prenatal education' in ruins. Though the principles are unknown, infants born from it had incredibly high intelligence."
Zhao Meiyou looked at the girl. There was indeed a sharpness in her eyes, the kind of gaze usually found in someone decades older. But because she was still a girl, that sharpness felt crystal clear.
He felt a bit hesitant. "Can we really trust the things we see in the ruins?"
"The reality within a ruin is a Schrödinger reality," Qian Duoduo replied. "Humanity has lost too much in the river of time. Technology from centuries ago looks no different to us than magic, alchemy, or myth did to the people of that era."
"But the android’s choice was wise." Qian Duoduo watched them quickly begin to exchange information. "At least in terms of apparent age, they share a commonality. It makes communication easier."
The boy and girl stood before a massive display screen. Species data, resources, ecological info—all sorts of charts and text flickered past at lightning speed. Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo stood nearby like two useless adults, listening to professional jargon they didn't understand fly from the children's lips. Eventually, Zhao Meiyou just sat down and tugged on the hem of Qian Duoduo’s pants. "Brother Qian, my legs are sore. Let’s rest a bit."
Qian Duoduo sat down as well. "We might be staying here longer than predicted."
"Yeah, we have to stay for the entire duration of 'saving the world.'" Zhao Meiyou watched the girl mobilize the starship’s resources. Although he couldn't exactly grasp what the two were planning, one thing was certain: they intended to remediate this desolate, post-catastrophe Earth.
"Let the kids worry about the survival of the human race."
Zhao Meiyou stretched his limbs, draped an arm over Qian Duoduo’s shoulder, and gave a lazy smile.
"Mature adults should be kissing at a time like this."
And so, the mature adults followed behind the reliable children, shuttling back and forth between the starship and the Earth. The girl known as Waipo Qiao didn't wake any more people. Instead, she and the android youth explored the surface alone. Sometimes Zhao Meiyou couldn't tell if they were saving the world or playing a game. "Pull me up!" He watched the girl on the ground; she had just jumped from a height of several hundred meters and was now screaming at the hovering drone in the air, looking both majestic and a little crazed. "I want to jump again!"
"My lady!" The boy roared back at her in a thick regional dialect. "We don't have much fuel left! This is our only hover-drone! Hurry up and finish collecting the surface data!"
"Pull me up!" The girl pointed at him from below. "Or I’ll dismantle you when we get back!"
"Fine by me!" The boy didn't buy it. He sat by the hatch and started picking at his feet. "Dismantle me and give me a new body. I want an eight-pack."
"This is a United Government ruin—" the girl screamed from below. "You jumping down is basically dancing on those bastards' graves—"
The boy immediately jumped down without a second thought.
Zhao Meiyou watched the two kids going wild in the ruins below. He didn't know how they recognized this as a United Government site. "They seem to have complicated feelings about the United Government."
"Back then, space colonization and exploration policies were partially mandatory, almost like a military draft. It’s normal for the populace to resent it."
Qian Duoduo sat beside him in the cabin, looking down. "That might be why Waipo Qiao hasn't woken more humans. There might be superiors in there who would use 'policy' to restrain her."
Zhao Meiyou had fully entered a state of "letting go." He said slowly, "Humanity is extinct, and they’re still worried about policy?"
"Even if they are the remnants of a destroyed world," Qian Duoduo said, "they are still human."
"I just thought of something," Zhao Meiyou said suddenly. "They both jumped down. Who’s flying this drone? How do they get back to the ship?"
Qian Duoduo blinked. "It should be on autopilot."
"Autopilot?" Zhao Meiyou was skeptical. "Is that reliable? Can it land and park itself?"
As it turned out, the autopilot could not land and park itself. Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo could only watch and not interfere, worrying that the two kids would die and humanity would finally achieve world peace through extinction. Eventually, Qian Duoduo studied the console and concluded that the drone would automatically descend once the fuel reached a certain limit. There were eighteen hours left until that descent.
In these eighteen hours of isolation, saving the world had nothing to do with them.
The boy and girl on the ground clearly knew this. Waipo Qiao finished collecting soil samples and handed them to the android. "We’ve done all we can. Let’s rest."
Her voice was a bit hoarse from all the shouting. The girl shed her heavy protective suit and took a breath of the heavily polluted, post-cataclysm air. The android youth watched her. "That will shorten your lifespan."
"I’ve already lived a long time. Longer than most humans." Waipo Qiao lay down in the ruins, looking up at the massive twin moons. "Roughly a hundred years have passed since the ship launched."
Perhaps because she had slept for so long, Waipo Qiao’s personality seemed fragmented. Sometimes she was a decisive genius, sometimes a wild girl, and sometimes she seemed like a long-departed elder. At this moment, she splayed her limbs under the moonlight. Every breath she took compressed her lifespan, and thus, the years she had missed while sleeping were also shortened. She looked at the starless sky and spoke. "The first time I came to the United Government, you could still see the Evening Star."
"Those were good years," the elder-like girl said.
"The cities were full of stars. It was hard to tell the difference between suns and satellites. Cars flowed through the sky-streets. You could stop at a red light and watch the fireworks. I went to the biggest Chinatown in the city. The tallest restaurant was built on a nuclear-powered airship. So many android geishas danced up there. And there was a storyteller who could sing, wearing a teal mask. I didn't understand what he was saying, but his voice was beautiful."
She paused, then added, "I was groomed for deep space travel from birth. Literature wasn't in my curriculum. It wasn't until long after the voyage began that I found the song he sang in the database."
The boy asked, "What did he sing?"
The girl reached out, her fingertips as white as the moon above. She turned her wrist gracefully and slowly sang a line:
"I think of the journey ahead, a thousand miles of mist and waves—"
A flurry of green code flashed across the android’s visor. Immediately, the characters appeared.
*I think of the journey ahead, a thousand miles of mist and waves.*
*The evening haze hangs heavy, the southern sky vast and deep.*
"This is the work of an ancient Eastern poet from about twelve hundred years ago. Poets of that era wrote lines of varying lengths to make them easier to sing," the android recited from its database. "Do you like his poetry?"
"It’s not that I like his poetry; honestly, I don't really understand what he wrote," Waipo Qiao said quietly. "I just feel... there are twelve hundred years inside his poems."
Compared to that, her time in stasis seemed so fleeting.
*Where shall I be when I wake from wine tonight?*
*By the willow-fringed bank, in the morning breeze under a waning moon.*
Another flash of code crossed the boy’s face. "Since we’re idle anyway, I found a melody in the database with a suitable rhythm. Do you want to hear it?"
"You’re going to sing?" Waipo Qiao looked at it, surprised by its ability to capture her mood. "Is your intelligence level a bit too high?"
"You currently hold supreme command over the ship. You can choose to downgrade my data or shut me down," the android said. "Do you need me to refresh and reboot?"
Waipo Qiao thought about it. "Never mind. What can you sing? Let’s hear it."
Synthesizing her language and emotional values, the boy stood up and tried to repeat the girl’s lyrics: "I think of the journey ahead, a thousand miles of mist and waves; the evening haze hangs heavy, the southern sky vast and deep."
"A bit too high-pitched," Waipo Qiao critiqued. "Try an octave lower."
The boy cleared his throat and tried another line: "Since ancient times, the passionate have grieved at parting—"
"Now it’s too low. Listen to me." Waipo Qiao sat up, took a breath, and sang a demonstration. "Try again?"
It was indeed difficult. The android tried its best to mimic her expression. Its processing core ran at maximum capacity, analyzing and deconstructing massive amounts of data, building a model, attempting to recreate the unique spirit within the girl.
A moment later, it raised its hand slightly. Moonlight poured down like a fresh inch of silk over white porcelain.
Just as male actors of centuries past had imitated the female form, even though their physical structures were worlds apart, once they were dyed with that magnificent hue, they transcended gender.
In this moment, it truly resembled a poet from a millennium ago, singing softly at a roadside pavilion, whispering a line about the years to come.
*The years to come,*
*The finest days and fairest scenes will be in vain.*
*Though I may feel a thousand kinds of passion,*
*To whom can I ever speak of them?*
Waipo Qiao was stunned for a long time. Then she slapped her thigh. "Yes! That’s the exact 'flamboyant' feeling!"
She began to clap her hands like a hand-drum, her eyes shining with an unprecedented joy. "Come on, keep singing! I remember a few more—The wind is fierce, the sky high, the apes' wail mournful; a branch of red apricot blossoms reaches over the wall!"
They sang back and forth, almost every line out of tune. The voices of the boy and girl echoed under the moonlit sky, sometimes solemn and joyful, sometimes tinged with a slight sorrow. They sang of dappled horses and thousand-gold furs, of descending to Yangzhou in the misty blossoms of March, of phoenixes roaming the Phoenix Terrace, of the Big Dipper hanging over the western tower, of a solitary sail vanishing into the blue void, and a single sand-gull between heaven and earth. At the height of their excitement, it became a hysterical shout. The girl stripped off the rest of her protective gear and did frog-leaps under the moon in a bizarre dance. They seemed to have gone mad in that moment, but in that moment, they were the only two people in the world. When the world contains only two madmen, they become the measure of all things; they could define "normal" by their own standards.
Thus, in this moment, they were the most normal, the most insane, the most pained, and the most joyful. They were all the happiness and misfortune of the world, all the longevity from antiquity to eternity. Naturally, they were also the sovereigns who sat upon a throne of all poetry.
*I am a copper pea that cannot be steamed soft, boiled tender, hammered flat, or popped in a pan,*
*Who told you young masters to crawl into that trap—the one that cannot be hoed through, chopped down, untied, or escaped—that slow-moving, thousand-layered silken snare?*
*I play with the moon of Liang Garden, drink the wine of Tokyo, admire the flowers of Luoyang, and pluck the willows of Zhangtai.*
*I can play Go, I can play Cuju, I can hunt, I can jest, I can dance and sing, I can play instruments, I can perform, I can recite poetry, I can play Shuanglu.*
*Even if you knock out my teeth, twist my mouth, lame my legs, or break my hands—though heaven has cursed me with these several ailments—I still refuse to stop!*
By the end, Waipo Qiao’s voice was completely gone. She lay on the ground, panting as she rolled over, and said to the boy under the moon, "That’s it. Your voice now sounds just like the song I heard a hundred years ago."
"It wasn't that hard," the boy said, acting a bit smug.
The girl spat. "That’s because I’m a good teacher."
"Tch, look at you."
"What about me?"
"You don't look like a human."
"Well, you’re wrong there." Waipo Qiao lay under the moon and made a solemn proclamation. "I’m telling you, humans are all exactly like this."
What are humans like?
The android suddenly turned its head to look at the girl sprawled on the ground. A string of green code flashed across its visor. "Hey, Waipo Qiao. Watch this."
A white cube rose from the android’s palm, rapidly expanding. The girl saw the light and sat up. "You’re equipped with a holographic projection system too?"
Before she could finish, vermilion towers rose from the ground. She saw herself surrounded by fireworks. Android geishas in magnificent robes danced under the moon. She knew not if she was in heaven or the mortal realm; there were only the fading lights of the festival.
The boy put on a teal mask, wearing wide robes and long sleeves as he sat behind a desk. He struck a gavel, his voice as beautiful as it had been a hundred years ago, singing and chanting, ending with a long cry.
Under the glow of red candles, he sang:
*Rock-a-bye, baby,*
*Rock all the way to Grandma Bridge.*
***
