The girl had never heard the song "Grandma Bridge."
"Then why did you choose it as your code name?" the android asked after he finished singing.
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "It’s been too long; I can’t remember. It was probably randomly assigned."
The whimsy of probability manifested in that moment—the same force that allowed hydrogen atoms to form in the universe, that saw ten thousand dice cast at once and all land on six, that allowed humanity to be born and then destroyed, and that guided a century-old ship back home.
It had also drawn the girl’s code name from a nursery rhyme.
She tried to hum the melody the youth had sung. "It’s actually quite nice."
*Rocking, rocking, all the way to Grandma’s Bridge.*
Eighteen hours later, they returned to the ship to continue their search of the entire planet. Even though rising sea levels had swallowed much of the land, the blue planet still possessed sixty million square kilometers of terrain. Their exploration lasted fifteen years, until one day, Grandma Bridge discovered a basin.
The girl—no, the woman she had become—pointed to a coordinate on the holographic map. "The probes have scanned this area many times with no results. But that antique you dug out of the warehouse, the first-generation android sensor, picked up some signals. They’re faint, but it’s worth a look."
The android still looked like the same youth. He was busy synthesizing something on the console. "Got it. Can we leave tomorrow?"
"Give it a rest. How many years have you been obsessing over that recipe?" Grandma Bridge rolled her eyes. "Is that carbonated drink really that good? We have so little arable soil in the greenhouse, and you insist on planting a bunch of coffee beans."
"You don't understand," the youth argued righteously. "Saltwater Cola is divine water. It cures all ailments."
"Divine my foot. That liquid you brewed is only good for scrubbing toilets." Grandma Bridge kicked him. "Move it. Let’s go."
The youth stumbled from the kick. "Grandma Bridge, you’re twenty-eight now, aren't you? Are you going through menopause?" He scrambled away as she tried to hit him again. "Stop! I just got this chassis replaced! It’ll hurt your hand!"
Over the years, they had grown increasingly familiar. Without a social structure to guide him, the android didn't know how a woman in her twenties was supposed to act; he only knew she wasn't supposed to be like Grandma Bridge—going weeks without washing her hair, spending her days rushing between heaven and earth like a reckless madwoman.
The woman donned her protective suit and led the youth into the hovercraft. Qian Duoduo nudged Zhao Meiyou, who was fast asleep. "Wake up. They’re disembarking."
"Huh?" Zhao Meiyou opened his eyes blearily, drool staining Qian Duoduo’s shoulder. "How much time has passed?"
"Fifteen years."
Zhao Meiyou snapped awake instantly. "I slept that long?"
"Don't panic. Time seems to flow differently for us than it does for them." Zhao Meiyou’s legs were numb, and he nearly fell over; Qian Duoduo quickly steadied him. "They’re heading down. I think they might find something this time."
For over a decade, the two on the ship had searched to no avail, unable to find even a single habitable spot on the barren earth to rebuild civilization. Grandma Bridge had already begun considering the feasibility of interstellar migration.
However, Zhao Meiyou’s attention was elsewhere. He stared at the reddish-brown liquid half-synthesized on the lab table. "No way... he still hasn't perfected the Saltwater Cola?"
The ship's database didn't contain the recipe for Saltwater Cola. The warehouse only held a few crates of century-old "M-brand" molecular meal kits—fist-sized canisters that expanded into a lavish fast-food meal when heated. The android had stumbled upon them by chance, and as it turned out, the addiction to these expired products was potent. After eating them once, the youth became obsessed with reverse-engineering the recipe.
"He’s getting close," Qian Duoduo noted. "Two years ago, he made a fairly successful batch of fast-food fried chicken. Grandma Bridge tried it and said it was delicious."
"Then why is he still synthesizing chicken?" Zhao Meiyou pointed to the half-used cooking oil on the table.
"I didn't quite catch that part either," Qian Duoduo said, looking puzzled. "He said something about the flavor being 'Old Man K' style, not 'M-brand.'"
They followed the woman and the youth to the surface. The hovercraft landed in what looked like a basin. They walked through the mountains for a long time until the woman suddenly stopped. "We’re here."
It was an ordinary-looking hill with cliffs in the distance, showing no signs of anything unusual. Grandma Bridge stared at the data on her sensor and waved at the youth. "This is the place. Coordinate 29753. Drop the Mountain-Cleaving Axe."
A string of data flashed across the android's eyes. A black speck appeared in the sky, and a massive package was precision-dropped. It disassembled automatically upon landing, unleashing a gale that swept away sand and stone with a roar like ten thousand stampeding horses.
Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo saw a gargantuan machine. They had never seen such a mechanism in Metropolis; it looked like the legendary weapons of myth. The android tapped a holographic interface in the air and entered a code. The machine began to move with effortless grace.
It was hard to describe the sensation of the Mountain-Cleaving Axe in motion. Metropolis was tall and deep, making everyone's lives feel narrow and dim. Zhao Meiyou had almost never seen such a display of thunder and wind. Perhaps only in mythology could one find a similar description—the universe was chaos until Pangu raised his axe to divide it, the clear light becoming the sky and the turbid dark becoming the earth, his eyes opening for day and closing for night.
After a world-shaking upheaval that felt like a divine strike, the hill was nearly turned inside out, taking a massive chunk of the cliff with it. The thing the woman was looking for was revealed.
Within the basin lay another basin, and in that deep depression stretching to the edge of the precipice lay a vast complex of temples.
To be precise, they were buildings shaped like temples.
But upon entering, the halls that should have enshrined gods and buddhas instead housed massive factories and laboratories.
Grandma Bridge didn't seem particularly surprised by her discovery. She led the youth down the sacred path toward the main hall. "Keep up. Turn on the projection."
The android’s power surged to maximum. Within a ten-foot radius, holographic projections rippled like water. The ruins, long buried in the soil, were reconstructed by the images. Crimson pillars rose from the ground, covered in crystal tubes and circuitry that, from a distance, looked like winding sutras.
They entered the main hall. The woman looked at the statue before them. "Found it."
It was a golden body of the Buddha.
The Buddha sat in the lotus position, elegant and solemn. The android quickly scanned the golden form, pulling relevant data from the archives. "In the 22nd century, this was an android factory. Academia conducted experiments here, attempting to instill Buddhist thought into androids to observe their brainwave reactions... I can't find anything more. The security clearance for this place is very high."
Grandma Bridge studied the statue. "I have a question."
The youth was busy browsing data. "What?"
"Hey, don't you want to know how the Earth actually went to ruin over this past century?"
"That’s not hard. I could build a model to predict it; there are plenty of historical samples." The android’s response was to pull up a mountain of files. "But you’re wrong about one thing."
The woman arched an eyebrow. "What’s that?"
"It wasn't the Earth that was destroyed; it was humanity," the android corrected. "Humans hadn't even dug through the crust before they went extinct."
Grandma Bridge looked thoughtful, then nodded. "Fair point."
"In any case, this place looks like it was buried intentionally, not destroyed by war." She looked around the hall. The murals on the walls, painted with some unknown chemical pigment, were still vivid. "Are the circuit codes on those pillars still functional?"
"It seems so." The youth tried to gain access and surprisingly succeeded almost instantly. The moment the circuits connected, the entire hall blazed with light. A "click" sounded from within the android's body.
Grandma Bridge heard it. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. The operating power just overloaded for a second." The youth steadied himself, the data stream on his glasses pausing before resuming. He pointed to the Buddha statue in the center of the hall.
"This is a supercomputer."
Grandma Bridge wasn't surprised. "I figured. Building such a large shell was clearly meant to hide the mainframe. The key question is: can you decode what’s stored inside?"
"...It shouldn't be a problem," the android replied after a moment. "But it will take time."
"How long?"
"I'm not sure. The outer firewall is weak. If it's just reading partial data, it should be fast. But if we want to crack everything, it might take many years."
"No rush," Grandma Bridge decided quickly. "What’s in the outer files?"
The android went silent for a moment. "Are you sure you want to read them? I feel like this folder is a bit of a trap."
He converted the data stream into a visual display on a floating screen. As he said, it was indeed a folder.
The title was blatant.
*2180-2208: Records of the Orion War.*
Grandma Bridge froze for a second, then said, "Delete it. Permanently."
The youth immediately threw it into the shredding bin.
"And delete any video records of this section from your own storage as well." Grandma Bridge recited a string of code—the android’s highest administrative override command. It was a forced execution.
On an Earth where humanity was already extinct, such things would only be a curse if left behind. Her goal was to rebuild civilization, and the last war could always become the justification for the next.
The youth was right about one thing: regarding the cause of human extinction, given the historical samples and the global situation when she left Earth a century ago, the process wasn't hard to guess.
And she didn't need so-called "facts" to prove her own deductions. The ship possessed memory-parsing technology; she couldn't look at that file, nor could she leave any possible fuse behind.
The youth completed the forced command. For a fleeting moment, he looked hollow and lost. He looked up at her. "Do you need me to decode the mainframe?"
"Back to the ship. I’ll write a safety program for you," Grandma Bridge said. "Filter out the data that meets the safety criteria first. We’ll worry about the rest later."
They spent another ten years exploring the temple complex, making many strange discoveries. The most useful were the remnants of 22nd-century technology. Although the spaceship recorded a vast amount of cultural information, the security clearance of the scientific expedition was limited; they didn't possess all the top-tier technology of that era.
Using these technologies, combined with another decade of exploration, the two finally found a suitable site for the reconstruction of civilization.
On the day ground was broken, the forty-eight-year-old Grandma Bridge and the youth descended to the surface. They brought only three things: M-brand fried chicken, Saltwater Cola, and Marlboro cigarettes.
The youth had finally perfected the recipe. The cigarettes were something Grandma Bridge had found in a teammate's luggage; when the ship's life support failed a century ago, the stasis pods were compromised, and that person had died on the journey home.
Grandma Bridge stood under the open sky and finished a whole cigarette, looking at the android beside her who was eating fried chicken. The youth did not age; his features were exactly as they were when she first woke from her stasis pod.
She crushed the cigarette butt under her heel, snatched the Saltwater Cola from his hand, took a large gulp, and then, like an ancient priest pouring a libation, emptied the rest of the liquid into the soil.
She tossed the cup aside, ignored the youth’s protests, and said succinctly, "Begin work."
The spaceship in orbit locked onto the coordinates and dropped the massive mountain-cleaving machinery from the sky. Thunder roared; it was like the beginning of a myth, with the heavenly host looking down in attendance. Grandma Bridge stood in the wind and thunder, her long hair whipping wildly, her body unmoving. A small flame flickered between the android's fingers as he lit a new cigarette for her.
The founding of the first city on the wasteland began within the smoke drifting from the woman’s lips.
As the cigarette was about to burn out, Grandma Bridge waved away the dust. "I’ve thought of a name for this city."
The youth looked at her. "Oh? You finally figured it out?"
Grandma Bridge gave a small "mm" and put her protective helmet back on.
Though the Earth's air had improved under their management, her body had gradually worn down over years of toil. She was now at an age where she had to consider her lifespan.
"This city shall be called Metropolis."
Before ground was officially broken on Metropolis, Grandma Bridge and the youth had run the statistics. With their existing technology and the limit of the machines they could build, they couldn't support the construction of the entire city alone.
After a long discussion, they decided to wake the humans sleeping in the stasis pods.
And so, in her forty-eighth year, Grandma Bridge, who had been home for so long, saw her awakened companions for the first time. The expedition team of old was well-trained. After learning about the current state of Earth, the group voted to allocate a portion of their resources to manufacture androids for the foundation of Metropolis, while simultaneously initiating the plan for raising human infants.
Another ten years passed, and the city on the plains began to take shape.
On Grandma Bridge’s fifty-eighth birthday, she was successfully elected as the first leader of the Metropolis government. Her schedule was incredibly busy. Returning late at night from the celebration ceremony, she suddenly told her driver to stop the car.
A 24-hour M-brand fast-food joint stood by the roadside. Grandma Bridge hadn't eaten such things in a long time, though her smoking habit had only grown heavier. She walked to the automated ordering kiosk and ordered fried chicken and a large Saltwater Cola.
"You should order the combo," a voice suddenly crackled from the machine. "It’s a better value."
Her hand froze over the screen. "Is that you?"
"It’s me, it’s me." The voice was as spirited as ever. "Long time no see, old lady."
"Long time no see." Grandma Bridge switched her order to the combo. "I thought you were coordinating work at the nuclear power plant lately."
"Old lady, why are you so cold?" The youth’s voice sounded dissatisfied. "We were together day and night for nearly forty years. Can't you even offer a greeting?"
After Metropolis took shape, the android's permissions had been lowered. The advanced technology from the spaceship had been transferred to a new database. As the navigator who had been emergency-activated, he should have retired and shut down, but as a gesture of remembrance, his core was kept running on the ship.
"I heard about your job." Grandma Bridge pulled a cigarette from her coat. "You allocated a large portion of your data stream to maintain the automation of every M-brand in the city. Just how much do you love fried chicken?"
"Old lady, have a heart. Androids don't even need to eat." The youth protested through the speaker. "If I hadn't been helping you test the food's shelf life back then, I never would have touched those meal kits in the warehouse!"
At her age, Grandma Bridge didn't remember those trifles very well. She thought for a moment and said reasonably, "I want a giant extra-large ice cream with chocolate sauce. For free."
"What?! Be reasonable! The utility rates your new government set are deathly expensive! Do you think it's easy for me to keep these few shops running?"
Grandma Bridge hummed and continued, "And a red bean pie and a chicken wrap."
The ordering machine froze for a moment, then a tray "clattered" out of the pickup window, holding the fried chicken, Saltwater Cola, chicken wrap, red bean pie, and ice cream with chocolate—along with a spiteful mountain of mustard packets.
Grandma Bridge tapped the machine. "You didn't give me utensils."
The machine fell silent. The woman wondered if she should say something, but a moment later, a roar echoed through the street as a skiff screeched to a halt. The youth jumped off and shouted at her before even getting through the door: "Old lady, eat less! Humans at this age can't just eat junk food whenever they want!"
"Long time no see." Grandma Bridge looked up through the haze of smoke and broke her red bean pie in half. "Then I’ll share this with you."
"You stingy woman!" The youth was fuming. "I want the fried chicken!"
In a fast-food joint at three in the morning, a fifty-eight-year-old woman and an ageless youth—the pioneers and leaders who built the city—fought over a piece of fried chicken.
That was one of their few meetings over the next twenty years. When the moment of her end arrived, in the kaleidoscope of her life's memories, Grandma Bridge remembered this night for a fleeting second.
The youth looked at her under the lights, just like the storyteller on the high tower a century ago. Golden code flickered across his glasses, forming a row of characters.
*I think of the miles of misty waves, the heavy evening haze, and the vast Chu sky.*
Dr. Qiao, the first leader of Metropolis, was born in the 22nd century. She traveled to the depths of space with an expedition team and returned home a century later. She dedicated her life to the reconstruction of human civilization and laid the city's foundations. Later, due to excessive physical toll, she was unable to undergo mechanical prosthetic replacement surgery and retired to conservative treatment.
She passed away a year later at the age of seventy-eight.
In her final days, the android went to see her, bringing a large bouquet of fresh flowers just grown in the greenhouse. She was in her hospital gown, looking at the youth in his suit through her reading glasses. "This is the first time I’ve seen you wear clothes."
"And it’ll be the first time I attend a funeral," the youth retorted. "Too bad you won't be able to see it."
The woman tucked a lock of white hair behind her ear and smiled peacefully. "I’ve grown old."
"Oh," the youth replied. "Do you want me to read you 'When You Are Old'?"
"Spare me," the woman sighed. "If you’re really that bored, why don't you take me to see the moon?"
"See the moon?"
"They say the outside air is bad for me. I haven't been out in a month," the woman said. "I still remember the ship's orbital path. You can see it clearly this season."
"Serves you right," the youth huffed. "Who told you to hate protective suits back then? And the smoking—you’ve already replaced your lungs three times."
"I know." The woman smiled at him, her aged face showing a spark of the girlishness he hadn't seen in years. "So, will you take me?"
In the end, they found a way to dodge the security. The youth lifted her wheelchair and brought her to the rooftop.
Besides the moon, a few stars were already visible in the night sky. The woman gazed at the heavens for a long time. "Did I ever tell you, a century ago when I first arrived at the United Government..."
"You saw the Morning Star," the youth finished for her. "You’ve said it eight hundred times. It’s just Venus. You can see it in the north now."
"Like an old friend." The woman smiled. "A reunion after a long parting."
"What kind of crappy friend is that? It didn't welcome you when you came home, but it’s here to see you off when you leave."
"It’s actually fine. In a way, we are the same kind." She seemed tired, speaking slowly. "I remember reading somewhere when I was very small... that every atom in the human body comes from a star that exploded in the universe."
"Death is just the transformation of matter and energy into another form. We are all, in fact, stardust."
"A body of inches, a longevity without bounds."
At that moment, they stood beneath the starlit sky. It was an inexplicably beautiful instant. According to astronomical theory, if every atom in the human body came from an exploded star, then in her final moments, this woman who had dedicated her life to the peak of rational wisdom could finally indulge in a romantic fantasy—perhaps millions of years ago, the atoms that formed the android's core and the atoms of her heart had come from the same star.
And now, they had finally met. As her life began to dissipate, she became a state of quantum entanglement. She was Schrödinger's cat, a winter tulip, and an elephant racing under the stars. Einstein said that the past, present, and future are only a stubbornly persistent illusion; in that moment, space and time folded infinitely, and the illusion was stretched into eternity.
"Grandma Bridge," the youth whispered, calling her by her full code name. "Why are you telling me this?"
Once she had reached adulthood, she had been a head taller than him. For many years, he could only look up at her. Now, as the elderly woman sat in her wheelchair, he finally looked down at her again. He saw the girl smiling at him with a hint of playfulness, her expression serene.
"Nothing," she said.
The youth clicked his tongue, about to speak, when he heard her ask, "Have I aged a lot?"
"Not really." The android pulled up the visual records from his database. "You looked more like a little old lady when you first stepped out of that stasis pod."
And her face now was exactly as it was when she woke from that pod—a girl with the eyes of an old soul. Infinitely ancient, infinitely young.
"I see." She blinked at her. "Then I can rest easy."
"Metropolis is just a skeleton crew right now, what are you resting easy for..." The youth’s words were cut short by the girl. He heard a faint farewell—if not for his android hearing, it would have sounded like a mere sigh.
"Goodnight."
The visual records in his database continued to refresh. He saw the girl from many years ago standing up from the stasis pod, her gel-like clothing tracing her soft silhouette, cold nutrient fluid dripping from her hair. She looked up and said succinctly: "Morning."
The android tilted his head back, looking at the scattered stars in the sky. A "click" sounded from within his body.
After a long time, the youth slowly recited a line: "...I think of the miles of misty waves, the heavy evening haze, and the vast Chu sky."
He knew that the girl had not truly died.
She simply possessed a longevity without bounds.
***
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Thus Spoke the Buddha: The Quantum Circus | Chapter 27 | Boundless Longevity | Novela.app | Novela.app
