This planet belonged to the Jiang Family Consortium. It was the research center and pharmaceutical factory of the consortium’s medical group.
Many legal and illegal research projects were conducted here.
Large numbers of medicine people underwent human experiments here. If they unluckily died, the agreement they’d signed contained liability waiver clauses. At most, family members would receive compensation and the matter would be settled. But because in this era reproduction was decoupled from sex and marriage, quite a lot of people didn’t even have family. Dead was dead.
Capital was like this. Never harbor illusions about capital.
The entire planet was inhabited by medical group employees and their families.
The planet’s surface was all greenery, looking very beautiful.
There were no “roads” on the ground. All roads were in the air. Daily commuting was basically tube transit.
The planet was full of towering buildings. In the spaces between buildings, public transit tubes crisscrossed and coiled like blood vessels in the space below 150 meters. Public transit vehicles shuttled at high speed through transparent tubes.
At the intersections of tubes, vehicles coming from different directions often whistled past each other with a 0.1-second time difference, looking extremely thrilling. But actually all public transit vehicles in the tubes were uniformly dispatched and efficiently run by computers. That 0.1 second looked thrilling, but collision accidents never happened.
Above 150 meters was the travel space for private flying cars, shuttles, and airships.
Those private vehicles “hung” outside the balconies of houses. Owners could board from their own balconies.
There was no underground garage design here.
This was why during the first zombie outbreak, when Jiang Cheng led the youth apartment owners in clearing zombies from the community, they’d completely overlooked the underground garage.
Because “Jiang Cheng” had no private car. She’d almost never been down to the community’s underground garage.
And in Jiang Cheng’s world, she’d simply never seen an underground garage design.
Neither person’s cognition could connect to underground garages.
—
Jiang Cheng had a good sleep.
Her brain had actually gone 120 hours without rest.
This time was true sleep.
After waking, she came to the research institute’s mental power experiment building. Most research and experiments related to the brain and mental power were completed here.
A tall, spacious office. Luxury sofas faced curved floor-to-ceiling glass.
Jiang Cheng stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass, gazing at the massive space outside—
The twenty-story-tall wall was a liquid chamber integrated body. The entire wall was densely packed with liquid chambers, like countless coffins. Each one contained a medicine person lying inside, giving their brain to the pharmaceutical company for research.
Many robots flew through the air, busily maintaining this chamber integrated wall.
Pulling some chambers out, inserting some chambers in.
Controlling the various drug components added to the nutrient fluid. Monitoring each chamber’s life signs.
Occasionally a chamber’s red light would flash, meaning the experimenter in the chamber was in life-threatening danger. Robots would quickly fly over to adjust and rescue.
Jiang Cheng sat on the sofa. Dozens of light screens unfolded before her simultaneously.
In the light screens were all people she knew.
Though many people’s real appearances differed somewhat from in the “world,” they could still be recognized at a glance.
“Li Jiangbing” was still a big guy—super big.
Because over eighty percent of his body had been mechanized.
In this era, medical standards were extremely high. But high technology didn’t mean widespread. Advanced technology had high prices.
In this era, “natural humans” reproduced naturally without genetic optimization had an average lifespan of 100 years.
Gene-optimized individuals had an average lifespan of 135-150 years.
Super-optimized individuals like Jiang Cheng had a natural lifespan expectation of 150-170 years.
But the lifespan of the mega-wealthy far exceeded 170 years. They had various means to extend their lifespans to around 220 years or even longer.
For organ replacement, self-cultivated bio-organs were best, but expensive.
Mechanical bodies were the worst, but cheap.
The cheap result was that when a person’s body exceeded 80% mechanization, they automatically lost citizenship and became sub-human.
No voting rights, couldn’t participate in political elections, couldn’t take civil service exams.
Same work, different pay—for the same position, they could only get 50-70% of the wage. Usually they could only engage in low-end work.
“Li Jiangbing” had only his head, neck, one shoulder, and one arm remaining of his body. Every other part of his body was mechanical.
His mechanical body’s shape was an extremely exaggerated muscular human form. This “exaggerated” was relative to normal human bodies. In fact, him still maintaining human form was already not exaggerated.
This society was like this—employers liked those bizarre, misshapen mechanical bodies. It seemed those weird shapes without human form better won a laugh from them. So bizarre shapes made finding work easier.
Li Jiangbing was hard and stiff all over. No wonder his superpower was the soft water element.
He must have really wanted a soft body.
The forty thousand people were released batch by batch.
In the plaza-like rest hall, “Li Jiangbing” found “Su Yu.”
In the “world,” Su Yu’s entire body had shattered.
In reality, “Su Yu” wasn’t much better off.
She lay on a hover bed.
This hover bed was clearly a cheap patchwork job from the secondhand market—rough and crude.
Anyone who could give their body to pharmaceutical work for various experiments couldn’t possibly be financially well-off.
They became medicine people precisely because they were poor.
“Li Jiangbing” sat by “Su Yu’s” bedside talking to her.
Both were shy and gentle.
But “Su Yu’s” condition looked terrible. She couldn’t even sit up like an ordinary patient, with the bed raised upright.
Her whole body was soft—including her bones.
Jiang Cheng asked: “What’s Su Yu’s condition?”
She looked like she was dying.
Uncle Jiang pulled up the data: “She’s an elementary school teacher. When the Beiyu Three Mining Star accident happened, she was there on a study trip with her students.”
Various diseases from ancient Earth, including cancer, AIDS, and so on, had long had treatments in this era.
The common and troublesome illness in this era was various radiation sicknesses.
Uncle Jiang: “When the Beiyu Three Mining disaster happened, because there weren’t enough escape pod seats, she put her students into the escape pods and stayed behind herself. All her bones have now gelatinized. Her brain and chest cavity have temporary supports holding them up.”
“Su Yu” didn’t just have bone problems. Her brain and organs had all been irradiated. She was walking toward death day by day.
She was just a teacher with an ordinary salary. Just maintaining her life had exhausted her savings.
Jiang Cheng said hatefully: “How is she a bleeding heart everywhere she goes.”
She said: “Let me hear what those two are saying.”
Many small metal spheres floated in the air of the rest hall. These were surveillance cameras.
No one paid attention to these cameras. This was originally the rest lobby of the pharmaceutical company’s experiment building—a public space.
One metal sphere received the command and silently flew to the side of those two people.
Jiang Cheng’s side could then clearly hear their conversation.
“Li Jiangbing”: “I’ve saved up some money. Let’s replace your bones first. Bio-bones aren’t possible—not enough money. Let’s start with metal bones.”
“Su Yu”: “It’s not easy for you to save money. Don’t waste it on me. I’ll live one day at a time.”
“Li Jiangbing” was sub-human. His pay was already lower than ordinary people’s.
He didn’t even have flesh to give the pharmaceutical company for research to earn quick money. For this kind of medical project, he could only sign up for the mental ones.
“Su Yu” said: “It’s fine. I have some research value. I signed a long-term observation contract with them. They collect data on my radiation decay and organ failure. My basic living expenses are covered. Is your money enough to replace a heart? Get a cultivated heart made first, then you can get your citizenship back.”
In legal theory, yes, he could get his citizenship back.
But in reality, “Li Jiangbing” was visually a complete robot. Even if he got his citizen status back through a bio-heart and could receive equal pay for equal work, in reality he would still face discrimination.
Those bosses might not be willing to hire a robot who had to meet minimum citizen wage standards. There were plenty of cheap robots.
“Li Jiangbing” held “Su Yu’s” soft, invertebrate-like hand, careful, afraid of crushing her bones.
Tears fell.
Jiang Cheng’s anger surged!
This was why ultra-high-realistic virtual worlds were legislatively banned by the government.
Jiang Cheng, a born capitalist, and these people—or more precisely, these poor people—were originally people from two completely different worlds. They would never have crossed paths in their entire lives.
But 120 hours in reality, ten months of shared life and death, shared hearts and strength in the “world”—now, because of these two poor unlucky bastards, she was nearly in tears.
How could she not be angry?
Uncle Jiang stole a glance at her.
Jiang Cheng didn’t want to acknowledge him.
It was supposed to be just an ordinary treatment.
These two lumps of quantum cloud had, to smuggle in their private agenda, turned it into this. She’d settle accounts with them later.
She pulled up “Su Yu’s” file.
“Su Yu” had essentially sold her broken body to the pharmaceutical company as research material in exchange for basic survival.
She now lived on this planet. She went nowhere—of course, she could go nowhere.
Her condition required chemotherapy, and bone replacement, ideally replacing her organs along with it. Otherwise, even if chemotherapy succeeded, her lifespan would be greatly shortened.
The most expensive part was the chemotherapy. The chemotherapy elements needed for the radiation she’d received were extremely expensive.
Jiang Cheng input a string of commands.
Uncle Jiang stole another glance.
He just really liked imitating these carbon-based human behaviors.
Actually, as the operations executor’s assistant computer, he didn’t need to “steal glances” at all. All of Jiang Cheng’s commands had to pass through him.
The only difference was whether she issued verbal commands directly to him or input commands through the light screen interface. But in the end, the data all passed through Uncle Jiang’s “brain.”
—
In the hall, two young boys found each other. They hugged in surprise and joy.
One was a university student, one a high school student.
The university student was “Zhao Yi,” the high school student was “Gao Yuxuan.”
It wasn’t yet the start of the school term in this star sector. Both young men wanted to earn a bit more tuition before school started.
“Holy shit, do you know how I died!” “Gao Yuxuan” gestured with both hands telling “Zhao Yi.” “I got hammered to death by a giant zombie, holy shit.”
“When I died I knew what was going on. I got reassigned by data to be a zombie hahahaha. I figured it out right then hahaha. But zombies have fixed behavioral commands—we couldn’t control ourselves.”
After chatting just a bit, they confirmed that even with a slight age gap in reality, they could still become soul brothers.
It was precisely because of the foundation of real personalities and interests that they could attract each other and become friends in the virtual world too.
“Gao Yuxuan” had too many things he couldn’t wait to discuss with “Zhao Yi”—
“The time point should be around ancient Earth’s millennium, I’m great at history, no mistake.”
“Actually, if you push the time point back another ten or fifteen years, ‘zombies’ wouldn’t even be a thing. They’d be instantly killed on sight. Because I read A History of Drone Development—drones were already developed by then.”
“Also, do ‘zombies’ even really exist? It doesn’t quite make sense.” Gao Yuxuan was too curious. He had to look up the data when he got back.
But Zhao Yi had a broader knowledge base. He knew some things: “You’re young, you might not know. The prototype might be ‘Happy Mood’ heavy addicts.”
“What’s that?”
“A drug. It was popular for a while when I was little. If you took too much, people would completely lose their minds, become extremely aggressive, with no possibility of recovery. Police shot them on sight, no arrests. Later the drug was banned. For a while, the area where I lived had very deteriorated public order because of it. My guardian moved us away because of that.” (Note)
“Gao Yuxuan” had too many things he couldn’t wait to discuss with “Zhao Yi.”
But “Zhao Yi” had more urgent matters.
“We’ll talk about this later!” He said. “Help me find Lesi first. I’m afraid if I don’t find her first, she’ll twist my ear.”
“Gao Yuxuan” laughed heartily.
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