Cities are no longer the concept of 30 years ago. Before the car drove to the border of the central capital province, the towering buildings had already taken over the entire line of sight. The airship keeps taking off and landing in turn, outlining a wisp of route and weaving into a net, forming a huge whirlpool centered on the central capital province, gathering and driving the entire artificial jungle, and the bottom of the whirlpool is the flow of people who gather and disperse, like the sand and gravel washed out of the whirlpool, which rises and falls left and right with the swing of the whirlpool.

The car stopped at the edge of the whirlpool, "I can only take you here, you can figure out the rest of the way." ”

Hanes didn't think to ask the driver how he could summon the airship and get out of this undercurrent whirlpool. He could only stand in place, looking at everything that had been turned upside down, as if this home planet that had been absent for 30 years was an alien planet, and where was his home.

"Young man, do you want to take a boat, where are you going?" A strong man covered in dust stood out from the sinking sand and rubble and appeared in front of Hanes with a smile on his face.

"How do I pay for going here?"

Hearing Hanes's words, the strong man smiled and became larger, and his face was dotted with the unique calculation and cunning of a businessman: "What year is this, and I also said the cost." Aliens, boy, right? ”

Hanes didn't want to hide his identity as an outsider, and he didn't have the ability to do so, so he just nodded. When the strong man saw it, he smiled happily, like an old farmer who had been guarding the stake for eight years and finally waited for a rabbit.

"Then you come with me, and you can leave immediately. When aliens come back and want to live on the home planet, they must register their ownership, and when they see that you are from Gaia, all the expenses over there will be returned to the public, and you will live a carefree life. ”

The strong man didn't seem to care if Hanes could pay for the airship, so he cooperated with the "alien" all the way to the provincial border station to register the ownership and remotely summoned an airship.

After the strong man skillfully entered Hanis's address into the coordinates, he leaned back to the comfortable imitation leather seat behind him, and let the airship fly and shuttle on its own.

"The home planet has changed too fast in recent decades. When I was your age, this kind of airship was the plaything of the rich, and my biggest dream at that time was to have my own airship and drive around every day, I didn't expect that this dream came true, do you say it's ridiculous, hahahaha. ”

Hanes didn't know whether to comfort the "driver" or laugh at him as a form of humor. He sat up straight, his eyes snapping as much as he could from the high-speed airship.

"Lie down, you don't have to work so hard to see the scenery." The strong man casually pressed the touch panel hidden on the transparent overlay, and the hull randomly changed from pure white to transparent, and the picture outside the whirlpool became magnificent as the airship climbed.

The tall building has bid farewell to the concept of "building" and has become a whole composed of "nodes". The smaller "node" is the private house, 10,000 private houses, around a large "node", is the commercial center, dozens of commercial center clusters, wrapped in the middle of a super-large "node", is the government affairs center. All nodes are connected by barrel pipes, and the barrel pipe cross-section between ordinary houses has been 100 square meters, and the barrel pipes of commercial centers and political centers are dozens or hundreds of times that of the former.

Outside of the buildings, there is nothing but the busy airship, and as far as the eye can see, the entire planet seems to be dominated by a network of node buildings and shuttle boats.

"Don't look at it, it's all the same. The place you are going to is in the middle of nowhere, and it will take 1 hour, so let's sleep a little first. ”

Hanes followed the strong man's advice. The tired body and the comfortable seat met, and the two eyelids could no longer be supported. But the wish of deep sleep did not seem to come true, and the sound of the strong man pulled him back from the edge of the dream every time.

"Hey, aliens, do you believe in gods?"

"Gods, what is your definition, a higher civilization, or something like the so-called gods of Kammun, who make miracles everywhere, or like the ancient books, can magic, can create all supernatural things?"

"It's not at all, it's the kind of thing that we can't understand and explain at all right now."

"In the eyes of Gaia's monkeys, we can't understand and explain it completely. Are we gods too? ”

"It seems that you are still an atheist, but I have always believed that gods exist, otherwise how can we explain the birth of the universe and the birth of civilization."

"We are evolutionary, and this needs no explanation! As for the birth of the universe, our current technology cannot explain it. ”

"It's true that it evolved, but why did the universe evolve only two civilizations, us and Kamon."

"Because the universe itself is barren, the probability of evolving life is equivalent to throwing a delicate mechanical watch into the sea and assembling it with the power of the sea." Hanes didn't know why he was discussing these things with this strange strong man, but he felt that he couldn't remember how many years he hadn't argued with anyone, so he might as well have a good discussion on this dispensable topic, and it would be considered a practice of words.

"But this probability, in an infinite time and an infinite number of planets, seems to be very small, but in fact it is very large, at least not two."

"So, do you think we were created by the gods?" Hanes began to learn Hyde's way of speaking.

"No, I think we were born because of the ignorance of the gods. You think, if the universe was really created by the gods, it is impossible to leave it alone for such a long time, and we have broken all the mysteries except for the creation of living beings. If we can create living things again, then we will not become the creator gods. ”

The strong man's thinking was too strange, and Hanes didn't know how to answer for a while. I can only turn my head out the window: the airship is still shuttling through the monotonous mesh of buildings, and if it weren't for the direction indication to keep moving forward, it's hard not to suspect that the airship is going in circles.

"The people inside, don't you come out to breathe?"

"Who dares to come out, it's not outside, acid rain and poisonous snow are radiation hail. People with a little ability hide in the building and breathe the fresh air that has evolved, and only people like me who don't know anything come out to run a rental boat. Hahaha. ”

"The environment on the home planet is still so bad?"

"If the whole ocean doesn't get better for a day, don't think about it for a day on land. Isn't it ridiculous that we remember that we went from the sea to the land in the memory year, and then ran from the land to the stars. In the end, I found out that I still didn't leave the control of the ocean. ”

"Water is the source of life. I didn't think you still had research on ecology. ”

"In these years, I don't know anything about running taxis, and I don't know what to talk to passengers."

Hanes didn't know what to say again. The building in front of me has said goodbye to the silver gray and has begun to take on the color of sky blue.

"It's almost there. I'll park the boat first, you wait for me for a while, I'll send you up, you can't find a place by yourself." ”

The airship route reunited into a stream at a black spot on the distant building, and after waiting for more than ten minutes on the endless route, the strong man impatiently turned off the autopilot mode.

"The safety distance of this autonomous driving has been adjusted so widely, and if this continues, there will be such a big hole for us to drill in the afternoon."

The strong man ignored the alarm bell of the airship behind him, skillfully shuttled between the routes, flying outside the route for a while, sliding sideways for a while, and following the boat at close range for a while, the extremely fast start and stop made Hanes a little dizzy, and when he looked out the window again, the black spot had become a super-large nest, and the airships in and out were like bats, some quietly perched on the cave wall, some searched, some left, and the chaos was orderly. The strong man took advantage of the departure of an airship and moored his airship to a hard-won idleness.

The cabin and berth passage are opened, opening the door to the building. The transportation in the building is carried by a single cabin, and all are controlled by computers. There were so many corridors that turned around like an anthill, and Hanes was curious how the strong man could remember such a complicated building passage, and after going around for an unknown number of turns, Hanes completely lost his sense of direction, and the two finally arrived at the distribution center.

"Look at the number B-27-0506 on the back of the address, you call a shuttle pod here, go to Block B, and then go the same way to Building 27, Room 0506."

"Okay. Thank you. "It sounds simple, but Hanes doesn't seem to understand.

"At present, the remuneration of the home star is based on the world average working hours. It took me a total of an hour and a half to send you over, and counting the deviation of working hours in the difficult industry of drivers, it is reasonable to charge you 2 ordinary times (the world's average labor hours), right? ”

Hanes had heard of the concept of the world's average labor hours: the output of labor for all people in the Blue Domain divided by the average of all hours in a year. Although I had to pay the driver for two hours, if I was to be a scientist by this standard, I would only need 10 minutes of work to pay for those two hours, so I readily agreed.

Dewey had already paid for a month's hotel stay, and on this unaccompanied planet, Hanes could hardly imagine that he would be able to find a job to pay for those two hours of work in this month's time.

Regardless, he was going to get a good night's sleep first, but the mental torment of his prison had brought him to a close breakdown, and after being injected with the organic nutrient solution, Hannis had sunk deep into the soft mattress.

But the mourning of Hyde's death, the worry about the direction of civilization, and the confusion about where he should go are constantly spinning in his mind. In the hard-won moment of tranquility, disturbances crawled all over the body. Hanes covered his head so that these thoughts could be kept out for a while. The terrible thing is that these thoughts took root from the mattress, crawled densely up Hanis's body, and clung to the poor shivering man.

Hanes jumped up from the bed and ran to the entrance with a scream, and he could only turn on the light and look at the busy world outside.