"How long will it take us to get to our destination?" Coreni asked.

"Let me see." Song Deyang took out a crumpled map of the city and a 19-year-old Shanghai travel brochure from his backpack.

The wind was a little less windy, but it still rattled the pages in his hand, and small ice chips hit his goggles.

Song Deyang looked around and saw a tall building with a strange shape in the distance.

After that, he turned his back to the direction where the cold wind was blowing, opened the travel brochure in his hand, and Coreni also approached curiously.

"Here." She pointed to a leaflet and said in standard Mandarin, "That's the Shanghai World Financial Center, in ...... Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone, what is a Financial and Trade Zone? ”

"I don't know." Song Deyang shook his head, "When I was born, the end had already fallen for almost ten years, but I heard my mother say that this was once a metropolis with more than 25 million people. ”

"Twenty-five million? This is also an exaggeration. "That's 2,500 times the population of the settlement, but I've heard my dad say that there are more than 10 million people in Paris, and that it must be very lively before the end comes." ”

Song Deyang spread out the map of the city again, and found the financial and trade zone and the World Financial Center on it, so as to determine the direction.

Then he put the map and travel brochure back in his backpack, and then he looked at his watch, "Let's go, we need to get to the library by noon, just in time for lunch there." ”

"yes, I'm the one who likes books the most." "They not only give us knowledge, but they also keep us warm." ”

After a short pause, the two young men continued on their way.

Their figures looked a little lonely in the wind and snow.

"Why are you applying to be an investigator?" Perhaps because she was a little bored, Coreni said, "This is the most dangerous job with the highest mortality rate. ”

"Because you can get double the salary." Song Deyang said, "And there are bonuses for bringing back valuable things." ”

"You're short of money?" Keleni was a little surprised: "Our food, medical care and accommodation are all free, why do you want so much money, can you use it to buy electricity to play games?" ”

Song Deyang didn't answer Ke Reni's question, but asked rhetorically, "What about you, why do you also want to be an investigator?" Aren't you afraid of death. ”

"I'm afraid, but I also want to see the outside world." "My dad always told me how beautiful the city was before the cold spell, and told me about the football games, the endless concerts, the fashion weeks...... I want to see with my own eyes the traces left by the civilization of the past. ”

Song Deyang snorted.

"Why, you seem to have a different opinion."

"No, I just had a little itchy nose just now." Song Deyang Road.

At this time, Ke Reni on the side suddenly let out an exclamation, and Song Deyang immediately became alert and held the ice axe hanging from his waist, "What's wrong?" ”

"It's nothing, I feel like I've seen a coffee shop." Coreni exclaimed, crouching down and using her gloves to sweep away the snow beneath her, revealing the ice below.

Through the ice, she saw a sign of antlers, and the English of Lukin Coffee underneath.

Song Deyang breathed a sigh of relief, let go of the hand holding the ice pick, and saw that she was making a fuss, and couldn't help but say, "It's just a coffee shop." ”

"What is it called a coffee shop, have you ever drunk freshly ground coffee?"

"Nope."

"I didn't have either, but my dad said he drank every day when he was younger, and more than one drink, and he felt bad if he didn't drink it for a day."

"Your dad must be lying to you, it turns out that humans can live well without coffee, otherwise the settlement wouldn't have been without coffee until now."

"That's because we've been strapped for food, and we don't have extra greenhouses to grow cash crops that can improve our lives."

"Hmph."

"Again, I can probably guess why you're an investigator."

"Why?"

"Because you don't communicate with your kind at all, working in a settlement is bound to be ostracized by your colleagues."

Ke Reni grimaced, but her face was tightly wrapped around her thick neck, and Song Deyang couldn't see her expression clearly.

"I just don't understand why you always miss the past." Song Deyang said, "I don't think there's anything bad about it now. ”

"Oh, are you talking about the fact that we walked more than 800 kilometers to Shanghai in the bitter cold, risked losing the temperature and lack of food, and then we were less than 30 meters away from the coffee shop, but we couldn't get in?"

"Coffee, like Mercedes, was just a non-necessity, and societies used it to distinguish between classes."

"Oh, so you're going to give me a political lesson now?"

"No, I'm just being realistic." "The Prophet stipulated that the gap between the maximum and minimum income in the settlements was six times, and that all transactions were settled in electronic money, which could be traced, greatly reducing the probability of corruption in the administration.

"Do you know how many times the difference between the incomes of the richest and the poorest people in the world you aspire to?"

"I don't know tenfold, twentyfold? It can't be a hundredfold. ”

"Hundreds of billions of times, this is what my mother told me, she is a worker."

Keleni's mouth opened wide, "Hundreds of billions of times, how is this possible?" What I mean by this is that I accept that people are born with different differences in intelligence, emotional intelligence, including origin, and the importance of the work they do.

"But the value created by their labor ...... It's not as exaggerated as the difference of hundreds of billions of times. ”

"That's the problem." Song Deyang said, "And those lowest-level workers have been deprived of the right to a week and two days off, I don't think there is anything to aspire to in that kind of world."

"Even if they create countless good things like coffee, luxury cars, yachts, etc. Can......

"But the more wealth a worker produces, and the greater the power and quantity of his product, the poorer he becomes. The more commodities a worker creates, the more he becomes a cheap commodity, and the increase in the value of the world of things is directly proportional to the depreciation of the world of man. ”

"These are the exact words of Karl Marx in his Manuscripts on the Philosophy of Economics of 1844," Corenne continued, "and I told you that I also like to read.

"But you have to admit that in terms of material civilization alone, the people who lived in that era were very happy."

Song Deyang frowned.

"OK, it's that expression again, just say whatever you want." Coreni said helplessly.

"There is no scientific research that proves that the more developed the material civilization, the happier human beings are, and the people who lived in the Tang Dynasty are not necessarily happier than those who live in the 21st century, and in the same way, I don't think that our current life is worse than in the past.

"Although our civilization may have stagnated, or even regressed."

"Well, you've won, big debater, I just hope we'll find some canned fruit at noon......" Coreni licked her lips and ended the brief debate.

In the snow, the two figures continued to walk slowly towards the tall buildings in the distance.

(End of chapter)