Under the fierce white light tube, a man in prison uniform is doing simple labor in front of the assembly line, assembling some complex parts, or putting finished products into boxes and packaging.

This is an industrial area located in the lower level of the city of Arpain, which is not only a factory, but also a prison, where the people who were previously arrested are held.

After a month of investigation and interrogation, now the federal government of the North Seventh District has roughly sorted out the situation in the underground world of Arpeggio City, the previous blockade has been slowly lifted, and the relevant personnel involved in the previous incident have gradually been dealt with.

"Blue!" A guard in a gray-blue uniform walked into the underground building with a personal terminal showing the information.

"Here!"

A tall man stood up in the crowd, like a white bear rising from the ice, which was particularly eye-catching.

"You come with me." Waving at him, he led Blue out of the room.

The two entered a closely monitored room for conversation.

"Sit down and drink some water." The guard's tone was a little better than before.

"Roger." Blue honestly opened the mineral water bottle on the table and drank the water from it.

Seeing him accept orders like this, the caretaker nodded with satisfaction, although most of the underground people were disobedient and had bad personalities, there were some exceptions.

"You've done well in prison, you've been evaluated by all parties, and you've been guilty of a relatively minor offense before, so—" He paused for a moment before continuing.

"You are honored to be released, the time is tomorrow, and in the next five years, as long as you abide by the law and do not touch the places that violate the rules, you can be an ordinary federal resident with peace of mind."

"Thank you for your teaching." Blue looked a little excited, but didn't know what to say.

"Okay, that's all, let's be a good person in the future." The caretaker tapped him on the shoulder and walked out.

Two days later, the floodgates of this large underground prison slowly opened, and several heavily armored escort vans slowly drove out, and then several released people walked out, and Blue was among them.

He was carrying a large package containing his clothes and sheets, and before leaving he asked what he could take with him, and the staff told him.

"It's 500 federal dollars, as a small amount of money for your time in prison, and you have to find a job as soon as possible after you get out, so that you can settle down."

Touching the card on his chest that contained federal coins, Blue recalled the caretaker's confession before leaving, and his heart was full of emotion.

Although 500 federal dollars is not much, it should be possible to save money for a week, and the most important thing during this period is to get a job, and now that the underground gang has long been disbanded, and the people who knew him well before are basically gone, he can only try to think about where to accept him.

If it was a distant ancient time, it would not be difficult for him to eat with a mouthful of food, but now it is the interstellar age of advanced technology, and all kinds of heavy labor are mostly replaced by machinery, and smart people and people who learn quickly are more popular, so it may not be so smooth for a period of time in the future.

Anyway, it's finally out.

Walking out the gate, Blue looked at the prison fortress behind him illuminated by bright yellow street lamps, sealed off by layers of thick steel structure, like a giant beast lying on the ground.

Three days later, at Wholesale Market 14 on the 45th basement floor of Arpeggio City, Blue found his first job here.

The job is to load, unload and move all kinds of goods in the wholesale market, and the salary is 2,400 federal dollars per month, and food and lodging are provided.

Although there are also T6-level AI machines in the market to load and unload, those are responsible for unified and coded bulk goods, and some scattered and messy goods are distributed, which is more convenient and cheaper to employ.

In order to save the declining employment rate, the federal government has raised the tax rate on AI chips several times, and about 90%-95% of the selling price of AI chips produced today is tax, and a second tax will be levied according to the duration of active use.

"Hey, big man, there's a new batch of goods, come with me."

In the dimly lit corner of the storeroom, Blue sat in the corner, his vest already sweaty, and he had just finished moving, and he had rarely sat for a few minutes.

"Roger." He replied with an urn, then stood up again, following the tall and lanky director.

In the loading and unloading area, trucks of different sizes are parked, loaded and unloaded in front of different numbers of warehouse doors in an orderly manner, and each warehouse door is monitored before and after, strictly watching the number of goods loaded and unloaded, and the driver only needs to enter the specified single number in the personal terminal interface, and confirm the waiting.

There are three transportation channels to the outside world in Arpeggio City, one is the most common ground freight road, when it arrives at the top of the patio, the goods are unloaded and transported to the underground by industrial elevators, and the second is the underground rail train, which is an underground transportation line built hundreds of years ago, because at that time, considering that the ground was facing orbital bombardment, traffic may be blocked, so there are such underground rail lines between underground cities, and the third is the shuttle aircraft or spaceships, which are mainly responsible for connecting the routes of the distant southern regions and the alien domain.

Among the three transportation channels, the underground transportation line has the lowest cost, but generally only pulls large quantities of industrial raw materials and products, the ground transportation is more flexible, all kinds of daily necessities and goods in the adjacent area are transported through this, aircraft and spaceships are the most expensive, generally used for import and export and time-critical goods.

"Here, this is it." The lanky supervisor directs Blue to a garage door, where the trunk of a parked truck has long been opened, and the driver is sitting on the sidelines smoking a cigarette and resting.

"Lao Gu, you can be counted as coming, and the fade bird we can wait for here." The driver's face was full of scum, his shoulders and arms were crossed, and his voice was rude.

"Isn't this coming?" The tall and thin supervisor said hello briefly, and then looked at the boxes in the truck.

"How many boxes are there?"

"31 boxes of lychees, 42 boxes of watermelons, 12 boxes of strawberries, 5 boxes of blueberries...... TM's watermelon delivery is really a loss" The driver took out the personal terminal at hand, reported one by one, and complained again.

Although watermelons have been selling well recently, they are not very profitable because they are sold at a lower price than other fruits.

"Alright, if it weren't for the luck, who would hire you." The 30-year-old warehouse supervisor checked the order number and then asked Blue to start moving.

These fruits are produced in the neighboring districts, and they are picked from the plantations in the morning, and after they are loaded, unloaded and distributed, they can be put on the shelves of various supermarkets in the city at four o'clock in the afternoon, because it is a short distance, but it is not so complicated to code, and the fruits are easy to spoil, and there is always some loss that needs to be manually adjusted to the data.

"Come on, Blue, you take these down one by one, don't fall."

"Roger." The fat man began to act, only to see him standing on the loading dock next to him, moving the boxes out of the car one by one, and then placing them on the rolling belt next to him to move slowly.

"Is this new?" The driver looked at the big man who was working not far away.

"That's right, just got out of prison." The little supervisor handed him a cigarette.

"Yes, it's pretty neat." He leaned and pumped up.

After about 20 minutes, all the goods were unloaded, and then the supervisor and the driver came and opened the boxes one by one to check.

"Well, these more than 30 boxes of lychees are not bad, they are all good." The Director lowered the lid and looked at the other side.

The front was basically qualified, but when the watermelons were inspected, the watermelons in the two boxes had cracked.

"This ......" the driver rubbed his hair, a little irritated.

"I'm very steady on the road, I can only say that this watermelon is like this, it cracks when you touch it, don't you see that it's quite fresh?"

"What's the use of you telling me, other customers don't agree, they all want to buy it." The little supervisor waved his hand.

"MD......" The driver cursed a few more words, saying that he would never pull watermelons and the like again in the future, and then took out his personal terminal and transferred it to the little supervisor for a small fee.

"You're cheap again." Putting away the personal terminal, the driver picked up the water bottle on the side, climbed into the truck seat, and prepared to start and leave.

"Director?" Watching the driver just go, Blue asked.

"It's okay, let him go." As a small supervisor in the warehouse, he was familiar with this situation and had many ways to solve it.

"You distribute these goods to the designated shelves according to the order number, and in another 1 hour, there will be transport trucks from various supermarkets to tow them away. After the explanation, the little supervisor picked up his personal terminal and communicated with the familiar supermarket manager.

……

"Yes, that's right, this batch is half the price for you...... It's cracked, the condition is good, aren't you finished making a platter, the quotation on the book is still the original, and I will return this part to you alone...... Okay, that's it, when you explain to the driver who transports the goods, don't talk about the wrong goods. ”

After the communication, he put down his personal terminal and played with it in his hand, feeling happy, and today he had an extra income, and he also looked at the sweaty man on the side.

"Good job, Blue, I'll give you half a watermelon after work."

"Roger." Blue replied breathlessly.

Time passed slowly, and in this way, Blue gradually settled in the wholesale market, and although the salary was low, he also had a small place to stay, and occasionally ate some obsolete fruit. The lost fruits were all T5-grade products, and even if they didn't hit the shelves properly, they were far better than the half-rotten ones he had dragged in the garbage dump before.

So, when the time came to mid-July, Blue finally had a rare day off.

He grabbed the old-fashioned second-hand personal terminal he had bought for more than 300 federal coins and went to the place where Jolon had lived and grown up.

After inquiring around for a while, he found that Qiao Long had not returned here, and there was no news, so he scratched his not very smart head, and he went to visit the cemetery that Qiao Long had requested.

The black tombstone was the same as usual, and there were only a few dead branches pressed by stone bricks in front of Joron's master's grave, which was the bouquet that had been laid down last time.

"Didn't the boss come out, or did he say where he went?" He held the bouquet he had bought temporarily, stood in front of the cemetery, and slowly lowered the bouquet.

After thinking about it for a long time, he still pressed the small card with his contact number under the stone brick, hoping that someone would contact him in the future.

Back at Wholesale Market 14, just when he thought that such days would last for a long time, perhaps years later, he would get a slight response, when a strange call made Blue stand up.

"Huck? Is it really you? His voice was agitated, because the other party was the partner who was often with him, and the two of them had been following Joron all the time.

The next day, Blue met his long-absent companion, wearing a baseball cap, hip-hop, and green paint on his face.

With his hands in his trouser pockets, Huck walked through the door of the storeroom, then stood still, smirking at Blue.

"It's great that I'm alive, and then it's even better to see you alive too." With that, he let out a long whistle, jumped up a few steps forward, pounced on Blue, and the two hugged each other.

After a while, the two sat in the corner of the storeroom and talked about their own affairs.

"At that time, I found a hidden path in advance, returned to the low-level residential area of Arpeggio City, hid next to a garbage station for a week, and then quietly moved, and then the matter passed, and I was safe." He's smart, and he's thin, so he can easily blend in with the crowd, unlike Blue, who can't hide.

"Huck is amazing." Blue complimented, then asked about something else.

"I don't know where the boss is, but I guess he's still alive, and someone as hard-hitting as him wouldn't die so easily." Huck told Blue not to worry about this.

"Have you been working here lately?" Huck looked around.

"Yes, the supervisor is pretty good."

"Forget it, he guesses it depends on how easy it is for you to use and cheaper." The skinny Huck understands a lot.

"I've been in a group of night marchers lately, and my life is okay, or if you come with me, I'll help you find a nightclub janitor's job, it's a lot easier, you're big enough."

"No, Huck." Blue shook his head, he was taught in prison to stay away from such a profession in the future.

"Uh......" Huck touched his head, and he couldn't do anything about this big guy for a while, after all, he wasn't Joron, and he would follow what he said.

"Okay, let's not talk about this for now, in fact, I have been a little frown recently, if we have time, we have to find the eldest lady."

"Is it a matter of helping to find someone?"

"That's right, the crowd of people on the night tour is mixed, and I really got a little bit of news, it is said that it is the information filled in when the residents were resettled, and there is information about the parents of the eldest lady."

"Isn't this all in the archives, do you still need us to tell the eldest lady?" Blue didn't understand.

"No, no, no, although there are many things recorded in the archives, there are some things that I don't think the eldest lady herself knows." Huck shook his head.

"When residents settle in, the local neighborhood committee will do an interview and ask the new tenants to understand the situation, which is not a formal and serious process, so it is very casual, but it is easy to find some problems."

"For example, her parents made a deep impression on the interviewers at the time, and I asked them when I spent a few hundred federal dollars to invite people to dinner."

"Is this all right?" Blue had thought that it would take more than half a year to find out some bits and pieces, and he didn't want Huck to have the results so quickly.

"I'm just asking about her parents' past, and I don't know where her father is, but it's too clean for me to suspect that he is a professional." Huck waved his hand.

"Ordinary people owe huge sums of money to repay their debts, and when the formal channels can't get through, they will be forced to take some off-the-beaten-path paths, such as loan sharking, going to work in the dark, underground boxing or racing cars, and the like."

"But her father didn't leave any trace of this at all, it seems that he suddenly got a sum of money, paid off his debts, and then quietly left, the process was so fluent that no one in the gray block of Arpeggio City had ever touched it."

"But when you think about her mother's origins, maybe a lot of things can be explained."

"According to the old man's recollection, it was more than 20 years ago, the eldest lady's mother was in her prime, and her voice and demeanor were very different from ordinary people, he didn't understand it at the time, and later traveled to other places, so he guessed that this young couple might be from the North Second District."

"It's hard to explain that temperament, but if anyone has been there, they can understand that he told me that." Huck leaned his head on a mat in the corner, and the two talked until a truck pulled into the storeroom and Blue had to get to work again.

If nothing else, there will be a chapter 0 0/~ in the evening

(End of chapter)