Chapter 45: Caravan

Chapter 45: Caravan

[Your suffering is the end for you, but for others, it's just the strange noise from an uncovered trash can lid when the evening breeze blows.]

[The winter in the great wilderness is very cold. Wearing your father's ill-fitting cotton overcoat, you walk on the snow line buried by wind and snow, stumbling and in a trance.]

[This blizzard has taught you a lesson. In the snowfield of the great wilderness, the wind and snow will cover up all the traces you have walked. Here, you can only move forward.]

[Ether cassette can barely help you resist the cold, but it cannot relieve your hunger. Every step you take in the deep snow makes you feel as if you are weighed down with lead, difficult and arduous.]

[But when you are about to fall, you are lucky to meet a truck caravan traveling in the great wilderness in the snowfield. They also found you and your sister half buried in the snow. After the leader of the caravan looked at you and the baby in your arms for a while, he had no intention of staying. But a middle-aged woman gave you a piece of bread.]

Bai Heng took the bread but did not leave.

When the caravan leader regarded you as an unreasonable little beggar and was about to drive him away.

Bai Heng bit his cold and dry lips:

"Can you take us in? I can work."

After hearing your words, the people in the caravan were stunned at first.

Immediately after, the leader of the caravan laughed first, and then all the members of the caravan laughed.

They seemed to think this was very interesting. When the laughter stopped, the leader of the caravan raised his drooping eyebrows and said to Bai Heng:

"Hey, kid, we are merchants, merchants, understand? We are not philanthropists. After the natural disaster in the great wilderness, there are many children like you. If we pick up a few every time we pass by. If people find out, they might even think we are child traffickers."

As he laughed, he said:

"Besides, what work can you do? We are not some big shots who need people to serve. If we let you two stay in the caravan, there will be two more mouths to feed for no reason?"

Listening to their laughter, Bai Heng lowered his head and asked in a low voice:

"Do you need help to keep warm?"

"Ah?" The caravan leader didn't understand what Bai Heng meant.

Bai Heng raised his head and took out an old metal original similar to a chip from his pocket. He pressed the button on the chip, and a virtual display screen appeared in front of him.

After pressing on the display screen a few times with his finger, a light red film gradually spread.

The caravan leader frowned. Feeling a little warmer, it was like being by a fireplace. But before he could speak.

Bai Heng spoke first:

"This cassette is set with a password. If you enter the wrong password, it will explode immediately. Of course, I can also detonate it actively."

After hearing this, the caravan leader frowned and pursed his lips, saying:

"Kid, I'm not interested in your ether cassette... I just want to know, this thing is strictly controlled by the oasis area. Why do you have one? "

"My mother left it. She is from the oasis area." Bai Heng replied calmly:

Just as the caravan leader said, Bai Heng indeed rarely saw something called an ether cassette in the place where he lived. However, he had seen many game cassettes, discarded arcade machines and game consoles sent from the oasis area.

Not only children in the oasis area, but even in the great wilderness where material life is extremely scarce, the spiritual food named "video games" still permeates everyone's life.

This ether cassette left by his mother is obviously quite old. It was what she used in the oasis area back then.

The codes and programs that run the ether cassette were also taught to him by his mother based on her memory.

"I won't cause you any trouble. As long as I have enough to eat."

Bai Heng showed his value, and this value did indeed make the caravan leader a little tempted.

[The caravan leader agreed to let you and your sister stay in the caravan. There is also powdered milk as a commodity in the caravan, which can feed Bronnie.]

[At the age of six, you follow the caravan and travel back and forth between various areas of the great wilderness. Sometimes, the caravan will also pass by the junk mountain and the neon city of the oasis area. You look at those towering buildings and the black drones patrolling over the city from a distance. You have also thought about entering this neon-covered city to inquire about the news of your parents. But the people in the caravan told you that people from the wilderness area cannot enter the city without identification. And your current identity is just a wandering orphan, an unregistered person, and you cannot enter the oasis area at all.]

[At the age of seven, this year, you and Bronnie still live in the truck caravan. You have opened up a small space in the truck compartment, and that is your home. Sometimes, when the caravan is stationed at a stronghold in the junk mountain and the great wilderness, you will try to scavenge. If you are lucky, you can find a few broken dolls. After washing them, you will bring these old cloth dolls back to Bronnie who is babbling.]

[But you find that compared to these soft cloth dolls. She seems to prefer to lie on you and watch you clear those colorful video games with an old-fashioned game console. Even though she can't understand anything at all at this age.]

[At the age of eight, during the journey with the caravan, you will also often collect some books about ether cassettes. Although you haven't had systematic learning, during the business trip, you have figured out many usage methods of ether cassettes through practice.]

[At the age of nine, you underestimated Bronnie's growth rate. Clearly four years ago, she was still a baby in swaddling clothes. But four years later, she has become a clever little girl. The only thing that remains unchanged is that she still likes to stick to you as she did four years ago.]

[At this age, children can just speak fluently, so they always have a lot of questions. Bronnie is the same. She will often pester you and ask: "Brother, why is my hair silver while yours is black? Why is my hair a little curly while yours is straight?" ]

[You simply tell her that she was fished out of the trash can by you.]

[As a result, Bronnie was just a little sad for a while. Then she ran to the trash can to look for things every day. You noticed this change and asked her curiously what she was doing. The answer was: "I also want a younger brother or sister."]

[At the age of ten, this year, the government of the Pengkeluode oasis area promulgated a new law. The law increased the tax levied on large caravans in the great wilderness. The caravan where you have lived for five years can no longer be maintained. In order not to embarrass the members of these caravans, you took the initiative to resign from the caravan leader and told him that you are preparing to go to the oasis area, to that real hacker city.]