Chapter 7 The Child Next Door

Stepping out of the subway station and walking east for about ten minutes, he arrived at his aunt's house.

"... Are you really leaving Earth? You're the only son of your family! If you were my son, I'd definitely scold you to death!"

Unsurprisingly, his aunt, teary-eyed and extremely reluctant, said a lot to persuade him to stay.

Faced with the concern from his relatives, Zhang Yuan awkwardly smiled, not knowing what to say. He turned his gaze outside the window.

His aunt's home was on the 192nd floor, and looking out, one could see a vast distance.

Donghua City was well-planned, with the outermost ring as the agricultural and industrial areas, and the city center in the middle. The buildings were spaced far apart to ensure every household could be in the sunlight.

"It's already planned. Turning back would be desertion and would face very severe punishment. It's also my dad's wish, and if he were alive, he'd definitely support me..."

Recalling countless days and nights of hard work, how could he possibly give up now?

"You're not coming back?"

"Yeah, not coming back..."

His aunt's eyes turned red, and she opened her mouth, unable to speak.

To cover up her sadness, she hurriedly ran to the kitchen to cook, occasionally wiping her eyes with her sleeves.

Meanwhile, his uncle was cracking sunflower seeds and watching TV, sitting with crossed legs on the sofa.

He said with great openness, "A good man's ambition should be boundless. Going to space is a good thing! It's not like you're dead. I don't understand why your aunt is so sentimental!"

"Look at this news, if I weren't so old and lacking knowledge, I'd want to sign up too!"

The TV was blaring loudly, playing a documentary about the "Earth Era" spaceship. Phrases like "witness history," "restart new civilization," and "humankind's first" stirred his uncle's emotions, making him wish he could also venture into the stars.

"Alas, I'm getting old. I wish I were as young as you."

Half an hour later, the meal was ready. The atmosphere at the dining table was somewhat silent. His aunt kept urging Zhang Yuan to eat more, saying things like "eat well before the journey" and "you won't get chicken, duck, or fish in space," which were rather odd.

To ease his relatives' worries, Zhang Yuan proactively talked about his future plans.

"... Besides some routine maintenance work on the spaceship, there's plenty of personal time. So, I plan to learn as much as possible before hibernation, hopefully completing Master's and Doctorate courses before reaching the destination..."

"Are there teachers on the spaceship too?"

"Of course, there are fifty thousand people there! Most have special skills, with education levels higher than mine."

"And there are many experts, like professors from universities and senior engineers from companies. These experts are very skilled, even some at the academician level!"

His uncle nodded, sighing, "That's a great idea. One should keep learning throughout life. Xiaoqing, did you hear that? Without studying, you can't establish yourself in society. Whatever you do needs knowledge! It's not the old days anymore..."

The girl sitting next to Zhang Yuan was Ye Qingqing, his aunt's daughter. Suddenly being lectured, she couldn't help but pout.

Although Zhang Yuan wasn't some top genius, he was a typical hardworking student, a "good student" in the eyes of relatives. Ye Qingqing naturally wasn't pleased with being constantly compared to the "good kid."

She quietly retorted to herself, "I don't even use trigonometric functions to sell vegetables..."

Ye Qingqing didn't dare to speak too loudly for fear that her father might hear and scold her.

With how things evolved, the anti-intellectual argument that "learning is useless" had long been discarded by the public.

A simple comparison: the average income of staff in major Space Cities and Moon Bases was around 600,000.

In contrast, Xia Country's average income was roughly 60,000.

A tenfold difference in average income between the two!

Xia Country had already become one of the wealthiest countries on Earth.

Without studying, it's embarrassing to venture into space and one would "likely" be a low-income earner.

In essence, for ordinary people, working in a Space City or at a Moon Base was a very respectable job.

"By the way, when will you enter hibernation? Didn't the TV say that most of the journey would be spent in hibernation, with an average conscious time of less than ten years per person?"

Zhang Yuan thought for a moment, then said, "Well, it depends on one's abilities. If you're outstanding, you can apply to enter hibernation later. Ordinary people will likely enter hibernation after resupplying at Jupiter, sleeping through hundreds of years, waking for a few years, then entering hibernation again. We take turns working to get through these difficult times."

"It will ultimately take three thousand years to reach the destination."

"Three thousand years, huh."

His aunt's eyes turned red again. By that time, they would long be gone, not even their bones left.

No one knew what would happen in the future, and who would contemplate things three thousand years from now.

His uncle also sighed, "Ah, let's eat, let's eat first."

Zhang Yuan felt a wave of emotions.

Every astronaut had to face such a choice--they had to abandon their Mother Star, abandon everything, everything here...

Time aged quickly, and past stories were hard to find. These fifty thousand people would become witnesses of Earth's history, personally experiencing the next three thousand years of Earth's future.

It sounded glamorous but was, in reality, profoundly harsh.

They would be abandoned by the entire era.

Some might wonder why there would be such fifty thousand people.

It sounded strange, truly strange.

Because... The morning fungus knows not of twilight, and the cicada knows not spring and autumn.

Without venturing beyond Earth, one would never understand just how vast the starry sky truly was.

Viewed from the Universe's scale, Earth seemed so very small, small enough to make one's heart flutter, as if it could be obliterated with a flick of a finger.

Just like a hundred years ago, when Professor Qi Yuanshan, the founder of the Deep Space Foundation and the Father of Nuclear Fusion, made his resounding proclamation, "What does aerospace have to do with profits!"

The atmosphere grew more silent, with only the sounds of eating. His uncle suddenly said, "Uh, Xiaoqing is taking the college entrance exam next year. Are there any good majors you can recommend? The kind with good job prospects."

Zhang Yuan got into university Z, considered the best achievable school for ordinary people with effort. Plus, he had interned in a Space City, so he knew the situation there.

Ye Qingqing looked up. She was already a high school junior, having a lively personality and not fond of studying. Based on her usual grades, she had a realistic grasp of her abilities and didn't expect to get into a particularly good university.

In her view, not studying was the ultimate liberation; as long as she didn't need to study, life would be easy and happy.

Even going to the market to sell vegetables seemed better than studying.

Zhang Yuan thought for a moment, "It depends on her interests for choosing a major."

His aunt awkwardly said, "She doesn't have any particular hobbies..."

This was quite normal. Most high school juniors didn't know what they wanted to do in the future and didn't have a complete life plan.

Anyway, they just dutifully studied when teachers and parents told them to. It was only when it came time to fill out application forms that they hurriedly spent a few days planning their lives.