Chapter 13 I'll Tell Your Mom!

Zhang Yuan took out his phone, opened the ridesharing app, and used voice input for his destination.

"Destination: East Sea City, distance about 412 kilometers."

"Searching for a carpool match, please wait..."

A radar-like icon was spinning.

This intercity bus carpooled ten people, with a cost of 60 yuan per person, quite economical.

It quickly got onto the intercity high-altitude track, with a speed of up to 400 kilometers per hour. Such speed was beyond what an ordinary human could handle, so it had to be controlled by an unmanned system to strictly maintain the distance between cars.

Once there was a fool who wanted to show off his driving skills in front of someone and switched to manual driving in non-emergency conditions, and the result... as expected, was dust to dust. At a speed of 400 kilometers per hour, the car crashed into the high-track railing, with not a single organ intact.

The carbon nanotube railing, however, remained unharmed in the accident, and the safety of the high track became legendary.

An hour later, after getting off the bus, Zhang Yuan took the subway to reach his destination.

"You sure are on time, not a minute early!" Li Zhendong opened the door.

"I took a nap in the massage parlor, so I was a bit late..."

"Tsk tsk, that's a great place for a romantic encounter!" Li Zhendong had a mischievous expression. Spending too long in Space City had turned them into tinder, seemingly ready to ignite just upon contact with the opposite sex.

Zhang Yuan responded irritably, "Come on, they were all middle-aged women, where's the romance in that? My taste isn't that bad... Can you stop talking about this stuff the moment we meet..."

"Zhang Yuan!" Li Zhendong suddenly looked serious, as if contemplating something.

"What?" Zhang Yuan felt a chill down his spine.

Li Zhendong, looking excited, waved his phone, "I've been chatting with a girl these days, maybe something could happen... Look at the photo, she's quite nice."

"Really?"

Taking the phone, Zhang Yuan saw it was a cute girl with pouty lips, fair and delicate.

Chat history:

[Girl: Does your job pay well?]

[Li Zhendong: Not very high, money doesn't matter much to us, the main thing is to be happy...]

[Spaceship photo]

[Li Zhendong floating in zero-g photo]

[Girl: Space seems so fun! I've always dreamed of going there, but the travel costs are too expensive.]

[Li Zhendong: Risking your life to do this work surely isn't fun. In zero gravity, you can choke just drinking water, and there have truly been such cases!]

[Girl: Is your dad also a Space City worker?]

[Li Zhendong: Of course, but I've never relied on my dad, I got there on my own.]

[...] (One thousand words of flirtation omitted)

[Li Zhendong: Look, I'm about to get on the spaceship. Can you join me for a movie? I've never been on a date in my life.]

[Girl: Haha~ Really? You don't have a girlfriend?]

The girl still hadn't replied formally but seemed a bit interested.

Li Zhendong, full of pride, boasted, "See how good I am? Want me to teach you how to pick up girls? The first trick is to act innocent—some ladies like that! They like virgins!"

Zhang Yuan furrowed his eyebrows as he listened.

"The second trick, letting go to capture."

"The third trick, monkey steals the peach!"

"What... steals the peach?!"

Li Zhendong grew more agitated and louder, "Oh, I mean steals the heart... Just imagine, even after you're gone, left Earth, those girls still keep you in their hearts. In the deepest place, they reserve a spot for you, filled with the beautiful times you spent together."

"One year, ten years, a hundred years later, at the moment of their passing, their last words are your name... while you are in another corner of time and space."

"Don't you find this meaningful?"

For some reason, Zhang Yuan felt nothing, even a bit nauseous...

He sighed, acknowledging that his friend, despite being intelligent, a genius, effortlessly achieving top-notch results—a level befitting an Academic God—had one flaw... extremely reserved and loved to brag.

Zhang Yuan suddenly grinned, "Player!"

"I'll tell your mom about this!"

The atmosphere plunged into a deathly silence.

Zhang Yuan repeated verbatim, "...One year, ten years, a hundred years later, at the moment of their passing, their last words are your name?"

"Li Zhendong! Li Zhendong! Oh, I'm dying."

"Is that how they call out? Enjoy it? Enjoy it?"

Silence engulfed them again.

In a certain way, Zhang Yuan also showed some talent.

Li Zhendong sighed as he stared at the ceiling, "Right now, I just want to beat you to a pulp, truly!"

...

At the dining table, Li Zhendong behaved like a model son, saying nothing extra, just quietly eating.

Mrs. Li was amicable, urging Zhang Yuan to eat more, saying, "You won't find natural meat in space," "This big drumstick is real free-range chicken," and so on, just like what a maternal aunt would say.

And it was true; the limited space and poor ecological environment on the spaceship allowed for some plant cultivation but made it impossible to luxuriously breed pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, or fish. So the food in Space City was synthetic meat, tissues from animal cells cultivated in petri dishes.

Li Zhendong's father, Li Cheng, and Zhang Yuan's father were colleagues at Space City.

He was sharing stories from the past when they designed the "Earth Era."

"...Your dad, Zhang Qiming, truly was a genius. The problems we couldn't solve, he figured out with just a tap on his head and a twist of the pen, like he was on drugs!"

"Drugged?" Zhang Yuan couldn't help but wipe the sweat off his face.

"He built the majority of the spaceship's control program. So far, only 212 minor bugs have been found; it's incredibly difficult..."

"Sadly, he left too soon, such a pity..." Li Cheng felt complex emotions, even drinking a bit of alcohol.

"Even 212 is a small amount?"

"You don't understand, the spaceship's control engineering, one ring connects to the next, one layer overlaps another; the more complex the system, the greater the risk. The Earth Era has safety monitoring systems, energy systems, ecological systems, material cycle systems, communication systems, and several small industrial plants; the complexity of control engineering is beyond your imagination!"

"Software and hardware complement each other; software isn't any less difficult than hardware!"

The two youngsters couldn't chime in with anything.

After a while, Zhang Yuan asked, "Can't the spaceship go any faster?"

Li Cheng shook his head, "Seven-thousandths of light speed is already very fast. Unless propelled by large-scale nuclear bombs, reaching possibly 3% of light speed, but our materials can't withstand the explosive power of nuclear bombs... and in the foreseeable future, materials resistant to nukes won't emerge."

Li Zhendong also asked, "Dad, after we leave, will they build the next Colonization Ship?"

"No, in the coming years, even decades, likely not... the entire Earth's economic circle needs some time to recuperate."

"This project was quite taxing, even with the strong support from various governments and the Deep Space Foundation, it requires a good rest period to slowly recover its vitality."

"Public opposition to the special aeronautics tax is strong; several countries are quite stirred up—it's likely to be canceled..."

Zhang Yuan asked in confusion, "Are we the only batch of Deep Space Colonizers?"

"Not exactly, as for the future, who knows?"

"The basic technology for deep space voyaging has matured; building a second large Colonization Ship won't be as costly as the first. Perhaps, once the governments have spare funds, launching a second one might be possible."

"However, without new technology, significantly boosting travel speed is tough. Don't count on later ships catching up with you."

Zhang Yuan gnawed on a drumstick, pausing slightly, he deciphered a crucial piece of information: the once financially robust Deep Space Foundation seemed to be out of money.