Lu Zhou had never thought that he, a man who never let outsiders spend the night in his own home, a man who sent his guests home when it got late, would one day talk with a man until late at night.
However, seeing someone from his era again did make him feel exceptionally nostalgic.
Lu Zhou learned some basic information from Li Gaoliang, as well as some misunderstandings that may arise from the perspective of a dormant person.
“You should rest for tonight.”
Looking at the time on the holographic screen, Li Gaoliang looked at Lu Zhou and said, “Get up early tomorrow. I will take you to find a place to live. I only have two days off this month. I have to go back before the day after tomorrow. If you need anything, I will try to help you tomorrow.”
Lu Zhou said, “That’s all the holidays you get?”
Logically speaking, there should be more holidays now than in the past, right?
Li Gaoliang smiled embarrassedly as he touched the back of his head awkwardly with his big hand.
“Um… How do I put it? The virtual reality technology of this era is pretty good. Holidays don’t matter to me.”
Lu Zhou: “…”
I feel like the Pan-Asian Cooperation fleet needs some rectification…
He slept for the entire night.
Early morning the next day, Lu Zhou said goodbye to the customs staff. While taking away his luggage, he also received a hand-painted greeting card from the staff.
Apparently, this card was left by a little girl who was a passenger on flight N-177.
Her name wasn’t on the cover of the greeting card; only two lines were written.
[Thank you, Mr. Hero, you saved Lili and everyone else.]
[PS: Lili will tell Tail about your story! :)]
On the back of the greeting card were two little girls, one tall and one short, holding hands. The background was the sun, blue sky, white clouds, and green lawns.
Although it wasn’t anything creative, it was full of childlike imagination.
Li Gaoliang touched his chin and said, “I didn’t expect to see paper greeting cards in this era.”
“I will cherish it.”
Lu Zhou put away the card. He looked at Li Gaoliang, smiled, and continued, “It’s time to go, take me to see the world 100 years in the future.
“Have people’s lives become better? Have the people of our time realized their ideals for the future?”
Li Gaoliang grinned and said with a smile, “Haha, I’m not sure if everyone’s ideals have been realized, but I bet that you’ll take years to experience what this era has to offer!”
Lu Zhou looked at the airport gate nearby. His eyes gradually ignited with a glimmer of expectation.
“Then I’ll go to Jin University for now, as well as the places where I studied and worked before, also my former residence…”
Is it weird to say that it is my former residence?
After all, I am still alive, but everyone thinks I am dead…
However, trivial things aside, what was waiting in front of him was the future!
He passed through the spacious back door. The dazzling sunlight shined through the treetops and scattered on the ground.
Lu Zhou raised his eyes and looked up with surprise.
There was nothing but high-rise buildings as far as the eye could see, the spacious six-lane highways were filled with endless traffic, like rainbows between the high-rise buildings.
Magnetic levitation!
Automated driving!
Pedestrians in strange costumes walked on the streets, and dazzling holographic images were everywhere. Rail trains that went between buildings seemed to be the main mode of transportation for most people. In order to compensate for the lack of daylight caused by high-rise buildings, the lighting systems in many areas were brightly lit even during the day.
Complex art was vividly manifested in every corner of the street. Like individual gears of different sizes, they ran at their own speed and rhythm. With the coordination of AI, everything was so unified and orderly.
Putting on the AR glasses was like traveling into a fantasy world!
The augmented reality was the icing on the cake. The buildings on both sides of the street were filled with holographic billboards.
People on the street looked like elves and non-human creatures from movies or TV shows… Most of their appearances through AR were exactly the same as their avatars in the virtual community.
“Welcome to the 22nd century! I believe someone on Mars has already welcomed you.”
“Not at all.”
Although Tiangong City was prosperous, the compact minimalist style was boring compared to the large-scale architectural style on the streets of Jin Ling City.
Of course, this was because the space on Mars was limited.
Li Gaoliang patted Lu Zhou on the shoulder. He smiled and said, “What do you think of this? Is it the future you imagined?”
After taking off the AR glasses, Lu Zhou was silent for a long time before he spoke.
“It’s so cool…”
He couldn’t imagine how a city could become more prosperous than this.
He finally understood why Li Gaoliang said that it would take years for him to experience what this era had to offer…
A greeting suddenly came from behind the two.
“Hey, hey, wait a minute…”
A stylishly dressed cyberpunk-looking guy ran over here while waving his hand. He stopped Lu Zhou and Li Gaoliang, who were walking on the street.
“Wait, you, are you really Lu Zhou?”
Lu Zhou looked at this young man. Although he didn’t like his dressing style, Lu Zhou still looked at him and spoke in a friendly manner.
“Yeah, why?”
The man’s face was full of excitement as he danced like he had won a prize.
“Oh my god! I am your biggest fan, can… can I take a photo with you?”
Fan?
When Lu Zhou heard that he was his fan, he suddenly smiled.
I didn’t expect people 100 years in the future to still admire me.
“No problem.”
“Great! Wait a minute…”
The young man took out a spherical drone from his pocket. He gently tossed it upward. It unfolded its rotors and hovered dexterously in the air.
Lu Zhou looked at this small drone with curiosity in his eyes.
However, judging from Li Gaoliang’s expression, this thing was probably relatively ordinary in this world.
With his hand on Lu Zhou’s shoulder, the young man showed a weird smile on his face.
“Look at the camera, smile!”
Lu Zhou: “…?”
The drone buzzed softly and captured this historic moment.
After the photo was taken, the guy skillfully reached out to catch the drone. He turned his head and grinned at Lu Zhou, then patted him on the shoulder.
“Thanks, bro.”
He looked at the camera drone in his hand and spoke excitedly as he left.
“Guess who I met on the street! It was Lu Zhou, the popsicle from a hundred years ago! Guys, make sure to follow me and comment down below!”
A string of texts floated across the holographic screen.
[That’s insane!]
[F*ck! Do you know who he is? The Lu Zhou Science Award is named after him!]
[Hahaha, hundred-year-old popsicle, that’s hilarious! Followed!]
[…(.•ˇ‸ˇ•.)]
“You…”
Li Gaoliang looked at the young man, and he suddenly became angry. He was about to step forward, but he was quickly held back by Lu Zhou.
He looked back at Lu Zhou angrily and said, “Don’t hold me back, I must teach him a lesson!”
“Don’t be impulsive, he’s just making a joke.” Lu Zhou said with a smile, “Not to mention that I agreed to take the photo with him. Let him be.”
“Is this a joke?! F*ck sake…”
Realizing that the situation had changed, the guy quickly ran away.
Although the anger in his heart was still there, he loosened his fists.
It didn’t matter if he himself was insulted.
However, that person insulted Lu Zhou!
He could never tolerate this.
Li Gaoliang calmed down and spoke in a serious tone.
“You don’t know what’s going on… A great man from more than 100 years ago was resurrected, and he just happened to get involved with the huge hijacking case of flight N-177. You are now the focus of the media around the world. We left through the back door of the airport. Otherwise, you would have been blocked at the airport entrance.
“In any case, let’s quickly find a place for you to live. Don’t go out if you have nothing to do these days. Don’t go to Jin University or anywhere else. Wait for the attention to pass!”
Lu Zhou shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t care.
In fact, this was correct.
He was now over 100 years old. He was a grandfather compared to most people, and he obviously didn’t care about that attention-seeking guy.
Even before, he didn’t care about ordinary people’s views of himself very much.
A person could not represent an era, no matter how loud that person’s voice was. The times would definitely give a correct and fair evaluation of their legacy.
Besides, what was the meaning of social development?
Wasn’t it just to let more people feel satisfied?
“Actually, don’t be too sensitive. Speaking of which, what happened to flight N-177?”
“The hijackers are space pirates, and it has something to do with the Pan-Asian Cooperation military operation in the asteroid belt a few months ago. The situation is still under investigation, so I am not sure about it… How did you get out of the danger?”
Lu Zhou shifted his eyes slightly.
“I don’t really want to remember what happened that day… Can you give me some time? Or are you here to interrogate me?”
Li Gaoliang quickly said, “No, no, I’m just asking casually! If you don’t want to, don’t say it. Anyway, I am definitely on your side.”
Lu Zhou nodded and responded with a thankful smile.
“It’s really not very convenient to explain… It’s kind of like I received help from a hacker.”
“Hacker?”
Lu Zhou: “Yeah.”
“… I just didn’t expect this.” Li Gaoliang muttered with a weird expression, “It’s not that there are no such things as hackers. It’s just that quantum encryption and quantum communication technology have become popular now. Exploiting security vulnerabilities is very rare nowadays.”
“Really?” Lu Zhou didn’t explain anything. He smiled and said, “Maybe there are other ways.”
In the distance, the stylishly dressed guy was running away.
The live broadcast drone seemed to be broken; it was out of control in the sky. It finally plunged into the side alley.
Lu Zhou and Li Gaoliang smiled. They were about to move on, but there was another greeting from behind them.
“Wait a minute…”
“Again?”
Li Gaoliang turned around and saw a foreign guy running over. He immediately stepped forward to block Lu Zhou.
Lu Zhou quickly reached out his hand and grabbed Li Gaoliang’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, this is my… acquaintance. Thanks to his help, I was able to get home safely.”
In fact, Lu Zhou originally wanted to say that he was the creditor, but since Lu Zhou was once a billionaire, he wanted to save face, so he changed his words.
After hearing Lu Zhou say he was an acquaintance, Li Gaoliang finally put down his hands, but he still looked at him vigilantly, with no intention of letting his guard down.
“Don’t worry… Friend, I’m not a bad person. My name is Leonard, a professor at the department of archaeology at the University of Oxford. The greatest achievement of my life… is helping Professor Lu.”
Professor Leonard’s hands were on his knees as he breathed heavily. He was finally relieved. He rolled his eyes and looked up at Lu Zhou.
“I waited for you all night. During the day I was about to go to the customs to find you, but the staff there told me that you were gone, so I quickly chased after… Sh*t, you borrowed 20,000 credits from me and left without even telling me.”
Lu Zhou spoke after he coughed.
“Don’t worry about this, I will pay you back, and the Pan-Asian Cooperation—”
“This is forty thousand credits.”
Li Gaoliang interrupted Lu Zhou. He pulled out a payment code from the holographic screen on his wristband and pushed it in front of Professor Leonard without saying a word.
“I will pay you back the money he owes you. Now, this matter has nothing to do with you.”
Although the credit points of the Pan-Asian Cooperation and the North Sea Alliance were called the same, they were actually two different currencies. However, the exchange rate between the two was maintained between 1 and 0.9.
“It’s… not about money, I just want to—”
Lu Zhou guessed what Professor Leonard was thinking. He sighed and walked around Li Gaoliang, then patted him on the shoulder.
“I know what you want to say, my friend. Thanks to your help, I was able to cross tens of millions of kilometers back to my hometown. You are the first friend I met in this era, and I am very grateful for our friendship. If I have the opportunity in the future, I will visit you.”
Professor Leonard held his right hand tightly.
“I will remember those words! Goodbye, my friend. In fact, I am here to say goodbye to you! Tomorrow I will fly back to the island of England. I am actually not expecting a reward or anything. I don’t have many friends in real life, so… I hope you will remember me in the future.
“Although nothing has changed from this trip to Mars, I feel that I have found something more meaningful than cultural relics.”
Professor Leonard used his finger to send his identity information from the holographic panel on the bracelet. He gave it to Lu Zhou and spoke with a grin.
“When you apply for an official ID card, remember to add my virtual community account! When I have the chance in the future, I will come to Pan Asia, or you can come to the North Sea Alliance; we will meet again.”
Professor Leonard made a goodbye gesture to Lu Zhou, then turned and left.
Lu Zhou smiled and waved his hand.
Although this guy always complained along the journey, Lu Zhou could feel that he truly cared.
Just now, Leonard secretly put something in Lu Zhou’s pocket. Lu Zhou was excited to see what it was.
Li Gaoliang looked at the 20,000 credits remaining in the air. He murmured, “What a strange person.”
He then reached out his hand to take back the half-paid holographic payment.
“Thank you, I will pay back the money later.”
Li Gaoliang said earnestly, “You don’t have to pay me back. The whole world is the crystallization of your wisdom. If you need it, I can give you all of my property.”
“You think too highly of me. There has never been a prosperous era that can be achieved by the strength of one person.” Lu Zhou said with a smile, “Don’t worry about me too much. I was a billionaire. Even after a hundred years, I won’t be so poor that I have to live on the streets.”
Li Gaoliang’s task this morning was mainly to help Lu Zhou find a place to live. Li Gaoliang taught him how to use a personal terminal to connect to the city cloud, and how to use the city cloud to find nearby properties that were currently available for rent.
Although real estate agents also existed in this era, their demand was small.
Most of the information could be found in the virtual community.
The point-to-point service built by AI had reduced the cost of individual users to obtain information, and the profit margin of using the information gap to earn the price difference had become negligible. The vast majority of real estate agencies mainly operated high-end real estate, and the value of their payment was mainly reflected in high-quality supporting services rather than using information advantages.
Lu Zhou also learned from Li Gaoliang that, since the 1970s, most high-rise residential buildings in the city center had not been sold to private individuals. Instead, they were developed and operated by leasing companies under the supervision of the local government. They were public rental housing in a disguised form.
After all, the buildings were getting higher and higher, and they were one hundred or two hundred floors high. Due to house demolitions and facility upgrades, all kinds of troubles came from traditional property rights.
It was obviously unrealistic to expect the invisible hand of the market to allocate resources perfectly. The Pan-Asian Cooperation had learned this lesson by simply removing this piece from market transactions.
At least in the Pan-Asian region.
In addition, some families that cared about the quality of life in this era would choose to buy a renewable property right private residential land in the suburbs to build their own residences.
However, most young people still chose to live in the city center with more complete public facilities, rent a small apartment with a moderate area, and focus more on the spiritual world, the virtual community.
Like Li Gaoliang said, the virtual reality technology in this world had reached an unimaginable level.
The expansion of people’s imagination on computers perfectly filled in the lack of “effective creativity” in computers, and at the same time, it satisfied people’s spiritual needs.
In the early 22nd century, many electronic artworks burst out in the form of a blowout. While the prosperity of science and technology broadened people’s living space, it also greatly contributed to the cultural prosperity of human civilization.
And this had been reflected in many aspects.
After hearing the news, Lu Zhou was emotional.
He never expected that the brain-computer interface he built back then would have such a big impact on the world.
So much so that people in the future era, whether in life or values, would completely change their appearances under the subtle influence of new technology.
After comparing several properties, Lu Zhou finally settled on a 200-square-meter large apartment on the 100th floor near the second ring road in the city.
The modern and minimalist style gave him an escape from the neon holographic colors.
The rent did not include water and electricity; it was about 4,000 credits a month. According to the purchasing power of credits, the rent was considered quite expensive.
However, due to its supporting facilities and location, this price was a bargain.
Lu Zhou originally wanted to pay by himself, but Li Gaoliang refused and insisted on paying for a year’s rent and two months’ deposit.
Lu Zhou had to accept this kindness, but he planned to repay the favor in the future.
Since Li Gaoliang’s return to Earth this time was on temporary leave, he had to rush back to the Lagrange Space Base to return to the team before tomorrow, so he didn’t stay here any longer. He left his contact information and agreed to meet again next time, then went to the Jinling Aerospace Airport.
Lu Zhou looked at the empty modern apartment. He sat on the sofa, and suddenly, he felt a little empty in his heart.
He was back on Earth.
But it felt like something was missing.
He knew that it was because of a lack of family, but he didn’t want to think about that for now.
Unlike soldiers like Li Gaoliang, ordinary people had no “reason” to abandon their relatives, friends, and happiness from the present and go to a completely unknown era.
To be honest, if they hadn’t found his dormant cabin, he would have died for sure.
Inside the empty living room, Lu Zhou took a deep breath and prayed silently in his heart.
“I hope you all lived a peaceful and happy life…
“Whether you are proud of my name or not…
“I will always love you.”
After sniffling, Lu Zhou put down his hands.
As for whether to visit his descendants, he was actually quite hesitant about this matter.
If they wanted to see him, when they heard the news that he was still alive, they could take the initiative to contact him.
And if they didn’t want to see him, he shouldn’t disturb their lives.
After all, not everyone wanted their originally peaceful daily life to be broken by an ancestor who emerged from nowhere.
“There is a meeting in the afternoon… The Freezing Human Rights Protection Foundation, I think?”
Lu Zhou operated the holographic panel with a weird UI design. He sent his address to Ms. K, the person in charge of the identity restoration procedures arranged by Chairman Li Guangya.
Without waiting for long, a message window popped up on the holographic panel.
[Meet at three in the afternoon.]
What a concise answer.
I like it.
Lu Zhou didn’t really like the trivial matters that affected the efficiency of work. It seemed that he would fit well into this era.
Lu Zhou replied with [OK]. He then swiped his index finger and turned off the holographic panel.
Apparently, the Freezing Human Rights Protection Foundation included free legal services. According to the official Pan-Asian Cooperation, the lawyer of the foundation could help him get an advance payment from the Pan-Asian Airlines before he restored his citizenship.
Lu Zhou’s legacy fund for the future was actually now used on himself, so he felt a little emotional.
Perhaps karma was real.
Someday, the good deeds accumulated in the past would come back to him.
Lu Zhou felt a little hungry. He was about to stand up and go to the kitchen to find something to eat when a crisp doorbell suddenly rang at the door.
“Already?”
Slightly surprised, Lu Zhou walked to the entrance and opened the door with his hand.
However, the result was beyond his expectations.
Standing at the door was not a lawyer or salesman in formal clothes. Instead, it was a young and beautiful girl.
She wore a white coat hanging down to her knees, and a Jinling Institute for Advanced Study ID card was pinned on her chest.
Lu Zhou’s eyes fell on her face. He was trying to recognize who she was. However, after a long time, he failed to match this face with a name in his memory.
There was an indescribable affinity. Her face was so perfect it was almost non-human-like, it made him wonder whether she was a human or an elf in a fantasy world.
However, Lu Zhou had no time to think about this issue.
The pearl-like eyes were covered with a layer of tears.
There was no time for him to say hello. The strange girl rushed toward him and threw herself at him.
“Master!!!”
“???”
Lu Zhou, who was thrown to the floor, looked dazed and completely confused.
Is this a scam that specifically targets frozen people?
Or is it the same kind of person as the guy before, those who are seeking attention?
Jesus, she’s so strong!
Obviously, she was not as tall as him, and her body was considered petite, but he felt like he had been hit by a tank; he couldn’t even move.
When the lumps of warm silica gel pressed against his face, Lu Zhou began to think.
However, even though he almost passed out, he still didn’t know what was going on…
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