In this strange town known as the 'Condenser', we could see many iconic symbols of the old Empire if we paid close attention. The walls of the houses were riveted with old metal plates. Records of their former uses could be seen everywhere. Some of them had nameplates that said 'XX function area', some had numbers that represented the unit designation, and some had blood-red triangular marks. Without a doubt, this town was built from the remains of the Army of Destruction.
The entire town was built on a metal disc with a radius of about half a kilometer. Just as Glick had said, this was a condenser. Based on the size of its cover, Sandora guessed that it was a part of a special aircraft carrier. There were many ramps of unusually high height around the town, and at the end of the ramps was a circle of equally high ground. This' terrain 'could have been caused by an external energy impact. Some kind of weapon similar to the Milky Way's main cannon had destroyed the outer armor of the aircraft carrier's cooling unit, leaving a crater like hole. The condenser under the armor had survived, but there were still traces of high temperature melting. (We soon found metal ripples on the east side of the square, which proved our speculation). Now, this crater like hole had become a safe haven for a group of scavengers.
Mercury Lamp flew high into the sky and looked around. She found that the overall terrain was slightly tilted to one side. Near the distant horizon, the 'ground' rose high like the deck of an aircraft carrier. On the other side of the horizon, there was a cliff at an angle of almost ninety degrees. At the edge of the cliff, we could see something that looked like an elevator moving quickly. There were lights on the other side, and we could also see small spaceships rushing into the distant sky from behind the cliff.
Mercury Lamp told us what she had found. Sandora guessed that it was because the aircraft carrier under our feet had plunged into the planet ruin when it crashed. At the same time, the huge impact had cut off the upper deck of another spaceship far away, leaving a cliff-like terrain. There should be a settlement near the cliff, and it looked much larger than this town.
Mercury Lamp was only 92.3 centimeters tall, but she could fly around noisily. This made Glick more and more curious. He tried to greet the proud puppet, and I was also interested to see how Mercury Lamp would react. So, we had to compensate Glick with a new set of clothes.
His shirt was destroyed by the puppet girl's metal storm, but Glick didn't look unhappy at all. Instead, he looked like he had earned a small fortune. It was as if it was a good thing that he had risked being hacked into pieces for a new set of clothes. He looked at the sharp feathers behind him and curiously asked if Mercury Lamp was the latest guard robot from the big city.
The townspeople who had been watching us from afar had been driven back into their houses by Sandora's hypnosis. However, there were some townspeople who hadn't shown up at the beginning that were not affected. Now, there were a few elderly townspeople who had come out of the higher class living cabins and waved at Glick from afar. Sandora had deliberately prevented them from being affected by the hypnosis. We needed to learn more about this world from the adults. Glick obviously didn't know enough.
Glick was called over by a chubby old man with white hair. After talking to him for a while, the old man looked surprised. Glick pointed at us and introduced us to the old man. "Grandpa Bernard, these are the guests from the big city. They hired me as their guide. They want to see our town!"
The old man called Bernard was wearing coarse linen clothes. His clothes looked cleaner than the others, and there were some simple decorations on his clothes. This might indicate that he had a special status in this town. Glick had scratched several black handprints on his sleeves, but the old man didn't seem to care. He just glanced at me and Sandora with his cloudy eyes, a trace of doubt flashing across his face. Then, his line of sight fell on Glick's back. The octopus-like autonomous robot was mumbling behind Glick. Occasionally, it would fly half a meter away and then quickly return. The old man stared at this new robot for a full ten seconds. However, in the end, he didn't ask anything. He just bowed to us and said in a trembling voice, "People from the big city are rare guests here. What can this small place that deals with scrap metal do for you?"
If Glick could be deceived because of his lack of knowledge, then this old man in front of me, who looked at least four times older than me, shouldn't be so easily deceived. We all knew that a person's age and knowledge were directly proportional in most cases. No matter how you looked at it, this old man should have seen a lot of people from the big city. Moreover, there was a doubtful expression on his face. Even so, the old man didn't ask anything. This made Sandora and I look at each other.
"We are just passing by." Lin Xue pinched her nose. "I have never seen such a messy place. You should understand what is going on."
The wrinkles on the old man's face smoothed out. In a very careful tone, he said, "Yes, yes, people from the big city will have such thoughts. Glick, show the guests around and tell them about the adults singing hymns. The party will start in a while. Today, all the children will get two sugar cakes."
Glick cheered happily and hugged Barnard tightly. Then, he led us to see the other buildings in the town that were very amazing in his eyes. However, we weren't very interested in those things now. After all, no matter how special those things were, they were just a broken spaceship. If we wanted to see them, there were many recycling furnaces of various models.
"Right, take us to your house."
The big sister looked around, looking a little bored. Then, she said to Glick.
Glick looked at us in surprise. Obviously, he didn't expect that the big shots from the big city would be curious about the lives of ordinary people and want to see the shanty town. However, he still remembered what he had promised us, so he nodded happily. "Okay, my house is right in front. However, the house is very small. I'm afraid you can't live in it. "
As soon as he said that, Glick slapped his head hard. "Wow, how could I forget? The big shots from the big city don't live in that kind of place. Please come with me! "
The little boy Glick's house was on the "high ground" on one side of the town. The high ground was a metal platform that protruded more than half a meter from the ground. It was surrounded by alloy pillars that were less than half a meter high, like a fence. It was probably where the particle deceleration unit of the condenser was located. However, the coil and control terminal of the condenser were gone. Perhaps they had been vaporized during the attack. Just like the other shacks in the town, Glick's small iron house was also fixed with rivets and wired solder joints, and its orientation was crooked. All the houses in the town seemed to be unplanned, and there was no fixed north-south orientation. The direction of the opening seemed to be random. This was because the magnetic field on the planet was chaotic, and the planet itself did not have a rotation direction or the structural characteristics of a normal celestial body. Therefore, there was no concept of north, south, east, and west. The residents of the town built their houses based on the principle of saving time and effort.
Glick led us to the front of the house. Then, he went forward and knocked on the door. He shouted, "Water Bead! Water Bead! I'm back! Open the door! There's a guest! A great guest from the big city! "
I noticed that no matter where he went, Glick would always say the words "guest from the big city". It was as if we were bringing him great honor. Maybe it was just a child's desire to show off. As Glick shouted, an old metal plate slid to the side from the wall. I swear to God, I didn't know it was a door until it moved!
A little girl, about seven or eight years old, looked out timidly from the house. She was dressed in coarse clothes like everyone else in the town, but her gray dress looked rather clean. The little girl was very thin, which made her look younger than her actual age. She had a pair of light blue eyes, and although they were a little timid, they looked very lively and had a curiosity that matched her age. Her short, light yellow hair was messily scattered behind her head, and she looked like she had just woken up.
"Water Bead, this is for you! I came back early today, so I didn't finish my food. I'm looking forward to the sugar pancakes for the party tonight! "
Glick said happily. He took out a small iron box from the pocket of his dirty overalls, and from the box he took out two gray rectangles. The little girl, whose name was Dewdrop, silently took the unappetizing objects. She quickly stuffed them into her mouth and began to chew them. She nodded to us and stepped aside to give us a chance to enter the house.
"Water Bead doesn't like to talk. She doesn't usually leave the house." Glick smiled awkwardly at us. It seemed that he was embarrassed that his sister didn't show enough respect to the guests from the big city. "Water Bead is only nine years old this year, but she can already do a lot of things. She is a hardworking girl. Even the priests in the big town nearby have praised her."
Glick's shack wasn't big. Like all the houses around us, it was a single-story structure. A few shaped metal plates taken from the wreckage of the spaceship's corridor formed an irregular frame. Above the frame, metal plates of the same material, textile, and soft materials were piled up to form the roof. This simple shack was even divided into several compartments using iron sheets and cloth curtains. When a large group of us went in, the 'living room' immediately became crowded. There wasn't even enough space to turn around. Bryndis couldn't stand such a cramped environment. She dragged the five Protoss cops out of the shack to make the space a little more spacious. Then Blue followed them out. As a big fox with a lot of tails, it was indeed a disaster to turn around in such an environment. Moreover, Glick's frequent questions about her large number of tails also troubled the unlucky fox girl a lot.
We curiously looked at everything in the shack. The things here were familiar, but also strange. The familiar thing was that they all had traces of the Empire. For example, the containers with the emblem of the Imperial Army. They were made of cut energy pipes. There were also mirrors and lampshades made of polymorphic Orank crystals. Many household items could easily be seen as processed from the waste of the spaceship. What was strange was that some of them didn't make sense. From Sandora and my point of view, those were junk that should have been thrown into the recycling furnace long ago, but they were all piled up in the room, together with daily necessities.
Glick noticed our gazes. He immediately scratched his head and explained, "I recycled these from the metal station. They look useful, but the people on the spaceship don't accept these things. By the way, look at this! "
Glick's eyes suddenly lit up. He was like a child who was eager to show off his toy to others. He quickly ran to the corner of the room and dug out a small metal box from a pile of scrap metal. Although the metal box was a little damaged, the overall structure was still intact. The crystal components on it were shiny. Obviously, it had been carefully cleaned.
"I found this from a very far place, almost in the territory of another metal station. It still has energy. Just like this …" Glick excitedly demonstrated to us. He fiddled with the metal box a few times, and the crystal components suddenly lit up. Then, a holographic image suddenly appeared in the air. It turned out that it was a portable holographic projection generator.
Due to a malfunction, the holographic image in the air kept shaking. Moreover, there was only the lower half of the image. A large group of soldiers were marching in formation, but we could only see their neatly arranged legs. The image gradually moved to the front of the army. After moving past a large pile of legs, the leader of the army appeared in front of the camera. He was a small figure wearing a black cloak. He only reached the waist of the surrounding soldiers. The figure turned his head and the image stopped.
My forehead was covered in cold sweat. I thought to myself, 'It's lucky that the image stopped here. Otherwise, Viskar's head from 720,000 years ago would have traveled through time and space to appear in front of Glick. It's such a sad thing. The image was only half way through, but Viskar's head was still completely in front of the camera. I could see that the little girl's eyes were red. Of course, it was possible that her eyes weren't red. However, it was true that Pandora was grinding her teeth.
While we were looking around and chatting with Glick, the little girl named Dewdrop sat quietly on a spacious chair. She was chewing on a gray rectangular piece that Glick had given her. That was probably the daily food of the people in this world. I saw a few similar pieces on the table not far from us. They were uniform in shape and had no smell. Although I didn't taste them, I could guarantee that they didn't look or smell good. According to PL-15's previous report, there was no agricultural system in this world, and there were no other industries that could produce natural organic matter. All the daily necessities of the people in this world came from the things excavated from the ruins and some ancient factories. Those factories seemed to have been dismantled from the ecological support system of a large spaceship. Perhaps they were the source of this world's fresh water and food. The little girl Dewdrop's mouth should be the artificial organic matter that was synthesized by machines.
My sister used her unparalleled affinity to finally talk to the timid little girl. My sister used the excuse that "people in big cities don't eat this kind of food" to ask about the source of the food in the little girl's mouth. Dewdrop obviously knew less about the outside world than Glick. She was easily tricked by my sister. She then told us that all the food came from the food synthesizer in the town. However, the raw materials for the synthesizer had to be bought from bigger cities. The final source of the raw materials was some ancient "heritage factories". Just as we had guessed, food and water were synthesized by machines in this world, just like the atmosphere.
A world built on the foundation of death, naturally, could only be maintained by machines.
Glick was talking to his new partner in the corner of the house. The so-called new partner was the autonomous robot that we had given him. Since the robot was always making noises, Glick simply named it Dudu. The autonomous robot, which did not have much thinking ability, gladly accepted its new name and reorganized its work in this small, cramped room. The advanced "non-fixed structure technology" allowed it to understand its new position in just a few minutes and establish a preliminary brainwave connection with Glick. Now, under its new master's instructions, it was quickly reorganizing a few broken metal lumps into a psionic shield generator for infantry. Such amazing work efficiency made Glick scream in excitement. He happily pointed at the autonomous robot that was reorganizing the pile of scrap metal at a speed visible to the naked eye and shouted to us, "Look, Dudu is definitely the best craftsman I have ever seen. Even the two craftsmen in this town are not as flexible as it. I want to bring this to Grandpa Barnard. With its help in sorting metal, the town will be able to develop!"
"This is your treasure. You want to give it to someone else?"
Sandora looked at Glick in surprise.
"Not to give it to someone else, it is for the town to use," Glick corrected her seriously. "This kind of thing should be used by the collective, because work efficiency is the law. The hymn says, 'We work, we move forward, we overcome everything. Efficiency is a virtue left to us by the ancient messengers. They gave us inexhaustible resources and made this world as happy as heaven.' However, I think 'Dudu' is still my thing. According to custom, the collective can only use it."
Glick sang a so-called "hymn" for us in a very strange tone. Then, he suddenly looked at us and said, "By the way, people in big cities sing hymns like this, right? I heard that the people in big cities are much livelier than the town when they have a party. You guys have a big shield that can cover the whole city. When you celebrate, you project a lot of beautiful scenery on the shield. "
His question was too sudden. We didn't know anything about big cities. Sandora didn't even intend to answer the little boy's increasing questions. Fortunately, just when I couldn't think of a way to fool him, a loud voice came from outside. A loud voice was particularly loud among the noise.
"Hey, hey! Hurry up! It's time to sing a hymn! "
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
