Chapter 881 Small Town

(Everyone, a new month has begun...so start throwing away your monthly tickets!)

The little boy named Glick looked at the mechanical creation floating between his sister and him with a dull expression. The miniaturized autonomous machine with a diameter of less than half a meter was like a naughty little pet, flipping back and forth in the air. As it somersaults, it is getting familiar with this strange world and changing its body structure and energy circulation methods to cope with the possible working conditions in the local natural environment. This amazing adaptability and pseudo-evolutionary ability can make it a leader in the eyes of ordinary civilizations. An extremely sophisticated ultimate robot, but among the various mechanical facilities in the Xiling Empire, it plays a role like a pipe cleaner and has the same value as a wrench.

But it seemed that to the little boy, its value was different.

Glick's eyes widened, as if he had never seen such a magical machine before. This made me a little worried. Is the thing that my sister took out happened to be something that is not available in this ruined world? This will make it difficult for us to encounter it. The local man on the board was scared away, and at this moment, the autonomous machine just completed its "rapid evolution". It adjusted the angles of several of its robotic arms, and then made an indistinct beeping sound. It briskly carried out the order given to it by onee-sama: move closer to its new master.

"ah!"

The little boy Glick let out a horrified cry and was frightened by the sudden attack of the self-disciplined machine, which made him sit down on the ground. The latter immediately braked suddenly in mid-air, circled its new owner twice in distress, and then said to us There was a somewhat aggrieved beep.

These little robots made by Gaia are just so much fun.

Grik awkwardly got up from the ground, and the autonomous machine in mid-air immediately came forward again, but this time it learned wisely and did not pounce on the opponent. Instead, it stopped about one meter away from the other party and kept beeping. The little boy didn't bother to pat the dust on his pants (in fact, I was curious whether there was any need to pat those pants. It seemed like It is much dirtier than the ground here), but he stared blankly at the shiny new machine in front of him, and then turned to look at us: "A brand new 'big craftsman'? Give it to me? You must be joking, right?" ! I know, I heard the old people in the town said that people in big cities would make fun of children in the countryside. If I touch this, I will get beaten..."

"No, this is yours, as a reward for being a guide," I breathed a sigh of relief. It seems that this thing also exists in this ruined world, but its value here may be different from the machine phalanxes everywhere in my impression, "Of course. In exchange, we have some special requirements: Don't ask too much Duo, please cooperate with our questions and don't talk nonsense about us to others. Can you do this?"

The little boy Glick carefully looked into my eyes to make sure there was no cunning smile, and then glanced at the self-disciplined machine that was flying around him cautiously with a somewhat dazed look. Finally, he nodded firmly: "The people in the old Glick family are the most trustworthy, and the entire Condenser Town knows it!"

Here we go again, that weird town name, this one full of ruins. A world where even the planet is made up of huge spaceship debris is so weird. Not only does it look like something we have never seen before, but even its place names are equally rare. Putting aside the so-called "big city" for the moment, the name is What's going on in the town of "Condenser"?

"Condenser Town is the name we gave it," Glick took us on another road that could bypass the nearly 90-degree slope in front of us and be covered with sharp metal fragments and lead to The main entrance to the town below is just a little further away. "Most of the temporary settlements have no names, but this settlement has lasted for decades. So the old people in the town decided to give the settlement a name, and they checked a lot of information disks. Then they found that the big metal disk under the town was a place called Condensation That's why they call this town 'Condenser' town. I think there must be more condenser towns in the world, because many temporary settlements will be built on metal platforms similar to the ones below our town. Those metal There are always a few platforms that are also condensers. If those towns can stay long enough and have a group of wise old people, they can also be called 'condenser' towns..."

Glick obviously tried hard to become a qualified tour guide, but maybe he has never done this, or maybe there is no tourism industry in this world. Although he tried hard to tell us the history of his town in vivid language, but What was said in the end was messy and rambling. Fortunately, we don't care about the origin of this town. What everyone is most curious about now is what this ruin-like world is like, its origin, and its origins. Residents, its vicissitudes in the past 720,000 years - it is difficult to imagine that the indigenous residents here are survivors of the Doomsday War 720,000 years ago, and they are still lingering in the ruins so long after the end of the world. , and living in such a strange wasteland life. If it were not for the judgment of the Temple of Life, I would never believe that the residents here have survived hundreds of thousands of years after the end of the world in the ruins. The original purpose of everyone coming here was to find Viska's lost fleet and to find the truth about the Legion of Destruction's attack on the world 720,000 years ago. But now, these two goals don't seem so urgent, and everyone's interest has begun to shift. To the ruined world itself.

"Interesting idea, probability and statistics."

Lin Xue suddenly glanced at Glick and said in a light tone, "Tell us about the situation in this place. You can't see such a dirty place in a big city. I'm very curious about this place."

"Of course, people in big cities are sometimes curious about various collection stations and workstations, because you usually don't do this... Oh, I don't mean anything else," Glick walked briskly in front, and gradually As he approached the light in front, his tone became more relaxed, "This is a metal station, and it is a secondary recycling station. As you can see, there are scrap metal cut into small pieces everywhere. They are all removed from machines that have been scrapped again. As we all know, the world's resources come from the earth under our feet. But not all resources can be picked up and used, and scrapped things must be found to be reused to avoid waste. This metal station is for all kinds of people. A place where various resources are collected and sorted. Every week, large ships will dump a lot of scrap metal collected from other places and resource metal that needs to be dismantled here. Adults sort them during working days and put away useful things. Send them to large factories or small factories - but most of them are sent to small factories. After all, most of them are smaller parts, and large factories will not accept them. It is different if it is a first-level recycling station. They all deal with big things. There are bigger metal mountains, and a piece of stuff on the mountain is bigger than the small piles around us. There are even some first-level recycling stations that can dig out resources that can be used directly from near the settlement..."

Glick rambled on about things he knew, but they sounded a little unclear to us. I couldn't ask him more directly, so I could only use his description as much as possible to restore a social system that was surviving in a ruined world.

The mercury lamp lay on my shoulder boredly, and she looked at the dilapidated garbage piles around her. I couldn't help but shrink back, and hugged my head harder. Feeling that small and exquisite body moving back and forth on my shoulders, I gently patted the other person's leg: "What's wrong?"

"Stupid human, I don't like it here,"

Mercury Lamp whispered, "I...hate the atmosphere here."

"Do you want to go back to the spaceship?" I could roughly guess the reason for Mercury Lamp's bad mood. This may have reminded her of some not-so-good things. Although she has overcome those things, the sudden contact will still make her feel a little uncomfortable. "Be good and obey."

"Don't treat me like a child," Mercury Lamp hit me on the head with dissatisfaction, but still shook his head firmly, "That would be even more boring. The ship is full of rigid soldiers and the scientist who puts clones everywhere, with you I can still fight with Lilina when we are together..."

I:"……"

I always feel that the problem of educating my children at home is becoming a serious problem before me again.

After walking for a while, we have arrived at the main entrance of the town called "Condenser" in Glick's mouth. It is said to be the main entrance, but in fact it is just a triangular frame supported by three crooked alloy frames. This triangular shelf is welded to a one-meter-high wall that surrounds the entire living area and is the only entrance and exit to the wall. The material of those walls seems to be the soft metal lining of the corridor inside the spaceship. The almost obliterated imperial writing can still be seen faintly on it, and the triangular door may come from a scrapped gun mount bracket, which is enough Five or six meters high, it seems a bit too big compared to the wall.

Unexpectedly, there is an automatic access control system on the triangular gate. A dozen irregular high-energy gratings are blocking the door. I observed it carefully and found that they came from two tall pillars at the door. The pillars were decorated with unknown symbols. There are many pairs of beam generators tied to the metal wires, and their energy lines are roughly exposed to the outside, extending from the low walls to the inside of the town.

The fence is a little over one meter long, the access control energy is completely exposed, and there are shaky joints everywhere on the fence. I can't help but think about how many unscrupulous intruders it would take to be blocked by such a security system. To be fair, With this kind of security level, my high school classmates who jumped over the wall with me to play games outside the school were able to crack it. If they installed such a high-tech grating wall, they might as well put a director of education at the door...

Glick was used to the simple facilities here. He just gave us a sign of waiting, then took out a small crystal card from his pocket. The crystal card looked very rough in workmanship and did not seem to be in the imperial style. Thing, he swept this gadget over the beam generator in front of the door, and the intercepted beam disappeared.

"Welcome to Condenser Town - people from the big city are rare visitors here. The last time we welcomed guests from the big city was three years ago." Glick happily waved his thin arms, obviously his mood after returning home I feel very happy.

We followed each other with a sense of curiosity. The dilapidated and chaotic environment around us may not be so refreshing, but the freshness brought by this strange world has diluted this negative impact well. I looked around and found that this was indeed a settlement built on a huge metal plane. The "ground" under my feet was a whole piece of alloy. The surface of the alloy was so rough that it was almost impossible to see its former glory. You can see pipe joints or cable joints extending from the metal floor everywhere. These joints were recycled and tied with ropes to become fixtures in shantytowns, used to reinforce the roofs of the iron-clad houses that can be seen everywhere here.

When we were on the high ground just now, we had seen the cluttered iron houses in this settlement from a distance. At the time, we felt that they were completely dilapidated, but now we are getting closer and taking a closer look - it is better to take a closer look just now.

We were surrounded by houses like that: crooked shantytowns held together by old, twisted metal panels. The most messy shacks are directly tied up with metal wires and rivets. The gaps between the metal plates are enough for people to see the scene inside from the outside. There are signs of welding in the slightly better shanties. It is not easy to weld the metal plates disassembled from the imperial warships. Maybe they used laser cannon focusing tubes picked up from the garbage dump, because I don’t remember Xiling. Technicians also use welding guns when repairing spacecraft. Of course, it is also possible that they found an autonomous machine that is still functioning and was originally used to repair pipes in the spacecraft (according to Glick, it seems that it should be called "The Great Craftsman" here). These autonomous machines can learn any kind of work. . Including turning yourself into a welding gun.

The best houses in the field of vision were some very neat large metal boxes. It took me a long time to figure out that they were residential cabins prepared for soldiers on large spaceships, but they were separated from the hull sections. , leaving only a pitted shell.

The arrival of strangers like us seems to have attracted the attention of the town residents. Some adults and children dressed in the same shabby and dirty clothes as Glick poked their heads out from nearby tin houses or corners of "streets and alleys", looking far away Looking this way. Their expressions were tense and their eyes were wary. After seeing Glick standing beside us and waving around, some of them muttered something and retreated into the room. More people boldly walked out, but still no one came close. They were like villagers who saw a heavily armed tank suddenly appearing in a quiet mountain village. They were fully vigilant and curious about outsiders like us. , Despite this, he never dared to step forward and ask a few words.

Sandora was of course very impatient with this situation of being watched. She looked around and suddenly snorted. Then everyone had a blank look on their faces and turned around and returned home.

Glick, however, felt nothing about the changes in the atmosphere around him. He began to introduce us to the most important place in this town with great interest, which is the disc square in the center of the town. It seems that the short contact along the way has confirmed to him that the group of people in front of him who seem to be difficult to get along with are actually extremely easy-going. In addition, the seemingly very precious "big craftsman" as a gift has made this thirteen-year-old The little boy relaxed his vigilance. He pointed to an open space not far ahead and told us that that was the best and most worth-seeing place in Condenser Town: the Disc Square.

In fact, it is just a circular open space, quite clean, and smaller than a basketball court. There are four lampposts around it, and the crystals on the lampposts are emitting bright light. It all looks very simple. , but in this dirty and poor place, it seems that such a smooth and clean square with sufficient lighting is a quite remarkable center for residents' activities.

"Look, this is our square. Every weekend, adults will sing hymns in this square, and children can play on the edge of the square and get one or two sugar cookies," Glick said excitedly. I (it seems that he has figured out that I am the leader and the best talker among the group) walked towards the center of the square, "Today is a day off, but there is still some time before the party starts, and the adults are all preparing. I am going to take my sister out today. I can still receive sugar cookies six times. Then I will no longer be considered a child, and of course I will not be considered an adult. At the age of fourteen, I will start to do half of the work of an adult and stop receiving children's benefits. Food rations, but that’s nothing to old Glick’s son, I was able to feed myself two years ago!”

"You have a sister?"

I asked casually, then my eyes fell to the ground.

In the center of this so-called disc square is a circular area that protrudes about ten centimeters from the ground. On this small circular table with a diameter of one meter, there is a clearly legible symbol, which is particularly eye-catching.

A blood-red triangular emblem.

A faint light flashed through Viscana's cat-like blood-red vertical pupils, which shrank into two narrow slits in an instant. She knelt down and gently stroked the triangular blood-red emblem on the ground for a long time. , took out a piece of chalk and drew a chessboard on it...

"The ground here is very clean. Who will play backgammon with me?"

Maotong Loli happily extended an invitation to everyone, and we were dumbfounded: "..."

Okay, it seems that those scenes just now were all my imagination. This girl didn’t have any feelings at all when she saw her legion emblem!

Before I could take action, Visca was already being dragged aside by Pandora's ears to teach. Sandora touched my arm: "These are the remains of Visca's old subordinates."

"Perhaps before we understand the situation in this space, we should try to find out who Huesca was at war with back then," I responded in a low voice, "Let the mothership put some stealth probes down and conduct a comprehensive search of the people in this space. Ancient wreckage... By the way, Sandora, if it were the emblem of another emperor's legion, would you be able to recognize it?"

"It would be fine if the imperial database was still there, but unfortunately we can't say for sure now," Sandora shook her head regretfully, "The empire's area of ​​demobilization is vast, and I didn't care much about the affairs of other emperors back then, and I never recorded them. Legion emblem. I think Pandora’s situation is more serious than mine. I’m afraid she doesn’t even remember the name of the emperor in the next area..."

I said again: "..."

You said these two war madmen survived in such strange circumstances back then!