After hundreds of years, humans finally left the earth again.

But it won’t be the last:

Before the distant, long end arrives – we still need more happiness to fill the boredom of waiting.

There were only two passengers on this manned spacecraft:

When he boarded the enclosed environment of the spacecraft, Fang Bailu lost the connection carried by pheromones – so he became two individuals again; and their differences would become greater and greater as time went on, until they were completely different and could no longer recognize each other.

But this is an acceptable consequence.

Perhaps humans are meant to travel: with their own names, good wishes and a pair of eyes.

The name “Fang Bailu” should be given to the traveler who will embark on a journey from which there will be no return, together with his travel companion.

……

And the giant tree of flesh and blood that still coiled around the earth – all it had to do was wait… and accept the new names that were given to it:

“Gray King”, “Great Mysterious Lord”, “Nan Ke Zheng Fa Zhen Jun”, “Old Dream God”, “Red Tree”, “Dirty Man”, “Blood Plant”, “Resurrection Wood” and “Ten Directions Ten Thousand Flowers of Black Color, Terrifying Yellow Millet Amygdalus Nucleus Manifested Heavenly Venerable”.

Until He also becomes a part of humanity itself – and accompanies them, protects them… until the ultimate end, reaching the other side of time.

At that time: all wishes will be fulfilled, all regrets will be made up for, and all possibilities will happen.

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Chapter 363 The Long Goodbye (End)

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They were about to reach the Kuiper Belt: this thin, wide and long “oil cake” of tens of astronomical units wrapped around the edge of the solar system; looking out through the porthole, the eight planets were like a few pinballs under the dark curtain, sometimes bright and sometimes dark.

It took the Hardware nearly ten years from launch from Earth to reach Pluto’s orbit – nine years and eleven months, to be exact.

It will take another three to four years to reach the first stop of this journey – the Kuiper Belt; the edge of the solar system.

The living space inside the Hardware Store is not large, it can even be described as cramped: at least there are not many of the various activity facilities required for long-distance space travel that Fang Bailu had seen in literary works in his early years.

The reason is naturally simple – whether it is Anbennola or Fang Bailu, they don’t have to worry too much about the health of their bodies in low gravity or zero gravity.

The only enemy to fight is boredom.

But it doesn’t matter: humans have created countless leisure-time entertainments to fight this killer of the soul.

The plan prepared by Fang Bailu was more complicated and more complete: he moved the entire “Three Thousand Small Worlds” out of the Siam Buddhist Court and saved a copy in the ship’s main control.

……

“Do you think we still have a chance to see it?”

Anbenola raised her fingertips and knocked on the transparent porthole – following the direction of her index finger, there was the blue planet: the one that no one would misunderstand.

“Technically, we’ve got at least a few more years of sighting Earth – we’ve only just reached Pluto.”

“Hey, An Ben… When I was a kid, Pluto was one of the nine planets. But before you leave, ask any kid. No one knows or cares how many stars there are in the solar system… er, planets. Satellites, asteroids… comets? Do comets count? Anyway, I don’t know how many there are.”

……

Anbenola continued to press on the porthole, as if trying to dig a hole with his fingertips:

“We can never go back: this is a one-way ticket. When we die here one day… the Hardware is a space graveyard.”

As she said, the Wujin was originally designed for a one-time flight, and almost all of its power systems were separated after launch, leaving only a few to adjust the route; but even if they were still there, Anbenola and Fang Bailu would not be able to repeat the launch. Even limited extravehicular walks were difficult for them to do.

“Eh, eh? Weird, why didn’t I notice you being so long-winded before?” Fang Bailu spun madly in weightlessness. This was a game he could never get tired of playing. “I remember you said that once right after we left the atmosphere.”

“Did I?” Numbers rolled in Anbenola’s eyes as she checked her past memories and records. “Well, I do – it’s really troublesome to be with someone who won’t forget.”

Fang Bailu let out a deliberate cackle:

“Haha! Sister, you’re going to be stuck with me for a long time… I advise you to just let it go.”

“Look outside. Do you see how dark it is? If you die on this ship, you will probably just float in space forever and won’t be able to find anyone to reincarnate into.”

Anbenola put his face back to the porthole:

“Darkness is not scary…”

She tapped the transparent surface in front of her face with her finger:

“Those hot stars are the souls of human beings after death; those cold planets are the souls of machines after death.”

“I know there are spirits in those stars…that live forever, alongside the living.”

Fang Bailu walked to the porthole and looked out with Anbennola –

Of course he knew… While repairing Anbennola, Fang Bailu also came into contact with her past memories; the cold rain in Qianye.

“You know what? Some planets are hotter and warmer than stars… and machines are not necessarily colder than humans.”

“Billions of years from now, the stars in the sky will fall again and become the earth again…”

……

In another three or four years, they will pass by the “End Machine” on the Kuiper Belt.

According to Patient Zero, the method of generating the grand scene is stored there. But does it really exist? The most perfect future for mankind…

Fang Bailu didn’t know, nor did he plan to look for it: his and her spaceship would just pass by the machine and continue its voyage.

……

Fang Bailu felt bored with the clockwise rotation, so he began to try out the various gymnastics moves he had seen on TV in his previous life:

“One day, you and I will die here.”

“I might be able to outlast you: you still have a lot of organic parts, but I have backup prosthetics.”

“But it doesn’t matter – I also brought the upward mechanism with me. At worst, you can squeeze into my mud ball when the time comes, and you don’t have to compete with me for the room fee.”

Anbennola suddenly turned around and floated to Fang Bailu’s side:

“Quick question – do you regret coming along? I was planning on coming alone.”

Fang Bailu kicked the wall hard to avoid her approach:

“Don’t flatter me, Anben! I also want to see space, the stars, and the distant beyond. The main reason I accompany you on this trip is to take a ride.”

“Besides – even if I really die here, what difference does it make? Don’t you remember my ‘theory’…?”

“Maybe one day, people on Earth will have time to come up with better aviation technology – if ‘I’ am still on Earth, this is quite possible – and their spacecraft will catch up with us one day: wouldn’t that be OK?”

“If by chance they never found the Hardware Number…it doesn’t matter. When the universe ends one day, we and others will have a chance to meet again…”

Anbenola rushed over and grabbed Fang Bailu’s cheeks with both hands:

“Oh! The one where the universe will eventually collapse into a point, and then all wishes will come true?”

“I think you’re making it up–you’re making it up? Eh? Now, don’t look away!”

Fang Bailu grabbed her ten fingers and turned his eyes back:

“At the end of the day, there’s something beautiful waiting for us… I think it’s a kind of hope: everyone needs hope, especially in this world.”

“Human beings are not perfect—nor will they become perfect, nor do they need to be. But if they hold out the hope that they will one day become perfect, then …”

puff!

Water gushed out of Ambenola’s mouth, dispersing into floating blobs, blurring her face like a funhouse mirror:

“Hahahaha! You’re so funny when you’re serious, in an indescribable way. Even if I can’t see your face, I still find it funny.”

……

Snapped!

Fang Bailu reached out and pushed the water ball back into Anbennola’s mouth:

“Come here, let me show you a little surprise—”

“Don’t you always want to do an EVA?”

“It’s a very simple method – just use the data captured and collected by the Hardware to generate the environment outside the cabin.”

“Then, we can leave the cabin through the online avatar—”

“The farther we fly, the larger this small world becomes. So in a sense… this is also a world we created.”

Anbenola’s eyes widened – this undoubtedly attracted her attention:

“Can we fly to the edge of the universe?”

Fang Bailu grabbed her arm and pulled her to his side:

“No, aren’t you fascinated by these things? How come you don’t understand anything? We have just exceeded the third cosmic velocity – we can leave the solar system.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about this later—come here.”

……

They were floating above the Hardware – the spaceship was flying at a speed of 17.5 kilometers per second: but Fang Bailu and Anbennola could not feel the reality of this speed at all.

After all, in a vacuum, there is no air flow caused by air resistance, and the stars that can serve as anchors are too far away and too large.

At this moment, they only felt that they were stagnant in this static universe: just a pixel embedded in the poster of the universe.

There is no cold, only loneliness.

Behind them, the stars shone like colorful lanterns, but they could not break through the coldness of the dark universe. A human soul would suffer in this vast coldness, but fortunately they found each other.

So he took her hand and flew to a hotter place – in the virtual world, the speed of time was also different. They slowed down time and soaked in the water of time… although it was slow enough.

“It’s still a long time.”

……

The universe was filled with silence, so they sang a silent song: a song about the endless rain and the rusty iron, about the ridiculous and unreasonable things, and the pain that would eventually be forgotten.

(End of the book)

postscript

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I originally typed a lot, but I deleted it all in the end; you should have read everything I wanted to say.

I am very grateful that you have read this book and read to the end: I think the value of a book does not exist in isolation. Without your reading, it has no meaning of existence.

The work is a point-to-point protocol that links you and me, and allows us to have an asynchronous but effective communication, which I will remember in my heart.

I have no intention of revising this book; it is an unreserved expression of myself between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty, years that will never return.

I decided to believe in the power of human beings; and this belief helped me relieve my physical and mental pain; I hope you can also believe in what you have.

I believe that all the regrets and pains that have occurred will be compensated in the future, and the mistakes that have been made or will be made will no longer be mistakes in the future.

So if you are feeling sad and depressed, I hope you can become happy; if you are happy, then I hope this happiness can last a little longer.

I really hope that you can be happy, blessed, and embrace the beautiful things.

thank you!

We’ll talk next time:

Goodbye!

February 29, 2024

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