On his thirty-third birthday, Chen Mo was laid off.
As the mortgage text and car loan reminder buzzed at the same time, he stood beneath an office tower in the dead of night, carrying an old backpack stuffed with odds and ends. His life felt like a terrible piece of code trapped in an endless loop.
Just as despair threatened to consume his reason, his phone screen lit up on its own.
A quaint fishhook icon glimmered faintly.
[“Civilization Angler” System successfully bound.]
[Beginner’s gift pack being issued...]
There was no fishing gear or bait in the pack.
Only an ocean of cultural treasures from another brilliant civilization:
The cold universe of The Three-Body Problem, the magical world of Harry Potter, the light of freedom in The Shawshank Redemption, Jay Chou’s youthful melodies, the epic journey of The Wandering Earth... Countless works that had once illuminated an entire world sank into his personal “fishing pool,” in their most complete and original form.
His former company was livestreaming the launch of its AI, a hundred-billion-yuan event watched around the globe.
Using the “Precision Delivery” trial card granted by the System, Chen Mo sent the opening lines of The Three-Body Problem to the top of every viewer’s screen.
“Give civilization to time, not time to civilization.”
As the whole internet went wild over this dazzling glimpse, and his former supervisor called in a fury,
Chen Mo sat in his dilapidated rental apartment and typed the first line of code truly belonging to this age of civilization.
From then on, the down-and-out programmer became a “Civilization Angler.”
Others fish for fish. He fishes for civilizations.
Others grind away in the rat race. He gives civilization to time.
This is the story of a man who uses the brilliant starlight of an entire higher-dimensional civilization to resist the crushing gravity of reality, and ultimately illuminate himself and the whole world.
