[Sci-Fi Apocalypse · Technological Progress · Industrial Reconstruction · Absurd Comedy · Ensemble Cast]
"After review, this device lacks novelty. Patent application denied."
Ke Bei, a patent office examiner with the highest rejection rate in the bureau, was known around town as "Ke the Rejector."
In the autumn of 2076, right in front of a retired master machinist, he rejected an application titled "Emergency Survival Device."
Three hours later, a super solar storm collided with a power-grid virus, knocking out the internet and electricity worldwide. Office buildings became isolated islands, and civilization returned to cooking over fires overnight.
Clutching the specification he had personally rejected, Ke Bei used a water cooler jug and a fire hose to get his first drink of water in the apocalypse.
Then a technology tree appeared in his mind.
A technology tree that provided only a catalog, not a single blueprint.
Want to unlock something?
Sure.
Build it yourself.
And once you've built it, you have to teach someone else how to do it.
Ke Bei: "I'm a patent examiner. I'm so hopeless with my hands I can't even unscrew a bottle cap, and you want me to build a chip?"
Technology Tree: [Prerequisite not met. Please learn how to unscrew a bottle cap first.]
Starting with a basin of clean water, he leads a master machinist, a nurse, a veteran, and a group of orphans in relighting humanity's technology tree one node at a time:
Steam engines, electric lights, radios, chips, vaccines, rockets, mechs...
They keep lighting the way all the way to Mars, where at last they receive the first reply from the sea of stars.
Many years later, someone asks him how he did it.
Ke Bei pushes up his reading glasses. "Because I taught a group of people."
At the top of the technology tree, one node has remained gray for forty-five years.
