Professor Shen couldn't remember the last time he sweated.
That is some kind of ancient human physiological mechanism, related to temperature regulation, calcium bones and upright walking. And now she was standing on the edge of this floating city, looking at the ink-colored seawater under her feet, her skin as dry as an old piece of paper.
Seventeen years. She hasn't shed a drop of sweat in seventeen years, since the last glacier melted and the ancient virus was released along with the bubbles in the ice core.
The water surged thirty meters below her feet. What was once the top floor of Lujiazui Financial Center is now an algae pasture. Several water-shaped figures swam through the deep water, with their postures stretched out, like molten glass flowing slowly.
Professor Shen turned around and walked towards her laboratory.
The laboratory was built on top of the abandoned Oriental Pearl Tower, and the entire spherical observation platform was transformed into a sealed cabin. It took three minutes for the hatch to complete the air-tight process. During these three minutes, she could hear the wind outside, the humid and salty wind, making a whining sound as it blew past the rusted metal frame.
Three minutes. Enough for a water-shaped person to change from a drop of water to a human form and back again.
Her student sat in front of the holographic screen without looking back: "Teacher, you went to blow the wind again."
"Watch the sea temperature."
"There is a sensor for seawater temperature." He is a good student. He is seventeen years old and can already switch between water form and human form freely. At this moment, he was sitting there in human form, but Professor Shen knew that his spine had three more sections than a normal person and could be bent at any angle.
"The sensor has no eyes," she said.
His eyes were still human-shaped, but there were fine ripples flowing in the pupils, which were the result of light refracting in the liquid crystal. He glanced at her and then back to the screen.
"Your data collection window today was two hours ago. You are one hundred and twenty minutes late."
Professor Shen said nothing. She walked over to her desk, where there was an old optical microscope that she had dug out of the rubble. Purely mechanical structure, no electricity or network required. She used the microscope to look at her own blood samples every day, recording changes in the thickness of the cell walls.
There are no changes to the data. Her cell walls were getting thinner every day, but the rate of change was so slow that it was almost impossible to measure. At this rate, she would have one hundred twenty-three years and four months before she would completely lose her solid form.
She was already three hundred years old at that time.
"Teacher," Xiao Lin said suddenly, "Dr. Chen sent a meeting invitation. About the final evacuation plan."
"Not going."
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