Thirty years after the disaster, everyone agrees: Don't use maps from three months ago. Don't embark on a journey without verification of your return journey.
Because the road disappeared.
***
Cheng Ning lives in such a world.
She does field maintenance at Baita Logistics Park. Her daily job is to dismantle equipment and recycle parts...
And, when necessary, go out along the still alive road and come back along the still alive road.
Until one day when she returned, she saw the same line of words for the fourth time.
[Baita Logistics Park——27km]
Cheng Ning parked the car, looked at the map, contacted Baita, and then confirmed one thing with great regret: she could not return home.
The only place nearby where the location can be confirmed is an abandoned service area that no one has mentioned for many years - No. 17.
Cheng Ning originally planned to borrow a place to spend the night there.
That night, she repaired the water pump and connected the electricity.
Then, things that had been sleeping underground for decades in the entire service area woke up.
[Onsite personnel detected.
[Original management unit: lost contact.
Do you want to take over the 17-K node?
Cheng Ning:?
The next day, she discovered that there seemed to be an additional artificial intelligence in the old system that was not on the equipment list.
The first piece of personal advice the artificial intelligence gave her was: [Don't take the northern route yet.
Cheng Ning asked: Why?
The other party didn't answer.
That evening, a convoy that shouldn't have been here drove into No. 17.
The leader got out of the car and asked, "Did you reopen that road to the north?"
Cheng Ning: "No."
"That's best."
"Why?"
"Because there were only two toll stations on that road before."
"What now?"
"Three."
***
Name: Cheng Ning.
Occupation: Field maintenance worker at Baita Logistics Park.
Current position: 17-K Interim Administrator.
Assets in his name: an abandoned service area with no water or power supply, a set of old road network nodes that were mostly damaged, and an artificial intelligence of unknown origin.
Current goal: get home.
Cheng Ning didn't think it was a big problem.
When something is broken, just figure out why it is broken first, and then decide how to fix it.
The water pump is like this. Generator is like this.
The road should be similar.
Later, people started lining up in front of Gate No. 17.
Some people are waiting for medicine, some are waiting for food, some are waiting for a car that can finally go to another settlement, and some people come to her with the address left more than ten years ago and ask her if this place can still be reached now.
After the first gray on the map lights up, the second, third, and fourth ones also light up.
Later, some people started calling her the road network administrator.
Cheng Ning took a look at his original survival plan, which was almost completely invalid.
She really just wanted to build a road home at first.
But keep practicing—
It seems that the whole world has been solved.
***
R was created with only one responsibility: to make sure that everyone who leaves has a way to come back.
R failed many times until Cheng Ning appeared.
She spent many years turning a road that only a few people dared to walk into a public route that everyone can pass.
But it took Cheng Ning even longer to discover——
Each route designed by R for the entire road network has only one return plan.
Except her.
She has two sets.
***
Atypical farming essay (?
Purpose: To re-establish connections between people in a broken world.
