Thirty years after the disaster, everyone takes it for granted: never use a map that's more than three months old. Never take a road unless its return route has been verified.
Because roads disappear.
Cheng Ning lives in a world like this.
She works in field maintenance at the White Tower Logistics Park. Her daily tasks include dismantling equipment and salvaging parts...
And, when necessary, heading out along roads that are still there, then following roads that are still there back again.
Until one day, on her way back, she saw the same line for the fourth time.
[White Tower Logistics Park: 27 km]
Cheng Ning stopped, checked the map, contacted White Tower, and confirmed with deep regret that she couldn't get home.
The only nearby place whose location could still be verified was an abandoned rest stop that no one had mentioned for years: No. 17.
Cheng Ning had only meant to find somewhere to spend the night.
That evening, she repaired the water pump and restored the power.
Then the things that had been sleeping beneath the rest stop for decades woke up too.
[Personnel detected on site.]
[Original management unit: unreachable.]
[Take over Node 17-K?]
Cheng Ning: ?
The next day, she also discovered that this old system seemed to have acquired an AI that wasn't on the equipment inventory.
The AI's first private recommendation to her was: [Don't take the northern route yet.]
Cheng Ning asked, "Why?"
It didn't answer.
That evening, a convoy that shouldn't have been anywhere near there drove into No. 17.
The person leading them got out and asked, "Did you reopen the road to the north?"
Cheng Ning: "No."
"Good."
"Why?"
"That road used to have only two toll booths."
"And now?"
"Three."
Name: Cheng Ning.
Occupation: Field maintenance worker at White Tower Logistics Park.
Current position: Temporary administrator of 17-K.
Assets: One abandoned rest stop without water or power, one mostly broken old road-network node, and one AI of unknown origin.
Current goal: Get home.
Cheng Ning doesn't think it's a big problem.
When something breaks, you figure out why first, then decide how to fix it.
That's how it is with water pumps. That's how it is with generators.
The roads should be much the same.
Later, people began lining up outside the entrance to No. 17.
Some needed medicine, some needed food, some were waiting for a vehicle that could finally take them to another settlement, and some came with addresses written down more than a decade ago, asking if those places could still be reached.
Once the first gray point on the map lit up, the second, third, and fourth followed.
Later, people began calling her the road-network administrator.
Cheng Ning glanced at the map of viable roads she'd started with, almost all of which had become unusable.
At first, all she'd wanted was to repair one road home.
But as she kept repairing them...
It seemed she'd repaired the whole world.
R had only one purpose: to make sure everyone who left still had a road to return by.
R had failed many times, until Cheng Ning appeared.
Over many years, she turned roads only a handful of people dared to travel into public routes anyone could use.
And it took Cheng Ning even longer to realize...
Every route R had designed for the entire road network had only one return plan.
Except hers.
She had two.
An unconventional farming story (?)
Theme: Rebuilding the connections between people in a fractured world.
