In 3099, the seventy-third year since Earth was digitized, Lu Qi, who lived in the Reclamation Zone, began fleeing through a digital downpour, carrying a death notice and a half-finished household robot.
* * *
In 3099, Lu Qi was nineteen. He liked the short-legged corgis from before the apocalypse, games, and lemon-flavored iced drinks. The one he trusted most was the household robot he had assembled with his adoptive father. He was skilled at disassembly and sniping.
The residents of the Reclamation Zone knew him as an illegal underground [disassembler] from the slums.
His relentless pursuers saw him as a walking, high-value bounty.
The powerful, who knew only part of the truth, knew him as the adopted son of Wu Yi, the previous holder of Earth's reconstruction blueprint...
But only those pulling the strings, who truly knew Lu Qi, knew that he had an inseparable brother...
The only son of the planet's designer, Wu Yi.
* * *
After completing another counterattack, Lu Qi leaped down from the enormous, pale skeleton of a whale. A mechanical hand caught him in midair.
"You should be more careful," Wu San said helplessly. He was both Lu Qi's older brother and the unfinished household robot that Lu Qi had built himself, and the owner of the mechanical hand.
* * *
Digitized Earth looked like one vast holographic online game.
"Turning a game like this into a pure game of 'God × Escape' is way too boring... We should at least beat a boss before calling it a day, right?"
Two-player mode, Hell difficulty, one life to clear it.
On the final day of 3099, Lu Qi and his "household robot" entered the planet's data core.
* * *
Lu Qi and Wu San stood side by side atop the ruins of an abandoned skyscraper, watching the sun rise over the horizon.
On New Year's Day, 3100, the world entered a new era and a new beginning.
Theme: Stand on your own two feet.
