"Hey, you, you finally woke up."

In a daze, Jiang Zhou heard someone talking to him.

The person who spoke seemed to be aware of the fact that he was awake earlier than he was.

Jiang Zhou blinked and focused his blurred vision. A burly man with eyes covered with strange metal bottle caps sat opposite him, "staring" at him with concern on his face.

"I am..."

Jiang Zhou's consciousness was still stuck on the moment when he received the call from "Janus" in the bar, and the sudden change of scene around him caused his brain to shut down.

The "bottle cap eye" sitting opposite him continued:

"I'm sorry, little brother. We were hiding from the company dogs in the warehouse of 'Theseus Freight'. We never expected that there would be people there. It was us who implicated you and were arrested as rebels...

I will explain it to you later, but don’t have too much hope. For the rebels, those corporate dogs would always rather kill by mistake than let go."

When the other party said this, his "eyesight" was a little dodgey, and his expression was full of embarrassment and guilt.

Corporate dog? Rebel? What on earth is this bottle cap eye talking about?

Weren't you in the bar before?

Jiang Zhou looked around blankly.

The area around him was not the bar before he lost consciousness, but a long and narrow car full of technology. The four walls were covered with dark matte paint, and electronic circuits reminiscent of blood vessels spread around, like breathing.

It emits blood-colored light alternating between light and dark.

There were about forty people sitting on the seats on both sides of the carriage... No, it should be said that there were about forty people imprisoned - most of them had their heads hanging down and were asleep. Everyone's joints were covered with buckle-like black

The restraint was firmly fixed in place.

Only then did Jiang Zhou realize that he was also restrained.

In the aisle in the middle of the carriage, several black flying machines that looked like Frisbees were floating in the air, scanning each sleeping prisoner one by one with light blue beams.

Jiang Zhou noticed that those aircraft had neither propellers nor jets, and were just floating silently in mid-air in defiance of the laws of gravity - as if Newton's spirit in the sky was humbly supporting them.

In the 2069 Earth where he lived, there was absolutely no such fantastic technology.

Is this time travel?

Jiang Zhou, who had a retro hobby of reading online novels when he was a student, thought to himself, but then he shook his head in his heart.

The "bottle cap eye" just spoke standard Mandarin, and also mentioned "Theseus", a word with clear historical origins. In other words, he must still be on earth...

Thinking of another outrageous possibility, Jiang Zhou calmed down, turned to look at the "bottle cap eye" and asked:

"I'm sorry, brother, I'm not very clear-headed right now. Can you tell me what time it is now? Which year, month and day?"

"My name is Black Falcon-136. There should be no one around here with the same genetic number as me. Just call me 136."

Speaking of the obviously abnormal name, the burly man who called himself Black Falcon-136 smiled generously, and then replied:

"Today is March 5th. Well, March 5th in the 44th year of the New Calendar."

What is the New Calendar?

This question flashed through his mind, but he did not ask it so directly - it is definitely a very dangerous thing to immediately expose one's ignorance of common sense in a new environment.

Just as Jiang Zhou was thinking about how to continue the routine, another voice next to him helped him solve his confusion just right.

"I'm really impressed by you... b6, how many times have I told you that the natives at the bottom of the resettlement area are used to counting years in AD, hey! Cavemen, this year is 2169 AD, how about it? Are your brains clearer now?"

The speaker was a woman sitting on the left side of Black Falcon-136. She seemed to be the only one awake in the entire carriage besides the two of them.

The woman was probably in her early twenties, and her hair was a very flamboyant color. It looked like all the pigments needed to paint a painting of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" could be found in her hair.

On her left cheek, there was a slightly fluorescent ice-blue butterfly, which looked a bit like the popular fluorescent tattoos among young people. But when Jiang Zhou saw the butterfly waving its wings like a living creature, it moved along the other side.

After his cheek moved to the skin of his neck, and then disappeared into the skin below the collar, he could conclude that it was definitely not something as simple as a tattoo.

But compared to the tattoo that could move on the skin, what the other person said shocked him even more.

In 2169 AD, one hundred years later?!

"How's it going? Caveman, are you clearer now?"

The woman asked again.

"Ah...well, I feel much more awake."

Not at all. At this moment, Jiang Zhou felt his head was buzzing. It was as if someone had put a tin bucket on him and hit him hard with a bat.

Calm down first...

Jiang Zhou took two deep breaths and thought to himself.

If it were really a hundred years from now, then no matter it was those anti-gravity aircraft or tattoos that could move on the skin, it wouldn't be a problem - any advanced technology would look like magic at first glance.

But the question is, how did I get to a hundred years later?

Needless to say... only "Janus", who is suspected to be the digital personality uploaded by himself, is suspected of this.

Recalling that mysterious phone call, Jiang Zhou felt a little bit sour.

No... Regardless of how it did it, why did "Janus" send himself a hundred years into the future?

"Hey, caveman, if you are clear-headed, I have some good news for you."

The words of the woman with the butterfly tattoo once again brought Jiang Zhou's consciousness back to reality.

"Caveman" seemed to be what the other party called him, and judging from the tone of his voice, the word was probably similar to the racist derogatory name that started with the word "Ni" for a certain skin color in Jiang Zhou's time.

It’s better not to worry about how you arrived a hundred years later. It’s more important to understand the current situation.

Jiang Zhou turned to look at the woman:

"What good news?"

The woman looked at Jiang Zhou with some amusement, and then said in a slightly gloating tone:

"Because you picked a good place to spend the night, you are now being arrested by the 'Pluto Submersible Company' as a member of the resistance organization 'Icarus'. We just bombed their No. 7 settlement last week.

They also burned the brains of their regional manager. The new regional manager who was assigned made harsh words as soon as he took office, saying that we 'terrorists' must pay an unforgettable price."

The current situation has been updated, and my luck is as good as ever. The first thing I did when I came to this strange era was to take the blame inexplicably.

"What's the price going to be?"

Jiang Zhou, who was cursing in his heart, asked calmly on the outside.

"That's a good question. As a super company that has only joined the 'Order of Olympus' in recent years, Pluto Deep Dive's behavior is less concerned with respectability than those of their predecessors. As far as I know

, they have not yet signed the "Biological Rights Protection Act." In other words, legally, because they have destroyed company property, they will have the absolute power to dispose of our living bodies.

"According to their usual behavior, the entire busload of us will probably have our frontal lobes removed, and then be transformed into various zombie slave workers according to their needs, until they work until their bodies are exhausted.

, to make up for the loss of their property.”

The voice of the woman with the butterfly tattoo carried a certain pleasure in getting people into the water with her.

Probably at this moment, she could only convince herself to accept the reality by confirming that "there are others who are worse off than herself".

Order of Olympus?

Hearing the familiar term, Jiang Zhou couldn't help but think of his old employer, Olympus Group - the global artificial intelligence giant that planned the "Janus" project, one of the earliest super enterprises in the 2060s.

.

I don’t know if this Order of Olympus has anything to do with my old club.

"What kind of good news is this?"

Jiang Zhou, whose mood had completely calmed down, asked.

After hearing his words, the desperate and exaggerated smile on the face of the woman with the butterfly tattoo became even stronger:

"Isn't this worth celebrating? As a caveman, you were supposed to live a meaningless life, wondering who made you live like a gutter rat... But now, you

But we can use 'Icarus Liberation Front'

As a front-line rebel, you sacrificed your life with great honor for the better future of mankind and for the great cause of overthrowing the super-corporate alliance. This brings the rarest idealistic brilliance of this era to your ignorant and miserable life. You

You have to be grateful."

Before Jiang Zhou could find the right words to push back, Black Falcon-136 on the side spoke:

"Qianxia Sakura, can't you restrain your meanness a little? This little brother was completely innocently involved, and it was us who implicated him. Also, can you stop using the scornful name 'caveman'? Why?

The fight for the rights that native humans deserve is one of the concepts behind the creation of 'Icarus'. Why have you become like this..."

His voice was not as warm as when he spoke to Jiang Zhou before.

"You want to ask me why I'm so mean?"

Not to be outdone, the woman named Qianxia Sakura turned her head and stared at 136, as if unable to restrain her intense emotions, she lost control and said:

"I can't figure out why I'm so mean... maybe it's because I'm about to have my frontal lobe cut off, stuff a bunch of bitch memories into my brain, and be transformed into a sex partner for some pervert to use as a toy.

; Maybe it’s because I have always been a selfish bastard. I joined ‘Icarus’ just to earn a living. Unlike you, a saint with lofty beliefs, who regards this fate as martyrdom,

Accept your destiny contentedly!"
To be continued...