NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 11: Chapter 11
The late autumn morning mist had not yet dissipated, and the sausage roasting machine in the convenience store had already started its third rotation. I squatted beside the electric bike to change the battery buckle. The broken metal rod was shaking gently in the incubator, and it was no longer an alarm, but a humming sound similar to a lullaby. Kailan stood behind the cashier holding Nuannuan, and the broken silver bracelet chain was finally complete - Brother Zhang used the welding machine of the Anti-System Alliance to weld the broken chain into a small sun shape.
"Brother Xiaoming, the new system has changed all order notes to handwritten!" Wang Mengmeng rushed in holding her phone. The light on her wrist was brighter than before, like a warm jade. "Just now a customer wrote, 'I want spicy sausage, just like your enthusiasm when you helped me move milk powder last time'. Is this the sweetest code?"
The phone vibrated in my trouser pocket. It was not a system prompt, but a text message from "1903 Laboratory": "Li Xiaoming, at 3 pm, on the top floor of Building 3 in Sunshine Community, someone wants to treat you to mung bean soup." The sender showed "Professor Kai", followed by a sausage emoji. Kai Lan's hands trembled when she saw the text message, and her warm little feet were stepping on the oden seasoning package she had just opened.
The afternoon sun made the top-floor freezer hot. The remains of Brother Chen's mechanical arm leaned against the corner of the wall, and half a sticky note was stuck between the gears - it was a sausage that Kai Lan drew when she was ten years old. The moment the freezer was opened, the cool air of mung bean soup mixed with the aroma of grilled sausages came out. Professor Kai sat in the shadows wearing a washed white coat, turning a melting popsicle in his hand, and the seven node marks on his wrist were shining.
"I was selfish as a father when I dragged you into the system." He pushed the mung bean soup over. The edge of the porcelain bowl was cracked. It was the one I broke on a snowy night seven years ago. "But you made me understand that the best system tester is never the code, but the child who will leave half a sausage for a stranger."
Nuannuan suddenly broke free from Kailan's arms and pressed her little palm on the freezer. At the reverse mark of last year's ice, a pattern of sausages and popsicles holding hands was now emerging. Professor Kai smiled and took out a worn work card from his pocket. There was a family photo on the back - different from the photo in the metal box in Chapter 10, this one had a delivery man holding a sausage, and it was me at the age of seventeen.
"There is only one cold data core left on Xinyuan Technology's server." SUSAN jumped down from the ventilation duct, and her sunglasses were replaced with ordinary black frames, revealing her hazel eyes underneath. "It's in the frozen food warehouse at the northernmost end of the city, hidden in a container of imported popsicles. Brother Zhang said that we need your "hot air delivery package" to sign for it."
The frozen food warehouse in the evening was like a huge ice cave. I picked up the convenience store's heater and tied it to the incubator, and Kailan stuffed five freshly baked spicy sausages into it. Nuannuan was wearing a small cotton jacket with the "Eros Eye" pattern welded by Brother Zhang. The mark on her wrist was brighter in the low temperature, like a moving little sun.
The container deep in the warehouse suddenly buzzed, and countless popsicles poured out from the conveyor belt. The packaging was all printed with the cold light logo of the "Eros Eye". The remains of Brother Chen's mechanical arm suddenly started, and the words "Protect Nuannuan" engraved in the gear cast a shadow on the ice, which was exactly the same as the pattern of the container's password lock.
"It's your turn, Xiao Ming." Professor Kai handed me the broken piece of the metal stick. The reflection from the broken end just matched the keyhole of the container. "I hid a little secret in the broken piece back then - the heart rate every time you burn the sausage is actually the best firewall password."
The moment the container door opened, the minus 20 degrees cold air mixed with the smell of sausage exploded. It was filled with servers flashing blue light. Each hard drive was engraved with a popsicle pattern, but after the golden light of the warm palm swept over, the burnt marks of the sausage slowly emerged. I pointed the heater at the core server, and the "sizzling" sound of the sausage resonated with the buzzing of the server, like playing a duet of ice and fire.
"The data cold core is melting!" Kai Lan pointed at the monitoring screen, and each blue light data block was turning warm yellow. "Just like Dad said, no matter how cold the code is, it can't resist the warmth of human heart." She suddenly remembered something and took out a yellowed experimental log from her pocket. There was a piece of sausage crumbs between the pages. It was from that snowy night seven years ago.
When the last hard drive made a "click" sound, the icicles in the entire warehouse began to melt, and the water droplets gathered into the shape of sausages on the ground. Professor Kai picked up a melted popsicle, and Kai Lan's childhood graffiti appeared on it - this was the last Easter egg of the first generation system, the warm memory hidden in each cold data block.
On the electric car on the way back, Nuan Nuan was dozing on the incubator, with half a sausage in her little hand. Kailan put the newly soldered silver bracelet back on her wrist and turned to ask me, "How do you think the new system will record our stories?" I looked at the new words on the back of my ID card: "Signed for: Human Fireworks Operating System V1.0, deliverymen: Li Xiaoming, Kailan, Nuannuan -- and all the people with warm heartbeats." The lights of the convenience store lit up in the twilight. Brother Zhang was changing the badge of the "Anti-System Alliance" into a sausage shape. Wang Mengmeng's child was crawling behind the cash register. The faint light on his wrist reflected the sticky notes on the wall, each of which told a story warmer than the code. And I know that the real system patches are never in the server, but in every smile when receiving hot food, in the 0.3 seconds spent for each other, and in all the real days with human warmth.