NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 12: Chapter 12
As the New Year's Eve snow fell on the convenience store sign, the sausage grill was spinning for the last time this year. I squatted beside the electric bike to adjust the rear seat bracket for Nuan Nuan. The "little sun" pattern that Brother Zhang had just welded glowed warmly under the streetlight, contrasting with the light pink mark on her wrist. Kai Lan was opening the oden seasoning packet behind the cashier and suddenly laughed out loud - the "1903 Laboratory Designated Ingredients" logo on the seasoning bag had somehow turned into a cartoon pattern of Nuan Nuan chewing sausage.
"Brother Xiao Ming, the new system has been updated!" Wang Mengmeng rushed in holding her phone, with countless sausage icons floating on the order map on the screen. "Now you can see the customer's heartbeat temperature for each order. Just now, a grandma said that she felt warm in her heart when she saw the little sun on your work card." The light on her wrist lit up as she spoke, casting a mini version of the shadow of a metal stick on the glass.
When the clock struck midnight, Professor Kai's text message popped up on time: "Go to the top floor and check. Someone left a New Year's gift for you." The broken metal stick in the incubator suddenly made a clear sound, which was exactly the same as the rhythm of the New Year's fireworks in the distance. Kailan left first with Nuannuan in her arms. I touched the new handwriting on the back of my work badge - "Delivered: 365 days of warm days" appeared at some point, and each word carried the burnt aroma of sausage.
The freezer on the top floor has become a display cabinet, with 365 sausage popsicles with different patterns frozen inside - there are small suns drawn by Kailan, gear patterns welded by Brother Zhang, and the footprints of Wang Mengmeng's children. Professor Kai stood next to him, with half of the melted popsicle stick sticking out of his white coat pocket, and the node marks on his wrist connected to form the spiral line of the sausage machine.
"This is the log backup of the new system." He knocked on the glass, and the ice crystals on the surface of the popsicles automatically spelled out our delivery route for the year. "Every sausage popsicle hides your heartbeat. When a corner of the city needs warmth, they will melt into warm code." Nuannuan suddenly reached out and pressed the glass. The moment her mark lit up, all the popsicles emitted hot steam at the same time, drawing a rainbow on the cold winter glass.
SUSAN jumped down from the ventilation duct. This time she didn't wear sunglasses, and snowflakes fell on her hair. "There's news from the frozen food warehouse in the north that the last batch of cold data cores have grown sausage patterns on their own." She handed Kailan a metal box with a mini sausage roaster inside. "Professor Kai said this is a gift for Nuannuan's future adulthood, and it can roast tears into marshmallows."
When the New Year's Eve fireworks exploded in the distance, the remains of Brother Chen's mechanical arm suddenly buzzed—the sticky note stuck between the gears fell off. It was a family portrait that Kailan had just drawn. Three little people were surrounding the sausage roaster, and next to it was the words "warm family" written crookedly. The mechanical arm actually lifted a sausage by itself and drew a huge "warm" word on the ice. Sparks splashed on Nuannuan's wrist, making the mark brighter.
"It's time to write a startup code for the new system." Professor Kai handed me the broken piece of metal stick. The reflection of the broken end reflected the convenience store on a snowy night. "No need for complicated formulas, just write the sentence you say every day." I touched the burnt marks of the sausage on the broken piece, and suddenly remembered the "eat while hot" that I always said when delivering meals, so I drew on the glass of the freezer: [System startup - please keep your heart warm and the sausage fresh].
The snow fell heavier and heavier, but the lights in the convenience store became brighter. Brother Zhang built a snowman in the shape of sausage at the door, and Wang Mengmeng's child stuffed a sticky note into the snowman's pocket, on which she wrote a crooked "thank you". Kai Lan put Nuan Nuan in the incubator, and the little guy giggled while holding the mini sausage machine. The mark on his wrist finally turned into a completely flesh-colored color - that is a human, warm color.
When the electric car rolled over the snow, the aroma of the sausage in the incubator mixed with the coolness of the snow, and it condensed into a rainbow in the air. I looked at the little sun on my work badge and suddenly realized that we are no longer the hosts of the system, but its first users - using the smell of sausages to write diaries, using the heartbeats of running orders to record mileage, and using the smiles of every person who received hot food to patch up this world that was once dominated by data with a permanent warm patch.
(Three years later, in the classroom of Sunshine Primary School, Nuan Nuan held up a sausage and asked the teacher: "Why does it glow?" The projection on the blackboard suddenly switched to a convenience store surveillance - 17-year-old Li Xiaoming was handing the last sausage to a homeless man, and Kailan was recording something behind the cash register. In every corner of the city, countless "Xiaoming Brother" and "Kailan Sister" are delivering hot meals, and the little suns on their work badges are brighter than any code.)