NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 19: Chapter 19
On December 24, 2048, the snow on Christmas Eve was denser than the first snow in Chapter 17. On the dashboard of Xiao Nuan's delivery car, the navigation coordinates of "Parallel Spacetime Convenience Store" were melting into the shape of sausages. The orange mark on her wrist cast a flowing little sun shadow on the snow as the wheels turned. The glass sausage in the incubator suddenly became hot, and the sealed 1998 burnt sample actually exuded a real caramel aroma.
"Destination reached - winter 1998, the back alley of Professor Kai's laboratory." The moment the delivery car automatically announced, the snow scene in front of Xiao Nuan was distorted into the texture of an old photo: Li Xiaoming, a teenager in a white coat, was squatting in the corner, drawing gears on the snow with a sausage skewer, and the incubator next to him leaked hot air, which condensed into the outline of a metal stick in the minus 20 degrees air.
"Your sausage is going to burn." Xiao Nuan subconsciously reached out to turn off the rusty oven, but met the vigilant eyes of the 17-year-old Kai Lan - the silver bracelet on her wrist was still intact, without the future broken chain welds, "Who are you? Why do you know the password to my father's laboratory?"
The combination lock of the laboratory iron door suddenly lit up, and it showed not numbers, but the rotation frequency of the sausage roasting machine. Xiao Nuan then realized that her delivery uniform had become the style of 1998 without knowing when, and the small sun sticky note on the back of the work badge was overlapping with the doodles on Kai Lan's notebook. What was even more shocking was that a half-burned sausage was stuck on the prototype of the first-generation controller in the corner, and the cracks in the casing matched the marks on her wrist perfectly.
"It was the beacon resonance that dragged us into the time anchor point of 1998." Bingdian's voice came from the ventilation duct. This time he was wearing a white lab coat, and the popsicle mark on his wrist was wrapped in the warm light of the sausage. "When Professor Kai burned the first sausage here, he accidentally opened up a space-time rift. Now he needs you to help him complete the beacon initialization."
The oven in the laboratory suddenly went out of control, and the temperature soared to 1378℃. The aroma of burning was mixed with the rusty smell of cold data. Xiao Nuan saw that the seventeen-year-old Li Xiaoming was inserting the metal stick fragment into the controller, but the burnt marks at the fracture split into countless ice crystals under the high temperature - that was the prototype of the first generation system that had not yet been soaked in warmth.
"Use the glass sausage to calibrate the time!" Xiao Nuan pressed the sealed 1998 sample on the oven glass. The scorch marks and Kai Lan's graffiti instantly overlapped, and the delivery log twenty years later appeared in the crack of time and space: "On a snowy night in 2025, when Xiao Ming blocked the electromagnetic cannon with a colander, the scorch marks on the sausage paper saved us."
The alarm of the oven suddenly turned into the "sizzling" sound of the sausage roaster. The seventeen-year-old Kai Lan looked at the future image on the glass, and the silver bracelet chain had its first solder joints - that was Brother Zhang's soldering technique twenty years later. Even more amazing is that the ice crystals on the prototype of the first generation controller began to melt, revealing the code written on the sticky note underneath: "All system vulnerabilities are hidden in the first burnt sausage casing."
The young Professor Kai in a gray coat rushed into the laboratory holding the experimental log, and was stunned when he saw Xiao Nuan: "What you and my daughter will look like in the future..." Before he finished speaking, the crack in time and space suddenly expanded, and the sound of countless sausage roasting machines in parallel time and space poured in. The popsicles stuck between the gears were all cold data cores that had not yet been melted by Wen Nuan.
"It's time to tell him the real secret of the beacon." Xiao Nuan copied the gear drawn by 17-year-old Li Xiaoming on the snow onto the controller, and the aroma of burnt sausage suddenly filled the entire laboratory. "What you burnt back then was not sausage, but the key to connect all time and space - every burnt crack is a beacon that someone is waiting for you to pass on warmth in the future."
The prototype controller beeps, and countless delivery scenes emerge in the cracks of time and space: Nuan Nuan in 2030 activates the node at the morning market, Wang Mengmeng's child in 2040 runs an order for the first time, and SUSAN in a certain time and space is transforming a powder dispenser into a beacon receiver. 17-year-old Li Xiaoming touched the back of his work badge, where a line of future handwriting appeared without knowing when: "The burnt in 1998 is the starlight in 2048."
When the snow stopped, the oven in the back alley of the laboratory automatically spit out a perfect sausage, with a Möbius strip pattern engraved on the casing. Xiao Nuan's delivery car has returned to its modern appearance. The 1998 sample in the glass sausage has disappeared, replaced by the little sun drawn by 17-year-old Kai Lan - that is the real startup code of the first generation system.
The phone vibrates, a new order comes from "2025 Snow Night Convenience Store", and the note reads: "Beacon initialization completed, all sausage machines in time and space have been synchronized. Please tell the 17-year-old me that the sausages 20 years later still carry the warmth of the first snow." The sender shows "Li Xiaoming (Sausage Apprentice)", followed by a melting popsicle emoji.
On the return delivery car, Xiao Nuan looked at the orange mark on her wrist and suddenly realized that the scorching and perfection of each time and space are the only way to convey warmth. When passing by the old site of the convenience store, the automatic sausage machine was working for the homeless, and the new engraving on the machine shell flickered in the moonlight: "To all deliverymen in time and space - when you scorch the sausage, don't forget that someone in the future is waiting to use it to sew the cracks in time."