During the rest period after dinner, even Robert was watching an old soap opera. Cheng Weilu looked at Li Xu in the distance, wanting to say something but hesitating. As she wrestled with her thoughts, she practically polished Robert’s head until it gleamed.
She stood up and sat back down. After pacing around the living room seven or eight times, Li Xu finally couldn’t take it anymore. He looked up at her. “What are you trying to do?”
Cheng Weilu walked over and sat down in front of him. Her eyes wandered around uncertainly for a while as she tried and failed to come up with a tactful way to phrase it. Finally, she steeled herself and said, “I’m here to check on my client’s mental health… Um, do you have a sleep disorder?”
Li Xu’s hands, which had been busy on his optical-brain, stopped. He turned to look at Cheng Weilu, his gray eyes carrying a hint of coldness.
“Don’t overthink it. I didn’t invade your privacy,” Cheng Weilu said. “Well, I only invaded it a tiny bit.”
“That wristband I gave you? When I made it, I put a biometric sensor in it. Xiao Wei can read the data, and it sent me your health report. It says you’re sleeping far too little, and your heart rate is frequently irregular. I’m worried you might be at risk of sudden death, and…”
Cheng Weilu said very seriously, “I suspect you have post-traumatic stress disorder from the war.”
Li Xu looked into her amber eyes. Rarely, he averted his gaze, pressing his lips together without saying anything. After a while, as though he had finally found the courage to look her in the eyes again, he asked, “Do you think I have it?”
“On the surface, you really don’t look like you do,” Cheng Weilu said. “After all, I don’t have any psychological training, nor do I have a medical license, so I can’t diagnose you. Whether you want to talk about it or not is up to you. I’m just asking. Commander, um… You should still try to get more sleep.”
“Don’t worry.” Li Xu lowered his eyelids, concealing some of the dark, unreadable emotions in his eyes. “I’ll do my best not to die suddenly on your spaceship.”
“…I think,” Cheng Weilu said, rubbing her neck, “if you can avoid dying suddenly, you should probably try to.”
“What, are you worried about me?” Li Xu set down what he was holding and leaned against the back of the chair. He crossed his arms, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing at the corners of his lips as he looked at Cheng Weilu. “So did Xiao Wei send you here, or did you come on your own? Afraid I’ll die halfway there?”
Looking at his defensive posture, Cheng Weilu realized that asking so directly seemed to have made him resistant. But being straightforward was really the only way she knew how to communicate.
Ignoring the sarcasm in his words, she simply looked at him sincerely. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Oh?” Li Xu became interested. “If I ask you to do something, you’ll do it?”
“As long as it’s something I can do. I don’t have anything else going on right now anyway. Consider it repayment for helping me find Qiqi.” Cheng Weilu added, “Of course, it has to be within the bounds of what’s legal, reasonable, and acceptable to me.”
Li Xu looked at her for a while before saying, “Then starting today, talk to me for an hour every night before I go to sleep.”
“Huh?” Cheng Weilu’s mouth fell open in shock. “Haven’t we been talking all day these past few days?”
“No,” Li Xu said. “I want you to talk to me about other things.”
He turned his head and looked out at the vast expanse of space beyond the porthole. “Things unrelated to what’s happening now. Like… when we went to the glacier planet last time and watched the ice melt. Tell me about your life, things you’ve experienced yourself, meaningless little trivialities. Tell me all of it.”
“What is this supposed to be? A bedtime story?” Cheng Weilu looked at Li Xu. He was a grown man, yet this request was really…
“You can think of it that way. It’s legal, reasonable, and within what you can do.” Li Xu looked at her. “So? Will you do it?”
Cheng Weilu sighed. “Fine.”
She wasn’t stingy, but there was simply too much work to do every day. After some bargaining, the two settled on once every two days, for ten days to see whether it worked.
So, when it was nearly time for her to rest that night, Cheng Weilu forced herself to stay awake and wandered back and forth in front of Li Xu, asking several times whether he was going to sleep. Only then did the man finally take pity on her, put aside what he was doing, and go wash up.
When he came out of the washroom in his room, he found a message projection from Cheng Weilu:
(You may wear pajamas, but please don’t wear pajamas made of too little fabric. Thank you for your cooperation.)
Li Xu lowered his head and chuckled at the message. He chose a simple, loose white shirt-and-pants set. The fabric was soft and lustrous, the neckline not too low, revealing a little of his chest and collarbones.
When he pushed open the door to the audiovisual room, he found Cheng Weilu crouching on the floor assembling something that looked like a rack, while Robert handed her parts. She was wearing a loose beige T-shirt and long pants, her hair hanging loose. Her skin, still carrying a healthy flush from having showered not long ago, looked warm and rosy.
Li Xu walked over, intending to help her. “What is this?”
“A folding lounge chair. It can also be used as a bed.” She pulled several extremely thin tubes longer, locking the joints together until they formed a slender, rectangular frame. A layer of something resembling a thin membrane stretched across the middle of the frame.
After adjusting the angle of one of the folds, Cheng Weilu flipped a switch on the side. The membrane inflated and bulged, suspending the frame in midair and turning it into something resembling a reclining sofa. Once inflated, the membrane darkened in color. It felt soft and comfortable to the touch while still providing ample support.
“This era is amazing. Making little things like this is practically effortless.”
Cheng Weilu smiled as she invited Li Xu to lie down on it, then unfolded another one beside him and lay down herself. Seeing the two of them like this, Robert tapped some part of his body with a metal finger and also floated into the air.
“Robert wants to hear the story too?” Li Xu asked.
“Of course,” Cheng Weilu said. “If you fall asleep, I can have Robert fork you back to your room.”
“…Fork?” Li Xu had trouble processing the word.
“Robert’s arms and legs can extend. You’ve seen it before.”
“Yes, yes.” Robert cheerfully waved his arms in the air.
Then it could transport him back like a forklift moving cargo. Li Xu understood.
He fell silent.
“Actually, we can just turn off the spaceship’s artificial gravity and float directly,” Li Xu said. After all, weightlessness was the normal state in space.
“No. I still want the environment to feel like we’re on the ground. I like having my feet on solid ground, even if it’s simulated.” Cheng Weilu said, “Xiao Wei, please activate the projection.”
“Arabian Nights begins.” Looking at the gradually materializing lights and images around them, Cheng Weilu said, “Let me tell you a story about a forest planet, Tyrant.”
Li Xu folded his hands together, his expression relaxed. “Please begin, wise girl.”
As the projection finished loading, Li Xu discovered that they were surrounded by a forest, a dense and primitive forest that had only ever been recorded during the era of Old Earth.
With every breath, he could sense the humidity of the dense jungle. The sensation of rain mist and moisture brushed against his skin. Various scents filled the air: flowers blooming on branches and giving off rich fragrances, leaves that released a fresh scent whenever they trembled in the breeze, fungi decomposing on the forest floor…
Li Xu lay on the lounge chair, looking at the dappled light filtering down through the canopy. All around him were the sounds of insects rising and falling, the vibrations of beating wings, the sound of creatures chewing on leaves. Somewhere in the distance, a clear call echoed through the forest, probably some kind of bird calling for a mate. Below them came dull grunts one after another, perhaps animals on the ground searching for food.
It was completely different from the exquisite artificial gardens and parks maintained through highly advanced technology. This was a primitive, authentic ecological environment that had been separated from human activity as much as possible.
Li Xu had never experienced a hologram this immersive. It wasn’t merely the visuals. The temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, and even the scents were all incredibly realistic. He felt as though he had become some kind of creature in the forest, lying on the enormous branch of an ancient tree and experiencing all of this.
“Is this a simulated experience?” Li Xu asked. “One that creates a realistic sensation by collecting experiences?”
Large corporations manufactured machines like this. After an experience collector finished experiencing a particular real-world environment, the company would reproduce that person’s experience and sell it as a digital product to consumers who wanted the same experience.
To ensure the richness and completeness of the experience, collectors usually chose popular environments, and the experiences would be appropriately beautified and adjusted during production.
“No. There’s nothing like this among the simulated experiences sold on the market. It’s too rough, too primitive.” Cheng Weilu’s voice was quiet. “This was recorded firsthand. It came from a forest planet.”
Cheng Weilu had discovered this planet by chance during one of her journeys, in a star system that wasn’t particularly famous but wasn’t remote either.
She had passed this small planet many times, occasionally taking random photographs of its surface. She had been astonished by the extent of its vegetation. It took an extremely careful search to find even the slightest traces of human structures. It was a planet dominated by forests.
With the high level of development in human society, modifying planets had become effortless. The preservation and propagation of flora and fauna could be maintained through laboratories and artificial facilities. As a result, since the arrival of this era, Cheng Weilu had rarely seen forests that remained so highly primitive.
When she excitedly flew her spaceship over, wanting to visit the planet and take a look, the star chart information showed that it was privately owned, and no one was permitted to land without the planet owner’s authorization. Cheng Weilu searched around on the Star Network but couldn’t find any information about it.
She was disappointed, but she still flew into near-Earth orbit and spent a full two circuits flying around it, admiring the beautiful private planet from high above.
By decoding high-altitude imagery and comparing information from different signal bands, it was possible to analyze some of the plant species on the planet. But more detailed varieties and their specific appearances could not be determined.
From then on, whenever her fishing route passed through this area, Cheng Weilu would set aside a few days and make a detour to come take a look.
Although her spaceship had never landed there and she had never met the planet’s owner, she still expressed her admiration from the bottom of her heart. Xiao Wei dutifully converted those words into signals and sent them toward the asteroid.
For example, “Passing by for the first time. Your planet is beautiful.”
“Passing by for the third time. It looks like you’ve built three large greenhouses. I wonder what new species you’re cultivating inside.”
“Passing by for the seventeenth time. Hello. Traveling has been a little exhausting. Seeing that this planet is still so beautiful is truly reassuring.”
Cheng Weilu continued telling the story in the gentle breeze of the forest. Li Xu was listening intently when she suddenly stopped. Something must have changed.
“Then what happened?” Li Xu asked.
Then, one day three years ago, Cheng Weilu passed by this planet again. She planned to admire it from a distance, send her usual words of praise, and leave. But Xiao Wei took some photographs from high above.
Li Xu looked at the images Xiao Wei projected into the air. They were large-format photographs taken near the equator, showing a dense rainforest belt that stretched farther than he could tell.
Xiao Wei gradually zoomed out, and it became clear that the shape of the rainforest belts was extraordinarily orderly. Li Xu realized that they had been artificially planted, and the variety of plant species was immense.
As the image continued shrinking, Li Xu discovered that the orderly planting belts, when combined, seemed to form a line of writing.
“778201, welcome to my planet.” Cheng Weilu smiled. “778201 is the last six digits of the code we use when sending signals.”
“I was invited.” Cheng Weilu’s voice was as soft as a murmur.
The owner of the planet had received the signals Cheng Weilu sent and invited her to visit this forest planet. But they didn’t know when she would come, and they were unwilling to send out another signal that might be received by other people. So they had chosen the simplest and most straightforward method, albeit one requiring an enormous amount of work: planting a forest signal.
Looking at those images, Li Xu could imagine how Cheng Weilu must have felt at the time. A smile appeared at the corners of his lips as he asked, “And then?”
There was no response.
Li Xu turned his head and discovered that Cheng Weilu had leaned against the back of her chair and fallen asleep, her head tilted to one side. Her long hair partially covered her face as it fell over her chest, making her look quiet and soft.
The projection gradually dimmed. Tired birds returned to their nests, and the chirping of insects grew louder. The forest descended into dusk. Li Xu turned over on the lounge chair and quietly watched her for a while in the faint light of evening.
If she slept like this, her neck would hurt tomorrow.
Li Xu climbed down from the floating lounge chair. He slipped one arm around her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, lifting her into his arms. Robert came over and extended his long arms, lowering his voice. “Let me help.”
“No need.”
Li Xu carried Cheng Weilu all the way to the door of her room. It was locked. He looked up at the cabin, making sure Xiao Wei understood what he meant. After hesitating for a few seconds, the door opened automatically.
Li Xu placed Cheng Weilu on the bed and settled her in. Without looking at her any longer, he stepped out of the room. The door automatically closed behind him.
The storyteller had fallen asleep herself, while the listener was still completely unable to sleep.
He walked to the living room of the spaceship and stood by the porthole, looking outside. After spending some time alone, he finally spoke.
“Xiao Wei, can you send me the star chart coordinates of that forest planet?”
“I can, but there probably isn’t any use in sending them to you now.”
Li Xu frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Actually, A Luo herself never went to that planet.” Xiao Wei’s tone held no emotion, yet Li Xu somehow sensed a hint of regret in it. “Those recordings were found later.”
“Why?”
“A Luo was very excited after discovering those words, but that trip was rushed. She decided to finish handling the matters at hand first and replenish the energy supply before coming back. She sent a signal to the planet. But when the three of us arrived three months later, the planet had disappeared.”
“…Disappeared?”
“Yes. At its original location, we found only a coded space box. A Luo opened it using our signal code and confirmed that it had been left for her. The recordings inside were the live footage you just saw. There was no one there and no other information. There was only the forest. A Luo spent half a month expanding the search area for the planet, but never found another trace.”
“She missed the appointment.”
…
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