Chapter 31: Fort Worth City

After the agreement with his mother was settled, Chen Jin was greatly relieved. She’d finally agreed to leave him alone for a while. He could now sit back and relax without his mother harassing him with the whole marriage thing for at least two to three years. At last, he could enjoy his freedom to the fullest.

And he’d take even more pleasure from it after he successfully launched his startup business and earned $15 million, even $150 million. He would be able to do whatever he wanted to! How sweet that would be! But if it failed…well, sorry, but there was no failure in Chen Jin’s book. He would never fail.

What he needed to think about the most was how he could do the research more efficiently and pull this plan off as soon as possible. Therefore, 5am on October 1st, the National Day, Chen Jin called his parents to let them know he’d left early to avoid traffic, after he packed his bag and acted as though he was going on a trip with friends.

“Have fun, son. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you at home,” He Li told her son, still feeling sleepy. She had planned to make him some breakfast despite her awful drowsiness, but since he’d just get some on the way, she went straight back to sleep after the call.

“Hehe…Planet, Haierfa, here I come!” Soon after he’d left the house, Chen Jin sneaked his way back in, quietly opened the door, and locked it behind him. And then, off he went, very nimbly, through the portal in the bathroom with his bag, landing on the metal platform he assigned Da Li to make.

…

At the huge-crater camp, everything was ready. A modified “Haierfa buggy” was fully charged. Blue Angel, working as a backup vehicle, was also fully charged, and there was a total of 51 robots with charged batteries. In addition, there were 50 electric motorcycles for each robot to ride on so that they would speed up rather than slowing down the mission. There were 200 pieces of large, fully charged, high efficiency batteries as backup, as well as 122 small ones.

There were more than 1,000 bottles of water, more than 50 boxes of hardtack, snacks, energy bars, canned fruits, canned meat, and more than 300 packages of ready-to-eat meals in the cargo space on the Haierfa buggy, the “Rover No.1.” These food supplies would be enough to feed Chen Jin for more than 3 months. His preparation for other supplies was also very sufficient.

As for Fort Worth City, it was only about 200 kilometers away from the camp; it wouldn’t take more than a day make a round trip, so he had more than enough time to really explore and raid the city. Moreover, as long as he kept driving North along the road by the camp – and if the road didn’t disappear halfway through – he could easily reach Fort Worth City without getting lost. And that was why he was confident to take the driver’s seat on Rover No.1 and lead the team personally to search (raid) the city.

“I wonder what will be waiting for me in a larger city with a greater population like Fort Worth. Maybe I’ll find more gold, more jewelry, or even more astonishing high tech information! In any case, I’m sure there will be more treasures in Fort Worth than in Tereese!” The thought of it was just too appealing.

Chen Jin’s face was filled with great excitement; he pressed the START button on Rover No.1 without any hesitation. “Here we go!”

VROOOM VROOOM!

The engine made loud noises as it spun rapidly. Shifting into 1st gear, Chen Jin held onto the steering wheel, and stepped firmly on the gas pedal.

VROOOOOM!

The tires started to move as the enormous Rover No.1 vibrated. The vehicle was moving forward. Chen Jin experienced the acceleration as he stepped even harder on the gas pedal, bringing the speed up to 20kph.

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The robots were coming along, too. They formed a four by four square contingent of 16 robots, clearing the way on their electric motorcycles, with the sniper robot in the first row using his millimeter wave radar to scan the road ahead of them to find the best route as well as avoiding landmines. On the sides, there were two rows of 16 robots guarding the entire team, with Da Li driving the backup vehicle “Blue Angel” at the very back.

To make it easier for all vehicles to move around, Chen Jin had ordered the robots to excavate a 50mx5m opening on the east side of the huge crater. Through this opening, the entire robot team that Chen Jin was leading was able to file out of the crater at a speed of 40kph!

They entered the vast Gobi desert, and off they went. This not-so-small convoy drove and drifted freely in the barren land of desert. The spinning tires left a trail of rolling dust as they sped along the desert road. All the stirring noises and actions they created suddenly made this silence-filled planet come alive.

…

In the driver’s seat in Rover No.1, Chen Jin was deeply absorbed in steering the vehicle. The black and white scene through the windshield, the vast, boundless land and the sand-covered sky, the architecture and buildings so rare… it all made Chen Jin feel like he was conducting research on the surface of some alien planet.

But he knew that it was because this planet, Haierfa, that had countless things in common with Earth, was so well developed that it led to its own destruction. It was the contradictory nature within mankind that caused the destruction; The destruction that came from their ambition, desire, and greed.

The Earth, however, was no better compared to Haierfa. There were tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, along with all sorts of conflict, and Hegemony still existed. Even though the Earth was not at war, and the people in most areas lived a precious and peaceful life, there would always be a possibility for Earth to end up like Haierfa as long as the potential source of conflict was still there. The humans on Earth could destroy themselves.

“Perhaps I should do something to protect the peace on Earth to prevent it from being exterminated like Haierfa?” Chen Jin mumbled to himself, but then shook his head.

Maintaining world peace? I’m just a guy with limited resources and limited ability, who am I to decide the future of the Earth? Even if the apocalypse did happen, I’d be thinking about staying alive and keeping my family safe, I wouldn’t be worried about anyone else! I’m not a savior nor Virgin Mary; it’s not my responsibility to keep the Earth safe. If the world war actually happened, I’d just hide here on Haierfa till it is all over. I’d have found another planet by then… How sweet would that be?

Just like the increase in entropy in the universe, creatures like humans are extremely complicated. Some of them are kind, some of them are evil; some are selfless, yet some are selfish; there are those that are religious, and there are those that believe in science; there are the ones that are peace-loving, yet there are the ones that advocate violence; some of them are wealthy, but some are poor. This, naturally, would create numerous conflicts. The society going from stability and order to chaos and confusion is almost inevitable, no one could change that.

Unless all of mankind turned into robots that were controlled and programmed, there would be no solution. Therefore, not just Chen Jin, but no one at all would be able to maintain world peace.

…

They’d been driving for four hours along the road that was packed with all kinds of vehicles, and they were just North of the City of Tereese. Ahead of them, the weather was getting more windy and sandy. The sand accumulation on the ground got thicker and thicker.

Driving on the traffic-free highway, Chen Jin had to rely on the scraper on Rover No.1 to scrape off all the sand before him so he knew where he was driving. All was good until the sand accumulation was a meter thick and the scraper could no longer work. There was no visibility of the road ahead whatsoever. Chen Jin had to put his Da Jiang Phantom 4Pro camera drone into operation so it could detect and search the area from thousands of meters above.

Luckily, the entire convoy was less than 10 kilometers away from Fort Worth City; the drone immediately sent back a set of semi-blurry pictures of the outline of the city. Seeing that they were driving towards the right direction, Chen Jin was greatly relieved, and led the team towards the outline of the city.

However, after they got to the outside of Fort Worth City, they parked on a little hill where they could overlook the entire area. Chen Jin was tremendously shocked. There was a massive crater with a radius of 5 kilometers right in the center of Fort Worth City. About 70% of it had been destroyed by a nuclear bomb.