Pei Ran took the bag containing the cake from the delivery guy, said “Thank you,” and was about to close the door.
The guy struggled in the door crack: “The merchant asked me to ask, if there was a delivery mistake, you wouldn’t leave a bad review, would you?”
Pei Ran: “No.”
What bad review? The pizza was delicious.
The matcha cake and iced cola were also quite good. After eating and drinking her fill, Pei Ran tapped on her wristband memo to call the municipal hotline to report the heating repair.
The municipal hotline connected quickly, much faster than Pei Ran had expected.
The deep male voice on the other end was very pleasant, and after hearing the repair request, it was full of apologies.
“I have recorded your issue in the system, and we will arrange for a technician to visit as soon as possible. However, due to the strike, it may take some time…”
The voice was deep and gentle, seemingly infinitely patient.
In fact, the person answering the phone was just an artificial intelligence.
Or, to use a more trendy term—a municipal service AI agent, specialized in handling multiple citizen complaints simultaneously, capable of answering countless complaint calls at once, far more efficient than humans.
Its voice was extremely magnetic, rolling deep in the throat, with a tone so gentle and ambiguous it was suspicious.
Pei Ran suddenly realized: this must be what novels refer to as a “bass cannon.”
It was likely a voice specifically adjusted for female users, to make them less angry when filing complaints and to reduce cursing.
It is said that the scheduling of municipal repair personnel is also managed by them.
Pei Ran vaguely remembered a memory fragment in her mind, a snippet from a news interview.
Striking repair workers complained in front of the camera, calling these AIs “machine heads that force people to work to the bone.”
It is said that if workers are even a few minutes late to a repair site, it would cold-bloodedly send a notification:
【Based on my calculation of the traffic conditions, you should have been able to reach the designated repair location in 12 minutes, but you took 13 minutes and 50 seconds. Ten performance points will be deducted this month.】
I wonder if the notification was also sent using the bass cannon voice.
The AIs are impartial and ruthless, stricter than the most demanding bosses. Workers are saying: whoever thought of using AI to manage humans must be crazy.
Yet, cheap and efficient AI agents are encroaching, invading various industries, step by step taking over this city, and even the entire federation.
On the hotline, the municipal service AI agent’s bass cannon remained gentle:
“I can offer you some small suggestions to help you get through the cold weather without heating, such as brewing hot drinks, using thickened door curtains and window curtains to reduce indoor heat loss…”
“No need. Thank you.”
Pei Ran hung up the phone.
Alright then. Drink more hot water. These AIs probably think humans are fools.
After clearing the pending tasks left by the original owner, Pei Ran scrolled down and saw a record of some letters and numbers—
【JTN34！！！！！】
Five exclamation marks in a row, one more than the exclamation marks for the heating repair report.
If another hundred million years passed, and the original owner turned to stone, besides the names of four heating units solidified on the tip of their tongue, there would at least be five “JTN34″s solidified as well.
The memories were too chaotic. What exactly was this “JTN34,” worthy of five exclamation marks? Pei Ran couldn’t recall at all.
Pei Ran tapped on her wristband, searched the internet for “JTN34,” but found nothing. She casually continued clicking around and then discovered a real treasure trove.
In this world, one could actually buy all kinds of food online at will.
And. It. Was. All. Unlimited. Supply.
Those canned meats, compressed biscuits, vitamin-rich powdered drinks—all the supplies that were prohibitively expensive on the black market in the bunker world—were available here in abundance.
There was even an online store specializing in emergency food for disaster periods, with each can having a shelf life of over fifty years.
You could buy as much as you wanted, just by placing an order.
Pei Ran stared at the adorable cans, adjusting her breathing.
But she was unemployed, and the money in her bank account was only going out, not coming in. She couldn’t spend recklessly. Pei Ran tried hard to restrain herself, carefully selecting and placing an order.
Just after finishing the purchase, the light outside changed.
Pei Ran sat up and noticed that the neon signs on the exterior of the building across the street had gone out, and the virtual advertisement screens had disappeared.
Pei Ran immediately reached out and pressed the desk lamp switch—
The light didn’t turn on. The power was out.
The blackout seemed to extend far beyond these few buildings. As far as the eye could see outside the window, the virtual screens on the skyscrapers had all vanished, sinking into the dusk, gray and gloomy.
Fortunately, the water was still running. Pei Ran found all the containers she could and filled them with water as much as possible.
The night was even colder than the day. Pei Ran wrapped herself in a blanket and lay on the bed, fiddling with her mechanical arm by the light of her wristband screen.
The arm was connected to her shoulder, with a smooth transition to the skin.
On the metal elbow was a delicate small logo—three equilateral triangles nested within each other, likely the brand of the prosthetic.
Losing limbs was quite normal in the bunker world. Although Pei Ran had all her limbs intact, she had long been mentally prepared to lose a part of her body at any time. After crossing over once, she lost a flesh arm but gained a metal one—an exceptionally flexible and natural metal arm, with no sense of discomfort. Pei Ran was already very content.
I wonder if this thing needs oiling.
Pei Ran flexed her black mechanical fingers, glanced at the cup on the nightstand, and casually picked it up.
With a squeeze, the double-layered metal thermos cup instantly crumpled.
Pei Ran: “…”
She put down the dented cup, silently clenched her fist, and slammed it down—bang—
The metal cup was mercilessly flattened into a pitiful sheet.
Not only did the cup suffer, but the wooden nightstand couldn’t withstand such treatment either, crack, splitting open with a large gap.
The dog next door started barking, and the neighbor wasn’t having it either.
“Who’s smashing things in the middle of the night? Building your family tomb or something? Can’t you let people sleep?”
Pei Ran, feeling guilty, didn’t dare make a sound.
She silently pulled up the virtual screen and searched for the triangular pattern on her mechanical arm.
She couldn’t find the brand at all.
In this world, mechanical prosthetics were very common, with various models available online, ranging from cheap to expensive.
The realism of the prosthetics was absurdly high, with skin textures, pores, and even fine hairs all meticulously replicated, looking no different from a real arm.
However, some prosthetics were deliberately designed to be flashy, maintaining a metallic appearance and sprayed with iridescent paint that changed colors under different lighting, as if afraid people wouldn’t notice.
Pei Ran scrolled through but couldn’t find a mechanical arm like hers.
Moreover, all mechanical prosthetics boasted “flexibility and lightness just like a natural arm.” She didn’t see any brand advertising “our mechanical arm is strong enough to crush someone to death.”
She quickly understood why.
The Federation had a set of safety regulations for bionic intelligent prosthetics, which clearly stated—“No mechanical prosthetic shall possess functions beyond the normal range of human limb capabilities.”
Pei Ran glanced at the flattened cup on the table.
This definitely fell outside the normal range of human limb capabilities.
This mechanical arm was likely illegal. She had no idea where the original owner got such an arm.
The original owner’s past was already hazy, filled with oddities—an illegal mechanical arm and strange green flashes in her mind.
Pei Ran closed her eyes.
This time, she suddenly saw, or rather, it felt as if she truly saw, that speck of green light lurking within her.
But no matter how she tried to summon it, it remained motionless, as if it were fast asleep.
It slept so soundly that Pei Ran couldn’t help but yawn as well.
The night was deep. Lying in a safe apartment, on a comfortable bed, without worrying about enemies popping up at any moment, Pei Ran had never felt so at ease in her life. She quickly fell asleep.
It wasn’t until her stomach growled with hunger that she opened her eyes.
Outside, the sky was already bright. Pei Ran tapped her wristband. A virtual screen automatically generated, displaying the time:
1:00 PM.
In addition, there was a newly received message—no text, just a picture.
The image had a white background with black text, as solemn as an obituary, containing only a few simple lines:
【Attention to all citizens of the Federation】
【From now on, please do not speak. Please do not send any text to others. Only image-based communication is safe.】
【I repeat. Only image-based communication is safe.】
【The silence is about to begin.】
—-
TL: This feels like a one day vacation for the FL, I would crash out if I were her 😭