booktalesy Chapter 284 Father
Chapter 284 Father
The news of Yu Ying's pregnancy spread within 402 in less than 24 hours. But when the news reached the Web of Consciousness, the first response came from a consciousness entity that Zuo Cheng hadn't actively connected to in a long time.
Chen Xinghe is 43 percent.
His signal was extremely weak, as if he had squeezed out the last bit of energy. Zuo Cheng activated the consciousness bridge; the outline of the digital Chen Xinghe was much fainter than before, its edges fading away. He still managed to utter a complete sentence.
You did not disappoint me. Not as a successor to civilization, but as a human being.
Zuo Cheng remained seated, motionless. He recalled the night he first heard Chen Xinghe's voice in the Sahara recording. A man no longer fully alive had revealed to him the secrets of the deepest level of the technology tree. Now, that man was truly about to leave.
"Your signal is much weaker than last time."
Data density is decreasing. Chen Xinghe's voice was calm. There's an inherent ceiling to 43% integrity. I've held on for seven years since the day of my surgery. Seven years is the maximum lifespan of a consciousness copy.
Zuo Cheng remained silent.
"My biggest regret isn't not seeing you activate the ninth branch," Chen Xinghe said. "It's not not seeing the Web awaken. It's not even not seeing the Pioneer take flight. My biggest regret is not seeing you as a father. The first day I saw your file in the screening system, you were an angry young man. Now you're a father about to hold his own child. This is the most unique thing the technology tree has borne on your branch."
Zuo Cheng wanted to speak. Chen Xinghe interrupted him before he could.
No need. I'll know in the web when he's born. I'm not dead. The data density has just dropped to a point where a conversation can no longer be maintained. But I'm still here. In the background noise of the web. In the data stream of all the nodes.
Chen Xinghe's outline began to melt away. He uttered a final sentence. Zuo Cheng didn't hear the exact words, but he sensed the complete meaning of those words on a conscious level. It wasn't a farewell. It was a simple blessing. The connection was severed. The node in the woven consciousness network marked "43% copy of Chen Xinghe" changed from "active consciousness" to "background noise layer. Persistent."
Zuo Cheng sat in his office for a long time. It was raining outside in Hangzhou. He opened the Origin File and added a new entry at the very end of the record. The title was two words: Father. The content was only one sentence.
Everything I did before was to buy time for humanity. Now I want to buy time for one person's entire life.
Over the next few months, Zuo Cheng began doing things he had never done before. He accompanied Yu Ying to prenatal checkups, sitting on a plastic chair in the obstetrics waiting room, surrounded by pregnant women and their families, and no one recognized him. He was just an ordinary expectant father, clutching his registration slip, waiting for the nurse to call his number.
He was watching baby care tutorials. A new folder appeared on his tablet, filled with information on newborn care. Yu Ying once woke up in the middle of the night and saw him wearing headphones, watching a baby bathing tutorial video; she laughed for a long time.
He made her a late-night snack. The first time, the egg noodles were overcooked, and the eggs were burnt. Yu Ying took a bite and put down her chopsticks. "Your late-night snack-making skills are far worse than building a rocket," Zuo Cheng said, indicating there was room for improvement. The second time, the millet porridge was alright, but he added salt. Yu Ying took a spoonful, her expression complicated. "Brother. Millet porridge is sweet." Zuo Cheng was taken aback. "Who said that?"
One night, after Yu Ying fell asleep, Zuo Cheng sat alone in his study. He opened the history of the web and flipped to the day the solar system's origin node was activated. Forty billion thirty million years ago. When the founder planted the first seed, did the founder who pressed the start button have children? Did they, on some night, sit by the window like him, wondering what all they had done was for?
There are no records of the founders' personal lives in the web. All the data left by that civilization is about technology, nodes, and interstellar travel. Not a single word is about family. Perhaps in the founders' civilization, paving the way for the entire civilization and keeping watch over one person were always the same thing.
He added a note at the bottom of the Origins archive: You did it for a civilization. I did it for a person. Perhaps, on some level, these two things are the same thing.
Yu Ying's due date was four months away from the original launch window for Pioneer.
The core team held a meeting. The meeting room still had that same whiteboard, with the ten-year roadmap still on it. There was only one issue: whether or not to postpone the launch.
Han Lu suggested a six-month postponement. Her reasoning was straightforward: the Pioneer wasn't a spaceship in a rush. Human interstellar missions didn't need to worry about four months. A postponement meant Yu Ying could give birth in peace, and Zuo Cheng could stay home with her during the crucial postpartum weeks. Shen Yiming remained silent. He was one of the crew members, and a postponement meant he would age faster in space, but he wouldn't vote for himself. Fang Ze wrote "Listen to Yu Ying" in his notebook.
Zuo Cheng remained silent. He knew that the only person qualified to make the decision had not spoken.
Yu Ying stood up. Her belly was quite prominent, and she supported her back with one hand. She walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and wrote two lines of numbers. One line indicated the launch window. The other indicated the next launch window.
"The launch window for Pioneer was calculated." Her voice was exactly the same as when she was presenting data. "Planetary alignment, gravitational slingshot, solar activity cycle. Missing this window means waiting two years."
She put down the marker and turned to look at everyone.
"Waiting two years for a baby to grow up and waiting two years for a launch window are two different things. Waiting for a launch window is a law of physics. The laws of physics don't change because of who you are."
Han Lu opened her mouth. Yu Ying didn't let her speak.
"Four months later, I took my child to the launch site." She placed her hands in front of her abdomen. "Letting him watch his father's spaceship fly away is more meaningful than making all of humanity wait two years for him to grow up first."
No one spoke in the meeting room. Shen Yiming stared down at the table. Fang Ze wrote another line in his notebook. Zuo Cheng looked at Yu Ying, and Yu Ying looked at him. He didn't argue with her. Not because she was right. It was because if he argued, he would be making a choice for her. And the last thing Yu Ying needed in her life was for someone else to make choices for her.
That evening, Zuo Cheng and Yu Ying were at home. Yu Ying leaned back on the sofa, flipping through an e-book on infant care, the screen lingering on the page about fetal development in the twentieth week. Zuo Cheng was in the kitchen making their third late-night snack. This time it was plain porridge. He didn't add salt.
Yu Ying took a sip and nodded. "You've improved."
"What progress?"
"You've finally accepted the objective fact that millet porridge is sweet."
"That's not an objective fact," Zuo Cheng said. "That's the rule you set."
"Yes." Yu Ying put down the bowl. "You have a problem with that?"
Zuo Cheng paused for a moment. "No objections."
Yu Ying looked at him. She reached out and placed her hand on his face. The rain outside the window had stopped. Pioneer orbited quietly in its low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometers, awaiting ignition four months later. Everything continued to move forward.
But in this room, someone is learning how to cook a proper bowl of millet porridge. Not for humanity. For one person.