The young woman had never heard of the nursery rhyme “Grandma’s Bridge.”
“So why did you pick it as your codename?” The young man finished singing the tune and asked.
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s been too long. I can’t remember. It was probably randomly assigned.”
In that moment, the strange wonders of probability theory revealed themselves. It was probability that birthed hydrogen atoms in the universe, that caused ten thousand dice to land with sixes facing up all at once, that allowed humanity to emerge and then perish, that guided a spaceship home after a century adrift.
It was also probability that made her codename come from a children’s nursery rhyme.
She tried humming the melody he’d sung. “It’s actually pretty catchy.”
Rock-a-bye, rock to Grandma’s Bridge.
Eighteen hours later, they returned to the spaceship and resumed their search across the entire Earth. Even with rising sea levels submerging much of the land, this blue planet still boasted sixty million square kilometers of territory. Their exploration dragged on for fifteen long years until, one day fifteen years later, Grandma’s Bridge suddenly spotted something in a basin.
The girl—no, by now a grown woman—pointed to a coordinate on the holographic map. “The probes have scanned here dozens of times and found nothing. But that ancient relic you dug out of the warehouse last time, the old Artificial Human sensor, picked up some faint signals from here. They’re weak, but worth checking out.”
The Artificial Human still looked like the same young man from before. It was busy synthesizing something at the control console. “Got it. Head out tomorrow?”
“Quit struggling. How many years have you been messing with that recipe?” Grandma’s Bridge rolled her eyes. “What’s so great about that cola with soda water? The greenhouse soil is so limited, and you’re hogging space for a bunch of coffee beans.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” the young man declared with perfect justification. “Salty cola is holy water. It cures everything.”
“Holy water, my ass. The slop you’ve brewed is only good for scrubbing toilets.” Grandma’s Bridge kicked it in the side. “Hurry up and let’s go.”
The young man stumbled from the kick. “Grandma’s Bridge, aren’t you twenty-eight now? You going through menopause or what?” He promptly got thrashed and scurried off clutching his head. “Stop hitting me! I just got this new shell— you’ll hurt your hand!”
Over the years, they’d grown increasingly comfortable around each other. Without any societal structure, the Artificial Human had no idea what a woman in her twenties was supposed to act like. Whatever the case, she sure wasn’t acting like it—going weeks without washing her hair, constantly bounding across the skies and earth like some wild, unrestrained madwoman.
The woman suited up in her protective gear and led the young man into the hovercraft. Qian Duoduo nudged Zhao Meiyou, who was sleeping like the dead. “Wake up. They’re heading out.”
“Huh?” Zhao Meiyou groggily opened his eyes, drool soaking Qian Duoduo’s shoulder. “How long was I out?”
“Fifteen years.”
Zhao Meiyou snapped awake. “I slept that long?”
“No need to panic. The time flow between us and them seems off somehow.” Zhao Meiyou’s legs were numb from sleep, nearly buckling under him. Qian Duoduo steadied him quickly. “They’re leaving the ship. I think this time we might actually find something.”
For over a decade, the two of them had searched the ship high and low to no avail. They couldn’t even find a scrap of habitable land on the barren surface suitable for rebuilding civilization. Grandma’s Bridge had started considering relocation to another planet.
But Zhao Meiyou’s attention was elsewhere. He stared at the half-finished reddish-brown liquid on the lab bench. “No way. It still hasn’t figured out salty cola?”
The spaceship’s database had no recipe for salty cola. The hold did stock a few crates of century-old McDonald’s molecular meal kits, sealed in fist-sized cans that expanded into hearty fast food when heated. The Artificial Human had stumbled upon them by chance, and they’d proven addictive even expired. After one taste, the young man became obsessed with reverse-engineering the formula.
“It’s close,” Qian Duoduo said. “Two years ago, it made a pretty successful batch of fast-food fried chicken. Grandma’s Bridge tried it and said it was delicious.”
“Then why’s it still synthesizing fried chicken?” Zhao Meiyou pointed at the half-used vat of cooking oil on the bench.
“I didn’t quite follow.” Qian Duoduo looked puzzled. “Something about the flavor being Colonel Sanders, not McDonald’s.”
They followed the woman and the young man down to the surface. The hovercraft touched down in what looked like a basin. They trekked deep into the surrounding mountains before the woman suddenly halted. “We’re here.”
It was an utterly ordinary hillside, with sheer cliffs in the distance and nothing unusual in sight. Grandma’s Bridge eyed the data on her sensor and waved to the young man. “Right here. Coordinates 29753. Drop the Mountain Opening Axe.”
Data scrolled across the Artificial Human’s eyes. A black speck appeared on the horizon, and a massive crate plummeted in a pinpoint drop. It unpacked itself on impact amid a whirlwind of dust and debris, roaring like a thousand galloping horses.
Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo watched in awe as an enormous machine emerged—something they’d never seen in the Metropolis. It resembled the mythical arsenal from ancient plays. The Artificial Human summoned a control interface from thin air, punched in a code, and the machine sprang to life with effortless power.
It was hard to describe the sensation of the Mountain Opening Axe in motion. The Metropolis was tall and deep, compressing all life into narrow crevices. Zhao Meiyou had rarely witnessed such thunderous spectacle, akin only to legends—as if Chaos itself parted, Pangu wielding his axe to sunder heaven and earth, the pure yang forming the sky, the turbid yin the ground, eyes opening for day, closing for night.
After an earth-shattering quake like five bolts of lightning crashing down, the hillside was practically flipped upside down, shearing off a massive chunk of the cliff face. The thing the woman sought lay exposed.
Within the basin lay another basin, stretching to the sheer drop-off and concealing a vast Temple Complex.
Or more precisely, buildings that resembled temples.
Venturing inside, the halls meant for gods and Buddhas instead housed gigantic factories and laboratories.
Grandma’s Bridge didn’t seem surprised by her discovery. She led the young man along the divine path toward the main hall. “Keep up. Activate the projection.”
The Artificial Human ramped to full power, holographic images rippling out a yard around it like water. The buried ruins sprang back to life in vivid reconstruction—golden-red pillars rising from the earth, crawling with crystalline tubes and circuits that resembled coiling scriptures from afar.
They entered the main hall, where the woman gazed at the statue before them. “Found it.”
It was a golden Buddha.
The Buddha sat in lotus position, elegant and majestic. The Artificial Human swiftly scanned the entire golden form and pulled matching data from its database. “This was an Artificial Human factory in the 22nd century. Academics ran experiments here, trying to instill Buddhist teachings in Artificial Humans and observe their brainwave responses… That’s all I can access. The security clearance here is sky-high.”
Grandma’s Bridge studied the Giant Buddha Statue. “I have a question.”
The young man was engrossed in the data. “What?”
“Hey, don’t you want to know how Earth went to ruin in the last century?”
“Not hard. I can model it from history. Too many precedents.” The Artificial Human summoned a flood of archives from its database. “But you’re wrong about one thing.”
The woman arched a brow. “What’s that?”
“It wasn’t Earth that was destroyed. It was humanity.” The Artificial Human corrected her. “Humans hadn’t even drilled to the planet’s core before they wiped themselves out.”
Grandma’s Bridge pondered that, then nodded. “Fair point.”
“Anyway, this place looks deliberately buried, not bombed in war.” She surveyed the grand hall. The murals on the walls, painted with some chemical pigment, remained strikingly vivid. “Can you still access those circuit codes on the pillars?”
“Seems so.” The young man tried for access rights—and linked up almost immediately. The moment the pathways connected, the entire hall blazed with light. A click echoed from inside the Artificial Human.
Grandma’s Bridge heard it. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just a power overload.” The young man steadied himself. The data stream on his eyes paused, then resumed. He raised a hand, pointing at the Buddha statue in the main hall.
“It’s a supercomputer.”
Grandma’s Bridge wasn’t surprised. “Figured. They hid the core in such a massive shell for a reason. The question is, can you read what’s stored inside?”
“…Shouldn’t be a problem.” After a moment, the Artificial Human replied. “But it’ll take time.”
“How long?”
“Not sure. The outer firewall is weak. Reading select files should be quick, but cracking everything could take years.”
“No rush.” Grandma’s Bridge decided swiftly. “What’s on the outer layer?”
The Artificial Human paused. “You sure you want to access it? Feels like a trap.”
It visualized the data stream on a hovering screen before them. As it said, it was indeed a folder.
The title was brazen.
2180-2208: Orion War Records
Grandma’s Bridge blinked, then said, “Delete it. Shred it completely.”
The young man immediately dumped it into the secure recycler.
“Delete all video records of this from your storage too.” Grandma’s Bridge recited a code string—the Artificial Human’s highest override command, enforced automatically.
On an Earth where humanity was extinct, relics like this could only bring trouble. Her goal was to rebuild civilization, and the last war could too easily justify the next.
The young man was right about one thing: piecing together humanity’s extinction from historical patterns, extrapolating from the world she’d left a century ago, wasn’t difficult.
She didn’t need “facts” to validate her suspicions either. The spaceship held memory-parsing tech. She couldn’t view this file, couldn’t risk planting any potential spark.
The young man completed the enforced command, a flicker of rare blankness crossing its face. It looked up at her. “Need me to decrypt the main drive?”
“Back to the ship. I’ll code a safety filter.” Grandma’s Bridge said. “Crack whatever passes the filter first. The rest later.”
They spent another decade exploring the Temple Complex, unearthing many oddities. The most useful were scraps of 22nd-century tech remnants. Though the spaceship archived vast civilization data, the survey team’s clearance had been limited, omitting the era’s pinnacle innovations.
With that tech, plus another decade of searching, they finally found a suitable spot on Earth to rebuild civilization.
On the groundbreaking day, the forty-eight-year-old Grandma’s Bridge landed with the young man. They brought only three things: McDonald’s fried chicken, salty cola, and Marlboro cigarettes.
The young man had finally recreated the perfect formula. The cigarettes had come from Grandma’s Bridge rummaging through a teammate’s luggage. A century earlier, the spaceship’s recycling system had failed, putting the hibernation pods at risk as well. That teammate had died on the journey home.
