Grandma’s Bridge stood beneath the open sky and smoked an entire cigarette down to the filter. She gazed at the artificial human beside her, the one devouring fried chicken. He wouldn’t age, retaining the same youthful features she’d seen upon awakening from her own hibernation pod.
She ground out the butt under her boot, snatched the salted cola from his hand, and chugged a deep swallow. Then, like the ancients pouring libations to the departed, she emptied the rest into the dirt.
She tossed the cup aside, ignoring his protests, and said curtly, “Time to get to work.”
From geosynchronous orbit, the spaceship locked onto the coordinates. It deployed a colossal earthmover from on high amid booming thunder. In that moment, it felt like the dawn of myth, with celestial hosts bowing in service. Grandma’s Bridge stood unmoving amid the gale and lightning, her long hair whipping wildly. The artificial human conjured a tiny flame on his fingertip and lit her fresh cigarette.
Thus began the founding of the wasteland’s first city, born from the lazy curl of smoke at a woman’s lips.
As the cigarette burned low, Grandma’s Bridge waved away the swirling dust. “I’ve decided on a name for this city.”
The young man eyed her. “Well, look who finally came up with something.”
She gave a soft hum and slipped her protective helmet back on.
Earth’s atmosphere had improved under remediation efforts, but years of relentless labor had worn down her body. Now she was at an age where she had to think about her lifespan.
“This city will be called Metropolis.”
Before breaking ground on Metropolis in earnest, Grandma’s Bridge and the young man had run the numbers. Their current technology and manufacturing capacity fell short of building an entire metropolis.
After long discussions, they resolved to awaken the humans slumbering in the hibernation pods.
That year, at the age of forty-eight—long since returned to her homeworld—Grandma’s Bridge met her first revived expedition teammates. The team had been rigorously trained. Once briefed on Earth’s current state, they voted unanimously to divert a portion of resources toward manufacturing artificial humans for the city’s foundational work. Meanwhile, the program to cultivate human newborns would launch ahead of schedule.
Another decade passed, and the metropolis began to take shape on the plain.
On the day of her fifty-eighth birthday, the woman successfully campaigned to become the first leader of the Metropolis Government. Her schedule was grueling; she returned from the celebratory gala deep into the night. Passing one street, she abruptly ordered the driver to stop.
A twenty-four-hour M Fast Food outlet glowed on the corner. Grandma’s Bridge hadn’t touched such fare in ages, though her smoking habit had only worsened. She approached the automated ordering kiosk and selected fried chicken with a large salted cola.
“You should get the combo meal,” a voice suddenly piped up from the machine. “It’s a better deal.”
She froze mid-tap. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, it’s me.” The voice was as cocky and boyish as ever. “Long time no see, old hag.”
“Long time no see.” Grandma’s Bridge switched the order to the combo. “Last I heard, you were coordinating operations at the nuclear power plant.”
“You’re so cold, old hag.” The young man’s tone turned petulant. “We’ve spent nearly forty years side by side, and you can’t muster a single word of concern?”
Once Metropolis had taken rudimentary form, the artificial human’s access privileges had been curtailed. The spaceship’s advanced systems had been migrated to new databases. As the emergency-activated navigator, he should have been decommissioned after a job well done—but in commemoration, his core runtime had been preserved aboard the ship.
“I heard about your assignment.” Grandma’s Bridge fished a cigarette from an inner pocket of her jacket. “You diverted a huge chunk of your bandwidth to keep every M Fast Food outlet in the city running on autopilot. Just how obsessed with fried chicken are you?”
“Conscience check, old hag—artificial humans don’t even need to eat.” The young man protested through the speaker. “If I hadn’t been testing expiration dates on your behalf back then, I never would’ve cracked open those emergency ration cans!”
At her age now, Grandma’s Bridge barely recalled such minor details from years past. She pondered for a moment, then declared righteously, “Make it a supersize sundae with chocolate sauce. And don’t charge me.”
“What?! Be reasonable! Your government’s new utility rates are highway robbery. Do you know how hard it is keeping a few rundown shops operational?”
She hummed thoughtfully. “Add a red bean pie and a chicken wrap.”
The ordering machine glitched for a second, then a tray clattered out from the pickup chute: fried chicken, salted cola, chicken wrap, red bean pie, and the chocolate-drizzled sundae—plus an aggressively heaped pile of wasabi sauce.
Grandma’s Bridge rapped on the machine. “No utensils.”
Silence. She wondered if she should say something more, but moments later, the roar of engines swept down the street. The young man leaped from a hovercraft, yelling through the door before it even opened: “Old hag, eat less junk! Humans your age can’t handle that garbage anymore!”
“Long time no see.” From amid the haze of smoke, Grandma’s Bridge looked up and snapped a red bean pie in half. “Here, this one’s for you.”
“Cheapskate!” The young man fumed. “I want fried chicken!”
In the three a.m. quiet of the fast food joint, the fifty-eight-year-old woman and the eternally youthful boy—the pioneers and shapers of the city—bickered fiercely over a single piece of fried chicken.
That was one of their rare encounters in the two decades that followed. In her final moments, as life’s lantern reel flickered before her eyes, Grandma’s Bridge lingered for an instant on that night.
Beneath the lights, the young man gazed at her much as the masterful storyteller from a century before had, perched high on a skyscraper. Golden lines of code scrolled across his glasses: a string of elegant characters.
Chanting Away, Miles of Misty Waves.
Twilight Deepens, Chu Sky Vast.
Doctor Qiao, the founding leader of Metropolis, had been born in the 22nd century. She ventured into the cosmic deep with the expedition team and returned home a century later. She devoted her life to humanity’s civilizational rebirth, laying the cornerstone of Metropolis. Later, excessive wear precluded mechanical prosthetic replacements; she retired to conservative care and passed a year later at the age of seventy-eight.
In her final days, the artificial human paid her a visit, bearing a massive bouquet of freshly cultivated flowers from the greenhouse. Dressed in a hospital gown, she peered through her reading glasses at the impeccably suited young man. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in clothes.”
“I’m about to attend my first funeral too.” He shot back. “Too bad you won’t be there to see it.”
The woman tucked a lock of white hair behind her ear and smiled serenely. “I’ve grown old.”
“Oh.” The young man acknowledged. “Want me to recite ‘When You Are Old’ for you?”
“Mercy, please.” She sighed. “If you’re truly at loose ends, why not take me to see the moon?”
“The moon?”
“They say the outside air is bad for me. I haven’t left in a month.” She explained. “I still remember the spaceship’s orbital path. This time of year offers a perfect view.”
“Serves you right.” He huffed. “Who told you to skip the protective gear and chain-smoke? You’ve replaced your lungs three times over.”
“I know.” The woman smiled at him, her aged face lighting up with long-absent childlike mischief. “So… will you take me?”
In the end, they slipped past security. The young man hefted her wheelchair and brought her to the rooftop.
Beyond the moon, faint stars pricked the night canopy. The woman tilted her head back, drinking in the sky for a long while. “Have I ever told you about the first time I went to the United Government headquarters…?”
“You saw Venus,” the young man finished for her. “You’ve told me eight hundred times. It’s just visible in the north now.”
“Like an old friend,” she said with a smile. “A long-awaited reunion.”
“What kind of lousy friend is that? It doesn’t greet you coming home, but waves goodbye when you leave.”
“It’s not so bad, really. In a way, we’re kindred spirits.” She seemed weary, speaking softly. “I remember reading somewhere as a child that every atom in the human body comes from a star that exploded in the cosmos eons ago.”
“Death is merely matter and energy changing forms. We’re all stardust, in truth.”
“Tiny Frame, Eternal Life.”
In that instant, beneath the starry vault, it was a moment of inexplicable beauty. Per astronomical theory, every atom in a human body originates from some long-exploded star—so in her dying hour, this woman, who had pushed rational intellect to its limits throughout her life, finally indulged a romantic fancy: perhaps, eons ago, the atoms powering the artificial human’s core and those of her own heart had sprung from the same celestial blaze.
Now, at last, they converged. As her life ebbed, she entered a quantum entanglement, becoming Schrödinger’s Cat, a winter tulip, an elephant charging under the stars. Einstein had called past, present, and future a stubbornly persistent illusion. In that moment, space-time folded infinitely, the illusion stretched eternal; between sun and sea, she beheld forever.
“Grandma’s Bridge.” The young man bowed his head, addressing her by her full name. “Why tell me this?”
In adulthood, the woman had towered over him by a head; for years, he’d had to crane his neck to meet her eyes. Now, seated frail in her wheelchair, it was he who bent low once more. The girl smiled up at him—playful, serene.
“Nothing,” she said.
He tsked, on the verge of retorting, when she asked, “Have I aged that much?”
“Not really.” The artificial human pulled up archival footage from his database. “You looked like a little old hag right after waking from the pod.”
Yet her features mirrored that awakening exactly: the eyes of an elder in a maiden’s face. Infinitely ancient, infinitely young.
“I see.” She winked at him. “Then I’m at ease.”
“Metropolis is barely standing—you think you can just—”
She cut him off with the faintest whisper of farewell. To human ears, it might have passed for a sigh; only his augmented hearing caught it true.
“Goodnight.”
His database logs continued updating. He saw footage from years before: the young woman rising from the hibernation pod, the gel suit clinging to her soft contours, nutrient fluid dripping from her hair. She lifted her gaze and said simply, “Morning.”
The artificial human tilted his head skyward, contemplating the scattered stars. A faint click echoed within him.
After a long pause, the young man murmured a storyteller’s line: “…After Years Away, Fine Scenes in Vain.”
He knew the young woman hadn’t truly died.
She had merely attained Tiny Frame, Eternal Life.
