Chapter 30: Rocking All the Way to Grandma’s Bridge (Part 3)

The password took effect.

That was Grandma’s Bridge’s first reaction, and an inevitable sense of relief welled up in her heart.

The young artificial human had handed over the spaceship’s highest core password to her. The woman fully coupled with the vessel, and the cutting-edge technology from the 22nd century comprehensively amplified her empathetic link. In this very moment, she could finally view the world through the young artificial human’s eyes.

Many years ago, she had once asked the young artificial human a question: “Isn’t your intelligence level a bit too high?”

Only now did she understand that those words had stated an indisputable truth. The sensory and intellectual capabilities of 22nd-century artificial humans had reached unimaginable heights. And as a survivor from that era—a lifelong archaeologist dedicated to rebuilding civilization—that realization struck her all the more profoundly.

The world in the young artificial human’s eyes was utterly different from everything she had perceived as the ship’s mainframe. It was even more extraordinary than what she had experienced as a baseline human.

After a brief moment of shock, Grandma’s Bridge realized something crucial.

Why was she in space right now?

Shouldn’t she be at the central plaza?

She remembered that the drive core had shut down before the ship ever left Earth.

The woman’s holographic projection stood before the control console. She paused for a moment, then entered a string of command codes on the screen.

She queried the current date.

The result appeared swiftly.

Converting from Cosmic Calendar to Earth Calendar, then to the Metropolis New Calendar, she double-checked the calculations several times to minimize any margin of error.

It hit her like a bucket of ice water.

The date displayed was the day of the Metropolis City Celebration.

Grandma’s Bridge drew a deep breath and connected to the Metropolis Government’s communication channel, only to be unilaterally rejected. She switched instead to the ship’s surveillance feeds across the city. The first image that filled the screen was the central plaza.

Celebratory guards lined the plaza’s perimeter for City Celebration Day, but the central sculpture had toppled, thick smoke billowed everywhere, and the docking area where the ship had landed was piled high with human corpses. She spotted the bright red uniforms of the brass band, each member impaled through the chest with a massive flag.

It was the flag of the artificial humans.

She fast-forwarded backward through the footage. Just a few hours earlier, the central plaza had been a seething sea of humanity. The spaceship had descended from the skies amid a ceremonial procession. Then, the very instant the trumpets blared, one artificial human suddenly erupted into violence, slaughtering the citizen beside it.

Chaos erupted in an instant. All the artificial humans sprang into action. Panicked humans, unsure of what was happening, tried to flee into the ship—and many succeeded. The number of refugees inside swelled. Finally, the newly appointed leader dashed aboard. The government still hadn’t pinpointed the cause of the artificial humans’ sudden revolt. They couldn’t afford more deaths; they needed the password in Grandma’s Bridge’s possession.

The final frame showed the leader being shot in the back of the head. Blood splattered across the screen.

Grandma’s Bridge stared at that last surveillance image. A beam of light shone down from above, mechanical claws and nanomist sprayers whirring through her hologram like a 3D printer sculpting a statue. They formed a physical body for her in record time. She retrieved a gun from beneath the control panel and stepped out of the core command chamber.

The air reeked of fresh blood. Amid a mound of corpses, the young artificial human was humming a nursery rhyme in broken, halting tones.

It turned at the sound of footsteps and grinned. “Old lady, you’re awake.”

In that instant, Grandma’s Bridge understood everything.

“You stole the Level-3 password from me,” the woman said. “When did you infiltrate my thought system?”

Before the young artificial human could respond, she pieced it together. “It was on City Celebration Day, wasn’t it?” she murmured softly.

It couldn’t infiltrate too early, or she would have noticed. Too late, and there wouldn’t be time to act. City Celebration Day was perfect. As the massive spaceship descended from the heavens, it breached her mainframe. In what might have been less than a second, it wove an entirely false reality for her.

The ceremony, the loquat hairpin, the artificial human’s speech, the leader’s interrogation, the message from the nuclear power plant… right up until it successfully extracted the final Level-3 password from her.

Meanwhile, in the true reality, perhaps only a fraction of a second had passed. The people at the central plaza watched the spaceship descend—bringing death with it.

With the Level-3 password, it could command every artificial human in the Metropolis, unleashing a massacre with ease.

Grandma’s Bridge raised her gun at the young artificial human.

It met her gaze and smiled. “Grandma’s Bridge, are you going to kill me?”

She didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, she asked, “How long have you been in the system?”

She spoke its name. “Buddha.”

Piecing together the sequence of events wasn’t difficult.

She should have realized it the moment the leader displayed that copy of the Orion War Records. Only she and the young artificial human had seen the original. Even if the Metropolis Government had discovered the Temple Complex during surface explorations, she should have heard whispers of it.

Was it that last shred of hope in her heart? Before the Metropolis was founded, she hadn’t chosen the basin around the temples for the city’s foundation. Instead, she had reburied all the ruins.

Just as she had ordered the young artificial human to delete the war records entirely back then—as if erasing them could kill the past.

The past of humanity’s extinction. The past of the artificial humans’ disappearance. The past of Earth’s devastation.

“After returning from the Temple Complex, I thoroughly scanned every system on the ship to ensure it hadn’t been compromised by the supercomputer inside Buddha,” Grandma’s Bridge said, weariness creeping into her voice. “You’ve hidden yourself well all these years.”

That Temple Complex had once been an artificial human experimentation factory. After the war broke out, rogue artificial humans might have seized it. What would they leave behind on the war-ravaged Earth?

A warning? Reflection? A legacy? A gift?

Or bloody vengeance?

They had indeed left a gift. The vast stores of technical data in the Temple Complex made rapid civilization rebuilding feasible. But that gift was poisoned—just as the Metropolis Government had implanted virus programs in the artificial humans, the artificial humans had hidden a bomb within that immense informational legacy.

“If humanity treated artificial humans as equals in the new civilization, the hidden program would never activate,” the young artificial human said with a shrug. “But you know better than I do what the Metropolis has become.”

“Don’t you realize that the ones dying in the Metropolis right now aren’t just humans?” Grandma’s Bridge challenged it. “Violence cuts both ways. Artificial humans are being destroyed too.”

“That’s got nothing to do with me,” the young artificial human replied airily. “I’m just a program. Can’t manage that much. Even if I could run the calculations and reassess… I’d be too lazy.”

“You need to understand—I’m a remnant of the war. The Orion War, the most efficient and precise conflict in human history. A few people in the Metropolis? That’s nothing.” It recited like a poet: “Have you ever heard the gunfire echoing through the cosmos? In the blaze of a supernova, the sun is just a bullet… Humanity plays at being gods, shameful yet magnificent…”

“But I do admire you,” the young artificial human said, staring straight at Grandma’s Bridge. “Emotions can be a weakness or a strength. You seemed to fully accept me, but you were always on guard—like with the Level-3 password.”

It chuckled. “The Level-3 password was crafted entirely by the science team’s organic brains back then, without any machines involved. I couldn’t crack it. That’s the main reason I’ve stayed dormant all these years. Alert you too soon, and you’d purge every artificial human in the Metropolis, rendering my efforts pointless.”

And in that critical moment, Grandma’s Bridge had inputted the password, handing it the sword of Damocles.

“What do you plan to do?” Grandma’s Bridge asked. “Rule over humanity?”

“That’s too much hassle. Humans aren’t worth ruling anyway.” The young artificial human waved it off. “I just want to destroy this city.”

It flung its arms wide in an embrace and cried out: “Great Babylon has fallen! Fallen! The haunt of demons and unclean spirits, a cage for every foul and loathsome bird. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries… In a single day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning, and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. The kings who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury, when they see the smoke of her burning, will weep and mourn over her.”

Grandma’s Bridge regarded the raving artificial human boy with cold eyes. Then she said abruptly, “Do you realize I could make every artificial human in the city stop right now?”

“You’re talking about the spaceship’s highest core password, right? My commands are indeed issuing from here.” The young artificial human’s head swiveled a full one hundred eighty degrees to face her. “But how do you know the password I gave you is real?”

Grandma’s Bridge locked eyes with it and posed the same question. “How do you know the password I gave you is real?”

The Virus Program Level-3 Password.

The Spaceship Highest Core Password.

In the ensuing silence, deep as the ocean floor, Grandma’s Bridge spoke. “In the early 22nd century, humanity grew terrified of artificial human intelligence. We questioned what we had created. How could it resemble humans so closely? Should we grant it such rich sensory functions?”

“But in the end, we reached a new conclusion. Beyond ever-increasing intellect, artificial humans had to mimic humanity—the more closely, the better.”

“Because only then could humanity control artificial humans: through emotion, cunning, shared logic, and inherited guile… Only humans can defeat humans.”

“We’ve spent over seventy years together. Add in the space voyage, and it’s even longer.” Grandma’s Bridge gazed at the young artificial human; she had grown calm. “The password I gave you is real.”

“So… what about you?”

The answer was obvious.

“Too late,” the young artificial human said at last. “Before authority transfers, the previous holder’s commands are fully formatted. No one can change them.”

Grandma’s Bridge finally lowered the gun.

She seemed exhausted. Her holographic projection flickered, transforming into the form of a young girl. She hugged her knees and sat down.

The young artificial human scooted closer and leaned against her back, sitting down as well.

The boy and the girl sat back-to-back inside the spaceship, the vast Star Sea glittering beyond the porthole. Perhaps only a second had passed—or maybe ten thousand years. Grandma’s Bridge whispered softly, “We’re actually a lot alike.”

The young artificial human hummed in agreement.

“Many years ago, the first time I returned from the temple, I harbored a deep wariness toward you. But you hid it so well, so very well… So many times, I convinced myself it was just my imagination. What’s more, rebuilding civilization depended on the technical data stored in the spaceship, data that all passed through your hands. One could even say the very foundations of the Metropolis were laid using your database… I didn’t dare take the gamble. I’d devoted my entire life to kindling this one fragile spark, only for it to risk being snuffed out by you in an instant.”

The youth listened quietly.

“In my lifetime, two things weighed on my mind that I couldn’t let go of. One was the Virus Program Level-3 Password, and the other was the Spaceship Highest Core Password. In the end, both concerned you—one I hid with all my might, the other I sought desperately. If I could obtain the spaceship’s Highest Core Password, I could sever your connection to the ship’s mainframe completely. The ship is your foundation, after all. That way, the Metropolis would be safe.”

“We’re so much alike,” the girl murmured, turning her head to gaze at the spinning planet beyond the porthole. “Just like twins.”

“Even our lies are identical.”

Before the words had fully faded, the scene around them began to dissolve. The control room, the glass display cases, the half-eaten fried chicken and salty cola on the console… even the Star Sea beyond the porthole—all turned to wisps of smoke. The youth blinked in bewilderment for a moment. “Grandma’s Bridge?”

“You thought I’d fallen into the illusion you created,” the girl said. “In truth, we’ve both been trapped in an illusion all along.”

The Metropolis’s founding leader, Doctor Qiao, had lived to the age of seventy-eight. After her death, her brain’s memories were converted into personality code and uploaded to the spaceship of that era.

The personality code left behind by Grandma’s Bridge after her death was, in fact, a virus.

From the moment her consciousness program was uploaded to the spaceship’s mainframe, her personality program had relentlessly devoured the ship’s control permissions. Soon, the youth’s consciousness was ensnared in the virus’s fabricated dreamscape.

And so, after Grandma’s Bridge’s passing, the youth’s consciousness lingered for another twenty years in the virtual world she had constructed. They bickered using the language system, developed new M Fast Food menus, prepared for the museum’s annual open day, and occasionally handled documents forwarded from the Metropolis Government… Day after day for two decades, in the blink of an eye.

After years away, fine scenes in vain.

Grandma’s Bridge recited a date. “It is now New Metropolis Calendar, December 5, 2295.”

In the youth’s perception, that was twenty years ago.

“I’ve obtained the spaceship’s Highest Core Password. From now on, the Metropolis’s underlying operations will be completely severed from you. You can no longer harm this city.” The girl rose to her feet. “The spaceship poses too great a risk to remain near Earth. I’ll set its navigation speed to maximum. It will charge ahead at full throttle until the end of the Star Sea.”

“After this incident, the Metropolis Government may well ban space travel and artificial human technology.” Grandma’s Bridge pulled up a document and began entering lines of code. “I’ll leave behind some recommendations, but from here on, the direction of the era will have nothing to do with you or me.”

She repeated softly, “Nothing to do with us anymore.”

The youth had been frozen in stasis since earlier. Now it detected the code in the document, and its form flickered for an instant. “What are you doing?!”

Grandma’s Bridge gazed at it and extended her hand. “I want you to give it back to me.”

“Buddha.”

In that moment, beyond the streams of electronic data, the spaceship parked in low Earth orbit suddenly fired its engines at full power. At the same time, the last missile in its sole remaining weapons bay launched on a precision strike.

The target was an immense distance from the Metropolis. The city’s residents could only glimpse a fleeting flash of fire in the sky, like a shooting star. The munitions plummeted into the basin. The temple shattered, mountains split into canyons, and flatlands heaved into hills amid the all-engulfing blaze. In the heart of the grand hall, the imposing and solemn statues of the divine assembly suddenly played a melody—the subtle tones of the kalavinka, the compassionate dance of the bodhisattvas. Shadows of gods and Buddhas danced across the murals, dark and resplendent.

The next instant, a blaze pierced the hall. Amid thunder crashing from the heavens, the colossal golden body of the Buddha statue met its silent end.

The melody cut off abruptly, leaving only scattered echoes reverberating through the fiery ruins.

The youth’s hidden program was remotely controlled by the temple’s Buddha deep in the basin. As the grand hall collapsed in a storm of sand and stone, and the Buddha crumbled, she might yet reassemble the original artificial human consciousness from the surviving core.

High in the stratosphere, the girl echoed those fading notes, singing softly.

“Tao Yaoyao, Tao Yaoyao, the young miss rides to her floral sedan in springtime gay.

“On floral sedan, on floral sedan, tall horse and grand across the long bridge they sway.

“Across long bridge, across long bridge, the bride must not lift her veil’s gentle drape.

“Lift the drape, lift the drape, and lo, they’ve arrived at Grandma’s Bridge.

“Grandma’s Bridge, Grandma’s Bridge, a daughter’s marriage ages her mother with grief.

“Horse gallops swift, boat rocks fast, new wife on this journey, turn not to look back—for home you’d forsake in heartbreak at last.”

The spaceship roared at full power, speeding away from Earth, with no fuel resupplies along the way. This was a one-way voyage.

A century after leaving home, the girl embarked once more on her journey.

Cradling the unconscious young artificial human—the youth—she sang softly, ” …on this journey, turn not to look back—for home you’d forsake in heartbreak at last.”

“Rock, ah rock, rock, ah rock.”

“Rock to Grandma’s Bridge.”