There was silence all around, not even the sound of insects chirping, and the sky was dark, with no stars or moon in sight. This is a truly "out of sight, out of mind" dark night.
In the darkness that could not be seen to the end, there was a little bit of light pulsating, and Zhao Yu's entire spirit was focused on this bit of light.
Zhao Yu was sitting down against one of the legs of the "Death Bringer" mechanical spider, and the light was mapped out from his hand, which was a miniature projector that was playing a simple image. Zhao Yu had already watched this image no less than a hundred times, but he never felt tired of it.
It was his most precious treasure.
"O son, don't worry about us, we're doing fine now." The image switched to the next scene, and a middle-aged man was appearing in the screen, "Your brother will be going to school soon as well, so there will be no problems."
The time shown in the upper right corner of the screen is August 10, 2026
The screen switches to May 9, 2032.
"Son, you've been hibernating for 10 years, I wonder if you're feeling okay?" This is the middle-aged woman whose hair is starting to turn gray, "We've come to see you a few times, and I don't know if you're cold ..."
The scene switches, June 8, 2043.
A young man smiles at him, "Brother, I've also graduated from college, and although I've never spoken to you, my parents and I visit you often. Don't worry, both of them are still in good health, and I hope to see the day you wake up."
The scene switched, September 7, 2049.
The smile on the youth's face disappeared, "Brother, mom passed away last week due to illness ... She was buried with a picture of you, and she misses you a lot."
The screen switched to January 4, 2051.
The old man who was already old struggled to smile, "Son, I may not be able to wait for you, I have to go find your mom ... I'll leave it to your brother from now on ... Don't worry about us, we've had a good life. "
The scene switches to November 19, 2057.
An unfamiliar middle-aged woman appeared with an expressionless face, "Mr. Zhao Yu, I regret to inform you that your brother Zhao Xi passed away the day before yesterday due to a car accident, and his family refused to continue to bear the cost of your cryopreservation. According to the agreement they signed, the matter of your cryopreservation will continue to be borne by this university's medical center, but this center reserves the right to conduct the necessary medical research on you. If you ever awaken in the future and have any questions about this agreement, please consult the appropriate authorities."
The scene switches to April 20, 2063.
Another unfamiliar middle-aged woman was equally expressionless: "Mr. Zhao Yu, according to the agreement between the United Nations and the Batmins civilization, your cryonic matter and related equipment will be handed over to the Batmins as part of the scientific and technological exchange ... Good luck."
The screen switches to October 15, 2154
A black officer nodded towards the camera, "Mr. Zhao Yu, welcome to the awakening, you have returned to the human world."
Zhao Yu sighed and switched the projector to the initial screen, it was a small group photo of a middle-aged couple holding a baby, surrounded by them in the middle was a hospital bed, the withered youth on the bed was trying to smile for the camera.
This was the only souvenir left for himself from that era - it was purely a miracle that even this souvenir had survived, during these hundred years or so, the Earth had suffered all sorts of unimaginable drastic changes, so much so that at one point, Zhao Yu wondered if he had woken up and traveled through the world, but in the end, he had to admit the reality.
The reality is, everything he is familiar with is gone, his friends and family are long gone, the relatives on the photos have also gone to the past, while he, who most likely passed away before them, miraculously woke up after more than a hundred years, and continues to survive in this world alone.
Zhao Yu turned off the projector and allowed himself to be immersed in the darkness. This was his habit, every time he watched these images he would take a while to get rid of this loss.
"What a mess." He grunted out of habit. There was only so much he could do to spit at this thing called fate.
Zhao Yu was born in the last few years of the 20th century, and although he didn't remember much about those years of his childhood, he was also a trans-millennial without a doubt. For the first twenty years of his life, Zhao Yu was no different from anyone else, growing up, going to school, falling in love early, becoming addicted to the internet, taking the college entrance exams, and attending college ... until his junior year, when fate dealt him a blow to the head.
"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis", commonly known as 'acromegaly', the cause of the disease is unknown, in the 21st century also makes the medical profession can not do anything about the terminal disease, the most famous patient called Stephen Hawking, everyone knows what he looks like. And this unreasonable terminal disease suddenly fell on Zhao Yu, making this 21-year-old youth lose all his power.
In the years that followed, his parents tried everything they could to cure him, and even gave birth to another child in spite of his advanced age in the hope that it would be useful for his treatment, but Zhao Yu still weakened day by day, his body gradually became unable to move, unable to express himself, and even unable to commit suicide, while the horrible thing was that he was always lucid, and despair loomed over his head every moment.
Finally in 2022, Zhao Yu's father's old classmate brought a not so good news: a university in the United States of America's medical school is researching the human body freezing technology, can be frozen, and then thawed when the future maturity of medical technology treatment, is currently recruiting volunteers - so in the company of his parents, Zhao Yu came to the United States, lying in a cold instrument, trying to lose consciousness in the He tried to remember the faces of his parents and brother before he lost consciousness.
He knew that if he slept, he wouldn't know when he would wake up, and he might not even wake up at all.
But he didn't expect to wake up to a completely different world than he expected.
"That old man of yours has been out there fuming for almost an hour." "A sergeant in the cockpit of the Deathlok was reminding on the screen, "Is he okay?"
The captain, Borg, took a leisurely drag on his cigarette, "It's fine, he does it all the time."
"But he's not wearing a mech combat suit, he's too conspicuous in the field, if a satellite or scout passes by it'll give him away immediately."
This time it was Hunter who interjected, "Sir, don't worry, it's the old man!"
The sergeant was silent for a few seconds before finally shrugging helplessly, "I hope he's as amazing as the legends say he is, or else he'll bring everyone down with him."
"I was more scared than you were at first, man." Borg laughed, "Don't worry, you'll soon realize how reassuring it is to be with the old man."
Zhao Yu suddenly raised his head to look at the sky.
The sky was still pitch black and lightless, perfectly blending in with the earth, and every time Zhao Yu was in this kind of utter darkness, he had the illusion that the entire world had left him.
"This is the fucking sky of the western United States, saying that the environment is beautiful and pollution-free, and that you can see the Milky Way every night?" Zhao Yu grunted, stood up straight, turned on the lighting equipped on his uniform, grabbed the handrail of the spider behind him, and then familiarly leaped up.
Of course he himself knew that this complaint was not useful at all, not to mention the romantic time of looking at the Milky Way and counting the stars, in this sky-rocketing 22nd century, even the United States no longer existed.
After waking up from the freezing, the medical school, which had been completely changed, arranged a ward for Zhao Yu, giving him time to digest what had happened in the past hundred years, and obviously had prepared for this kind of thing for a long time - and rightfully so, Zhao Yu was not the first "old century" person to wake up from the freezing. Zhao Yu was not the first person to awaken from the "old century", there were more than a hundred people who entered the freezing chamber with him with hopes for the future, and before him, about thirty people had already awakened.
Despite a little psychological preparation, Zhao Yu clicked on the file called "Historical Events" and almost sat on the floor in three seconds.
In the first forty years after Zhao Yu entered the freezing, the world was calm and quiet, as usual, several big countries continued to fight with each other, localized wars continued to occur, the environment continued to deteriorate, and the population continued to increase.... In a word, the earth was just like what it was like before Zhao Yu's hibernation, all the way to the lazy operation of the air, and with time, for example, after a thousand years, it might be able to succeed in the battle of the world. thousand years, it might have managed to turn into a great big dump.
However the future didn't go in that direction.
In the fourth year after the death of Zhao Yu's brother and the transfer of his family's cryopod to the university's medical school, aliens calling themselves "Batmins" arrived on Earth and openly made contact with Earth's civilization. From the very beginning, the Batmings made it clear that they came on behalf of the largest civilization in the Milky Way, hoping to help the Earth's civilization reach the appropriate heights to join the civilization, and to this end, they were willing to provide all kinds of technology to the people of Earth, at the price of which they hoped that the people of Earth would commit themselves to joining the civilization and abiding by the rules of the civilization.
Of course, the size of the earth's countries in a moment of chaos into a pot of porridge, around the aliens in the end can not be trusted, how to communicate with aliens, who to communicate with aliens, how to share the fruits of the exchange of bad things such as two years long, during the period and even broke out a number of small-scale wars, and finally or the United Nations P5 to take up the first time in the history of mankind and extraterrestrial civilizations to deal with the heavy responsibility! --They were the only ones who could do it, and any other country that dared to do it for them would be taught to be a human being in a minute, as proven by some unsuspecting countries.
In 2063 A.D., Earth and the Batmings reached a cooperation agreement, and everyone cheered, cheering the dawn of a new era.
Three years later war broke out against the Batmins, the first interstellar war.
To Batmings launched an attack on the ship there are more than thirty countries, mainly in the Middle East and South America, God knows what these countries are thinking, perhaps it is red that a few big countries monopolize the extraterrestrial science and technology, or perhaps it is that the Batmings have always maintained a friendly attitude, or perhaps it is simply the combat strength of only 5 dregs, not as good as to rob a hand to get a pain in the ass, in short, the war suddenly broke out in this way.
At the beginning of the war, the Batmans still maintained restraint, allowing the Earthlings to bombard their own bases every day, only to constantly protest, hoping that the United Nations can stop this "unfriendly behavior", but the United Nations has shown the same inefficiency and incompetence (Zhao Yu guessed that a few big countries may want to take this opportunity to explore the bottom of the aliens), and finally simply play the fool, and the aliens are not the same as the United Nations. However, the United Nations was as ineffective and incompetent as ever (Zhao Yu guessed that several big countries might also want to use this opportunity to find out the bottom of the aliens), and in the end, they simply played a trick and declared that they had no power to command the military actions of these countries, hoping that their alien friends could understand.
The Batmins finally simply asked, "So can we handle this on our own?"
The UN replied with great alacrity, "Without endangering Earth's civilization as a whole, be my guest."
Two hours later, the Batmins politely sent another ultimatum to the nations that were bombarding themselves indiscriminately, "Please cease unfriendly hostilities and withdraw your troops within one hour, or suffer the consequences."
Hell if anyone gave a shit.
One hour and five minutes after the ultimatum was sent, a ship slowly rose from the Batmins' base, and then - and then God knows what happened. Despite the fact that almost every country on Earth was watching the area with satellites or some other kind of monitoring equipment, and a number of countries had secretly slipped spies into their besieging armies, no one knew what had happened.
In what way did the Batmings actually do it, no one saw. All of the surveillance equipment was scrapped in an instant, and those armies that were besieging the base ... no longer had any armies left.
From the last images, that alien ship seemed to have emitted some kind of flash, and in only ten seconds, hundreds of airplanes, thousands of armored vehicles, tanks, and what military heavy equipment like rocket launchers and missile launchers were all turned into unreadable scrap metal. And they are finished together with a total of more than 700,000 people in the army, the people who arrived later could not even see the corpses, the scene is only a piece of continuous black stains, in the farther away from the Batminsky land - probably a few hundred kilometers away from the barracks, can be found in a relatively more like a corpse of the object, according to the results of the detection of these poor guys in the seconds were turned into charcoal by the heat of thousands of degrees.
However, what is even more frightening to the earthlings is that within the range of this massive strike of very short duration, there were several other towns of civilians, which were met with ... not even a single dog dead.
That is to say, the aliens in the large-scale strikes covering an area of tens of thousands of square kilometers, precisely avoided all civilians, only all the military personnel along with their weapons a write-off, in the face of this kind of earth's science and technology can not be expected to the height of the world, all the people of the world together dumbfounded, and then trembling.
The Batmings, a civilization from a thousand light years away, in this interstellar war - which the Batmings themselves probably don't think of as a war, but just a "small punishment" - for the first time, really showed their strength. The Earthlings can only admit that the Batmings do not regard the Earth civilization as a rival or an object to be guarded against, and their attitude towards the Earthlings is just like keeping a pet.
And the only thing a pet has to do is be obedient.
Two months later, the United Nations obediently presented a full of sincerity, according to the tabloid comment is "have taken off their pants to lie in bed, their own hands spread their legs, warmly welcome aliens to enter," the cooperation treaty, declaring the official start of cooperation with the Batmans civilization.
But in the eyes of the people of this era, the ancestors had just made their first real mistake.