Doomsday Wonderland

Panda Novel

Two weeks had passed since they returned to Exodus. Unexpectedly, the days were peaceful even though there was a warrant charged upon her.

The days in Exodus were so leisurely and comfortable that it gave Lin Sanjiu the impression that the doomsday had already ended. She had even formed a routine. Every morning after taking breakfast with Woyu and Yu Yuan, she would go to the cell and allow Lollipop to check-in through [Cornetto, Freeze The Fun Time]. After that, she would make the rounds in Exodus. Then, late in the afternoon, she would bathe herself and nap until the day turned dark. At night, she would depart to Black’s Market to check-in.

She spent most of her time shuttling between Exodus and the checkpoint. The silver lining was that since she and the pilot had become close friends, he promised her that he would come to fetch her every midnight. Thanks to him, she remained unnoticed by her pursuers.

She bought herself two male variants [masks] and took turns wearing them to Black’s Market and Mokugyo Encyclopedic Form. She left dozens of messages for Silvan, but they all sank into oblivion; the same went for the messages she sent to look out for her friends. Truth to be told, she wasn’t worried about Silvan at all. She was very confident he was fine right now and that he was probably very busy dealing with the queen.

“We have five kinds of dishes this morning,” said Silas softly, pulling Lin Sanjiu back from her thoughts. “Which one would you like for breakfast, administrator?”

Lin Sanjiu pondered for a moment and then tapped several times on the holographic screen. When plates of fruit and scrambled egg, and a cup of coffee rose from the table, she asked, “There’s something that has been bothering me for quite a bit, Silas. Why do you call me an administrator?”

“Because you are the administrator of Exodus,” Silas replied plainly. Lin Sanjiu looked slightly stumped, as she had not expected such a simple answer from Silas.

She took the coffee from the table and took a sip. Through the thin wisp of smoke, she saw Yu Yuan looking at the ceiling.

The meal they were eating for the past two weeks came from the stack of food supplies the grand prize prepared for Lin Sanjiu. She had stored half of it into Exodus’s pantry area. After she picked up a piece of cantaloupe with a fork, she turned to look at Woyu, who was wolfing down a plate of eggs and grilled chicken, his cheeks swollen into puffy red balls of contentment.

If B. Rabbit and the others were here, Lin Sanjiu was certain that they would love Exodus very much.

“When you go to check-in today,” Woyu said, his words garbled amid the food in his mouth. “Would bou do me a fabor?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I mean, can you help me with something?” Woyu swallowed the egg and continued. “My committee, well, my ex-committee, has a point of contact near Black’s Market. It is located at the central station, have you heard of it before? I will give you the keys. Can you help me retrieve something from there?”

His eyes shadowed with grief as he put down his knife and fork on the table. “Now that the committee is gone… I want to take something back from the base as a memento.”

It was only now that Lin Sanjiu remembered she still had a [Central Station Storage Box Purchase Voucher #1210]. She figured that it was time for her to go and see what was in the box. She nodded at Woyu, and then turned to Yu Yuan. “How about you? Do you need me to fetch you anything?”

Yu Yuan did not give any response. His brows were locked together as he scooped a spoonful of porridge into his mouth.

Lin Sanjiu found that the young man had been acting strangely ever since he entered Exodus. His mind was somewhat unhinged, and creases would appear between his eyebrows whenever he was lost in thought. There were times where he was so immersed in his own world that he didn’t respond to her calls instantly. It was only when Silas spoke out that he would momentarily snap back to reality. And then he would start to look around, as if he was searching for Silas’s voice.

“Yu Yuan?” Lin Sanjiu tried to call again.

This time, Yu Yuan finally emerged from his reverie. The furrowed expression left his face as he replied to Lin Sanjiu with a smile, “Ah, I am sorry, what was that?”

“Do you need me to fetch you anything from Black’s Market?” Lin Sanjiu repeated.

“Oh no, it’s okay. I am good. Just be careful.”

Lin Sanjiu had no idea why but even after she’d checked-in, the image of Yu Yuan’s expression still lingered in her mind.

Lin Sanjiu was confident that Yu Yuan was hiding something from her. However, she wasn’t going to ask about it until he was ready to tell her everything.

Putting the thought away, Lin Sanjiu began to search for the central station from the map.

Unlike what Woyu told her, the central station was actually pretty far from Black’s Market. There were very few buses at night, and Lin Sanjiu had to wait for three hours before a bus finally arrived.

It was a bad-tempered vehicle, much to Lin Sanjiu’s surprise. When the bus saw her from afar, its headlights shone up brightly as a deep and long sigh wafted out of the engine. “It’s 2:00 am, don’t you have better things to do than taking a bus? Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

The interior of the bus was dark, and there were few passengers and no driver on the bus. Throughout the entire journey, they had to listen to the bus complaining about how tough it was to drive at night, how stingy its organization was, and how painful its back was so it could not travel on a bumpy road. When it drove into the central station, only then did Lin Sanjiu see why a vehicle like this bus could talk. With the help of the light from the central station, Lin Sanjiu saw a line that read “humanized and personifiable public transport” pasted in front of the bus. Below the line, there was a dial that pointed at the “negative and grumpy” personality.

Similar to many buildings in Heaven Underworld, the central station was built after the doomsday. It agglomerated the creativity of posthumans from all different worlds. The area was filled with so much light, it was bright as day. Above her head, the sky was covered by a network of orbits, stretching from one horizon to another. On the ground, all the public transportations lined up on both sides of the central station according to their own categories, each one looking less like a bus than the last.

Right now, Lin Sanjiu was standing in front of a huge station map. She raised her head and stared at it meticulously. After a long while, she finally made out a small line of words that read “point of contact and locker” amongst the cluster of lines, diagrams, and dots. She had to put her finger on the words and then look for her current location because the map was too big and too complicated. She would instantly lose herself on the map once she took her eyes off the map.

Truth to be told, the map was even more—

Before the thought could even take form in her mind, she heard a chuckle from behind. She turned around and saw a tanned boy laughing at her. He rode on a skateboard and nodded with his chin towards the map. With a grin plastered on his face, he then said in a polite manner, “Ma’am, there is no way you can find the locker service if you look at this map.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“This map is wrong. A posthuman made this map out of fun and put it here to confuse those who aren’t familiar with the area,” the boy said as he kicked the ground. The skateboard glided forward, and he waved to Lin Sanjiu. “All of us from the Twelve Worlds know about it. By the way, the place you are looking for is behind the train cemetery.”

The boy was right. Even though the central station was huge, its layout was simple and straightforward. It took Lin Sanjiu only five minutes to find the train cemetery.

She had been guessing what a train cemetery could possibly be, but she never expected it to be a location where “ghost trains” resided. Any inoperable trains would be moved to this area so that their “soul” could be extracted through an unknown means. And then those “dead” trains that had been gifted with a second life would continue their mission as public transport to fetch passengers in their translucent bodies into the night sky.

Lin Sanjiu looked slack-jaw as a ghost train started up. Not far away from her, a young passenger hopped into the ghost train. He looked like he had been eaten by a translucent amber-colored worm. Very soon, the ghost train let out a huff and went away.

“I am surprised,” a muffled voice rang out from behind her. For a second, she thought somebody was talking to her, but she soon realized that was not the case.

Even though the person was very far from her, she could hear his voice very well. She met him twice, and he had even talked to her several times in the past. He was none other than Mophead, the man who sold her the checkpoint booklet.

Although the central station was very far from the Lost Dog’s Pod Hotel, Lin Sanjiu did not find it strange that Mophead would come here, judging from his nature of work. Mophead was talking to two other men. The three of them were standing inside the shadow of the corridor. She walked closer and realized that her destination, the point of contact and locker service, was behind them.

A man wearing a cap glanced at her, drawing the gazes of Mophead and the other person. Fortunately, she was wearing the [Mask], so Mophead could not recognize her. All of them had turned silent. One of them lit up a cigarette. They looked as if they wouldn’t continue their conversation before Lin Sanjiu walked away.

After a short bout of rumination, Lin Sanjiu crouched down and fumbled with her shoelaces. When the three of them were not looking at her, she slipped her [Dairy Card] underneath the stone. Then, she rose to her feet.

To make herself less suspicious, she hopped onto the next ghost train.

Lin Sanjiu felt intrigued, partly because this was the first time she rode on a ghost train and partly because it also made her feel like she was sitting inside a huge length of jelly, as her feet couldn’t touch the ground even though she could see it. After she alighted from the train, she doubled back via the track. The next station was so far from the central station that when she arrived, Mophead was already gone. She quickly went over to the spot where she hid her [Daily Card]. She let out a sigh when she found it.

“After all,” the [Daily Card] began to replay Mophead’s sentence where he left off, “I am just an information broker.”

“Well, this information is not helpful at all,” the man wearing a cap replied, “Given the fact that the last group of people who went after her has gone missing, it simply means that the woman is not someone that you and I can defeat. It’s too risky.”

“I understand, but try to think about it. What if we really found her house? Do you have any idea how much we could earn out of this trip?” It seemed like Mophead was trying very hard to persuade the other two people. “She couldn’t possibly stay in her house all day long since she’d need to come out and check-in. This is our only chance. If we succeed, we will become rich!”

Lin Sanjiu looked at the next sentence.

“Have I ever mentioned that the woman has a container of money?” Mophead champed. “It won’t hurt her even a bit if she spares some for us… The committee has a great name, but they are all so useless. So, what are your thoughts? Are you in or nah?”

“Okay, I get it,” another man replied. “Let’s go and scoop out the area within these two days.”