Homo Sapiens

After being scolded by the administrator, Gan Lin quickly apologized and went back to his apartment to unpack their luggage.

His wife, Mo Kang, had already laid out the bedding.

He hurried to start cleaning. There wasn’t much dust in this kind of apartment; after all, all the ventilation systems in the underground residential area had air filters.

His two daughters were also helping their mother.

The family had very little luggage, mainly a few valuable pieces of jewelry and some old clothes. Nothing else had been allowed.

Since they had been hooded when they were brought over, Gan Lin had no idea where he was now.

Faced with the heavily armed New Human security guards, they had no choice but to obey.

After more than two hours of tidying up, they finally finished arranging the room. By this time, the whole family was thirsty and hungry.

”Gan Lin, we don’t have any food, and we don’t have any money. What do we do now?” Mo Kang asked, extremely worried.

Gan Lin knew, of course, that they had no money. All their paper currency had been confiscated. But he remembered something and opened the quick-start guide he had received at the registration office.

”But you can’t read...” his wife reminded him, her voice tinged with grievance.

Gan Lin’s hands froze as he was opening the small paper box. Although the illiteracy rate in Tianzhu didn’t seem high, their standards weren’t high either. If you could write your own name, you weren’t considered illiterate.

Apparently, Gan Lin was one of those people who, despite being officially considered literate, was functionally illiterate and could only write a few words.

Still, he decided to give it a shot. He tore open the paper box, and inside was a cell phone.

It was a jade-green phone, identical on both sides, with no ports or buttons. Gan Lin, who had only ever used a phone with physical keys, was completely baffled.

”How do you use this thing?” he muttered to himself.

[Language of surrounding environment detected... Analyzing... Analysis complete. Manipur State Dialect 5. Spoken content: ”How do you use this thing?”]

[System startup procedure triggered... System initializing. As per user agreement, default mother tongue set to: Manipur State Dialect 5...]

[Initialization complete. Entering intelligent assistance mode...]

The phone’s internal system finished initializing and then projected a 3D hologram.

A holographic cartoon image of an ”electric mouse” materialized before Gan Lin in a soft glow:

”Hello, User! I am the System Sprite. Please place your temporary employee card under the phone, flush against it.”

Snapped out of his daze, Gan Lin held the phone gingerly. He was terrified. The device looked incredibly high-tech and expensive, and he felt that if he dropped and broke it, he could never afford to replace it.

As if worshiping a divine statue, Gan Lin carefully placed the phone on the table, then licked his dry lips. ”Place the employee card under the phone?”

”Correct. The system needs to input user information,” the System Sprite’s stiff voice emanated from the phone.

”It’s amazing! It can talk!” His eldest daughter’s eyes widened as she stared at the electric mouse.

Gan Lin quickly took the temporary employee card out of a small leather pouch and placed it gently under the phone.

”Placement complete. Please do not move the phone or the employee card. Beginning information input...”

About two minutes later, Gan Lin’s identity information was logged into the phone’s system. The System Sprite then verbally instructed Gan Lin to register his family members’ employee cards, as well as each person’s face, fingerprints, and voice.

”Mr. Gan Lin, your identity information has been confirmed. Now officially entering intelligent assistance mode...”

RUMBLE RUMBLE... Gan Lin’s stomach grumbled.

The biological phone’s sensors picked up the sound and immediately parsed that the user was hungry. ”Mr. Gan Lin, you are currently in a state of hunger. It is recommended that you eat as soon as possible.”

”Uh... I don’t have any money...” he replied awkwardly.

”Analyzing...”

”Optimal solution: According to Article 15 of the Special Management Regulations for Social-Type Temporary Employees, temporary employees are entitled to a 100-day special protection period. During this time, you may go to a designated restaurant each day to collect three relief meals. You can go to the nearest location, 36 Food Street in White Stone Town, to collect your relief meals.”

So-called ”Social-Type Temporary Employees” were refugees like Gan Lin’s family who, after being ”specially recruited” by the company, were granted employee status. However, this status was relatively unique and was designated as such.

”So there are relief meals... That’s great!” Gan Lin was overjoyed.

He quickly picked up the phone and, under the System Sprite’s guidance, led his family toward 36 Food Street.

Along the way, he ran into many other temporary employees who were also holding phones.

Due to the unique environment of the Assam Branch, the Homo Sapiens Company had directly implemented a full-scale rollout of biological computers and biological phones here.

After all, in a completely sealed environment like this, there was virtually no risk of information leaks.

The biological phones, which used bio-chips and DNA storage, had a floating-point computing power of 15,000 teraflops, 750 megabytes of operational memory, and a storage capacity of 12,000 terabytes, already meeting the basic requirements for artificial intelligence.

To reduce the manpower wasted on guiding and training temporary employees, the company had directly issued biological phones to them.

「In a short while.」

Gan Lin’s family arrived at the restaurant at 36 Food Street, White Stone Town.

By this time, many temporary employees were already queuing up here.

The restaurant was filled with people.

When it was his family’s turn, Gan Lin finally got a clear look at the so-called relief meal.

It was a large bowl of pale green paste and a patty made of some unknown meat. There were two sizes: one for adults and one for children.

The server noticed the infant, brought out a baby bottle, and mixed a bottle of synthetic composite milk. Handing it to Mo Kang, the server asked, ”Did you receive your formula?”

”Yes, thank you. We did,” Mo Kang replied quickly.

The server reminded her, ”As for how to use the formula, just ask the phone. If there’s anything wrong with the baby, have the phone notify the hospital, or go directly to the block administrator.”

”Thank you, I will.”

After getting their relief meals, Gan Lin’s family found an empty table.

Unable to bear her hunger any longer, their eldest daughter picked up a spoon, scooped up some of the green paste, and put it straight into her mouth.

Fortunately, having been heavily influenced by the cuisine of Tianzhu, their tolerance for paste-like food was relatively high.

Gan Lin also spooned some into his mouth. The taste wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either—salty with a hint of sweetness, followed by the grassy taste of plants.

He took a bite of the meat patty. Its flavor was actually not bad, similar to a regular ham sausage.

In reality, all of it was artificial food made from extracts of algae, insects, and fungi, produced using special technology.

Its main characteristic was being nutritionally complete, rich in starch, vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, and plant fiber.

It just didn’t taste very good.

Although the company had the technology to make the paste incredibly delicious, there was no need to.

After all, this was a relief meal. If they made it taste too good, the temporary employees would just give up and slack off, not working all day. That would be a huge problem.

Therefore, while this relief meal might seem acceptable at first, after eating it for a week or two—especially with the temptation of delicious food from the other restaurants on Food Street—it would definitely become hard to swallow.

This was an effective way to stimulate the temporary employees’ desires, making them understand that if they didn’t work hard, they would be stuck eating this unpalatable paste.

For now, Gan Lin’s family still thought the relief meal was decent. In another ten days or so, they would learn what pig slop tasted like.

The servers all smiled without saying a word. Clearly, they had all endured the torment of the green paste themselves.

In the underground bases, the larger ones with relatively abundant resources were fine. It was the smaller, resource-poor bases that were truly miserable, and the green paste was a common food there.