Max and the Mechanical Army Chapter 2

Five years later.

New Star Year 275, Eighth Galaxy, Beijing β Star.

"Beijing β" is a common planet name. Every galaxy has a dozen "Beijing Stars", "London Stars" or "Zimbabwe Stars" series, just like in the ancient times of the Earth, many cities in China had "Beijing Road" and "Nanjing Road".

Perhaps because of the name, Beijing β has a very oriental temperament, and many residents have more or less ancient Chinese ancestry - of course, in this hellhole of the Eighth Galaxy, even if you have the bloodline of ancient dragons, don't expect to live a decent life.

It is said that among the top ten headlines of mainstream media in other galaxies every day, there must be one lamenting that the people of the Eighth Galaxy are living in dire straits.

They also gave this place another name, called "desert".

The Alliance has a total of eight star systems. The First Star System where the capital star Voto is located is of course the top of the pyramid. The further back in the row and farther away from Voto, the more backward its development becomes. By the eighth star system, it has basically become the sewer of the pyramid.

There are natural and historical reasons why the Eighth Galaxy has become a "desert". Lack of resources and inconvenient transportation are one aspect, but more of it is a historical legacy. If we start from the beginning, it's like a child without a mother. It's a long story. In the old star calendar era more than 200 years ago, the Alliance and the Interstellar Pirates were fighting fiercely. The members of the Interstellar Pirates were also descendants of ancient earthlings. They were not ETs with eyes like tennis balls. They were not called "Interstellar Pirates" at the beginning, which is a bad name that means villains. And there was more than one force among them. After the Alliance government controlled most of the galaxy regimes, in order to save trouble, all anti-government organizations that refused to recognize the Alliance were collectively referred to as "Interstellar Pirates".

The Eighth Galaxy is "isolated from the rest of the world", and compared to the other seven galaxies that are clustered together, it is like a pitiful island. In order to fight against the powerful alliance, a small group of anti-government forces were forced to form an alliance, using the Eighth Galaxy as their base to confront each other from afar. At the beginning of the New Star Calendar, the Eighth Galaxy was occupied by interstellar pirates for a hundred years. It was not until the 136th year of the New Star Calendar that it was recaptured by General Tyler Lu, the then leader of the Alliance, and the route to the other seven galaxies was re-established.

Over the past hundred years, the Alliance has developed at the speed of light under the searchlights of science and humanity, while the Eighth Galaxy has been displaced in the constant conflicts and civil strife of pirates. An irreparable gap has gradually opened up at both ends of the route, and the gap between the two sides is almost as big as that between contemporary Homo sapiens and ancient chimpanzees.

After General Tyler Lu recovered the lost territory, the Alliance sent people to investigate the Eighth Galaxy, and found that this damn place had nothing and was worthless, so they established a "democratic self-government" government in the Eighth Galaxy - which meant releasing these chimpanzees into nature and letting them mess around on their own.

When the Alliance has important occasions and needs the representatives of the chief executives of the major galaxies to attend, the chief executives of the other seven galaxies have their own name tags, but the representative of the eighth galaxy has no name, and the name tag simply prints "eighth galaxy". It's not that the Alliance discriminates by region, it's really because these gorillas often fight among themselves, the chief executive and his government are basically disposable, and the representatives change every day, so no one knows who is who, so they have to use "race names" as substitutes.

Anyone who has any means has tried to immigrate, and the rest are just poor souls abandoned by the times in the desert.

In the eighth galaxy, Beijing β is considered to be quite decent. It is the most populous planet. Although it is chaotic and depressed, there are still some surviving industries and interstellar shipping routes in operation, which can allow people to survive.

As night fell, a slow bus carrying sleepy passengers drove slowly along the road on the Beijing Beta Star. On the peeling paint of the bus, the words "Galaxy Transport" were mottled and only "Rikeyun Car" remained. The artificial intelligence driving the car might be "artificially retarded", with a damage rate of more than 95%. Currently, only the "ultra-safety mode" can be used. It moves at a snail's pace in the night, honking the horn every five minutes.

There was not a single intact window on either side of the train - they were all smashed by residents along the way who were woken up by the honking of the night train.

The car was drafty and dusty, and no one maintained it. Because the Galaxy Transport Company had been closed for two hundred years, all that was left was this unstoppable urban bus system, which ran automatically every day.

It was the middle of winter, and due to the laws of planetary revolution, the winter on Beijing β was very long. According to the unified new calendar, it would last for three years, and the city's constant temperature heating system had been shut down because of lack of money. The biting cold wind invaded the defenseless human city-state, passing through the windows of the car, and the poor passengers in the car wrapped themselves tightly in their undignified outer clothes, like a nest of quails with their heads buried under their wings.

Most of the people who use this free bus are the poorest of the poor, and there are many homeless people among them. They are so dirty that you can't tell whether they are men, women, young or old. Fortunately, the carriage is not sealed, otherwise the smell of these passengers would be like a biological gas bomb.

In the corner of the last row of the "Rikeyun Car", there was a drunk girl sitting. Her face was so blurred by residual makeup that it was hard to tell her age. She was not afraid of the cold. Her jacket was open, revealing her weird underwear. There was also a skull tattooed on her waist. From her appearance, she should be a female hooligan who was not easy to mess with.

The girl had a one-meter-high backpack at her feet and was wearing headphones. She was leaning against the tattered back of a chair with her eyes closed, looking a little irritable - because she was still hungover and there was a naughty kid in the car who was crying the whole time, the crying was so penetrating that even the deafening music in the headphones could not block it out.

She endured it for a few minutes, but couldn't stand it anymore, so she pulled off her headphones and prepared to cause trouble.

But strangely, the noise disappeared as soon as I took off my headphones.

The girl looked around in frustration, but as far as she could see, there were only half-dead adults in the carriage, huddled up to avoid the wind, and no children at all. She burped in confusion, suspecting that she was hallucinating, shook her head, put on her headphones with a suspicious look, pulled down her hood again, and closed her eyes sleepily again.

Just as she was drunk again and about to fall asleep, a child's sharp cry pierced her eardrum like a needle: "Mom!"

The girl opened her eyes with a start. The "Rikeyun Car" just stopped at the station, uttered a long sigh, and stopped.

She turned off the music and this time she could hear clearly the child's miserable cry coming from not far away, constantly drilling into her ears.

But...where did this damn place come from?

The bus stop sign had been stolen long ago by someone, and the street lights were all dead. It was pitch black all around. Not far away was a large area of   filthy alleys that were connected to each other. The eyes of the night seemed to be peeking out through the dirty corners. The "artificial mental retardation" in the car had broken down again, and it sounded the "terminal reminder" in advance, and without waiting for the passengers to protest, it automatically went into hibernation. The passengers had no choice but to queue up to get off the bus while cursing.

The girl frowned, picked up her luggage, and followed a few tired passengers. In front of her was a middle-aged man wrapped in a thick cotton coat, very thin, holding a pale and skinny old man in his hand. The old man staggered and bumped into her.

The little hooligan raised her eyebrows, and before she could show her heroic qualities, her eyes suddenly blurred. She rubbed her smoky eyes that were covered with mascara, and saw that the old man who bumped into her had rejuvenated and turned into a little boy!

"Am I poisoned by the fake wine?" she muttered to herself and closed her eyes tightly again.

As the image in front of her eyes went from blurry to clear, the girl discovered that the person in front of her was indeed a child, who looked to be about two or three years old, and could not walk steadily. He was wrapped in a dirty rag, with a corner of his clothes showing, but the clothes were quite nice. Although he was crying like a human, his delicate skin could still be seen.

The "vagrant" next to him grabbed the child's neck with one hand and his wrist with the other, and carried him away without touching the ground. He was struggling and crying, but no one around looked up, or even looked strange - probably they just saw a crazy old vagrant throwing a tantrum like she had just seen.

This is a collective hallucination!

The girl's pupils shrank slightly, and she suspected that the "homeless man" was a human trafficker with black technology, so she followed him quietly.

The "homeless man" carrying the child did not pay any attention to the little girl. After getting off the car, he walked straight into a narrow alley. There were a few shabby small houses in the alley, and at the deepest end was a dark bar. The dim night lights at the back door of the bar were like fireflies, sprinkling on the thin snow, allowing night travelers to see the road clearly. The sharp cries of children echoed in the narrow alley, but did not alarm anyone.

This couldn't be a hallucinogen - whether on the bus or in the narrow alley, the howling night wind was enough to sweep away all biochemical products.

The girl carried a bag on one shoulder, pushed up her hood, and called to the homeless man: "Hey, stand still for a moment."

The tramp paused, grabbed the back of the child's neck viciously, and had a timid and flattering smile on his face. He hunched his shoulders slightly, shrunk his neck, and put on a cowardly look of not wanting to cause trouble. He stammered, "Call...call me?"

The girl narrowed her eyes warily, raised her chin, and pointed at the child in his hand: "Is this your child?"

The tramp's expression suddenly changed, and after a moment's flickering, he forced a smile: "What...what? You...you see---are you seeing things? Where is the child? This, this old thing, looks like...like an old monkey. He, he is small, not a child, look."

As he spoke, he pushed the person in his hand in front of the girl. For an instant, the girl felt as if there was a malfunctioning screen in front of her eyes. The little boy who was crying and gasping for breath kept stretching and shortening, and turned into a shadow. Sometimes he was a wretched old tramp, and sometimes he turned into a crying child, flashing back and forth continuously.

She frowned, took two steps forward, and tilted her head calmly: "Strange."

Seeing that she was fooled, the tramp grinned and showed his yellow teeth: "Look, I, I said what---what..."

Before he finished speaking, the girl suddenly pulled out a bottle from her bag and attacked the homeless man's forehead with lightning speed. The bottle shattered into pieces, and the sharp broken glass shards were scattered everywhere. The pungent smell of low-quality alcohol spread out. The heroine held the half-broken bottle, wiped the remaining lipstick on her lips, and spat, "B@st@ard, are you fooling your grandmother?"

The wine flowed down the "homeless man's" head and face, and the smile on his face gradually disappeared. His eyes were sinister and cold, revealing blood. Then, he threw the child aside, and his bones made a loud noise. His whole body stretched and widened like inflated air, and in a blink of an eye he became a burly man nearly two meters tall!

The arrogant girl suddenly changed from looking straight at him to looking up at him. She was a little confused for a moment and subconsciously took a half step back: "You..."

The "tramp" smiled, his mouth as long as a palm, and when he opened it, a bloody mouth was revealed: "I thought so, it turns out that you are a cripple with empty brain syndrome."

As soon as the word "disabled" came out, the girl's face suddenly changed, from fear to rage, and she kicked the other person in the crotch. While the other person was bending over, she grabbed his hair and pushed him down, and the half of the wine bottle stabbed into his face fiercely. This series of actions was steady, accurate and ruthless, showing that he was experienced in street fighting and was a senior gangster.

But the sharp half of the bottle slipped when it poked the man's face, without even breaking the oily skin. His face was hard and pale, and its texture seemed like some kind of metal.

The "tramp" moved his neck nonchalantly and gently grabbed her hand that was pulling her hair, as if he was grabbing the girl by the hand of a kitten.

The bottle fell to the ground. The girl struggled in mid-air, looking at the reflective face in shock: "You...you are not a human."

The "tramp" showed a strange smile, and pinched her head with his palm-leaf fan-like hands, with veins popping up on his hands---

At this moment, a strong light suddenly swept by, and then three or four high-speed motorcycles swooped down from mid-air, clearly violating the ban on "high-speed motor vehicles are prohibited from getting within 100 meters of the ground". The light arrived first, followed by the thunderous sound of the engines, which stirred up a whirlwind on the ground and swept over them.

The "homeless man" may have realized something, his face changed, and he immediately let go and ran away.

The wind from the high-speed motorcycle made the girl lose her balance and she fell to the ground with her bag. She quickly grabbed the wall with all four feet.

The little boy who had just been thrown aside screamed and was blown into the sky by the whirlwind.

The monster-like "vagrant" leaped up like a beast, stepped on the wall, and then a laser flashed on his body and he disappeared into the night in an instant.

The little boy's limbs were flailing in the air, and he flew straight towards a black bar not far away.

The back door of the bar suddenly opened, and a man walked out. He stretched out his hand and hooked the back of the boy's neck.

The high-speed motorcycles all landed and stopped making any sound. The girl lying in the corner raised her head and looked out through the gaps in her hair that had been blown into mop strips by the wind. She saw that the man was tall and slender, with the light behind him, so her face could not be seen clearly.

He bent down, put the child on the ground, and flicked the ashes off his cigarette with a flash of fire on his free hand.

"No need to chase them. They've already run away because of the space field," the man said calmly. "Next time you show up, you can make a bigger noise. It would be best if you can scare people away from you even if they hear the news from a light-year away."