Caged Humanity

Chapter 2: A Shattered Routine

As a home, it was not particularly large. It had two bedrooms, one living room, and a total area of a little over forty square meters.However, for a person living alone, this place was already more than spacious enough.

Yuan Ling placed the scrap parts he had bought from the secondhand market on the sofa, loosened the buttons of his shirt, and walked toward the refrigerator. He opened the door, glanced at the thermometer inside, then carefully observed the layer of frost inside the freezer compartment. After a brief inspection, he very decisively turned the entire refrigerator around, picked up a screwdriver and a multimeter, and began working on it.

Any machine would operate according to certain scientific rules. Even if it broke down, the reason behind that breakdown was still science. Compared with humans, machines were much more willing to obey rules. That was why Yuan Ling liked machines. Their faults were visible, measurable, and logical. Unlike humans, they would not suddenly act according to emotion, pride, lies, jealousy, or some other meaningless impulse.

"Hmm. It seems that using liquid nitrogen as a refrigerant is still too unsafe. Although the effect is excellent, the amount released remains difficult to determine with precision."

After checking the surrounding space, Yuan Ling quickly confirmed that this living room was not suitable for proper repairs. Therefore, he simply removed the refrigerator's cooling unit, held it in his arms, and walked into his own room. In front of one wall that had almost blended perfectly with the mountain behind the house, he reached out and pressed a long sequence of numbers on an old landline telephone mounted there.

The next moment, the wall opened silently. A passage leading underground appeared before him.

As Yuan Ling entered the basement, automatic sensor lights lit up one after another. The lights followed his steps downward, as if the entire underground space had awakened because of his arrival. When the staircase finally came to an end, what appeared before him was not a normal basement, but an enormous underground platform covering nearly two thousand square meters.

"Young Master Yuan Ling, please select the tools you require."

A small table moved toward him on wheels. Yuan Ling placed the cooling unit on the table and continued walking forward. The table followed him closely. On the fluorescent touch screen standing beside the table, he calmly selected the tools he needed. By the time he and the table arrived at a workshop platform in the northwest corner of the laboratory, the tools he had chosen had already been taken from the toolboxes. Several mechanical arms arranged them neatly around the work area.

"Ah, the number six and number eight wrenches from that set were damaged last time. Bring me the loose ones instead."

"Yes, Young Master Yuan Ling."

A mechanical arm beside him made a crisp metallic sound. It reached into the loose tool section, took out the number six and number eight wrenches, and placed them beside the table.

And so, from afternoon until evening, the person named Yuan Ling stayed inside this secret laboratory, doing what belonged entirely to him as a personal "interest." He examined parts, adjusted circuits, recalculated pressure values, tested the cooling unit, and occasionally wrote a few formulas on a nearby screen. To most people, spending an entire afternoon repairing and improving a refrigerator component would be boring, strange, and meaningless. But to Yuan Ling, this was one of the few things in the world that could truly be called enjoyable.

This was Yuan Ling's life.

A perfectly normal life for a "scientist."

However, even Yuan Ling, who liked to start every judgment from common sense and logic, would never have imagined that on this seemingly ordinary day, something would happen that could change the whole of society, the future of humanity, and perhaps even the destiny of the entire Earth.

Yes. That event was about to happen.

Boom!

An explosion?

Yuan Ling had already removed his clothes and was standing in the bathroom with only a pair of pants on. He was preparing to wash away the grease and oil on his body, take a proper shower, and then rest. But at that moment, an explosion suddenly came from his own room.

Had one of his experiments gone wrong?

Could the propulsion device he had built last time have become unstable?

As soon as this thought appeared, Yuan Ling no longer cared about getting dressed. He grabbed his glasses and put them on. Then he glanced at the surveillance feed on the wall beside him. The camera facing the entrance showed that the front door was still tightly locked. No one had entered from outside.

Without wasting another second, Yuan Ling rushed out of the bathroom and headed straight for his room.

Of course he cared about this home. But what he cared about was not the home itself. He did not care about the outer shell of this building, nor about the idea of a warm and peaceful place to live. What he truly cared about was the laboratory hidden beneath it. That laboratory contained far too many things he had made with his own hands. If any one of them was damaged, it would be enough to make him furious.

So he had to move quickly. Although the laboratory was equipped with sufficient fire-control systems, he still needed to see the situation with his own eyes as soon as possible. He had to save anything that could still be saved.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Then...

Yuan Ling tripped over something.

His entire body fell straight forward.

Thud.

For science, there was no such thing as coincidence or accident in this world. Or rather, for science, coincidence and accident were both necessary. Marie Curie discovered radium because of an unexpected observation. Newton thought of universal gravitation because of an apple that happened to fall. Therefore, what people called coincidence was often only a phenomenon whose causes had not yet been fully understood.

So there were no true coincidences in this world.

Yes. No coincidences at all.

Yuan Ling pushed up his glasses and took a deep breath. Then he lowered his head and confirmed his current situation with great seriousness.

His hand was pressing against something extremely soft.

Beneath him lay a young woman who appeared to be about eighteen years old, with nothing covering her body. Her skin was pale with a faint pink tone. Her waist was slender, and her figure seemed to have been created according to a perfect golden ratio. Her long black hair reached all the way to her knees, smooth like silk. Her long legs and delicate frame made her look as if an extravagant creator had poured an unreasonable amount of effort into shaping her.

Yuan Ling pushed up his glasses. The expression on his face remained stiff and serious. He took another breath and looked again at the place where his hand had landed.

There was no doubt.

The softness was exactly the same as that of a real woman's body.

There were no coincidences in this world.

"Ah... mm..."

The girl's eyes were closed, and her long eyelashes trembled slightly. It seemed that she had reacted to Yuan Ling's movement. However, the real question now was not whether she had reacted.

The real question was...

Who was this woman?

"Hey. Who are you?"

Yuan Ling moved his hand away, reached out to support the girl's shoulders, and helped her sit up.

"Why are you in my room? Wake up. Do you still have consciousness?"

At first, Yuan Ling thought the girl had fainted. After all, according to any normal line of reasoning, a young woman suddenly appearing in his room after an explosion was already absurd enough. If she was unconscious, then at least part of the situation could still be explained as some kind of accident, invasion, or trap.

But after he called out to her, something that went far beyond his current understanding happened immediately.

For some unknown reason, the girl who had seemed weak and fragile only a moment earlier suddenly opened her eyes and sat upright. What was even more unexpected was that she did not cover herself and scream like an ordinary girl would. She did not panic, did not blush, and did not try to escape. Instead, she stared blankly ahead, as if she had no consciousness at all, and began speaking in a flat, emotionless voice.

"Function restart successful. Time point confirmed: November 26, 2012. Beginning creation of temporal disturbance... Creation complete. Maintaining disturbance."

Temporal disturbance?

Wait. What was that supposed to mean?

Before Yuan Ling could understand those words, the girl suddenly turned her head and stared directly at him. Only then did Yuan Ling notice that her eyes were not like ordinary human eyes at all. There was something cold and mechanical in them, like a scanning device hidden behind a human shell.

"Biological confirmation. Species analysis... Analysis complete. Phylum Chordata. Subphylum Vertebrata. Class Mammalia. Subclass Theria. Order Primates. Family Hominidae. Genus Homo. Species Homo sapiens. DNA analysis..."

"Hey, I'm asking you a question—"

Yuan Ling opened his mouth, wanting to ask clearly what was happening. But just as he began to speak, the girl suddenly leaned forward with shocking speed.

Her soft lips pressed directly against his.