Interstellar Educated Youth:Farming In The Seventies

Chapter Two

The transition from death to life was a violent, suffocating blur. One second, Lin Fan was engulfed in the blinding white fury of a tearing starship reactor; the next, he was choking on air so thick and humid it felt like liquid in his frail throat.

He gasped, his chest heaving as a terrifying wave of disorientation washed over him. Dizziness smashed against his temples like a heavy hammer. His mind felt split in two—on one side, clean metallic corridors, automated alarm sirens, and high-pressure chemical equations; on the other, memory fragments of narrow brick alleys, bicycles clanking over cobblestones, and an agonizing fever in a cramped urban bedroom. Vertigo pulled the room into a spinning vortex of shadows and dim morning light. Where was the gravity lock? Why wasn't the station's atmospheric scrubber humming? He reached instinctively for his wrist to access his diagnostic panel, but his trembling fingers brushed only bare, feverish skin.

For several agonizing minutes, Lin Fan simply lay there, trembling beneath a heavy, scratchy quilt, waiting for his racing heart to settle. As the mental whiplash slowly receded, leaving behind a dull ache in his bones, reality sank in with startling clarity: Space Station Alpha-9 was gone, and he had survived the impossible.

Most people would have spiraled into total panic at waking up in an unfamiliar body, half a galaxy away from their own era. Yet, as Lin Fan pushed himself up against the wooden headboard and stared at his thin, pale fingers, a profound, quiet acceptance settled deep within his chest.

Why would he ever mourn his past life?

Back in 3042, he had been a ghost trapped in a cage of silver bulkheads, suffocating on synthetic gel and absolute solitude. He had no family, no friends to grieve his passing, and no lover to warm the cold silence of his quarters. His entire existence had been a lonely, sterile pursuit of a forgotten world he could only dream about through historical databases. The station explosion hadn't stolen a rich life from him; it had liberated him from a metal graveyard.

Here, despite the blinding headache and fragile body, his lungs pulled in real, uncycled oxygen. He could smell the faint scent of damp wood, old paper, and living soil drifting through the window sash. Transmigration wasn't a nightmare to be feared—it was an unbelievable second chance at life, love, and the real earth he had craved until his very last breath.

Dragging his trembling body up from the bed, Lin Fan reached the narrow wooden window sill and pushed the glass frame wide open.

The breeze that swept across his face was completely alien to him. It wasn't the dry, sterile draft of recycled space station ventilation, nor was it tainted by the sulfurous reek of antimatter smelters. It was a living, breathing current of air—cool, heavy, and saturated with the crisp scent of pine needles, wet bark, and green leaves drying under the morning sun.

In the interstellar era, the sky had been an opaque canvas of grey industrial smog, choked by massive factory complexes that belched chemical runoff into dead soil. Plant life was restricted to glowing hydroponic vats, isolated from the poisoned outside world. But as Lin Fan looked out into the 1970s morning, his breath caught in his throat.

There were no towering silver exhaust stacks tearing through the horizon. No metallic hum of planetary turbines vibrated through his soles. Instead, a row of tall, leafy poplars lined the narrow dirt road below, their branches swaying gently in the wind. Beyond the low brick rooftops of the urban edge lay rolling green hills, dense thickets of wild bamboo, and unchecked foliage stretching toward a clear blue horizon.

The lack of massive factories left the atmosphere pure. The air tasted clean, carrying the earthy perfume of crushed moss and fresh sap, unblemished by heavy machinery or synthetic exhaust.

Lin Fan extended a trembling, pale hand through the open window, reaching until his fingertips touched the wild branch of a tree hovering near the sill. He squeezed a broad, vibrant green leaf between his fingers, feeling its cool moisture and fragile, living veins. A quiet laugh broke from his lips, quickly dissolving into a sob of sheer disbelief.

He was surrounded by trees. Real, unmutated, wild trees, growing freely from living dirt in a world virtually untouched by industrial poison. To anyone else, this quiet, rural backwater was a primitive, undeveloped land. To Lin Fan, it was paradise.