《四》
At that time, The Mechanical City was expanding wildly , encroaching on nearly all of the surrounding villages. Steam could be seen rising from the entire Mechanical City, they were steaming hot on a cloudy day, peeking through the cracks in the pipes and rising from the reddish parts.
Luo had no parents, she was like a product of the Mechanical City from the moment she was born. Perhaps she didn't really count, the machinery here all carried numbers, she didn't, not that anyone noticed. As for how Luo survived, a washerwoman would drop some milk into her mouth as she passed through the alley.
Then Luo fell into a deep sleep, to the sound of roaring machines, in a corner of the steaming Mechanical City, and when she woke up again, the woman was still dripping milk into her mouth. But every time after doing this, the woman always walked away without looking back, and at that moment, Luo knew that this person had done all that should be done.
Then Alan appeared in Mechanical City.
She took Luo.
In the days to come, Luo would quietly run to Mechanicsville, only, now she had a name. But once again, she would return to that alley and sit.
Luo was waiting.
So much so that an inexplicable anticipation would arise in her mind.
The kind of anticipation that overshadowed her judgment of her own birth, overshadowed everything she had at the moment. Perhaps Luo didn't understand what she was looking forward to either, as she stood in the narrow aisle of Mechanical City, her hair wet from the water dripping from above. Luo stared upward in melancholy, too young to know exactly what was going on within her.
Afterward, Luo pulled up her hat, the wide brim covering her face.
She was gone, once again.
All for her, the tall people who came and went, only appeared in her field of vision on two legs. Walking among them, Luo thought, they too were like those tall machines, dense and breathless. The many-refurbished vending machine was brightly lit in a corner of the curb, its rotating lights blinking.
Luo saw someone put coins into it, but it seemed to be stuck, and the man slammed it into the vending machine a few times, before helplessly paying for it with the Federation account number on the mechanical watch on his arm, which popped up with a holographic interface after he put in the information about the living organism.
"Hello, Mr. Spurger! Is the purchase confirmed?"
"Hello, yes."
"This transaction is in progress, please wait."
After the Federation confirmed it in real time, the man took a drink from the square that the vending machine spit out.
Standing on the side of the street, watching everything, Luo silently walked away as she continued to walk through this labyrinthine mechanic city, like any other time, yet different from any other time ......
