Seeing that her father looked a little embarrassed, his expression uncertain since he had never stolen anything in his life, Jing Shu said, "Left here, it will rust out soon enough, or get stripped for parts. Better to take it home, use it, and maintain it. When the sun returns and order is restored, we will give it back. Consider it giving the owner proper maintenance in the meantime." She framed it as stewardship, not theft.
Only then did Jing An laugh, the tension easing from his shoulders. "Makes sense. Charging will be convenient from now on." He accepted the practical logic.
Besides the charging pile, they had also gained a small, rattling diesel generator and a heavy rotary hammer.
The small generator, Jing Shu felt, was not very useful at the moment. They already had a high-power gasoline generator at home for emergencies, and they had no diesel stored anyway. Fuel was now tightly controlled by people with power or hidden reserves, though one could still manage to trade for a little here and there if you had the right connections.
But five years into the apocalypse, during the great forced migration, it would be invaluable. It could come along in a cart to boil water, cook rice, run a small electric heater, and many other things to make the harsh journey more comfortable. She stored the thought away.
As for the rotary hammer, it would be useful when the heavy snows came and the world iced over, for breaking frozen ground or ice, and in general for repairs and drilling into concrete.
After another half day of tinkering with Jing An under the dim morning light, they discovered the charging pile had already been "cracked" by the previous crew, the payment module bypassed. Plug it in and it would charge the energy car directly, no scanning or virtual payment needed. A ready to use prize.
Father and daughter loaded the generator and hammer into the trunk, lashed the heavy charging pile securely to the roof rack with thick straps, and drove it slowly back to the villa in their community, the car sitting low with the weight.
Jing An worried the pile was too heavy and would damage the car's suspension or roof. Midway, Jing Shu had him pull over briefly. She slipped the charging pile into the space temporarily cleared in the poultry section of the Cube Space, a brief sensation of weightlessness, then took it back out and onto the roof when they neared home, the maneuver seamless. Jing Shu's 125 cubic meters of space had long since been stuffed full of all kinds of supplies, a tightly packed inventory.
"Did not feel any increase in fuel use on the road, but why does this charging pile smell like manure?" Jing An frowned at the odd, barnyard scent clinging to it, but did not dwell on it, attributing it to its previous outdoor location.
The villa had a private garage. In the end, father and daughter decided to install the charging pile just inside the garage door for convenience, running a heavy duty power line from the villa's main electrical panel. It was not a small project. Running the line through conduit, trenching a shallow ditch across the courtyard, and burial took two full days of sweaty work before the charging pile was properly set, bolted to a concrete pad.
Finally, no more long, risky treks to find a functioning station. They could charge whenever they liked, though to preserve the battery's lifespan they would still run it down somewhat before charging. It was a luxury of control.
Thus the family settled into a new daily routine of going out only to collect the water ration, the charging worry removed.
One way or another, Jing Shu felt a flicker of gratitude to those three hapless men. They had done the hard work of digging the half buried pile out, cracked the payment lock, and even gifted her a generator and a rotary hammer. Efficiency.
For such unwitting bringers of fortune, Jing Shu could only think: may I meet people like you every day. The sentiment was only half ironic.
The day the free cooked food began, half of Wu City was talking about it in hushed groups and online chats.
[Fat Girl, No. 25]:"Feels like today's mushroom rice had a moldy smell, and there was not enough. I went home and roasted two skewers of grasshoppers."
[Zhu Fan, No. 7]:"Better than tree bark. Wu City's richest man, Qian Duoduo, is hiring bodyguards. Two meals provided. I am signing up tomorrow. Anyone else going?"
[Feng, No. 3]:"If you are in a hurry to die, go ahead. I will eat the government rations. No need to cook every day. When the artificial sun is finished, everything will be fine. I am going to game every day."
[Fat Girl, No. 25]:"Whose home is frying fish and braising spare ribs every day? The smell drifts right to me. Spare a thought for people who cannot get enough to eat."
[Zhu Fan, No. 7]:"Are you starving into hallucinations? Who still has fish and ribs now? And with natural gas cut off, how are they cooking?"
Seeing that, Jing Shu chomped down on the rib bone in her hand, chewed the soft cartilage to bits, and swallowed. Then she called out toward the kitchen, "Grandma, turn on the extractor. The smell is drifting out and people can smell it." Her voice was calm.
"Dog noses, the lot of them. From hundreds of meters away and they still smell it. What a waste of power," Grandma Jing muttered from the stove, but she clicked the range hood on, its fan whirring to life.
These days the family cooked dinner on the induction cooker during the 5:30 p.m. power window provided by the community grid. Induction ate electricity voraciously, so soups and long braises were done over coal bricks in the clay stove outside. Without natural gas, everything was inconvenient, a step back in time. Thankfully, Jing Shu had stocked the Cube Space with plenty of precooked dishes for midnight snacks, hidden feasts.
Jing Shu kept eating ribs, the meat falling off the bone, while scrolling through the chat on her phone with her clean hand.
The previous day Wang Dazhao had sent a cryptic news update from inside the Zhetian Gang: they planned to rob Qian Duoduo's supplies. The rumor was already circulating on the street. In response, Qian Duoduo was recruiting bodyguards everywhere and even asking the government for armed aid.
"But I think it is a feint," Wang Dazhao's message had read. "It does not look like they intend to hit Qian Duoduo. After all, Qian Duoduo is in Xishan Villa, and that whole area is his compound. He has tons of private bodyguards there, I've heard he even has guns. His connections are strong. No reason to poke that hornet's nest."
Jing Shu searched her memories from the previous life. This stretch was blurry, the early chaos a smear of violence. She only knew the Zhetian Gang had tortured many people to death in their dens. They had not seized guns at the police station attempt, but they had acquired a few guns and homemade bombs somehow. In the end, the armed forces arrived in force and wiped them out in a single, brutal operation.
"Keep watch. If you can, find me everything about that person," Jing Shu had replied, meaning the gang's leader.
She had heard nothing from Wang Dazhao about the Zhetian Gang being interested in their community. Not even a hint. Perhaps they did not have her community on their radar, or considered it too poor a target. "Best not to provoke me. Ignore me," Jing Shu thought, and allowed herself to relax a fraction.
That evening, Su Lanzhi came home with Third Aunt Jing Lai, who was carrying a cloth bag. They brought garlic shoots, a handful of baby bok choy, a head of lettuce, and some crown daisy greens as recompense for the shared pig arrangement. Compared with the ubiquitous mold mushroom mash, the benefits of being inside the system were starting to show, these fresh greens a quiet testament.
The gap would only grow wider. Just as Jing Shu was considering finding some official or useful work for Jing An to do to secure their position further, Jing An solved it himself.
On the morning of May 23, after dropping Su Lanzhi at work under the usual gray sky, the family went, as usual, to collect their water ration.
This time they came prepared, bringing their own bowls and all their empty bottles from home. No need to wake at 3 a.m. to bike and queue at the very front. Wu City had thirteen districts and more than eighty supermarkets like Ai Jia converted to distribution points. On average, each handled thirty to forty thousand people. Arrive late and the line would be an hour or two longer, snaking around blocks, but you would still get your share eventually.
Today's meal, according to those already leaving, was fried rice with shredded oyster mushrooms and a scant sprinkle of minced meat, widely praised by many in line for the variety.
It would likely be the last praise for a long time. From here on, every day would be some bland blend of rice and mushrooms, or mushroom porridge with a few noodles. For the next ten years of apocalypse, the government catering would perform one hundred ways to cook oyster mushrooms, a monotonous, necessary staple.
Before long, when people could not choke it down and began to complain loudly, the government would introduce a new dish with grim pragmatism.
All right then, you want meat? From now on, you will eat meat every day. Satisfied? Happy?Jing Shu remembered the announcement, the subsequent revolting deliveries of protein paste and insect meal.
…
Back home after water collection, Jing Shu strapped a wriggling black pig into the reinforced roof box and drove with Jing An to deliver it to First Uncle's family to settle the final debt. The destination, however, was not First Uncle's own home, but the home of First Aunt's elder brother, where the extended family had gathered.
First Uncle's family lived in an apartment and could not raise pigs, so they had decided to slaughter it immediately and share the meat among the relatives. Since the pig was to settle a debt, First Uncle could handle the distribution as he wished, a gesture of family cohesion.
When Jing An drove the energy car into the old government compound for family housing, the sensor activated streetlights flared on in a sweeping wave of orange light. Quite the spectacle in the generally dark city.
More than fifty people stood clustered at the gate of the designated building, mostly middle aged and elderly aunties and uncles, with some younger family members. They craned their necks, pointing excitedly and murmuring when they saw the car with its rooftop cargo.
As soon as Jing An parked, cutting the engine, the crowd surged forward, First Uncle's family at the front, their faces eager in the artificial light.