Why it never ends

Chapter 1199

Hershta's expression became somewhat confused, and after a moment of silence, she spoke again.

“I mean the mother city,” Hesta tried to explain, “not the core—”

“How could I not be able to distinguish between the mother city and the core city?” Li Ge raised an eyebrow and deliberately slowed down his speech. “Yes, for a while, Turan went to the mother city every day, leaving early and returning late, but never staying overnight. I said she might as well live there, but she said she didn’t have the authority yet, maybe she would after doing a few more projects.”

The two looked at each other, and after half a minute, Rico silently spread his hands.

Hersta was still looking at her, but his hand had already reached into his pocket for his phone.

"...Hey, Turan? Yes, I'm back—but let's not talk about that. Could you come over here? Ligo and I are at the old house. You can see us as soon as you come over."

……

Turan arrived with a heavy heart, but when she saw Rico and Hersta sitting side by side on the grass in the sunset, her anxiety eased somewhat—the two looked very calm and waved to her with similar amplitude.

Turan started running towards them again, slowing down when they were about seven or eight meters apart.

"...It seems you've already talked it out, haven't you?" Turan looked at Hesta, then at Rico. "You've talked it all out? And it's settled?"

Just as Rico was about to make a sarcastic remark, she felt Hersta's hand on her shoulder, a gesture that momentarily touched her. But then, in a flash, Rico realized that their conversation today hadn't reached any consensus—they had simply shared their thoughts with each other, frankly and sincerely expressing their ideas… but that was all.

Rigo had a gut feeling that if time could be reversed and he returned to that night of the fire, Hester would most likely still go looking for the box... If someone always intentionally or unintentionally puts themselves on the edge of a cliff, what can others do?
This fluctuating emotion made Rig feel subtly uneasy, a mixture of sadness and annoyance. She grasped Hersta's hand and replied, half-jokingly and half-seriously, "That's quite a story."

Hershta clearly didn't grasp the complex emotions behind those words. She looked at Turan and asked, "Have you been to the Mother City many times?"

"It's about average, not particularly many," Turan replied. "Some research projects can be booked at labs in the home city, but there's a waiting list, and you can only go when you get a slot. Two-thirds of the people in our group have successfully applied."

"What is the mother city like inside?"

"Specifically..." Turan recalled for a moment, about to speak, when he suddenly became suspicious, "You haven't been there?"

"No."

"Impossible!" Turan exclaimed in surprise. "Ligo didn't go because she has a deportation record, how could you—you really didn't go?"

“You reacted the same way as Victoria.” Hester smiled. “Tell me quickly what kind of place it was. Victoria said it was like a tomb.”

Turan walked between Rico and Hersta and sat down.

"Well, it's a pretty quiet and spacious place. The first time I went there, I didn't encounter anyone. The only thing that followed me was the voice prompts. Wherever I went, it followed me."

"Oh……"

“When you enter the Mother City, you first enter the surface area, which is also the most well-known image of the Mother City,” Turan said. “Things like the manta ray robots, the unmanned patrol devices that hover in the low sky, the large rows of neatly arranged self-assembly factories, the uninhabited simulated urban areas… these configurations all look very advanced, but in reality, they are not like that at all. “The manta ray robots are more of a spectacle than a practical tool, the self-assembly factories mainly produce low-tech products like conventional drones, and as for the simulated urban areas, all the public facilities are in a low-power standby state, and no residents will move in.”

"Everything on the surface is the least important part of the mother city. If you've ever seen the underground space there, you'll understand what I mean—the things that are truly technologically different from the outside world are all concentrated underground."

Hester and Rico listened intently, both recalling the fleeting glimpse of Mother City that Liz had mentioned in a letter many years ago.

“Further down is the underground pre-level,” Turan said softly. “This is the true boundary of the mother city. Once you enter, the feeling of being watched will suddenly become very strong.”

"why?"

“I think it’s related to the architectural design there, but it’s hard for me to describe it clearly in words… You’ll understand once you go there yourself.”

Hersta and Rico simultaneously let out a thoughtful murmur.

Turan continued, “The entire underground front level is a huge circular structure, and it’s very deep. The elevator I took only goes down to the 30th floor. I saw elevators on some floors that go to deeper areas—but I don’t have permission to go in.”

Hersta suddenly remembered the underground bunker of Avad Prison—when Victoria took her to the Class A biological laboratory, the two of them had changed elevators several times.

“I mainly operate on floors -1 and -12,” Turan said softly. “Floor -1 is the bio-factory, and floor -12 is the integration lab. In the corridors of these two floors, if you look up at the center of the ring, you can see the same data dome, which is a hemispherical storage array with a large number of automated maintenance robotic arms hanging on it, ready to be used… It’s quite beautiful.”

“The Data Dome,” Hester repeated the name softly, “what data does it store?”

Turan tilted his head and sighed softly: "Some people say that it contains complete technological archives of mankind since the Silver Age... Do you believe it?"

Neither Hershta nor Rico answered.

As the setting sun gradually sank into the distance, the sky above them changed from orange-yellow to azure blue. Hershta gazed at the last rays of the sun disappearing among the mountains.

"...You just said that was only the first level underground?" Hester turned his head and looked at Turan again. "What's below that?"

"It's said to be called the Core Area," Turan said softly. "It contains the central reactor well and the core memory bank of the mother city. The entire Core Area is kept at a constant temperature of 4°C, and you need to wear special protective clothing to enter."

Li Ge turned his head with some surprise: "How did you know such details? It sounds like that's not a place ordinary people can enter."

“I have a collaborator who went down there,” Turan shrugged. “She talked to me about that trip once when we were drinking together.”

At this point, Turan looked at Hesta again.

“You know what? When she told me about this experience, she also said that the mother city was like a tomb.”

"What's your collaborator's name?" Hersta asked. "Perhaps I'll have the chance to talk to her sometime in the future."

Turan shook his head, a hint of regret in his expression: "She has passed away."