Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"Little... little sister, you haven't said your name yet..."

"Yelena, what about you?"

“Johnny, a…sailor.” He was indeed a sailor; his name was Sailor, his profession was Sailor, he couldn’t be more of a sailor.

[PS]

Star Alliance Navy Jokes:

A new recruit, entering a frigate for the first time, stared at the unidentified cubes on his plate.

"What is this thing...?"

"Uh, that thing..."

"What is that thing?"

"That thing... emmm." After a long period of thought and silence, "It's that thing—"

"Its official name is...emmm, that thing, because even the maker doesn't know what to call it, neither in terms of taste nor substance."

Chapter Forty: Sailing Towards Tomorrow

-------------Chapter Dividing Line---------------

"Johnny, I've never heard of you before. What do you do on the ship?" Old Xia frowned slightly and sat down at the communications station. "Also, what's the status of the ship?"

"It's terrible. We lost almost all of our jettisonable cargo and load, and we still almost crashed. Now I'm stuck in the command module and can't go anywhere."

That sounds really bad, and if it's a complete jettison and there's nowhere to go... "So, you can't even start the engine for a forced landing?"

“That’s right. As for me, I’m just an intern! I encountered this on my first day on the ship…” She was so aggrieved that she was about to cry. “I’m just an intern who earns 15 Star Coins per hour. Why did I have to go through this?”

"That's normal. I'm also a newbie who just joined a few months ago and only makes less than 3500 a month. By the way, I was the one you guys dumped." Old Xia said calmly, even though he was making more than ten times this guy's hourly wage.

One Star Coin has approximately the purchasing power of 2-3 US dollars.

Star Alliance's salaries are determined by AI, and its most crucial unit for measuring working hours is "workload hours" rather than "actual working hours".

In other words, if Lao Xia's salary is calculated based on 6 hours a day, then the workload he is assigned can be more than completed within six hours.

Conversely, even if he works 8-10 hours a day, he will not receive overtime pay unless he is assigned new work.

In theory, he still works the same amount of time; he's just slacking off, and of course, there's no pay for slacking off.

For Lao Xia, who doesn't work every day and whose working hours are short, and who has plenty of paid leave during the off-season, his hourly wage is indeed more than ten times that of this kid.

Spaceship sailors, especially trainee sailors, are considered one of the worst professions in the Covenant, firstly because it is difficult to supervise workload during voyages.

Therefore, they usually receive an hourly wage of 15 star coins, but do more than 15 star coins worth of work. Secondly, there is usually no work to do when the spaceship is docked, and no work is assigned, so there is no pay.

However, this situation improved greatly after becoming a technical position on the ship, but it required considerable intelligence, knowledge and skills, and not just anyone could do it.

Mr. Johnny was clearly the one who couldn't handle the job. "So, you were just assigned a cargo ship job right after graduating high school? Or did you apply for the job yourself?"

"I applied for a job myself, and I don't want to be stuck in the same factory layout for the rest of my life."

“You should really stay in the factory array; at least if you hadn’t boarded the ship, you should be at home now.”

"That's true, but it's too late to regret it now. I lack everything, and I don't know when the shield will fail and I'll get hit by a meteorite, waaaaah—" Okay, he's already crying, after all, he's just a high school student.

"Alright, alright, Mr. Johnny, now let's discuss what you have left. First, what are your skills?"

What can I do?

"I mean, besides the skills a trainee sailor should have, do you have any special talents or skills? Anything is fine."

"I can't do anything!" she said with great pride.

"Didn't you join any clubs in high school?"

"Yes, the largest club in the whole school..."

"Then you should learn something, at least."

"The problem is the family club."

Don't assume that Star Alliance's high school clubs are some kind of relaxed and fun Japanese-style activities; those things have performance evaluations based on the results of the activities.

Of course, for people like Lao Xia, who are into retro rocket enthusiasts, this kind of assessment is easy to pass. In a sense, they are the ones who produce the results, and the school is the one who is most at ease.

"You just said that you were assigned to a factory array, which means that someone in your family works in the industrial matrix?"

“My father, he’s the foreman of Black Mole Matrix, I mean, the drone engineer…”

Because most repetitive manual labor is done by drones and automated equipment.

Therefore, the engineers, or more accurately, production planners, responsible for managing, allocating, and arranging these drones are nicknamed "foremen."

"And then you tell me you know absolutely nothing about drones?"

"I know a little bit of what the school teaches, like the kind in craft class." Old Xia gasped.

While it is rationally understood that no matter how advanced a civilization is, there will always be those who are useless compared to others.

But to my utter surprise, the other survivor besides myself is precisely this kind of good-for-nothing. Is this a case of fools having good fortune?

"So what kind of work did they assign you in the industrial matrix?"

"Pipe cleaner..."

"Uh..." Subtracting their advanced work equipment, relatively easy job positions, and all the embellished descriptions based on technological progress—isn't it just cleaning sewers?

"You... well, I guess there's not much hope for your expertise. What resources do you have left?"

"Um, Mr. Xia Lin, what do you do?" the other party asked with some respect. The previous conversation sounded like a school teacher interrogating him.

"Me? I'm in agriculture. I'm on this ship to the new colonies to provide agricultural technical guidance..."

"Technical advisor, so you are...?"

"Ah, you graduated from the College of Agriculture. Is there anything else you're curious about?"

"No, no." The percentage of college graduates in the Star Alliance is about 1%, which means that one in 100 people is a college graduate. The total number is about 4 to 5 million people, but that's the total number across all age groups in society.

The number of agricultural graduates from Lao Xia's program alone wouldn't exceed 10 annually, referring to the total number of all colleges in the Star Alliance offering this major. Of course, it is indeed a moderately difficult major to get into.

The number of students in less demanding humanities majors and some STEM fields, such as space geology, is several times greater. However, overall, the number isn't significantly more.

Each year, less than two-thirds of the students enrolled in all majors at the Star Alliance can graduate, which adds up to about one million to ten million students. For a population of nearly 40 billion, that's barely enough.

It's not that we don't want to expand enrollment, but even if we do, they might not be able to complete their studies according to the curriculum.

If unqualified graduates are placed in Star Alliance positions that require university degrees, the accident rate will be extremely high, and the number of deaths could be unimaginable.

Putting aside other factors, even for professionals, Starship Engineering Academy has an annual mortality target of 0.2% – meaning that the student internship mortality rate needs to be kept below 0.2%.

If you put unprofessional people in there, it's not just a matter of how many people die, but whether anyone will dare to drive the things they build.

After all, people are different. There are some things that you just can't do, like math.

"Stop talking to me about this. If you have plenty of time, I suggest you take stock of your resources and tell me what else you have that will allow you to keep living..."

"One nutritional paste manufacturing machine, one water purification and circulation machine, three control consoles, one medical kit, and two spare extravehicular activity suits are all gone."

"Uh……"

"Mr. Xia Lin?"

"No, you managed to survive, didn't you? Speaking of which, you survived for two years on organic sauce?" What a warrior! This guy does have some merits, namely, his willpower is beyond imagination.

“Not entirely. There was still some food in the lockers of the previous passengers, but it’s all gone now.” Johnny sighed. “So, Mr. Xia Lin, if you have any extra return rockets, could you send me some… food?”

"No, not for at least six months. Even if it does, launching it won't be of any use given the circumstances." Unless Old Xia turns the rocket into a small patrol boat equipped with weapon and shield systems, then it's no problem; they can just blast their way through.

"However, I'm curious, what about the anti-meteorite interception weapons on your ship?" Civilian cargo ships are equipped with weapons, of course, not to fight pirates. No pirate can afford a warp drive, so relying on conventional flight to rob...emmmm, space piracy is a romantic notion, meaning it basically doesn't exist in reality.

"It's broken..."

"How did it break?"

"It's been broken all along. The captain hasn't fixed it. He thinks that if a meteorite can break through the shield, the device is useless. Besides, he's wondering where there are so many dense meteorites in space, and they're all big pieces."

"So now you know that there really is such a dense belt of large meteorites."

Old Xia looked into the distance. There was nothing he could do; these privately owned cargo ships were all built to save money, and frankly, such accidents were indeed extremely rare.

"The boss means we should fix it during the next annual inspection..."

"What about the others? How did they die...?"

"Yes, one of them went down by boat..."

"I saw it; I was the one who retrieved his body..."

"Um... there was another one hanging on the communications tower behind us. A meteorite shattered half of his body. The boss said he went to separate the last cargo hold to remove that pile of antimatter to prevent it from blowing us up, and then he never came back..."

"Okay, I saw it too. By the way, that ship full of antimatter exploded."

"Two other people went to explore the space station together, but they were blown up by the defense system."

"Wait, a space station? What space station?" Soon, the communications station sent a real-life image at an extremely slow speed. Looking out through the porthole, the huge artificial celestial body sat quietly among piles of Originium.

It's clearly a Terra creation, as you can see that many of the mechanical structures and impressive-looking devices use Originium materials, and the golden-brown color, resembling coffee candy, is very obvious. However, it's clearly not finished.

Old Xia had no doubt that Terra was a lost civilization; their bizarre technology tree was something that couldn't have been developed through normal means.

However, it was unexpected that their technological level before their demise was sufficient to construct such a colossal space creation.

Also sent were space photos taken by the light radar system, or rather, the sky-surveillance system, as well as various complex radar analysis data, of which Lao Xia could barely understand some—

The meaning is simple: the entire galaxy is constantly moving away from the star disk and accelerating, and after a few more laps, it will fly out completely.

Although this is at least a million years from now, the side effects are already apparent: if the Terrans want to travel to the nearest star system, they will need to travel more than 300 light-years.

Even if they possess faster-than-light technology, it would still take them more than 30 years if they didn't discover a wormhole large enough.

"The Ark of Generations, this size is obviously what it is..." If your place is about to become an isolated island, the best way is to use all resources to build a large enough canoe and sail to the nearest shore.

"An ark to tomorrow, or an ark to set sail tomorrow. Unfortunately, given the Terrans' technological level, this thing may never have a tomorrow."

These Terrans may well have been the lowest-ranking residents of that time, who were put on the last ship to leave.

The scientists, technicians, politicians, and tycoons among them may have already fled on the first two ships, leaving the rest to wait for the third ship to be built. However, for some reason, this third ship was never completed.

Having lost its scientific heritage, lost its stable government, and even had its slightly smarter members of the population flee, what can the remaining group do but fall back into the Dark Ages?