At 3 a.m. in a convenience store, the sausage grill was sizzling and emitting oil. I was using a screwdriver to pry the battery buckle of an electric car. Brother Zhang's new battery was always stuck, which was as troublesome as the abnormal order sent by the system. The metal stick was drooping in the incubator, just like my mood when I was badly reviewed yesterday. But the smell of kelp soup cooked by Kailan went straight into my nose, and I was in a trance and returned to that snowy night seven years ago when she held up half a sausage and said, "Brother Xiaoming's sausage can drive away ghosts."
The phone was jumping in my trouser pocket, and Wang Mengmeng's private message smelled of milk stains: "The mark on the child's wrist will chase the sausage!" In the picture, the light spot on the palm of the swaddled baby was crawling towards the incubator, just like the metal stick when it first recognized its owner. Kailan came over, the broken silver bracelet scraped the LED light, casting a small fan-like shadow under her eyes: "Bring two sausages, sister SUSAN said that there is no code that can't be solved by hot starch." She stuffed the screwdriver into the incubator with a familiar movement, the same routine as when she helped me hide the failed test paper in college.
The elevator on the seventh floor of the Municipal Hospital was more laggy than the system when the order was exploded, and the smell of disinfectant mixed with milk powder made people dizzy. When I counted to the third floor, I suddenly remembered the "03" on Wang Mengmeng's husband's work card - when I helped him move the stroller last week, the number glowed blue in the sun, exactly the same as the joint seam of Brother Chen's robotic arm. The incubator in my arms was "banging" hot, and the metal stick drew the route of the hospital's back alley on the bottom of the box. Even the surveillance blind spot next to the trash can was marked with a sausage icon.
In the ward, Wang Mengmeng was smashing the thermos onto the surveillance camera: "If you keep filming my daughter, I'll make your camera blurry!" When she saw us, she immediately stuffed the baby into my arms, the burn marks on her wrists looking like freshly roasted chestnuts. "The caregiver's ID card changed color this morning," she pulled open the swaddling clothes, and the golden light from the baby's palm cast a miniature metal stick shadow on the curtains, "same as the light on the lens when Brother Chen died."
When the metal stick "clanged" and hit the lunch box in the incubator, I instinctively pulled Kailan through the window - I've practiced this "balcony escape technique" 17 times, all from the experience of being chased by office building security guards. The voice-activated lights in the fire escape flashed like a phone call to urge an order. When I stepped on the third step, I instinctively pulled in my belly to protect the baby. The loose floor tiles "clicked" and the baby suddenly giggled. The golden light from my wrist swept across the fire hydrant, and the rusty iron door "squeaked" open a crack.
"They used Wang Mengmeng's hospital number!" Kai Lan panted against the wall, and the screwdriver burned a red mark on the palm of her hand, which looked very much like the scars we got when we stole grilled sausages while working the night shift at the convenience store. The baby's golden light suddenly surged, and the trash can at the entrance of the alley "sizzled" with white smoke, just like the tragic scene when I overturned my hot pot delivery last time. Brother Zhang's electric welder was rumbling in the alley behind the scrap yard, and the welding sparks splashed on his newly tattooed "Eye of Eros", forming a small sun shape.
"This kid has made your sausages into a safety protocol." Brother Zhang turned off the welding machine, and sparks fell on the badge of the Anti-System Alliance, which was the size of a school badge. "The stray cat that Professor Kai raised in the laboratory back then also glowed like this when he saw the sausages." He pointed to the baby's little hand grabbing my work clothes pocket, and the metal stick fragments were rolling around in her palm, just like my panic when I touched the metal stick for the first time.
When an unfamiliar number called, the "sizzling" sound of the sausage suddenly changed. Brother Chen's voice was like a rice ball torn into eight pieces: "Li Xiaoming, every order you deliver, the system records it in the heartbeat of the newborn ——" When Kai Lan grabbed the phone, the text message had already been sent: [Clear the program has been bound to the sausage aroma, the next resonance will start from the moment the tin foil is bitten]. The baby suddenly opened his mouth, and the babyish "ah-woo" resonated wonderfully with the prompt sound of the sausage machine.
When the morning light illuminated the alley, Kailan put the baby in my arms, and the screwdriver turned between her fingers like a rotating sausage rack in a convenience store. The electric car rolled over the gravel road, the aroma of the sausage in the incubator mixed with the smell of the baby's milk, and the broken pieces of the metal stick trembled with the rhythm of the wheels. Brother Zhang's welding machine sounded again, this time welding the bracket of the back seat of the electric car, and the pattern was exactly the same as the mark on the inside of Kailan's silver bracelet.
The sirens of the fire truck came from the direction of the hospital, but the little body in my arms was warm, and the little sun sticky note on the work card was wet with saliva, but it was as bright as Kailan's eyes when she first praised me. The office workers and dog walkers running in the morning mist all had a faint golden light on their wrists - not the cold light of the system barrage, but the warmth of the oil stains on the oil paper bag when the sausages were just out of the oven.
In the shadow of the scrap yard, a woman wearing Chanel sunglasses touched up her makeup with powder. YSL Supermodel No. 03 stained the gears of Brother Chen's mechanical arm. Next to the burn on the inside of her wrist, the direction of the newly tattooed hummingbird's wings was exactly opposite to the Anti-System Alliance emblem. The metal object in the shadow suddenly buzzed, and the burn mark pattern on the surface was exactly the mark on the baby's palm that had not faded - it was the complete first-generation controller core that SUSAN had hidden for ten years.