Dark King

The pungent stench suffocated Durian constantly. It became to a point where he almost threw up everything from inside his stomach. From time to time, he also touched wet and soft objects. In darkness, he could not see anything but in his mind, he had guessed such as lumps of feces, or a rotting body of a rat. Even the poorest of the poor would have avoided places such as this.

Dudian gritted his teeth, crawled for another seven or eight meters and finally touched a hard object. It was his frozen storage device!

He touched further along the edge of the shell, and soon later found a button to press.

“Fingerprint verification in process…” A mechanical voice echoed in the darkness.

“Click!”, the frozen storage opened. The door of the storage arched the mountain of garbage slightly upwards. However, more thrash fell into the storage compartment, filling up much most of the free space inside.

Dudian glanced at the door, where a number in red was present.

This was the very year.

It was this that allowed Dudian to know that he regained consciousness after 300 years. ?The other reason for him to comprehend that a full 300 years have passed by is since the energy tube in the cold storage capsule could only supply energy for a maximum of three hundred years. That time length was the limit.

Dudian went inside and soon clicked a raised button. The click sound echoed once more. A built-in palm-sized screen popped up.

“Eye scanning initiated…”

The previous mechanical voice spoke again as a beam shot unto Dudian’s eyes from the palm-sized screen.

“Verification… authorized”. The mechanical voice resounded. The screen turned into a three-dimensional hologram. There were two options, to start and to exit.??Dudian said “Start”.

During the outbreak of the original disaster, Dudian was not only cytogenetically frozen. Furthermore, the cold storage capsule had also a super-computer in it. It can be said that this super-computer was the zenith of the old civilization. It stored information regarding to fields of science, technology as well as social history. These are only information and do not consume much memory. Nevertheless, the super-computer also included information regarding social, scientific and technological development data from every country, which would have required at least petabytes or even exabytes of storage.

Dudian recalled his father’s last words, “Remember, you must rebuild the human civilization… …”

It was obvious that the frozen storage capsule was built in such a way meant to be used to survive the disaster, but his father also considered the survival of humanity post-disaster. The fallout of the global nuclear bomb would have dealt a devastating blow to human civilization. This super-computer contained the entire wisdom of the old world!

The basic principles of manufacturing gunpowder as well as firearms, were naturally also included within the data kept.

The world does not have ‘electricity’. Fortunately, the remaining energy in the frozen storage capsule was sufficient to operate the super-computer even though human body could no longer be cryogenically frozen any longer. At the very least, it was enough to maintain the basic operations of the frozen storage capsule. It was enough to study for few months. Dudian did not know what was the exact power consumption, but he estimated that the super-computer only consumed energy far less than what a laptop would consume normally.

However, Dudian did not have much time remaining to stay any longer. There was no time to come here to study, as it would raise suspicions from the Jura couple.

“I have enough time to learn how to make gunpowder, generators and to check out the tools of the steam engine era”, Dudian said as he lied down on the edge of the cold storage capsule to study.

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Dudian resisted the foul stench of feces and rotten animals. His body gradually adapted. His mind was completely focused on the contents that the super-computer displayed.

“Sulfur decomposition…”

“Electricity augmented steam engine…”

In this small and full of garbage cave, Dudian tried concentrated on learning. Haphazardly, Dudian studied but was not fully absorbed into it. His concept of time was brutal. At dusk, he rubbed his sore eyes and stopped the super-computer lessons. He felt his stomach burn due to not eating and drinking for an entire day.

“I don’t know when in the future would I come again the next time. If an earthquake occurred and the capsule is uncovered, somebody may take notice and excavate it.” Dudian then made the decision that it was too dangerous for the super-computer to be here. Previously, he did not bring it into the Meishan Orphanage. This is because in the orphanage, there was a high possibility that it would have been discovered by the children.

However, the present situation was different. He now lived in a residential area where normally, for residents to have small pieces of metal, people wouldn’t care. Even in “Scavengers” training camp, it would not draw unnecessary attention.

With a crack sound, Dudian opened the cover. He used his small nail to eject a tiny, chip. The energy tube was connected to the circuits of the capsule so it was very difficult to dismantle it.

Dudian looked at the tiny chip and sighed. Thousands of years’ worth of human history and technological inventions were compressed into this tiny object. If the current powers of this world came to realize the value of this chip, he could not predict how crazy the situation would have developed into.

Dudian carefully put away the chip. He closed the storage’s door, and hoped in the future that he would get to access it in the future. He began crawling all the way back to the surface. As soon as he left the colossal garbage heap, he felt as if he baptized from hell and entered heaven. Compared to the air inside, even though everywhere surrounding him was filled with feces and urine, he felt fresh after he climbed out.

He took a few deep breaths and then looked around. He noticed that nobody was around and the coat was still on the ground. He picked up the coat and quickly left the garbage dump.

Not far away from the garbage dump, the earlier continuous downpour from rain water had accumulated into a small lake. Dudian did not bother to regulate for radiation. He put away his coat, and then cleaned his arm and chest. If he could produce a stable supply of power, he would naturally be able to learn from the super-computer methods to purge radiation from the human body.

Previously, he found an iota of information in the supercomputer. There existed information that documented the methods to purge radiation. However, time was constricted so he did not read about it. After all, even if he did, it would still be practically useless to learn about it.

Soon his body was slightly cleaner. He wiped the sticky stuffs out, especially his left hand that was stained with feces. He had bouts of nausea.

Dudian knew that his hair still exuded a strong foul stench. He had to return home to wash properly, for he would get sick if he continued to use rainwater.