Silence in the Great Hall. Even Chiwang, the great appetite, paused in the middle of his second spoonful – and for a being who had devoured highways for thirty years, that was a sight of historic significance.
“You…,” said Lao Wang and slowly sat down on the sturdiest chair there was. “You are not dead?”
“Dead?”, Old Feng – or rather: Master Gu – laughed and put down his spoon. “Boy, in the last thirty years I’ve cooked seven hundred and twelve different broths. The opposite of dead.”
“But you have grown old!”, cried Lao Wang. “You are – you are not old! You look like thirty years ago!”
“That comes from the vegetables,” said Master Gu. “And a little bit from the fact that since 1996 I have not been fully in the physical world.”
“Ah,” said Jun. “And this is the moment where everyone says ‘What, please?!’ at the same time?”
“What, please?!”, everyone said at the same time.
Master Gu sat down with them at the table, and the yellow light lines in his apron hummed softly, like an old refrigerator that is content.
“Then let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “There are three things you need to know. First: The First Network was never a computer project. Second: It was a recipe. And third…” – he looked at Lao Wang for a long time – “…third, you wrote it.”
“I WROTE WHAT?”, said Lao Wang so loudly that several tables in the entire hall bent.
“Calm down, boy. You were twenty-two. It was three in the morning. The student job. The night shift oven. Do you remember the night when you were tired and dreamed you would ‘get to know all the people in the neighborhood one by one’?”
Lao Wang slowly turned pale. “I… copied my notes into my recipe book the next morning. I thought it was a shopping list.”
“That,” said Master Gu, “was a flowchart for human connection in shorthand. In a single dream you had written down what forty engineers had failed at for six years. That’s why the book had to go. That’s why I disappeared. That’s why I hid it.”
“In a fish delivery van?”, asked Meilin.
“Fish keep contact lines fresh,” said Master Gu seriously. “That’s science.”
“That is not science,” said Meilin.
“Not for you,” said Master Gu, and it was unclear whether he meant it seriously, which was often the case with him.
Bao-Bao meanwhile had stopped pulling noodles and stood motionless, his spoon half raised like a soldier at ceremony. 🤖
“Master,” he said quietly. “If the First Network was a recipe… what was the eighth ingredient already back then?”
“Good question, little oven,” said Master Gu. “The answer is: it didn’t exist yet.”
Silence.
“It didn’t exist?”, repeated Lao Wang. “But my grandfather –”
“Your grandfather knew that it was missing,” said Master Gu. “He knew all his life that there was a gap at the end of the recipe. That’s why he never wrote down what the eighth ingredient was. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. Until today.”
He looked at Chiwang, who sat silently in front of his soup. Then at Xiaofeng, whose light pulsed calmly. Then at Bao-Bao.
“The eighth ingredient,” he said, “is what happened at the table today. A hunger that settled. A heart that took a seat. A noodle robot that treated a guest with respect. And a stubborn cook who trusted his instinct more than a piece of paper. The eighth ingredient cannot be cooked. You can only be it.”
“That is either,” said Uncle Tao and discreetly blew his nose into a non-existence form, “the most beautiful or the most impractical ingredient I’ve ever heard of. And I was at a conference on bureaucracy cookbooks.” 🕴️
“But then why the whole escape?”, asked Jun. “The hiding? The train? The three packages to Jiaxing?”
“Ah, the packages,” said Master Gu and waved it off. “Those were gifts. For friends. You can take them when you leave.”
“And why did the van then drive by itself?”
“I just don’t like sitting in traffic,” said Master Gu. “Next question.”
“Then why did you tell BAO-BAO that he is the carrier?”, asked Meilin. “Chiwang was looking for the carrier of the notebook and thought it was the robot.”
“Because he was almost right,” said Master Gu and slowly stood up. He pointed to the light map floating above the hall – and to a new, tiny point that was neither bright nor dark, but simply different. “Do you see the point? It is new. It was created today. I always thought the eighth ingredient had to be found. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe it has to be preserved. Because where this point shines –”
He zoomed the map closer. Shanghai. Hongbao Alley. A noodle restaurant.
“– someone else is just now taking over a restaurant. And since tonight no one there has seen anyone who really lives.”
Xiaofeng became silent. Chiwang put down his spoon for the first time in his life with a ringing sound that sounded like a bell toll.
“A third system,” he whispered. “That’s impossible.”
“Right,” said Master Gu and took off his apron again. “And since all impossible things have already happened today anyway: Who among you wants to go back home and save the noodle shop?”
Lao Wang looked at the point. Then at his apron. Then at his crew.
“The van still smells like fish,” he said.
“I’ll drive,” said Bao-Bao immediately. 🤖
“I still have to deliver to Jiaxing,” he added.
“That’s on the way,” said Master Gu. “It’s always on the way. Don’t ask.”