Chapter 5: A Talent
The next morning, One went out to find a job.
He didn’t go to the job fair; there were too many people there.
He walked cautiously along less-traveled side streets, observing the situation and carefully reading the small advertisements posted on utility poles.
He saw some very hard-to-understand ads. On a piece of wrinkled, rain-soaked paper, a few large characters were haphazardly distributed: “Cures all, contact XX887X.”
The ad was damaged, and the number was illegible.
One stared at the utility pole for a long time before carefully peeling off the small advertisement.
Human hands weren’t very easy to use; the fingers were too soft and too thick to remove the paper without damaging it. So, One quietly extended a metal filament from his fingertip.
A moment later, the small ad was folded neatly and placed in his pocket.
“According to my calculations,” One thought to himself as he walked, “human technology is not advanced enough to cure all diseases.”
“This piece of paper may be an important clue.” He looked around cautiously, determined to present this discovery as a highlight of his work in his next report to the homeworld.
One walked a long way, and his pocket grew bulging, filled with a series of medical breakthroughs like “Cures All,” “Guaranteed Male Births,” and “Resurrection from the Dead.”
He turned a corner and saw a shop with a sign hanging on the door that said “Hiring.”
There was only one man in the shop. One walked in. “Hello, I need a job.”
The man looked up, frowning at One. “Tell me about yourself.”
One was stumped. He hesitated. “I can do anything…”
With a thud, the man placed a bottle of liquid on the table. “Sell this fruit juice. I’ll pay you based on how much you sell.”
In a daze, One found himself with a temporary job. He stood at the shop entrance, holding a bottle of juice. He couldn’t help but analyze the liquid’s composition.
There was almost no fruit content, only various strange additives.
He was somewhat perplexed, unsure why this mixture of additives was called “fruit juice.”
But it was a job. When a woman walked by, One approached her.
“Hello, would you like some fruit juice?”
The woman stared straight ahead as if she hadn’t seen One, but her feet automatically moved in an arc, avoiding him.
Inside the shop, the man crossed his legs and watched the scene outside with a leisurely air.
One looked at the woman’s back, then at himself, confirming that he was not invisible.
“Strange,” he said quietly, not thinking there was anything wrong with him.
Then, One approached the second person who passed by.
He was avoided in the same way.
In succession, seven people ignored One’s attempts to speak to them. Finally, a short old man stopped.
“What’s this?” the old man’s voice was loud. “Why does it look like pesticide? Don’t you try to cheat me out of my money!”
The old man looked at One suspiciously. “It won’t poison anyone, will it?”
One carefully re-analyzed the composition of the juice and then solemnly told the old man, “Although the ingredients are of no benefit to humans, it is not so bad as to be lethal.”
A rather stiff smile appeared on One’s face. “You could give it a try.”
He firmly remembered the old man’s point of concern and repeatedly emphasized, “It will not kill you.” He tried hard to sell the juice, so his description was very detailed. “The ingredients may cause mild diarrhea, but it really will not kill you.”
The old man stared at him, dumbfounded.
The man inside the shop shot up, rushed out, and snatched the bottle of juice from One’s hand.
The old man ran off in a panic, his cane tapping rapidly on the ground like a woodpecker. The man from the shop slammed the door shut and yelled through it, “You psycho! Get lost! If you don’t get lost, I’ll find someone to beat you to death!”
One looked at the old man’s retreating back, then at the man in the shop, and clearly realized he had lost his first job.
He lowered his head and walked on in silence, not knowing what he had done wrong.
The sun was about to set, and One still hadn’t found a job.
He couldn’t understand what humans were thinking. His mechanical energy churned; he felt no emotion, yet he found himself somewhat afraid to approach humans.
One walked on in silence.
Suddenly, he received a signal.
“One.”
One heard Two’s voice.
One immediately stood still and responded sternly, “Didn’t I say not to contact me like this unless it’s an emergency? It could be detected by humans.”
Through the fluctuating signal, Two replied, “I remember, but this is the first time we’ve been separated. I was a little worried.”
One didn’t speak.
Two continued, “Everything is fine over here.”
“Pang Hua and Little Dirtball are sleeping. Cai Feng…” Two paused slightly. “Cai Feng ate two large bowls of rice and a bowl of stewed meat.”
“One, how are things on your end?”
“Good.” Besides that, One had no other answer. “Everything is good here.”
“As expected of Number One,” Two offered a subtle compliment. “So you found a job, right?”
One stood in a corner where the light was dim. An insect tentatively crawled onto his foot.
“Yes, I found a job,” he replied.
After the signal was cut, One started walking again, this time toward a place where there were people. Ahead was a dilapidated gate, and it was noisy inside.
One walked in. “Hello…”
He saw the scene inside. A row of people was working hard to package some letter paper, while a short man sorted the packaged paper into boxes.
On the other side, a heavy-set woman was slumped over a desk, writing something in a frantic state.
“I’m looking for a job.”
No one looked up at him.
One had no choice but to say it again, louder. “Hello, I’m looking for a job!”
The short man looked up. “What can you do?”
One, having learned from his previous experience, said, “I can’t do anything.”
The people responsible for packaging stole a moment from their work to laugh. The short man ignored One and focused on organizing the boxes.
The heavy-set woman inside cried out in frustration, “Oh heavens, the client said they don’t want a handwritten inventory list. Now they want us to make a list on the computer and send it to them.”
The short man grew anxious too. “Who here knows how to use a computer? We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to ask Little Zhao from the next street for help. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
The woman complained nonstop. “I told you computers would be useful eventually. We spent so much money on one, and you just can’t learn how to use it.”
The short man knew he was at fault and defended himself in a low voice, “Didn’t I say? I’m going to take a training class, but it’s been too busy lately…”
“I can use a computer,” One’s voice suddenly rang out.
The short man looked at him dubiously. “Didn’t you say you can’t do anything?”
One couldn’t explain. He walked straight in, over to the clumsy computer in the room.
“It’s very expensive,” the woman reminded him worriedly. “If you break it, you’ll have to pay for it.”
One placed his hand on the mouse. Strictly speaking, this clumsy computer was his ancestor.
An alien ancestor, that is.
“It’s a bit difficult,” One said truthfully.
Then, he continuously downgraded a logic circuit in his body until it could go no lower. From the palm holding the mouse, invisibly thin metal filaments extended into the computer’s central unit.
The woman looked at One with concern, but in the blink of an eye, One had already grasped the entire operational logic of this old alien ancestor.
When the woman blinked again, One turned to look at her. “It’s done.”
He showed the spreadsheet to the woman.
The woman was astounded. She looked at the short man outside. “Old Qian! Didn’t it take Little Zhao a whole morning to make a spreadsheet before?”
Old Qian nodded. “Yes.”
The woman looked at One, thought carefully, and then shouted loudly, “Old Qian, I suspect that son of a bitch Little Zhao has been scamming us! This thing is super fast to make!”
One knew he had made another mistake, and that Little Zhao had been wrongly accused because of him, but he didn’t dare to speak.
Old Qian ran over and carefully examined the beautiful spreadsheet One had made. After looking, he asked, “Are you looking for a job?”
“Yes.”
The woman looked at One carefully. “There aren’t many talented people who know how to use a computer these days. You could find a job at a big company. Why come here?”
Old Qian coughed. “Yulan, he’s looking for a job. Just say yes or no. Why ask so many questions?”
Yulan looked around the courtyard, then at the spreadsheet One had made, feeling as if she were burying such a great talent.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Yulan said. “Our factory usually just has my husband and me. We only hire temporary workers when we’re too busy.”
“We only have one machine, and it can only print letter paper and exercise books. And we bought it secondhand from someone who didn’t want it.”
“If the machine breaks down one day and we can’t afford to fix it, this factory will go bankrupt.” Yulan asked seriously, “You’re good at making spreadsheets, and you’re more honest than Little Zhao. If you looked for a proper job, you could definitely find something much better than this. We can’t pay much either.”
Old Qian glared at Yulan and smiled fawningly at One. “It’s not that bad. Don’t worry, as long as the two of us can earn a single penny, you’ll definitely get your wages.”
They were talking too much. One directly extracted the keyword—will go bankrupt.
He gave a reserved nod. “This is the job I want most.”
When One got home that evening, he was carrying a large bag.
Two and Cai Feng, each holding a baby, were sitting at the table. Under their expectant gazes, One opened the bag.
Inside the large bag were eight large steamed buns.
“My boss gave them to me,” One explained. “They said I am a rare talent.”
Because they had no money to give the talent today, Yulan had given him freshly steamed buns. The temporary workers got two each. One was a talent, so he got eight.
“I walked a long way today and familiarized myself with the environment here.”
“When I wanted to find a job, I was immediately invited by someone.”
This was One’s summary of his day.