Alien Relic Hunter

In this era, the word "cooking" can almost be equated with "luxury".

Food is scarce, and everyone can’t fill their stomachs... In this environment, as long as they can find someone to eat, the first reaction of many people is to stuff it into their own stomachs before others find out. In the mouth... at least the taste and texture, that doesn't matter at all.

As long as that thing satisfies hunger, that's enough.

But on the Ark, finding food was difficult.

If famine breaks out on the earth, people can choose to go deep into the mountains and forests to find food... Although it is dangerous to do so, no matter what, as long as there are living creatures, you will definitely find something to eat. But on this colonial ship, even if people dig deep, all they can see is metal and concrete.

Almost all food sources are in the hands of the government and a few powerful private forces.

A few months ago, there were still people selling dead rats skewered with steel drills on the black market, but now, even cockroaches are almost extinct on the Ark.

People are almost ready to eat without exchanging their children.

Before the disaster, although supplies were not abundant, they could at least keep most people fed and clothed... Many people miss their previous lives, but they also know in their hearts that they can no longer return to that kind of life... At least their generation will definitely never see the Ark return to what it was before.

Linden held the bag of bean sprouts in his arms, lowered his head, and walked quickly through a narrow alley.

At the entrance of the alley, there was an old man sitting with a sallow face and thin muscles. He had his eyes closed and his arms were drooped on both sides of his body, as if he was asleep.

In front of the old man, there was an empty aluminum bowl filled with dents.

When Linden got close to the old man, a disgusting smell of corpses suddenly penetrated his nose. Only then did he realize that the old man had been dead for a long time.

Whether he died of starvation or some other cause of death, Linden did not know.

No one came to collect the corpse, and the people in the sanitation department also couldn't get enough food. After completing their duties, these people just wanted to rest for a while, so as to reduce the consumption of calories as much as possible... This corpse , I’m afraid it won’t be disposed of until it completely rots.

Of course, it is also possible that some people who "break through the bottom line" will be secretly dragged away.

"Cannibals" are no longer just stories that appear in urban legends. Just last month, the military executed a group of people arrested for mutilating and eating their own kind. The entire execution was watched on the screen.

Those cannibals had their limbs tied with restraints and huddled on the ground. Their bloodshot eyes bulged outwards, their lips were covered with ulcers, and their loose hair obscured most of their faces... They didn't look like people, but the kind of people in horror novels who were hidden in dark sewers and were called... A monster called a "ghoul".

According to Ark's new laws, corpse eaters will be punished by death, regardless of whether the corpse was killed by a corpse eater or not.

But under the pressure of hunger, some people will always choose to take risks.

Linden no longer looked back at the old man's body, but chose to speed up his pace again.

Half an hour later, he finally returned to his residence safely.

After Ark came out of the wormhole, the original "safe zones" protected by the army were revoked, and Linden also moved to a shanty town in the East Fourth District.

The East Fourth District was originally the superior area of ​​Ark. The commercial streets and luxury residential areas here are worth every inch of land. Even with Linden's family situation before the disaster, they only lived in the East Sixth District... …Compared with the rent and land prices in the Sixth District, the East Fourth District is more than twice as expensive.

But in the process of traveling through the wormhole, the entire East Sixth District has completely turned into an unlivable dead place. According to the official budget, it will take at least twenty years to restore these dead places to their original habitable appearance. time.

Not to mention anything else, just repairing the damaged hull, removing radiation, and reconnecting the gas and water supply pipes and power lines will take a statistical unit of time of years. Not to mention that Ark now simply cannot devote so much resources and manpower to repairing a residential area that has little strategic value.

The buildings in the East Fourth District were also seriously damaged during the crossing, but at least the basic life-support facilities were not greatly affected. There were no problems with the airtightness of the space and the oxygen supply. As for the power outage, it was not a big problem. .

More than fifty mobile searchlights are distributed at various street intersections in the East Fourth District as lighting equipment. However, in order to save energy, these searchlights are only on for one-third of the day. In addition, most of the time Residents of the East Fourth District must survive in the dark.

This shantytown was originally a high-end residential area located in a prime location, but all the valuable mansions were destroyed by the secondary disasters caused by the crossing, and no one was spared. The military used construction materials cleared from the ruins to build shacks in a rough manner to house refugees who had moved from other uninhabitable damaged areas.

Linden checked the simple homemade lock on his door. After making sure there was no sign of prying, he took out the key from his pocket and opened the door lock. Then he put the lock on the other side of the door and locked the door. .

With a hint of excitement, he walked to the sleeping bag placed in the corner of the room, put his hand into the sleeping bag and groped for a while, and then took out a small package of transparent crystals wrapped in a plastic bag.

This is an essential ingredient in every household’s cooking before disaster strikes: salt.

Now, the main way to obtain sodium and chloride is through small pills swallowed every day along with those dough-like synthetic foods. As for real salt, it has long become a luxury product that is as difficult to obtain as vegetables.

Of course, Lyndon couldn't afford real table salt. These transparent crystals were actually sodium chloride that he extracted chemically from industrial raw materials for repairing ship hulls.

In the old era, people often mistook "industrial salt" for "table salt" and were poisoned. However, in fact, the ingredients of industrial salt and table salt are completely different. The former is also called nitrite, and its main component is sodium chloride. There is also sodium nitrite. If it is pure sodium chloride, whether it is obtained through traditional salt-making processes or purified from industrial raw materials, it is actually edible.

Linden used the crystallization method to separate sodium chloride. After initially waiting for the coarse salt to crystallize, he carried out several purifications. Although it was impossible to achieve a complete absence of any impurities, at least the toxicity was negligible.

You don’t need to use too much salt, just a little bit is enough to add freshness to the dishes.

Although bean sprouts are simple, because there are so few types of vegetables that people can eat, this originally seemingly monotonous ingredient was almost made into flowers by the residents of the Ark before the disaster - as far as Lyndon's impression of his father is concerned, There have been at least twenty kinds of dishes cooked with bean sprouts as raw materials.

But most of the dishes require woks and oil, and salt can be purified from stolen industrial raw materials, but he really has no way to do these two things.

Based on the principle of using local materials, Linden decided to make two dishes that his father often cooked in the past: bean sprout pancakes and bean sprout soup.

He found a metal cup that had been scorched black at the bottom, wrapped a wire around the edge of the cup, and hung it under a tripod about thirty centimeters high - this tripod was found in the ruins of his residential area. What was picked up was originally supposed to be an accessory for a certain model of camera, but the camera had already been picked up by people who rushed to scavenge, leaving only the somewhat deformed tripod lying among a pile of rubble.

As for drinking water, he had plenty of it - the engineering team that Linden worked for had an enviable benefit, which included breakfast and lunch. Drinking water was naturally included in these two meals. Because the engineering team's work is very intensive, the supply of drinking water is also sufficient. Each person can draw at least 3,000 milliliters per day.

As for the drinking water originally distributed to residents, he saved it.

Linden carefully poured the clean water from the plastic bottle into the metal cup, and then added half of the bean sprouts and a pinch of salt.

The fuel used was oblate solid alcohol, which he also got from the engineering team... The day after the team leader died in an accident, he took advantage of the fact that no one was available to take over the team leader's work in time and updated the material call form in time. A lot of small but very useful goodies were secretly brought back from the engineering team's warehouse.

Lit the solid alcohol with a fire starter, and a bright fire suddenly rose in the originally dark shed. Although the temperature did not change much, it still made Linden feel a little warm. In addition to the power supply, the East Fourth District was damaged. Outside the lines, the temperature control facilities have also stopped working. The outdoor temperature remains around five degrees Celsius all year round, and the indoor temperature is barely ten degrees Celsius.

Fine bubbles began to emerge from the bottom of the metal cup, and Linden vaguely felt like he smelled a long-lost fragrance.

"Maybe it's an illusion..." He rubbed the wings of his nose, "Bean sprouts boiled in plain water...how could they smell fragrant?"

Lyndon smiled self-deprecatingly, and then took out a dented aluminum bowl from his coat pocket.

This was the bowl placed in front of the old man's body, but the old man could no longer use the bowl, so Linden brought it back.

The aluminum bowl is very thin. It is called a bowl, but it is actually a disposable container made of aluminum foil and used to hold cooked food. The old man probably picked it up from some ruins, but judging from the thin layer of dust accumulated on the aluminum bowl, it probably hadn't held food for a long time.

Linden wiped the aluminum bowl clean, cut one side of it, and flattened it into a piece of aluminum foil - he didn't have a pot, but it was enough to use this aluminum foil as a pancake cooker.

In the past, Linden's father used an electric baking pan that could clamp the dough, but now, Linden has neither an electric baking pan nor electricity.

He took out a bag of synthetic rations, added a little water to it, and then slowly stirred it with his fingers until the white powder and water were completely combined and turned into a sticky dough.

According to the way most people eat, it is ready to eat at this time, but if too much water is added, it will be more difficult to swallow. Generally, the batter is diluted and eaten as porridge.

But for Linden, he thought the water was a bit too much.

He had only seen his father do it before, but this was his first time doing it in practice.

Looking at the soft dough in the bag, he thought for a moment, took out a clean piece of clothing, poured the dough on it, and then wrapped the clothing tightly.

The excess moisture was quickly filtered out from the holes in the clothing fibers. Looking at the dough with at least half the moisture content, Linden nodded with satisfaction.

The main component of this synthetic ration is actually starch. Although it is not as easy to process into various pasta as flour, it can still be shaped as long as the proportion of water is controlled.

Linden kneaded the remaining half of the bean sprouts into the dough, added an appropriate amount of salt, rolled the dough into a ball, flattened it, wrapped the bread with aluminum foil, and then sandwiched it between the burning solid Above the alcohol, let the flames lick the surface of the aluminum foil again and again.

An alluring scent emanated from the cracks in the aluminum foil, and this time Linden could finally confirm that this was not his hallucination, but the real scent captured by his olfactory organs.

How long has it been since you smelled the aroma of food? After the Ark traveled through the wormhole? No, to be precise, it should be that after his father passed away and he and his mother moved into a safe zone protected by the military, they have never had cooked food again.

At that time, the daily food was compressed biscuits, and the soap-like taste was still fresh in Linden's memory... However, now even compressed biscuits have become a popular delicacy.

Just in the East Fourth District, a soldier was attacked by civilians last week. He was hit in the back of the head with a brick and died directly... and the reason for the attack was simply because he was holding a cardboard box with compressed biscuits printed on it.

However, the attackers did not find food in the cardboard box. The cardboard box contained a pile of documents, which was important information rescued from the ruined building.

Before the disappointed attacker could vent his anger on these documents, he was shot dead by the soldiers who came to support him, and the video in the news broadcast ended abruptly.

The smell of pancakes became stronger and stronger, and Linden's abdomen began to make a gurgling sound... He couldn't help but swallow a mouthful of saliva.

At this moment, there was a sudden banging sound outside the shack door.

"Is there anyone inside? Open the door quickly!" an impatient male voice shouted outside the door.

Linden's hand shook, and the dough wrapped in aluminum foil fell onto the solid alcohol, and the flames were immediately extinguished.

…

[P.S. This extra chapter ends here, leaving an open ending. Everyone can rely on their own imagination and the background of that era to guess the direction of the plot. As for the real ending - history will never record the story of an insignificant person. 】