Chapter 61: The Past: The Chariot (II)

"Good morning, Dad."

"Good morning, Nia." Ruifan combed his sparse hair carefully in front of the mirror while saying good morning to his beloved daughter.

"Where's that brat? Did he drive off to work?" Lao Ruifan slowly walked out of the bathroom, came to the dining table, and prepared to enjoy a delicious breakfast made by his daughter.

"Same as usual." Nia grinned, showing two cute dimples.

Perhaps because she had been carefully cared for by her husband and father, she showed no trace of being a married woman; she still acted like a young girl, carelessly happy all day long.

"That's good..." Lao Ruifan nodded, eating fresh fried eggs while holding his phone and opening the electronic newspaper.

This was a habit Lao Ruifan had developed in the past: he needed to eat while reading various news items on the newspaper, whether boring or interesting, to have an appetite.

Even now that paper newspapers had become extinct, Lao Ruifan still had no intention of changing this lifestyle habit, stubbornly sticking to his own ways.

He would rather spend most of his time researching phones with increasingly new functions, just to download a useful news information APP.

Lao Ruifan swiped up and down on the phone screen with his thumb while putting food into his mouth, only stopping when he reached a certain page of news.

"What's wrong?" Nia asked, tilting her head, looking at her old father with some surprise as if he had been turned to stone.

Lao Ruifan was startled out of his trance by her words, silently wiped the sweat seeping from his forehead, but the hand holding the tissue trembled slightly.

"Nothing, nothing..." Lao Ruifan forced a smile at his daughter, lowered his head to eat the remaining half of the fried egg, and hid all his churning emotions beneath those old wrinkles.

Nia raised an eyebrow; she had grown used to her father's occasional strange behavior.

"Nia... I..." Lao Ruifan hesitated for a few seconds, opened his mouth wide, but could not utter a single word.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing... I'll tidy up and get ready for work." Lao Ruifan spoke in a calm tone, trying hard not to let his daughter see through him.

"Okay, okay, come back early!" Nia, suspecting nothing, stood up, gently gave the old man a hug, and then tied his tie for him.

"Okay." Ruifan replied softly, swallowing many unspoken words along with the egg residue into his stomach.

Nia, as usual, saw her old father to the door, watching his slightly limping back slowly step out the threshold until it disappeared from sight.

For some reason, she had a strange feeling.

I hope I'm overthinking it.

She muttered to herself, closed the big door, and kept the rising sun and the blowing cold wind outside the house.

◎

"Hey, did you hear?"

"What?" Dila scratched his messy hair and asked with some impatience.

"You didn't go to the meeting this morning, did you? I really don't know where you ran off to..." The colleague helplessly shook his head, pulled out the chair next to Dila, and sat down heavily.

"A beer! Thanks."

"Two." Dila said to the waitress walking towards them.

It was still this motel; except for the people, everything else seemed to have changed very little.

The once mature and charming boss had turned from an auntie into an old lady, and no young drivers with flowery words invited her for a drive anymore.

Since Lao Ruifan retired and stopped driving, he rarely came here to eat, drink, and have fun; instead, Dila had taken over the old man's mantle, always coming here to rest during his spare time.

"I thought you quit drinking; didn't you say you were planning to prepare for pregnancy with your wife?"

"Business is hard these days... Without money, where is there room to consider such things..." Dila sighed and drank the cold beer in big gulps.

In 2073, the rookie driver Dila had long shed his youth and become one of the few top hands at the taxi Company.

The former Company ace, Lao Ruifan, was quite satisfied with this young man and simply married his beloved daughter to him.

"Hey, look at my memory, the topic went off track again... Where were we just now?"

"The morning meeting..." Dila gave his colleague the middle finger and reminded him grumpily.

"Ah, that's it." The colleague slapped his thigh and nodded repeatedly. "You don't know yet? They fired everyone on all the store floors!"

"Are they crazy?" Dila frowned, deeply puzzled by the Company's upper management's move. "Firing all those old people, where will they find experienced staff who have undergone full-time training?"

"Who knows... I heard they want to replace everything with drones and automate..."

"Automation? On what basis do they think AI can compete with humans?" Dila shouted, but his voice grew smaller and smaller as he spoke.

Even if he was psychologically unwilling to accept it, he had to admit that AI was gradually replacing their positions.

"You're becoming more and more like Lao Ruifan..." The colleague sighed softly. "By the way, how is that old guy doing lately? Didn't he retire and stop driving? What job does he do now?"

Dila's eyebrows knitted together, and a bad omen seized his heart.

"I didn't ask... That old guy doesn't like people interfering with him... Since he retired, the Company should have arranged work for him... Could it be store work?"

"Then you should take some time to go home and check. Lao Ruifan is stubborn to death... If he loses his job, who knows what he might do..." The colleague advised Dila to go home and see his father-in-law.

"Damn... I still have a job to run later..." Dila muttered and punched the table hard.

In this era where taxi drivers' salaries kept dropping, just picking up passengers by chance couldn't earn much money. The main bulk of income had shifted to reservation jobs.

Therefore, every reservation job they took was crucial; the difference of one more or one less could be the question of whether they could eat the next day.

To support his family, Dila could not give up the work at hand.

"At this time, the old guy should already be at work..." Dila stood up, paced back and forth in place, and kept muttering to himself, trying to convince himself.

"Hey, don't be so nervous..." The colleague pulled Dila's sleeve. "Lao Ruifan has lived this long; he won't easily take his own life. Just consider me drunk and speaking nonsense; don't worry too much. If you really care, just make a phone call."

"Alright... I almost forgot..." Dila slumped back into the chair somewhat dejectedly and drank the remaining beer in the glass in one gulp.

"But this Company, using AI to assist driving was one thing, but how can they now hand over even these stores to those cold-headed things?"

"I even suspect AI has already infiltrated the Company's management... We should just hold meetings online from now on." Dila twitched his mouth, telling a joke that wasn't very funny.