Chapter 55

Earth, New Bamboo Forest Tribe, Cosmic Era 1002 Laila squatted by the campfire, watching the young boy use coffee grounds to paint a new spirit butterfly pattern on a pottery jar. The scorch marks at the bottom of the jar resonated with the coffee machine wreckage she had discovered during her archaeological excavations, and the flames suddenly projected a phantom image from the Human Era: Chuntao teaching Lin Xiaoman's Data Ghost how to bake cookies, the light spilling from the opening and closing of the oven door overlapping with the glow of the campfire. "The elders in our tribe say that coffee grounds can connect us to the ancestors' spirit net." The boy tossed a bamboo twig bearing binary patterns into the fire, and the flames immediately leaped into the shape of a Möbius strip. "Last month, someone drank memory soup and drew the gear structure of a Mechanical Panda."