Hair Electricity
Author: ЛИ ЦЗЯЦИ | LI JIAQI

As a historian at the National Research Institute, Chou, who was walking the streets with his computer bag, was asked to investigate the local customs. Although he had seen the folk culture of many different places, the scenery here was still quite new to him - many people here had long hair, and their hair was soft and smooth in the amber-like sunlight. He looked at the shiny black hair which was on both sides of the street, and remembered that history books had written that people had worn their hair like this thousands of years ago. He touched his shorts and sparse hair,  feeling a surge of bitterness trough his heart for no reason.

  "Oh... I must hurry to work. When it gets dark and no electricity, I can only grope toughly in the night....." Chou recalled each night of working under the faint light. Because of the lack of light, he found himself at loose ends, simply can not stand.

  The gentle female mechanical intonations sounded, urging Chou to start a new day. He rolled out of bed and unconsciously pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, trying to pull out some hair.

  Since human scientific civilisation climbed one new peak after another, people have finally found in despair that the earth has no more resources to use. Those can be mined fuel has long been ran out, no matter how advanced the development of food and clothing in this new era, as long as there is not enough resources to support the power of human civilisation can begin to stall.

  So scientists turned to the human race itself, taking great pains to find the last utilisable value in this group of terrified people. However, this group of people who have to sell their labor force in exchange for subsistence in the era of rapid development cannot produce more recyclable things, except the hair that is falling out.

  At this time, biologists made a major breakthrough - using proteins to generate electricity, and after a large number of experiments proved that keratin in hair can be used on a large scale.

  This news is tantamount to a sound of thunder, woke up the group of exhausted resources scientists, after some practice, optimisation, they proudly declared: human hair can be used as a new type of energy to save the earth.

  Chou fumbled for a long time, nothing, only to remember that it had been a long time since he had cleaned his hair on the floor. He licked the corners of his dry lips and called for an intelligent butler to salvage bits of hair from various places.

  After a while, something that seemed apologetic came out of the butler's cold mechanical chamber: "It's been searched three times, and there's no hair left to recycle." Chou put on his shoes and paced to the window, obviously the hot sun was right for a trip, but he was surrounded by a sense of impenetrable powerlessness.

  Chou strolled the streets for a while and finally walked into a quaint coffee shop ready to get to work. Chou sat by the window and waited as usual for the ordering robot to arrive. Half an hour later, when he looked up from the pile of paper, he realised that there did not seem to be any robots here. He looked up at the rustic coffee shop, not built of lightweight materials or managed by intelligent systems, and thought it wasn't a very developed place. Standing not far away, the waiter saw that the customer finally took off from his busy work and hurriedly greeted him with a smile, "What would you like to drink, sir? The coffee in our shop is freshly made by hand."

  Chou sighed again, pure hand-ground coffee, seems to be the product of history books many centuries ago. He took two cautious sips, feeling as if the product was more mellow and aromatic than the beverage that had been removed from the industrial process.

  Generators shut down completely without fresh protein. With the sun soon to fade with the last of its glory and no hair left to power it, Chou turned off most of the smart systems in his home, leaving only a few functions running to speed up his daily work. Boundless loneliness like the tide engulfs Chou. He wanted to go out for a walk, but remembered how few lights were on either side of the street. To conserve resources to keep the city running, the government has ordered lights not to be turned on after dark if necessary. And the residents are required to hand in a certain amount of hair, in order to repair the public facilities. However, out of the door is only to witness some new technology era of steel products, it’s more boring. He was stumbling in the dark to the storage room from memory, trying to retrieve some nutrient fluid, and it was almost the end of the month, and there was no fresh hair to take to the clinic, which was not good.

Busy for a while with the research of the 21st century history book report, Chou looked at the sun falling below the horizon and decided to walk home with the last bit of afterglow. Today's work has been completed well, he was rarely in a good mood to hum. Walking slowly to the side of the road, he pulled out his communication device and prepared to book a car back to the hotel - unfortunately, the latter did not last a few seconds after he turned on the extreme power saving mode. Chou stood where he was, ashamed and embarrassed to express his appeal by dancing to passers-by. Finally, with the help of passers-by tired back to the hotel, he vaguely felt that this trip seems to be different from the usual investigation, but did not have the energy to think about it. In a comfortable room temperature, he wrapped the quilt deep sleep, safe and sweet, a night without dreams.

  Chou drank the last few bottles of nutrient fluid and lay in bed with the same anticipation as every other day, anticipating waking up with more newborns on her mottled scalp. Chou is very nostalgic for the bright days of the past, so day after day waiting for the dark day is really difficult.

After studying here for more than a week, Chou gradually adapted to the leisurely life here, and even enjoyed himself quite a bit. Here during the day you can see all kinds of literature can see the red walls and green tiles, pavilions, dense hot snacks will be the corners of the street soft, night markets under the stars lit, light and shadow flow, good a vibrant, full of vitality of the city, compared to the new materials of the skyscraper, the first time feeling the development of the low level of the place seems to have its charming place. But he's still haunted by questions: Why doesn't this place seem to be bothered at all by a lack of resources? What resources do they rely on to sustain such a large city? If it's electricity, what does it use to generate it? He tried to ask the people around him, but the man was puzzled,"Isn't it running on electricity?"

 "Where does electricity come from when we use so much electricity every day?"

The man was even more confused,"Of course, it is just by opening the electric switch."

  He was about to inquire further, but saw that the man's more suspicious face, the words to the mouth was swallowed. He looked at the man's pigtails at the back of his head and was more than  sure that there was no protein to generate electricity here.

  But despite these unusual signs, Chou's life here is very good. Because the institute didn’t give the traveling man more research tasks, Chou's work pressure was less. In the slow pace of life in a small town, Chou was even pleased to find that he had grown a lot of hair roots one morning.

   Happy time is always gone quickly. In a blink of an eye week has turned in this investigation into more than half a month, according to the plan, he would leave to return in two days. That day, he was referring to the history books, painting on the manuscript paper, recording what he saw and heard in this half month, trying to explain the various phenomena here. Suddenly, a shrill bell cut the quiet room, Chou readily connected, the opposite contains anger of the voice through the communicator, "Half a month didn’t go to work, you should inform us even if you quit!"

  The timer was doing its job, blasting in Chou's ear along with the emotionless mechanical timing. He looked at the time, and at exactly eight o 'clock in the morning of June 7, 3050, he jumped out of bed, ready to sort out the investigation data and report to the institute.

  When he dressed up and opened the paper, Chou was shocked by the empty paper, lying quietly on the table, as if everything had never changed.

  "That's the situation, doctor." Chou looked at the white coat frowning in front of him and felt uneasy. Chou's colleague Lin is more anxious than him,"Doctor, you quickly see what the problem is?" My colleague didn't come to work for half a month, and asked him if he was on a business trip as soon as he arrived. But we have not been out for nearly half a year, you see this - "he looked back at his eyes, about to speak.

  The department in front of us is one of the few doctors in this era who are only dominated by humans, after all, they need to contact human psychological emotions, and common medical robots still lack some empathy ability. Chou looked at the doctor and said with great certainty, "It's not a business trip, I went back to the past." He began to tell a vivid story of his wonderful experiences. Lin at first do not believe, want to stop his ridiculous "fantasy", but hear back, Lin gradually calm down, he listened to the description of the week, the mind slowly outline a picture of the years intact... Wait, doesn't that fit with the 21st century life story in the history books?

  The doctor turned to look at the holographic electronic screen. When he entered the department, he observed the organs and hormones in Chou’s whole body and looked at Chou's resume, male, 23 years old, national first-class history researcher...... Obviously in the prime of his life, there are very few black stubble on his hair...Doctor smiled and talked to Chou,”You have an amazing job,”he pulsed, his eyes flashing with concern under the scanning mirror, "But haven't you rested for a long time?"

  Chou froze. Obviously, immersed in his story of traveling through time and space, he didn’t understand.

  “Obviously, I mean, you do need to see a doctor for a hallucination about a nervous breakdown, Mr. Chou.”