The wooden toll booth at the edge of Galaxy #200 smelled like hot sesame pancakes, roasted lamb fat, and fresh yellow road paint.
Outside the window, a hundred-mile-wide wormhole highway stretched straight into the dark void toward the center of the Local Supercluster. Massive compressed black-hole bricks formed a flat, unbreakable roadbed, while glowing white traffic lines guided a steady stream of Spirit-Furnace Star-Trains and fluffy Honey-Bun Delivery Bees toward the newly joined border worlds.
Inside the main administrative hall of the Civic Galaxy Plaza, Pei Xuan sat behind a plain pine table, sipping a mug of warm Sweet-Spring tea and looking at the floating blue screen in front of his eyes.
“Three hundred trillion mouths fed three times a day, and not a single burned pot,” Old Guo said happily as he wiped his hands on his greasy apron and set a plate of crispy deep-fried locust legs on the table. “Young Master, those thirty eastern galaxies that joined us yesterday couldn’t stop crying when the Honey-Bun Bees dropped off the morning pork buns. One old village chief tried to kowtow to a bee!”
“Tell them to save their knees for plowing the turnip fields,” Pei Xuan said with a smile, picking up a crunchy locust snack. “How is the highway paving crew doing out past the two-hundredth gate?”
