He walked upstairs and saw Alice Grant leaning against the door with her arms crossed.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Alice Grant kept a straight face. "I'm thirsty and don't know where to get water."

"Oh." Brian Carter understood. "I'll go get you some water."

He turned and headed back downstairs, with Alice Grant following behind him.

Brian Carter: "Let me get it for you. You go rest."

Alice Grant: "Okay." She didn't stop, still trailing behind Brian Carter.

Brian Carter fell silent.

After pouring her some water in the kitchen, Brian Carter led her around the house, introducing how to use the various things. After forty years of upgrades, many products had changed quite a bit.

When Alice Grant went out to buy groceries, she forgot her phone. Now, seeing Brian Carter turn on the large built-in screen in the living room and show her how to change channels, she suddenly remembered a question.

"What do phones look like now?"

Brian Carter took a black button off his watch strap. The tiny button unfolded in his hand, turning into a palm-sized screen.

"Phones now are equivalent to the old ID cards, bank cards, and some other cards. You have to link your ID, and use it for payments, browsing information, contacts—everything is on this, including the home security and adjustment systems. It's also like a personal computer; a lot of people use it to handle information now," Brian Carter explained.

Alice Grant looked at it and said, "I thought the screens would get really big."

Brian Carter: "You can adjust the screen size yourself. I'm just used to this size." As he spoke, he demonstrated, and sure enough, the screen could get bigger or smaller.

Alice Grant finally found something about forty years later that she actually liked. She used to hate having a pile of different IDs and certificates, and phones getting bigger and more inconvenient to carry.

"Tomorrow we'll get you an ID and a residence permit, and buy you a phone."

"Okay." Alice Grant sat down on the sofa, picked up the TV control screen, and started fiddling with it.

Seeing her slouched there, head down, playing with the control screen and not paying him any attention, Brian Carter remembered the past. Alice Grant was always like this—she loved playing games, and when she wasn't working, she was addicted to them, a full-grown internet addict. He stood by for a while, and, like a helpless old father, advised, "You've had a long day. Why not rest first and get familiar with this tomorrow?"

Alice Grant didn't even look up. "I can't sleep."

There was nothing he could do, so Brian Carter just walked away and left her alone.

Brian Carter returned to his own room, the door closing with a click. Alice Grant's hands paused, and she looked up at Brian Carter's door, not moving for a long time.

Suddenly, music blared from the TV, and Alice Grant turned her attention back to the flashing big screen. She searched for a large game she used to play, only to discover...

"The servers are shut down!" They'd been closed for twenty years.

Fuming, she kicked a sofa cushion across the room, then angrily searched for other games. But logging in required ID verification, and as someone who didn't have an ID yet, Alice Grant could only quit, then kicked another cushion away.

She searched for everything she was familiar with, one by one. Some things could still be found, but they'd all changed, and most couldn't be found at all. She thought of the phrase "things remain but people change," and felt her heart fill with sorrow.

Suddenly, her hand froze, and the stern look on her face finally showed a hint of joy. Her favorite adventure novel—the author had written it on and off for ten years, making her wait from high school to marriage, with no end in sight. She'd thought she'd never see the ending in her lifetime, but now, searching for it, she found it had officially concluded ten years ago! She could actually see the end of this huge story in her lifetime!

She stayed up most of the night finishing the book, and read the author's final words: "All people must part ways. Every moment, we are experiencing a farewell."

Alice Grant tossed aside the control screen and collapsed onto the sofa, closing her eyes.

Brian Carter was still there, but she felt as if she had already parted forever from the Brian Carter she once knew.

Alice Grant fell asleep on the sofa. Not long after, Brian Carter's bedroom door quietly opened. He, who should have been asleep, was still neatly dressed in his daytime clothes, with no intention of resting. He walked softly over to Alice Grant, picked up the two cushions from the floor, turned off the TV, and, with some effort, lifted Alice Grant in his arms.

"Getting old, getting old," he sighed softly, a little out of breath.

When Alice Grant woke up in the morning, she found herself lying in the guest room bed, the blanket tucked in nicely. Sitting on the bed, she thought, Old Mr. Jiang can still carry her?

She got up to brush her teeth and wash her face, went downstairs, and as she reached the stairway, she heard a strange old man's voice coming from the living room.

"Hey, Old Jiang, are you coming fishing with me today? My son will drive us there, and we'll have lunch at the fish restaurant. In the afternoon, my son can pick us up again."

Brian Carter's voice sounded, "I'm not going. You go by yourself. I have things to do. I've got things to do these days."

The unfamiliar old man had a loud, hearty voice, sounding like a cheerful old fellow. "Oh come on, what could you possibly have to do? Just research, right? Always staying home alone tinkering with those things—your brain's gone bad, your health is worse than mine and I'm over seventy!"