[Excerpt from Interview Transcript – Conjecture, Logic, and the Blade Runner’s Gravedigger
This was a telephone interview. The author never met the subject in person, nor knew their location. Making contact with any member of the military task force from that time was already quite difficult. The author made numerous inquiries, both inside and outside relevant circles, contacted many people, went through lengthy procedures, and finally arranged the interview through friends at the PLA Daily Media Center.
“Simply put, getting this nuclear weapon released from storage involved many twists and turns. I can’t reveal the specific details, but it was indeed very difficult, you understand.”
The voice on the phone was male, speaking quickly and decisively.
“The yield of the nuclear weapon you used was ten kilotons?”
I asked.
“That’s correct, ten kilotons.” The voice replied. “This yield was carefully considered. The China Nuclear Industry analyzed and discussed the Nanjing Command Center’s requirements in detail. Command’s requirements were extremely stringent—I’d personally never seen such a complex project. If they’d just wanted high yield and high power, that would’ve been manageable. If they’d just wanted low yield and low power, that also would’ve been manageable. The problem was they wanted high power in a small area but low power in a large area. That made things difficult… Though the yield wasn’t even the most challenging part.”
“But you managed it in the end.”
“Yes, we barely met their requirements. Killing an alien while not harming a little girl—anyone would find that troublesome. I must say that the Command Center Director in Nanjing was a formidable person. I heard he had a nickname.”
“Iron Hand Death-Seeker.”
“Uh… Director Zhao isn’t a bad person, just a bit impatient.”
“You mentioned earlier that yield wasn’t the most difficult part.”
“Yield was the simplest link in the entire mission chain. More complex was the delivery method… Joking among ourselves—and I’m just joking here—we said dropping a missile on Washington wouldn’t be this difficult.” He gave a dry laugh. “Conventional delivery methods were completely unsuitable for this mission. Our existing missiles—whether long-range or short-range—were all useless. We had to design the solution from scratch.”
“So you used the Long March 5?”
“Correct. The timing was fortunate too. After searching everywhere, the solution fell right into our laps. It happened to be just before the Long March 5 Y3 launch. We had very limited time to design the delivery method and had to use whatever was available. The Long March 5 was like a pillow being handed to someone sleepy—it perfectly solved the payload capacity problem. The Long March 5 has over 20 tons of LEO capacity, which was very suitable. We immediately contacted Wenchang, and fortunately, the Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, especially the Sixth Academy, provided great support.”
“So the Long March 5 became a trans-temporal strategic nuclear missile?”
“No, no, no, you can’t say that. The Long March 5 still played the role of a delivery vehicle, not a missile.” The voice answered. “Because the mission requirements were completely different from a normal strike. Command required that the nuclear weapon couldn’t be air-burst, only ground-burst or semi-underground detonation, and it had to detonate at a specific time and location. But if you asked exactly what time and location, nobody could answer. Without even being able to confirm the target, even the most precise guided weapons would be flying blind. So everything had to be manually controlled. The Long March 5 was just a delivery vehicle, responsible for getting that nuclear weapon there, ensuring the recipient could receive it.”
“But the Long March 5 alone couldn’t accomplish this. You had to ensure the nuclear weapon could precisely re-enter the atmosphere and land steadily on the ground.”
“Yes, the Long March 5 was only responsible for getting it up there; we needed a vehicle to bring it back safely. The nuclear weapon couldn’t re-enter the atmosphere on its own.” The voice replied. “So we again used what was available. By the end of last year, China’s new generation crewed spacecraft was already being tested. There wasn’t a more suitable vehicle than that, so we borrowed it.”
I was startled.
“The Shenzhou spacecraft?”
“No, not Shenzhou, the new spacecraft—Shenzhou’s replacement. Two-stage structure, the one that publicly made its first flight this May. The one that flew mid-year was the backup; we’d borrowed the primary vehicle half a year earlier.”
“Borrowed it to carry a nuclear weapon?”
“We put the nuclear weapon in the command module, strapped it in safely, then sent it up. The public announcement called it Practice Satellite 20.” The voice answered. “[REDACTED] was very angry. He called us saying borrowing the spacecraft was fine, but it had to be returned.”
“[REDACTED]?”
“Yes, he was one of those in charge. Because we were rushing for time and had special authority, we acted first and reported later. Many units were unhappy.”
“So it sounds like there was significant resistance during the plan’s implementation.”
“There was, but I can’t elaborate on that.”
“All right, next question. The nuclear weapon was successfully delivered, but how did you manage to eliminate the big eye while not harming Ban… BG4MSR?”
“This question… one moment, let me check if this has been declassified… Okay, I can answer this. As I mentioned earlier, delivery wasn’t the most difficult part of the entire mission chain. The most difficult aspect was the trigger—how to have Miss Qiu detonate it at the right time and place, killing the Blade Runner without causing collateral damage. We couldn’t just dig a super-large hole in the ground and wait for the Blade Runner to step in, right? This stumped all of us from the very beginning of Operation Red East’s planning phase. If we didn’t have to consider MSR’s life safety, we could have simply carpet-bombed the area with nuclear weapons, using a dozen MIRV warheads to plow through the entire urban area, ensuring the big eye’s death. But with a little girl there, that was completely unfeasible. From a certain perspective, she was like a hostage in the big eye’s hands—the hostage’s presence tied our hands.”
“Understandable.”
“This problem troubled us for a long time. As long as it remained unsolved, Miss Qiu couldn’t be deployed. This continued unresolved, nearly derailing Phase Three of Operation Red East. It looked like we wouldn’t be able to use Miss Qiu… until that night when MSR encountered the big eye and fell into the well, surviving against all odds. That’s when our breakthrough came.”
“What breakthrough?”
“It was a conjecture—a conjecture at the time, though later confirmed. This conjecture was crucial; it brought us an earth-shattering reversal.”
I held my breath, ears perked.
“The evening after MSR’s brush with death, that little girl was describing the big eye to Bai Yang. She said something strange—she didn’t know if it was a coincidence, but she always made eye contact with the big eye.”
I repeated this sentence in my mind:
“This sentence concealed a great secret?”
“An enormous secret. It revealed a logic in Blade Runner that humans couldn’t understand—the key to how Blade Runner could grasp the human world’s vital points, but it also gave us a way to dig the big eye’s grave… Director Zhao and his team uncovered this secret and successfully buried that Blade Runner. And the tools they used were nothing more than two cameras—”]