Today is December 10th.

Keeping clear records of dates and times was a good habit left by the teacher, one that Banxia had maintained until now. Even Bai Yang was surprised that she kept such a self-disciplined and rigorous habit while living alone. Bai Yang couldn’t understand the meaning of recording dates as the last person on Earth, but the teacher had said that time belongs to the universe, but days belong to oneself.

The teacher had made many calendars, engraved on walls, floors, and pillars. She had made calendars up to the year 2050, and Banxia marked off each day as it passed. If time was like a long strip of noodles, then Banxia had sliced it into thin pieces – she was like a Henan knife-cut noodle master.

That motherboard still hung on the wall, connected to colorful complex cables. Upgrading the signal modulation method was indeed difficult. The current Banxia couldn’t be considered a complete novice – after such long training and hands-on practice, she could somewhat understand some basic concepts, but PSK debugging was many times harder than AFSK.

During breaks, she would make faces at the camera.

The Hikvision UVC camera paired with the old Philips CRT monitor produced terrible display effects – not only low quality but also with delay. Banxia wondered how she should make her appearance once the data transmission system was successfully built.

Wave?

Bow?

Forget it, maybe she’d do a backflip for them.

Banxia was waiting.

Zhao Bowen was also waiting.

A thousand threads all converged at the command center.

This would be an enormous plan. Besides Lao Zhao himself, no one could see its complete picture. Bai Zhen and Wang Ning sat on the sofa organizing materials. Looking up, they could see Lao Zhao standing again before the Nanjing city map, comparing and measuring with a compass and pencil in hand. He drew a circle at the border between Qinhuai District and Xuanwu District, stared at it with furrowed brows for a while, then erased it with an eraser and drew a slightly smaller one.

Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were very dissatisfied with his mysterious behavior.

“Don’t ask what you shouldn’t,” Zhao Bowen said.

“Then what are we doing now?” Wang Ning asked. “We haven’t seen any progress for several days. Lao Zhao, time is being consumed synchronously on both sides – one day passes here, and one day passes there. We have no time to waste.”

“Does she have enough food?” Bai Zhen asked. “And water?”

“I know.”

Zhao Bowen was irritated. He threw down the compass and pencil and went out to smoke.

The four phones still sat motionless on the tea table.

Zhao Bowen ran downstairs and sat at the building entrance, smoking gloomily.

He cursed in his mind while smoking.

Cursing Bai Zhen, cursing Wang Ning, cursing the computer team, cursing the aerospace team, cursing the engineering team, cursing everyone. How many hours had it been, and not a single piece of good news? Every phone call was met with evasion, excuses, delays, buck-passing, and “Iron Hand is coming to get us, run away silly children!”

“Run, run, the whole world is doomed, where can you run to?”

Zhao Bowen looked into the distance, maliciously imagining what the apocalypse would look like, wondering if the Big Eye would eat the old lady walking her dog across the street, slightly venting the negative emotions of his psychological dark side. When in a bad mood, he would smoke, smoke alone brooding, and then grow more depressed the more he smoked.

Li Bai said cutting water with a sword makes it flow more, and raising a cup to drown sorrows makes them grow more. Zhao Bowen wasn’t so cultured – he just said fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Lao Zhao pulled out his phone from his back pocket and opened WeChat wanting to post a long rant cursing people, but after scrolling through his contacts he couldn’t find a suitable target. Having no one to curse at made him bottle up his anger inside. So Zhao Bowen thought of a solution – he logged onto Weibo, Tieba, Douyin, and Kuaishou, looking for stupid posts to argue with the original posters.

Some posts were intellectual lowlands, gathering many pseudoscientists, conspiracy theorists, and those who had slipped through the cracks of nine-year compulsory education. Before entering, Zhao Bowen was full of confidence, thinking as a Nanjing University associate professor, at the peak of society’s intellectual pyramid, wouldn’t he be crushing them. Wouldn’t this be overkill?

But Zhao Bowen was utterly defeated, retreating in disarray. Initially, he still maintained some dignity as a high-level intellectual, trying to persuade others with logic and common sense. But he quickly realized the other side didn’t speak logic. When Zhao Bowen painstakingly explained who Braun was and what lunar orbital rendezvous meant, the other side would only frantically type traitor dog traitor dog traitor dog you acknowledge the American moon landing you’re a traitor dog.

Neither reason nor cursing worked.

Lao Zhao was very dejected, dejected that so many people were unreasonable, and more dejected that he couldn’t even win at cursing. He thought such a world might as well be destroyed.

But thinking back, he shouldn’t have tried to reason with people online. He should have said your eighteen generations of ancestors combined don’t have as much education as me, curse, and then blocked. Arguments online ultimately all end up about family and ancestors – knowing this might as well use the trump card from the start.

Lao Zhao finished his cigarette, threw the butt on the ground, and stamped it out rather viciously, as if crushing under his foot the people he had just argued with online, grinding back and forth. After venting, he patted his bottom preparing to go back to work.

As the command center, Zhao Bowen and others were coordinating the entire plan. They reported directly to higher levels – this was a crucial node, connecting above and below. But doing coordination work was just so damn frustrating. To those below, the command center was the evil client, laymen commanding experts, and a collection of bureaucracy. But to the command center itself – damn it, pressure from both sides, responsibility was theirs but credit went to others.

If they messed up, they’d take full responsibility; if they succeeded, it was the leadership’s wisdom. If it weren’t for the gravity of the situation with countless lives at stake, old Zhao would want to quit. It was rare to do physics while still having a full head of black hair – couldn’t waste it like this. Let whoever wants to come take over.

Zhao Bowen sighed. Damn, why am I so responsible?

This cursed responsibility is rooted in his heart.

If anyone was to blame it was Confucius. The old master said to cultivate oneself, regulate the family, govern the state, and bring peace to all under heaven – unshakeable for two thousand years, leaving Zhao Bowen unable to find even an excuse to escape.

Going upstairs, upstairs to make more calls, urge the engineering team, urge the aerospace team, urge the astronomy team. He needed that remote-sensing satellite. By whatever means, the aerospace team must send the remote sensing satellite twenty years into the future. Zhao Bowen knew this was difficult, but if it weren’t difficult they wouldn’t need to gather those elites. The remote sensing satellite was too important – without eyes they were blind. But eyes alone weren’t enough. Thinking of this, Zhao Bowen’s heart slowly sank again.

He had been waiting for news.

Zhao Bowen took out his phone to look again, an unconscious action. He didn’t know what he wanted to see – perhaps the time, perhaps WeChat.

The phone vibrated slightly.

A text message had arrived. Zhao Bowen hoped it was good news. These days any message on his phone could make him anxious – a feeling he hadn’t had since checking his college entrance exam results. He closed his eyes, then slowly opened them like watching lottery numbers being drawn.

But these days only carriers send spam messages. Zhao Bowen guessed it was China Telecom, like scratching a lottery ticket to reveal “Thank you for your patronage.”

He didn’t see the familiar China Telecom – it was an unknown number.

But Zhao Bowen knew where this message came from:

“Betrothal gifts delivered, engagement complete, Miss Qiu will soon be wed.”