At the next day’s regular meeting, Old Zhao’s proposal was rejected.
Although the Big Eye had left a deep psychological shadow on all meeting participants, the leadership group maintained the utmost cautious attitude regarding the resolution to launch an attack.
Taking the offensive was a last resort option. Retrieving data from inside the First Base or Second Base remained Project Dongfanghong’s primary objective. Rashly engaging in combat with the Big Eye would undoubtedly place Xia Ban in an extremely dangerous situation, contradicting the plan’s first premise of “ensuring BG4MSR’s safety as the top priority.” The risk would be unacceptably high, so at the meeting, Zhao Bowen’s aggressive strategy was vetoed.
Thinking about it afterward, Old Zhao felt they were right—he had lost his head.
Mainly because that Big Eye had scared him witless. After all, nuclear weapon control wasn’t in Old Zhao’s hands. If Zhao Bowen had the launch button, he definitely would have pressed it with lightning speed.
“If we don’t use nukes now, then when?”
Bai Zhen pulled out a sheet from the mountain of documents piled on the desk, squinting at it—a green-headed document from Nanjing City.
A telegram from the city, sent by the Municipal Committee Office, marked urgent and clear, stamped with the office’s confidential seal. Bai Zhen briefly scanned the heading:
“Notice Regarding the Fifth Meeting of Nanjing City’s First Amateur Radio Emergency Working Group… How did this end up here?”
Bai Zhen shook his head. He couldn’t be bothered to figure out why it was sent to the command center. Since it arrived, it needed a stamp, so Old Bai picked up the seal from the coffee table and firmly pressed it onto the document with a “ka” sound, leaving a red circle.
Reviewed!
Bai Zhen and Wang Ning had clear divisions of labor in the command center. Bai Zhen was responsible for handling various documents of unclear origin. These things came in daily, both clear and encrypted telegrams. Bai Zhen spent all day going “ka-ka-ka-ka” stamping documents.
“Think about it, Old Bai, that’s a nuclear bomb, a nuclear bomb! It’s not a toy.” Wang Ning sat opposite him, holding up a large printed photograph, examining it against the light. “One nuke can level an entire city. If we use it, how can we guarantee that girl’s safety? How can we ensure she won’t be caught in the blast?”
The photo was their first telemetry image received last night—an aerial view of Meihua Manor Community twenty years in the future.
They could finally examine the Big Eye carefully on the coffee table—everyone knew the thing had to be two or three stories tall, but in the photo, it was just a few centimeters long. Calling it a spider or octopus was quite an apt comparison. The Big Eye was just a black sphere with six long legs growing out of it. Beyond that, no other features were visible. It was hard to tell whether it was biological or mechanical.
When the telemetry satellite photographed it, it was climbing over the roof of the Meihua Manor residential building. The synthetic aperture radar wasn’t good at capturing moving targets, so the image was blurry.
“Modern nukes can control their yield, you know,” said Bai Zhen. “Keep the yield small, make it a tactical-level nuke.”
“What about radiation? What about radioactive contamination? How do we deal with that?” Wang Ning said. “This damn thing is such a hassle to use. We better not end up hurting our people.”
“Without nukes, would other weapons be effective?” Bai Zhen asked.
“That depends on how well we understand it.” Zhao Bowen stroked his chin and cheeks, standing behind the coffee table. He faced a larger photo projected onto a screen—still, the Big Eye captured by the telemetry satellite last night. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles…”
He pointed at the black spider on the screen. “We still know far too little about this thing.”
“What about your gang of experts? From Tsinghua, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Chinese Academy of Sciences?” Bai Zhen continued stamping documents. “When this image came out, shouldn’t they have been doing pixel-level analysis overnight? Have they figured anything out?”
“No.” Zhao Bowen answered bluntly. “We don’t even know if this thing is alive or not.”
“I reckon it’s alive. Didn’t you hear what that girl said? This thing can speak human language!” Wang Ning shook the photo in his hand, making the laminated A4 paper rustle. “It might look dim-witted, but it’s quite accomplished at learning foreign languages.”
“Just because it can talk doesn’t mean it’s alive. Look at this…” Old Bai turned and shouted at the top of the fridge, “Grooming Sprite! Grooming Sprite!”
“Hello!”
“See?” Bai Zhen pointed. “Speaking doesn’t necessarily mean it’s alive.”
“For visitors from beyond Earth, we might not be able to define life in conventional ways. It could be mechanical, biological, or perhaps both—Transformers are called silicon-based life forms, after all.” Zhao Bowen sat down, casually spreading out all the photos on the coffee table. “Speaking human language shows it has strong learning capabilities, able to master a language in a short time…”
He shook his head as he spoke.
“Talking about this is useless. To kill it, we just need to know what it’s made of. If it’s flesh and blood, we bomb it to death. If it’s electronic machinery, we use electromagnetic pulses to paralyze it! Whether it’s flesh and blood or electronic machinery, a nuke can send it to heaven!”
Regarding the stance toward the Big Eye, Zhao Bowen was a determined hawk.
The leadership group criticized Zhao Bowen for left-wing adventurism, overemphasizing the destruction of the Big Eye while ignoring the true purpose of the plan.
But Old Zhao disagreed. He believed destroying the Big Eye was inevitable.
What was the point of obtaining data and materials from the First and Second Bases? Wasn’t it all to destroy the Big Eye? Destroying it was the ultimate goal.
Unfortunately, the leadership group wasn’t Old Zhao’s one-man show. He couldn’t make decisions alone, especially regarding crucial resolutions like using nuclear weapons. Everyone believed maintaining extreme caution and not making hasty decisions was the responsible attitude and approach. The nice way to put it was “cautious,” and the harsh way was “hesitant.” But hesitation was inevitable. Now that nuclear weapon was just sitting there—whether to use it, when to use it, how to use it—all remained unresolved issues.
Only after getting their hands on it did they realize… having it created more problems than getting it did. Navigating countless obstacles to retrieve it from the nuclear arsenal was just the beginning. This thing was a hot potato—keeping it for one more day was trouble. So the leadership group thought if they were going to use it, use it; if not, return it quickly—though of course, not needing it would be best.
But there was no one alive today with real nuclear warfare experience. The B-29 bomber crew who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima had all passed away, with the last crew member dying of natural causes five years ago, gone to meet his maker.
So Old Zhao had no one to learn from.
“Where’s Miss Qiu now?” Bai Zhen asked. “Old Zhao, can I touch Miss Qiu? I’ve never touched a real one.”
“I want to touch it too,” Wang Ning said. “But won’t there be radiation?”
“Dream on,” Old Zhao said. “I don’t even know where it is. Forget about touching it—none of us can even see it. None of us.”
“Ah, what a shame.” Old Bai sighed. “I thought it might be delivered to our living room.”
“What would it do here?” Zhao Bowen asked.
Bai Zhen waved his seal. “I could stamp its butt.”
Old Bai was quite disappointed. He had always hoped to meet a girl like Miss Qiu, made of Uranium-235. Just imagine—such a huge nuclear bomb, a massive behemoth, imposing and magnificent, standing right in the middle of your living room, staring at you all day long. How impressive that would be!
(Much later, he would learn that Miss Qiu was only the size of a basketball, neither massive nor magnificent.)