Everyone sat motionless like meditating monks until three in the morning when some finally couldn’t take it anymore. They figured no solution would fall from the sky even if they sat until sunrise, and it would only increase their chances of sudden death. So Old Bai and the others got up to see their guests out.

They went downstairs to escort the nuclear work group out of the building, watching as they drove away.

The residential complex was completely silent, with only a few street lights still burning.

“There’s still a backup Long March 5, right?” Wang Ning shivered in the cold wind. “And a backup spacecraft too. Why not just use those to send the key over?”

“I already brought that up,” Old Zhao shook his head. “The space team advised against it. The reset isn’t complete, we haven’t analyzed why the last spacecraft failed—don’t know if the parachute opened late or didn’t open at all. Rushing another attempt might repeat the same failure, with the reentry capsule crashing to the ground with a bang.”

“Making another big crater,” Bai Zhen added.

“Headache.” Zhao Bowen sighed.

“If you ask me, we’re just making trouble for ourselves,” Old Bai complained. “The world’s about to end, why bother with so many rules?”

“Tell that to the Central Security Committee—they set the security level.”

Zhao Bowen yawned, walking away as he spoke.

“Old Zhao, where are you going?”

“Home!” Zhao Bowen yawned again, mounting his electric scooter at the edge of the lawn. “I have a meeting at the Provincial Committee at eight this morning, need to catch some sleep. If I hurry now I can get four hours… damn, this is my longest sleep in a week.”

Bai Zhen turned to Wang Ning, “What about you?”

Wang Ning thought for a moment, “I’ll take the couch.”

Five hours later.

White Yang returned home with Lian Qiao after their morning run to find his father sitting listlessly on the sofa with huge dark circles under his eyes. Uncle Wang sat equally listlessly on the sofa, sporting identical dark circles. The two sat there lazily flipping through documents on the coffee table, yawning continuously, one after another, opening their mouths to reveal yellow teeth stained by years of smoking and drinking, their middle-aged morning breath permeating the air.

Lian Qiao’s brows furrowed deeply.

“No joke, when I got up this morning and looked at my pillow, it was covered in hair,” Bai Zhen covered his face and took a deep breath. “But the saddest part is that even sacrificing so much hair didn’t buy us a good idea.”

Wang Ning scratched his head.

If Old Bai couldn’t think of anything after losing so much hair, he was even more helpless.

Everyone had hoped to wake up with a reliable plan, or perhaps receive guidance from the Duke of Zhou in their dreams, but unfortunately, few met the Duke. Bai Zhen lay in bed tossing and turning sleeplessly, so he went to find Wang Ning in the living room. The latter wasn’t sleeping either, sitting motionless in the dark. When Bai Zhen suddenly turned on the lights, it startled him.

“What’s going on?” White Yang came out of the bathroom, wiping sweat with a towel. “Run into some problem?”

“What else could it be?” Wang Ning said. “How to deliver the key.”

“Use a time capsule,” White Yang said without thinking. “Send it by slow delivery.”

“Not secure enough. After the last spacecraft’s slow delivery failed, superiors lost some trust in us, and our methods faced widespread questioning,” Wang Ning shook his head. “They demand we come up with the safest possible plan. We’re thinking about how to increase the safety factor.”

“What safety factor can a time capsule have?” White Yang was puzzled. “Isn’t sending this thing just gambling on luck?”

“Yes, it’s gambling on luck,” Bai Zhen nodded. “That’s how we see it, but the world doesn’t revolve around us.”

Ten o’clock in the morning.

The nuclear work group came by again. White Yang curiously examined the small device they poured out of their document bag.

“This is the key?”

“Yes,” someone nodded. “Excuse me, do you have any sunflower seeds?”

Mom brought out a large plate of seeds and thus began another sunflower seed conference.

“Don’t let its small size fool you—it’s quite powerful,” the nuclear work group explained to White Yang. “Have you seen in movies how there’s always someone carrying a black briefcase next to national leaders? That black briefcase is the nuclear weapons command system. Of course, those in movies are fake, but this is real… You can think of it as a nuclear briefcase. It’s an integrated system—the normally vast command and control chain has been compressed into this tiny key. It combines unlocking, timing, identification, triggering, and detonation. Without it, the nuclear weapon can’t detonate.”

“Wow.” White Yang marveled, understanding somewhat.

“After all, no one will be giving orders twenty years from now,” the nuclear workgroup added. “Miss Qiu needs to be a self-contained control loop.”

“So it’s the nuclear weapon’s detonator and brain?”

“Part of the brain—the trigger system’s control components are built into this little thing.”

The nuclear work group nodded.

“That nuclear weapon’s trigger mechanism was very difficult to make. If we wanted Miss Qiu to form a control loop by herself, we inevitably had to make it a bit intelligent… but this contradicts safety requirements. That nuclear weapon demands extremely high robustness (this was your Director Zhao’s requirement)—it must remain undamaged even if the spacecraft crashes. To achieve such insane reliability, we could only minimize the use of microelectronic components inside the weapon.”

“This is like building a computer with vacuum tubes, transistors, or even gears and rods—it could fill this entire living room,” someone added, sounding somewhat helpless. “In the end, we used a compromise: keep only the highly reliable components inside the weapon, and move all the precise, fragile, intelligent control components outside as a replaceable peripheral device—this key you see before you. Understand? If the key is damaged, we can replace it, but if all systems were built into the weapon, repairs would be impossible if something went wrong.”

“That’s clever,” White Yang said. “Can I ask what exactly is the weapon’s trigger mechanism?”

The nuclear work group members exchanged smiles.

“You’ll find out.”

“Can we think about how to deliver this thing?” Bai Zhen pointed at the key on the coffee table. “If we can’t deliver it, everything else is pointless.”

“Throw a time capsule in the lake?” White Yang said.

“Not allowed,” Bai Zhen said. “They think the safety factor is too low.”

The nuclear work group members spread their hands, indicating this was their superiors’ requirement, nothing to do with them.

“Sending a time capsule is gambling,” Wang Ning said. “We’re betting against this world’s future. If you can’t afford the stakes, you naturally won’t win anything.”

Bai Zhen sighed:

“These goddamn Three Laws of Time Slow Delivery.”

Meanwhile.

Zhao Bowen was attending his first meeting of the day at the Provincial Committee.

The astronomy group had finally grown a backbone, no longer having to endure Iron Hand’s torment. Perhaps after Nanjing headquarters’ last Time Slow Delivery mission failed, other teams gained attention from superiors and higher priority, beginning to flex their muscles. Whether it was Project Hedgehog’s team or Project Earth Cannon’s team, their preliminary work required understanding the enemy situation. Before moving troops, send scouts first. Thus the astronomy group gained great importance. After suffering under Nanjing headquarters’ oppression for so long, they finally saw their day in the sun, able to hold their heads high.

Zhao Bowen lost influence in the astronomy group (now called the 1220 Global Joint Observation Task Force), as their work focus shifted to supporting other teams. Truth be told, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ astronomical observatory had long wanted to shake off Iron Hand’s death grip. When the orders came down from above, almost everyone celebrated by flicking their foreheads in joy.

Zhao Bowen lazily slouched in a chair in the last row, catching up on sleep.

On stage, the astronomy group was explaining a newly developed technology.

VVVLBI technology, short for The Very Very Very Long Baseline Interferometry, is xnicknamed Triple-V technology.

Its success would make possible an ambitious grand plan—

Creating humanity’s largest telescope ever: the Earth Orbital Horizon Telescope.