[Excerpt from Interview Records – Final Day and the Zhao Bowen Conjecture:

On the last day of the October National Day holiday in late 2020, the author continued the interview with Bai Yang. The afternoon sunlight was pleasant, with a faint dog barking outside the window.

When discussing the final step of the entire operation, the somewhat nervous young man before me suddenly became uneasy, his ten fingers tightly interlaced.

“We all thought it was secure,” the youth said softly from his chair.

“Think about it. After such a long, complex, and massive plan finally succeeded, who wouldn’t feel relieved? Most people had this rather blind trust – trust in their superiors, in those around them, in the command center. They all thought that if they did their part well, the grand plan would succeed, and once it succeeded, the Knife Visitors would be eliminated, and the world would be saved… This thinking was wrong.”

“The emergence of such thinking isn’t based on logical facts, but comes from people’s natural affirmation of their own labor’s results – simply put, it’s self-consolation,” I said.

“Yes… that’s right.” Bai Yang nodded.

The author looked into his eyes, and he didn’t avoid the gaze.

Something still lay hidden in the depths of his eyes, remaining undissolved despite the passage of time.

“Tell me about the Knife Visitors. I’m interested in their properties,” I changed the subject.

“According to your conjecture, these Knife Visitors have no back side, right?”

Bai Yang paused, thought for a few seconds, then nodded.

“That’s correct. No matter which angle or position you view it from, you can only see its front side. You could say it has no backside.”

“So here’s the question,” I said.

“How can a structure without a backside exist in three-dimensional space?”

Bai Yang shook his head: “Nobody knows. Perhaps the Knife Visitors’ structure exists in higher dimensions, or maybe those who created them exist in higher dimensions… It’s quite obvious – they can influence space-time, so they must transcend our world.”

“How did Professor Zhao discover this?” I asked.

“His conjecture – about the operating principles of the Knife Visitors, let’s call it the Zhao Bowen Conjecture for now – how was it born?”

“I only know the general outline. For specific details, you’d have to ask Uncle Zhao…”

Bai Yang pondered as he answered.

“Uncle Zhao first noticed something was wrong when the Young Miss mentioned that Big Eyes always maintained eye contact with her. Initially, we thought it was some kind of eye-tracking function, just found it peculiar. So Uncle Zhao took this question back to review materials and discuss with the project team’s expert group. We had very limited information at the time, so Uncle Zhao and the others kept reviewing and reviewing the recording from our first video communication. I think that’s when they made the discovery.”

“During the first video communication?”

“Yes, the secrets were all hidden in that first video communication.”

Bai Yang smiled slightly.

“At the time, we all thought it was the Young Miss’s activity that attracted the Knife Visitors prowling nearby. However, Uncle Zhao proposed a different opinion. He believed what truly drew the Knife Visitor to linger outside the window was us.”

“The camera?” I immediately thought of this.

“Exactly, it was the camera set up in the center of the room. The Knife Visitor wasn’t seeing the Young Miss, but us.”

Bai Yang said.

I held my notepad, momentarily forgetting to take notes. Bai Yang’s slow and deep narration took me back to that night of humanity’s first direct encounter with the Knife Visitors but from a completely different perspective.

“There were several people present at the time – me, Dad, Uncle Zhao, Uncle Wang, Sister Qiao – all watching in front of the computer in the living room. We were all terrified by the Big Eyes outside the window. Much later, when Uncle Zhao was verifying his conjecture, he asked us to carefully recall the situation… He asked if I had been stared at directly by Big Eyes, and he asked the others the same question. That’s when we realized that although everyone was at different angles, we were all making eye contact with the Knife Visitor.”

“So… the Knife Visitor had locked onto your positions then.”

I said.

“Yes, it must have locked onto our positions then. This thing’s properties are unrelated to any external conditions, and unaffected by any factors. Although we were separated by twenty long years, the iron law of ‘observer equals observed’ still held for the Knife Visitor.”

Bai Yang nodded and continued:

“But this lock-on was interrupted.”

“By what?” I asked instinctively.

“Master Huang, that yellow weasel.”

Bai Yang answered.

“Master Huang’s sudden appearance attracted all our attention. We all focused our gaze on the yellow weasel, so from the Knife Visitor’s perspective… we seemed to suddenly vanish, evaporated from existence. After all, we weren’t actually in that world – it couldn’t find us, we were twenty years in the past.”

“Did it try to search for you afterward?”

I asked.

“It searched. We believe it was looking for us at that time.”

Bai Yang answered.

“We were all sitting on the living room sofa, and the Knife Visitor had locked onto the living room position, so it didn’t linger long outside the bedroom window, immediately moving to the floor-to-ceiling window of the living room… This is our inference, but I think it’s pretty close to the truth. However, that world’s living room was empty, not a single person. I imagine the Knife Visitor must have felt puzzled too – it had locked onto people sitting there, but when it looked in, there was nothing. Must have seemed like a ghost story.”

Bai Yang smiled.

“So based on this, you designed the final phase of Project East Red, using people from twenty years ago as bait to lure Big Eyes into the nuclear blast epicenter… Professor Zhao was very sharp, very insightful.”

I said.

“It wasn’t just his discovery. It was the result of many people discussing it for a long time.”

Bai Yang shrugged.

“And you too.”

I said.

“I didn’t do anything. I was just following their lead the whole time.”

Bai Yang smiled somewhat shyly.

“I’m just an ordinary high school student after all. What can an ordinary high school student do? What can they do…”

The youth gradually fell silent, his eyelids lowered. In his eyes, I saw again that thing lying there, too dense to dissolve. I suddenly realized what it was.

“What can I do?”

Bai Yang said softly, turning his head to gaze at the brand-new ICR-8600 amateur radio on the bookshelf.

“If only I could do something. Even if I could only make a tiny change, something that would make the final result just a little different from now, just a little would be good. But she’s so far away, Teacher Tian Rui, she’s so far away… Twenty years is so far.”

“Can you understand? She’s so very far away.”

I sensed the fragility and powerlessness in this young man. Before the cold, hard face of time, human emotions were mere snowflakes falling onto a red-hot iron plate.

My effort to change the subject ultimately failed. Bai Yang returned to that final day of the mission he never wanted to face:

“We all thought it was secure.”

“The nuclear bomb successfully detonated. She just needed to stay in the safe zone for a week, until the nuclear blast zone was safe, then she could unhurriedly make her way to Base One.”

“But less than twelve hours after the nuclear explosion… she reestablished contact with us.”

Bai Yang’s body suddenly tensed.]

The day after the nuclear explosion.

January 3rd, 8 PM.

Bai Yang was routinely monitoring frequency 14255. He wasn’t expecting to make contact with the Young Miss – according to the normal plan, the girl should be staying in the safe zone now.

Only static filled the channel, the headphones saturated with the universe’s meaningless murmurs. Thinking about having to listen to such eldritch whispers for seven whole days, Bai Yang was truly going crazy. While making regular calls on the channel, he secretly hoped the girl would return soon—

As if some eldritch god had heard his plea, the amplitude of noise in the headphones suddenly increased, then quickly diminished, and from within the static emerged the girl’s unclear voice:

“BG… anyone there? Is… is anyone there?”

Bai Yang sat up straight with a start.

“This is BG4MXH! Young Miss, is that you? Please respond if you copy!”

He shouted while pressing the hand mic, both delighted and puzzled.

The other side paused for several seconds, then responded loudly as well, the voice both joyful and terrified.

“It’s… it’s me! BG! B… can you hear me? Can you hear… they… they’re coming down from the sky.”