Chapter 51 Pushing Away from That Titanic

The next morning, after the handover meeting, Shang Lu went to the Operations Office to review the experimental records. He had brought with him from the Science City a rigorous and detailed experimental management system. The idle staff in the office were suddenly thrust into a situation reminiscent of their graduate school days, when they were relentlessly pushed and even pressured by their supervisors. “Why is there a missing page number? Where did page 31 go? Let me emphasize again: experimental logs cannot have missing page numbers. Even scraps of draft paper must be accounted for!” “Absolutely no use of pencils from now on. This is a one-time exception.” “Original data must be glued to the back of the records! Our work is reflected in the logs; they must be readily accessible at all times.”

Shang Lu spent a long time conducting standardized training for the Operations Office. After finishing in the morning, he immediately went to the Shielding Room to train Shen Jiang in the afternoon. His schedule was packed, giving an illusion of steady progress—each small step forward, each problem solved, each procedure completed seemed to push the world a fraction further from its inevitable doom. If Shang Lu were aboard the Titanic at this moment, he would be using his meager strength to steer the great ship away from the iceberg-bound course. Unfortunately, his strength alone was too insignificant, and there was no one else in sight to help.

Shang Lu placed his bets on the meg-BCI system, on Shen Jiang. It was the only thing he could do and was capable of doing.

“If she’s not dead, maybe she can handle it,” he thought.

“At the time, I realized that Shen Jiang’s strength came at a cost. She’s deeply entangled; the BCI and the giant apparatus have inflicted great damage on her, making her life fragile. But if you don’t exchange life force for power to confront the strongest angel, you simply can’t win.”

“Lu Lu, I have to find a way to protect her.”

The 151 Base’s Workshop 110 Operations Core Maintenance Office was now the world’s only meg-BCI experimental team. They were the front-line unit, while the RCBI group in Science City was the back end. Shang Lu brought the two teams together, coordinating and dividing tasks. Science City, Chengzi Institute, and 151 Base all provided their utmost support.

During joint meetings with the Operations Office and Science City’s RCBI group, honestly, at first, Wang Xiangbing, Li Wenxuan, and Zhang Zhong were somewhat intimidated by the RCBI team appearing on the computer screen. After all, the Operations Office was a grassroots frontline organization, mostly filled with people who just floated along, while RCBI was a cutting-edge technical team from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, each a certified technical expert from Science City. Though their rankings were unknown, they were certainly ahead of 1047. This was the reverence of underachievers facing top scholars. But after a few days, the Operations Office relaxed—because in Shang Lu’s eyes, they were all on the same level.

“Source switching app.”

“We can’t expect it to map one-to-one between two domains. It’s a functional mapping; the high-dimensional, time-varying neural activity cannot output signal by signal. We still have to guess.”

“This is a local optimum, not the global optimum. No, we need to start over.”

“Neural dynamics remains a weak link. Does the institute currently have any faculty working in this direction?”

Shang Lu called on each person by name to voice opinions; those addressed all stiffened, both in the Operations Office and RCBI alike.

Bai Shu felt that once Shang Lu was in work mode, he became a different person. She watched him silently sitting at the end of the desk, clutching the materials and logs, only raising his head after a long while to ask one or two questions. This was probably how he was in Science City. At such moments, he exhibited many small habits rarely seen before—like rubbing and pressing his temple with his fingers, gently stroking his lips. Some of these gestures seemed feminine to Bai Shu, a habit typical of women. She was keenly observant but wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion.

Why would a man occasionally display a woman’s temperament?

After reviewing the records, Shang Lu left work, leaving the others to continue their efforts.

“Damn, the director’s off again,” Li Wenxuan muttered quietly. “Wasn’t he supposed to lead by example and charge ahead?”

“Have you ever seen any big lab head hanging out all day with the students?” Bai Shu whispered. “They’re like dragons—appear at will, vanish without trace.”

“Then where did the director go?” Li Wenxuan asked.

“I guess he’s looking for Shen Jiang,” Zhang Zhong said. “They’ve been close lately; their relationship is good.”

Everyone in the office glanced at Bai Shu.

Bai Shu said, “What are you looking at me for?”

“Reaction’s slow, huh? A little sense of crisis, little sister,” teased Wang Xiangbing, the senior uncle in the office. “Aren’t you worried the director might write down the Red Lotus pilot’s name on his dating application form?”

“Impossible,” Bai Shu shook her head confidently. “You don’t understand. I’m a woman; my intuition is keener than yours. The Red Lotus pilot definitely isn’t his type.”

“Then are you his type?” Wang Xiangbing asked.

Bai Shu froze for a moment, then admitted after a long pause, “I… I probably am not his type either.”

“What kind does he like then?” Wang Xiangbing, acting the office patriarch, was concerned about the younger generation’s future. “I need to know so I can find someone for him.”

“Go ask him yourself,” Bai Shu shrugged, pushing the experimental logs forward and sighing deeply. “God, this stuff really gives me a headache.”

Shang Lu rode his bicycle back to the dormitory. As he was parking his bike, he saw Lilac eagerly entering the courtyard carrying two bags of oranges. She greeted him and said they were sent from the observation station. They couldn’t finish them over there, so they brought some over here—supposedly one for each person, but Shang Lu knew they were mainly for Chen Yu; the others were just enjoying the leftovers.

Chen Yu was also single and unmarried. He probably had a dating application form too, but it was unknown who he might write down.

In recent times, the operations staff mostly stayed in the dorms. Beside Chen Yu’s bed was a large stack of old books—Yan Lianke, Shi Tiesheng, Kawabata Yasunari, Watanabe Junichi, Oe Kenzaburo, as well as Sartre, Maugham, Nabokov, and Borges. Facing these great works of humanities and literature, Shang Lu felt as blind as Chen Yu did confronting his lectures on Riemannian geometry and general relativity. The only author Shang Lu was willing to read was Watanabe Junichi.

The Combat Section was the most idle unit when not on alert. The duty officer’s daily work was to stare absentmindedly at the telephone on the desk. Those not on duty could not go out casually. To pass the time, the base’s staff each had their own ways. Chen Yu stayed in the dorm reading, occasionally sharing with Shang Lu some philosophical insights that always sounded like nonsense—every one of them a spherical chicken in a vacuum.