Once We Lived in Nanjing

"…Yes, Miss, it's the Red Hare, OVER."

"Great, it's just like the Red Hare wielding the Guandao axe!"

Ban Xia lifted the homemade Yagi Antenna high in the air, fashioned from a slender wooden stick and ten clothes hangers; not too heavy, but still a strain on the back and waist after holding it for a while. Section Chief Wang wanted it to be used for the long-term accurate and swift tracking of satellites. Doing this manually was impractical; at the very least, an equatorial instrument was needed — naturally, making Ban Xia handcraft an equatorial device was out of the question. The only sensible solution was to hang the relay satellite thirty-six thousand kilometers above Nanjing City.

"How does this antenna work?"

"Tie it to the walkie-talkie, Miss," Bai Yang explained. "The satellite operates on the UV band; its downlink frequency is 430MHZ, and the 725 can't receive this frequency. Thus you must use the walkie-talkie to receive it, OVER."

"Just with this walkie-talkie?"

Ban Xia fiddled with the Baofeng UV9R in her hand, somewhat surprised. Such a tiny device could connect with a satellite thousands of miles away?

"Don't underestimate the walkie-talkie in your hand, Miss," Bai Yang said. "As long as you've got the know-how and skill, using it as a satellite phone is no problem at all, OVER."

"It's really impressive."

Ban Xia marveled.

"It's just one part of the entire project. It's not about its individual greatness, but the collective brilliance of the entire plan. We can't do without any part of it," continued Bai Yang. "You'll have two satellites above you: one acting as the eyes, and the other as the ears. The Reconnaissance Star is responsible for taking pictures, orbiting the Earth every hour, passing over your head each time. The relay satellite stays in a geostationary orbit thirty-six thousand kilometers up… Huh? What's up Uncle Zhao?"

"What happened?"

"Uncle Zhao just got back; he had a meeting at the provincial party committee this afternoon and asked me to find him a pair of slippers," Bai Yang responded. "My mom found a pair for him. Let's continue, the relay satellite stays in a geostationary orbit, so it will be in a fixed position relative to you, meaning it will always hover over your head, transmitting data to you, OVER."

From the aerospace team's plan, the relay satellite's structure seemed fairly simple. It only had two functions: storage and forwarding. It wasn't large, with dimensions of 30 centimeters high and 20 centimeters in length and width. It was a cube satellite weighing a few tens of kilograms; recycled from a domestic commercial satellite project, with all functionalities ready. What was required one day, the 518 division under the Fifth Institute found the next day.

— Of course, this cube satellite couldn't just be taken and used; it had to connect with the homemade Yagi Antenna of BG4MSR thirty-six thousand kilometers up in a geostationary orbit. An arduous task for sure, as reaching such an orbit was extremely challenging given its high altitude.

Thirty-six thousand kilometers — what does that distance even mean?

The equatorial circumference of the Earth is forty thousand kilometers; thirty-six thousand is like running 90% around the Earth's equator, or running from Antarctica to the North Pole and back again. On one end, a small satellite weighing tens of kilograms, on the other, an antenna made from wood planks and clothes hangers.

And these two had to communicate.

Under normal circumstances, expecting the Yagi Antenna to reach anything beyond low Earth orbit was pushing its limits. The comrades from the Fifth Institute handling the project racked their brains, scratching their heads, until they decided to add another Yagi Antenna to the relay satellite. Normally folded, it would deploy once in space. The two Yagi Antennas, thirty-six thousand kilometers apart in space, would duel to successfully transmit the data.

Division 518 was one of the collaborative partners responsible for the Reconnaissance Star, with experience in extraterrestrial probes. Thus, the Fifth Institute and Changguang Institute took the lead for different modules of the project. The satellite and radar were developed by Changguang Institute, with the propulsion and orbital design handled by the Fifth Institute. One ensured the satellite had big eyes to see, and the other ensured that it could leave home for twenty years and still enter its orbit correctly.

They named the satellite "Zheng Lun."

The relay satellite launched alongside it was called "Chen Qi".

And the rocket which launched them was named "Heng and Ha".

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The rocket was launched on December 18th, 2019.

On the same day, Ban Xia completed her PSK image data transmission system.

For most people, December 18th, 2019 may seem unremarkable, but at the French Guiana Space Center on this very day, a Russian-made Soyuz-STB rocket was launched. It carried the Italian-made CSG1 Earth observation satellite and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS space telescope—a typical commercial launch vehicle, just one of the hundreds of unnoteworthy launches that happened that year.

However, in the history recounted by others, on December 18th, 2019, a Soyuz-STB launch vehicle, nicknamed "Heng and Ha", was launched from the French Guiana Space Center, carrying two top-secret payloads on a highly confidential mission, destined for the distant future twenty years later.

The full scope of the East Red Action had been fully laid out. If one were to call it a military operation, then there hadn't been an operation of such complexity since World War II. Seventy-five years earlier, on June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord commenced in the morning mist along the coasts of Europe. 170,000 Allied troops landed on Normandy, initiating the campaign that would thoroughly reverse the situation on the Western Front of World War II. It was the largest amphibious invasion in human history. And then, seventy-five years later on December 18th, 2019, the East Red Action officially began beneath the veil of an unknown history. A Soyuz STB launch vehicle carrying two satellites was set to reach Earth's orbit twenty years later to carry out a cross temporal strategic reconnaissance mission—possibly the most complex super space-time orbital invasion in human history.

It must be said that Zhao Bowen was foresighted; he had long instructed Bai Yang to teach the BG4MSR to establish a data transmission system, on which virtually all subsequent work would be based.

The image transmission system, with core components consisting of an Icom725 amateur radio set, Celeron 3150 industrial motherboard, and Philips CRT monitor, would allow Ban Xia to see the world from twenty years ago, as well as allowing Bai Yang to see the girl from twenty years later. Meanwhile, the remote control system, whose core was the GR3188 simulator relay station, was essential for satellite communication. The 725 shortwave radio was incapable of operating in the UV frequency band; the only option for satellite communication was the handheld radio in Ban Xia's possession.

Now that everything was prepared, Bai Yang went to take photos for Ban Xia, as promised. He even took the afternoon off and skipped school for this.

"Where should we go first?" Bai Yang asked. "Xuanwu Lake? Zijin Mountain? Or Xinjiekou?"

"Confucius Temple! Let's go to Confucius Temple first!" Lian Qiao suggested. "And the Qinhuai River too, to be honest, despite being here in Nanjing for so long, I haven't yet visited the Confucius Temple."

"Those are just tourist traps made to lure outsiders." Bai Yang said. "Just a street lined with shops; what's there to see? Locals never go there. The Yangtze River Bridge is a much better option."

"But I'm not a local!"

"Then let's flip a coin. Heads, we go to Confucius Temple first; tails, we go to Zijin Mountain first." Bai Yang took out a Morse code practice coin from his pocket, flicked it with his thumb, and the coin spun up into the air. Before it could fall, the agile Lian Qiao caught it.

"What are you doing?"

"What's this?" Lian Qiao asked, holding the practice coin aloft curiously. "A game token?"

"It's a Morse code practice coin. Look, it's engraved with the Morse code representations for the 26 English letters. If you want to learn Morse code, you can buy one on Taobao—it costs twenty yuan." Bai Yang snatched the coin back from her hand and flicked it towards the ceiling again—

The coin flipped upward to its peak, where kinetic energy turned into potential energy, and as it reached its highest point it tended toward stillness. But such a state was broken almost immediately, as the coin flipped again, falling downward, picking up speed, faster and faster, until finally, with a slap, it was caught by a pair of small hands.