Once We Lived in Nanjing

Never before has such a moment made Zhao Bowen, Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and everyone else feel that the girl is still alive; that she is vibrant, bouncing, running around, living in the radio signals and under the watch of satellites, as if you could hear her voice.

She is in the satellite's telemetry imagery, silently shouting to the world of twenty years ago:

Hi——!

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The first satellite data transmission test was declared a success.

Heng and Ha, with their invincible dumb luck, overcame all the difficulties and successfully entered orbit, marking the third milestone in human space history after Yuri Gagarin's first space journey and Neil Armstrong's first moon landing—the first successful orbit after the destruction of humanity. Members of the East Red Action group excitedly linked arms and went downstairs to celebrate with drinks, though drinking during work was forbidden, this time was an exception.

The first test lasted half an hour, during which the relay satellite transmitted about 60MB of data to the ground radio. The vast raw image data obtained by Reconnaissance Star's synthetic aperture radar was too large to transmit in its entirety; thus at the relay satellite stage, it went through a selection, compression, and modulation process. But compression would lead to a significant loss of information—data quality and transmission efficiency were like fish and bear's paws, unable to have both. There's no helping it; the satellite signal transmission speed is only that fast. Lossy compression had to be begrudgingly accepted, with the final image decoding and restoration relying on the computer group's algorithms.

The computer group said they could restore blurry images to high definition. For training algorithms, they had turned every cavalry film on the market into an infantry film.

Ban Xia set up her camera, adjusted the lens direction, and aimed it at the desk and the window.

The satellite communication test succeeded; after dismantling the satellite communication equipment, they immediately started the hectic preparations for the second test. After all the hard work, the painstakingly crafted PSK signal modulation data transmission link would finally come into play.

She was finally going to see the person on the other side.

After communicating through amateur radios for three or four months, tonight would be their first video transmission.

"BG, BG, who goes first, you or me?"

"You first!"

"Alright, then I'll go first!"

Of course, Icom725 was a damnable half-duplex radio; real-time chatting like a WeChat video call was impossible. Data could only be transmitted one way, either Ban Xia watched Bai Yang perform, or Bai Yang watched Ban Xia perform.

So, they agreed that each video transmission would last five minutes: five minutes for Ban Xia, five for Bai Yang, another five for Ban Xia, and then another five for Bai Yang. The image data transmission link couldn't transmit sound, only images, so they communicated by writing words on cardboard with a pen.

Ban Xia turned on her flashlight and in the dark, unplugged the Yagi Antenna UV9R handheld's audio transmission line and replaced it with the one from the Celeron 3150 industrial motherboard, seamlessly switching the two sets of peripherals.

She decided to send a video first and start with a backflip on camera—

But it was late at night, and she dared not turn on the lights; in the pitch-dark room, a backflip performance would be unseen. After some thought, Ban Xia decided to abandon the idea.

On the other end, Bai Yang was a little nervous.

"This is like meeting a girl you met online," Forsythia teased. "What if she's not good-looking?"

"Go away, Comrade Instructor. With a formidable enemy ahead, we must prioritize the larger picture," Bai Yang replied righteously, setting aside such needless concerns.

But as he said this, he was indeed the most nervous one in the command center as the actual meeting approached.

"Nervous about what?" his old man asked while focusing on adjusting the software. "Aren't you two already familiar with each other?"

"Old Bai, you don't understand. Before, it was just phone calls, but now we're finally going to meet face to face; how can that be the same?" Wang Ning said while tightening a tripod screw, "How could an old-timer halfway buried in dirt comprehend the psyche of a young person in the throes of adolescence..."

"Your mom's halfway buried!" Old Bai retorted.

At eight fifteen that evening.

The software was tuned, the signal connected.

Bai Yang sat with a straight posture on the sofa in front of the coffee table, knowing that the other party couldn't see him, but still he couldn't resist combing his hair stealthily and buttoning up his shirt collar, managing his expression.

It was less like meeting an online girlfriend, more like gearing up for some business negotiation.

Behind him was a crowd of people, Old Bai, Old Wang, Old Zhao, Forsythia, all peeked their heads out from behind Bai Yang's shoulders.

They too were curious.

They wanted to see what this girl, who lived alone in Doomsday World, looked like.

But the computer screen showed only a video playback window, pitch black.

"Why is it still dark?" Wang Ning asked, "Is there a problem somewhere?"

"There's no problem, the signal is connected, the lines are fine..." Old Bai checked the laptop ports, pushing the plugs in firmly, "At least there's no problem on our end, it might be her... Hey hey hey hey! It moved! It moved! There's light, there's light!"

Suddenly, a burst of light appeared in the pitch-black video playback window, as if a flashlight beam had hit the camera lens. The people sitting in front of the computer instantly stirred with excitement.

"It's alive! It's alive!" Wang Ning was ecstatic.

"Old Wang, what nonsense are you talking, of course, she's alive," Bai Zhen chastised.

At this moment, they all understood that the darkness in the video was simply because the other party's room had no lights on, not because of any problem with the lines; the video transmission had succeeded.

The girl was still adjusting the camera lens; all the people in the command center could see was a flashlight swaying back and forth, with occasional glimpses of a hand in the beam of light, twisting something on the camera lens, the wrist brilliantly white against the dark background.