Once We Lived in Nanjing

Zoom in on the image, it's Nanjing City, a web-like city nestled between green fields and hills, with the muddy Yangtze River branching off here. Zoom in further, it's the Qinhuai District, dense with buildings, the dark green Moat a winding belt. Zoom in again, it's Meihua Villa, neat rows of red roofs like perfectly arranged mahjong tiles. Zhao Bowen stands in front of the large screen, using his hand to magnify the map on the screen through gestures, magnifying seemingly without end, from the Eurasian plate all the way to a residential building in a neighborhood, to see an orange cat sunbathing on the rooftop.

"Oh, how magical," Bai Zhen admires. "Is this your modeling?"

"This is Google Maps," says Zhao Bowen.

"This is O3, this is O3, clear signal," old Zhao presses the walkie-talkie, "Switch to map group one."

"Received, switching map," someone answers from the walkie-talkie.

The map on the large screen changes, the originally clear and distinguishable map suddenly turns into a fine mesh of blue, green, and red that no one can understand. This is the modeling that the computer group has worked hard on. In the past week, the Icom725 radio operated throughout the night, the remote sensing satellite flew over Nanjing City from space once every hour, with twenty-four reconnaissance flybys in a day and night; the relay satellite in total transmitted about 40GB of compressed data. The designed lifespan of the remote sensing satellite is only 160 hours—as good as seven full days. By December 24th, the humming satellite has exhausted five-sevenths of its life.

It is said that the whole system cost a total of six hundred million yuan, whereas the Chang'e-4 lunar rover's entire moon trip cost only five hundred million yuan. Of those six hundred million, four hundred million went to the remote sensing satellite. Old Bai counts with heartache; a satellite with a lifespan of 160 hours costs four hundred million, burning on average seven hundred yuan every second—even throwing Renminbi into a furnace to burn wouldn't go this fast.

Are we launching a satellite?

Or running a Renminbi shredder?

But fortunately, the money was not spent in vain, as people have obtained the data needed. Using this highly compressed data, the computer group has reconstructed a model of Qinhuai District in the apocalyptic era and roughly constructed a behavioral model of the 'big eye.'

If before they were mired in the fog of war, completely blind, then from this moment on, they've finally turned on the global map.

Zhao Bowen stands beside the coffee table, raising one hand so that the camera can capture his gestures, his five fingers flexibly typing on an invisible keyboard in the air. From several meters away, he can manipulate the Nanjing City urban model on the screen.

Old Bai watches curiously and also stealthily extends his hand to wave it, but the camera ignores him.

"Dammit, does this thing recognize its master by blood?"

Zhao's other hand holds the walkie-talkie, eyes on the map, issuing commands:

"This is O3, input the X coordinate parameter, 117.05791."

"Input the Y coordinate parameter, 32.69723."

"Calibrate the coordinates, East longitude 120°21′10.6372."

"Calibrate the coordinates, North latitude 32°41′50.0559."

"Display topographic contour line annotations."

"Display elevation point data."

Under old Zhao's command, more and more lines appear on the large screen, increasingly complex, layers of graphics accumulating. Instead of becoming clearer, it only gets more chaotic, baffling all onlookers. From Bai Zhen's point of view, it seems Zhao Bowen is facing a messy tangle of yarn.

"Is this the modeling?" Bai Zhen asks, "It doesn't look like a model at all, what are all those sesame-like white dots on the map?"

"This is modeling," says old Zhao. "The white dots are numbers, each the elevation height of every building in the Qinhuai District."

"I thought it would be like those things we often see in movies, you know, a beam of light 'swooshes' down and a virtual sand table appears on our coffee table, showing the entire virtual map of Nanjing City." Bai Zhen gestured, "Then we could use our hands to spin it around, zoom in, zoom out..."

"That's the movies, man. In the movies, 007's car can fly and tunnel through the earth."

"But no one can make heads or tails of this map model either, it's damn ugly." Bai Zhen said.

"It doesn't matter if you don't get it, there are plenty of people who do." Zhao Bowei said, "Right now, there are at least a company's worth of people staring at this map... Old Wang, are you connected yet?"

Wang Ning, cradling the laptop, fiercely pounded the Enter key.

"About to connect... Damn, this dumbass server, can we not use Tencent Cloud next time?"

Old Zhao pressed down on the walkie-talkie:

"This is 03, this is 03, all units report your progress, over."

A few seconds later, replies came in:

"First unit reporting, second orbital adjustment for bypass two-hole complete, estimated time to pass over Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province on December 24th at 18:33, zenith angle 84°, data distributed by Zijin Mountain Communication Center, double redundancy backup in Guizhou and Beijing, over."

"Second unit reporting, complete rehearsal of the entire secondary work process, conducting disaster recovery backup test, over."

"Third unit reporting, vulnerability found in the firewall, security engineering team is investigating, expected completion by 15:00 this afternoon, over."

"03, 03, this is 02, all personnel at the base are ready, entering first-level combat readiness, how's the situation on the command center's side? Over."

"03 reporting, currently making precise comparisons of the model map, inputting data on Swordman's behavior," Zhao Bowei replied, "Other tasks progressing smoothly, expecting to finish by 16:00 this afternoon, over."

"03, this is 01, report on work progress, over."

"03 reporting, currently making precise comparisons of the model map, inputting all behavioral data on Swordman." Zhao Bowei could only repeat his previous response, as these higher-level units always come in bunches to ask about the situation, "Other tasks progressing smoothly, expecting to finish by 16:00 this afternoon, over."

"03, this is 00, is the work still going smoothly?"

"Report, all is going well." Zhao Bowei was startled, his voice changed; this was the boss of bosses from the higher-ups asking, "Guaranteed to complete the mission."

Everything was progressing in an orderly manner. While BG4MSR was making preparations to head out, her Super Space-Time backup team was also getting ready.

Bai Zhen somewhat regretted not paying more attention when he signed those documents and materials before. If he had, he would have known just how much effort the higher-ups had put in to ensure the smooth operation of this mission. Just judging by the number of paramilitary vehicles he saw across the street when he went downstairs to take out the trash at noon, this was an unusually major operation.

He asked Forsythia for some information, and Forsythia said that it was the local paramilitary, probably from the Jiangsu Corps, called in by the Provincial Party Committee.

The computer team demonstrated their strength to the fullest. Strictly speaking, with data obtained in less than a week, establishing an accurate and reliable model for the Eye's behavior was still somewhat lacking... What to do without enough data? Well, you'd have to guess, but the computer team, after all, was elite, the cream of the crop; even their guesses were more accurate than others.

There was a wizard in the computer team, who in his youth was the champion of a coin-flipping contest, had won five million in a lottery, could make money without working, just by picking it up off the street, guessed all five multiple-choice questions on the college entrance exam correctly, survived a car accident without a scratch, and was blessed by Lady Luck all his life. He led a team independently, codenamed "Blind Cat," using divinely inspired insights to fill in the model data.

Utilizing this powerful model blessed by Lady Luck, the computer team conducted a mix of wild guessing and rigorous analysis, summarizing the Eye's behavioral pattern—the thing about this Eye, was that there was no pattern to its behavior at all.