The film, titled *Autumn of 2001*, continued to play until 5:30 in the afternoon.
As the sun slowly set, the angle of the light gradually changed. The inverted world projected on the back wall of the classroom slowly blurred, eventually dissolving into the dusky twilight like a fading dream.
The bell rang, signaling the end of class.
For the students of Grade 7, Class 1, the afternoon had been simply too fantastical.
First, they’d all participated in a class-wide "unauthorized construction project," then they’d collectively enjoyed a full period of movie time in the dark.
The excitement had completely drained their energy.
So, the moment the bell rang, everyone packed their bags much faster than usual.
"Brother Zhuo, I’m heading out! See you tomorrow!"
Liu Fei slung his backpack over his shoulder and shouted toward the front row.
His use of "Brother Zhuo" was no longer just going with the flow; it was now a title spoken from the heart.
"See you tomorrow."
Chen Zhuo didn’t turn around, simply raising and waving the hand that held his ballpoint pen.
Before leaving, Li Xiaoya and a few other girls left another pile of supplies on Chen Zhuo’s desk.
Two chocolate bars, a bag of fish-shaped crackers, and an unopened bottle of AD Calcium Milk.
"Go home early. Don’t study too late. Look how tired you are."
Li Xiaoya nagged him like a mother hen before leaving with her pink backpack.
Soon, the noisy classroom fell silent.
All that remained was the dark space, sealed tight with newspaper, and the lingering smell of snacks and ink in the air.
Chen Zhuo remained seated on the soft chair.
He finally turned the page in his copy of *Jimmy Dovich*—a page he had been pondering all afternoon.
He wrote the final line of the equation neatly in the bottom right corner of his scratch paper.
Q.E.D.
Chen Zhuo put down his pen and let out a long breath.
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, which felt tight and strained.
The feeling was like finishing a marathon. His whole body was trembling, but his brain was in a state of blankness that follows extreme exertion.
The post-euphoria lull.
For an ordinary junior high boy, this state usually came after a heart-pounding basketball game, finishing an exquisitely crafted novel, or completing certain... indescribable acts.
But Chen Zhuo was different.
For Chen Zhuo, solving a difficult math problem was its own high-level mental climax.
Now, the climax had passed.
A huge sense of emptiness washed over him like a tide.
He didn’t want to go home.
Home was just the sound of the TV, the possibility of a call from the factory for Comrade Chen Jianguo, and the profound affection of the most, most, most respected Ms. Liu Xiuying.
Right now, he needed a place that was absolutely quiet, absolutely rational, and free from any human emotional interference to settle his brain, which was still spinning at high speed.
Chen Zhuo put his glasses back on.
He glanced around the dim classroom, his gaze passing through the newspaper-covered windows to the old red-brick building across the athletic field.
That was the science building.
At this hour, it should be a world of silence.
From the innermost compartment of his backpack, Chen Zhuo fished out a slightly worn key.
It was from Old Zhou.
A ticket to his sanctuary.
The science building was the oldest structure at City No.1 Middle School.
Built in the early eighties, its red-brick facade was covered in withered ivy.
The voice-activated lights in the hallway were often on the fritz. Walking on the terrazzo floor, the vast, echoing sounds were enough to make one’s skin crawl.
But Chen Zhuo liked this flavor.
The flavor of science.
With practiced ease, he felt his way up to the second floor in the dark, stopping in front of a dark green door at the end of the hall.
A paint-chipped sign hung on the door.
[Physics Prep Room]
This wasn’t a large laboratory for student classes, but a place for storing precision instruments, for teachers to prepare lessons, and for equipment maintenance.
In other words, Old Zhou’s turf.
Chen Zhuo inserted the key into the lock and gave it a gentle turn.
The lock cylinder felt stiff as it turned; clearly, no one had used this spare key for a long time.
The door opened.
A gust of cool, long-sealed air washed over him.
Chen Zhuo didn’t turn on the light. He closed the door gently, completely shutting out the world outside.
The sky outside had grown completely dark. Only the distant streetlights cast a few mottled slivers of light on the floor through the gaps in the curtains.
Using this faint light, Chen Zhuo walked to a long table in the corner.
He placed his backpack on the floor and gently pulled the dust cover off the instrument on the table.
A heavy, grayish-white metal instrument was revealed.
A J2459 Student Oscilloscope.
In this era, this was the most expensive piece of equipment in many middle school labs.
Though it was an old relic in the eyes of professional research institutions, for Chen Zhuo, it was the only electronic toy he could get his hands on.
He reached out and stroked the instrument’s cold metal casing.
The texture of the rough, granular paint was reassuring to him.
"CLICK."
He pressed the red power switch.
No response.
Chen Zhuo wasn’t worried.
This machine used a cathode-ray tube. Like an old diesel engine, it needed to warm up.
The filament inside needed to glow red, and the electron gun had to build up energy before it could shoot out that fantastical stream of electrons.
Chen Zhuo pulled over a round stool and sat quietly in the darkness, waiting.
One second.
Two seconds.
Ten seconds.
In the center of the oscilloscope’s round screen, behind the glass, an extremely faint little green dot suddenly appeared.
Immediately after, the green dot began to focus and brighten.
Chen Zhuo reached out, gently turning the intensity and focus knobs.
The blurry spot of light slowly contracted, finally becoming a point as sharp as a needle’s tip, emitting a faint green glow.
It was so pure.
This green wasn’t the green of plants, nor the green of paint.
It was the light emitted by phosphor powder bombarded by high-energy electrons.
It was the physical manifestation of electricity.
In the dark laboratory, this sliver of green light reflected off Chen Zhuo’s gold-rimmed lenses, casting a strange and cold, high-tech aura on his youthful face.
If someone were to walk in now, they would probably mistake Chen Zhuo for some kind of mad scientist.
No, that’s not right.
A junior version of a mad scientist.
But Chen Zhuo was actually just playing.
He picked up a lead from a nearby shelf and connected the Y-input to the signal generator.
The game began.
Chen Zhuo wasn’t performing any experiment from a physics textbook.
He didn’t need to measure voltage or observe waveforms.
He just wanted to draw.
To draw with a beam of electrons.
His left hand rested on the X-axis gain knob, his right on the signal generator’s frequency adjustment knob.
The principle of an oscilloscope is actually very simple:
The electron beam makes a dot on the screen.
The X-axis controls the dot’s horizontal movement, and the Y-axis controls its vertical movement.
With no signal, it’s just a stationary dot.
With a sweep signal on the X-axis, it becomes a horizontal line.
But what if you input two sine waves to the X and Y axes simultaneously?
Then you get a Lissajous figure.
A very interesting form of electronic graffiti.
Chen Zhuo first locked the X-axis sweep frequency at 50 Hz—the frequency of the mains electricity, the most stable and cheapest time base available.
Then, he started adjusting the Y-axis signal generator.
A light twist of his fingers.
The green dot on the screen went wild, jumping and spinning madly, tracing dazzling trails of light.
Due to the persistence of vision, these light trails wove into a tangled mess on his retina.
That was chaos.
It was disorder.
Chen Zhuo stared at the tangled mess with a focused gaze.
He continued to fine-tune the frequency.
He was searching for the resonance point.
Hz... 60 Hz... 75 Hz...
The lines on the screen were still shaking violently, like a green ghost trapped in a cage, dashing left and right.
Suddenly.
The instant the frequency knob turned to 100 Hz.
The frantic, tangled mess froze in a ten-thousandth of a second.
All the lines snapped into place, coalescing on the screen into a perfect, closed figure-eight.
That was the stable pattern that appeared only when the X-axis and Y-axis frequencies reached an integer ratio of 1:2.
"Beautiful."
Chen Zhuo murmured in admiration in the dark.
This was ten thousand times more satisfying than drawing on scratch paper.
Lines drawn on paper were dead, just an accumulation of graphite powder.
But here, these lines were alive.
They were the trajectories of countless electrons flying through a vacuum at thousands of kilometers per hour.
If Chen Zhuo’s fingers trembled even slightly, if the frequency drifted by even 0.1 Hz, this perfect figure-eight would immediately collapse back into a tangled mess.
This feeling—of forcibly maintaining a fragile order on the very edge of an extremely unstable chaos—intoxicated Chen Zhuo.
This was a sense of control.
This was a god’s-eye view.
It gave him the pleasure of conquest.
He continued to play.
Hz.
The figure-eight split, becoming three interlocking loops, like a complex Chinese knot.
Hz.
The pattern transformed into a twisted crown.
Chen Zhuo’s fingers danced swiftly over the knobs, as if playing an invisible piano.
The green light on the screen shifted unpredictably with his fingertips.
At times it was smooth as silk, at others sharp as lightning, and then it would bloom into a complex geometric flower.
The entire laboratory was quiet.
There was only the faint "HUMMM" from the oscilloscope’s transformer—the low drone of the 50 Hz current.
In this gloomy space, this nine-year-old child was immersed in his own unique, secret electronic game.
He didn’t need Red Alert, he didn’t need Counter-Strike.
This single beam of green light was his entire world right now.
Until.
A smell wafted into his nostrils. It was a mixture of cheap tobacco, old tea stains, and the greasy odor of someone who hadn’t bathed in a long time.
Chen Zhuo’s fingers froze.
The pattern on the screen instantly collapsed, reverting to a jumble of jumping green noise.
"The frequency drifted."

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