The file was copied.
Chen Zhuo ejected the floppy disk, put it in its plastic case, and placed it back in his school bag.
He stood up and followed the stream of people out of the computer lab.
The next time this computer restarted, the restoration card on the motherboard would wipe the C and D drives completely.
The LaTeX environment he had just configured today would have to be set up all over again tomorrow.
A few more days passed.
On an afternoon with no classes,
Chen Zhuo finally managed to download the complete articles during a time when the computer lab’s network was stable. He compressed them into split archives and fit them onto two floppy disks.
Holding the floppy disks, he walked into a print shop just outside the school’s south gate.
The print shop wasn’t large. Inside were two bulky, secondhand copy machines, and the air was filled with that distinct print-shop smell.
The owner was a heavyset man in his thirties, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he copied textbooks for someone.
"Boss, I need to print something."
Chen Zhuo walked over to a printer connected to a computer and held out the floppy disk.
"Plug it in yourself. Make a new folder, copy the files over, and print from there. Floppies carry viruses easily, so I have to delete everything when you’re done."
The owner didn’t even look up.
Chen Zhuo inserted the first floppy disk into the computer case.
CLICK. CLACK.
The sound of the drive reading began.
Chen Zhuo double-clicked to open the A: drive.
The screen froze for a moment.
Then, a dialog box popped up:
[Disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?]
Chen Zhuo’s hand, resting on the mouse, froze.
He stared at the prompt for a full five seconds.
’Dammit...’
The floppy disk had bad sectors. The split archive file on it was corrupted.
This meant he couldn’t extract the article. Not only that, but the math formula code he had spent all night typing, which was also saved on this disk, was gone for good too.
The print shop was noisy.
The copy machine made a rhythmic WHIRRING sound.
Looking at the prompt, Chen Zhuo sighed silently to himself.
He clicked "No."
As the drive whirred and ejected the floppy, he pulled it out, squeezed it in his hand, and tossed it into the nearby wastepaper basket with a hint of regret.
"What’s wrong? Disk busted?"
The owner leaned over for a look.
"That’s how it is with these things. Get squished in a bag or a little damp and they’re toast. You got a backup?"
Chen Zhuo dusted off his hands and gave a helpless smile.
"The backup’s in my head. Any way to copy it directly from there?"
Chen Zhuo glanced at the floppy disk in the wastebasket, his tone tinged with self-deprecating resignation.
The owner chuckled at that and flicked the ash from his cigarette.
"If I had that kind of high-tech gear, I’d be working at the Academy of Sciences. Just do it over, kid."
Chen Zhuo sighed and inserted the other, undamaged floppy disk. It contained two other, slightly shorter papers in PDF format.
Open. Click print.
The laser printer next to him began to warm up, feeding and spitting out paper.
A dozen minutes later, Chen Zhuo was holding a stack of A4 paper, still warm and smelling of ink.
One hundred and twenty pages in total.
"Double-sided printing, at 0.15 yuan per page. That’s eighteen yuan total."
The owner tapped a few keys on his calculator.
Chen Zhuo pulled a twenty-yuan bill from his pocket and handed it over.
He took the two one-yuan coins he got back as change.
He walked out of the print shop. The wind outside made the A4 papers in his hand RUSTLE loudly.
Chen Zhuo walked along the path back to his dorm.
As he walked, he did some quick math in his head.
Today, printing these two not-particularly-long articles cost him eighteen yuan.
If he wanted to keep up with the research progress of those other people, he’d need to print at least several dozen preprints of this length every month, not to mention his own constantly revised manuscripts and derivations.
The printing fees alone would cost him several hundred yuan a month.
On top of that, there was the hassle of fighting for a computer in the lab, configuring the environment, and risking damaged floppy disks.
’It just doesn’t seem worth it.’
He had a bank card.
On it was 18,000 yuan he had saved up from various competition prizes.
In 2002, a typical university student’s monthly living expenses were only about three to four hundred yuan.
Eighteen thousand yuan was enough for the down payment on a small apartment in Huizhou.
But at his current rate of visiting the print shop, this money...
...would be gone in two years, tops.
’Knowledge really burns through money.’
Chen Zhuo pushed open the door to Dorm 4, Room 215.
The room was a bit of a mess.
Wang Dayong, wearing a pair of baggy shorts, was squatting in the aisle between the desks.
A few old newspapers were spread out on the floor in front of him, scattered with a motherboard, capacitors, a few old RAM sticks, and a soldering iron.
The smell of rosin was thick in the air.
"You’re back?"
Wang Dayong was biting a pencil, a pair of small tweezers in his hand, carefully prodding something on the motherboard.
"Dayong."
Chen Zhuo walked to his desk and set down the stack of warm, freshly printed A4 paper.
"If you keep soldering in here, the dorm matron is going to think we’re running some kind of underground radio station when she does her rounds."
Chen Zhuo pulled out his chair, sat down, and teased him casually.
Wang Dayong grinned and placed the soldering iron on its stand.
"Just messing around. I picked up a busted ASUS motherboard at the flea market yesterday. The chipset isn’t fried, just a few power supply capacitors blew. I’m replacing them. It might just power on."
Wang Dayong dusted off his hands, stood up, and grabbed a cup from the desk, chugging a large gulp of water.
Chen Zhuo glanced at the slightly yellowed motherboard on the floor.
"Dayong."
Chen Zhuo picked up his own cup and poured some hot water.
"Around here, if I wanted to build a Pentium 4 machine—top-of-the-line motherboard and graphics card, big hard drive, and a flat-screen, eye-care monitor—roughly how much would that cost?"
Wang Dayong paused.
He put down his water cup and wiped the sweat from his face with the towel draped around his neck.
"You’re building a computer?"
"Yeah."
Chen Zhuo took a sip of hot water.
"Saving code at the computer lab is too much of a hassle, and another one of my floppy disks died today."
Wang Dayong sat cross-legged on the edge of the lower bunk, starting to run hardware prices through his head.
"If you want a top-spec tower and monitor like that... a brand-name machine would probably run you twelve or thirteen thousand yuan."
Wang Dayong rubbed his chin.
"But if we get the parts and build it ourselves, I can probably get the price down to around seven or eight thousand. Still, that’s a money-burning configuration."
For a hardware enthusiast, getting to handle the top-tier components of the era for a build...
Wang Dayong was instantly thrilled.
"Alright."
Chen Zhuo nodded, his tone as steady as if he were buying a box of chalk.
"What if we add a personal laser printer to that?"
Wang Dayong coughed twice, violently, nearly choking on his own saliva.
He stared at Chen Zhuo with wide eyes.
"A what? A printer?" Wang Dayong thought he’d misheard. "A laser one?"
"Yeah."
Chen Zhuo pointed to the stack of printed articles on his desk.
"Reading on a screen hurts my eyes. I want to be able to print out materials whenever I need to."
Wang Dayong swallowed hard.
"That’s not cheap, man. Who buys one of those for their dorm room? Even a basic black-and-white HP laser printer would cost several thousand yuan! And the consumables for those things are crazy expensive."
Chen Zhuo put his cup down.
"All together, would twelve thousand be enough?"
Wang Dayong fell silent.
He looked at Chen Zhuo’s calm face, which held no hint of a joke.
"Enough."
Wang Dayong nodded.
"More than enough."
"Good."
And just like that, the matter was settled.
But after sinking twelve thousand into this, the remaining six thousand yuan wouldn’t be nearly enough to cover the massive amount of toner and paper he’d go through in the coming years.
He still needed to find a way.
A way to earn some money for consumables.
「10:00 PM.」
The dorm building started to get noisy.
From Room 216 across the hall,
came the faint sound of rapid, heavy keyboard clatter.
It was accompanied by the CREAK of a bed as someone tossed and turned.
Chen Zhuo sat at his desk.
He opened the stack of articles he had just printed today and picked up his fountain pen.
The noise from across the hall was much louder than usual.
He paid it no mind.
Head down, he began to underline sentences and write notes in the margins of the paper.
’The ecosystem in this dorm building is fascinating.’
’Some people are piecing together junk for the sake of hardware, some are burning themselves out over a few lines of code, and some are on the verge of a breakdown just for a peaceful night’s sleep.’
Chen Zhuo quietly turned a page.
He just had to wait for an opportunity.
Chu Ge’s typing grew more and more frantic.

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