In Huizhou, the October wind already carried a hint of a chill.
On the second floor of Keda’s old library.
Outside the long, narrow, wood-latticed window, ivy leaves swayed, blocking a portion of the afternoon sun.
Chen Zhuo sat in his usual spot by the wall.
Several yellowed sheets of scratch paper lay spread across the table, covered in matrices and partial differential equations.
To the left of the paper was a thick, foreign-language journal. Its cover was frayed at the edges. It was a bound volume of *Physical Review Letters* from 1998.
The fountain pen in Chen Zhuo’s hand paused mid-air.
The ink on its nib had begun to dry from the long pause.
He looked at the half-derived mathematical model on the paper, his brow furrowing slightly.
’It’s a dead end.’
He was trying to use the tools of algebraic geometry to deconstruct a classic topological boundary problem from 1980s string theory.
But by the fourth nested step of his calculations, an ineliminable infinity emerged in the parameters.
He flipped through the 1998 journal at his side.
The experimental data inside was too old.
Physics was developing too quickly at this stage, especially the hypotheses concerning quantum states.
He needed the latest preprints.
He needed papers from yesterday, or even this morning—the ones that hadn’t been formally published yet.
The library’s physical collection didn’t have them.
Chen Zhuo capped his pen with a soft click.
He folded the scratch paper, tucked it inside the book, and stood up.
The first-floor circulation desk.
Su Wei was hunched over, organizing a box of new library cards, her sleeves rolled up to her wrists.
Chen Zhuo placed the thick, bound volume of *PRL* on the wooden countertop.
Su Wei looked up.
She pulled the card from the back of the book and picked up the date stamp.
Her movements were clean and efficient.
"It’s not overdue."
Su Wei slipped the card into a sorting box and placed the book on a cart behind her.
"Is there any chance Keda subscribes to the physical copies of this month’s foreign physics preprints?"
Chen Zhuo asked casually.
Su Wei didn’t stop what she was doing. Her voice was level.
"Impossible. Physical journals have a lag of one to two months at best. They come by sea, go through customs, and then get distributed to the various departments. Even for *Nature* or *Science*, by the time they arrive at the library, they’re already out of date."
She glanced at Chen Zhuo.
"If you want the latest stuff, your only option is the computer lab at the network center. But the lab is on the education network, so it’s fine for domestic websites.
"But if you want to download foreign articles, you’ll have to fight for the pitifully small amount of international bandwidth. If you can’t find a good foreign proxy IP, the direct download speed... is pretty much down to luck."
Chen Zhuo nodded.
"Got it. Thanks."
He turned and walked out of the old library.
「Two days later.」
8:00 PM.
Keda Network Center, Computer Lab 3.
The air was filled with the mixed smell of plastic shoe covers and heat radiating from computer towers.
The lab was packed.
Most screens flickered with the interfaces of early text-based MUD games or WhatsApp chat windows.
The clatter of keyboards rose and fell in a ceaseless rhythm.
Chen Zhuo sat at a computer in the corner.
It was a machine with a Pentium 4 processor. The 15-inch flat-screen monitor was a bit harsh on the eyes.
Chen Zhuo didn’t open a web browser.
He was in a new folder on the D: drive, manually configuring the CTeX compilation environment.
He needed to type up the mathematical formulas he had worked out on paper over the past few days, making them digital for easier citation and modification later.
Ten minutes later, the environment was configured.
Chen Zhuo opened an editor with white text on a black background, placed his hands on the keyboard, and began typing out the code from memory.
He typed quickly.
But the computer responded slowly.
With every compilation preview, the computer tower would emit a dull roar, and the hourglass icon on the screen would spin for several seconds.
Chen Zhuo waited patiently.
After typing out two pages of formulas, he minimized the editor and opened Internet Explorer.
He typed the URL for arXiv into the address bar.
The page loaded very slowly.
The progress bar at the bottom crawled forward like a snail.
After a full two minutes, the simple English search interface finally appeared.
Chen Zhuo typed in a few keywords.
The list refreshed.
He found a preprint paper from the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study that had been uploaded just three days prior.
He clicked download.
The file wasn’t large, just a 2.5 MB file in PS format.
But when the download box popped up, the speed showed only a few kilobytes per second.
Estimated time: forty-five minutes.
Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair, watching the slow-moving blue progress bar.
He took two brand-new 3.5-inch floppy disks from his bag and placed them on the desk.
A single floppy disk only had a capacity of 1.44 MB.
He would have to compress the downloaded article and split it into multiple volumes just to be able to copy it and take it with him.
Time ticked by.
The air in the computer lab grew increasingly stale.
9:50 PM.
The download progress reached 98%.
Chen Zhuo sat up straight, ready to start the compression.
At the entrance to the lab, the elderly administrator picked up a brass bell and began to shake it vigorously.
"It’s ten o’clock! We’re shutting down the internet and the computers! Save your work now if you haven’t already!"
The old man’s booming voice echoed through the lab.
Chen Zhuo glanced at his screen.
99%.
The download speed suddenly froze, dropping to 0 KB/s.
All around him, computer screens began to go dark, one after another. Students pushed back their chairs and headed for the door, grumbling.
9:55 PM.
A red ’X’ finally appeared in the download box on his screen.
Connection timed out.
’So close.’
Chen Zhuo stared at the red ’X’ for a moment, his finger hovering over the mouse. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache began to form.
’Stuck at 99% before the connection died.’
’Just a wonderful feeling.’
He closed the browser.
He saved the LaTeX file he’d just typed and dragged it to the A: drive.
The computer case emitted a series of clicks and whirs as it wrote to the disk.

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