"I’m Shen Lan, a visiting professor at the business school."
The woman looked at Su Wei and stated her name for the first time. Her tone was no longer impatient and condescending, but carried a sense of scrutiny between equals.
Su Wei nodded but didn’t introduce herself.
Shen Lan looked at the girl before her.
A thin shirt, a pale face, and a slightly chipped thermos clutched in her hands.
Other than her unusually calm eyes, there was nothing special about her.
Shen Lan didn’t believe in magic like photographic memory. She only believed in logic and stress testing.
The previous example of the binding error might have just been a coincidence. Perhaps the girl had happened to flip through that book a few days ago and had seen that specific mistake.
On Wall Street, a data source that couldn’t pass continuous cross-validation stress tests would never be integrated into a core model.
Shen Lan’s gaze sharpened. Without any warning, she spoke.
"The 1996 Nikkei 225 Index. Anomaly analysis report on the implied volatility for March."
Shen Lan spoke extremely quickly, as if issuing a search command.
Su Wei didn’t even blink.
"Review of Financial Studies, the 1996 spring issue."
Su Wei’s voice remained steady and clear, showing no ripple of disturbance from Shen Lan’s accelerated pace.
"Page 214. It’s a comprehensive report. The charts span three pages, from 214 to 216."
Shen Lan’s pupils contracted slightly.
She didn’t go to the shelves to verify it. She had just looked up this data set in another database last week and clearly remembered the report’s source.
Su Wei had been correct down to the very page number.
"Ninety-two. Rubinstein."
Shen Lan threw out a second command, even omitting the specific topic and giving only the year and a name.
Su Wei’s hand holding the thermos tightened.
But she only paused for less than half a second.
"A discussion on early pricing models for the Volatility Smile."
Su Wei filled in the information Shen Lan had omitted.
Shen Lan’s breath caught.
"Journal of Business, 1992, summer issue."
Su Wei continued to report the coordinates.
"Page forty-five."
Su Wei paused, as if retrieving the specific image of that page in her mind.
"Second paragraph, third line. The subscript in the derivative formula is misprinted."
Su Wei looked at Shen Lan.
"It was supposed to be the variable ’t’ for time, but it was printed as the variable ’i’. If you copy the formula directly, the entire time-series derivation will collapse."
Shen Lan stared intently at Su Wei.
She didn’t issue a third command.
There was no need.
Two retrievals of extremely obscure information—spanning different years, different journals, and even including specific printing errors—had completely shattered the probability of it being a coincidence.
Shen Lan knew exactly what this meant.
’This isn’t just a good memory.’
’This is forcibly building a multi-dimensional, inverted-index database inside her brain out of tens of thousands of messy, incomplete, physical journals.’
’She hasn’t just indexed titles and authors. Even typos, missing symbols, and binding errors have all been added as tags in this database.’
’This is practically a computer in human form.’
’In 2004, no civilian computer or campus network database can do this.’
’And the quantitative project she’d just taken on after returning to the country... its most troublesome and fatal bottleneck right now is the lack of a tool to quickly clean and extract raw historical data from the nineties.’
’The few graduate students here in China are maddeningly slow at finding data, and when they do find it, they often feed the erroneous data directly into the model.’
Shen Lan placed the thick book in her hands onto a nearby cart.
She looked at Su Wei.
"What’s your name?" Shen Lan asked.
"Su Wei."
"What year are you?"
"Second year in the gifted youth program."
A flash of realization crossed Shen Lan’s eyes. ’No wonder she has this unnatural photographic memory and inverted indexing ability.’
Shen Lan’s gaze went past Su Wei’s shoulder, toward the lit cubicle at the end of the hallway.
She saw the running air conditioner mounted on the wall and the computer on the desk.
Even from a distance, Shen Lan could tell the flashing matrix models on the screen weren’t for simple word processing, but for running complex mathematical calculations.
’It’s obvious some unknown old professor or department at the university is squandering this kid’s time, completely oblivious to her value.’
Shen Nan withdrew her gaze. When a quality asset is undervalued, the most effective method is a buyout at a high premium.
She didn’t beat around the bush, nor did she ask if Su Wei was interested in quantitative finance. She especially didn’t bother with nonsense like, "Work with me and you’ll learn a lot," or "I’ll guarantee you a spot in grad school."
"How much of a stipend does the university give you a month to sit here in this archive room?"
Su Wei looked at her.
"The highest tier for internal staff. Two hundred."
Su Wei replied.
The corner of Shen Lan’s mouth curved into a cold arc.
’Using two hundred yuan to hire a human supercomputer is an absolute waste of a precious resource.’
Shen Nan wasted no more words. She reached out, pulled open her trench coat, and took out a long, black, genuine leather wallet from an inner pocket.
Her slender fingers undid the wallet’s metal clasp.
A thick stack of red hundred-yuan bills was stuffed inside the wallet’s compartment.
Shen Nan’s fingertips riffled over the stack, and she crisply plucked out several bills.
"I don’t care what department you’re in, and I don’t care who gave you that computer."
Shen Nan slapped the cash she’d pulled out directly onto the scratch-covered table.
The brand-new, undisguised red bills were a stunning visual shock in the dimly lit archive room.
"Taking the university’s measly two hundred yuan in dead-end wages to do this kind of menial work is an absolute waste."
Shen Nan looked into Su Wei’s eyes.
"Your brain. I’m renting it."
Su Wei looked at the cash on the table.
"You don’t even have to leave this archive room. Just use that computer and do my work on the side. From now on, you’ll sit here every day, extract the raw historical data I need from these crappy books, do the basic data cleaning, and send it to me in a package."
Shen Nan tapped her finger on the edge of the bills.
"It’s piece-rate pay, with a guaranteed base of four times what the university gives you. I’ll give you eight hundred yuan a month as a service fee. Pure cash, off the university’s books. This is an advance for the first month of next semester."
Shen Nan stared at Su Wei’s face.
Su Wei’s gaze shifted from Shen Nan’s face to the red banknotes on the table.
For a girl who came from the remote mountains and had to budget carefully every month, nothing was more persuasive than cash held right in her hand.
She didn’t refuse, nor did she stand on ceremony.
Su Wei reached out her left hand and placed it directly on the hundred-yuan bills.
She picked up the money, held it in her hand, then stuffed it into her pants pocket with extreme naturalness.
"I’ll take it."
Su Wei looked at Shen Nan and gave a crisp, decisive nod.
Shen Nan nodded in satisfaction.
"Tomorrow at 8 a.m., I’ll send the first batch of data requirements to your email. Make a report template for it."
Shen Nan turned and left without even taking the copy of Econometrica she had spent so long looking for.
Now that she had this human database, she no longer needed to come flip through books herself.
The sound of high heels on the floor faded into the distance and disappeared around the corner of the stairwell.
The archive room fell silent again.
Su Wei stood in the aisle, reaching a hand to touch her pocket.
The unpackaged bills, separated from her thigh by only a thin layer of fabric, gave off an extremely solid and reassuring feeling.
A primal sense of security.
Carrying her thermos, she turned and walked back to the warm cubicle.
She closed the door.
Su Wei sat down at the computer desk, set her thermos aside, unzipped her pocket, took out the cash, and laid it flat on the desk.
She didn’t count it. She just opened the innermost compartment of her canvas bag, placed the money carefully inside, and zipped it shut.
On the computer screen, the probability model for the Discrete Matrix had just finished its final progress bar.
A green "100%" popped up.
Su Wei looked at the screen and let out a sigh of relief.
She moved the mouse to the top-right corner, clicked save, tapped the keyboard, and entered the shutdown command.
The screen flickered once and went black. The computer’s fan whirred to a stop, and the only sound left in the cubicle was the hum of the air conditioner.
Su Wei stood up and unplugged the air conditioner from the wall.
She slung the canvas bag over her shoulder, pushed open the cubicle door, and walked out.
She turned off the main lights in the archive room.

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