「2:00 PM.」
Wang Dayong sat at his desk, a portable ultrasonic flaw detector in his right hand. He was repeatedly comparing readings from a silver-gray lithium-aluminum alloy sample.
He frowned, a dog-eared copy of *Physical Properties of Metals* spread open before him, its pages densely annotated in red ink with lattice constants.
The fan whirred in the dorm room.
Chu Ge wasn’t in room 216. He had pulled up a round stool and was sitting at Chen Zhuo’s desk.
In the year 2004, Chen Zhuo’s computer was an anomaly at Keda. The tower hummed almost silently, and on the screen, lines of white code on a black background cascaded down like a waterfall.
Chu Ge had a freshly unwrapped lollipop in his mouth, the plastic stick bobbing up and down as he clenched his jaw.
His eyes were glued to the screen. Every so often, he would reach out to hit the enter key a few times, only to follow it with a long sigh.
"Brother Zhuo, this machine of yours runs so smoothly. When my crappy Pentium runs this branch prediction, the fan spins fast enough to blow the case cover off."
Chu Ge mumbled indistinctly.
Chen Zhuo ignored him.
Chen Zhuo was sitting cross-legged on the top bunk, his back propped up by a quilt. He held a yellowed Russian book in one hand and a freshly opened carton of milk in the other, the straw chewed and dented.
"SLUUURP—"
He’d finished the milk, and the straw made a hollow gurgling sound.
Chu Ge’s furious typing clattered on the keyboard, then stopped abruptly.
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, then turned and looked up.
"Brother Zhuo, this Discrete Matrix you derived for me yesterday... is it a bottomless pit?"
Chu Ge’s tone was thick with the aggrieved frustration of someone looking for an excuse.
"My code’s been running for over ten minutes, just going in circles. When you wrote out the derivation, did you deliberately leave out an exit condition for me?"
Chen Zhuo lifted his gaze from the Russian book and glanced at the empty carton in his hand, pointedly avoiding Chu Ge’s long, suffering face that screamed for help.
He placed the empty milk carton steadily on the metal railing of his bed, his voice betraying no emotion.
"That piece of scratch paper I gave you yesterday. What’s written on the last line of the back?"
Chu Ge froze.
The lollipop stick in his mouth stopped moving.
"Holy shit, there was stuff on the back?"
He whipped around and started frantically digging through the messy pile of papers next to the keyboard, finally pulling out the A4 sheet covered in matrix derivations.
He flipped it over.
At the very bottom of the page was a solitary line of symbols, followed by a tiny, handwritten note: Truncate.
"Singularity... Truncate?"
Chu Ge stared at the line of text, speechless for a long moment. Two seconds later, he slapped his thigh hard.
"I’m such a fucking idiot! I was so focused on copying the main formulas on the front that I missed the closing boundary on the back!"
Cursing himself, he quickly grabbed the mouse and, with a flurry of clicks and keystrokes, added two lines of limiting conditions.
The code on the screen noticeably paused for a second.
Then, the logic that had been stuck in an infinite loop instantly resolved, and the data stream began to scroll smoothly.
"Incredible!"
Chu Ge grinned, crunching down on the lollipop stick, his eyes still fixed on the screen.
Wang Dayong put down his flaw detector, blew a bit of dust off his desk, and chuckled without looking up.
"Chu Ge, you come running to 215 every day. You might as well just move your bed over. Xiaozhuo’s computer is practically your personal workstation now."
"Dayong, you just don’t get it."
Chu Ge’s eyes were glued to the screen, and he didn’t turn his head.
"This is called basking in the aura of a genius. I mean, look at this logic. Is this something a normal human brain can come up with?"
The door was open, and the laughter of a few guys chasing each other down the hall occasionally drifted in.
Just then, the sounds from the hallway suddenly turned chaotic.
A set of heavy, disorderly, and extremely fast footsteps headed straight for room 215.
"BANG."
A hand shoved the open door all the way back until it hit the wall.
Old Ma, the head of the logistics department, stood in the doorway, his forehead beaded with sweat. He was wearing a worn-out jacket and panting heavily as he scanned the room.
Behind him, the hallway was crowded with four or five workers in blue uniforms.
Some were carrying a thick coil of gray cable, another was pushing a flatbed dolly carrying a chunk of iron half the height of a man, and two carpenters were holding toolboxes.
Most eye-catching of all was a dark gray security door, its edges lined with a thick sealing strip, that several workers were struggling to hold upright together.
The noise in the room suddenly stopped.
Chu Ge turned around. Wang Dayong stood up, his tall, broad frame blocking the doorway and instantly cutting the light from the hall by half.
"Sir?"
Wang Dayong frowned and took a step forward, positioning himself squarely between Chen Zhuo’s bunk and the doorway.
"What’s all this? Tearing out doors, running cables... you didn’t even give us any notice? We have labs this afternoon, we need to get some rest."
Wang Dayong’s tone was heavy and tinged with defiance.
Old Ma took out a tissue to wipe his sweat. He didn’t put on the airs of a department head, but instead forced a dry smile.
"My apologies, students. This is a special situation that requires special handling."
As he spoke, Old Ma looked up at Chen Zhuo, who was still sitting on the top bunk.
"Classmate Chen, I hope we’re not disturbing your reading?"
Chen Zhuo, the straw still in his mouth, watched the scene at the door. He didn’t speak, just reached out and deposited the straw into the empty milk carton. His movements were very light.
Old Ma rubbed his hands together, his tone carrying an undeniable urgency.
"It’s a direct order from Principal Zhou. The wiring in this room must be finished this afternoon, and the door replaced. The workers are very fast, I promise they won’t disturb your rest for long."
After speaking, he turned and waved to the workers behind him.
"Come in, come in. Be careful. Don’t touch the students’ computers or their samples."

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