Chapter 1924 - The Man Who Fixes Computers

The Senate strongly supported this matter. Not only did they allocate special funds to expand the old timeline goods warehouse at Gaoshanling to store Elders' scrapped personal items, but they also spared no expense offering consumer goods to buy back these items. On one hand, this recovered precious resources. On the other, it prevented these items from flowing into society and causing information leaks.

These items from the old timeline—even something as simple as a notebook—demonstrated the "backwardness" of the Senate's existing industrial products in terms of material quality, processing technology, and performance.

Why were Australian products so advanced, yet the Senate could only produce "clunky, big, and ugly" austerity versions? This doubt had long festered among naturalized citizens.

Regarding the origin of the Elders, the "Australia" explanation was currently in use, but the Australia story wasn't a panacea. Therefore, for a long time, information about the original timeline was handled with a strict policy of containment. The General Office and the Great Library jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing the Diffusion of Old Timeline Intelligence."

Zhang Haogu of the Truth Office took the lead and, based on this, formulated the "Advanced Technology Protection Regulations (Draft)." The seemingly innocuous title concealed many controversial clauses: inspecting the preservation status of old timeline items in Elders' private spaces and offices, conducting random checks on life secretaries' knowledge of old timeline technology and history, and monitoring and preventing core naturalized citizens from discussing the origins of the transmigrators.

This draft was unsurprisingly rejected, but it had left a significant mark. The result was that the Senate and the Executive Committee formulated a series of policies to prevent intelligence diffusion based on the original "Notice."

This "trade-in" policy for personal items was an important measure among the confidentiality protocols. Lin Shenhe probably felt his computer was beyond repair, and having borrowed Feng Zongze's computer gave him something to fall back on, so he simply handed it over to the Planning Commission for scrapping and recycling.

So if Dr. Zhong wanted to get his hands on this scrapped computer, it would likely be handled according to the procedures for accessing Senate reserved old timeline materials, and the approval process for that was notoriously complex. Besides, Lin Shenhe's machine had a broken screen cable while the rest of the motherboard functions remained relatively intact. It was uncertain whether the Great Library would agree to let him remove a component from the power module.

In truth, Feng Nuo also had a say in this matter, especially regarding the removal of parts. Of course, the approval process wasn't under his control—he just signed off as the head of the technical department.

If Dr. Zhong can settle everything beforehand, doing a favor wouldn't hurt, he thought. Anyway, only one of the two computers can survive. Saving one is as good as saving the other. I haven't refused Elders' requests on similar forms before. Transmigrating and actually bringing a Sony... Feng Nuo shook his head, replaced the desiccant in the iron box, returned it to the cabinet, relocked it, and went back to his desk.

In the old timeline, Feng Nuo had been a PhD student in the computer science department of a university in Beijing. His supervisor was a big name in the field of computer architecture—mediocre academic standards, but exceptionally skilled at bragging and maneuvering. Not that this had much to do with Feng Nuo. He wasn't an angry youth. It wasn't easy for the boss to feed a large group of people, and he treated Feng Nuo reasonably well. Unfortunately, Feng Nuo wasn't a creative person. One might even say he was rather inert. By his sixth year of PhD study, he had written a mountain of code and a heap of applications, guides, patents, and reports, but had barely managed to churn out a few papers, published in journals of mediocre quality. The boss didn't give much guidance but had high standards for graduation and wouldn't relent to let him defend his dissertation—let alone drop out to find work. Feng Nuo's face didn't matter, but the boss's face did.

Feng Nuo felt boxed in.

In those two years, PhD students jumping off buildings was a trend. Feng Nuo could well understand the depression brought by graduation pressure and was genuinely worried that one day his dopamine levels might happen to dip and he would take that path. Of course, hindsight proved Feng Nuo had worried in the wrong direction. His hormone levels seemed to remain consistently high. Combined with graduation pressure, this led him to resolutely join the transmigration expedition. Perhaps due to his hormone levels falling back after the crossing, he soon regretted it—and regretted it many times. The most recent instance was just now while talking to Dr. Zhong, when he suddenly remembered he was just an ungraduated PhD student.

In the early days after the crossing, Feng Nuo was deeply depressed for a while. In truth, he wasn't suited for transmigration. He was the kind of person who couldn't function outside the modern technological environment and the internet. Fortunately, relying on the golden signboard of his school and years of coding experience, Feng Nuo infiltrated the IT group and hung around for a long time. Of course, he claimed to be a PhD, boasting about how great his academic achievements were and how he had only transmigrated in anger because his achievements had been usurped by his boss. This routine had truly inherited the essence of his former supervisor. In fact, no one had the time or inclination to scrutinize the authenticity of his doctorate, so he hadn't been exposed yet.

However, this was of limited use. There were plenty of people in computer-related majors in the Senate, but it was one of the most useless specializations. Feng Nuo called it a "former sunrise industry." Everyone knew this stuff was too advanced—so much so that the first generation couldn't possibly restore the electronic information industry of the old timeline in their lifetimes. So Feng Nuo quickly put away his boasting and settled into muddling along.

Working in the computer room offered unique advantages. His job was mainly maintenance, which wasn't particularly demanding. The spare time was spent playing games, reading forum posts, watching movies. He was like a fish that had accidentally swum into a water-filled rut, greedily breathing the modern atmosphere in the computer room every day.

The place where he worked was called the Senate's Computing and Data Center, and the director was Xu Laowu. However, Xu Laowu didn't manage the computer room directly—he was the overall person in charge. Feng Nuo's current official title was Director of the High-Performance Computing Resource Management Office of the Planning Commission. His main task was managing all electronic computing equipment brought by the transmigrators from the old timeline: from the large computing clusters deep in the General Manufacturing Plant down to the Deli solar calculators in the hands of individual Elders. Although he held several other concurrent positions with different names, it amounted to this: he was the Senate's computer system administrator plus repairman. Considering confidentiality requirements, he also had to moonlight as a cleaner.

Fortunately, later there were life secretaries. He applied to have one come over to work part-time as "security duty," though the main work was cleaning and helping with repairs.

Feng Nuo originally had several colleagues, including many coders, system administrators, database administrators, and others whose skills far exceeded his own. They all despaired of this former sunrise industry one after another and changed careers. After all, most IT group people had data analysis and processing skills. Some went outside to be leaders, some went to the Planning Commission, some to various departments in the industrial sector, some to the General Staff to develop combat training simulation and logistics management software, and of course, some went into general administration. The list went on.

Fewer and fewer people remained, but coincidentally, the work in this former sunrise industry grew heavier day by day. The reason was simple: it had been six or seven years since the crossing. Under the hot and humid conditions of Hainan, lacking necessary maintenance facilities, with unstable power supply and bumpy transport, the lifespans of various electronic components were running out one after another. Dr. Zhong this morning and Lin Shenhe earlier were just microcosms of the larger trend.

Feng Nuo's job was nominally called management, but in the past two years, most of his energy had actually been spent on repairs. Feng Nuo remembered a joke that circulated when he was in school in the old timeline: "Hearing you studied computers, all your aunts and relatives ask you to install systems and fix computers. Damn it, who can tell them universities don't teach computer repair? Go to the computer tech city to clean dust and install systems." And now, Feng Nuo felt that he, a "PhD," wasn't even as competent as someone who studied computer repair in a vocational school. Fortunately, his previous research direction had been hardware-oriented, and he had actually gone to the computer city to learn some practical skills for a few days. In the past few years, he had supplemented his knowledge and practiced regularly. He finally upgraded his computer repair skills from swapping graphics cards and memory to being able to replace individual components, thus securing his position as "Director of the High-Performance Computing Resource Management Office."

It was hard to say whether fixing computers counted as private work or official business. Calling it official business, most of the equipment he repaired belonged to Elders personally. Calling it private work, these Elders' personal computers were actually the pillars of various aspects of the Senate's undertakings, involving the allocation of large amounts of top-controlled old timeline materials and components.

However, officially speaking, Feng Nuo's most important work duty remained the "management" of the Computing Center.

Contrary to most people's imagination, the Computing Center and Data Center were not located in the stronghold of Senate black technology—the Gaoshanling Great Library—but in a separate courtyard deep within the General Manufacturing Plant in Bairen City. This was a deliberate choice. The Senate's network infrastructure capabilities were running purely on legacy capital, and there was no hope of establishing a self-reliant system in the foreseeable future. Therefore, being able to post on forums, check databases, or connect to computing clusters to run simulation data at any time could only be done within Bairen City. The Senate didn't have enough equipment and cables to support network access in Gaoshanling or Lingao County. To conserve materials, most of the wired and wireless network connection equipment originally provided in various office buildings and Elder apartments had been dismantled, retaining only a small number of access nodes. For Elder apartments, if one wanted to use the network, one had to go to a dedicated "internet room." Office networks were strictly limited to a few access nodes per department. Having the Computing Center's servers together with the precision processing equipment from the original timeline at the General Manufacturing Plant also facilitated stable power supply and security protection.

For dispatched agencies in Sanya, Qiongzhou, and elsewhere, as well as places around Lingao with power supply like Bopu Port, Gaoshanling, Taibai Observatory, Manyao Industrial Zone, and Manyao Fort—even if Elders could use personal computers for work, information exchange could only be done using USB flash drives. This had once caused the USB ports of the receiving servers to age and break successively. The Planning Commission had to requisition "USB hubs" from all Elders. This small item, which sold for only a few yuan in the original timeline, had been completely forgotten by the vast majority of people, becoming one of the few items "not brought from the ship." In the end, Feng Nuo only managed to collect a meager handful of hubs, using them carefully and sparingly every day.

(End of Chapter)