Chapter 43: Resource Standardization

“Old Wen, I got the ship!” Wang Luobin burst into the office, his face beaming, holding a folder. “Got everything sorted out, the permits, the licenses… Money really does make the world go round. It only took three months to get it all done.”

“The ship or the licenses?” Both Wen Desi and Xiao Zishan were confused.

“Both. Here’s the ship’s information. Meng De and I ran all over the place. This is the one. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied!”

This ship, destined to build a new world like the Mayflower, would eventually be called the “Holy Ship” and be permanently preserved at the landing site. But for now, it was just a general cargo ship, over 40 years old and nearing the end of its service life.

The ship was an ocean-going vessel of the same class as the Polish-designed “Fengcheng” type, built in a domestic shipyard in the mid-to-late 1970s. Its registered gross tonnage was 6,557.89 tons, with a net tonnage of 3,608.3 tons and a deadweight of 7,167 tons. It could carry 6,000 tons of cargo. The ship’s total length was 135.26 meters, with a beam of 17.74 meters. Its molded depth was 10.4 meters, and its full-load draft was 7.65 meters. It had five cargo holds and was equipped with four derricks (including two heavy-lift ones). Its cruising speed was 11 knots.

The ship could store and transport various types of cargo. Its first, second, third, and fifth holds were for dry general cargo. The fourth hold was a refrigerated cargo hold, divided into three levels. The lowest levels of the first and fifth holds were designed as vegetable oil tanks for bulk transport. In the late 70s, its deck had been reinforced and its hatches enlarged to experimentally carry containers. It was truly a versatile vessel.

Because it was originally designed as an ocean-going ship with a large cargo capacity and deep draft, its operating costs for coastal transport were too high, and it had been idle for a long time.

“The ship has been laid up for a long time, so it looks a bit rough,” Wang Luobin explained. “But because it was in preservation, its overall condition is okay. Little Meng and I inspected it together. The main equipment on board is a bit old, but it’s all functional.”

“How much?” Wen Desi became nervous. This was a genuine ocean-going liner; buying it would surely cost tens of millions!

“12 million.”

That was a relief. The price was below his psychological threshold. The Executive Committee’s budget for the ship was 30 million.

“However, it would be best to spend some money to repair and maintain the equipment. A lot of it is aging. We might as well get it all in good shape.”

“Fine. We won’t have a place to repair it after we go over. We need to ensure all the equipment can last for a few years.”

“It will probably cost two or three million…”

“Fine, spend it.” Director Wen gritted his teeth, reminding himself that the money was meant to be spent.

“Because we have a budget surplus, Meng De suggested buying two more ships.”

“What?!”

“One is the self-propelled deck barge he proposed, 1,500 tons, for 3.5 million.”

“Does it need repairs…”

“Basically no, just a little maintenance. One or two hundred thousand should be enough.”

“Done.” Director Wen thought to himself that ever since Engineer Wang took over procurement, he had started talking bigger and bigger.

“And there’s another very useful, good ship. You will definitely be happy.”

“I’m overjoyed. Stop keeping me in suspense…” Director Wen was starting to feel faint.

“A landing craft! Just decommissioned from the military, very well-maintained. Even the machine gun mounts are intact.”

“A landing craft?” Xiao Zishan’s eyes widened as well.

“Yes, a multi-purpose landing craft built in the Qinhuangdao Shipyard in 1975.”

Gross tonnage 89 tons, net tonnage 50 tons, length 28 meters, beam 5.4 meters, height 2.7 meters. It had an electric bow door that doubled as a ramp. Open-top design, capable of carrying two standard trucks or one heavy truck. Draft 1.2 meters.

“Hehe, and this boat is cheap, only 160,000! Wu De said it’s so cheap it’s practically a giveaway.”

“What about the fishing boats Wu De mentioned?”

“He has his eye on something called a Type 8154 single-trawler fishing boat, 200 tons. The condition is very good, also decommissioned from the military. 1.2 million per boat. He’s applying to buy four. In addition, we need to purchase a lot of spare parts, equipment, and special consumables for the ships.”

“Buy them all. As long as the money doesn’t exceed the budget. We’re running out of money soon.”

Perhaps it was the lingering trauma from the finance ladies he had encountered in his past corporate life, but Director Wen rarely visited Cheng Dong, the young man from the financial industry who was in charge of the Transmigration Company’s finance department. Recently, he hardly even dared to call him. Every time Cheng Dong saw him, he would lament in anguish how dangerous the company’s current financial situation was, how there were no profits at all, how huge the expenses were, how many expenditures did not comply with financial procedures, how many loopholes there were in the accounts, and the problems faced by those shell companies. If Director Wen were really running a corporate group, he would probably be thinking of absconding by now.

Currently, their various subsidiary company accounts and the cash in their secret vaults still had a lot of surplus, but all this money was earmarked for paying for goods or approved project budgets. The truly mobile reserve funds had been reduced to less than two million. For the past three months, the Transmigration Company had been secretly selling off the last batch of Ming Dynasty goods that could bring them trouble: precious Chinese medicinal herbs, musk, various hardwoods, and high-grade spices.

These items had a very small market, and a large influx of goods would cause market fluctuations. Director Wen was very keen for the butterfly effect to become a hurricane in the Ming Dynasty, but in their own time, a butterfly effect in the market could lead to their complete exposure. Recently, the hardwood market in Guangdong had been falling, which had already attracted the interest of some financial reporters.

Hurry up and get to the 15th of the eighth lunar month! Wen Desi thought unrealistically, looking at the moon, which was gradually becoming full outside the window.

---

In a tiered lecture hall in one of the office buildings here, a joyous yet solemn atmosphere prevailed. The large, green blackout curtains hanging low over the windows added a strange sense of mystery. The rows of long benches, with their peeling paint and broken slats, were filled with people, some whispering, some staring blankly, some pretending to be calm while looking around. The common thing they all shared was a laptop open in front of them. In the dim light, the continuous hum of fans from thirty or forty laptops running simultaneously filled the air.

Three or four people sat casually on the stage, with several laptops and a huge computer case piled in front of them. The lights of a wireless router blinked. Behind them hung a huge projection screen. Projected onto it was a photo of a scantily clad, voluptuous woman. Below it were three large characters: Sola Aoi, followed by a string of numbers: P01701105-3.

“Attention everyone. This time, the standard number is P01701105-3, name: Sola Aoi. Begin resource synchronization.”

As the network card lights on the laptops flickered, the server on the table began to issue commands through the wireless local area network to each laptop, which had remote control software installed, to conduct an intelligent search. The first step was to search for all video files with the keywords Sola Aoi, 蒼井そら, あおいそら, and AoiSola. The second step was to search for Sola Aoi’s entire AV catalog, provided by someone, in Chinese, kana, and Japanese romaji. The third step was to compare file sizes and video formats.

Finally, the software generated a report on the server, which indicated which laptops had duplicate resources and which laptops had resources with better video formats.

Almost simultaneously, a prompt popped up on the screen of each laptop: Resource P01701105-3 optimization and synchronization beginning! The program automatically deleted video files on the laptops that it deemed duplicates or of poor quality. Video files that were currently missing, or of better quality than the existing ones, began to upload automatically.

“Ah, why is my entire Sola Aoi collection being deleted?!” someone screamed, frantically mashing their keyboard. “It took me a whole month of BT downloading to get the full set, ahhhhh…”

“Everyone, don’t touch your keyboards! The program is running automatically!” a person on the stage shouted into a microphone. “What the hell are you yelling about? The Sola Aoi on our resource server is all DVD-rip MKV high-quality compression. You and your few-hundred-megabyte RMVB files have no place here! When you download it back, you can fap yourself to death!” As he spoke, beads of sweat dripped onto the table. In this early autumn season, cooped up with dozens of men and their computers, it would be strange if it wasn’t hot.

After a wave of sighs and laughter, the next AV actress appeared on the screen:

Standard number P01701105-4, name: Mihiro, みひろ

…

So-called resource standardization was a unified action by the Executive Committee to integrate all non-material resources. Every transmigrator who reported for duty brought with them, without exception, laptops, countless terabytes of hard drives, and innumerable discs, containing all sorts of electronic resources. Besides popular items like Japanese AV, there were complete sets of various academic papers, journal databases, several mainstream domestic electronic library databases; various movies, TV series, and entertainment programs; radio and television university distance learning programs, university lecture videos; electronic versions of various blueprints, CAD design drawings, and industrial manuals; all kinds of software… Almost all digitized text and media resources, both those that could be found online and those that couldn’t, were brought here. This massive amount of information was scattered across many carriers, with a lot of duplication wasting space and being insecure. Therefore, the Information Group was responsible for uniformly checking, classifying, optimizing, and backing up these resources brought by each batch of reporting personnel, cataloging them by category, and creating an index for easy searching.

Every laptop, every hard drive, and every disc had a barcode made for it by the resource group and was then entered into the database. In principle, the Information Group did not confiscate personal laptops, but all discs and hard drives were collected for centralized management. The Information Group had the right to delete and store resources on the hard drives for optimal management.

As for the storage space on the laptops, it remained under personal control. After the software completed the resource standardization process, everyone could download things of personal interest from the Information Group’s resource server—of course, the most core resources still required authorization.