CDJMM – Volume 2 – Chapter 8 The State Slaps and Teaches the Scum a Lesson (8)

Since 1961, when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manned spacecraft, countries around the globe had all turned their gaze toward the boundless starry sky above, setting off a fervent space race.

In 1969, American astronaut Armstrong landed on the moon, and the United States thus became the second country in the world to independently possess manned spaceflight technology.

Then in 2003, Shenzhou V soared into the heavens, and Huaxia officially joined the manned spaceflight club, becoming the third country in the world to master independent manned spaceflight capability.

Why were all the nations so enthusiastic about the space endeavor?

The answer lay in the speech President Kennedy delivered before the Apollo moon landing:

“If this brief yet progressive history can teach us anything, it is that mankind is unyielding and unstoppable in its pursuit of knowledge and progress.

Whether we participate or not, space exploration will continue. At all times, it remains a great adventure, and no nation that aspires to lead the world would choose to halt in this space race.

Our forefathers sparked the first wave of the Industrial Revolution, the first wave of modern inventions, the first wave of nuclear technology. And our generation will never allow itself to fall behind in the coming wave of the Space Age.”

That speech was titled “We Choose to Go to the Moon.”

Yes, we choose to go to the moon.

Because the stars are right there, waiting for us to conquer.

At that time, under the Western technological blockade against Red Huaxia, the country had not yet mastered manned spaceflight. It wasn’t until after the collapse of the massive Soviet Union, when Huaxia finally breathed a sigh of relief from living cautiously under the shadow of nuclear war, that the ambition to “reach for the moon in the Ninth Heaven” began to take root.

On September 21, 1992, Huaxia decided to secretly launch its manned spaceflight program, laying out a three-step development strategy.

The “three major challenges of manned spaceflight technology” that Le Jing mentioned in his letter referred to:

1. High-thrust carrier rocket technology—to send extremely heavy spacecraft into low-Earth orbit.
2. Safe satellite re-entry technology.
3. Reliable environmental control and life-support system technology.

Only a country that overcame these three hurdles could truly claim to possess manned spaceflight capability.

Le Jing intended to play a cat-and-mouse game with Huaxia’s government.

Not by seeking them out or begging for the aid of the national machinery, but by making the machinery seek him out, and after realizing his value, protect him.

He would turn himself into the world’s greatest “bug.”

He would give Huaxia of this era the chance to cheat in the global game called “Earth Online.”

Night had fallen, with only a few blood-red streaks of sunset still burning weakly on the horizon.

The office of Academician Xu Fang, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was now encircled layer upon layer. Armed special forces stood guard at the door, and inside, a crew-cut teenager sat in Xu Fang’s seat, checking his computer.

Xu Fang knew that in the room next door, more than a dozen others were also working at computers, assisting the youth in completing his task.

The boy’s brows were tightly furrowed, fingers flying across the keyboard at such speed that afterimages almost lingered in the air. In the otherwise quiet room, the rapid clacking of the keyboard sounded especially harsh.

Xu Fang wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, his heart restless and his mind in turmoil. He had a bellyful of questions but dared not interrupt the boy’s work.

He recalled what had happened four mornings ago. After the overwhelming sense of unreality, what arose in his heart was a bone-deep fear.

The day before yesterday, as usual, he had turned on his computer to look up research papers. But the moment the screen lit up, an email popped up on its own.

Instinctively, he clicked it open—and what he saw made his face turn deathly pale, his body drenched in cold sweat.

“I know you already have the idea of setting up a secret laboratory to conduct covert research on manned spaceflight technology. Perhaps I can help you. I can assist in overcoming the three major hurdles of spaceflight—if you can find me.”

Xu Fang’s expression had instantly grown grim. At that time, he didn’t take the contents of the letter to heart. As for the oversized attachment included with the email, he hadn’t even considered downloading it—who knew what it was? What if it was a malicious virus?

What worried him most were the classified research materials stored on his computer!

That computer wasn’t connected to the internet, and it even had a custom firewall built by the country’s top technical experts. Yet the hacker had still penetrated all those defenses… and delivered the email straight to him!

At first, Xu Fang thought this was merely a foreign hacker intrusion—but what followed took on an almost magical quality.

The state’s technical team downloaded the attachment and found inside high-definition blueprints for a high-thrust launch vehicle and its components, along with key documents on crewed spaceflight technology.

The government urgently and secretly convened aerospace scientists from the Academy of Sciences and several classified departments to study the materials and verify their authenticity. As director of the Academy, Xu Fang naturally took part in the investigation.

Hundreds of experts and scholars worked day and night for two consecutive days and nights without sleep, and in the end they reached a conclusion that left people both amazed and unsettled—the materials were authentic.

Xu Fang was rapturous over those rocket schematics; he studied them obsessively for two sleepless days. His specialization was mechanics, but he also had deep expertise in mechanical manufacturing, so he could immediately sense the weight and importance of those drawings.

The blueprints were exquisitely designed. The advanced technical concepts and requirements embedded within them surpassed the current technological level in China. From Xu Fang’s perspective, building a high-thrust launch vehicle according to these plans seemed a quite feasible way to solve the first major problem of crewed spaceflight.

More than a decade earlier, pushed by Master Qian, they had secretly established Project 714 to research crewed spaceflight technology—but due to the limitations of the era’s tech, they had ultimately had to abandon the plan in frustration.

Yet now, these long-desired drawings had suddenly appeared.

Every aspect of the matter smelled of oddity. Xu Fang could not make sense of it.

After an unknown length of time, the young man suddenly sighed in regret, angrily pounded the keyboard once, then fell into a long silence.

Xu Fang snapped out of his thoughts and urgently asked, “Well? Did you find something?”

The youth looked up and ground his teeth as he replied, “I traced his footprints from the U.S. to Japan, then from Japan to the Soviet Union, and finally found on Peking University’s server a string of code he left. After cracking it, there was an English sentence—translated into Chinese it reads: ‘Hahahaha—fooled you, you stupid pigs!’”

The boy lied.

The string of code that had appeared for only about a minute and then vanished was actually simple; the youth and his colleagues had cracked it easily.

It was a web link.

The youth quickly found the webpage.

At the top of the page in huge bold characters:

Chronicle of Major Events in 1989:

May 16 — Our country’s top leader met with the visiting top leader of the Soviet Union, announcing normalization of Sino–Soviet relations.

May 21 — Typhoon Brenda made landfall near Shangchuan Island in Guangdong Province.

May 29 — A Chinese Warring States bronze dun, stolen and smuggled to the United States, was returned to Beijing from across the ocean.
…

July 19 — United Airlines Flight 232 crashed while making an emergency landing due to engine failure in Sioux City, USA; 111 died and 185 were rescued. It remains one of the most thoroughly documented air disasters in aviation history.

July 31 — Residents of Sai Kung, Hong Kong staged a sit-in at the western dam of High Island Reservoir, protesting the government’s plan to build a refugee center for Vietnamese boat people there.
…

December 16 — A China Civil Aviation passenger plane flying from Beijing to New York was hijacked and made an emergency landing in Tokyo, Japan.

Beneath the timeline was a paragraph: “I am a time traveler from the future. If you can find me, I will give China a cheating chance.

P.S. Friendly reminder: On Christmas Day in 1991 our Soviet big brother will collapse—get ready to scoop up the bargains. Friendly reminder: back then someone even exchanged unsold canned goods for a plane, you know.”

The youth forced himself not to show his shock. If the things on that computer were real, then this was the nation’s highest-level secret—the fewer people who knew, the better.

He forced a teasing expression and said, “Probably some foreign red-hat hacker pulled a prank.”

Xu Fang exhaled; it was hard to tell whether he was disappointed.

The young man stared at him with eyes that glinted with a strange light. His voice dropped almost to a whisper, as if afraid of disturbing some unseen presence: “Even if it’s a prank, the materials look very real. Why do you think that person did it?”

Xu Fang shook his head with a bitter smile. “That’s the part I can’t fathom. I’ve even considered whether these materials are erroneous ones planted by foreign powers to deliberately hamper our scientific development.”

From the preliminary investigations so far, the materials did appear highly plausible. But no one could guarantee they were 100% correct.

The youth smiled casually. “Don’t worry—we’ll find him, and we’ll make him tell the truth. That fellow will pay for his prank.”

They would mobilize the whole state apparatus and dig the earth out by the roots to find him.

Then either they would kill him, or—protect him with the full force of the nation.

May 21, 1989: Typhoon Brenda made landfall near Shangchuan Island in Guangdong Province.

May 22, 1989—the Fox Hunt Task Force was established. This task force was under the Ministry of State Security; nominally it investigated espionage activities within China, but in reality it had only one mission: to find the person codenamed “Can.”

This unknown individual might hold in his hands the long-sought cheating opportunity for China.

Of course, it could just as well be a foreign intelligence sting.

So they had to find him.

If he truly knew secrets of the future, the state would spare no expense to protect him.