Chapter 48: Vulnerability (8)
48 – Vulnerability (8)
Wang Anquan: “?”
Wang Anquan: “Why are you still acting smug?”
“I’m not acting smug,” Lin Xun said. “I’m having a heart attack.”
Wang Anquan: “Do you think I believe that?”
Lin Xun lowered his head and took a few deep breaths. “I…”
He kept saying “I” for a while but couldn’t come up with anything substantial.
“Dong Jun came out to explain,” he said, looking at the Weibo post and then at Wang Anquan, as if seeking confirmation. “So, is the matter over now?”
Wang Anquan gave him a deep look, making Lin Xun feel uneasy.
Then Wang Anquan left the room, saying, “I think it’s better to ask Jia Gou (Architecture).”
Lin Xun: “…”
He ignored Wang Anquan and wanted to continue messaging Dong Jun but was afraid of disturbing him. Caught in a dilemma, he could only stare blankly at the earlier “Sorry for the trouble” message.
Zhi Zhen had somehow lost its frame and was now dozing on his lap.
During its few days staying in Chaoyang District, the cat showed no signs of fear or nervousness. It had even gained a little weight, its fur glossy, soft, and thick.
As Lin Xun stroked the cat, he thought that it was ultimately Zhi Zhen’s presence that had completely shattered the hearts of the “wifey fans.”
Actually, what they said wasn’t wrong.
If it weren’t someone close or trustworthy, why would they send their cat to be fostered?
Lost in these wandering thoughts, Dong Jun replied.
Dong Jun: It’s fine. I didn’t keep a close enough eye on my employees.
A Happy Zhi Zhen: But won’t this have a negative impact on you? qwq
Dong Jun: No.
Lin Xun tapped on the keyboard, typing out a long message, only to delete it in the end.
Perhaps noticing his prolonged silence, Dong Jun added another message.
Dong Jun: I’m not an idol, and Galaxy doesn’t rely on public opinion to survive.
That was true.
Dong Jun didn’t rely on his looks to make a living. While he had many “wifey fans,” he had even more technical fans among programmers. Back in the day, Dong Jun’s GitHub was often filled with scenes of developers worshipping his work.
Similarly, the boss’s personal life wouldn’t have any impact on Galaxy.
Not to mention the globally widespread Automated Driving System, just take the recently launched holographic gaming pod—it represented a complete technological monopoly. No other company besides Galaxy could produce it. You couldn’t avoid using the Automated Driving System, and similarly, if you wanted to play holographic games, you could only purchase them from Galaxy’s official website. Under such circumstances, unless a major scandal erupted within the company or product quality issues arose, the idea of Galaxy’s stock falling was simply absurd.
A social media uproar likely didn’t even count as a minor disturbance for Galaxy and Dong Jun himself.
After realizing this, Lin Xun felt less tense. After careful consideration, he still edited this message.
A Happy Zhi Zhen: That’s good. But what about your Weibo… I mean, it still seems like it could be misunderstood. qwq
He sent the message, anxiously tugging at Zhi Zhen’s ear as he waited for a reply.
Dong Jun’s reply came quickly.
Dong Jun: ^^
And then…
There was no follow-up.
For a moment, Lin Xun didn’t know what Dong Jun meant. He just felt that Dong Jun’s attitude was strangely similar to that of a little liar who, when asked a critical question, would zone out and pretend to be a fake cat.
But this “^^” emoji was oddly captivating. Lin Xun stared at it for a long time, his heart pounding a few times, and somehow ended up smiling along with it.
He didn’t know what Dong Jun was “^^” about and didn’t dare ask, so—
A happy Zhi Zhen: ^^
The conversation seemed to have reached a pause. Lin Xun took a deep breath, changed clothes, and went out to wash up.
Just as he was about to leave, Jia Gou was finally dragged out of bed by Wang Anquan.
“What?” Jia Gou howled, “I just took a nap, what did you all do?”
He pulled open the door and said to Lin Xun, “Don’t go, come here. Do you know you’ve been tricked? You…!”
Lin Xun stepped out, closed the door, went downstairs, and shut Jia Gou’s words behind the door.
He got into the car, drove to Lin Ting’s hotel, and left with her. Today was the day they had agreed to visit their grandfather.
The sky over the capital was overcast, as it had been for the past half month.
The sky was high and distant, with few vehicles on the road. The car radio played news about the famous pianist Dong Chen and his orchestra beginning their mainland tour in the capital, and so on.
Lin Ting seemed to have already disconnected from domestic social media, as the news hadn’t reached her yet. She chatted peacefully with Lin Xun, while Zhi Zhen, not shy at all, nestled in her arms with half-closed eyes. The atmosphere in the car remained calm. As Lin Xun chatted with her, his mind wandered to what had happened that morning and wondered whether it would be awkward when he video-called Dong Jun tonight.
Thinking this, he opened his phone to check the trending topics. The original ones remained high, and now another had been added: #Dong Jun’s Second Ever Weibo Post#.
At the same time, Jia Gou was spouting some baseless nonsense in the group chat.
Zhao Jiagou: @Lin Suanfa, he never removed the trending topics. Don’t you think about why that is?
Lin Suanfa: Galaxy isn’t a media company; they might not be able to remove trending topics.
Zhao Jiagou: ??? Then what does their PR department do?
Zhao Jiagou: Look at his Weibo post again. I studied it carefully for half an hour and read between the lines. The entire post says, “Thank you for your concern, I have a boyfriend.”
Lin Suanfa: You must be crazy. Otherwise, why would the Zhao family’s dog glance at you twice?
Zhao Jiagou: You know Lu Xun, but you misquoted him. It’s “glanced twice,” not “glanced once.”
Lin Suanfa: …
Zhao Jiagou: Fine, I get it. You’re like spilled water now.
Lin Suanfa: You even know about spilled water.
Zhao Jiagou: …
He and Zhao Jiagou went back and forth like this for over an hour, finally stopping when another message appeared.
It was from Jiang Lian, who had officially joined the “Goddess of the Luo River” group three days ago.
Jiang Lian: So, will we be acquired by Galaxy?
Lin Suanfa: Brother Jiang, sorry, but we still kept something from you.
Jiang Lian: …Huh?
Lin Suanfa: Actually, Dong Jun has always been a shareholder of Goddess of the Luo River.
Jiang Lian: …
Jiang Lian: Then why are we so miserable, working in a residential building? Honestly, on my first day here, I thought you were running a pyramid scheme.
Lin Suanfa: I don’t know either. Maybe Dong Jun is tempering us. He’s a good boss.
At the same time, a message from Zhao Jiagou popped up.
Zhao Jiagou: It’s a kink. We don’t need to understand it.
Lin Xun decided to close WeChat and ignore Zhao Jiagou.
The journey was long, and by afternoon, they finally arrived at their destination. Along the way, the weather had turned overcast, with a thin layer of mist hanging in the sky and a light drizzle falling steadily.
It was a large cemetery in the suburbs, where their grandfather had slept for five years.
Lin Xun carried a bouquet of white flowers, stepped out of the car, and walked with Lin Ting to their grandfather’s grave.
The tombstone was made of marble, square at the base and rounded at the top, inscribed with only a few words: the name, dates of birth and death, and the person who erected it.
During his lifetime, the old man had lived a peaceful life, passing away without pain or regrets. The death of an elderly person seemed inevitable, yet standing before the tombstone, a wistful, smoke-like sense of melancholy and nostalgia lingered, impossible to dispel.
In 1946, computers were born, and Grandfather was among the earliest assembly engineers in the country. At that time, computer languages consisted only of machine language—binary. Code had to be handwritten and then punched onto paper tape before it could be read by a computer.
As a child, Lin Xun had few hobbies, but he loved being taken along by his grandfather to play.
He had a modest talent—occasionally capable of photographic memory, but truly skilled at mental arithmetic, living up to his childhood nickname “Little Calculator.”
The old man spent all day giving him problems to solve. Simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were boring; deciphering codes was fun, and calculating narcissistic numbers mentally was the best way to pass the time.
But there were also problems he couldn’t solve mentally, because as long as you wanted, the computational complexity had no upper limit. A simple example: 9876 × 6798 could be solved at a glance, but 987,654,321 × 123,456,789 was much harder.
Whenever this happened, the old man would gently pat his head with a kind smile, turn on the computer, and within a fraction of a second, the program would run and produce the answer.
Thus, a question emerged, one that had accompanied Lin Xun since he was five or six years old:
—Why can’t my brain work like a computer?
Why can’t the human brain possess the processing power of a computer, and why can’t computers learn and think like humans?
Thinking of the past, Lin Xun couldn’t help but smile.
Some things from childhood shape a person for life. Over the past twenty years, he had continued pursuing this very goal. Transforming the human brain was a fantasy, but making computers think on their own seemed not so distant. When he was working on his thesis under his advisor, his advisor said the industry was “in the midst of a grand feast.”
Perhaps by then, you’ll never be able to give me a math problem I can’t solve.
—He placed the bouquet down.