Shanglu Journal

It has been nearly two months since I reported to 151 at the end of August. I should record and summarize my progress. Keeping a log is an unremarkable habit, yet such small details might alter the future of the world. The first piece of good news is:

I have persuaded Wang Xiangbing, the de facto leader of the Operations Office.

Children and family are, after all, a man’s greatest vulnerability. If I tell him his child will not grow up safe and sound, he will do anything to change that terrible future—though I still harbor doubts. I question whether the Operations Office truly possesses the capability to assist me with the massive technical hurdles I am about to face in developing a non-invasive BCI system, even though I am certain that in the previous Poincaré generation, the 151 Nanshan Base Operations Office was the greatest contributor to the rapid progress of BCI systems—after all, they had a director who was the world's number one genius.

I hope the 151 Operations Office of this generation can demonstrate equally formidable capabilities.

If current trends continue, BCI systems will intrude ever more deeply into the neural systems of pilots. It is foreseeable that one day, in order to resist the Angels, humanity will abandon its bottom line; pilots will no longer know for whom they are fighting. That is a horrific conclusion, a world destroyed in a different way. In the first Poincaré generation, the human world was destroyed by Angels; in the second, it might well be destroyed by giant mechs instead. A non-invasive BCI system might be the key to breaking this deadlock, but it is simply too difficult.

Too difficult, too difficult, too difficult, too difficult, too difficult.

I must use the word "difficult" five times in a row to describe how arduous this is. Fuck it.

It is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!

I am certain that I am the person in the human world most familiar with and knowledgeable about this system. In the entire Science City, no one but me could successfully master it, but the Rabin-Shang number is an insurmountable wall.

No one has the standing to blame me for choosing to give up; no one can! I have exhausted my heart and soul for it. I was the only person in the entire Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute who persisted with this technology, and when the entire RCBI team fell into deep depression and sat collectively on the rooftop, it was I who painstakingly persuaded them to come back.

But I cannot hold on any longer. Let it be. If the world is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. Better to die early than to suffer; I have died once already, so a second time makes no difference.

I’m packing it in.

I’m done. I’m going to watch the fireworks.

I am certain that 151 is a place of vital importance. Destiny must have placed the 151 Nanshan Base in a critical position; after all, the final line of defense broken in the last generation was Nanshan, Chongqing.

Now, about the people at Nanshan Base.

There is one person who is very important.

That’s right, it’s Shen Jiang.

Shen Jiang is better looking and more likable than I imagined.

However, she suffers from severe prosopagnosia; she has almost no ability to distinguish facial features. This surprised me. I am not sure if the Shen Jiang of the previous generation had this issue—perhaps she did, perhaps not. Maybe the previous Shen Jiang also had it, and I simply never heard of it, or perhaps she did not—if the latter is true, then the Shen Jiang of this generation is in a worse situation than I anticipated. Her brain condition is very serious.

(I estimate there is a high probability it is the latter.)

Shen Jiang is not far from death.

What does that have to do with me?

—If I were still in Science City, that is certainly what I would think.

But I have a hypothesis now: you could say I am taking a different path, pinning my hopes on some unknown force in the shadows. But in this era, if praying to gods and Buddhas could achieve our goals, people would wear down the thresholds of the Tushan Temple and Laojun Cave on Nanshan. We have never been shy about using every force available to us. If I can save a person from a fated death, can I use that as a fulcrum to shift the course of the entire ship? Can I avoid the unsolvable dead end that human society faced in the first Poincaré generation?

To change the fate of one person is to change the fate of the entire world.

I am certain that in the previous generation, she perished alongside an Angel in battle, dying from severe complications caused by the BCI system—oddly enough, before arriving at 151 and meeting her, I had never considered this path: saving the world by saving a specific person. I realized by chance that I had never focused on a single individual before. When you stand at too high a vantage point, individuals appear too small; you see dense masses of thousands upon thousands, unified into a vast statistic.

You see only numbers, not individuals.

When I was in Science City, I did not care about the death of any particular mech pilot. To me, they were data on paper, a metric, a table—one of the goals the RCBI team served, and far beyond my reach.

But I truly want to save Shen Jiang. I am even willing to restart the MEG-BCI system I had already abandoned to do so. Why is this?

Perhaps I just want to see that beautiful smile, and see it a few more times.

Saving the world and saving Shen Jiang—I don’t even know which is the reason for the other. For someone who once tried to save the world and then completely gave up, the whole of humanity may not be as important as one girl.

Especially since she looks so beautiful when she smiles.

The second piece of good news is:

I am certain I have never heard of the No. 092 Lighthouse Angel.

This generation is not identical to the last, which ruins my expectations of being a prophet. It is a pity, although predicting the arrival of an Angel is meaningless unless you are the Angel’s parents and know its nature inside out—predicting an Angel’s arrival is like telling someone their mother is going to explode in their bedroom in two days with the force of a hundred Tsar Bombas. You can run away on your own two legs now; the only purpose of such a prophecy is to let you die with clarity.

Of course, looking at the bright side, the inconsistency between the two generations means our future holds greater possibilities. Perhaps this generation will not walk into the same unsolvable, destructive end as the last; perhaps I am just worrying needlessly.

I hope I am just worrying needlessly.

There is no one else in the world like me, simultaneously giving up and feeling anxious.

So anxious that even my colleagues in the Operations Office have noticed. They even called it "a sense of style." Damn it, what kind of style is that? It’s like telling someone with diarrhea frantically searching for a bathroom, "Brother, the way your legs are shaking has such a rhythm to it, just like breakdancing"—instead of saying that, could you help me find a bathroom?

Tomorrow I will prepare the materials and file a report to Old Man Ji, asking him to allocate some resources to me.

I hope the Operations Office doesn't screw me over.

Shang Lu! Shang Lu! You need to have confidence in yourself, you hear?

That’s all for now.

Shang Lu
October 17, 2016