Chapter 13: Chapter 5: Burning CPU and the Millennium’s Snow
December 31, 1999.
The last day of the century.
The entire world seemed to be caught in a frenzy of agitated celebration and inexplicable panic.
The television news was filled with endless reports about the Y2K crisis, as if the moment the clock struck midnight, computers across the globe would explode, bank accounts would be wiped clean, and nuclear missiles would launch themselves.
The song "Meet in ’98" was playing on every street and in every alley. Even though it was last year’s hit, it still felt exceptionally fitting on the cusp of a new century.
Winter in the south was a damp, bone-chilling cold.
The sky was gloomy, like a vast leaden sheet pressing down, brewing a rare snowstorm.
But on the Chen family’s balcony, in the cramped space that had been converted into a study, the temperature was frighteningly high.
Seven-year-old Chen Zhuo sat at his desk.
He was wearing a thick, cotton-padded jacket and a red wool scarf his mother had knitted, a fountain pen clutched tightly in his hand.
On the desk, the needle of a Model 500 multimeter rested silently at zero.
But inside Chen Zhuo’s mind, the needle on his internal gauge had long since shot into the red danger zone.
Ever since discovering the shortcut of "physically perceiving physics," he had become like a shark that had tasted blood, frantically devouring knowledge far beyond what his age could handle.
With the multimeter, he was no longer satisfied with the simple Ohm’s Law.
He began to study electrical power and Joule’s law, and even started trying to derive simple electromagnetic field equations.
He took apart the family radio. He took apart the electric fan.
He measured the resistance of every resistor and calculated the charge and discharge time of every capacitor.
He didn’t just want to know "how" things worked; he had to know "why."
This high-intensity learning kept his mind in a state of extreme excitement.
It was like he was forcing a 286 computer, which was only meant to run Minesweeper, to render a 3D blockbuster film.
Right now, a copy of "High School Physics: Required Course I" lay open before him.
Yes, high school physics.
He had already skipped the rest of middle school.
To him, the simple basics of mechanics and electricity had become as tasteless as plain water. He needed something stronger.
He was deriving the work-energy theorem.
The formula was beautiful.
But in Chen Zhuo’s mind, they were more than just letters.
He tried to construct a perfect physical model in his brain: a rigid body sliding on a frictionless plane, subjected to a force, accelerating, its energy transforming.
He wanted to calculate the motion of every single molecule, to simulate the heat dissipation generated by friction.
"This isn’t right..."
Chen Zhuo muttered to himself, his voice hoarse.
He felt the model in his mind begin to vibrate.
The amount of data was too immense.
A seven-year-old’s brain, with its neural synapses not yet fully mature and its myelination insufficient to support such high-speed signal transmission.
But he couldn’t stop.
An almost pathological greed had taken control of him.
It was the vengeful thirst for knowledge of a mediocre person from his past life.
In his last life, he’d looked at these formulas as if they were gibberish. In this life, he could understand them, he could master them. This sense of control was addictive, impossible to quit, even if his brain ached as though it were being pierced by steel needles.
"WHIIINE—"
The ringing in his ears returned.
For the past few days, this high-pitched whining had been his constant companion, like the lament of an overheating engine.
Suddenly, the wind outside picked up.
Branches tapped against the glass—TAP, TAP—like a frantic knocking at the door, or perhaps a warning.
The sound of firecrackers erupted from downstairs.
It was the neighbors celebrating the arrival of the new millennium a little early.
"CRACKLE-POP-BANG—"
The sound of the firecrackers drilled into Chen Zhuo’s ears, instantly distorting into some kind of sharp signal interference.
Chen Zhuo frowned, and his fountain pen suddenly sliced a long, dark line across the paper.
In that instant, he felt his vision swim.
The formulas in the book began to warp.
The delta symbol (∆) transformed into a spinning triangle, turning faster and faster and faster, until it became a black hole.
’What’s happening...’
Chen Zhuo wanted to stand up and get a glass of water.
But he found that his legs wouldn’t obey him.
A wave of weakness, the likes of which he had never felt before, surged from his bone marrow and instantly submerged him.
It wasn’t just exhaustion.
It was a burning heat.
He could feel his eye sockets burning, and the air he exhaled scorched his nostrils like fire.
’Overload...’
That was the last clear thought that flashed through Chen Zhuo’s mind.
Immediately after, the switch labeled "Reason" flipped off with a CLICK.
Darkness fell.
...
"Jianguo! Jianguo! Get over here, quick!"
Liu Xiuying’s terrified shriek pierced through the fog of Chen Zhuo’s consciousness.
He felt himself being lifted.
The hands were rough and strong, but now they were trembling slightly.
"He’s burning up! His temperature must be at least a hundred and four!"
"Don’t panic! Quick, grab a blanket! We need to go to the hospital!"
His father’s voice.
Chen Zhuo tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t.
His eyelids felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds, and the slightest effort to open them caused countless bizarre patches of color to explode in his vision.
He hadn’t completely lost consciousness.
Or rather, his consciousness was trapped in a far more terrifying dimension.
A fever.
For an adult, a fever is just an illness.
But for someone with an adult soul trapped inside the feverish brain of a seven-year-old, it was a logical catastrophe.
The rising body temperature altered enzyme activity and threw neurotransmitter conduction into disarray.
Chen Zhuo’s brain had begun an uncontrolled, chaotic spiral.
At this moment, he didn’t feel like he was lying on the back of his father’s bicycle. Instead, he felt as if he were floating in a vast void made of geometric shapes.
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