Chapter 1922 - Divine Instrument

January 1636, early morning.

Since the Senate's recovery of Guangzhou in March 1635, more than half a year had passed. In those ten months, the city had endured a tempest of changes: the initial "citywide demolition," the subsequent "citywide excavation," comprehensive household registration, the New Life Movement, then the eruption of the Witchcraft Case, vice industry rectification, forced collection of vagrants and beggars, and finally the plague outbreak that only subsided shortly before year's end. One upheaval after another had left indelible impressions on both the city's residents and the Elders themselves.

Fortunately, 1635 ended on a joyous note. The Senate's first public civil service examination had concluded successfully. This recreation of the old timeline's examination system—whether or not it truly resembled its model—fully demonstrated the Senate's determination to "start fresh with new methods" and held significant symbolic weight.

Accompanied by the biting north winds of the Little Ice Age, an H800-class transport ship belonging to the Navy was towed slowly into position by a tugboat, gliding toward the VIP pier of Guangzhou's Big World. Unlike the other piers already piled high with materials and equipment, this one was clean and quiet, as if it had never been used.

This was the Big World's internal pier, reserved exclusively for Elders and naturalized citizen cadres. As a brief military bugle call sounded from the ship, a squad of guards deployed from within, taking up positions along the pier. Everyone knew: another Elder had arrived in Guangzhou.

After Guangzhou's initial stabilization, many Elders who had been "hibernating" in Lingao for years had "awakened" one after another, swarming toward Guangzhou like flies sensing blood. Almost every ship arriving carried several of them. Most had already donned titles like Director, Division Chief, or Bureau Chief of some Guangdong or Guangzhou department. Others held vaguer designations like "Inspector," "Special Commissioner," or "Specialist"—these were the more cautious ones, reluctant to abandon their comfortable nest in Lingao, preferring to make an "inspection tour" of Guangzhou before committing.

Today's situation was different, however, because Elders had actually come to the pier to greet the arrivals.

When Guangzhou had first been recovered, Liu Xiang, adhering to the principle that "courtesy never offends" and "everyone coming is here to help," would either personally welcome any arriving Elder—whether coming to assume a position or merely visiting—or at minimum send a member of the municipal government leadership team to the pier to offer greetings.

As the workload grew increasingly demanding and the arriving Elders ever more numerous, this courtesy died a natural death. Now when Elders arrived in Guangzhou, apart from staff dispatched by the Guangzhou Municipal Government's General Affairs Section for reception, Mayor Liu, Director Lin, and the other top brass were nowhere to be seen. Only occasionally would the corresponding department's Elder come to greet someone.

The Elder who had come to the pier today was Ai Zhixin—Guangdong Regional Tax Commissioner and concurrent Guangzhou Municipal Tax Bureau Director.

In truth, the Elders arriving on the ship were not from the finance and taxation system. They could even be said to have nothing whatsoever to do with that department. But they were crucial to the next phase of the finance department's work.

The cold wind blowing over the river in the morning was genuinely biting.

"Is this really Guangdong?!" Ai Zhixin muttered, involuntarily pulling his wool overcoat tighter. If he didn't absolutely need their consultation, he would never have bothered with this early morning errand.

The municipal and police departments clearly also have needs, so why does welcoming them fall to me? he grumbled silently, watching the sailors mooring and setting up the gangplank. These people are way too slow!

As he watched a group cluster around several pot-bellied men descending from the deck, Ai Zhixin knew without seeing their faces that those walking with hands clasped behind their backs were Elders. He hurried forward, forcing a sunny smile onto his face. "Welcome to Guangzhou! Comrades..."

Halfway through his greeting, Ai Zhixin suddenly realized something was wrong: these Elders approaching him were from Education!

In Lingao, Elders not knowing each other wasn't unusual. After all, there were more than five hundred people. Some were away for extended periods; others rarely participated in public activities. But Education department Elders had unusually high recognition—most departments had to deal with them at some point.

The one in front was Yuan Ziguang, followed by Dong Yizhi. Ai Zhixin recalled that the latest issue of Weekly Developments had carried an appointment notice: Yuan Ziguang was now "Chairman of the Guangzhou Education People's Committee."

He hadn't expected Yuan Ziguang to arrive on this very ship. That was fast!

Yuan Ziguang spotted him as well. The two immediately "firmly shook hands," and Ai Zhixin found himself forced into exchanging pleasantries.

"Director Ai, Dong Yizhi and I are coming to Guangzhou to run education—we're short on people and funds. You, the God of Wealth of Guangzhou, must lend us much assistance." Yuan Ziguang had been calculating on the ship. Now, seeing Ai Zhixin "deliver himself to his doorstep," he wasted no time making his pitch.

Ai Zhixin found nothing more annoying than being called "God of Wealth." These past months, just sorting out the fiscal and taxation system had added dozens of gray hairs, not to mention the hopelessly tangled mess of the tax structure itself.

"What kind of God of Wealth am I? I'm just District Chief Wen and Mayor Liu's accountant," Ai Zhixin laughed, then immediately changed the subject. "What's this—you've come to Guangzhou to establish a girls' middle school?"

As organizer of the Pleated Skirt Club and one of the founders of the idol group "Four Seasons," Yuan Ziguang's desire to establish a girls' middle school to satisfy his own and certain other Elders' peculiar interests was well known in Lingao. Not long before the Guangdong Campaign began, he had lobbied the Senate relentlessly to split up Fangcaodi School.

Obviously, Hu Qingbai had no interest in either splitting Fangcaodi or establishing a girls' middle school. He had banished Yuan Ziguang far off to Guangzhou, telling him to start from scratch on his own. This kept him from constantly organizing coalitions in Lingao and stirring up sentiment—out of sight, out of mind. The guiding principle was simple: whatever you want to do is fine, as long as you can convince the Planning Commission to greenlight it.

"The ideal is bountiful; reality is bone thin," Yuan Ziguang sighed. "The little capital given to me might not even be enough to run a few elementary schools..."

Just as Ai Zhixin exchanged pleasantries with Yuan Ziguang above deck, down in the H800's "VIP cabin," Feng Nuo and Xu Laowu were sweating profusely, searching the compartment for something.

What they sought was an utterly unremarkable item in the old timeline. Neither in terms of ubiquity nor price could a multimeter be considered anything precious. But in this timeline—setting aside the fact that even a 21st-century plastic bag was controlled material under the Planning Commission—for Feng Nuo and Xu Laowu, a multimeter and soldering iron were their "divine instruments." Without these two items, they couldn't perform even the most basic work.

Though the Planning Commission warehouse had multimeter inventory, this Hioki unit was Feng Nuo's personal possession, used for years. He had been using it on the ship to repair computers. Now they were about to disembark, and the multimeter had vanished!

This search cost them considerable time. By the time they finally fished the multimeter out of a suitcase, only Ai Zhixin remained on the pier, breathing into his hands and stamping his feet against the cold.

"If you hadn't come down soon, I would have frozen to death right here," Ai Zhixin complained, his nose running.

"We couldn't find an important item just now—took some time," Feng Nuo said apologetically. "Let's hurry and go."

"Wait, wait—where's the stuff you brought? The computer?"

"That thing is still in the lower hold. Dozens of crates. The three of us can't carry it ourselves. After unloading, it still needs installation and debugging. Won't be ready for at least ten days to two weeks."

"Alas, I thought it could be used right away." Ai Zhixin's face showed visible disappointment. "What we desperately need right now is data processing capability. Without data reports, I'm completely flying blind here."

"Rest assured, while this equipment can't compare to old timeline standards, compared to abacuses and hand-cranked calculators, it definitely deserves being called a 'divine instrument.'" Feng Nuo paused. "However, this system also requires many operators. Old Xu brought over some girls from the Data Center, but that's definitely not enough. You'll need to train local personnel as well."

"Personnel is no problem. What we have most of here is people." Ai Zhixin led them into the Big World's inner sanctum and sat down in the Elder rest area. "But training probably can't be done in a day or two."

"That's not an issue—we have training experience," Xu Laowu said confidently. "The key is care and patience. Literacy and numeracy are sufficient."

The man called Xu Laowu was actually named Xu Yicheng, serving as Planning Commission Data Center Director. A middle-aged man, he had previously run his own IT company in the old timeline, with modest success. Being also a mathematics graduate from a 985 university, these two qualifications combined made him the natural choice to oversee the Senate's "big data" work.

This time he and Feng Nuo had come to Guangzhou specifically to establish a computing center to process the ever-expanding torrent of statistical data.

Naturally, with server and component reserves only ever diminishing, the Planning Commission couldn't possibly allocate precious reserves of modern electronics for this work. Therefore, this "South China Data Center" would be, like Lingao's "National Data Center," a hybrid indigenous-modern product. However, this time the "indigenous method" wasn't limited to manual calculation. They would use the IT department's newly developed mechanical computers.

And Feng Nuo was one of the main developers of this "divine instrument." He had come to Guangzhou for assembly, debugging, and user training.

The "mechanical computer" currently lying in the H800's cargo hold could, strictly speaking, only be called a "semi-finished product." Many early mechanical computer functions were limited by the Senate's gaps in electromechanical capabilities and couldn't yet be replicated. Thus it was destined to be a clunky, difficult-to-use machine.

But even clunky and difficult to use, its processing efficiency was dozens—perhaps hundreds—of times faster than manual calculation. Most crucially, its indexing and statistical functions meant the vast amounts of data collected by the Senate could now be put to actual use, rather than merely sitting idle on statistical forms.

(End of Chapter)