Reborn in 1950: Shorting the Federal Reserve at the Start

August 1999, 12, night.

The skyscrapers of Manhattan, New York, are brightly lit, yet they exude a suffocating deathly atmosphere.

There are only two minutes left until midnight of the new millennium.

Inside Citibank's underground data center, dozens of top computer experts stared intently at their screens, their keyboards smoking as they typed, their shirts soaked with cold sweat.

"Has the patch been applied? Has the date logic in the database been successfully modified?!"

The Wall Street financial tycoons were frantic behind them, their roars nearly lifting the roof off.

"No! The underlying code is too massive! We simply can't finish modifying it!"

The chief engineer clutched his hair in despair, his voice trembling with tears.

"Back then, to save that pitiful amount of memory, the years were all written as two digits! As soon as midnight struck, the system would recognize 2000 as 1900!"

"All interest calculations, account balances, and transaction records will be instantly wiped to zero!"

"when--!"

The New Year's bells in Times Square rang mercilessly at that moment.

"It's over..."

The engineer slumped to the ground, his face ashen.

The next second, all the screens in the data center flickered simultaneously, and then turned into a deathly silent blue screen.

It's not just Wall Street.

At this moment, the entire Western world was plunged into an unprecedented and terrifying paralysis.

The airport's flight scheduling system crashed, forcing countless passenger planes to make emergency landings; the power grid control center malfunctioned, plunging much of North America into darkness.

ATMs on the street were spitting out cash like crazy, or they were swallowing cards and crashing.

The unseen specter known as the "Y2K bug" has gripped the neck of Western modern civilization.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Earth...

Beijing, Shenzhou Bureau Underground Information Command Center.

There was no panic, no screaming. Only the rising steam from the thermos and the soft clatter of people cracking sunflower seeds.

Shen Jinghong leaned back in the large leather seat, looking at the clearly defined global night view satellite image on the big screen.

North America and Europe were largely blacked out, with red system crash alerts appearing everywhere.

In contrast, our land of flowers is brightly lit from south to north.

On the newly opened high-speed railway, trains are speeding smoothly at 300 kilometers per hour; in the settlement systems of major banks, data flows even more smoothly than usual.

"Chief, the US side is completely finished."

Chen Weiguo was so happy that his big teeth were showing. He pointed at the chaotic Western cities on the screen and laughed so hard that he slapped his thigh.

"I heard the Pentagon's access control system crashed, and several generals were locked in the bathroom and almost died of constipation!"

"Serves you right."

Shen Jinghong spat out the sunflower seed shells, a cold, extremely comfortable smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Back then, they were so stingy with memory to save a few kilobytes. Now they're getting their comeuppance, aren't they?"

Shen Min'an, dressed in a white shirt, pushed up his black-rimmed glasses, a hint of pride flashing in his cool eyes.

"Dad, you were right to have foresight back then."

"Our 'Skynet' underlying code abandoned their ASCII code from the very beginning and directly used our Chinese character encoding extension specification."

Shen Min'an pointed to the stable Chinese code running on the screen, his tone exuding an air of overwhelming confidence:

"Furthermore, with your newly designed timestamp logic, our system won't malfunction even if we calculate up to the end of the world, let alone 2000!"

"This is the wisdom of our ancestors, combined with our cutting-edge technology."

Shen Jinghong picked up her teacup, took a sip, and looked deep into her eyes.

"Ring ring—!!!"

The red secure hotline on the table suddenly started ringing frantically, like a death knell.

Shen Jinghong glanced at the caller ID, his wicked smile growing wider.

"Look, here comes the sucker who's handing over the money."

He pressed the hands-free button.

On the other end of the phone came the hoarse voice of the U.S. Treasury Secretary, a voice more grating than a sob, even carrying a hint of humble pleading:

"Director Shen! Help! For God's sake, please help us!"

"Our financial system has completely collapsed! Wall Street is losing tens of millions of dollars every second! If this continues, America will go bankrupt!"

"Oh, Minister, Happy New Year!"

Shen Jinghong greeted him slowly and deliberately, her tone as relaxed as if she were asking a neighbor if they had eaten.

"Saving lives is no problem; we Chinese are always happy to help. But..."

He turned to look at Shen Min'an and raised an eyebrow.

Shen Min'an immediately understood, took out a floppy disk that was only a few kilobytes in size from the drawer, and waved it in his hand.

"However, our programmers at the Shenzhou Bureau didn't even get to have New Year's Eve dinner while working on this patch, so their overtime pay..."

"We'll pay! We'll pay whatever it costs!"

The finance minister roared hysterically on the other end of the phone.

He was like a drowning man; even if Shen Jinghong offered him a straw, he would cling to it desperately.

"happy."

Shen Jinghong snapped his fingers, his eyes instantly turning sharp as knives, revealing a ruthless, bone-sucking ruthlessness.

"Min'an, give them a price."

Shen Min'an pushed up his glasses, his cool voice relentlessly striking the hearts of Wall Street tycoons through the airwaves:

"A system patch, fifty million US dollars. No bargaining, no discounts."

"You have ten minutes to consider. After ten minutes, the price will double."

A gasp came from the other end of the phone.

Fifty million US dollars?!

Buying just a few lines of crappy code?! That costs less than 50 cents! This is blatant robbery!

But would they dare to say "no"?

dare not.

"We'll buy it! Transfer the payment immediately!" The finance minister gritted his teeth and swallowed his pride, agreeing in a humiliating manner.

After hanging up the phone, cheers erupted in the command center, as if the roof had been blown off.

Chen Weiguo rubbed his hands excitedly: "Chief, Miss Chen went too far! Selling a floppy disk that costs a few cents for fifty million—that's way faster than robbing a bank!"

"This is called intellectual property rights, do you understand?"

Shen Jinghong burst into laughter, feeling extremely happy.

Before we knew it, the first rays of sunlight of the new millennium pierced through the thin morning mist in Beijing.

The golden morning light shone on the Shenzhou Bureau's courtyard, giving this building, which has witnessed countless miracles, a sacred glow.

Shen Jinghong stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the vibrant new century.

Lin Qinghan walked to his side and gently took his arm.

"Jinghong, we've weathered the Y2K crisis smoothly; we've won another round."

"Yes, we won."

Shen Jinghong took a deep breath of the crisp air, but her gaze did not linger on the victory before her.

He turned around, walked to his desk, and pulled open the bottom drawer.

From inside, they took out a strange black cuboid.

There is no antenna, and no densely packed physical buttons.

There was only one large, smooth, mirror-like black glass screen.

Lin Qinghan was stunned, looking at the object in his hand with a puzzled expression: "What is this? A new type of communicator?"

"No."

Shen Jinghong gently stroked the cold glass screen with his thumb, a fanatical light bursting from his eyes that could overturn the entire way of life for humanity.

He turned his head, looked at Lin Qinghan, and a smug smile appeared on his lips.

"Honey, the era of bulky PCs is over."

"Next, it's time for the world to enter the mobile internet era."