I bought a prison in the United States.

"Mr. Underwood mentioned to me that you selected a group of prisoners to form a technology research and development team to develop a surveillance system."

"May I take a look?"

"Of course, no problem, Ms. Reporter, please come with me."

Ringo stood up and walked out, with Gloria following him carrying the tape recorder.

The research and development team was right next door; the door wasn't closed tightly, and the smell of rosin and solder seeped out from the cracks.

Lin Ge pushed open the door, revealing three metal desks crammed inside, each piled high with components and blueprints.

A whiteboard stood in the corner, covered with densely drawn circuit diagrams.

Gloria saw a prisoner sitting at a workbench, using tweezers to solder a hair-thin wire onto a circuit board with steady and precise movements.

Another prisoner stood to the side holding up the blueprints, his brows furrowed.

The third person was squatting in the corner, dismantling a Panasonic video recorder, with its internal parts scattered all over the ground.

"This is Craig, the head of our research and development team."

Lin Ge pointed to the person holding the tweezers:

"He used to draw up F-117 blueprints at Lockheed, but he got lost and ended up here with me."

Craig put down the tweezers, nodded to Gloria, and then turned his attention back to the circuit board.

"You mean stealth fighters?"

Upon hearing Ringo's seemingly casual explanation, Gloria's voice betrayed obvious surprise.

That was one of the most classified projects in the entire U.S. defense industry; even the men in the Tulsa World editorial office would rave about it.

She leaned closer, as if to interview Craig:

"I saw in the news that the Pentagon plans to equip the first batch of these devices before 1988. Were you involved in that project?"

"It's just drawing blueprints."

Craig's tone was nonchalant:

"It's similar to what's depicted here; it's about cramming a bunch of precision parts into a small space so that it won't malfunction under extreme conditions."

What are "extreme conditions"?

"On fighter jets, the extreme conditions are vibrations and temperature changes at supersonic speeds."

He gestured with his chin towards the window:

"In prison, the extreme condition is that... people would throw things at the cameras every now and then."

"Low light levels are not a problem at all."

Craig turned to look at Ringo:

"Boss, we got the stepper motor back this morning."

"The parameters are perfect for the gimbal drive. Morris is drawing the gimbal's mechanical structure, and the first prototype should be ready next week."

Lin Ge nodded in satisfaction. "Would you like to take a look at the samples, Miss Reporter?"

Gloria nodded slightly.

"Maurice".

Morris straightened up; he had been crouching next to the video camera the whole time, and Gloria had almost missed him.

He walked to another workbench and picked up a palm-sized black plastic box.

A lens protrudes from the box, with several colored wires attached to its tail. The other end of the wires is connected to an exposed circuit board.

He handed the box over:

"This is the first engineering sample of the CMOS image sensor module. The chip is designed by us and has a back-illuminated structure."

"The low-light imaging quality is twice as good as other products in the same price range on the market."

"Try facing the window."

Gloria took the box and pointed the camera at the window.

The circuit board is connected to a 14-inch black and white monitor, and there is a faint noise on the screen.

But the outline of the window frame, the branches and leaves of the maple tree in the parking lot, every detail is clearly visible.

"Back-illuminated structure..."

She wrote the nouns down in her notebook and drew a question mark next to them.

Craig picked up a hand-drawn cross-sectional diagram from the workbench, marked it with a pencil, and explained:

"In traditional front lighting systems, light has to pass through a metal wiring layer before reaching the light-receiving surface, with the metal wires blocking more than half of the light."

"We do it the other way around, letting the light in directly from the back, increasing the amount of light in by 40%, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio in low light conditions."

Gloria asked with slight curiosity, "Did you come up with this plan?"

"No, the boss suggested it."

Gloria stopped writing and turned to look at Ringo.

Lin Ge stood in front of the whiteboard, holding a cup of coffee, his expression no different from when he was in the office.

"You used to work in the semiconductor industry?"

"No, I used to own a factory."

"How could someone who owns a factory understand image sensor design?"

"A person who does business needs to know a little bit about everything."

Lin Ge took a sip of coffee, not saying much about the matter, and casually made up a reason that sounded plausible:

"The stamping machine is broken, and I need to know how to fix it."

"If a prisoner is sick, I need to know what medicine to buy."

"To build a surveillance system, I need to know what's inside the cameras."

"I'm not an expert; experts have their own things to do."

He gestured with his chin toward Craig.

Gloria lowered her head, her pen moving across the paper.

She interviewed many CEOs who read numbers from press releases, exaggerating their own abilities.

However, the person in front of me answered every question without embellishing or boasting.

It doesn't sound like anything special.

But every step is perfectly executed, leaving no room for criticism.

"Mr. Chen, one last question."

She closed her notebook:

"Mr. Underwood told me that you had rejected a cooperation offer from a judge in McLean County."

"This could cause some trouble for your prison getting audit approval. Aren't you worried about the consequences?"

Lingo placed the coffee cup back on the table, his tone calm:

"If what's written in the audit report is true, I won't worry."

"If what's written in the audit report isn't true, then I'm not the one who should be worried."

Gloria turned off the recorder, put her things into her canvas bag, and gave a formulaic smile.

"Today's interview is over. I will organize the information and show it to the editors when I get back. I will come back again later."

"You are a very capable warden, and I believe that this prison will shine brightly under your management."

Lin Ge picked up his coffee cup, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly:

"Ms. Winters, let the readers judge for themselves after the report is written."

……

On a late October morning, the outline of the McLean County Courthouse was faintly visible in the thin mist.

Built in 1929, this three-story building features a relief sculpture above the main entrance depicting a blindfolded woman holding scales in her left hand and a sword in her right.

The plaque below the relief was stained grayish-white by pigeon droppings; only those who could withstand the stench could see the inscription, which read:

Even if the sky falls, justice must be served.

At 8:00 a.m., Judge Hammond's car drove into the designated parking space at the back entrance of the building as usual.

He turned off the engine and looked through the windshield at the scaffolding on the east wing of the courthouse, standing there all alone, covered in dust.

A few years ago, the county government allocated $120,000 to renovate the exterior of the courthouse, and the project was won by a building materials company owned by Bayless.

Of the $32,000 in materials, there was a batch of imitation marble panels from Mexico, with a purchase price of less than 30% of the contract price.

Hammond was not involved in this matter from beginning to end, at least not on paper.

The person responsible for signing was Leonard Hart, chairman of the county purchasing committee.

Hart is his partner at the Tulsa Country Club golf course, and they meet without fail on the first Saturday of every month.

They never discussed business, but that didn't stop Hart from calling him to ask for his opinion before making any important decisions.

The highest level of power is when your hand never touches the pen, yet the paper bears the image you desire.

Hammond straightened his tie, a Christmas gift from his wife Nancy last year, with a card that read:

"To my judge husband, may every judgment you render be as serious yet warm as this tie."

The card was now lying at the very bottom of the study drawer, along with all the cards Nancy had given him over the past fifteen years.

He never replied to the letter because his wife could never quite grasp what he liked.

Years ago, Nancy would ask him at the breakfast table if he had received it.

He would always say he received it, then continue flipping through the day's court schedule.

Nancy stopped asking and simply left the gifts at his study door every Christmas morning.

Hammond pushed open the car door with a cold expression, and the smell of the courthouse parking lot hit him in the wind.

"Crackling sound".

The floor tiles in the courthouse were worn shiny by the flow of people, and your shoes would make a slight rubbing sound when you walked on them.

The walls are adorned with oil portraits of past county judges, the first of whom is John McLean, the man who bought the land and named the county after him.

In the portrait, he is wearing a high-necked black robe, his right hand resting on an open Bible, his gaze directed towards a distant direction outside the frame.

Hammond would slow his pace whenever he passed by this portrait.

He always felt that old McLean was looking at him, and that there was some kind of inexplicable approval in his eyes.

After walking a little further, the clerk was already waiting for him at the office door.

"Judge Hammond, this is today's schedule. At 9:00 a.m., there will be two hearings on probation violations."

"At 9:45, the sentencing hearing for the minor assault case will begin."

"This is the third time the defendant has been involved in a drunken brawl. He broke the other person's cheekbone in the previous incident. The plea agreement recommends six months plus 200 hours of community service."

"Between 10:30 and 12:00, there were three preliminary hearings for burglaries, and all of them applied for legal aid."

Hammond nodded slightly, casually took the schedule, and then, seeing the words "Sentencing Hearing," asked:

"Who is the assistant prosecutor?"

"Max".

Max is a young man with three years of experience who had his motion for evidence preservation rejected in court by Hammond just last month.

Hammond remembers the boy standing at the prosecutor's dock, clutching a stack of case law copies, so nervous he could barely hold them.

He's not a bad lawyer, he just hasn't learned one thing yet.

In this court, winning a case isn't determined by the sheer volume of precedents.

"Go and inform him that I do not accept the plea agreement and that he should be sentenced to twelve months in prison."

Margaret hesitated for a moment.

Normally, the sentence for repeat offenders of such minor offenses ranges from eight to ten months.

Twelve months, some sentences were too harsh.

The defendant's wife called the court last week to plead for leniency, saying that their daughter was about to be baptized and hoping for a lighter sentence.

Margaret answered the phone; the woman's voice was hoarse, as if she had been crying all night.

She recorded her plea for leniency in a court memo and placed it on Hammond's desk.

The paper is still under the schedule, in the same position, but now there are a few more rings on it from the burn marks on the bottom of the coffee cup.

"Then he will request a hearing."

"Then let's arrange a hearing."

Hammond's tone left no room for negotiation.

Margaret read something in his eyes that she had known for a long time: he didn't care.