My IQ has been increasing year by year.

The autumn wind in Huizhou has already brought a noticeable chill.

The leaves of fallen trees lined both sides of the main road on campus, rustling softly underfoot.

The corridor of dormitory building number four echoed with dull footsteps and heavy breathing.

"I can't do it anymore."

Chu Ge gritted his teeth, and the veins on his arms bulged out.

He was holding a huge cardboard box in his arms.

The cardboard box contained a monitor that had just been brought back from the Buynow electronics market.

These large head-up displays from 2002 were encased in a thick plastic shell, making them incredibly heavy to hold.

With each step Chu Ge took, his body sank a little lower.

"Excuse me, excuse me, my legs are weak."

Chu Ge leaned against the wall at the corner of the stairs, using one corner of the cardboard box for leverage, and gasped for breath.

Wang Dayong walked in front.

He had a computer case on his shoulder and a huge, square-shaped package in his hand.

It contained the laser printer that Chen Zhuo had requested.

Dayong spends most of his time doing farm work back home, so this weight is manageable for him, but he's a big guy and the stairs are narrow, making it quite difficult for him to climb. "Chu Ge, are you sure you can manage?"

Da Yong stopped and turned around to look at Chu Ge, who was leaning against the wall and rolling his eyes.

"Where's that enthusiasm you had when you were haggling with the shopkeeper at the electronics market, picking out a graphics card? You were practically drooling with excitement!"

Chu Ge waved his hand weakly.

"Can mental labor and physical labor be the same? That bastard tried to fool me with a bulk CPU, so I had to fight him to the death. Who knew this monitor was so damn heavy?" Chen Zhuo walked at the back.

He was carrying two large plastic bags containing a silent keyboard, a mouse, a power strip, a network cable, several boxes of brand-new A4 printing paper, and spare toner cartridges. He looked at Chu Ge's swaying figure.

"If you don't hold this monitor properly and it falls," Chen Zhuo teased, "we'll have to use it as a fish tank tonight."

"You are this one."

Chu Ge rolled his eyes.

"I'll have to put you in the fish tank first."

He took a deep breath, hugged the cardboard box tightly again, gritted his teeth, and continued climbing to the second floor.

Push open the door to dormitory 215.

Chu Ge simply placed the monitor on Chen Zhuo's desk.

A muffled thud.

The table shook slightly.

Chu Ge slumped into the chair, panting heavily, too weak even to pick up a water glass.

Dayong placed the computer case under the table and then moved the heavy laser printer onto the tabletop.

"How come this thing is heavier than the computer itself?"

Dayong shook his slightly sore arm and patted the gray-white printer casing.

"It contains a toner cartridge and a heating and fixing unit."

Chen Zhuo put down the plastic bag in his hand and began to unpack the cables.

"It's all iron parts inside, and there's a lot of material used."

The dormitory is a bit messy.

Da Yong helped push the books on Chen Zhuo's desk to the side, making a large space.

Chen Zhuo took out a utility knife and cut open the tape on the monitor.

Bring out that bulky, big thing and place it right in the center of the table.

Dayong helped organize the cables, tying several long black wires together with cable ties and stuffing them behind the table.

Finally, Chen Zhuo disassembled the laser printer.

Remove the shock-absorbing foam and pull out a few orange plastic strips used for fixing.

Insert a brand new black toner cartridge into the slot and press down the lid.

Everything is ready.

"The power's on."

Dayong squatted on the ground, holding a newly bought six-hole power strip in his hand.

He plugged in the computer host, monitor, and printer one by one.

Then I plugged the main plug of the power strip into the power panel on the wall.

Chen Zhuo nodded.

He pulled out a chair, sat down, and pressed the power button on the computer's control panel.

The green indicator light is on.

The humming sound of the fans starting to spin came from inside the computer case.

The monitor screen flickered and a black screen appeared during the motherboard self-test.

Immediately afterwards, Chen Zhuo reached for the HP laser printer next to him.

I pressed it down gently.

"Buzz"

A low, humming start-up sound came from inside the printer.

That's the sound of the motor driving the gears as they start to turn.

In that very instant.

The old incandescent light bulb overhead suddenly emitted a slight crackling sound.

Immediately afterwards, all the lights in dormitory 215 went out.

Chu Ge was startled.

He had been slumped in his chair with his eyes closed, resting, but suddenly he sprang up.

"Holy crap! The power's about to trip!"

Chugo stared at the light tubes on the ceiling.

Dayong was also stunned, remaining squatting on the ground, staring intently at the power strip in his hand, as if afraid it would spark.

The light tube flickered twice, and the tungsten filament inside emitted a faint red light.

The entire voltage was dragged to its limit.

Two or three seconds later.

Once the internal heating components of the printer have finished preheating, the machine enters standby mode.

The deep voice gradually subsided.

The incandescent light bulb overhead flickered again.

The lights returned to their normal brightness.

The room was quiet for a few seconds.

All that remained was the steady whirring of the computer case fan.

Chu Ge breathed a sigh of relief, patted his chest, and sat back down in his chair.

"Holy crap."

Chu Ge looked at the now quiet, gray-white machine on the table, still feeling a lingering fear.

"That startled me; I thought the power was going to trip."

Chen Zhuo looked up at the light tube.

"The startup power is a bit high."

Chen Zhuo kicked the power strip under his feet deeper into the table.

"Dayong, from now on, when I use the printer, let's try not to plug in an electric heater."

Dayong stood up and dusted off his hands.

"Okay, I don't use the electric kettle much anyway."

On the computer screen, the classic blue sky and white clouds desktop of Windows XP has already popped up.

Accompanied by that crisp startup beep.

The dormitories at USTC were already connected to the campus network. After plugging in the network cable that Dayong had just connected, the two small computer icons in the lower right corner began to flash. Chen Zhuo opened Internet Explorer, skillfully clicked on the settings, and entered a string of proxy server IP address and port number.

Why are you becoming an agent?

Chu Ge came closer and watched Chen Zhuo type on the keyboard.

"The campus network's international access is too limited; without a proxy, some websites cannot be accessed."

Chen Zhuo pressed Enter to confirm.

The browser reloaded, and the page loaded rather slowly.

Brush down little by little.

White background with blue link text.

This is an extremely simple webpage, without any fancy pictures, only a dense list of English text.

The latest preprint papers in physics, mathematics, and computer science are uploaded from all over the world every day.

Chen Zhuo entered a few keywords into the search box.

Page redirection.

I opened the document submitted by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton that I hadn't copied properly a few days ago.

The title is quite long and involves the boundary problem of multidimensional topological manifolds.

Chen Zhuo clicked the download button.

A file of a few tens of kilobytes can be downloaded in just a few seconds.

He opened the file, and the screen was full of English text and complex mathematical formulas.

Chen Zhuo barely looked at the screen; he simply moved the mouse to the top left corner and clicked print.

The paper feed tray made a soft click.

A brand new blank A4 sheet of paper was sucked in and transformed into a series of papers.

Chu Ge pointed at the machine, looking heartbroken.

"You spent several thousand dollars to assemble such a top-of-the-line machine."

Chu Ge pointed to the stack of papers in Chen Zhuo's hand.

"So you just let it do local area network downloads all night, and incidentally act as a printer driver?"

"uh-huh."

Chen Zhuo placed the stack of documents on the table.

"I only use it for downloading and printing right now because that's the only step I've taken in my thinking."

He glanced at Chu Ge.

"As we move forward and need it to handle those massive underlying matrices, I hope this machine can wait for me in terms of computing power, rather than making me wait for it." Chen Zhuo paused slightly before delivering the fatal blow.

"I paid a lot of money for computing power redundancy and stability. I don't want to be calculating a critical step in the middle of the night and suddenly a burnt smell comes out of the computer case, and I have to carry it around the hallway looking for a fan to blow on it." Chu Ge was instantly speechless.

He touched his nose and coughed twice.

Late at night.

In late autumn in Huizhou, the wind gets a bit strong at night.

A wisp of cool air occasionally seeped in through the cracks in the window.

The main lights in dormitory 215 have been turned off.

Wang Dayong lay on the bed, emitting even and low snoring sounds.

On Chen Zhuo's desk, a black lamp was lit.

A warm yellow halo of light shone on the table.

The stack of Princeton preprints lay flat in the very center of the aperture.

Chen Zhuo sat in a chair.

He was holding a pencil in his hand.

When he reads, he is in a state of extreme stillness.

My eyes followed the English letters and formulas on the paper, scanning down line by line.

Turn the page, turn the page...

The Princeton researchers have a brilliant approach; they're attempting to define the absolute boundary of a multidimensional topological manifold within the existing framework of string theory. It's a very impressive topic.

The logic is very rigorous, and the mathematical tools are used very elegantly.

Until the core part of the derivation.

Chen Zhuo's gaze stopped.

In the middle section of this paper, the formulas suddenly become extremely complex.

To handle a singularity that is unavoidable in continuous integrals, the authors introduce a large renormalization process here.

A series of calculus symbols, limit symbols, and compensation parameters are piled together.

It took up almost half a page of space.

It's like a glass building that was originally designed to be very simple and modern, but when construction was halfway through, it was suddenly discovered that it was not strong enough to support the load.

Therefore, the architect had to forcibly attach a ring of concrete pillars around the outside of the building as a patch.

Chen Zhuo frowned slightly.

He didn't think the other person had written it wrong.

The professors at Princeton are not so prone to making basic mistakes; the results they derive are logically self-contained.

It's just a bit bulky.

Chen Zhuo placed the pencil on the table and tapped it lightly.

He recalled the reverse tree diagram of underlying data retrieval that he had drawn for Chu Ge a few days ago.

And the one-sided release topology matrix that Lu Jia wrote on the draft paper to break the vicious cycle.

When a continuous flow of water encounters a blockage, it will overflow and become infinitely large.

So the people at Princeton used renormalization to forcibly repair the dam.

but.

What if the water flow were instantly cut off near this singularity, turning into discrete water droplets?

At the most basic level of data logic, nothing is impossible to divide.

Chen Zhuo's thinking jumped between the macroscopic continuity of physics and the discreteness of computer underlying algorithms.

He didn't immediately take out a brand new sheet of draft paper and start frantically calculating.

This is a big problem.

He only has a vague idea of ​​the algebraic and geometric tools involved; he still needs to consult some materials.

He doesn't have the habit of staying up all night to study.

Chen Zhuo gently put down the document in his hand.

Pick up that wooden pencil.

Next to that bloated and complicated renormalization formula.

Did you draw a small one?

He then closed the twenty-odd pages of documents.

I put it in the desk drawer.