Chapter 150: Whale Song

Chapter 150 -62: Whale Song

So this is…

“Whale Song.” ℯℯ𝘭.

Yu Xian uttered the name unconsciously.

Such a romantic, vibrant, and yet tragically heroic technical solution.

Shi Zuozhou listened, dumbfounded.

“This… this could actually work? Isn’t this similar to that ‘Sonic Payment’ feature Alipay used to have?”

“Yes, the principle is the same. It just modulates data into an audio signal.” Wen Xiao nodded, then added,

“However, the limitation of this solution is that, due to the physical properties of speakers, the bandwidth for acoustic transmission is extremely low—maybe only a few dozen bytes per second. Which means…”

“In ‘Whale Song Mode,’ it can only be used to transmit the simplest plain text messages?” Yu Xian asked.

“Yes. If it really comes to that, humanity might have no choice but to regress to the ‘telegraph era’,” Wen Xiao said regretfully.

“That’s enough. In a disaster like that, being able to send out an SOS or a short set of text coordinates is far more valuable than downloading a movie on a normal day.”

Yu Xian looked at Wen Xiao. This shy girl with her hair in a bun suddenly exuded a reassuring sense of reliability.

“But for now, our priority is still to increase the number of nodes. Otherwise, when the disaster hits, if we don’t have enough nodes, all these ideas will just be empty talk,” Yu Xian reminded them. The other two nodded in agreement.

“Right. Even if we can sing the Whale Song, we need enough ‘whales’ to hear it,” Shao Yiyi agreed.

Now that their strategic direction was set, all that remained was tactical execution.

Wen Xiao picked up her laptop again, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

Although the complex “point-bidding” and “forum” systems still needed more time to polish, the core “distributed storage” feature was complete.

“The current interface is… a bit basic.” Wen Xiao turned her screen toward them, a little embarrassed.

“There’s no graphical interface or preview images yet. It looks… like one of those FTP resource sites from over a decade ago, or an even older BBS file section.”

On the screen was a directory structure in green text on a black background.

There was no fancy UI, just lines of folder names:

“Complete Bus DLC Collection,” “Horror Themed Audio,” “Fantasy Adventure Audio,” “Romantic Action Audio,” and so on.

These were the fruits of Yu Xian’s round-the-clock work over the past few days.

Hundreds of audio files lay waiting inside.

This extremely primitive, even crude, list format made Shi Zuozhou smack his lips in doubt.

“Tsk, tsk. This is way too retro. Are the students really going to buy into this?”

“A starving man doesn’t complain about the bowl his food is served in,” Yu Xian said, shaking his head.

“Did you ever see those old Nokia and Motorola phones that ran on Java or Symbian when you were a kid? Back then, people would spend hours digging through messy WAP sites just to find a resource pack for their phone of a few hundred kilobytes or to download a novel in .txt format.”

“Yeah, Senior Brother Shi. Look at all the people on Tieba and confession walls begging for ‘seeds’ and ‘resources’ these days…” Shao Yiyi said, holding out her phone for Shi Zuozhou to see.

“For them, having a centralized resource hub where you can just give them a huge collection, where they don’t have to beg everyone and their mother, where they can just click and download… Forget a basic interface, they’d even be willing to pay for it.”

“Alright, let’s begin,” Yu Xian said, glancing at Wen Xiao.

Wen Xiao took a deep breath, typed a line of command into the terminal, and firmly hit the enter key.

“Generating digital signature…”

“Packaging installation image…”

“Broadcasting version update via gossip protocol…”

English prompts flashed on the screen. A few minutes later, Wen Xiao let out a sigh of relief and looked at Yu Xian.

“It’s done. As long as someone installs this version of Rabbit Hole, their device will not only automatically act as a storage node, but they’ll also be able to browse and download these audio files. I also transcoded and compressed the files to make them easier for you to relay.”

“Good. Old Shi, once we upgrade the version on our own devices and download these compressed audio resources, we can go out and ‘infect’ the other nodes.” Yu Xian nodded, looking at Shi Zuozhou.

“You got it!” Shi Zuozhou couldn’t wait. He quickly opened Rabbit Hole on his phone and wristband, and sure enough, the version was updating silently in the background.

When the progress bar finished, the original, bare-bones interface—which had only shown a signal diagram with two connection points—changed.

A “Resources” tab had appeared at the bottom. Tapping it brought up that same directory list with green text on a black background.

Shi Zuozhou’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Now, all we have to do is spread this update package like a virus!”

This was the fearsome power of the gossip protocol. Now, any nearby device, or any of the supernodes they had previously deployed, would automatically initiate a handshake upon detecting an older version of Rabbit Hole in the vicinity.

And those nodes that received the new version would, in turn, become new sources of propagation, continuing the search for the next node.

One spreads to ten, and ten to a hundred.

“What are you talking about, Senior Brother Shi? This is a vaccine!” Shao Yiyi corrected him.

“With these Rabbit Holes, even if the Great Flood really comes, at least we won’t be like blind men stumbling around in the dark,” Wen Xiao said softly.

“Yeah, if you ignore the problem of drowning.” As soon as Shi Zuozhou heard the words “Great Flood,” he seemed to remember something and slumped back onto the sofa.

“So, the key is still the tickets. Old Yu, what do you think? If there really is a ‘Noah’s Ark,’ or some kind of shelter, how do we get on? Where do we buy tickets? Who do we buy them from? Is it really like in the movies, where only billionaires and dignitaries get a spot?”

The other three fell silent. It was true. Even if they built an underground communication network that covered the entire campus, or even the entire city, it all seemed so insignificant in the face of a natural force powerful enough to destroy civilization.

They were still just a few ants, waiting to be washed away at any moment.

‘There has to be a way.’

Yu Xian frantically searched his mind, sifting through every fragment of information he had gathered recently.

Professor Gao Jiguo’s last words, Professor Shu’s overnight evacuation, the rumors of man-made torrential rain, the panic in the School of Physics…

These clues were a tangled mess. They seemed unrelated, but there had to be a common thread connecting them all.

‘If an Ark truly exists, then someone must be organizing its construction, or at the very least, organizing an evacuation.’

‘Professor Shu left with his team and equipment. He might have boarded the ship, or at least gone to work on it.’

‘Professor Gao died. Could it be… the price for trying to stop something?’

“I am guilty. I’m sorry to all of humanity.”

‘Could Professor Gao’s “guilt” and his reason for being sorry to all of humanity be related to this apocalypse?’

‘Could the collider project he voted against be related to the “tickets”?’

“Tickets…” Yu Xian muttered to himself. ‘Professor Gao must have known something.’

‘But Professor Gao is already dead…’

Suddenly, Yu Xian’s gaze froze.

“There’s one person who might know where the ‘tickets’ are.” He snapped his head up, looking straight at Shi Zuozhou.

“Who?” the other three asked in unison.

“Professor Ning Qikun,” Yu Xian said, his voice firm.

“Think about it. Professor Gao and Professor Shu—one was a leader in the field, the other a mainstay. They were both qualified to be privy to the core secrets. Professor Ning might be low-key, but he’s also a senior professor at the School of Physics. He’s been immersed in this circle his entire life.”

Yu Xian recalled the small, hunched-over old man on the lecture stage.

“Professor Ning didn’t choose to flee, nor did he choose to end his own life. Instead, he chose to stay and finish his ‘final lesson’. He must have had something he didn’t get to say. Or maybe he already said it, and we just didn’t understand.”

“We have to find him!” Shi Zuozhou shouted.

“If we find him, we’ll have a chance to find that ship!”

“But…” Wen Xiao began, her voice trembling slightly.

“If… and I’m just saying if.”

She looked at Yu Xian, her eyes filled with fear.

“If the mastermind behind this is really like you guys speculated, willing to drive Professor Gao to his death and force Professor Shu to flee just to cover up the truth…”

“Then isn’t Professor Ning in incredible danger right now?”