After Li Qing had walked the three out, Huang Xuan went back to his bedroom and called Li Shenggang.
“How is everything in the aluminum factory?”
Li Shenggang was at a dinner party where it was very noisy. He stepped out of the room and answered loudly, “How are you, boss? The factory is operating well, and the staff is in a fine mood, but it is losing money.”
“It is me that is supposed to worry about it.” However, Huang Xuan wasn’t worried at all. “Has anybody been making any trouble with you recently? How is everything going on with the power plant?”
“I’m having dinner with the people of the power supply bureau. We have developed a good relationship. Don’t worry.” Li Shenggang giggled. Then he looked around and said in a low voice, “There is a power cut today. With nothing to do, I decided to entertain them with a meal. There has been a temporary shutdown since three days ago, but the electricity bill has been increasing sharply, I was explaining to them about it.”
“It must be Rolin,” Huang Xuan thought. “Does the power cut have anything to do with us? Are there any problems?”
“Of course not, I have heard that the transmission line of Nanjing broke down and there will be an inspection, but the person in charge of the inspection is having dinner with me. The transformer near our factory has gone wrong, so the shutdown will probably last for a while.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Huang Xuan had never thought the old factory would make a profit anyway. He bit his lips and thought about it.
“Li Shenggang.”
“Yes!”
“Have you ever used the Huang Family as protection?”
“How dare I? You have forbidden it.”
“Anybody aware of it?”
Li Shenggang smiled and said, “Frankly speaking, I am not sure whether they know it or not, but I have never told anyone.”
“Good. It will still be forbidden in the future. Understand?” Huang Xuan sounded harsh. Li Shenggang stood at attention right away and said, “Yes. Yes. I promise I will remember it.”
Hearing this, Huang Xuan couldn’t help laughing. “Relax. Don’t be so serious. You have a lot of work to do these days. I have had one million wired to you as overhead. Figure out a way to enter it into the account book.”
“Thank you very much!”
Hearing the word “overhead”, Li Shenggang’s eyes glittered. For the time being, he was like the overlord of the factory. After fixing the problems, the rest of the money would all go to his pocket.
Huang Xuan had known that Li Shenggang had been embezzling money, but he didn’t mind. Back at home, his mom had talked a lot about people who embezzled but also did well in work. To stop Li Shenggang from embezzling, he just needed to ask Rolin to monitor him and remind him every now and then himself. But the cost would be high. What was worse, the guy’s enthusiasm in work would be deflated.
Rolin had returned, safe and sound. Huang Xuan could count on him again. He was in a good mood. Sensing that Li Shenggang was in a high spirit, he smiled and said, “Lucky for you. I am happy today, so later I will give you ¥100,000 as a bonus. That’s it.”
“Thank you, boss.” This time, Li Shenggang’s voice was low. He was thinking, “Is this ¥100,000 for me not to take money from the factory anymore or it is simply a bonus?”
Huang Xuan didn’t know Li Shenggang’s thought. He put down the phone, rushed to the door and shouted, “Brother Qing, please contact Zhang Rong. I want to see their president Yu Lixin. I would like him and Yu Tingli to join the meeting too.”
“OK.” Li Qing ran to the phone.
Xihuang Industrial had been a subsidiary of World Group. After the stocks of it and the Huang Family Funds had been exchanged, its original general manager had gone back to the group, and Yu Lixin had been appointed as the president at the last moment. The actual persons in power were Zhang Rong and Yu Tingli. Xihuang Industrial actually just dealt in import and export. It also took part in the operation of Docas Company. As a company worth nearly 200 million dollars, it only had a staff of 20-odd people.
All set. Huang Xuan exhaled deeply.
“All these things I am doing will cost all my money. You’d better not be extinguished by other bases.”
“Don’t worry. We are in a temporal and spatial desert, where we can barely meet anybody else except for the intruders.”
“That will be the best. Who could afford 300 million dollars every day? I will arrange a meeting for Xihuang Industrial and Docas tomorrow to ask them to assign a separate dock to us. When the crude oil and the ethanol arrive, you take them away directly from the dock. For the time being, get the electricity from the dock temporarily. As long as you take care of the information on the computer, there will be nothing to be worried.”
“Good.”
Huang Qunsheng hadn’t come home. Huang Xuan came to the base. Looking at the white and blue walls, he calmed down. Privately, he felt Rolin was the only one he could rely on in Brazil. His disappearance had disturbed Huang Xuan a lot internally. Sitting on the cold floor in the lounge, Huang Xuan looked up at the ceiling and asked, “There were a lot of people in this base, weren’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Did they go back to their own space?”
“It’s their own plane,” Rolin corrected. “P112 is a colonial plane of the standard plane. On the eve of temporal and spatial oscillation, they returned to the standard plane.”
“Then what’s going on with the standard plane? How come I have never heard about it from you?” Huang Xuan asked, sleeping on one of his arms, as if he was talking to his family.
“I don’t know. The bases of lower levels can’t enter and visit the bases of higher levels. But I don’t think the standard base has been destroyed during the temporal and spatial oscillation.”
“Was this place destroyed?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Huang Xuan put his right hand on his chest, feeling sad. He forced a smile as if it was for Rolin. Then all of sudden, he asked, “Rolin, you said the energy in the buffer zone determined how many times one could travel between spaces, but according to the Butterfly Effect, if a butterfly flutters its wings, won’t the zone crash in many years?”
“Of course not, because the Butterfly Effect isn’t applicable to temporal and spatial theories,” Rolin said scornfully.
“Why?” Huang Xuan was curious.
Rolin searched the materials on the Butterfly Effect and answered, “The Butterfly Effect was first analyzed in a paper submitted to New York Academy of Sciences by the meteorologist, Edward Lorenz in 1963, who mentioned that if the theory turned to be correct, the flutter of a seagull would change the climate. In his later speeches and papers, he started using butterflies, which were thought more poetic, instead of seagulls. The most common interpretation of the theory was that the flutter of a butterfly in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas one month later. It shows that the result depends sensitively on the initial conditions. A tiny difference in the initial conditions can lead to a very different result.”
“However,” Rolin continued. “the ground of the theory is that all the conditions remain constant. He didn’t say what would happen if the conditions were altered. In the temporal and spatial theory, because of the buffer zone, it is impossible for the Butterfly Effect to occur.”
“Isn’t the future definite? Aren’t you always talking about similarity?”
“Those are two distinct conceptions. Similarity isn’t equality. It is referring to societies and history, not individuals. Think about it: how many hurricanes occurs in the Pacific Ocean every year? And how many butterflies are there in the world? Does every butterfly cause a tornado?”
“That’s not what the theory means. It’s a possibility,” Huang Xuan was defending the theory of his times.
“Of course it is just a possibility. Let’s suppose the butterfly effect is true. How do you think a dinosaur from 30 million years ago could affect you?”
“It might eat my mammal ancestor.”
“It could not eat all the mammals, could it?”
“Perhaps.”
“So the mammals exist, and you exist.”
“I wouln’t exist if my ancestors were eaten.”
“No, it’s not like that. Who you are depends on your social relations. Your mother bore you, and you are Huang Qunsheng’s son, so you are Huang Xuan. It is actually the well-known grandmother paradox: suppose you are able to travel to the past and the future. You went to the past and killed your grandmother. However, if there wasn’t your grandmother, where did you come from? If you didn’t exist, how could you kill your grandmother? Let me tell you: the reason you are Huang Xuan is not the combination of a sperm and an egg but education. Education made you meet the need of the time and space for Huang Xuan. Humans are always self-centered. For planes, each space and time is relatively separated. The space and time you live in are different from the one your grandmother lived in. But there is a connection between them. If you killed your grandmother, there would be an influence on you, which the space and time would be able to reduce.”
Rolin kept babbling. It seemed that he had made up his mind to solve Huang Xuan’s question.
“Just imagine what will happen if two balls collide. We are not concerned about the process but the result. It is all about energy. Do you understand?”
“Not really. If my ancestor were eaten, neither my dad nor I would exist.”
“For the society, it doesn’t matter whether you are Huang Xuan or Zhang Xuan. Without World Group, there would be other groups. It doesn’t matter what group it is as long as they do the same business. Your place would also be replaced by someone with the same education and life experience.”
“But with different thoughts.”
“Thoughts originate from life experience and education.”
“Huang Xuan, how do you think it would have affected you if someone had killed your father three years ago,” Rolin added as Huang Xuan was thinking with his lips bitten.
“Bite your tongue!”
Rolin apologized and said, “It would have affected both you and your family greatly, and even the times, wouldn’t it?”
“Certainly.”
“Then it goes against the Butterfly Effect, which says that the initial conditions are sensitive and cause huge differences in the result. In the temporal and spatial theory, the spaces and times enjoying more similarities make more differences, which is a diminishing effect. Clear now?”
“No.”
“Fine.” Rolin was patient. “If the mammals in a plane died out, it would influence today, but it is not the flutter of the butterflies. It is the hurricane. Countless air currents had made the difference. The later the current occurred, the weaker it was. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang1 were famous because they were the first ones to rise up. However, even if they hadn’t, there would be Liu Sheng and Zhu Guang. Would it make any differences to you?”
“No,” Huang Xuan answered like a pupil.
“But it would affect the families, friends, and descendants of Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang, which proves that the Butterfly Effect is paradoxical with the temporal and spatial theory.”
“So?”
“Things paradoxical are questionable and wrong,” Rolin answered bluntly. “Besides, since the spaces and times are linked by energy and the relation between spaces is all about energy, the buffer zone is essential. The buffer zones with more energy are usually safer.”
“What’s the use?”
“To reduce and even extinguish the so-called Butterfly Effect.”
“How is it possible?”
“The object moving opposite the butterfly can offset its kinetic energy.”
“Sounds complicated. Can you do that?”
“Sure. Although it is just a theory, as time goes by, the effect will gradually decrease. Just remember that to maintain the function of the plane, the buffer zone needs basic energy and to remove all kinds of influence, the buffer zone will consume energy, but to prevent the occurrence of temporal and spatial oscillation, the buffer zone needs more than the basic energy. Are you clear?”
“Whatever.” Huang Xuan shrugged his shoulders, thinking that he had consumed too many brain cells today. “What does it have to do with me?”
“When time travelers arrive at and leave P112, energy is consumed. To make sure the buffer zone is in a normal state, a great deal of energy is needed.”
“How to get energy?”
“By changing other spaces and times and causing the loss of their energy, which will go into our plane.”
Huang Xuan’s countenance went pale. “Didn’t you ever say that it meant war?”
“The ones of a large scale is war but the little ones are not.”
Huang Xuan shook his head hard, regretting how come he had never found that Rolin had the quality of a warmonger. Rolin didn’t say anything more and let Huang Xuan go home and rest.
Note:
Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang: the leaders of the peasant uprising in the last year of the Qin Dynasty.