On the Scientific Regulation of Teleportation and Labor Protection

A girl with grayish-blue skin stood by the table, slurping her milk tea through a straw.

Sing Sing stood up and circled around her.

"Your diet has improved dramatically lately," Sing Sing gestured. "Look at your cheeks, and look at your waist, the fat's practically overflowing."

"Ouch!" The Wandering Girl patted her stomach. "Don't talk nonsense! This is called collagen! I'm out doing fieldwork every day, gaining weight is a work-related injury!"

Wandering Girl

Sing Sing grabbed the empty plate, picked up the largest piece of roasted venison, and handed it over.

"Okay, okay, consider it a work injury. Go back and get reimbursed by Director Wang. But what are you doing here in the middle of the night? You can't be here to mooch a midnight snack from the cafeteria, can you?"

The Wandering Girl tore off a large piece of venison and stuffed it into her mouth, mumbling a complaint:

"It's all because of Director Wang!"

"You dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and made me come find you right away. I was having a dream where the fried chicken leg was as big as a washbasin, and I had just taken a bite of the crispy crust when I found myself here!"

Darwin, sitting opposite, twitched at the corner of his eye, his mind racing.

The past few days are still vivid in my mind: being chased and bombed by armed helicopters in Alaska, fighting desperately with the Silver Peak Consortium in snowdrifts at sub-zero temperatures, being swept into the sky by a gale, and finally speeding across the snowfield on a wheelless, broken the Raft.

These guys clearly have Mutants in their hands who can travel internationally in a second!

Darwin grabbed a handful of fries and slammed them onto his plate, then stood up and glared at Sing Sing, "Why are you forcing me to drive a beat-up RV in the snow when you have a space-age ability user on your payroll!"

"We're being hunted down by the Silver Peak Consortium! Missiles are whizzing past us! Instead of using a method that could get us there in a second, you insist on dragging me into wilderness survival! Are you out of your mind?!"

Sing Sing wasn't annoyed; he pulled out two tissues and wiped away the spittle that had splashed onto his face.

"Xiao Da, young man, don't get so angry. Sit down and talk."

Sing Sing cleared his throat, adopting the air of a director, "When dealing with matters, you must adhere to rules and regulations and have a broad perspective. Do you think Spatial Teleportation is like a shared bicycle on the street, where you can just scan a code and roam freely all over the world?"

"Little Yi signed a formal labor contract with the 749 Bureau, and her official position is listed under the Breaking News Photographer Division. Do you even understand the law of conservation of energy? This skill consumes an extreme amount of calories! Taking someone across borders once burns a huge amount of calories, and afterwards you have to eat a ton of high-sugar, high-calorie foods to recover."

Edith nodded repeatedly, biting on the straw.

Sing Sing walked over to Darwin and patted him on the shoulder.

"We emphasize scientific employment practices and protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers. Arbitrarily exploiting employees' special abilities is the behavior of capitalist thugs. If I were to treat Little Yi like a free international courier, the Labor Security Bureau would fine me until I'm penniless!"

Treating Mutants like ordinary laborers and then bringing up Labor Laws?

Sing Sing ignored his stunned expression and continued speaking.

"Even if we disregard the system and focus on reality, if Little Yi is hungry, her teleportation point will veer off course. Last time, she took me back to China on an empty stomach, and she teleported me directly into a mud pit at an abandoned drilling site in the Taklamakan Desert!"

At this point, Sing Sing looked pained.

"My high-quality replica Armani white suit is ruined on the spot! High-risk capabilities should be used wisely. Assigning you to drive this time is a special test from the organization for someone like you who's about to become a grassroots cadre."

"Think about it, in the future, your resume could include something like, 'I led a team through Canada's extreme cold and snow, driving a motorhome and successfully repelling a transnational armed pursuer.' That kind of resume would definitely boost your year-end performance reviews and promotions!"

"Don't try to fool me with your job title application!"

"She can run from China to Canada today, and tomorrow she can sneak into a bank vault, or even the president's bedroom! She could kill someone with a knife and come back in less than a second."

"How can you regulate people like this who carry cameras and report the news? Just a labor contract?"

The Wandering Girl put down the roasted venison and glanced at him. "Does the president's bedroom serve full-sugar bubble tea?"

"Is this the point?!" Darwin nearly went crazy.

"How is that not the point? Crossing the Pacific Ocean once, I'd be so hungry I'd be gnawing on a table leg. Why would I risk my life assassinating someone for a pittance?"

Sing Sing Chow tapped the table with his knuckles. "Xiao Da, don't get excited. This is a technically sophisticated question."

"The contract covers wages, leave, and work-related injuries; the use of skills is governed by separate procedures. After get off work, I can just go downstairs to buy steamed buns; the company doesn't care. As long as I don't trespass into restricted areas, engage in illegal passenger transport for payment, or endanger public safety, I can go wherever I want in my private time."

"However, bringing people or goods into classified areas or across borders changes the nature of the activity."

"Cross-border missions are assigned unique numbers, and are reviewed by the operations department and the legal department. Who is on the team, what they are carrying, where they are traveling from, and where they are left behind—all of this must be registered and reported to border control and customs in advance."

"Each mission requires an independent recorder. The original records are stored in the monitoring department and cannot be altered by anyone. The equipment is returned to the equipment room after the mission. The recorder does not collect personal travel information; if a case arises, it will be retrieved according to legal procedures."

Darwin stared wide-eyed. "You actually wrote regulations for Spatial Teleportation?"

"With over a billion people in China, what kind of unusual job don't we have? Divers need to report when they go down into the well, escorts for hazardous materials transport, and space industry employees need to fill out a few more forms when traveling internationally. Is that so hard to understand?"

Sing Sing pulled out a French fry and tapped Darwin on it.

"Having teleportation ability isn't illegal, but using it to commit murder is still considered intentional homicide. Teleporting into someone's home is illegal trespassing. Crossing a border without declaring it is illegal border crossing. Smuggling contraband will result in arrests by the Anti-Smuggling Bureau."

"The law governs behavior. Whether you walk in through the door, climb in through the window, or jump in out of thin air, if you commit a crime, you'll have to go inside and work on the sewing machine."

The Wandering Girl finished sucking on the last pearl and added:

"That's right. Last time, I was starving and veered off course, ending up in the kitchen of a bubble tea shop. I had to go back and squeeze out a four-page report on the unusual landing point, and I even had to pay 32.6 yuan for the bubble tea."

Sing Sing tilted his head to look at her, "Wait a minute, I remember you filled in fifty-eight yuan on your expense report?"

Edith, without batting an eye, replied, "International exchange rate fluctuations."

"Where did the money you bought in Beijing go?"

Darwin had no interest in listening to the two dredging up old grievances. "Can a recording device stop her? She can just remove the device, send it to the ends of the earth, and who can find it?"

Sing Sing answered simply, "We can't stop them."

"Rules and regulations are used for prior authorization, task tracking, and post-event accountability; nobody intends to lock people up in iron cages. With cameras everywhere, people will still steal electric bikes."

"Once they realized something was wrong with her, her unit suspended all international assignments and arranged for a psychological evaluation."

"If there is conclusive evidence of a violation, it falls under the jurisdiction of the police. To pre-convict and imprison someone simply because they have some kind of supernatural ability is lazy governance; it's a case of saving trouble to the point of violating laws and regulations."

"Besides, if Little Yi is in mortal danger and her body teleports out of control, even if you put a bomb collar around her neck, the moment you press the remote control, someone else will already be queuing up in the store with their milk tea, leaving you alone to write an accident report in front of an empty chair."

Darwin was still unwilling to give up.

"What if the person who gave her the order is your bureau chief? They could have her transmit the message to some base to assassinate a target, and then destroy the record? Who would know?"

"It's pointless for anyone to give such an order. She has the right to refuse, and our unit has channels for appeals and reports."

"If this task fails to pass legal review, the leaders who sign and stamp it will be summoned for questioning. The words 'classified information' are not a plaster; they can't be arbitrarily slapped on to turn illegal acts into legal ones."

"Disciplinary inspection and supervision departments aren't just sitting idly by. Their oversight not only involves monitoring those doing the work below, but also preventing those at higher levels from abusing their power for personal gain."

The Wandering Girl stirred the ice cubes at the bottom of her glass with a straw.

"If anyone dares to ask me to carry out an assassination, I'll slap the mission sheet on their forehead right there and then turn left and go to the Discipline Inspection Commission to submit my case."

She leaned back in her chair, her tone exuding nonchalance.

"I started spreading rumors when I was twelve. Many people tried to arrest me, but none succeeded. Even the 749 Bureau couldn't stop me."

"But they gave me an ID card, a work badge, and a dormitory key, and even wrote 'No working on an empty stomach' into the safety rules. After each mission, I was willing to go back and hand in the records, just because they treated me like a human being."

Darwin remained silent for a long while.

Sing Sing adopted a posture as if he were lecturing young people.

"Did you hear that? The more dangerous the situation, the more we need to integrate people into normal society. Only when they have stable jobs, a secure livelihood, and a place to voice their grievances will they be willing to cooperate with the system."

"They surround her with guns every day, call her an experimental asset the moment they see her, and threaten to dissect her for research. If you were in her shoes, would you be willing to stay and be subject to such supervision?"

Darwin fell silent; he couldn't refute the question.

The Moon-Boy didn't understand a word. After finishing his turkey, he picked up the empty plate and licked it twice before looking up and asking:

What is regulation?

Edith thought for a moment.

"It means you can't eat the communal plates after you finish your meal."

The Moon-Boy stared at the plate in his hand for a few seconds, then obediently put it back on the table.