A Call from Herta

The new bed was far more comfortable than Bai Luoming had expected.

March 7th had adjusted the room's soundproofing and temperature controls to a perfect balance, and Bai Luoming slept especially soundly.

That lasted until an incessant call ringtone exploded beside the bed.

He reluctantly reached a hand out from under the warm covers and fumbled around on the bedside table for a long time before grabbing the terminal that kept vibrating.

With his eyes closed, Bai Luoming swiped at the screen by feel a few times and finally answered. His brain was still stuck on the chaos of receiving furniture yesterday. He pressed the terminal to his ear and mumbled, "Just leave the delivery at the door. I'll get it when I wake up."

With that, he was even ready to hang up, roll over, and return to the embrace of his soft bed.

There were two seconds of silence on the other end.

A familiar voice came through the terminal. "Little guy, are you awake? This isn't a delivery."

Bai Luoming's eyes snapped open, and the voice drove away most of his drowsiness.

He glanced down at the screen. The contact name clearly read "Ms. Herta."

Bai Luoming jolted upright, several strands of his messy black hair sticking up. He cleared his throat and made a determined effort to save face. "Of course I'm awake. That was just an emergency response test. Congratulations, you passed."

"Your brainwave activity is barely higher than a puppet in standby mode," Herta said, mercilessly exposing him. "Don't call being half-asleep a test. I'm the one who does the testing."

Only then did Bai Luoming remember the crucial issue.

He had personally set his terminal to silent mode before going to sleep.

He opened the settings screen. The silent-mode switch was indeed still on, and unread messages from his other apps sat quietly in the notification bar without having made a sound.

Only Herta's call just now had managed to ring throughout the room.

"Speaking of which, when you upgraded my terminal, did you sneak in something extra?" he asked in confusion.

"I clearly had it on silent, so why did it still ring when you called?"

Herta fell silent for a moment before replying proudly, "Is that hard to understand? I'm a genius. Is making your terminal ring supposed to be difficult?"

"All right, all right, Ms. Herta is brilliant. So, what did you want me for? If it's not urgent, I'll sleep a little longer."

"It's getting late, little guy. Look at the space station's standard time."

Bai Luoming instinctively looked out the window. The starry sky outside the train was as deep as ever, countless star trails interweaving into a river. He argued, "It still looks like the middle of the night outside."

"There's no sunrise outside the space station's windows," Herta reminded him. "Judging the time of day by the stars will only disrupt your sleep schedule."

She added, "By Blue Planet time, normal people are almost ready for lunch."

Bai Luoming opened the time display. It really was twelve noon. He had slept through the entire morning.

He was silent for a moment, then promptly shifted the blame. "You can't blame me. Too much happened yesterday. I just made a mistake anyone could make."

"All right, little guy, come to my office as soon as you can. I need to see you about something."

"What is it?" Bai Luoming's curiosity was piqued.

"You'll find out when you get here," Herta said, deliberately keeping him in suspense.

Bai Luoming immediately changed his tune. "Don't. I'm already on my way."

"Oh? Really? I'm guessing your body is still in bed, and neither of your feet has touched the floor."

Bai Luoming glanced down at the blanket still covering his legs and corrected her seriously. "My spirit is already on the way. My body is loading."

"Come as soon as you can, little guy."

With those words, Herta ended the call.

After the call ended, Bai Luoming refused to give up and tried setting his terminal to "mute everyone without exception," but the system popped up a line of small text: [Communications with the highest privileges are not affected by this setting.]

He then tried dragging Herta's contact into the do-not-disturb list. The list had barely been saved when it automatically reverted to its original state the next second.

"You've got to be kidding me. Can geniuses just do whatever they want?"

Bai Luoming looked at the terminal, unwilling to accept it but helpless to do anything, and could only accept the fact that Herta could do whatever she wanted in his terminal.

He didn't dwell on it for long. After a quick wash, he dug a clean set of white casual clothes out of his suitcase and changed into them. The swelling in his lips had completely gone down, and his reflection had regained its usual fresh appearance.

He looked himself over from side to side in the mirror and said with satisfaction, "Tsk, as handsome as ever. Just what I'd expect from myself."

Before leaving, he saw a message March 7th had sent the night before.

It reminded him not to oversleep and included a reduced-size preview of their group photo.

When he went to reply, he realized the message had arrived a long time ago. His terminal had been on silent, so he hadn't received any notification at all.

He saved the photo first, then replied, "Successfully overslept."

After a moment's thought, he added, "Could you edit my lips to look a little more normal in the photo?"

March 7th replied almost instantly. "Nope. This is a true record."

A sticker of someone rolling on the floor laughing followed.

Even through the screen, Bai Luoming could imagine what she looked like right now. He could only give up on salvaging that embarrassing photo and decide to find a chance to take a more handsome one to overwrite it.

The train remained steadily docked at the space station platform.

As Bai Luoming left the guest car, he happened to hear Pom-Pom remind everyone over the train's broadcast not to miss lunch, and also warn them not to pile personal belongings in the public passageways.

He glanced at the time on his terminal. A long time had already passed, and time was quite tight.

He decided to go straight to the office first and deal with lunch when he came back.

After he entered the space station, his terminal's navigation automatically plotted the shortest route to Herta's office and even applied for and obtained access to several internal areas for him in advance. Bai Luoming was quite satisfied with the results of the upgrade. At least this time he wouldn't have to follow a puppet, or wander through the maze-like corridors until he questioned his life.

As he passed near the Master Control Zone, Bai Luoming ran into Asta, who was giving staff members instructions about repair scheduling.

When Asta saw him coming from the platform, she smiled and first checked whether he had received the furniture without trouble the night before.

On learning that his room had been furnished, she breathed a sigh of relief. "The space station's express delivery service finally didn't drop the ball again."

Then, as though mentioning it casually, she looked at the terminal in Bai Luoming's hand and asked gently, "Is the terminal working well for you?"

"It's great," Bai Luoming said, giving it an immediate and highly positive assessment. "It runs very smoothly, just what I'd expect from something Station Master Asta gave me."

Asta kept smiling, but a hint of doubt arose in her mind.

If the terminal had been working normally all along, why couldn't she see any location updates or receive any information uploaded by the underlying plugin?

Bai Luoming didn't notice anything unusual about her and continued, "Especially after Ms. Herta took it and upgraded it. It's even better than before. I had it on silent just now, and she could still call me directly."

"Huh?"

The smile on Asta's face froze briefly.

Almost immediately, those words confirmed the truth for her: the plugin she had installed hadn't malfunctioned. Herta had discovered it and completely removed it.

And Herta had not only tampered with the terminal; she had most likely installed her own plugin on Bai Luoming's terminal as well.

Seeing Asta react a little strangely, Bai Luoming asked with concern, "What's wrong? Are there compatibility issues after the terminal's upgrade?"

"It's all right. If it works well, just keep using it. Don't worry." Asta quickly recovered her bearing as the space station's station master.

She watched Bai Luoming follow the navigation's directions toward Herta's office.

Only when the white figure disappeared around the corner did the thought in Asta's mind become perfectly clear: it seemed she had made the right choice not to forcibly keep Bai Luoming at the space station earlier.

If she competed for him head-on in Herta's territory, the other party would see her every move clearly.

Asta looked down and pulled up the list of procurement and research-and-development permissions on her personal terminal.

Her fingers moved quickly across the screen as she carefully selected gifts that could replace the terminal's functions without being casually taken over or blocked by Herta.