The frequency tuning was finished quickly.
There was nothing.
"I'm saying, this is a near-field communication band, right? With current equipment, the absolute limit is a transmission range of thirty thousand kilometers. Within thirty thousand kilometers, there's nothing but Mars and the Vanguard. What signal could you possibly find?"
Shi Tiexin thought about it and realized that was true.
This wasn't bustling Earth. Looking at that brick-red planet outside, there were only tens of thousands of people on it from beginning to end, and every last one of them had a clear background. Who would use this sort of signal?
"I was just acting on a whim." Shi Tiexin sighed softly. "Never mind whether this world even has a Third Frontline. Even if it does, Ling Xingjian might not be in it. And even if she is, she'd probably have moved to the second line and taken an administrative post. After all, she's nearly forty. Those who should sit in offices should sit in offices, and those who should get married and start families ought to do so too."
In this Worldline, people his age should all have had families of their own and lives of their own.
The once harmonious big classes, big schools, and big groups had all fractured and reorganized into tiny cells, tiny families. Only Shi Tie Zhu drifted beyond those little cells, without a fixed abode, like a wandering ghost.
Thinking about it this way, Shi Tiexin instantly understood what those people rushing to blind dates were thinking, and in one stroke grasped the feelings of parents who pushed their children to marry.
Shi Tie Zhu shook his head. "Fine. Since it's just a lingering thought, let's leave the machine on here. I'll set an incoming-message alert. Maybe we'll catch something someday. Come on, let's