The next steps were to raise some money as startup capital, maintain a normal routine, and then find an opportunity to return to Asia.
After thinking over everything he'd done these past few days, he realized that buying the chemical reagents might become a problem.
The reason he thought it might become a problem
had to do with what Huang Xiuyuan planned to do next. As the saying went, people feared fame just as pigs feared getting fat. He was destined to stir up a storm.
He carried memories of the future. After all, he had Hyperthymesia and remembered what was to come with perfect clarity.
Some might say the butterfly effect would change the future.
Huang Xiuyuan didn't deny that possibility. He understood perfectly well that the moment he called home, he had already begun to change history.
Though he had only changed the lives of a few insignificant people, the greater his influence grew, the more rapidly the butterfly effect would magnify.
He was well aware of all these possibilities.
But the most valuable part of his memories of the future wasn't the course of history itself. It was the scientific and technological knowledge.
As the future unfolded, brain suppressants and nan chips became widespread, making people with Hyperthymesia natural top students thanks to their extraordinary memories.
Huang Xiuyuan was the first generation of Hyperthymestics and a participant in the Fuxi Project, a secret initiative launched by China in 2040 to create Hyperthymestics and train top scientists.
Because of his age, he was already fifty-four when he joined the Fuxi Project. He could only study while also serving as a mentor to the younger participants.
The Fuxi Project did indeed train many scientists for China. Two of its Hyperthymestics even became top scientists.
Huang Xiuyuan spent three years in the Fuxi Project as both a student and mentor. After that, he taught at the Qinling Class—the public name for the Fuxi Project—and served as a professor in Harbin Institute of Technology's materials department.
After retiring, he was rehired. All told, he spent a long twenty-four years in the Fuxi Project. In the end, he hadn't retired from it; he had been killed in an attack.
Because of his Hyperthymesia, every moment before his death remained vivid in his mind.
For one thing, he had memorized almost all the scientific and technological knowledge China possessed at the time through the Fuxi Project. He knew his own field, materials science, especially well.
From 2040 to 2064, China's technological capabilities ranked among the world's leaders in every field.
That was tied to the state of the world at the time. That period was also known as the New Cold War, a confrontation between East and West. Technology underwent an explosive boom, and many fields made great leaps forward.
As a member of the Fuxi Project, Huang Xiuyuan was like a living encyclopedia. He had memorized most of the technological knowledge from 2000 to 2064, though he lacked access to the West's cutting-edge technology from the 2060s.
That knowledge was an enormous treasure.
But back to the point: with so much knowledge at his disposal, Huang Xiuyuan would inevitably become a thorn in the side of certain forces once he began revealing it, bit by bit.
Once someone became famous, everything they did would be scrutinized under a magnifying glass.
That was why he worried that buying chemical reagents might become a problem.
If someone noticed something amiss about the reagents and figured out what they were for, that was the last thing he wanted.
Once he had calmed down, Huang Xiuyuan began thinking about how to deal with the problem. A few ideas soon came to mind.
He opened his laptop and logged into the Harvard University website to check on the school's chemistry buildings. Perhaps because it was the holiday break, several of the simple labs were available to borrow.
He entered his student ID and applied to use one of them for half a month.
After submitting the application, he counted his money. He had $21,500 in the bank and $73.75 in cash.
He checked his watch. It was around two in the afternoon. Given how quickly the university processed applications, it would probably take two or three days.
He grabbed his coat and took a cab back to the chemical supply store, where he bought more than a dozen reagents.
Back at the dorm, he went online and ordered another batch of chemical reagents through the company's official website, asking them to deliver it to Harvard University.
Everything seemed perfectly normal, but Huang Xiuyuan wasn't done. His fingers danced across the laptop keyboard.
By nightfall, he had hurriedly eaten dinner and finished three small programs. He clicked on one of them.
His laptop desktop split in two. When hacking in the USA, the thing he needed to guard against most was his own computer, because all these computers were monitored by PRISM.
The program he had written disguised his activity and confined the PRISM system to a limited area.
Next came the zombie computers.
Late at night, beneath the bright yellow light, Huang Xiuyuan stared intently at the screen. His nimble fingers danced across the keyboard.
The chemical supply company's internal network happened to be connected to the internet. He had the company's online ordering service to thank for that.
He sent a Trojan into the company's internal network by asking a question over email. By then, Huang Xiuyuan had already gained administrator privileges.
He found the records of his two purchases in the company's sales database, then pulled up the sales records from that store for the recent past.
He shuffled the names of the chemical reagents across more than a hundred sales records, keeping the total quantity sold unchanged while mixing up many of the reagents and their corresponding customers.
"Done. Time to call it a night." Huang Xiuyuan smiled to himself.
A few months from now, even if the two clerks had excellent memories, their recollections of that day would have grown hazy. They would have to trust the computer's "accurate records."
By then, even if the FBI turned the place upside down, it would never find anything useful among the chemical reagent records, which would make no sense at all.
The next day was Thursday, January 24.
He opened his laptop and found an email in his inbox. He clicked it and skimmed through it. His application to borrow a lab had been approved, for the period from January 25 to February 20.
He replied to confirm that he had received the email and to confirm the reservation dates.
Snow still drifted outside. The unrelenting snowfall had blanketed the whole world in white.
He breathed out a cloud of white mist, grabbed his down jacket, and stepped out of the dorm. He shivered involuntarily, then strolled toward the university dining hall.
It was only when he entered the dining hall that he felt a little warmth. He picked up some black pepper pasta, fruit salad, grilled sausages, and a bottle of hot milk, found a seat, and began eating slowly.
A few minutes later, someone pulled out the wooden chair opposite him.
With his haggard face, unkempt clothes, and thick glasses, he gave off an air of weary gloom and dullness.
"Xiuyuan, where have you been these past few days? I thought you'd gone back to China." The man stirred sugar into his coffee as he spoke in a low voice.
Huang Xiuyuan put down his knife and fork, wiped the grease from his mouth, and asked with some concern, "Xuedong, are you doing okay?"
"It's nothing. Something's going on at home. Have you passed your thesis defense?" Lu Xuedong replied with an effort, then promptly changed the subject.
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