Pretending to glance casually at the prison guards in the distance, Zhao Pengcheng saw that the two guards were chatting and not paying attention to him; then he glanced at the camera pointed at him out of the corner of his eye to make sure that the camera would not capture the entire screen before he felt relieved.
He suddenly found it a little funny, a feeling of being a thief, like a student cheating in an exam. He had never been this nervous, not even when killing someone with a scalpel.
The document had already automatically entered a long paragraph of text, and the cursor stopped, but the text was clearly not fully expressed in the context.
Zhao Pengcheng was very curious. How was this possible? Could it be that Qingmu's Mental Power could control a remote computer through the internet?
No, impossible!
Zhao Pengcheng quickly dismissed the idea. If that were the case, Qingmu wouldn't be human; he'd be God. God wouldn't use such a pointless method to contact him. If God disliked someone, he could simply throw them into VY Canis Majoris, where they might even be caught in a supernova explosion and roasted by gamma rays—perfect for God's taste.
Thinking of this, Zhao Pengcheng couldn't help but recall his past life in another parallel world, the cryogenic laboratory of the underground resistance organization. He couldn't help but wonder if a pure consciousness could withstand the extreme environments of the material world, such as near absolute zero or the high temperatures inside a star.
Since Qingmu wasn't God, the only possibility was that he had used some special means, like a computer virus, to hack into the prison's system. This was a reasonable explanation, and it calmed Zhao Pengcheng down a bit. Otherwise, no matter how calm he was, he couldn't imagine cooperating with someone as powerful as God.
The document on the screen remained unchanged.
Why did it stop? Did that guy over there go to the bathroom?
Zhao Pengcheng had a sudden inspiration and immediately typed a few words in:
Are you waiting for my answer?
The cursor started moving again, and WPS automatically displayed two words without any user interaction:
Yes.
Zhao Pengcheng got excited and continued typing:
Did you hack into this system?
No, strictly speaking, it wasn't an intrusion; I was just browsing.
Aren't you afraid of being discovered? The controls here are very strict, and the system is very advanced.
Don't worry, they don't have that ability yet.
How did you know I'd be coming to the computer lab today? To be honest, I didn't know myself.
My brother told me.
My brother?
Zhao Pengcheng looked up at the prison guard not far away, then thought of his own discipline, and finally shook his head.
I told my brother to let me know if I heard anything about you. I wasn't even sure if it was you until you wrote that long letter of repentance. It's well-written, brother, you have a bright future!
"..." Zhao Pengcheng was speechless. What was this guy joking about at a time like this?! This didn't sound like Qingmu at all!
Could it be someone other than Qingmu, testing him? He suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.
What do you want from me?
He typed the question in carefully.
It's nothing, just passing on a few words to you for my teacher.
The conversation lasted for about ten minutes. To be on the safe side, Zhao Pengcheng typed and deleted simultaneously. Ten minutes later, he continued writing his letter of repentance.
When his guard returned, Zhao Pengcheng had already written the application and confession. The guard instructed him to upload them to the designated location on the system and then asked the prison guard in the computer room to print them out.
With the printed manuscript in hand, the guard led Zhao Pengcheng back to his cell. The shackles rattled in the narrow, cold corridor. Sunlight streamed through square holes high in the wall, casting beams of bright light across the opposite wall, adding a touch of warmth to the damp, chilly passageway.
Zhao Pengcheng looked up and, from the direction of the sunlight, roughly determined the orientation of the corridor and the location of the prison's control room. Light streamed through several square holes, casting shadows of branches and barbed wire on the walls. A slight smile appeared on his lips as he silently counted his steps.
Zhao Pengcheng wrote his confession very carefully, and he was quite confident in his writing skills. Writing essays had always been his forte since he was a child. If it weren't for his sister's illness, he might have chosen to major in literature in the college entrance examination.
A former highly educated intellectual and promising surgeon, now a murderer and a sinner who brushed with death, has written a letter of repentance with utmost sincerity and powerfully moving prose. This letter is sure to touch a nerve with some people. After reading it, the prison leadership will undoubtedly use him as a model and publicize him extensively, which will be of great benefit to the ideological reform of prisoners and to improving the image of the prison.
During the days of waiting for news, Zhao Pengcheng continued to get up, wash, do morning exercises, and work as usual, leading a very regular life.
Although serious offenders are closely guarded, their jobs are relatively stable due to the long duration of their sentences; they don't switch jobs frequently.
People like Zhao Pengcheng, who have a certain level of education or technical skills, are usually assigned to jobs with relatively high technical requirements. Zhao Pengcheng was assigned to soldering PCB circuit boards, the kind of common green plastic boards that look like computer motherboards. His task was to solder components such as resistors, capacitors, and transistors onto the pre-printed circuit boards according to the blueprints.
In prison, the division of labor for this kind of work is very clear, and the management is much stricter than in a typical small workshop.
A circuit board is usually built by a group of people working together. First, someone organizes all the required components according to the schematic diagram. Then, they divide the work according to different components: some are responsible for resistors, some for capacitors, some for diodes, etc. They insert these components into the corresponding holes on the PCB board as shown in the schematic diagram. After all the components are inserted, the board is passed to the person in charge of soldering, who solders the components in place.
Next, someone will check the soldered boards again according to the drawings to see if there are any errors. If there are no errors, the boards will be passed to the testing group. The testers will test the circuit boards with the components installed. If there are no problems after testing, they will be packaged. If there are problems, the process will be returned to the previous steps to find out where the problem occurred. The prison guard in charge will record the information and deduct points from the entire group and the individual.
Such strict division of labor and quality control would greatly increase the labor costs of the product. However, in prison, people are the least valuable resource. Therefore, things that small factories outside cannot do can be done in prison.
The prisoners were very diligent and rarely made mistakes, because if they did, they would be severely punished, such as being transferred to make shoes or even sent down into the mines.
Although Zhao Pengcheng studied medicine, he was good at mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science. He could understand the diagrams of these simple circuit boards at a glance, and he could even guess where they were used.
The prison authorities quickly recognized his talent and appointed him as the head of the quality control team, overseeing the final checkpoint. Sometimes, he also had to deal with factory inspectors.
A few days later, his requested winter clothes arrived: a thick cotton-padded coat and a thin pair of cotton-padded trousers. The trousers were very thin, not because the prison was stingy, but because Zhao Pengcheng was in shackles, and the thick trousers couldn't be slipped through the gaps in the shackles. The prison guards weren't going to come and unlock the shackles just because he wanted to change his trousers.
The clothing issue was resolved, but there was still no news about Zhao Pengcheng's lengthy letter of repentance.