Chen Hao clipped the pen cap to his ear and stared at the flight path sketch on the whiteboard. After he asked, "What should the first message be?", the room was silent for a few seconds; no one answered.

Nana turned and walked to the control panel, tapping the screen lightly. The wall projection lit up, not a route map or an equipment list, but a video—the ship was rocking violently in a storm, waves crashing against the deck, Susan was crouching at the hatch, gagging against the railing, Carl was using a rope to hold onto a box that was about to slide away, and Chen Hao was gripping the steering wheel tightly, his face covered in water.

The data scrolling at the bottom of the screen includes: wind speed, tilt angle, fuel consumption curve, and oxygen reserve fluctuation line.

“This is the nineteenth hour,” Nana said. “The storm peak.”

Chen Hao didn't move. He remembered that at that moment, only one thought was in his mind: Don't flip it, whatever you do, don't flip it.

Susan looked down at her hands, then raised them again, as if recalling what she had been holding. She didn't speak.

Carl frowned. "I haven't seen this part."

“The original log was automatically archived,” Nana said. “You didn’t have time to replay it back then.”

The projection switches. The scene changes to the interior of a cave, where a dim flashlight beam sweeps across the rock wall, illuminating a patch of glowing vines. This is followed by a close-up of land crabs crawling through a layer of decaying leaves, a simulated animation of a fungal network slowly spreading underground, and a scene where they almost trip while carrying samples.

The timeline advances to the final scene of the ship returning to shore. The ship gently bumps into the pier's cushioning mat with a muffled thud.

The entire conference room fell silent.

Chen Hao reached up and touched his chin; his stubble was rough and a little prickly. He suddenly stood up, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and wrote a line:

What made us survive?

“I used to think that as long as you’re bold, your luck won’t be too bad,” he said. “But now that I think about it, we were able to come back not because anyone was particularly brave, but because someone did something, and did it right.”

He turned around. “For example, Nana kept reporting the water depth, Carl reinforced the cargo door in advance, and Susan immediately called for a halt when she discovered the sample leak. These aren’t the ‘stepping up in a critical moment’ kind of drama, they’re just…doing what needed to be done when it was time to do it.”

Susan looked up at him. "And what about you?"

"Me?" Chen Hao grinned. "I'll just keep my mouth shut. If I'm not worried, no one else will dare to be either."

Carl snorted. "When you were at the helm, your hands were shaking like a leaf."

"It was cold, you know!" Chen Hao glared. "Besides, didn't I manage to stay calm?"

Nana interjected: "But at the nineteenth hour and thirty-seventh minute, I issued three consecutive direction adjustment commands, and no one responded for more than fifteen seconds."

Her tone was calm, as if she were reading a weather forecast.

“I was dealing with a broken sail line,” Susan said.

“I’m checking the main beam for cracks,” Carl added.

"I'm thinking about how to survive until tomorrow," Chen Hao said, shrugging.

Nana nodded. "Knowledge output is not the same as effective execution. My database can provide the optimal solution, but if no one receives or executes it, the information is meaningless."

Chen Hao was silent for a few seconds, then picked up a pen and drew a table on the whiteboard.

The left side displays "Crisis Level," and the right side is divided into three columns: "Who is in charge," "Who is operating," and "Who is providing support."

“From now on, we’ll categorize things,” he said. “Small problems will be handled by each person, medium problems will be decided by the person closest to the site, and big problems—like a ship about to capsize—must be given a unified order, and everyone else will have to keep quiet and carry it out.”

"You're in charge?" Susan asked.

"Otherwise what?" Chen Hao laughed. "I'm not an engineer, nor a plant expert. There aren't many jobs I can do, but I'm a perfect score in bragging and taking the blame."

Carl began, “Before the last storm, I didn’t reinforce the rear hatch, thinking it would hold up. But when the waves came in, they almost washed away two sample boxes.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Susan said. “We all thought we could get through this.”

“But I’m a ship repairman.” Karl looked down at the sketchbook in his hand. “I didn’t have enough tools or materials, and I didn’t prepare spare parts in advance. By the time I figured out what to do after the accident, it was too late.”

Chen Hao added a line below the form: "Regular maintenance checklist, signature of the person in charge".

“I have to remember,” he said. “Whoever forgets will have to do three more days of odd jobs next time.”

Susan turned a page of her notebook. "Actually... I've thought about giving up too."

Everyone looked at her.

“It wasn’t really about leaving,” she explained. “It was during those two days of being lost at sea, when we couldn’t see land, the instruments malfunctioned, and we still had half our food left. I started to wonder, were we really exploring, or were we just wasting our time? Would those samples we brought back actually be useful, or would they just rot in the warehouse?”

No one spoke in the room.

Chen Hao sat back in his chair and tucked the pen back behind his ear. "I understand. Whenever I'm exhausted, I think, 'Why don't we move to another island to grow vegetables and raise chickens? At least we wouldn't have to look at the sea every day.'"

“But you always take the lead,” Nana said.

"Because I'm lazy," Chen Hao laughed. "If we don't keep moving forward, the problems will only pile up. If I work hard now, maybe I'll be able to harvest crops while lying down in the future."

Susan shook her head. "It's not that I'm afraid of hard work. I'm afraid it'll be meaningless. I couldn't sleep that night, I kept thinking, what if all of this is just in vain?"

Carl said in a low voice, "I do that when I'm fixing things. Once, a drill bit broke and got stuck in a metal plate, and I couldn't get it out. I smashed the toolbox and almost burned the whole plate through."

"And then?" Chen Hao asked.

“Nana handed me a new drill bit,” Carl said. “She said, ‘Emotions don’t affect accuracy, but they do affect safety.’”

Chen Hao laughed. "That sounds like something a robot would say."

“I am a robot,” Nana said.

Everyone laughed.

After the laughter subsided, Chen Hao said seriously, "From now on, for every voyage, we'll appoint a psychological watch officer. Anyone can be one, but the task is the same—to pay attention to the teammates' condition. If someone is talking too little, moving too slowly, or repeating the same action over and over, you have to remind them."

"Is this counted as part of the workload?" Susan raised an eyebrow.

“Of course.” Chen Hao nodded. “Caring for people is much harder than moving boxes.”

Nana opened a new interface. "I will record all emotional fluctuations and label the environmental triggers. For example: prolonged high pressure, resource shortages, communication interruptions, etc. This will be used to optimize the risk assessment model for subsequent tasks."

“So,” Susan said, “my anxiety can be turned into data?”

“To be precise, it’s a behavioral response pattern,” Nana said. “For example, under stress you tend to repeatedly check the sealing strip; this habit can be predicted and intervened in advance.”

“That sounds a little scary,” Carl said.

“But it’s useful,” Chen Hao said. “Knowing who will break down and when can help us avoid a real breakdown.”

He added another line to the whiteboard: "Team status is also a key metric."

The meeting continued.

They meticulously reviewed each procedural flaw: chaotic sample handling, inappropriate storage of emergency tools, conflicting communication channels, and lack of records for night shift handover…

For each question raised, write it down on the whiteboard, and then discuss the solution.

Chen Hao was responsible for writing, Susan added details, Karl provided practical suggestions, and Nana archived the information to the system.

Two hours later, the whiteboard was almost completely filled with writing.

On the far left are "successful experiences": timely information sharing, clear division of labor, maintaining communication, and trusting professional judgment.

In the middle is the "problem list": delayed instruction response, unclear boundaries of responsibility, unmonitored psychological load, and lax tool management.

On the right are the "Improvement Measures": Emergency Response Role Cards, Regular Psychological Rotation, Dynamic Data Update Mechanism, and the Initiation of Standardized Operation Manual Writing.

Nana stood up and categorized the meeting minutes, uploading them to the "Team Growth Archives." A prompt appeared on the screen:

[Entry Update: Leadership Reflection Module v1.0]

[New Draft Agreement: Crisis Response Responsibility Matrix]

[To-do list generated: 6 items]

Chen Hao leaned back in his chair and stretched. His shoulders cracked twice.

“I used to think meetings were the most boring thing,” he said. “Now I realize that we can live our lives with greater clarity.”

Susan closed her notebook and sighed softly. She looked up at Chen Hao, her lips moved, but she only nodded in the end.

Carl put away his sketchbook and wrote the title "Emergency Plan Structure Diagram" on a new page. He drew a vertical line, wrote "Emergency Situations" on the left, and began listing categories on the right: mechanical failure, biological risks, sudden weather changes, personnel incapacitation...

Nana stood in front of the control panel, her eye lens flashing slightly, as she organized and archived the last batch of voice recordings.

As darkness fell outside the window, the base's lighting system automatically turned on, casting light onto the walls and illuminating the dense writing and unerased flight path sketches on the whiteboard.

Chen Hao stared at the question he had initially written down:

What made us survive?

He slowly raised his hand, picked up the eraser, and added a line below:

Because we've learned to look back and see how we survived.

At this moment, Nana suddenly said, "During the last exploration, I failed to update the seabed topography database in time, which caused the course to deviate by 3.7 kilometers."

Chen Hao turned around. "So?"

"I suggest establishing a dynamic data update mechanism," she said. "New data collected each time we go out to sea should be verified and synchronized to the main database within two hours of returning to port to avoid information lag."

"Sounds like working overtime," Chen Hao grinned.

“It’s the system,” Nana said. “You can hate it, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Alright.” He raised his hands. “It’s settled then. From now on, whoever is the last to disembark from the ship will be responsible for transmitting the data.”

"That is, the equipment is working properly," Carl said. "Last time I came back, water got into the hard drive interface, and it took half an hour to export the data."

“Then let’s add one more thing.” Chen Hao picked up a pen and wrote on the edge of the whiteboard: “If the waterproofing measures are not in place, the person responsible will be punished by washing the tableware for a week.”

Susan couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Nana didn't smile, but her eye lens flickered slightly, as if she blinked.

Chen Hao sat back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the table. He looked at the flight paths, experience bars, and responsibility sheets on the wall and suddenly felt a little unfamiliar with them.

These things didn't exist before.

But now we have it.

He didn't know if this counted as progress, but he knew that when the next storm came, they would be more confident than this time.

“Actually, I’ve always had a question,” he said, his voice lowering.

The others stopped what they were doing.

“If we really do build that bio-communication network…” he looked at Nana, “what will the first message say?”

Nana looked directly at him.

Her voice was steady and clear.

"Suggested message: We are here. We are alive. We are learning how to live better."