Coffee spilled on the corner of the table, dripping down the metal edge onto the floor. Chen Hao didn't wipe it up; he stared at the red dot flashing on the main screen, his fingers unconsciously tapping his knee.

The construction team has already opened up the mezzanine in Zone C, and the new energy storage interface is being installed. The first batch of three devices—the oxygen supply module, the lighting main control unit, and the data relay node—have all been upgraded and connected to the pulse power output from the "little blue" device. For the first two hours, everything was normal, and the indicator lights were bright green.

Then the problem arises.

The oxygen supply module suddenly stopped for five seconds, interrupting air circulation, but the alarm didn't sound. After restarting, it ran for thirty seconds before stopping again. The third time, it completely locked up, and the panel screen went black.

The lighting system was even more bizarre. The main light strip first flickered, like it was trembling, then the brightness skyrocketed, burning out two LED arrays. When the backup line was switched on, it also started flickering violently in less than a minute.

The most absurd thing was the data relay node. No one touched it, and it didn't receive any remote signals, yet it restarted itself three times, each time at different intervals. The logs were cleared, leaving not even any error codes.

Susan's call came urgently: "Come here right now!"

When Chen Hao arrived at the control room, she was staring at three sets of waveform diagrams for comparison. Her brows were furrowed in worry.

“It’s not a wiring problem,” she said. “We’ve checked all the connections; the crimps are secure and the insulation is intact. There was no sudden surge in current when the fault occurred.”

Carl leaned against the power distribution cabinet, holding the oscilloscope probe in his hand. His legs were aching, but he didn't change his position.

“I recorded the signals before the power outage twice,” he said. “Both times were about 0.3 seconds after the peak energy output.”

Nana's voice came from behind the terminal: "All operation logs have been retrieved. All three faults occurred during the capacitor bank switching and charging phase. The time difference was 0.28 to 0.32 seconds, with an error range of ±0.02."

Chen Hao walked to the screen and watched the blue line surge to its peak and then quickly fall back. "The gradient absorbing model...is something wrong?"

“In theory, it should not interfere with external devices,” Nana said. “The capacitor switching process is independent of the output circuit and is equipped with isolation protection.”

“But the reality is that it’s an interference.” Susan flipped the draft paper over. “Either the protection didn’t work, or the interference method isn’t in your database.”

Nana's optical lens rotated slightly, beginning the search. Lines of parameters and architecture diagrams scrolled across the screen.

Chen Hao sat down, picked up a pen, and drew a square on a piece of paper, labeling it "Oxygen Supply." Next to it, he drew another one and wrote "Lighting." Then he drew another one and wrote "Relay."

“The three devices are different models and have different uses, but the only thing they have in common is that they are all powered by new energy sources.” He tapped the paper with the tip of his pen. “The problem is not with them, but with the power supply.”

“Or the transmission path,” Carl added. “We only measured the start and end points, not the middle part.”

“Then add monitoring points.” Chen Hao stood up. “Set up a sampling port every five meters in channel B3 to record voltage fluctuations in real time.”

"Should we install it now?" Susan asked.

"Or should we wait for it to fix itself?" He grabbed his toolbox. "I'll go get some people to lay the wiring."

Six hours later, Chen Hao returned to the control panel. All twelve newly installed sensors were online, and the data stream was transmitting steadily. He took a sip of his cold coffee; it tasted like medicine.

"And then?" he asked.

Susan shook her head: "There are no abnormal waveforms. The voltage is stable during transmission, and the ripple is less than 0.01 millivolts. The interference could not be coming from the line."

"Then it's a problem with the equipment itself?" Chen Hao frowned.

“Impossible,” she said. “The same batch of lighting modules, the one on the left is broken, but the one on the right is fine. The same goes for the oxygen supply system, two units are connected in parallel, one is disconnected, and the other is working normally.”

"Individual differences?"

“These devices underwent consistency testing at the factory, and the error is no more than two percent.” She opened two logs side by side. “You see, the faulty machine and the normal machine receive the exact same signal.”

Chen Hao stared at the screen, then suddenly realized something: "Are they... on different capacitor banks?"

Nana responded immediately: "Checking." A few seconds later, she reported the results: "The oxygen supply module is connected to the secondary capacitor, the lighting main control is connected to the primary capacitor, and the relay node is connected to the tertiary capacitor. The three correspond to the small, medium, and large capacity groups, respectively."

Is there a pattern?

"There is no correlation at the moment. The three faulty devices belong to different levels, and there are cases of normal operation within the same level."

Chen Hao leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples. His mind was a complete mess.

“I think we’re going in the wrong direction,” Susan suddenly said. “We’ve been looking for ‘where things went wrong,’ but maybe we should be asking ‘why things went wrong now.’”

"What's the meaning?"

“These three devices are being connected to the new energy source for the first time today,” she said. “The temperature control system was successful before because we had debugged it separately in the cellar, and the parameters had already been fine-tuned. But these are directly connected to the official lines.”

"You mean... I need an adjustment period?"

“Machines aren’t people, they don’t catch colds,” Carl interjected. “But they really haven’t experienced this kind of power supply before. Pulse input, intermittent charging, completely different from the continuous DC power they used to have.”

"So they're 'not used to' it?" Chen Hao smiled wryly. "The electricity we're giving them is too harsh?"

“It’s not wild.” Susan picked up a pen and drew a sawtooth wave on the paper. “It’s the rhythm that’s wrong. Our algorithm makes the voltage fluctuate wildly. Although the average value meets the standard, the instantaneous changes are too fast. Some devices have internal voltage regulation circuits, and they may be suffering from this.”

"Then why don't they all break at once?"

"Because the voltage regulation design of each device is different," she said. "Some react quickly, some slowly; some can withstand fluctuations, while others trigger protection as soon as there is a slight shock."

Chen Hao was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed: "So we created something great, only to find that most electrical appliances aren't good enough for it?"

"More or less." Susan crumpled the draft into a ball and threw it in the trash. "Now the question is, should we modify the equipment or the power supply?"

“Changing the power supply is like starting from scratch,” Carl said. “The gradient absorption model is the only usable solution at present.”

"Then we'll have to modify the equipment," Chen Hao sighed. "Adjust them one by one?"

“Not just that,” Nana cautioned. “The base has 47 key pieces of equipment that rely on a power supply. If we were to debug them one by one, it would take at least 32 days.”

"Who can hold out that long?" Chen Hao slammed his fist on the table. "If the oxygen system malfunctions again, we'll all suffocate!"

No one spoke.

The laboratory fell silent, with only the low hum of the equipment running.

Chen Hao looked down at the printed waveform charts. Page after page, they were filled with densely packed data. He felt a headache coming on, but couldn't find a way to break through.

Nana was still running the simulation in the background. Her voice prompts had become slow, like a stuttering recording.

"The eighteenth simulation has ended. The fault scenario was not reproduced."

"Continue," Chen Hao said. "Try a different angle, don't just focus on the capacitor switching."

“I suggest introducing a load dynamics model,” she said. “Current simulations assume all devices consume constant power, but in reality, there may be instantaneous power variations.”

“Then add it.” He rubbed his eyes. “Include the power consumption curves of all forty-seven devices.”

“The computational workload will increase sevenfold,” Nana said. “The processing time is estimated to be nine hours.”

"Wait," he said. "Anyway, I'm not going anywhere tonight."

Susan tore up the third draft of the deduction, slamming her pencil on the table. With a snap, the tip broke.

She ignored it, bent down to pick it up, and continued drawing with a new one.

Carl remained glued to the oscilloscope. His fingers were constantly on the knob, ready to detect the next anomaly. The wound on his leg throbbed with a dull ache, as if a thread was pulling at it, but he didn't move.

Looking at the three of them, Chen Hao suddenly felt incredibly tired.

I was full of confidence this morning, thinking that once I opened up the mezzanine, everything would go smoothly. But reality slapped me in the face, leaving me dizzy and disoriented.

He opened his notebook and crossed out the "Device compatibility" section.

Below it is written: Problem escalation.

Looking up at the screen, the red alert was still flashing.

He reached out and pointed to one of the small dots.

"Oxygen supply module...try messing with me again?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the red light suddenly went out.

Everyone turned their heads at the same time.

Three seconds later, it lit up again, flashed once, flashed twice, and then remained steadily lit.

"It's back to normal?" Susan stared at the updated log.

"Automatic restart, no errors reported," Nana confirmed. "Current output is normal, oxygen supply flow has returned to standard value."

"What about the lighting?"

"The main light strip remains locked, and the backup circuit is off."

"Relay node?"

"The last reboot was seven minutes ago, and it is currently running smoothly."

Chen Hao stared at the status bar of the oxygen supply module, and the green progress slowly advanced.

"It healed itself?"

"The possibility of temporary poor contact cannot be ruled out," Nana said, "or the local circuit may heal itself."

"Bullshit," Chen Hao said in a low voice. "What circuit can heal itself?"

Susan stood up and walked to the terminal to retrieve the data again. She pulled up the logs from the previous and next half hours and compared them second by second.

Suddenly, she stopped.

"Wait a minute." She zoomed in on a section of the waveform. "Look here."

Chen Hao leaned closer.

On the screen, a tiny fluctuation appeared just before the oxygen supply module resumed operation. It was extremely brief, almost drowned out by the noise.

"What's this?"

“It doesn’t seem like a power output,” she said. “It’s more like… a feedback signal from the device itself.”

"Did the device actively respond to the power supply?"

“Possibly.” Nana pulled up the protocol analysis. “An unknown handshake sequence was detected, outside of the standard communication protocol.”

"The machine has learned to greet people?" Chen Hao grinned. "It's quite polite."

No one laughed.

Carl said softly, "Could it be... some kind of adaptive mechanism? The device is trying to match the power supply rhythm?"

"From passive adaptation to active adaptation?" Susan frowned. "But these devices didn't have this function when they left the factory."

“But now we have it.” Carl pointed to the waveform. “You see, after it sends a signal, there’s a tiny adjustment on the power supply side. The amplitude is small, but it’s there.”

Nana immediately began comparing the bidirectional data streams.

Ten minutes later, she looked up.

"Indications of two-way interaction have been confirmed. During the seventh restart after the failure, the oxygen supply module sent a calibration request to the power control system. After a delay of 0.4 seconds, the output waveform showed a slight adjustment, and the deviation was reduced by 61%."

Chen Hao sat up abruptly: "It found a way to live on its own?"