A new notification pops up on the terminal screen, and the characters scroll at a slower pace than usual.
Nana's optical lens immediately focused on that line of text. She didn't speak; the robotic arm had already inserted itself into the host interface and begun capturing the background logs. The data stream cascaded down like a waterfall, the green code reflected on her metal casing, flashing intermittently.
“Here we go again.” Susan leaned back in her chair and tapped her fingers on the keyboard. “Every time there’s a problem, the system freezes before it reports an error, like squeezing toothpaste.”
Chen Hao stood in front of the control panel, a pen gripping his hand, his knuckles white. He stared intently at the waveform on the screen, his eyes unblinking. "Don't let it pass this time. Slice all the data, starting from the 25th second, and capture the state every five milliseconds."
Carl looked down at the printed paper in his hand, which showed the voltage curves from three tests. He frowned: "The drop is too small, less than one percent. It shouldn't affect the signal."
“But it still crashed.” Chen Hao slammed his pen on the table. “It didn’t crash randomly; it always got stuck at around thirty seconds. That means something is slowly going bad.”
Nana brought up four parallel curves: power output, amplifier module current, battery internal resistance, and bit error rate. She locked the timeline between 25 and 35 seconds, and the image automatically zoomed in.
“Look here.” Her voice was steady. “From the 25th second onwards, the voltage drops slightly and continuously, while the load current rises slowly. The battery’s internal resistance is also increasing, and all three change at the same pace.”
Susan leaned closer to the screen: "So, the power supply capacity is declining, but the demand for electricity is rising?"
“Yes.” Nana nodded. “Although the individual fluctuations are all within the normal range, they accumulate and create pressure. By the 30th second, the system is close to the critical point.”
Chen Hao walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew a line. "It's like a group of people carrying a stone up a mountain. No one is slacking off, but everyone slips and falls down together." He wrote the word "tired" on the paper and circled it. "Our equipment isn't broken; it's been dragged down by itself."
Carl turned to a page of the report: "I checked the thermal imaging of the solder joints, and there was no abnormal heating or poor contact. The physical connection is fine."
“That’s soft attenuation.” Susan switched interfaces and brought up the qpSK demodulator’s work log. “Slight fluctuations in signal amplitude caused the decoding failure rate to increase. The system automatically activated the retransmission mechanism, which in turn increased the circuit load.”
“A vicious cycle.” Chen Hao added a few arrows to the whiteboard: “Component aging → slower response → slight voltage drop → signal distortion → frequent retransmission → increased load → system instability. Step by step, I’m pushing myself into a ditch.”
The laboratory was quiet for a while.
“So you can’t just look at individual modules,” Susan said. “You have to see how they work together and hinder each other.”
“The problem is,” Carl looked up, “that all these parts we have are salvaged from old equipment. The specifications are up to standard, but nobody knows how long they’ve actually been used or how they’ve been used.”
“Then let’s try them one by one.” Chen Hao turned to face the three of them. “From now on, we won’t use them as standard parts anymore. We need to know who can hold on and who gets out of breath as soon as they exert themselves.”
“You mean… give each component a physical inspection?” Susan asked.
"It's not just physical exams," Chen Hao grinned. "We also need to create files. We need to record everyone's age, what kind of work they've done, and how much weight they can still lift now."
Nana responded immediately: "I can activate the 'Electronic Component Lifetime Modeling Protocol'. Combine historical usage records and data from this test to generate a performance evaluation model."
“Sounds like a nursing home management system,” Susan chuckled.
"Pretty much." Chen Hao leaned against the wall. "We need to make proper arrangements for this bunch of old guys. We can't let a capacitor that's about to retire be used for critical circuits."
“Risk grading is necessary,” Nana continued. “I suggest setting three categories: green for stable and usable, yellow for restricted use, and red for prohibited use in high-precision modules.”
“Okay.” Chen Hao nodded. “You start with this batch of recycled parts. Run it at full capacity once and see which one can last the longest.”
“It’s a lot of work,” Carl cautioned. “Hundreds of components, testing them one by one, will take several days.”
"It's better than the next experiment failing again." Chen Hao shook his head. "What we lack most right now is information. We don't know who we can rely on, and putting together any combination is a gamble. Instead of blindly blundering, we should spend time figuring out the details."
Susan opened Notepad: "I can write a monitoring script to track the output stability of each module in real time. Once an anomaly is detected, it will immediately trigger an alarm and reduce the frequency."
“Add this.” Chen Hao wrote “Real-time monitoring + automatic protection” on the whiteboard.
“And another thing,” Carl added, “avoid high-risk combinations during assembly. For example, don’t use old capacitors with high-frequency amplifiers.”
“That’s right.” Chen Hao pointed to the chain reaction diagram he had just drawn. “We can’t replace the parts with new ones, but we can use the old ones smartly. We can use them knowingly and without forcing them.”
Nana has begun executing the program. Her robotic arm is connected to multiple test ports, which are then connected to different components in sequence. Individual windows pop up on the screen, displaying the progress of the durability test.
"The first round of sample loading is complete," she said. "Preliminary results are expected in six hours."
Looking at the pulsating colored blocks, Chen Hao suddenly said, "We used to treat them as parts, but now we have to see them as people."
"You need to know who's tough and who's delicate," he chuckled. "Otherwise, next time it'll be everyone going down with us."
Susan closed her laptop and rubbed her temples. "Our lab is practically turning into a retirement home for computer components."
Carl laughed too: "The nursing care levels need to be further subdivided. Level 1 care and special care cannot be mixed up."
“That’s right.” Chen Hao walked to the control panel and sat down again. “From now on, anyone who starts work will have to show their health certificate first. No one will be allowed to install anything without a medical examination report.”
Nana's indicator light switched to a stable blue light, indicating she had entered long-term operation mode. Her database was importing historical maintenance records and, combined with current test data, was automatically generating a risk distribution map.
The green area occupies most of the space, concentrated on resistors and basic logic chips; the yellow blocks are mostly electrolytic capacitors and relays; there are only seven red markings, all of which are older model capacitors from high-frequency filtering modules.
"Have you found a problem?" Chen Hao stared at the red dots.
“The performance of the seven capacitors has severely degraded,” Nana replied. “Although they pass the basic tests, the response delay exceeds the safety threshold under continuous load. We recommend immediate discontinuation.”
“Sure enough.” Susan leaned closer. “These three are still on yesterday’s prototype.”
"Tear it down." Chen Hao gave the order directly. "Even if it affects the progress, we can't leave any hidden dangers."
Carl stood up and prepared his toolbox: "I'll get started now."
“Wait a minute,” Susan stopped him. “Let’s finalize the replacement plan first. Which spare part to use needs to be assessed for risk.”
“You’re right,” Chen Hao nodded. “We can’t keep making changes based on gut feeling. There must be a basis for deciding who replaces whom.”
Nana updated the database, marking seven red components as "disabled" and recommending three sets of green alternatives. Each set included a compatibility score and expected lifespan prediction.
"This efficiency is not bad." Chen Hao glanced at the time. "It's faster than I expected."
“The knowledge base played a crucial role,” Nana explained. “There are 327 failure cases of similar components, which can be directly used for model training.”
"You're still hiding so much information?" Chen Hao raised an eyebrow.
“It’s always been there,” Nana said calmly. “You just haven’t asked.”
“We thought it would be enough to just replace a part,” Susan said with a wry smile. “But it turns out they had a whole big data platform behind them.”
“Now I understand.” Chen Hao stood up and stretched his shoulders. “From now on, when we’re competing on equipment, we’ll start with the data.”
He walked behind Nana, looking at the constantly updating risk map on the screen. "Before, we just made do; now we use it sparingly. Even though we're poor, we can't be sloppy."
“What’s next?” Carl asked.
“Continue testing.” Chen Hao pointed to the remaining yellow areas. “These can’t be overlooked either. We can hold on today, but we might not be able to tomorrow. We need to establish a long-term tracking mechanism.”
“I can set up regular self-check tasks,” Nana said. “I can run a durability test once a month and dynamically update the status labels.”
"Add a reminder function," Chen Hao added. "It will alert you a week in advance if someone's due date is approaching."
“It’s already been included in the plan,” Nana replied.
Susan stretched but didn't get up. "After all this, we've upgraded from a guerrilla force to a regular army."
"The equipment is still broken," Chen Hao replied with a smile, "but at least we have a combat manual."
Carl looked down at the waveform diagram in his hand and suddenly said, "If we had done this earlier, the communication array wouldn't have exploded last time."
“Back then, we were in a rush to get results,” Susan said softly. “We didn’t have time to investigate so much.”
"Not in a hurry now?" Chen Hao asked back.
“Even more urgent.” He paused, “but we’ve learned to slow down.”
Nana's screen suddenly displayed a new notification: The second batch of component testing has begun and is expected to take eight hours. The progress bar began to slowly advance.
Chen Hao stared at the slowly rising green line, his fingers unconsciously tapping the table.
Susan opened her notepad to plan the order of tomorrow's tests.
Carl held the corner of the printed paper, his gaze fixed on a certain temperature threshold, his lips moving slightly as if he wanted to say something.
Chen Hao turned to look at him.
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