The pencil rolled to the floor and stopped near Nana's shoe. She bent down, picked it up, and put it back on the table.
Chen Hao stared at the "Development Plan V1.0" on the wall, but before he could speak, his communication terminal rang.
"The other party requested access to the video channel," Nana said.
"Go ahead." Chen Hao sat up straight. "Let's see what they're up to."
The screen lit up, and a blurry figure appeared. The voice was processed, making it impossible to discern the age or gender. Without any pleasantries, the other party began playing a video: a neat workshop, an automated production line in operation, workers performing their duties, no one whispering to each other, and no one stopping to check their watch.
"This is our daily operating model," the voice said. "Efficiency is our priority, and responsibility is assigned to specific individuals. Meetings are only convened for key personnel, and decisions are driven by data analysis."
Susan frowned: "You mean, no one else needs to know what happened?"
"The scope of knowledge should match the responsibilities," the other party replied. "Information overload will slow down the execution speed."
Karl sneered, "Then who's going to fix the machines? Robots?"
“Some of it is done by the system,” the other party said. “Human resources are used for optimization and emergency response.”
Nana suddenly spoke up: "When the storm hit last month, it was the newcomer who discovered the clogged drainpipe. He wasn't a core member, but he was there."
The other party was silent for two seconds: "Special cases require special handling."
Chen Hao tapped the table: "No one here is superfluous. Everyone can talk, and everyone has to work. This isn't a matter of efficiency; it's a matter of how we live."
He stood up, walked to the projector, and pulled up the decision-making records from the past three months. There were thirty-seven items in total, covering power dispatch, resource allocation, and personnel rotation. Each item was marked with the number of people who participated in the discussion, ranging from a minimum of twelve to a maximum of twenty-six.
“We argue a lot, make a lot of changes, but we make few mistakes,” he said. “The last time the voltage was unstable, it was because someone connected wires without reporting it. Since then, all operations must be announced for ten minutes before they can be carried out. This rule was decided by everyone.”
The other party paused for a moment: "Collective decision-making takes too long and can be fatal in a crisis."
“But we survived,” Susan said. “And you? Now you only have one channel left to talk to us.”
The air suddenly became quiet.
Nana whispered, "I suggest setting up an observation period. They demonstrate their working methods, and we explain our rules. We can serve as examples for each other and not rush to judge."
Chen Hao nodded: "Three days, a cultural observation week. Nobody is allowed to shut their ears."
The meeting ended, but no one went far. Susan flipped through the duty roster, marking the next few days' gaps in yellow. Carl squatted in front of his toolbox, tightening a loose screw. Nana began compiling the base's timeline, preparing it for external presentations.
The next morning, the other party sent a sample work log. Daily tasks were specified down to the minute, rest times were fixed, and even the communication phrases had templates. For example, "requesting support" couldn't be expressed as "please help," but had to include a number and risk level.
Carl shook his head: "Living like a clock, isn't that tiring?"
“Maybe they feel safe this way,” Nana said.
“Safety?” Karl looked up. “People aren’t parts that can be replaced when they break?”
He glanced at Nana, then looked down and continued fiddling with the wrench.
Chen Hao heard this and came over to sit down: "Are you afraid that you'll be useless if they come?"
“I’m not afraid,” Carl said in a lower voice. “I feel that… we’re repairing machines not just to generate electricity. It’s to ensure these people have lights on and water to drink. This is home, not a factory.”
“That’s why we need to show them,” Chen Hao said, “how we can get things done while arguing.”
In the evening, the roundtable discussion began as usual. Newcomers were also called in to listen. The topic was immediately raised: **"With increasing automation, do people become more or less important?"**
A young technician raised his hand: "Last time Nana taught us how to assemble an electrolytic cell, if we relied entirely on the machine, I still wouldn't know which interface would leak air."
Another person said, "But if the machine can remind us, why do we still need people to remember it?"
“Because machines don’t rush,” Susan interjected. “That night of the power outage, an intern manually restarted the water purification program. She could have waited for instructions, but she didn’t. Machines don’t ‘rush,’ nor do they ‘think.’
Nana listened quietly, while the system's backend silently noted down a sentence: **"Human judgment in non-standard situations cannot be fully modeled."**
Chen Hao slammed his hand on the table: "I never studied for exams before, and the teachers all said I was hopeless. Now I'm in charge of feeding and sleeping over thirty people. Tell me, who decided this path?"
Someone laughed.
Carl grinned. "Well, you're starting to look like a leader now."
“I don’t want to be a leader,” Chen Hao said. “I want to be someone who can understand what you’re saying.”
On the third day, the other party proposed a "tiered and transparent information system." Key data would only be available to management, while ordinary members could access it as needed.
Nana immediately responded: "Last year, the groundwater level dropped because a new team noticed that the soil near the water intake point was unusually dry. They weren't monitors, but they passed by every day."
“This was a chance discovery,” the other party said. “Institutions cannot rely on chance.”
“But we trust in this kind of chance,” Chen Hao said. “Just like we trust that when Karl can’t fix a machine, he’ll yell at people instead of holding it in.”
He stood up, picked up a pen, and wrote on the whiteboard: "You are afraid of chaos, we are afraid of division."
Then he drew a line, wrote "efficiency" on the left and "shared responsibility" on the right.
"Could we do this—keep the existing mechanisms at the base in place, and try your methods in collaborative projects? For example, for new track construction, we could encrypt the core parameters, but report the progress and risks daily?"
The other party remained silent for a long time.
Finally, it was said: "A pilot program can be conducted. However, a designated contact person must be specified, and the information flow must not be disseminated."
“Nana is in charge of monitoring,” Chen Hao said. “She records feedback and conducts regular evaluations. If it’s not suitable, she stops it.”
"agree."
The conversation ended, and the screen went dark.
The workshop returned to silence. The light shone on everyone's faces, and no one was in a hurry to leave.
Chen Hao added a new column to the whiteboard and wrote "Cultural Compatibility Test". The first item read: "Total Awareness vs. Information Classification - Impact on Grassroots Response Capabilities to be Verified".
He turned and walked out, his figure disappearing around the corner of the corridor.
Nana sat in front of the terminal and started the semantic analysis report generation program. Text scrolled across the screen, finally displaying a conclusion: **Team inclusiveness increased by 17%**.
Susan opened the duty roster and filled in the names of several new employees in the blank spaces for next week, writing in the remarks column: "Participating in cultural rotation observation".
Carl didn't move. He opened a small compartment inside the toolbox and stuck a handwritten note on it. It read in his own crooked handwriting: **We're repairing homes, not just machines.**
He closed the box and looked up at the planning map on the wall. The route of the new track had been marked, crossing the highlands and extending southward.
His fingers unconsciously rubbed the corner of the box, where there was an old scratch, from when he was repairing the generator last year.
Footsteps came from outside the door; it was the night shift technician coming to take over.
Carl stood up and pushed the toolbox towards the center of the table.
"Don't touch connector number three tonight," he said. "I changed the gasket; we'll do the pressure test tomorrow."
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