◎Happy 105th Day: Nine-Key Code◎
I wonder if anyone has ever had the experience of waves hitting the window.
When the rushing sea water roared and hit the solid glass head-on, there was no sound for a moment.
The sound of water when the waves surge, the sound of the two colliding, when the sea outside the window turns completely blue, all will be swallowed up by the sea along with the window.
The same goes for the post-apocalyptic sandstorms.
When a real sandstorm comes, there is no sharp howling of wind, nor any crackling sound of sand colliding with objects.
The entire blue planet seemed to be quiet at this moment.
Everything in the world was swallowed up by the dim and black smoke, along with the sound.
The team responsible for staying in the western suburbs was still lamenting the unpredictable weather on Blue Star a minute ago. Yesterday, it looked like the world was about to end, but today they can see the sunny weather after the disaster. Their mission of staying behind is probably about to end.
But I didn't expect that after a gust of wind, the sky would darken.
The sudden rise of dust obscured their vision, preventing them from returning to the room in time.
A thin man happened to be guarding the door when the sandstorm started again. Now he was struggling to cover his mouth and nose with his hands, constantly calling out to his comrades who were still outside, trying to use his voice to point them in the direction.
Fortunately, after the initial panic, he received a response from his comrades.
One by one, two by two, the comrades returned to the cave entrance one after another. In this team of ten people, the only one left who had not returned was the last comrade who had just run two more steps.
But it doesn't matter.
He had already heard the other person's voice.
The other party was rushing towards the door.
It was just that the other party was choked by the wind and sand when he responded, and he stopped and coughed for two steps, which delayed him for a few seconds.
The wind and sand were too strong, so a few people were assigned to guard the door and close it a little to prevent too much sand and dust from blowing into the cave. The remaining people stayed at the door, constantly making noises to guide their comrades back.
"Have you found the place?" asked the thin man who spoke first.
The visibility is too low now. Even with goggles, you can't see the situation outside clearly. If you want to determine the other party's position, you can only rely on sound.
"It's almost there, the sound is very close to me..."
The voice of his comrade suddenly disappeared, and before the thin man could react, he was knocked down by a huge force.
Then his eyes went dark and he subconsciously tried to open his mouth, but he only choked into a mouth full of sand.
The nasal cavity, oral cavity, and even the trachea were blocked by sand and dust in just a few breaths.
All the noise faded away, leaving only a vague buzzing in the man's ears.
As the dull pain in the back and abdomen came, strands of oxygen flowed back into the lungs, and the buzzing sound gradually became clearer.
"Captain? Captain, wake up! Captain!"
Someone was calling urgently in his ear.
The man's consciousness seemed to be pulled out of his body. He had a strong desire to open his eyes, but he never succeeded.
It was not until he regained consciousness of his body and involuntarily retched a few times due to the itching in his throat that he successfully opened his eyes and saw the situation around him clearly.
The lights inside the cave were dim. The man looked around and found that there seemed to be fewer people surrounding him.
He wanted to ask something, but before he could utter a word, he coughed a few times because of the itchy feeling in his throat.
Someone patted his back, trying to ease his discomfort.
A glass of water came from somewhere outside the crowd, and the people surrounding the man took it and quickly handed it to him.
The thin man took the glass of water and finally breathed a sigh of relief after drinking it.
The voice that had woken him up just now hurriedly soothed him, "Don't worry, Captain. We're all here, not one is missing. It's just that Xiao Su ran slowly. Afeng and the others dug him out from the sand, and he hasn't woken up yet."
Seeing that the man had finished the water in his hand, the person who had previously handed him the water took the empty cup and poured him another one.
The thin man nodded slightly in thanks, drank the water in several gulps, and cleared his throat several times before he reluctantly said, "What happened just now?"
The man handing him the water paused, his voice trembling unconsciously as he spoke: "Just now, it was... dark."
This man was also one of Captain Yu's confidants. After receiving the order to "move all valuable materials within two days and put other materials on hold for the time being", he expressed his doubts to his superiors, and then heard from others about Jiang Muyun's judgment on the scale of this sandstorm.
The real disaster has yet to come.
He didn't understand before, what would happen if a sandstorm of that severity lasted for several months?
But today, when the yellow sand that almost covered the sky and the sun flooded this place with an unstoppable momentum and submerged him completely, he suddenly understood what the "real disaster" that people around him were talking about that had not yet come was.
It was not the disaster he imagined, such as "the profound impact of dust that lingers for months on the climate and environment and the chain reaction that leads to changes in human life." It was obvious that the paper had made up a lot of stories.
It is the simplest and most intuitive, with huge destructive power. It does not require any subsequent chain reaction. It is enough to cause a great disaster to mankind at that time. It is a real disaster.
He had carried out a pursuit mission before the end of the world.
At that time, the target of the mission fled to an uninhabited desert in the northwest.
He was accidentally captured during the mission when the target's men grabbed his hair and pushed him face down into the hot yellow sand.
When the wall of sand hit him today, he couldn't help but think of that experience.
It's not a pleasant feeling to be pushed into the sand, but at least it's not like today, when my whole body was hit by the sand wall and it hurt as if my bones were about to fall apart.
Burying his face in the sand made it difficult for him to breathe, but at least the sand at that time would not actively penetrate into his nasal cavity and throat.
When a sandstorm really hits, there is no such thing as visibility.
The light has disappeared.
The yellow sand and dust between the sky and the earth blocked the sun completely. He thought that his eyes were blacked out by the huge impact force when the sand wall collided with him, but when he came to his senses, he found that he could no longer see any light in front of his eyes.
It was not until he heard his comrades also say that they were in darkness, and until he groped to turn on the light in the cave, that he dared to be sure that he was not blinded in the collision.
He was lucky and was directly knocked into the cave by the sand wall.
The door of the cave was pushed closed by the wind, blocking a large amount of sand and dust for the people who fell into the cave, preventing them from being buried directly by the sand and dust.
This gave the people in the cave a chance to regain consciousness and rescue their comrades.
Their team was also very lucky. They did not run too far when they found that the wind and sand had stopped in the morning, and they were able to retreat back into the cave in time when the disaster struck.
Huge balls of sand rolled past, and the part that was intercepted by the mountain was directly piled up.
A few hours later, even the dense and tall tree forest had given up resistance, allowing the yellow sand to invade and wander in the forest, covering every blade of grass with the mark of yellow sand.
Jiang Muyun rushed into the house at the last second before the sand wall arrived. Except for some sand and dust at the door, nothing else in the house was affected.
Then, the rope bell hanging on the wall began to jingle.
This was the two days when Jiang Muyun and Chu Buwen were out, and Qin Shiwen and others tied it up again at home.
Previously, when plants began to emerge on the mountain, many mechanisms that relied on ropes to operate became ineffective, and this rope bell used for communication was one of them.
Now that they saw that everyone would not be able to go out freely for a while, they cleared out several paths on the mountain wall and tied the rope bells again to make it easier for everyone to pass on information.
The sounds being heard now are people reporting to each other that they are safe.
Jiang Muyun pulled the rope hanging on the wall and could clearly feel the difficulty in pulling it.
It wasn't the kind of difficulty that came from being stuck, but rather the fact that every inch of exposed rope was blocked by the thick dust in the air, making it impossible to move forward. She had to exert even greater strength than usual to pull the rope through the loose sand that spread between the sky and the earth.
Jiang Muyun opened the crack in the door and took a look outside.
It was pitch black, and all light was blocked out by a thick layer of sand. Jiang Muyun even felt that the temperature outside had dropped significantly.
Jiang Muyun thought about it, stretched out his hand to feel the wind and sand squeezing in from the gap, then carefully pulled the bolt, opened the door a little, and stretched out his arm to feel the wind and sand outside.
After she made a rough judgment in her mind, Jiang Muyun began to pull the bell to convey the message to everyone.
In the current situation, pulling the rope bell is a physical job, and conveying accurate information is even more so.
Jiang Muyun first pulled the bell loudly to attract everyone's attention. When the replies came one after another, she turned on her cell phone, counted the number of times with a pen and paper, pulled the bell a few times and paused, and slowly passed the message to everyone.
In other caves on the mountain, everyone also held paper and pen and carefully checked the number of rings. After recording them, they checked them repeatedly before confirming the message.
They didn't use Morse code or anything like that to transmit information.
This type of signal is so complex that deciphering it usually requires an entire codebook. The only people who have some understanding of this type of communication code are Zhao Jiahao and Li Anxuan.
But the coded signals they used were relatively simple. Being able to read information like "Don't eat mushrooms" was the limit. There might be more detailed ones, but they were beyond their level of ability to learn.
So they chose the simplest way.
Nine-grid typing method.
People of their age all grew up using keypad phones and buying text messaging packages to chat with each other. No one was unfamiliar with typing in the nine-square grid; they could do it with their eyes closed.
The number of times the bell rings is the number. After a two-second pause, pull the bell again and it will be the number of the letter represented by the number.
For example, pulling it twice represents the "2" in nine-key typing, and pulling it twice more represents the second "B" in the three letters "ABC" of the "2" key.
The largest number "9" is replaced by "1" which does not represent a letter in the nine-square grid, so that everyone can save some effort when pulling.
In comparison, the letter that requires the most pulling, that is, the third letter "V" represented by the "8" key, only needs to be pulled eleven times, which is much more convenient than directly spelling the twenty-six letters.
After all, most people cannot accurately tell which order a certain letter belongs to. If they use this method to pass on messages, they will probably have to recite the alphabet again every time they check one.
Moreover, this method can not only be used for pulling the rope bell, but also can be used for other messages that need to be conveyed in the future.
The coded signals that Zhao Jiahao and his team knew could be understood by many people in the neighboring base. In their eyes, it was almost equivalent to plain text communication.
They don't understand other lesser-known coded signals, but some of the more popular Morse codes might be understood by more people, and most people can tell at a glance that this is someone sending a message to a companion.
On the other hand, with a plain password like the nine-key typing, the message transmitted is just a string of random numbers, and few people can guess that it is a paragraph of text.
Pulling the bell to send a message in this kind of weather is a physical job.
There were more than ten words in total, and Jiang Muyun spent almost half an hour to finish sending the message.
"Every two days we go out to clean the sand. We don't meet up, we only clean the entrance."
Just with such a simple sentence, Jiang Muyun was sweating profusely.
There is no other way except to do this.
Clearing sand in a sandstorm of this magnitude is completely different from clearing snow in a blizzard.
Even if the latter is unlucky and encounters a severe cold wave, people are only a few steps away from their doorstep and there is always time to escape home, and there is a high probability that they can save their lives.
But having your respiratory tract blocked by sand and wind in a sandstorm is like being thrown directly into the seabed while sleeping, and then breathing normally without any protection, only to choke on seawater that fills your mouth and nose.
Even a moment of disorientation or loss of consciousness will make a person lose the ability to save themselves and they can only wait to die in the dust.
Now they have to risk their lives every time they go out, but the sand at the door must be cleared, otherwise the entrance to the cave will be blocked, and everyone will probably be suffocated to death in the cave.
Only after the sandstorm officially arrives and the wind and sand conditions are understood, can Jiang Muyun determine the most cost-effective frequency of sand clearing.
Now that the frequency of sand cleaning has been determined, it would be best to arrange a unified time so that everyone can report their safety.
Jiang Muyun was shaking his aching wrists, thinking hard about how to simplify his words so that he would have to pull the rope less times, when the rope bell hanging on the wall rang again.
This time it was Chu Buwen.
"Clear the sand at 8 o'clock, report every 10 minutes, if there is no report, two people will come to rescue."
The message is easy to understand. The sand clearing activity starts at 8 o'clock every day, and safety is reported every ten minutes. If someone fails to report safety in time, the two people living closest to them will go to rescue them, and the others will be left alone to avoid accidents on the way to rescue people.
The arrangement was reasonable and the message was conveyed clearly.
After reading the message, Jiang Muyun applauded Chu Buwen in his heart.
Good man, saved her a lot of effort.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
