Chapter 3: A Bio-Computer Beyond Its Time

Sure, Big Bro and the others could barge back in any second, but if you just got your hands on a computer straight out of the future, could you resist messing with it? 

So Chen Xu tiptoed over, locked the door, and yanked the curtains shut—looking for all the world like he was about to do something shady in there. He'd already planned his move: if they knocked, he'd shove the laptop under the blankets and let them guess whatever wild nonsense they wanted. 

The dorm doors at Hexie University were a joke, especially in the new buildings. They looked fancy—decked out like some mythical "eighteen-lock anti-theft" deal—but it was all for show. Yeah, the door was iron, but instead of a built-in lock, it had a big padlock dangling outside and a flimsy bolt on the inside. 

The school's excuse? "Safety and convenience." No risk of an auto-lock trapping you out. Fair enough—once that bolt was slid shut, no one was busting in uninvited. Perfect. Chen Xu dove back to the desk, eager to crack open this high-tech marvel from eighty years in the future. 

But within minutes, he hit a wall. A sad, pathetic wall. 

He had no clue how to use it. 

No "My Computer," no drive letters, no "Network Neighborhood"—none of the stuff he knew. Just that virtual palace-gown beauty on the desktop, smiling sweetly at him… so sweetly his face started heating up. 

Worse, there was no mouse. He hunted for a USB port—nothing. He tapped the mirrored keyboard surface—no trackpad either. Scratching his head in frustration, he muttered, "What, did people ditch mice completely in 80 years? Not even a touchpad?" 

"The touchpad is on the LCD screen," a melodic female voice replied from the computer. "You can tap the screen lightly with your finger to operate it. Alternatively, you can use voice commands. And per your specific needs, we've installed a USB 2.0 port—just summon it with a voice command to connect an external mouse." 

Chen Xu blinked. "You… you're talking to me?" 

The stunning 3D palace lady on-screen gave a graceful curtsy. "I'm your personal assistant, Xiaomin. I'll help you get the hang of the Magic Box Generation One Portable Computer." 

"No, no, wait—" Chen Xu stammered, feeling a little spooked. "I mean, you can understand me? Are you… like, some legendary AI?" 

"I'm sorry, I don't have an answer for that in my database," Xiaomin replied. "I'm a new product from Moho Corporation, the first fully functional computer assistant. My database contains a massive trove of data and responses, with top-tier human-like simulation among similar products. I can answer almost any question you throw my way." 

Her robotic tone let him down a bit. Not some sci-fi super-AI after all—just a program. A fancy one, sure, but still a program. Even back in 2006, stuff like this existed—think Tencent QQ's chatbot, "Q Little Sis" (ID: 6150500000), or foreign equivalents. Those were text-based, though. Voice recognition this slick? Unheard of in his time. 

He should've noticed sooner—her voice was soft and silky, but it had that mechanical edge. Grumbling under his breath, he said, "Guess 80 years of progress didn't fix that. Virtual characters still sound stiff as hell." 

"I need to correct you there," Xiaomin interjected. "Moho's personal assistants lead the pack because we've nearly perfected human emotion simulation. Beyond being a next-gen computer aide, I'm also a top pick for phone hotlines and emotional counseling. But our human-like qualities were too good—some users got hooked on virtual relationships. So, outside of special cases, the company stripped out the emotion programming." 

Chen Xu sweat-dropped. Fair point, though. Back in high school, he had a buddy obsessed with games—crazier than him, even. The guy learned Japanese just to play the Final Fantasy series, which Chen Xu relentlessly mocked him for. 

After Final Fantasy VIII—the one with Faye Wong's "Eyes on Me"—that dude swore he'd fallen hard for the heroine, Rinoa, vowing to marry someone like her. Then Final Fantasy X dropped, and he shamelessly switched his "true love" to Yuna. Word was Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core was hitting next year, and with Square's track record of making each heroine hotter than the last, Chen Xu bet the guy would fall for whoever showed up next. 

(Sure enough, in September 2007, when Crisis Core launched, the guy proved him right—professing his love for Tifa, a virtual girl with classic Eastern charm.) 

It wasn't hard to see why. As 3D tech got better, virtual characters grew so lifelike they were practically perfect—too perfect for some. In Japan, where anime and gaming ruled, Chen Xu had heard rumors of hardcore fans petitioning the government to legalize marriages between real people and virtual ones. Nuts, but not surprising. 

Good thing Xiaomin's emotions were dialed back. Her name might've been plain, but her 80-years-ahead 3D design was flawless—stunning face, killer figure, the works. If she weren't so ethereally gorgeous it screamed "fake," you'd never guess she was digital. Pair that with a warm personality and soulmate vibes? Half the guys out there would ditch real girlfriends for her. 

With Xiaomin's rundown, Chen Xu started piecing together what this future computer was all about. 

First off, it was a bio-computer—built with bionic principles, mimicking spiral protein factors in the human body to create its electronic components. 

A game-changer in computing history. 

For one, bio-computers were tiny. You could pack billions of circuits into a square millimeter—explaining why this laptop was so light it barely registered in his hands. The biochemical parts, like human cells, could self-repair and reshape, and they sipped energy like it was nothing. Paired with a 2080s super-efficient solar battery, it could charge via sunlight or plug, filling up overnight from empty and lasting a full month in the dark on a single charge. 

A literal god-machine. 

Its bio-chips ran circles around today's integrated circuits—the gap was like a horse cart versus a spaceship. Back in 1943, IBM's president famously said five computers would serve the whole world. He couldn't have dreamed that, 63 years later, they'd be in every home—or that 80 years beyond that, they'd hit this level. 

Bio-computers didn't overheat, were easy to carry, and fixed themselves like a body healing a cut. Best perk? No more warranty hassles! 

Sure, 80 years from now, there'd be viruses and glitches for this fancy OS—more complexity, more holes. But in 2006? No chance anything here could touch it. 

With Xiaomin's help, Chen Xu got the hang of it fast. The OS wasn't Windows, but it borrowed the best of the windows-style setup. Gates had rushed Windows out early to lock in user habits, and that legacy stuck. So, even on this futuristic rig, Chen Xu could fumble his way around. Add Xiaomin's guidance, and he was cruising in no time. 

The more he used it, the more it blew his mind. 

This thing was a world-ending cheat code! 

He poked around the storage first. It wasn't like modern hard drives—think less "big clunky slabs" and more "living organism." Every "cell" in this computer could hold 10GB, scattered across countless tiny units. Files got split and merged like DNA, ditching the old drive-letter limits. If data got corrupted, only a few cells took the hit, keeping losses small. Viruses? Trapped in a single cell, unable to spread. 

Chen Xu tried crunching the numbers. By today's standards, this thing had… 2 to the 100th power terabytes? 

1TB = 1024GB.

2^100 = 1024 × 1024 × 1024… 

He gave up. The number was meaningless—just stupidly, gloriously huge. Yesterday, he'd seen some senior on Hexie's BBS bragging about a 1TB drive stuffed with "prime videos," enough to watch from birth to death. Chen Xu's stash? Enough for hundreds of lifetimes. 

So what was in this 2^100 TB beast? 

Cue the OS—and Xiaomin's brilliance. Anyone with a big drive and a hoarding habit knows the pain: click "Start," open "All Programs," and watch a 22-inch screen drown in options. Finding one obscure app? Torture. 

Now imagine this computer, with over 8,000 programs. Flipping through manually would kill him. But Xiaomin? Tell her what you need, and she'd pull up a shortlist to pick from. 

Problem was, Chen Xu didn't even know what he wanted. It was like a broke guy winning a $50 million jackpot—too dazed to spend it. Speaking of jackpots, he shamelessly asked, "Any lottery numbers or stock trends from the next few decades in there?" 

Xiaomin's reply sent his heart soaring: "Yes." Then crashing: "But that data cell's damaged. It's unreadable until the auto-repair finishes." 

Nooo! It was like a hot date stripping down, hopping into bed… then locking on an iron chastity belt—with no key! 

"Cursed iron chastity belt!" he wailed internally. Defeated, he sighed, "Fine, what else is in there?" 

Xiaomin listed off: "Fully intact data includes the national census system, video editing software, 3D animation tools, a medical encyclopedia, and some games. Total size: about 200TB. The census alone takes up nearly 100TB." 

Chen Xu vowed to smack his grandson someday. Why load this thing with useless junk? Swap that census for 80 years of global stock data, and he'd drop out, invest, and be sipping cocktails in a mansion by next week! 

But the census sparked an idea. "Xiaomin, can this thing scan fingerprints?" 

"Affirmative." 

His eyes slid to the table—Old Dong's ID and bank card, left behind by the thief with a shred of "honor among thieves" decency after swiping the cash. 

No pro burglar on TV would've been dumb enough to leave prints—gloves were standard. In 2006, fingerprinting solved cases, but even the U.S. didn't have every citizen's prints on file. Prints were for matching, not tracking. 

Chen Xu, though? He had a hunch. The thief had to have left prints somewhere. Scanning the whole room was a no-go—dorm life meant too many random fingerprints, maybe even from last year's tenants. But the ID and card? Those were personal. Not many hands touched them. If he got lucky, he might ID the culprit. 

Action was his style. "Xiaomin, how do I collect prints?" 

A sneaky little probe—like an electronic pen—slid out from the laptop's side, startling him. Where'd that come from? No slot, no seam—wild. 

He grabbed the pen and scribbled over Old Dong's ID like a kid doodling. The screen popped up images and profiles. Top match: Dong Qingjie. Weirdly, the photo showed a sharper, more polished guy—older, successful-looking, not the scruffy bumpkin Old Dong was now. Stranger still, the name read "Dong Qingjie," not "Dong Qingjie" as he knew it. 

Name change? Chen Xu shrugged. People tweaked their names sometimes—no big deal. Looked like Old Dong would clean up nice in the future. Time to buddy up. 

Below Dong's profile were others. Then one caught his eye—a sleazy-looking dude named Xia Jiliu. Summer Flow? One character off from "downstream" or "sleaze." Name aside, Chen Xu knew him. The guy had swung by the dorm the night before school started, hawking pens! 

Chen Xu's inner Sherlock kicked in, replaying that visit. But just as he got into it, a frantic bang-bang-bang rattled the door. Second Bro's sleazy voice hollered, "Yo, Third Bro! Locking up in broad daylight? What, you jerking off in there?!"