Chapter 136: Thresholds and Contracts

Wednesday. 5:40 a.m. Dawn had not fully broken. Lin Chen opened his eyes on time. No alarm clock. His body clock was already tied to the markings in the ledger.

He threw off the thin blanket. His left foot touched the ground. The skin under the gauze tightened, pain spreading upward from the ankle, but the gait had already become muscle memory: weight shifted right, left toes touched first, then slid forward. No hesitation. No testing. Like executing a written command. He walked to the water jar and scooped water to wash his face. Cold water struck his skin and woke every nerve ending at once. He checked the edge of the bandage. No seepage. Dry. That meant today he could withstand more than two hours of continuous sitting.

The main room was quiet. Wang Guiying's breathing was even. He put on his shoes in the dark. From the drawer he took his notebook, the cardboard keyboard, and ten yuan. Half a cold steamed bun had been left on the stove. He broke off a small piece and swallowed it with cool boiled water. He wrapped the rest in paper and stuffed it into his canvas bag. 6:00 sharp. He left.

The town's first bus was at 6:20. He reached the stop twenty minutes early. Only two old farmers selling vegetables were on the platform. The wind carried the smell of dew. He sat on the bench, set the cardboard on his knees, and closed his eyes. His fingers hovered in the air.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Home row. The raised bumps on F and J. Left index finger found F, right index finger found J. Not by sight. By the friction against the pads of his fingers. He missed once. Stopped. Recalled. Tapped again. Ten minutes. His fingers grew faintly warm. He opened his eyes. The sky had turned pale. The first bus pulled in. He dropped in two yuan, found a seat, and set the canvas bag on his lap to keep pressure off his left foot. The bus was packed with people headed into the city for labor work. Sweat, smoke, and the plastic smell of woven sacks mixed together. He did not look out the window. In his head he ran through Excel logic. The four parameters of VLOOKUP. Nested IFs. Common traps in data cleaning: full-width spaces, hidden line breaks, scrambled date formats.

9:00 a.m. County transfer station. He switched to the intercity bus. Fare: three yuan. Balance remaining: five.

11:20 a.m. He arrived at the municipal employment office. The lobby was noisy with voices. Fluorescent tubes hummed overhead. The air smelled of old carpet mildew and copier ozone. He took a number. A-14. The waiting area was full. Some wore suits and ties. Some wore rubber shoes and carried woven sacks on their shoulders. He found a plastic chair against the wall and sat down. He stretched out his left leg to keep it from bending too long and slowing the blood return. He took a photocopied sample sheet from his bag and spread it over his knees. He read the fields line by line. Client name. Contact number. Invoice number. Amount. Notes. The formatting was chaotic. Some entries had parentheses, some had asterisks. He marked cleaning rules in the blank space with a pen: remove spaces. Standardize to half-width. Convert dates to YYYY-MM-DD. He ran the logic once in his head. No errors.

1:40 p.m. The loudspeaker called his number.

He stood and walked into the testing room. Ten old computers were arranged in two rows. The cases had yellowed. Dust had settled in the keyboard seams. The proctor was a middle-aged woman with glasses. She handed him a test sheet. "Fifteen minutes. Typing plus tables. Sixty characters to pass. More than 5% errors and you're eliminated immediately. Begin."

He sat down. Adjusted his posture. His left foot touched lightly against the floor. Both hands went onto the keyboard. Enter. The test software launched.

First minute. His fingers were stiff. The key travel was deep. The rebound was slow. The space bar stuck a little. He forced himself not to look at his hands. Only at the screen. A stream of letters began to roll. He adjusted his breathing and focused on where his fingertips landed. Not speed. Accuracy.

Third minute. The rhythm stabilized. Forty-five characters.

Seventh minute. Fifty.

Tenth minute. Fifty-eight. His left foot began to go numb. The pain turned into a steady blunt pounding. He ignored it. Shifted his weight another half inch to the right. The words on the screen kept flowing. He hit a long string of numbers. His fingers instinctively wanted to slow down. He pressed the impulse down. Held the rhythm. His fingering did not break.

Twelfth minute. Sixty.

Final three minutes. He did not dare speed up. He protected the accuracy rate. Deleted one typo. Put it back. Submitted.

The result flashed on the screen: 61 characters/minute. Accuracy rate 97%.

The woman glanced at it. "Passed. Go fill out the form at window three."

He stood. When his left foot touched down, his body swayed slightly. He caught himself on the edge of the desk. Waited for the ache and numbness to pass. Then walked to the window. He handed over a photocopy of his ID card. Filled out the form.

Position: temporary data entry clerk. Term: three months. Daily settlement: 40. Hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Lunch included. Three late arrivals counted as voluntary resignation.

He signed his name. The pen tip cut through to the back of the paper. The woman handed him a receipt. "Bring the original documents tomorrow to report in. Don't be late."

He nodded and walked out of the lobby. 3:00 p.m. Return bus. The carriage was emptier now. He leaned against the window, the canvas bag on his lap. His left foot had already lost sensation, leaving only a mechanical alternation. He took out his notebook and opened the ledger.

Date: August 5. Expense: fare 5 yuan. Lunch 0 yuan (included). Income: 0 (to be settled tomorrow). Balance: 5 yuan. Commute time: 4 hours 20 minutes round trip. Net earnings calculation: daily wage 40. Minus fare 5. Actual take-home 35. Average workday 8 hours. Hourly wage 4.37 yuan.

He stopped writing and looked at the number. Enough to live. But not enough. If the foot injury worsened and he needed medicine, or if rain delayed the buses, the margin would be pierced at once. This was not a long-term plan. It was only a chip to buy time. Trade labor for cash, cash for computer-room time, computer-room time for skill. The chain was fragile. If any link broke, everything would return to the starting point.

He closed the notebook and shut his eyes. Outside the bus window, the city's high-rises slid backward. In the glass was the reflection of his tired face.

7:00 p.m. Home. The main room was lit. Xiaoman was drawing. Wang Guiying was cooking porridge. Lin Jianguo was chopping firewood in the yard.

"Back?" Wang Guiying looked up.

"Mm. It's settled," he said.

He sat down, switched on the desk lamp, clipped the receipt into a folder, and updated the ledger. Then he opened the photocopied sample sheet he had brought back from the test. It was pre-job practice material from the office. Dense tables. Client information, invoice numbers, amounts, dates. Chaotic formatting. Many duplicate entries. By manual entry, at most 200 records could be processed in a day. At that speed, he could earn a little over 1,000 a month. After commuting and wear, 800 would remain. Enough to pay next term's book fees. Not enough to buy reference books. Not enough to handle emergencies.

He stared at those repeated fields. Then a thought flashed through his mind. If those fields followed patterns. If the cleaning rules could be written into a script. If a machine could run them on its own. Then one day could process 2,000 records. Even 20,000.

He picked up his pen and wrote on the back of the sample sheet:

Repetitive labor. Replaceable. Need to master: file reading. String handling. Loops. Conditional logic. Language: Python.

He paused and looked at the line. The computer room cost 4 yuan an hour. Too expensive. But the old computer section in the library was free after 8:00 p.m. Open until 10:00. Two hours. Enough to get through the basic syntax.

He opened the notebook again and added a new entry beside "Excel."

Goal: automate data entry. Term: unknown. Budget: 0. Path: free library computer hours. Hand-copy syntax. Local debugging.

He blew out the desk lamp. Darkness fell. The gauze on his left foot pressed against his skin. The pain was still there. But the markings had already pointed to the next threshold. Tomorrow. 8:00 a.m. Report in. Night. Library. Script. The road was still long. But every step landed on solid ground. Outside the window, the wind had stopped. A dog barked twice in the distance. He closed his eyes. His heartbeat was steady.