Chapter 200: Scale and Leeway

The night bus smelled of too many things mixed together: the sweat soaked into the vinyl seats, diesel exhaust, and the sour tang of orange peels leaking from someone’s plastic bag, all fermenting inside the sealed cabin. Lin Chen leaned against the window on the right side, keeping his left foot suspended over the edge of the aisle so the sole of his shoe would not press against his swollen ankle. The numbness had already spread past the top of his foot and into his calf, like a strip of coarse burlap soaked through with icy water wrapped around it. He closed his eyes. There were no EEG waveforms in his mind now, only a timetable. May 20: follow-up at the county hospital. May 21, 2 p.m.: interview with the technical committee. The two places were 140 kilometers apart, a three-hour one-way bus ride. There was no buffer zone between them, only hard physical displacement.

At four in the morning, the bus pulled into the county passenger station. The sky was still dark, the streetlights dim yellow, and the air carried the damp, earthy smell of dew darkening the asphalt. Limping, he made his way to the emergency building of the county hospital. Wang Guiying was sitting on a blue plastic chair in the corridor, clutching the payment slip and medical file. Lin Jianguo was squatting in the corner by the wall, smoking, the tip of his cigarette glowing on and off in the dark.

“He threw up twice and is asleep now.” Wang Guiying looked up at him, the shadows under her eyes deep, her voice kept low. “The doctor says it may be a gastrointestinal reaction to the new medicine. They want to keep him under observation.”

Lin Chen nodded, took the forms, and went to the cashier window. The newly prescribed combination therapy was sodium valproate sustained-release tablets plus levetiracetam. Standing at the counter, he checked the drug names, specifications, daily dosage, and contraindications one word at a time before scanning to pay. His mobile banking notification gave a short beep. The balance dropped from 320 to 187. The numbers flickered on the screen. His expression did not change; he simply put the phone back into his pocket. During rounds, he stood at the foot of the bed and listened as the attending physician explained the precautions for a long-term video EEG.

“He’ll need to be admitted for twenty-four hours of observation. The electrodes will have to cover the whole scalp, and one family member will need to stay with him. The deposit is 2,000 yuan. It must be paid in full before the end of the day.”

Two thousand.

His current cash flow could not support that.

He turned to his father. “Dad, go back and get some rest first. The busy farming season just ended—your back can’t take it. I’ll stay today.”

Lin Jianguo stubbed out the cigarette without saying anything. He only stuffed the wrinkled cigarette pack back into the pocket of his Zhongshan jacket. When he stood up, his knees gave a soft click. He patted his son on the shoulder, heavily, then turned and walked toward the elevator at the end of the corridor. His back was a little stooped, but his steps did not falter.

The ward was quiet in the morning. Xiaoman’s breathing gradually steadied, though every now and then his fingers curled unconsciously. Lin Chen sat on the folding companion’s chair beside the bed, a laptop spread across his knees. The screen brightness was turned all the way down. He plugged in his earphones and played BBC Six Minute English. The speech was fast. He mouthed along silently, correcting his vowel sounds. On the other side lay the outline of interview topics: CAP theory in distributed systems, the difference between cache avalanche and cache breakdown, rollback strategy for grayscale release, emergency response procedures for a P0 production failure. He did not need to recite standard answers. What he needed was to translate the nights he had spent in front of the grayscale panel over the past six months, the memory leaks he had tracked down, the rollback scripts he had written, into language an interviewer could understand.

At two in the afternoon, he closed the laptop and went to the cafeteria for two bowls of plain porridge and some steamed buns. Xiaoman ate slowly, and Lin Chen fed him spoonful by spoonful, wiping the rice broth from the corner of his mouth. He himself wolfed down a few hurried bites, his stomach feeling as if a cold stone had been lodged inside it. His phone vibrated. It was a WeChat message from Director Li: “Don’t get nervous in tomorrow’s interview. The technical committee values execution ability and resistance to pressure—don’t just recite textbook answers. The department has only this one slot this year. Hold steady.”

Lin Chen replied: “Received. Understood.”

No extra words. He knew exactly what Director Li was implying. The delegation slot was a bargaining chip in the department’s technical wager; if he got it, the team’s technical standing at headquarters would gain points. But if family matters distracted him, or if he botched the interview, Director Li would not cover for him. There was no warmth in the workplace, only exchanges of value and delivery of results.

On the morning of May 21, at six o’clock, he handed Xiaoman over to an old acquaintance from the village clinic who had come to stay as caregiver and paid him 300 yuan for the trouble. That left 157 in his account. He flagged down an unlicensed car into the city to transfer to the high-speed rail. His left foot was even more swollen now; every step felt like stepping on shattered glass. He bought a bottle of iced mineral water and pressed it against his ankle through the plastic bag. The cold stabbed to the bone, but it could suppress the burning in the nerves for a while. On the train, he kept reading technical documents. Outside the window flew the flatlands, the towers of the power lines, and broad swaths of plastic greenhouses. He thought of the dirt roads of Qingshi Village, of his father’s back when he went to borrow a three-wheeler, of the line on the grayscale dashboard that had to keep rising. Two lines were pulling at him. But he could not stop. The age offered no pause button, only the right to choose.

At 1:50 p.m., he walked into the company building. The mirrored wall inside the elevator reflected his face: bloodshot beneath the eyes, the collar of his shirt slightly creased, but his gaze was still. He entered the meeting room. Three directors from the technical committee and one HR representative were already seated inside. There was no small talk; they began at once.

His self-introduction in English was delivered at a steady pace. His pronunciation carried a somewhat stiff northern accent, but his logic was clear, without hesitation. When the technical Q&A reached the issue of tracing a memory leak on an edge node during grayscale rollout, he did not talk in abstractions. He went straight to the whiteboard and drew the architecture diagram, pointing out the conflict between the log rotation strategy and object pool reuse, and how he had replaced the cache key serialization method with the smallest possible change. The directors exchanged glances. Their pens tapped lightly on the paper.

HR asked, “If a P0-level production incident occurs during the delegation period, what would you do?”

Lin Chen was silent for two seconds. “Bring my laptop. Work on the reversed time difference and handle the failure first. The delegation is for learning, not for vacation. The business baseline can’t be broken. If I absolutely had to choose one over the other, I would apply to postpone the trip—but I would submit a complete postmortem report to make sure the delegation slot wasn’t wasted.”

The answer was dry, without decoration. But it was real enough. The technical director nodded and marked something on the evaluation form.

By the time the interview ended and he walked out of the building, it was already four in the afternoon. The sunlight was harsh, and he narrowed his eyes against it. His left foot hurt so badly it had gone numb; he could only drag himself forward with his right leg doing most of the work. He sat down on the edge of a roadside flower bed and unscrewed the bottle of mineral water for a sip. His phone screen lit up.

Two messages.

The first was from the technical committee: “Initial interview passed. Final interview and budget approval will be announced on May 25. Please keep your phone available.”

The second was from the nurses’ station at the county hospital: “Family of Lin Xing, the long-term EEG has been scheduled for May 24. Please make up the 2,000 yuan deposit before 17:00 today, otherwise the bed will be postponed to next month.”

He stared at the screen.

May 25 for the announcement. May 24 for the deposit.

The timing was locked tight.

He felt in his pocket. Inside were only a bank card with 157 yuan left on it, and a taxi receipt that had not yet been reimbursed. He lifted his head and looked at the clouds reflected in the glass curtain wall of the office building across the street. The wind was strong, shaking the leaves of the roadside trees in a loud rustle. He took out his phone, opened his contacts, and found a number labeled “Old Zhao.” His finger hovered over the call button for several seconds.

Then he pressed it.

From the receiver came a long waiting tone, like the cogs of some countdown mechanism beginning to engage.