Chapter 2 Boundaries of Science

Wang Miao felt that the four people who came to him were a strange combination: two policemen and two soldiers. It would be normal if the two soldiers were armed police, but these were two army officers.

Wang Miao didn't like the policeman who came to him at first glance. In fact, the young man in police uniform was okay and his behavior was very polite, but the plainclothes man was annoying.

Hengrou, wearing a dirty leather jacket, smelling of cigarette smoke, and speaking in a rough voice, was the type of person that most disgusted Wang Miao.

"Wang Miao?" the man asked, calling him by his first name made Wang Miao very uncomfortable. Moreover, the man was still lighting a cigarette at the same time without raising his head. Before Wang Miao could answer, he motioned to the young man next to him.

After a while, the latter showed Wang Miao his police officer ID. After he lit his cigarette, he rushed directly into the house.

"Please don't smoke in my house." Wang Miao stopped him.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Professor Wang. This is our Captain Shi Qiang." The young police officer said with a smile, while winking at the man named Shi.

"Sure, let's talk in the corridor." Shi Qiang said, taking a deep breath. The cigarette in his hand was almost half burned, but no smoke came out. "You ask." He asked the young police officer again.

He tilted his head.

"Professor Wang, we want to know that you have had contact with members of the 'Science Frontiers' Society recently, right?"

"'Science Frontier' is an academic organization that is very influential in the international academic community, and its members are all famous scholars. Why can't I get in touch with such a legitimate academic organization?"

"Look at you!" Shi Qiang said loudly, "Did we say it's illegal? Did we say we wouldn't let you come into contact with it?" As he said that, the smoke he had just inhaled hit Wang Miao's face.

superior.

"Well, this is personal privacy, I don't need to answer your questions."

"Everything has become private. A famous scholar like you should be responsible for public safety." Shi Qiang threw away the cigarette butt in his hand and took out another one from the flattened cigarette box.

"I have the right not to answer, so please do as you please." Wang Miao said and turned to go back to the house.

"Wait!" Shi Qiang said sternly, and at the same time waved to the young police officer next to him, "Give him his address and phone number, and go for a visit in the afternoon."

"What are you going to do!" Wang Miao asked angrily. The quarrel caused the neighbors to poke their heads out to see what was going on.

"Team Shi! You said you -" The young police officer pulled Shi Qiang aside angrily. Apparently, Wang Miao was not the only one to be uncomfortable with his vulgarity.

"Professor Wang, please don't misunderstand." A major officer hurriedly stepped forward, "There is an important meeting in the afternoon, and several scholars and experts will be invited to participate. The chief asked us to invite you."

"I'm very busy this afternoon."

"We know this. The chief has already said hello to the leaders of the Superconducting Center. This meeting cannot be without you. It is really not possible. We have to postpone the meeting and wait for you."

Shi Qiang and his colleague didn't speak any more, turned around and went downstairs. The two officers looked at them walking away and seemed to let out a sigh of relief.

"Why is this man acting like this?" the major whispered to his colleagues.

"He has a bad record. In a hostage-taking incident a few years ago, he acted without regard for the lives of the hostages. As a result, a family of three died tragically at the hands of criminals. It is said that he also had a fierce fight with the underworld and used a group of underworld forces to deal with another person.

Gang; last year, they engaged in torture to extract a confession, leaving a suspect disabled, so he was suspended..."

"How can such a person enter the operations center?"

"The chief asked him by name, so he must have something special about him. However, the restrictions on him are quite strict. Except for public security matters, he is not allowed to know almost anything."

Operations center? What is that? Wang Miao looked at the two officers in front of him in confusion.

The car that picked up Wang Miao drove into a compound on the outskirts of the city. From the gate with only a house number but no unit nameplate, Wang Miao knew that this was the territory of the military, not the police.

The meeting was held in a hall. As soon as Wang Miao entered, he was surprised by the chaos here. There was a circle of computer equipment placed haphazardly around the hall. Some tables were placed directly on the floor because they couldn't be placed on the tables. Electric wires and network cables were tangled.

Scattered on the ground; a large pile of network switches are not placed in the rack, but piled on the server; there are several large projector screens standing randomly at different angles in the corner of the hall, like a gypsy tent

; The smoke floated in the air like morning mist... Wang Miao didn't know if this was the combat center the officer mentioned. One thing he was sure of: the things being handled here had made people unable to care about anything else.

.

The makeshift conference table was also filled with documents and sundries. Most of the participants looked tired, their clothes were rumpled, and their ties were torn off, as if they had stayed up all night. The person who presided over the meeting was a man named Chang Weisi.

Army Major General, half of the attendees were soldiers. After a brief introduction, he knew that there were also a small number of police officers. The others were experts and scholars who attended the meeting like him, and several of them were very famous scientists.

It studies basic science.

What surprised him was that there were four foreigners, and the identities of these people surprised him: two of them were also soldiers, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a colonel in the British Army, serving as NATO liaison officers; the other two were actually American

What is the role of a CIA officer here as an observer?

From everyone's faces, Wang Miao read a sentence: We have tried our best, let's get it over with!

When Wang Miao saw Shi Qiang, he changed from his rudeness yesterday and greeted Wang Miao, but the silly smile on his face made Wang Miao unhappy. He didn't want to sit next to Shi Qiang, but there was only one empty seat, so he had to sit there

, the already strong smell of smoke in the room became even stronger.

When handing out documents, Shi Qiang approached Wang Miao and said, "Professor Wang, you seem to be researching some... new material?"

"Nano materials." Wang Miao answered simply.

"I've heard that that thing is very powerful, so it won't be used in crimes, right?" From Shi Qiang's half-ridiculous expression, Wang Miao couldn't tell whether he was joking.

"What's the meaning?"

"Oh, I heard that that thing can lift a big truck with the thickness of a hair. If a criminal steals some of it to make a knife, he can cut a car in half with one blow."

"Hmph, there is no need to make it into a knife. Use that material to make a thread that is only one percent of the thickness of a human hair. If you stop it on the road, you can cut the passing cars in half like cutting cheese...what can't be used?

For committing a crime? A fish-scaling knife can do it!"

Shi Qiang took half of the documents in front of him out of the bag and stuffed them back, obviously losing interest. "You're right, fish can commit crimes! I once handled a murder case, and a woman took her husband's thing

It was cut off. Do you know what it was used for? Tilapia frozen in the refrigerator! After the fish is frozen hard, the row of spines on the back is like a sharp knife..."

"I'm not interested. Why, is this why you asked me to come to the meeting?"

"Fish? Nanomaterials? No, no, it has nothing to do with that." Shi Qiang put his mouth to Wang Miao's ear, "Don't give these guys a good face, they discriminate against us and just want to get information from us, but what?

You don’t even tell us. Like me, I’ve been here for more than a month and I still don’t know anything like you.”

"Comrades, the meeting has begun." General Chang Weisi said, "In all theaters around the world, our place is now the focus. First, let me introduce the current situation to the comrades present."

The unusual term "war zone" confused Wang Miao. He also noticed that the commander did not seem to intend to introduce the ins and outs to a newcomer like him, which corroborated Shi Qiang's words. In General Chang's brief opening remarks, he

After mentioning "comrades" for the first time, Wang Miao looked at the two NATO soldiers and two CIA officers opposite him and felt that the general seemed to have missed "gentlemen".

"They are also comrades, that's what everyone here calls them anyway," Shi Qiang said to Wang Miao in a low voice, while pointing at the four foreigners with the cigarette in his hand.

While confused, Wang Miao was somewhat impressed by Shi Qiang's observation skills.

"Da Shi, put out your cigarette, the smell of smoke here is strong enough." Chang Weisi said, lowering his head and flipping through the documents.

Shi Qiang took the newly lit cigarette and looked around. He couldn't find an ashtray, so he threw it into the teacup with a squeak. He seized this opportunity and raised his hand to ask for a speech. Before Chang Weisi could express his position, he said loudly

: "Chief, let me make a request, which I have mentioned before - equal information!"

General Chang Weisi raised his head and said, "No military operation has equal information. I also ask the experts and scholars present to understand this. It is impossible for us to introduce more background information to you."

"But we are different." Shi Qiang said, "The police have been involved in the combat center since its establishment, but until now, we don't even know what this organization does. Moreover, you are squeezing the police out.

He will gradually become familiar with our work and then drive us away one by one."

Several other police officers present at the meeting whispered to stop Shi Qiang. Wang Miao was a little surprised that Shi Qiang dared to speak like this to a leader of Chang Weisi's level, and the latter's counterattack was even sharper.

"I'm talking to you, Da Shi. It seems that your old habits in the army have not changed yet. Can you represent the police? You have been suspended for several months because of your bad behavior and will soon be removed from the public security force.

I transferred you here because I value your experience in urban policing, so you must cherish this opportunity."

Da Shi said in a rough voice: "Then I have done meritorious deeds? Don't you think those are all crooked experiences?"

"But it's useful." Chang Weisi nodded to Shi Qiang, "As long as it's useful, I don't care about that much now. This is a war period."

“We can’t care about anything anymore,” a CIA intelligence officer said in standard Mandarin. “We can no longer use conventional thinking.”

The British colonel could obviously understand Chinese. He nodded, "To be or not to be..."

"What did he say?" Shi Qiang asked Wang Miao.

"Nothing." Wang Miao answered mechanically. These people seemed to be talking in their sleep, war time? Where was the war? He turned and looked at the floor-to-ceiling windows in the hall. Through the windows, he could see the city outside the compound in the distance: Under the spring sunshine,

The streets are busy with traffic; people are walking dogs on the lawn, and a few children are playing...

Which is more real, the inside or the outside world?

General Chang said: "Recently, the enemy's attacks have obviously intensified, and the target is still high-level officials in the scientific community. Please take a look at the list in the document first."

Wang Miao pulled out the top piece of paper in the document. It was printed in large fonts. The list was obviously drawn up hastily, and there were both Chinese and English names.

"Professor Wang, what's your impression when you see this list?" Chang Weisi looked at Wang Miao and asked.

"I know that three of them are famous scholars at the forefront of physics." Wang Miao replied, a little absent-mindedly. His eyes were fixed on the last name. In his subconscious, the colors of those two words were the same as those of the famous ones.

The lines above are different. How come you see her name here? What happened to her?

"Do you know him?" Da Shi asked, pointing to the name on the document with a thick finger yellowed by smoke. Seeing that Wang Miao didn't respond, he responded quickly and said, "Oh, I don't know you very well. Want to know me?"

Now, Wang Miao knew that it made sense for Chang Weisi to transfer his former soldier. This guy with a vulgar appearance had eyes like knives. He may not be a good policeman, but he is indeed a ruthless character.

That was a year ago. Wang Miao was the person in charge of the nanocomponent part of the "China II" high-energy accelerator project. That afternoon, during a short break at the construction site in Liangxiang, he was suddenly attracted by a composition in front of him.

As a lover of landscape photography, real-life scenes often form artistic compositions in his eyes. The main subject of the composition is the superconducting coil they are installing. The coil is three stories high. Halfway through the installation, it looks like a

The monster composed of huge metal blocks and tangled ultra-low-temperature refrigerant pipes looked like a pile of garbage from the industrial era, showing the ruthlessness of inhuman technology and the barbarity of steel. Just in front of this metal monster, appeared

A slender figure of a young woman. The light distribution in this composition is also amazing: the metal giant is submerged in the shadow of the temporary construction ceiling, revealing its cold and rough texture; while a ray of golden light from the setting sun shines through the ceiling.
To be continued...