Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
However, Gu Nianzhi still obediently sat at Zhao Liangze’s chair and opened his large scale server equipped desktop to run the program.
“Brother Ze, what is this program for?” Gu Nianzhi saw Zhao Liangze enter the phone and felt nervous. This was Huo Guanyuan’s personal phone number…
“Did you forget? Your Brother Ze can find out everything about a person with just their phone number!” Zhao Liangze flicked Gu Nianzhi’s forehead, “Get on with it!”
Gu Nianzhi couldn’t act like a lady in front of Zhao Liangze and Yin Shixiong. Rolling her eyes, she peered at the progress bar of the program on the screen. After an hour, it had only completed less than 10%–at this rate, she was getting cross eyed. Gu Nianzhi couldn’t help it and pulled up Zhao Liangze’s source program, then increased the search speech by making a few adjustments to optimize the program. When it began running again, 50% was completed in half an hour. Calling Zhao Liangze over smugly, Gy Nianzhi pulled by the ears and made him look at the display, “…I improved it, call me Big Sister!”
“Oh my god! You really improved it?!” Zhao Liangze hastily pulled out the source program to read through it and was speechless for a long time before finally calling Gu Nianzhi, “Big Sister!”
Gu Nianzhi was so shocked she almost fell off the chair.
“What? You can’t take it?” Zhao Liangze continued grinning smugly as he patted her shoulder, “Nianzhi, become Brother Ze’s student and I promise to teach you everything that I know! You are my eldest and closest disciple! –I Zhao Liangze, will only accept one disciple and that is Gu Nianzhi!”
Gu Nianzhi giggled hard, “Fine, fine Brother Ze, stop joking around. You were just calling me ‘Big Sister’ earlier, then turned around to accept me as a disciple. You can’t take advantage of the situation like that!”
The pair joked for a bit more and suddenly heard the computer emit a “ding” when the program finishing rynning. Gu Nianzhi and Zhao Liangze turned around together, their hearst thundering. An image of a phone appeared on the screen, indicating they had found the target phone.
“This… this phone actually still has power!” Zhao Liangze’s voice shook and his fingers flew as he entered a new command. He really didn’t think that his sudden idea to give Gu Nianzhi a task would have this result and actually work out! As long it there was power in the phone, it would connect with the satellite system regardless if the phone was actually on or had a number linked to it. This was the nature of the technology. Zhao Liangze’s program quickly connected to the phone number requested and hacked into the phone.
Gu Nianzhi was scared to even speak in too loud a voice and carefully asking Zhao Liangze, “Brother Ze, are you sure that phone number hasn’t been used by anyone else?”
“No.” Zhao Liangze frowned at the screen, “It’s always belonged to that phone.”
“But no services have been paid for so many years and the bloodthirsty mobile company didn’t resell the number?” Gu Nianzhi mused.
“Huo Guanyuan had a special status, so his personal phone should have been confidential.” Zhao Liangze explained to her, “Normally under these circumstances, the phone number will never change. Even if there’s no more service, this phone number cannot be used by anyone else again.”
Gu Nianzhi then understood, “That’s even better, it makes it simple for us.” Shortly after, the model of Huo Guanyuan’s phone as well as information stored on it appeared on the screen. There were many call records and text messages, which were largely identical to the records from the mobile company.
“What’s this?” Gu Nianzhi was anxious. Their efforts would have been wasted if they put in all that work but looked in the wrong direction.
“Hurry up and download all the content.” Zhao Liangze quickly hammered in another command, “This phone still actually has a charge, that’s a miracle.” Even with a rare graphene battery, the power can only last ten years! By now 16 years had already passed.
“…Maybe the person who stole the phone charged it.” Gu Niaznhi didn’t agree, but then it seemed more strange the more she thought about it, “Let’s think, one charge is enough lasts ten years, so another charge would be another ten years! If it was really stolen and charged the year Luo Xuexin passed away, that was ten years ago too. That means the battery will die again very soon? …Oh my god! That’s so scary!”
Zhao Liangze rolled his eyes, fingers still flying across the keyboard to enter strings of commands. All the local content store on Huo Guanyuan’s personal phone was quickly saved. They now had two records–the original from the mobile company and the second copy which was local content stored on the phone. There would always been a difference between the two, and the contents provided by the mobile company were generally more complete because local content stored on a phone could be deleted or lost, so it had less content that the original.
“Here, run this search program.” Zhao Liangze opened another program for Gu Nianzhi, “This one can compare the two records to find the differences between them.”
Gu Nianzhi nodded as she looked at the program on the computer, while reading the printed pages of the local content to compare with what she remembered was included in the mobile company records. Soon after, Gu Nianzhi rubbed her eyes and thought she was seeing things wrong. She looked at the time on the local content record, then compared to the mobile company record and confirmed she was reading it correctly. Picking up the local content record where she had circled several spots, Gu Nianzhi made a strange face as she asked Zhao Liangze, “Brother Ze, have you ever seen a phone receive texts, but the mobile company has no record of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the time of these texts in the local content record, it was received six years after the accident, which also was a few days before Luo Xuexin died.” Gu Nianzhi then took out the mobile company records, “And the mobile company records indicate that Huo Guanyuan’s phone hadn’t received any call or texts since the accident.” In other words, Huo Guanyuan’s personal phone randomly received a series of texts six years after his accident. The mobile company had no record of these texts being sent or received. If it had only been one text, it could be said there was a bug in the mobile company’s programming. But it had been over the course of several days that the same texts were sent, and yet there was record of it with the mobile company. This phenomenon could not be attributed to a bug in the program.
Zhao Liangze became solemn. The search program on the computer also completed and gave the same findings as Gu Nianzhi. Which was to say, Huo Guanyuan’s personal phone received a series of texts six years after his accident–but the mobile company has no record of it. From the perspective of the mobile company, this kind of situation was impossible. Huo Guanyuan’s line had been out of service long before and no bills were paid, so they would not supply service to this number again. So how did the series of text messages displayed on the local content of Huo Guanyuan’s phone bypass receipt by the mobile company’s base station network?
