134: First Encounter with the "Stargazing Observatory" and "Ambiguous Answers"

The "Star Gazing Platform" Special Evaluation Team, an organization born from Wang Jianguo's difficult decision and situated in the most secluded corner of "Homeland," had been operating quietly for several months in a state of high secrecy and extreme restraint. Its existence was like a precise and silent instrument, continuously scanning a list of extreme problems concerning national strategic security that flowed in through specific channels, yet it had never truly activated its core function—the hidden path connected to Excellence's special intuition, regarded as a last resort.

However, the peace was shattered on an early autumn afternoon. A technical report marked "Top Secret · Urgent" was delivered to the terminal of the "Star Gazing Platform" team's Chief Analysis Officer through layers of encrypted verification. The report came from the headquarters of a major national science and technology infrastructure project—the "Xihe" Project. This project aimed to construct a world-leading controllable nuclear fusion experimental reactor based on a brand-new confinement scheme, the success of which was directly related to the national energy strategy landscape for decades to come.

The report pointed out that during the final sprint phase of the project, while performing the ultimate numerical simulation of plasma confinement stability for the full-scale Tokamak device, the research team encountered an extremely eerie and stubborn "Phantom Disturbance." At specific stages of the simulated run, when the plasma temperature and density approached a certain critical point, the confining magnetic field would exhibit a weak yet precisely periodic low-frequency oscillation that could not be perfectly explained by existing Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) theory. This oscillation was like an invisible ghost; every time it appeared, it would lead to a rapid deterioration of the plasma confinement in the simulation, eventually triggering a "disruption" (Disruption) and causing the simulation to fail.

This disturbance was extremely subtle, with its energy scale being only about one-millionth of the total energy. In physical experiments, it would likely be submerged in noise and difficult to observe directly, but in numerical simulations pursuing ultimate precision, it became an insurmountable obstacle. A joint task force composed of the country's top plasma physicists, mathematicians, and computational science experts spent months investigating all possible sources of error: from the precision of grid partitioning, the setting of boundary conditions, and the approximation of constitutive equations, to the convergence of numerical algorithms, the load balancing of parallel computing, and even potential flaws in the supercomputer hardware itself... all to no avail. The conventional theoretical framework seemed to have reached its end, and project progress hit a stalemate. An invisible anxiety and pressure loomed over the core team of the "Xihe" Project.

Whether in terms of the strategic nature of the problem (concerning the future of national energy), its extremity (unsolvable by existing top intellectual resources), or its urgency (the project being stuck at a critical Node), this report fully met the extremely strict activation threshold preset by the "Star Gazing Platform" team.

Upon receiving the report, the atmosphere within the "Star Gazing Platform" team instantly turned solemn. The Chief Analysis Officer immediately convened core members, including theoretical physicists, neuroscientists, ethicists, and security personnel, for a closed-door meeting.

The debate at the meeting was exceptionally heated. The side supporting the activation of the contingency plan argued:

High Necessity: The "Xihe" Project is of great significance; any path that might bring a breakthrough is worth trying, even if the hope is slim.

Relatively Controllable Risk: The contingency plan is designed to be highly indirect and anonymous. Excellence is completely unaware, so it will not cause a direct psychological impact on him.

Immense Scientific Value: If successful, it would not only solve a practical problem but might also provide a brand-new research paradigm for understanding the nature of Excellence's abilities and even for certain frontier scientific dilemmas.

The opposing side was filled with concern:

Enormous Ethical Pressure: This involves using a person's special abilities to serve external goals without their knowledge or consent, violating the basic principle of informed consent.

Extremely High Uncertainty of Results: This "intuitive reference" model is unprecedented, and its effectiveness and reliability are completely unknown. It might be in vain and instead increase the risk of exposure.

Setting a Dangerous Precedent: Once activated, there might be a second or third "threshold-reaching" problem in the future. How do we define the boundaries of "extreme"? Will it slide into the abyss of overuse?

After hours of intense debate and risk assessment, a difficult consensus was eventually reached under the weighing of the Chief Analysis Officer (who required a code name, such as "Deep Blue"): a conditional activation of the contingency plan. The following must be met simultaneously:

The operation process must be absolutely anonymized. The information Excellence comes into contact with must undergo multiple layers of disguise and dimensionality reduction to ensure he cannot associate it with any specific problem.

Data collection must be completely imperceptible, using only remote, non-invasive physiological signal monitoring.

The interpretation of results must be highly cautious. Any output will only serve as a "Heuristic Hint," never as a basis for decision-making, and must undergo rigorous statistical significance testing.

This operation will be treated as an isolated case. Upon completion, a comprehensive ethical review will be conducted immediately, and the results will directly affect the future existence of the "Star Gazing Platform."

After hearing the report, Wang Jianguo remained silent for a full minute before finally signing the approval order with a heavy heart. He knew that once this step was taken, it would leave a weight on the scales of ethics regardless of the outcome.

The task fell onto Evelyn Li's shoulders. She had complex feelings, containing both the excitement of scientific exploration and a deep sense of guilt as Excellence's guardian. She had to design a seamless set of "Cognitive Stimulus Materials."

Her design was extremely ingenious, following the principle of "Greatest truths are the simplest; great concealment lies in the mundane":

Ordinary Carrier: The materials were embedded into a computer puzzle game Excellence played daily to exercise his logical thinking and spatial imagination, called "Star Map Maze." This was a game he was very familiar with and enjoyed, where the content involved solving puzzles by rotating and combining various geometric shapes to proceed to the next level.

Abstract Content: The materials themselves contained no direct information related to fusion, plasma, or energy. Instead, they extracted the core mathematical essence behind that eerie disturbance—a topological invariant characteristic of a specific type of non-linear periodic oscillation appearing in high-dimensional phase space. Evelyn's team used complex algorithms to perform an isomorphic mapping (Isomorphic Mapping) of these highly abstract mathematical features into a series of visual and auditory patterns:

Visual Part: A series of dynamic multi-dimensional graphic projections with specific rotational symmetry and scale invariance (fractal characteristics) were generated (displayed on the screen as 3D rotating polyhedrons or manifolds of extreme structural complexity). To an ordinary person, these graphics would just look like brilliant and strange screensaver patterns, but their inherent mathematical structure shared the same origin as the fusion disturbance.

Auditory Part: A segment of white noise mixed with various frequencies was synthesized, with a cluster of extremely low-intensity harmonics corresponding to the spectral characteristics of the disturbance frequency very discreetly embedded within. The human ear could hardly distinguish them, but theoretically, they could be perceived by the subconscious.

Digital Sequences: In the corner of the game interface, a series of seemingly random numbers flashed at millisecond speeds. The generation algorithm for these numbers implicitly contained the parameter characteristics of the disturbance model.

Random Presentation: These special materials were randomly inserted into the intervals between normal game levels, appearing as "loading screens" or "transition animations," lasting for a very short duration (2-5 seconds), seamlessly integrating with the regular game content.

The entire design ensured that even the most astute analyst, scrutinizing these materials without prior knowledge, would only consider them complex visual elements and background sound effects inherent to the game, with no possibility of associating them with a specific problem like nuclear fusion.

The operation day was set for a weekend afternoon, during Excellence's usual relaxation time after finishing his daily studies. The location was the familiar entertainment room in his living area. Su Mu sat on the sofa nearby as usual, knitting a sweater while accompanying him, creating a completely natural and relaxed atmosphere.

In the monitoring room next door, which had undergone special shielding treatment, the atmosphere was as tense as an operating theater. Evelyn, Chief Analyst 'Deep Blue', and several neuroelectrophysiology and data experts stared intently at the dozens of display screens before them. The screens showed Excellence's electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and eye-tracking data in real-time, alongside a synchronized mirror of the game screen.

Excellence was completely unaware, playing "Star Map Maze" with full concentration. He skillfully operated the controller, cracking level after level, his face wearing an expression of focus and pleasure. Everything was as usual.

Until the game reached about the one-third mark, a level ended, the screen dimmed, and it entered a brief loading phase. At that moment, the first set of special visual materials—a slowly rotating, complex fractal polyhedron containing high-dimensional oscillatory topological features—quietly appeared on the screen.

At first, Excellence's gaze just casually swept across the loading screen, his fingers unconsciously tapping a rhythm on his knee, his brain waves showing a predominance of relaxed alpha waves (8-13Hz). However, at the exact moment that the graphic rotated to a specific angle and its internal hidden mathematical symmetry reached a critical alignment state (a moment precisely controlled by the program)!

An anomaly appeared in the monitoring data!

EEG: The originally steady alpha rhythm showed a brief but significant suppression (Alpha Suppression), while in the prefrontal and parietal regions, a faint, higher-frequency gamma wave (30-80Hz) burst briefly. This pattern is typically associated with cognitive conflict, recognition of novel stimuli, or neural activity preceding an insight (Aha! moment).

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR): A rapid and tiny peak appeared in the conductivity of the skin on his fingers, indicating a faint activation of the autonomic nervous system (surprise, alertness, or cognitive engagement).

Eye-tracking: His gaze showed an extremely brief fixation on the graphic, and his pupils dilated imperceptibly.

All these physiological changes lasted less than two seconds before quickly returning to baseline levels. Behaviorally, Excellence only tilted his head slightly and frowned almost invisibly, as if thinking the loading screen was "a bit weird," but then the screen lit up, a new level began, and his attention was immediately drawn back to the game, resuming normal operation. Beside him, Su Mu was looking down, counting her knitting stitches, completely unaware of the momentary anomaly.

But in the monitoring room, the experts almost held their breath! The data was recorded in real-time and subjected to preliminary Event-Related Potential (ERP) and time-frequency analysis. Compared to the previous ordinary game screens used as a control baseline, this special stimulus triggered a statistically significant difference! Although the signal was weak, the pattern was clear! This indicated that Excellence's unconscious cognitive system had indeed produced a specific "recognition" and "reaction" to that hidden mathematical anomaly pattern isomorphic to the fusion problem!

In subsequent tests involving auditory stimuli embedded with harmonic clusters and rapidly flashing numerical sequences, similar physiological signal deviations were observed, though they were even weaker but consistent in trend.

After the operation ended, the massive amount of data was immediately transmitted to the supercomputer cluster at the "Star Gazing Platform" for in-depth analysis. Complex algorithms attempted to perform reverse mapping and correlation analysis between those anomalous physiological reaction points and the mathematical features hidden in the stimulus materials.

After several hours of sleepless calculation and repeated deliberation by the expert team, an extremely blurred yet internally consistent "suggestion" pattern was finally extracted from the noise. This "suggestion" was not a specific equation or parameter value, but rather a directional cognitive guide:

It vaguely indicated that the root of the problem might not lie in the macroscopic MHD instability of the main plasma region, but rather in some as-yet-unrecognized nonlinear resonance feedback mechanism between the boundary layer of the confining magnetic field and the population of extremely high-energy particles (such as alpha particles). This feedback might be driven by a high-order magnetohydrodynamic-kinetic hybrid mode that is extremely sensitive within a specific parameter range, where tiny perturbations in initial conditions (possibly rounding errors or iteration step settings in numerical calculations) would produce an amplification effect, manifesting as periodic ghost disturbances in simulations.

This "answer" was abstract and obscure, like looking at a flower through a fog. For the fusion team, it was neither a ready-made solution nor something that could be directly verified by experiment. It was more like a wise man from an unknown realm pointing a finger in a direction and saying, "Perhaps you should look over there."

With a hint of skepticism and a "clutching at straws" mentality, the "Star Gazing Platform" group provided this highly abstracted and de-sensitized "heuristic suggestion" to the core algorithm team of the "Xihe" project under the name of "external expert consultation" (with all source information hidden).

Initially, the fusion experts were confused and even somewhat annoyed by this, considering it almost metaphysical. But in a desperate situation, the team leader decided to give it a try. They re-examined the most easily overlooked boundary conditions and numerical processing details in the model, especially the extremely complex collision operators and field equation coupling parts related to high-energy particle behavior simulation.

Miraculously, after three days of repeated checks, a diligent young researcher discovered an extremely hidden numerical integration error while checking a sub-program used to handle the influence of the magnetic boundary Lorentz force on high-energy particle orbits! This error stemmed from a logic flaw in a conditional statement regarding numerical stability that would only be triggered in specific boundary cases, causing the calculation to produce tiny, periodic deviations near the critical parameters where the ghost disturbances appeared. This deviation was so small it was almost negligible in a single calculation, but in a continuous simulation lasting several hours, it was constantly amplified by nonlinear effects, eventually evolving into that unexplainable oscillation!

After correcting this code error, the re-run simulation was exceptionally stable, and the "ghost disturbance" that had plagued the team for months vanished without a trace!

When the news reached the "Star Gazing Platform" group, none of the insiders cheered; instead, they fell into a complex silence. The excitement was undeniable, as this proved that the potential value of Excellence's ability was immense beyond measure. But the sense of weight was equally strong: they had utilized his subconscious without his knowledge to solve a massive problem of the adult world that had nothing to do with him. This success instead deepened the ethical sense of guilt.

After hearing the detailed report of the entire process, Wang Jianguo sat alone in his office and contemplated for a long time. Outside the window, Excellence was happily chasing a butterfly on the grass with Su Mu, his laughter crisp and pleasant. That carefree figure formed a sharp contrast with the role he had played—unbeknownst to himself—in this secret operation.

Finally, Wang Jianguo issued a clear directive:

“All related materials regarding this ‘Star Gazing Platform’ contact case are to be classified as top secret and sealed permanently. Participating personnel shall sign lifelong non-disclosure agreements.”

“The active operation mode of the ‘Star Gazing Platform’ is to enter a ‘frozen’ state immediately. The assessment program shall not be restarted unless it is an extreme moment of crisis concerning the national destiny and people's livelihood, and all conventional means have completely failed.”

“We must invest resources into researching how to discuss and cooperate with Excellence in a more transparent manner that respects his own wishes in the future. Until he reaches adulthood, possesses full civil capacity, and can understand and decide for himself, protecting the purity of his childhood is our primary responsibility.”

The first contact, like a stone thrown into a deep pool, proved that the underwater treasure indeed existed, but it also stirred up ripples of ethics that would not subside for a long time. Excellence was still under the sun of the "Homeland," cheering for the success of his "hand-crafted" project and fretting over unsolvable math problems, completely unaware that a subtle "distraction" in his unconscious had already quietly changed the trajectory of some important matters in the distant world. The road ahead, concerning how to treat this gift, was destined to be filled with deeper reflection and weighing of options.