Chapter 113: Circling Back To The Telephone Booth
He was used to dealing with Lin Ran and knew that he would suddenly give him a little “surprise.”
So this time, after Lin Ran finished speaking, Chen Jingrun’s expression didn’t change, as if nothing had happened, but his brain was fully focused on memorizing what Lin Ran said.
He had no choice but to memorize it, because what he said each time was crucial.
Section Chief Zhang had said the same when assigning work to Chen Jingrun: other things could be ignored, but what Lin Ran told him must be firmly remembered.
“Are you still getting used to life in New York?” Lin Ran asked.
Chen Jingrun said: “Pretty good, just that New York’s winter is a bit too cold compared to Hong Kong.
Aside from the weather, I’ve adapted to everything else pretty quickly.”
How to put it, Chen Jingrun’s change in mindset had gradually shifted along with the rise in Lin Ran’s identity and status.
At the very beginning, he felt that being sent to New York, thousands of miles from home, to do work with special nature, he would have feelings of discomfort, incomprehension, or even resistance.
But after Lin Ran entered the White House and became a real power figure in the White House as reported in the newspapers, his resistant emotions had vanished without a trace, and he even had very high initiative and enthusiasm for his own work.
This was not only because he could access the most cutting-edge mathematics in New York, but also because he knew that as Lin Ran’s link in New York, the higher Lin Ran’s status, the more help he could provide to China, and thus his own work would be more meaningful.
In 1961, Chinese people with such simple mindsets were still the majority, and Chen Jingrun, because he did mathematics, was even more straightforward in this regard.
Whatever task you assign me, I’ll complete that task.
The aforementioned resistant mindset was also at the subconscious level, manifested in missing home and family.
After simply chatting with Chen Jingrun and returning to Jenny’s side, Jenny asked: “Professor, who is that Chinese person?”
Lin Ran explained: “He is the most talented student from when I went to Hong Kong to lecture before.
I believe he can achieve accomplishments in number theory no less than mine.”
After the banquet ended, Lin Ran drove the Beetle to take Jenny home, and before she got out of the car, he took an apple from his pocket and handed it to Jenny:
“Here.”
Jenny took the apple, a bit puzzled.
Lin Ran said: “In Chinese custom, on Christmas Eve you eat an apple, because in Chinese, apple and peace sound similar, and eating an apple symbolizes peace in the new year.
Thanks for accompanying me today. I told you long ago that mathematicians’ gatherings are very boring.”
Jenny suddenly kissed him on the face: “Professor, thank you for bringing a math dummy like me into the temple of mathematics. See you at the White House after the Christmas holiday.”
After Jenny left, Lin Ran touched the lingering warmth on his face and let out a long sigh.
However, his melancholy didn’t last long, and his thoughts had already drifted to Times Square.
That’s right, Lin Ran had placed the version of “The Man in the High Castle” that he rewrote in 2020 at his first gate in the 1960 spacetime.
That is, under the floor of the telephone booth at Times Square at the very beginning.
The more dangerous the place, the safer it is.
And even if someone finds it, it’s just a science fiction novel.
The one responsible for retrieving it was not Chen Jingrun, but Huang Yunji.
After Chen Jingrun passed the news to the relevant person, he didn’t need to worry about it anymore.
Huang Yunji, as the president of the Overseas Chinese Daily News, also had no one watching him.
The fact that he survived the McCarthy years without being investigated was proof that no one was watching him.
Times Square on December 25, 1961, had cold winds blowing through, the streets were packed with pedestrians shopping for Christmas, neon lights flashed, and long lines formed at theater entrances.
Huang Yunji had reserved the latest play for that evening, and before the play started, he first went to the telephone booth at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 46th Street that Lin Ran mentioned to make a call.
During the phone call, he gently tapped a few beats with his foot, confirming that it was indeed hollow underneath.
Standing in the red telephone booth with the New York Telephone Company logo, Huang Yunji’s mind was full of how to complete the task.
He also had one thought: how did Lin Ran stuff this thing under here.
He was completely baffled by this.
Logically speaking, the other party shouldn’t have had such an opportunity.
Although Huang Yunji didn’t understand the working mechanisms around key figures like Lin Ran, his superficial knowledge as a peer was that it was impossible to let a key figure come to a busy place like Times Square to hide items.
The red telephone booth was even more conspicuous.
Moreover, prying open the floor, hollowing out a hole, putting the item in, and restoring the floor— the whole process, even a pig could discover it, right?
Huang Yunji thought of the Bay of Pigs Invasion earlier that year and inwardly grumbled that maybe they really were pigs.
With such thoughts, Huang Yunji didn’t find a suitable opportunity until December 28, when he walked out of the dance hall at four in the morning, and finally found a thick manuscript and a note in the red telephone booth.
He had done full psychological preparation beforehand, but he was still startled the moment he saw the note:
“The item given to you is the most advanced product from America’s alien research base, containing specific technical data on the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.”
This short sentence scared Huang Yunji into hurriedly stuffing the entire note into his mouth, afraid that if he was even a little slow, a bunch of CIA agents would rush out and gun him down.
The U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was already shocking enough; if the former news got out, and it was known that the source came from Randolph Lin, the senior official in the White House responsible for aerospace affairs, it could top global hot news for a full month.
As the editor-in-chief of the Overseas Chinese Daily News on the surface, that is, a so-called media practitioner, Huang Yunji had always thought that the existence of aliens was fake.
Or rather, the rumor that America discovered aliens was fake.
“So the Roswell incident was real?”
Starting from the 1947 Roswell incident, there had always been UFO rumors.
In July 1947, unidentified object debris was discovered on a ranch near Roswell in New Mexico, and America initially announced the recovery of a “flying saucer.”
This statement quickly made international headlines, but within a day, the American side changed their tune, claiming it was just a crashed weather balloon.
This incident sparked enduring rumors, with the outside world believing that the American Government had covered up the discovery of an alien spaceship and alien corpses.
The Roswell incident also became the starting point for UFO rumors.
Including the space race during this period, which further intensified folk space rumors.
From America to Europe to the Soviet Union, many UFO enthusiasts believed that because they discovered aliens and picked up alien debris, America and the Soviet Union’s space technology had made leaps and bounds.
Huang Yunji, because he was usually responsible for collecting news related to Lin Ran, had even seen rumors in some locally published conspiracy theory tabloids guessing that Lin Ran was an alien.
Saying that Lin Ran was an alien aid hired at a high price by the American Government in cooperation with aliens.
He just looked like a yellow race on the surface, but actually didn’t look like humans at all.
Huang Yunji’s past attitude toward this was complete disbelief.
But now, this was firsthand news from Lin Ran.
Although he didn’t know what item the other party had given, since he said so, there really were aliens.
Huang Yunji suddenly felt a surge of emotion inwardly, grateful that there was Lin Ran inside the White House.
Otherwise, China would never have known this news no matter what.
Because the situation was major, almost everyone with the right to know gathered together that very evening to discuss the matter intensively.
“There is a book and a note. The note’s content has been transmitted back via encrypted telegraph, and after our comrade decrypted it, there was only a short sentence.”
After he finished speaking, the entire meeting room was silent, with only the cast iron radiator slightly deforming due to thermal expansion and contraction under temperature changes, rubbing against the pipe and making a “click” sound.
And the heavy breathing of everyone.
At dawn, such news seemed especially shocking.
Dean Qian inwardly grumbled that news related to Lin Ran always brought him a little “shock” in the middle of the night.
The news was hidden under the iceberg.
Although what Lin Ran transmitted back was just one sentence, the information it contained was infinite.
Dean Qian knew he had to speak, and it was his turn to speak.
America entrusted Professor von Kármán to lead the research and development of long-range rockets. The entire “Corporal” missile design team had many Chinese people in it; Dean Qian was in charge of the theory group, while Qian Jiachuo and Qian Weichang worked on ballistic trajectory analysis, combustion chamber heat conduction, combustion theory research, and such.
If anyone present might have heard of it, it was only him.
After carefully sorting out his thoughts, Dean Qian said word by word:
“In my past experiences dealing with America, I have never heard of them having contact with aliens, or having alien debris, or obtaining alien technology.
I’ve never heard of it.
But that doesn’t mean I think the news passed back by White Horse is fake.
The news that he went to great lengths to pass back, based on the news White Horse has passed back in the past, whatever he chooses to tell us must be extremely valuable information.
Including item No. 6101 brought back from Geneva this time, which can be seen at a glance to be very different from current technological products.
Although I have left America for seven years, I don’t think they could advance to this level in just seven short years.
Additionally, the Europe and America applied science journals we have access to have not stopped, and there is no technology similar to 6101 in them.
So the news passed back by White Horse is credible; it’s just unknown whether this is something America imitated based on alien products, or if it’s directly an alien product.
I personally tend toward the former.”
6101 was the code name for the item that Lin Ran gave to the other party during the Geneva incident.
It indicated that it was the most important internal item of the year.
