We Live In Nanjing

  Chapter 1 Preface

  Come, let us poke a point in the historical coordinates of mankind.

   In 1887, 8 degrees 24 minutes east longitude and 49 degrees north latitude.

  The small German town of Karlsruhe.

  This is the north gate of the lush Black Forest. The Rhine River flows quietly from here. It is a quaint town with scattered buildings in the sun, nestled among the verdant trees.

  In this quiet and peaceful afternoon, the sun fell on the feet of young people through the gaps in the curtains of a certain building of Karlsruhe University.

  The light in the room is dim, and there is a long wooden table on the floor.

  There is a cylinder on the side of the long table. The cylinder is densely wound with layers of copper wire, which is an inductance coil.

  In the center of the long table is a pair of barbells—at least it looks like a barbell.

There is a hollow copper ball the size of a human head at each end of this thing. The two copper **** are connected by a thin solid copper tube. They are two meters long. At first glance, they look like an elongated barbell. It is different from a barbell, because the copper rod in the middle is broken in the center, and there is a gap of two centimeters to divide this thing in two.

  Two hollow copper **** are connected to the inductance coil at the back with wires.

  The inductor is connected to the battery under the table with a wire.

  In addition to the open brass ring held by the young man, then this set of equipment will be alive.

He knows very well what each component of this set of equipment is used for. The coil is a booster, which can boost the weak battery voltage to a high enough level. The two copper **** are capacitors. To accumulate electric charge, one side is the positive electrode and the other is the negative electrode. When the electric charge accumulated in the capacitors on both sides reaches a certain amount, then the high-voltage current can instantly break down the air in the gap—

  The young man closes the circuit switch.

  Slightly "pop".

  It was like sparkling fire, and a light blue arc bounced from the gap in the center of the copper rod.

   is not over yet.

  This is not the purpose of the experiment.

  He raised the C-shaped brass ring in his hand—the brass ring had a small opening, slowly approached the table, and then held his breath.

  One step, two steps, three steps...

   There was a very slight "pop", and it sounded like a ghost, except that it did not come from the experimental device on the table, but from the copper ring in the hands of the young man.

  Transparent, faint electric spark like a fairy burst out from the opening of the C-shaped copper ring.

  His eyes widened in surprise, and after unremitting efforts, he finally caught the invisible ghost floating in the air.

In the dark, there is a mysterious pushing hand that transfers energy from the electric spark generator on the table to the copper ring in his hand. There is no wire, no medium, and no connection. This small copper ring is independent. Flames throbbed from above, it was a miracle.

  Maxwell’s theory has been perfectly verified.

  On this day, human beings consciously sent out the first electromagnetic wave toward the universe.

  This young man who teaches at the University of Karlsruhe is named Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

  This year, he was thirty years old.

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  Let us poke another point in the historical coordinates of human beings.

   July 11, 1998.

The Nanjing shortwave team composed of Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and Zhao Bowen participated in the IARU Shortwave World Championships. They used an Icom725 shortwave radio station and placed the radio and antenna on the purple mountain and the grass under the shade of the hot sun. A small table, starting at 8 o'clock in the morning of the same day, calling out.

  The antenna uses a horizontally erected dipole antenna in the north-south direction, which is tied between two trees with a drawstring, which looks like a clothesline from a distance.

"CQ! CQ! CQ!" Bai Zhen held the microphone in one hand and the pen in the other. He was sitting in the channel set up with his English soaked in the pickle jar, "Bravo-Golf-Four-Mike-Xray- HotelContest! BG4MXH! QSL?"

  "Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK! QSL?" A clear reply came from the headset soon.

  Bai Zhen made an OK gesture and started to record the communication log.

  The call sign of the other party is JA1...1...

What is behind   ?

  "Juliet-Alfa-One...again?" Bai Zhen had to tell him to report again.

   "Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK!"

The call sign starting with   J is Japanese.

  No wonder English is worse than mine.

  Bai Zhen thought silently, and at the same time replied: "Roger! Roger! Youare59! QSL?"

   "QSL! Thankyou!"

   "Thankyou! 73!"

   "73!"

  Japanese speaking English is really a mess.

  This is the 69th radio station they connected to, and everything went well.

The IARU Shortwave Championship is the largest event for amateur radio enthusiasts in the world. Scores are based on the distance and number of radio stations connected. The more stations you connect to and the farther the distance is, the higher your score. You can get three points for a Japanese radio station. , If you can connect to Europe or America, you can get five points.

  "CQ! CQ..."

  Start calling the next one immediately. Their goal is to connect with 500 stations during the 48-hour game.

  Ke Bai Zhen hadn't finished speaking yet, as soon as he let go of the microphone, an extremely sharp noise rang out in the channel, piercing his eardrum like a needle.

   "Fuck me!"

   "What's the matter?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen, who squatted to the side playing cards, turned their heads.

   "It seems that there is interference..." Bai Zhen pulled the headset on the beginning, "How did it happen?"

  "Where is the interference from the mountain." Wang Ning put the Jianlibao in his hand on the table, reached out to take the headset, and put it on his head, "Fuck!"

   "A ghost is calling." Zhao Bowen also listened, "Look at 6 Mibo?"

   "There is a Sadako in 6 Mipo."

   "12 meters?"

   "There is a chestnut in 12 meters."

   "What the **** is chestnut?"

   "Which channel is full of ghost calls." Bai Zhen twisted the FM **** on the radio at will, a little surprised, "We are suppressed by something in the whole frequency band."

  Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen subconsciously looked up into the sky. There are no aircraft passing by, right?

  When encountering this kind of thing, the game was considered a hit, but Bai Zhen was not reconciled. He turned down the volume, slowly turned the knob, and swept the floor in various amateur channels.

  Perhaps there is a strong interference source nearby. The interference source has shown indiscriminate suppression on any channel, and the noise has overwhelmed all effective signals.

   "It's gone." Wang Ning squatted back to play cards, "Lao Bai, leave it alone, come and play cards!"

   "Play cards!" Zhao Bowen said.

Bai Zhen ignored these two things. He lay on the table and worked hard to debug the radio. After ten minutes of tossing, it still had no effect. Rao has never seen the situation like this with an experienced HAM like Bai Zhen—he even Secretly suspect that Nanjing City was attacked by EMP, right? Fighting? The American emperor is calling here?

   "Lao Bai, don't guard... It's out of play, don't you eat popsicles? Let's buy popsicles."

  Wang Ning squatted under the shade of the tree and shouted weakly, lifting up the fan of the white vest.

  Nanjing Hot Dogs in mid-July can't lift their energy.

  Bai Zhen wiped the sweat from his forehead, suddenly cheered up, "Wait...wait! I heard a sound!"

   "What's the sound?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen squatted far away under the tree, their cards stopped playing, their tongues were sticking out, and they were as hot as a dog.

   "Someone is talking..." Bai Zhen slowly turned the knob, frowning, "The voice is very weak, I can't hear clearly."

  Icom725 cannot filter out all the noise. In the noisy back noise, Bai Zhen can hear faint human voices. He squinted his eyes and focused.

  "CQ..."

  "How do you verify your identity?"

   "...Look up to the sky, it's on top of your head!"

  "Meteor, look, it's a meteor!"

  "We must put this thing in a predetermined location, otherwise it will not be killed, and the power of nuclear weapons will be limited."

   "They have come down from the sky."

  "Help me, please, help me..."

  The chaotic voices of men and women are noisy together, and Bai Zhen can hear it inexplicably. Who is this **** on the channel?

   "We will see you again."

   "Pop!" All the sounds stopped abruptly, and Bai Zhen raised his head. It turned out that Zhao Bowen had turned off the radio switch.

  He took off the headset on Bai Zhen’s head, “Don’t mess it up, let’s go down the mountain to buy something to eat! Go buy an old popsicle! Old—ice—stick—yoho—!”

  This year's World Championship, the three of Bai Zhen ended in failure due to inexplicable interference.

  The following year, Bai Zhen failed the college entrance examination and joined the army. He served as a communications corps at the Guantong Station of the North Sea Fleet for 12 years.

  Zhao Bowen was admitted to the Department of Physics of Nanjing University in the same year that Bai Zhen joined the army. He stayed at the school after his doctoral degree. He is currently an associate researcher at Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory and has been engaged in space physics and electromagnetics research until now.

  Wang Ning went around for many years, and finally worked in the office of the Nanjing Non-Commissioned Committee as the head of the radio monitoring station until today.

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  Let us finally poke a point in the long river of time.

now.

  At this moment.

You are looking at the screen of a mobile phone—whether it is Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung or OV, they are fundamentally the same as the C-shaped copper ring in Hertz's hands. All text, pictures, sounds and videos are modulated into Electromagnetic waves are received by mobile phone antennas via communication base stations and wireless routers, then demodulated into signals that humans can understand, and enter your eyes and ears.

  Every minute and every second of this world, long waves pass through the deep ocean, short waves oscillate on the ionosphere, and UV waves crash across the city. Where we can’t see them, they form another world.

It has been more than 130 years since humans first captured electromagnetic waves in 1887. Theoretically speaking, energy is conserved. The first electromagnetic wave emitted by humans is still oscillating in the universe, although it has decayed to the point where there is nothing. People can catch it like a little ghost, wandering in this noisy world. It may cause a sudden jump of electrons in a component in your mobile phone's integrated circuit, flashing like a spark, so weak that except for this universe, No one can notice anymore.

  At that moment, you rubbed your sleepy eyes, and you would not realize that after a long time of one hundred and thirty years, you received the greeting from the young man named Hertz.

This is a story about radio. This story took place in 2019, and it has been nearly two years. During these two years, the author has spent a lot of energy visiting around and sorting out various materials, and only then has the confidence to put it into a manuscript and make it public. , And strive to not be ridiculous, if any party sees the clumsy work, please smile at it.

  The characters appearing in the text are all pseudonyms:

  (End of this chapter)