JFWCM Chapter 16

Star Orbit Calibration Time

Jiang Wan’yuan’s mechanical pencil unconsciously drew parabolas on her notebook, the ink seeping into the paper, gradually blurring into the trajectory of the shot put on sports day. The girl in front of her turned around to borrow an eraser, glanced at her draft paper, and was taken aback, “What are you drawing?”

Jiang Wan’yuan looked down and found that the chaotic lines had unknowingly formed a complete star map—Orion’s Belt, directly corresponding to the three bronze bolts on Yi Shang’s mechanical spine.

“…Physics problem.” She slammed the notebook shut, the stardust blue light lingering on her fingertips flashing in the morning light.

The sound of Jiang Wan’yuan closing the notebook startled the mechanical butterfly on the corner of the desk—a “classroom monitor” that Jing Xiao had made from old watch parts. Her best friend leaned over from the desk behind, the mint green tips of her hair brushing the edge of her draft paper, “Stop pretending, when you threw the shot put yesterday, Yi Shang’s mechanical arm index soared by 237%. I even received an overload alarm at the terminal in the lab.” She shook her phone, the monitoring screen still displayed: a boy in a white coat was slightly adjusting the anemometer behind the judge’s seat, his metal spine reflecting the sunset, as if drawing guide lines for the shot put trajectory.

“Mind your own business!” Jiang Wan’yuan said with a smile as she pushed her shoulder, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zhang Yao passing by carrying an experiment box. The girl’s white coat was covered with gold powder, and every step she took left a miniature star map on the ground—the Orion constellation that they had replicated on the playground with fluorescent reagent last night. Zhang Yao suddenly turned around and stuffed a button-sized component into her pocket: “An astrolabe from the old observatory, it will align with the landing point of the shot put at three in the morning.” The component’s surface was still warm, creating a faint resonance with the birthmark on her wrist.

“Are the assignments collected?” Yi Shang’s voice came from the podium, as cold as a test tube taken out of a liquid nitrogen tank. As he carried the assignment notebooks downstairs, Jiang Wan’yuan noticed that the bronze bolt on the back of his neck was half loosened—a “mark” she had deliberately left when helping him adjust after the sports meet. As the two passed each other at the corner of the stairs, he suddenly stopped, took out a mechanical pocket watch from his inner pocket, and shoved it into her palm: “The second hand stopped at the moment you broke the record.” A very small star map was engraved on the inside of the watch cover, with a parabola drawn by the shot put in the center.

During lunch break, Jing Xiao dragged her to the rooftop, placed a thermos cup on the ground, and the bottom immediately unfolded into a holographic screen: “Look! I hacked into the sports meet’s monitoring system.” In the picture, at the moment Jiang Wan’yuan threw the shot put, Yi Shang was standing in the shadows of the audience, the bolts on his spine suddenly burst out with silver light, and the shot put in the air strangely deviated from its trajectory by 0.3 degrees—just enough to cross the second place’s record line. “This isn’t a physics problem, it’s clearly interstellar communication!” Jing Xiao said while chewing on a lollipop, pointing at the screen, in the background Zhang Yao was holding a spectrum analyzer, aiming it at the shot put’s flight path.

Jiang Wan’yuan touched the mechanical pocket watch in her pocket, the second hand suddenly started turning counterclockwise, projecting a miniature astrolabe in her palm. Zhang Yao appeared at the rooftop entrance at some point, half of a meteorite slice was sticking out of her white coat pocket—with the same composition as the one that fell ten years ago. “The metal composition of the shot put is homologous to Yi Shang’s mechanical spine.” She placed the slice on the pocket watch, and the two metals immediately emitted a buzzing sound, spelling out a complete Orion constellation on the ground, “Your ‘parabola’ is actually a coordinate that crosses the stars.”

The class bell rang in the distance, Yi Shang’s figure appeared at the end of the playground, his mechanical spine gleaming with a warm bronze light in the sun. As Jiang Wan’yuan ran down the stairs, the second hand of the pocket watch suddenly pointed to twelve o’clock, resonating simultaneously with the birthmark on her wrist, Zhang Yao’s meteorite slice, and Jing Xiao’s mechanical butterfly. She remembered the moment when Yi Shang helped her put on the medal during the sports meet award ceremony, his fingertips lingered on the back of her neck for 0.1 seconds—there, hidden a star orbit pattern that matched his gear birthmark.

“Next class is physics.” Jing Xiao shook her phone, the screen displaying the title of Yi Shang’s lab report: *On the Resonance Frequency of Meteorite Fragments and Human Genes*. Zhang Yao handed over a new mechanical pencil, the lead core inlaid with extremely fine gears, “Using this to draw parabolas will be closer to the star map trajectory.” Jiang Wan’yuan opened the pencil cap and found a silver cufflink lying inside—the one she had picked up yesterday on the shot put field, from Yi Shang’s school uniform, with a tiny “Orion” engraved on the back.

Outside the classroom window, the three main stars of Orion faintly appeared in the midday sun. As Yi Shang walked into the classroom, the bolts on his spine and the pocket watch in her pocket made a soft sound, like a greeting across light years. And in this overlapping frequency, Jiang Wan’yuan suddenly understood: all unconscious strokes are love letters written on paper by the stars, and they are both the writers and the stars chosen by the trajectory.

The fluorescent lights in the lab suddenly flickered, Yi Shang looked up, his glasses reflecting a cold light. The tweezers in her fingertips hovered above the petri dish, the bronze bolt at the third joint of her mechanical spine was rotating at an abnormal frequency.

“Group three, record the metal resonance data.” Her voice was as cold as a frozen steel ruler, but trembled almost imperceptibly when she glanced at Jiang Wan’yuan. The gear pattern on the back of her neck leaked a faint blue halo through the collar of her shirt, flashing in sync with the flickering Orion β star outside the window.

Jing Xiao’s mechanical butterfly suddenly landed on Jiang Wan’yuan’s test tube rack, its wings unfolded into a translucent screen. “Look!” She bit the rainbow-colored electronic pen cap, the screen jumped with real-time spectrum diagrams, “Yi Shang’s spine is emitting θ waves, this is not a frequency that a machine should have!”

Zhang Yao’s white coat swept across the experimental table, gold powder formed a dynamic equation on Jiang Wan’yuan’s lab report. “0.3 degree deviation value reappears.” She put the meteorite slice on Jiang Wan’yuan’s wrist birthmark, the slice immediately showed the same thread as Yi Shang’s spinal bolt, “Now there is only difference of…”

“Jiang Wan’yuan.” Yi Shang suddenly appeared behind them, frozen test tubes condensed white frost in her hands, “Your petri dish.” At the bottom of the glass container she handed over, a miniature star map was drawn with condensed water—the three-dimensional projection of the parabola trajectory in the pocket watch.

When Jiang Wan’yuan took it, her fingertips brushed Yi Shang’s mechanical knuckles, and all the electronic devices in the lab buzzed simultaneously. Her mechanical pencil suddenly started drawing curves on the paper automatically, the nano gears in the lead core running hot.

“Wow!” Jing Xiao’s modified smart watch dial exploded with a string of garbled characters, “This is not static interference, it is clearly quantum entanglement!” She suddenly grabbed Jiang Wan’yuan’s wrist, aligning the birthmark with the holographic projector. The beam of light passed through the blue light under the skin, projecting a rotating interstellar coordinate on the wall.

Yi Shang’s mechanical spine emitted a warning buzz, and the hem of her white coat swept off a graphene pencil as she turned around. Zhang Yao picked it up first, the word “Orion” engraved on the pen barrel was seeping stardust.

“Tonight at 23:17.” Zhang Yao held the pencil to the window, the midday sun passed through the pen barrel, projecting a clear time projection on the ground, “There will be a meteor shower at the old observatory.” A few pieces of gold powder suddenly floated out of her white coat pocket, forming the arrangement of the three stars in Orion’s Belt in the air.

Yi Shang’s bolts suddenly stopped turning. She took off her glasses to wipe them, this rare action allowed Jiang Wan’yuan to see the shadow cast by her eyelashes—like the trajectory of the second hand passing over the dial.

“Lab report.” When Yi Shang put her glasses back on, her voice returned to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, but she slid a data card to Jiang Wan’yuan’s hand, “Need your signature.”

Jing Xiao’s mechanical butterfly suddenly pounced on the data card, sparking when its wings scanned it. “God! This is not experimental data!” She stared at the holographic screen, “This is… this is a star track love letter drawn with a spectrum analyzer!”

Zhang Yao’s gold powder formed a decoding matrix above the data card, the emerging three-dimensional image made Jiang Wan’yuan’s ears burn—it was clearly a combined image of her and Yi Shang’s star patterns, two trajectories converging into a heart shape at the position of Orion β star.

Yi Shang’s spine made a crisp “click” sound, like a precise clock suddenly stuck. She strode towards the storage cabinet, but the gear pattern on the back of her neck became brighter and brighter, clearly visible through her shirt.

“Senior’s coolant is about to boil~” Jing Xiao shook her e-cigarette, the screen displaying the real-time temperature curve of Yi Shang’s spine. Zhang Yao suddenly pushed a cup of liquid nitrogen in front of Yi Shang, the water droplets condensed on the cup wall automatically forming “Orion” in Morse code.

Jiang Wan’yuan looked down at the data card and found that it was written on the back with nanoscale engravings: [Every star orbit has one and only one focus]. Her mechanical pencil suddenly started writing automatically, the lead core carving indentations of varying depths on the paper—under ultraviolet light, these marks formed a silhouette of Yi Shang’s profile.

Outside the window, Orion, which should not have appeared during the day, suddenly became clearly visible. Yi Shang’s mechanical spine and Jiang Wan’yuan’s pocket watch resonated in harmony, and the metal objects in the entire laboratory floated slightly, forming a starlight tunnel in the sun, the end pointing to the dome of the old observatory.

“Next class is PE.” Zhang Yao’s white coat suddenly folded automatically into a star map manual, “But I think someone needs to go to the observatory for extracurricular practice more.” She handed the manual to Jiang Wan’yuan, a bronze bolt clipped between the pages—the loose one from Yi Shang’s spine.

Jing Xiao’s mechanical butterfly landed on Jiang Wan’yuan’s shoulder, the wing vibration frequency completely synchronized with the pocket watch’s second hand: “According to my calculations, someone’s mechanical spine overload alarm will exceed 300% today~”

Yi Shang suddenly turned around, the eyes behind her glasses were completely revealed for the first time, like two polished stars. She pressed the frozen test tube into Jiang Wan’yuan’s palm, and the liquid metal in the test tube automatically formed a line of words:

[23:17, take you to see the real interstellar parabola]