Brainoid

Qi Min followed Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan and found a place to sit down in the cafeteria of the "Nimbus" computing center.

Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan did not speak at first, but just quietly ate the small flat fish on the dinner plate. Qi Min felt that the atmosphere was a bit awkward and did not dare to take out his mobile phone to play in front of others, so he had to carefully chew the boiled cauliflower as a side dish.

After a while, Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan said: "Girl, why are you so nervous? You are also a PI, and you will have to find people to cooperate with you in the future."

"I'm just... not used to it." Qi Min whispered.

"You will get used to it." Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan said gently. "In fact, when you are studying for a Ph.D., you should get used to dealing with other people in the academic world."

There's nothing wrong with that, but Qi Min just hasn't learned how to deal with people in formal situations, so he submits articles N times without taking the initiative to seek peer reviews from his supervisor's acquaintances. After returning to China, he failed N times in interviews for teaching positions. She gets along well with her classmates and even anyone else who isn't a PI, but she gets scared when she actually sees her boss - no matter who her boss is.

"Then...then I'll try to get used to it..." Qi Min said with some embarrassment.

"Well, I think you can communicate more with Mr. Zheng and his research team." Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan suggested to her, "We here mainly maintain the 'Nimbus', and the research projects have just begun. . And I don’t know very well, but the University of Science and Technology of China does not seem to be very strong in biology research. If you want to have better development, you still have to cooperate with groups from other institutions.”

Qi Min nodded. If the biology department of the University of Science and Technology of China wasn't strong, they wouldn't want a weakling like her. And she secretly felt that she was only at the level of the Biology Department of the University of Science and Technology of China, and would only have a mixed professional title in the future.

——

Qi Min returned to her office at the school, opened her laptop and saw that researcher Zhou Xiaoshan had emailed her the access method of "Nimbus".

She followed the instructions and reconnected the paused code to Nimbus. The test set that she had run all night in the school computing center was completed in less than two minutes.

Cool.

Qi Min stopped the code for testing machine learning and restarted running the 1024×1024×1024 brain-like body. The code ran for five minutes, and she thought there should be no problem, so she closed the Jupyter page.

By some mistake, Qi Min opened Skype again, only to find that because she had shut down her computer before, Skype did not start when she restarted her computer. Now her conversation with Anton showed that he had sent her seven video invitations in total.

Qi Min's heart skipped a beat. Could it be that something happened to Mimi?

She quickly sent a video invitation to Anton, but no one answered. I sent another voice invitation, but no one answered yet. Qi Min panicked a little and sent him N messages one after another asking about the situation.

Almost an hour passed and no one responded. Only then did she remember that it was afternoon for her, but it was early morning for Anton. Although Skype shows that it is online, it is probably because the computer forgot to turn it off.

But then why did he send her a video invitation in the middle of the night? Is there really something going on, or is he just having nothing to do... She hopes that Anton has nothing to do, of course it's good to be fine, and the fact that he can still contact her when he has nothing to do shows that the relationship between the two of them is not pornographic. .

Because of this, Qi Min didn't have the heart to read the code anymore.

When she first returned to China, she thought Anton was completely holding her back, but now she just wants to see him and Mimi again. Besides, Qi Min and Anton already had little to spare to support Mimi with their own wages. Now that Mimi can’t walk normally and Qi Min has returned to China, I don’t know how Anton earns enough money to still take care of her. of.

Qi Min felt that she had to go back sometime, at least to see how they were doing. But if she still has no money, it won't actually help Anton and Mimi.

——

Qi Min struggled until night. At about ten o'clock, she had returned to the small bedroom where she lived temporarily at Yan Zhaolan's house, and suddenly she saw Anton sending her a message on Skype.

"Nothing happened, don't bother us," his message read.

Qi Min immediately sent a video invitation, but was immediately rejected by the other party. She refused to give up and extended the invitation again. This time Anton picked up the invitation, and the face that he could see every day when he opened his eyes appeared on the screen.

It's just that it's slightly different from what Qi Min remembers. His hair has grown longer, the blue highlighted bangs in the front have almost lost their color, and the hair at the back is long enough to be tied up. His skin color also appeared paler, and the dark circles under his eyes made his brown eyes appear surprisingly large, but his eyes expressed quite strong contempt and rejection.

"Why are you still calling me on Skype? Do I have anything to do with you?" Because the Chinese restaurant owner who adopted him is from the north, Anton's Chinese also has a slight northern accent.

Qi Min was originally worried about him and Mimi, but seeing his attitude of rejecting people thousands of miles away, he felt angry: "What doesn't matter? After all, I am still Mimi's mother."

Single mothers receive subsidies in the United States, so Mimi is still Qi Min's daughter legally no matter what. This is something Anton cannot change on his own.

"Go and publish your lousy article!" Sure enough, Anton immediately scolded, "Do you deserve to pay Mimi back to her mother?"

"Is Mimi okay?" Qi Min took the opportunity to ask, "Where is she now?"

"Mimi is disabled, so what do you call 'nothing'?" Anton asked her, "You have such a conscience!"

He said this, indicating that Mimi had not had any major incidents recently. Qi Min breathed a sigh of relief. If that was the case, there was no need to worry too much.

However, she still wanted to choke him: "I publish articles to find a teaching position to make money, but you earn so little money and don't let me see Mimi. You are deliberately not wanting to see others!"

"Fuck you!" Anton cursed out this Beijing curse he had learned from Qi Min before, then he knocked on the keyboard and turned away.

He probably wanted to end the video, but in desperation he pressed the wrong shortcut key. Qi Min saw from the camera that he walked to the sofa angrily and sat down, then held his head and cried.

It has been more than six years since she met Anton, and Qi Min has never seen him cry. Sitting in front of the computer at this time, Qi Min felt at a loss.

She actually didn't resent Anton, after all, it was basically her own fault. But now she wanted to comfort him, but she was separated by a vast distance of the Pacific Ocean.

In the end, Qi Min just ended the video silently.

She knew that Anton would not want her to see him like this, and she realized that her mocking of his income was a bit too mean.