The Seventeenth Sample

The photovoltaic inverter you designed works perfectly in the laboratory. In the Gobi Desert, the power grid is as soft as a long spring - your algorithm cannot lock it. Forty years old, deputy senior officer for seven years, failed to apply for senior post twice. The moment the students asked you in public, you admitted: The seventeenth version of the control board is all in the simulator, and none of it has ever been connected to the real power grid. Open your eyes again and go back to the day you reported for freshman year. Among the seven roommates in the dormitory, one of you missed him in his previous life - he was later persuaded to quit, went to a hardware factory, and had two fingers broken. In your last life, you played games in an Internet cafe and never looked back. In this life, he sleeps on the upper bunk next to you, and his draft paper is full of incomprehensible curves. Welded seventeen control boards from scratch. Solder, fry, start over. Simulation can never calculate the harmonic drift in the Gobi Desert, just like people can never calculate when they turn around to catch a falling roommate. The price is forgetfulness. Forgetting your mother's birthday, forgetting the laboratory house number, forgetting what the students you taught in your previous life looked like - the engineering experience you actively retrieve will accelerate the erosion, and forgetting follows the order from shallower to deeper, and finally the face of your loved one. "It doesn't look good, but it can run." Every second that the seventeen control panels run smoothly is your height.