Chapter 23: That Is The Question
Before Jingwei could push the issue of including his trusted team members, their families and everyone Zhiyi and Hanchuan considered an outsider, Zhiyi’s phone rang.
The sharp electronic sound cut through the silence surrounding the coffee table and everyone turned to look at them.
Zhiyi reached for it, and Hanchuan moved at the same time. Coming up behind her, he wrapped one arm around her waist and looked over her shoulder.
"Private number," he murmured, noting the absence of a caller ID.
Without replying, she accepted the call. "Qiao Zhiyi speaking."
"New question for you," a man said immediately.
He spoke with the easy familiarity of someone who had called her many times before. Hanchuan’s arm tightened around her waist.
In contrast, the office sounds behind Recruiter Gao were more than familiar to Zhiyi: telephones rang, keyboards clicked away and several conversations passed over the low walls of government cubicles.
She didn’t have to see his office to know what it would look like.
"Assume twelve distribution centers serve forty-seven municipal districts," Recruiter Gao continued, not waiting for her to say anything else. They had done this dance many times. "Six centers remain fully operational. Four have lost between twenty and sixty percent of their capacity, and the remaining two may become inaccessible within seventy-two hours."
Zhiyi pulled her notebook closer and started to write.
"Each district requires water, food and medical supplies, but the reported population figures may be inaccurate by as much as fifteen percent. Three districts can only receive supplies by one route. Two of those routes share a bridge with a maximum capacity of nine hundred tons per day."
Someone interrupted him.
"What?" Gao asked, his voice drifting away from the phone.
A second voice spoke too far from the receiver for Zhiyi to distinguish the words.
Recruiter Gao returned to her. "If either threatened distribution centers becomes inaccessible, traffic has to be redirected across the bridge, reducing its usable capacity to six hundred tons per day. There are eight thousand tons of reserve supplies. Where should they be placed?"
The meeting discussing the end of the world disappeared as Zhiyi got drawn into the new question.
The properties, vehicles and six names written on the whiteboard remained in the room, but Zhiyi could no longer hold them beside the distribution network opening inside her mind.
"Provide the weight of the water, food, medicine and other supplies separately."
"They only gave me mixed supplies," came the immediate reply.
"That isn’t a usable division," Zhiyi countered. If he didn’t give her the facts, she would be able to give an accurate response.
Recruiter Gao sighed, then lowered the receiver without disconnecting.
"She needs the breakdown," he called to someone nearby. "Water, food, medicine and everything else."
Paper moved between desks.
Hanchuan remained behind Zhiyi, his arm resting around her waist while they waited.
"Forty percent water," Gao said when he finally returned. "Thirty-five percent food, fifteen percent medicine and ten percent other essential supplies."
"Medicine requires separate categories."
"It can be treated as one category for this question."
"That reduces the accuracy," Zhiyi warned him, but her brain was still going through all the probabilities and responses that the new information generated.
"It only needs to be more accurate than the answer they already have."
Zhiyi opened to a blank page.
"Provide the number of vehicles in each load class and identify all road-weight restrictions."
"They said to assume uniform carrying capacity."
"That removes the effect of the restricted routes," Zhiyi sighed. She closed her eyes and leaned against Hanchuan without thinking about it.
An answering sigh crossed the line. "I’ll ask," the recruiter said at last.
Zhiyi could hear Gao putting down the phone.
Hanchuan looked at the notebook. Zhiyi had already drawn twelve distribution centers and begun connecting them to forty-seven smaller points.
Around them, the meeting cautiously resumed.
Jingwei carried the regional maps to the credenza, where he began marking alternate approaches to the first shelter sites. Shichen sorted the property files into three groups and made notes directly on the plans. Zeyu turned his chair away from the table and called one of his engineers about amphibious vehicle prototypes.
Qinghe didn’t return to his list.
Instead, he watched Hanchuan’s arm around Zhiyi instead.
Recruiter Gao returned with five vehicle classes, three fuel restrictions and two bridges that couldn’t support the heaviest trucks.
Zhiyi incorporated them into the network.
"Are the two centers threatened by structural failure, power loss or blocked access?"
"Blocked access."
"Will the supplies remain recoverable?"
"No."
"Then no reserve stock can remain at either center after the first forty-eight hours."
"That was my answer," Gao agreed with a satisfied sound.
"It doesn’t identify the replacement locations," countered Zhiyi
"Which is why I called you."
Zhiyi began weighting the routes.
The reserve had already been assigned. If the departments had wanted an optimized distribution from the beginning, the question would have included all twelve centers equally. Instead, someone wanted confirmation that a decision already made could survive scrutiny.
She stated the conclusion.
Gao was silent for a moment. Someone near him laughed.
"Can you solve it without knowing the selected location?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The information wasn’t necessary, so Zhiyi didn’t request it. She continued with the problem she had been given.
Eleven minutes later, someone carried another sheet to Gao’s cubicle.
Three districts possessed local water reserves that hadn’t been included in the original figures.
Zhiyi recalculated the minimum allocations.
Eight minutes after that, a road listed as secure was revealed to have a lower weight capacity than the first report claimed.
At twenty-seven minutes, the population uncertainty increased from fifteen percent to twenty-two percent in six districts.
Each condition changed part of the network she had already completed.
The first blank page of her notebook filled.
Then the second.
Hanchuan guided her into a chair and Zhiyi sat without looking away from the calculations. He took the seat beside her, close enough for their legs to remain pressed together.
The room continued moving around them.
Jingwei left twice to speak with his security team. Shichen spread structural drawings across the far end of the table. Zeyu abandoned his call long enough to examine Zhiyi’s growing model, then returned to his engineer with less humor in his voice.
Qinghe brought over yet another bottle of water and Hanchuan accepted it from him before raising it to Zhiyi’s mouth.
She drank automatically even as her eyes continued to be glazed over.
Qinghe’s expression tightened, but he said nothing.
"The three isolated districts require six days of advance stock," Zhiyi told Gao.
"That reduces the reserve available to the central districts."
"The central population figures are overstated."
"You don’t know which districts they are."
"Their reported consumption doesn’t support the stated population."
Gao relayed that to someone standing over his shoulder.
A different man took the phone.
"State your confidence level."