History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 56

night shift part one

Tuesday, August 2023, 8, is an ordinary day in summer, and it is also a day with some atmospheric fragrance in the mild heat.After parking the bicycle she had ridden from the subway station entrance, she went straight to the lobby on the first floor of the building where the company was located.

This hall is quite large, a nearly square 30-meter-square space, and the elevator shaft is in the middle of this large square.

In the lobby on the first floor, she saw the security guards at the gate and the main service desk were handing over.Although the two who came to take over shift had their backs to her, she could still see the supper in the bags they were carrying in their hands.

On the wall of the hall, the number displayed by the electronic clock is 18:59:57.

Walk into the elevator and press the number for the 17th floor, and the elevator door slowly closes. "It's a nice building that just finished seven months ago," she couldn't help thinking.The elevator door was not as fancy as those old buildings, and as the aluminum alloy elevator door closed, her face was clearly reflected on it.

Well, in addition to her face being reflected, there is also her back reflected on the elevator wall behind her.

Well, the wall of the elevator she was leaning against also reflected her back because it was brand new and smooth.

But... two things that look like mirrors, if they reflect each other, they should be reflected endlessly, if you look carefully...

At this time, the number displayed by the electronic clock in the elevator was 19:00:03.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, ding, the 17th floor is here.The elevator door opened slowly, and her face and back reflected on the elevator door also disappeared as the elevator door retracted into the elevator shaft.She touched the nib of the pen with the second knuckle of her right index finger, coughed slightly, and walked out of the elevator.

In the elevator hall on the 17th floor, warm yellow LED light illuminates every detail in this space clearly.

Here, the number displayed by the electronic clock is 19:00:11.

When I walked into the office, I didn't finish my work during the day shift, and several colleagues who had just finished the work at hand had already started to pack their things.After five or six of them stepped on their backpacks or shoulder bags at the same time, they hurriedly greeted her and walked to the elevator hall on the 17th floor.

Her desk is by the west-facing window. Four or fifty meters away from this window is another office building next door. One corner of that building is facing her side, blocking all the scenery she can see to the west. line of sight.Although it is a west-facing office, sufficient air-conditioning and heat-insulating glass keep the office at a comfortable temperature of 50 degrees Celsius.The company is also very kind to its employees. It has arranged humidifiers, and the temperature and humidity meters on the wall always remind employees how pleasant the space they are in is.

Unknowingly, the color of the sky changed from dark blue to light gray, from light gray to dark gray, and the number displayed on the electronic clock on the wall also changed to 20:37:23.

In the more than 200-square-meter office with white as the main color, there are only her, one sitting in the northeast corner, and the other sitting in the east of the room—two colleagues at the entrance of the office.These two colleagues are really hardworking. From the time when she entered the office a little after [-] o'clock to the current time of [-]:[-] a.m., she never got up to go to the bathroom, and she didn't touch the takeaway on the table. Well, that should be dinner for these two.

With colleagues who work so hard, she also told herself not to lag behind others.Put your notebook and laptop on the table, turn on the computer screen, and start your work.

Unknowingly, the number displayed by the electronic clock changed to 21:53:07.

She stretched and glanced at the two colleagues in the east and northeast corners. The two colleagues were still there, and the takeaway bags on the table seemed to have not been touched.

The coffee she drank before entering the company made her unable to sit still, so she hurried to the bathroom, returned to the desk and sat down.

The number displayed by the electronic clock changed to 22:04:04.

At this time, there was a sound of "tap, tap, tap" from the roof behind her left, like the sound of someone upstairs dropping a glass marble on the floor.

She turned her head suddenly and found two colleagues in the east and northeast corners standing behind her, looking at her.

Her scream, the echo of her scream, the echo of the echo of her scream, and the "other" sound mixed with the scream, rang through almost every room on the 15th to 20th floors. corner……

Not many people remember her name, but everyone calls her "A Piao".

Author's note: Is the above a ghost story?

No.

The reason is this:
Part II Scientific Explanation
From the front to the back, "Apiao" is used as a synonym for ghosts or ghosts in many popular cultures.In this story, due to her outstanding ability, the protagonist girl is arranged by the company to travel frequently, to do interviews and due diligence positions in other places, and she is often not in the company, which leads everyone to think that her whereabouts are "floating". This is where the nickname "A Piao" comes from, but the girl who is calm and lively by nature also likes this elegant and free-sounding name, so she didn't bother to correct the well-intentioned nickname of her colleagues.

A Piao, who had already been dazzled by copywriting work, coupled with the hot weather outside and the low-temperature air-conditioning in the office building, made the protagonist girl somewhat suffer from heat stroke.Due to the combination of various factors, her drowsy mental state naturally did not notice that the two colleagues moved to her back.And the two colleagues naturally saw A Piao who was concentrating on her work, and they also knew that today's event would definitely make this female colleague who was outside all day very sad, so they tried their best to give her a treat without disturbing A Piao. Surprise - a refreshing glass of hand-brewed lemon iced tea.

The two takeaway bags that A Piao saw at the door just now contained the dinners of these two colleagues, and one of them had some unrequited affection for A Piao.After he learned from the supervisor that A Piao would also be working overtime at the company tonight, when that colleague was ordering drinks, he naturally didn't leave A Piao's share.

Why is there a sound of "ta, da, da"?In the initial setting of the story, it has been indicated that this is a newly built office building.With extensive use of cement for building columns, walls, and floors, such newly constructed buildings are often still in the process of deep drying of the cement.In this process, the thermal expansion and contraction plus the loss of water will make the cement make a sound like marbles falling on the ground.

Why can Ah Piao hear it clearly?Because sound travels more easily in solids, and her desk is close to the wall, it is easier for her to hear the sound of cement expanding and contracting.In addition, Ah Piao, who already had some "sense of fear" in her heart, would be more sensitive to these abnormal noises than in the normal state, so such "ta, da, da" was more clear and abnormal to her.

Why did Ah Piao, who had just entered the elevator, see the time in the elevator box as 19:00:03, but the elevator could climb 8 floors after only 17 seconds?This is also easy to explain: because in a building, usually the elevator has an independent power supply system relative to the rest of the building.In order to facilitate construction and installation, other related control systems in the elevator, including the setting of time display, are relatively independent of other parts of the building.In this case, coupled with factors such as elevator power-off debugging and emergency accident tests in the early stage of building operation, it is understandable that the time display of the elevator is slower than that of the electronic clocks in other parts of the entire building.

(End of this chapter)