[ECHO ARCHIVE · LAYER 3 · 29.4% DECODED · KEY: LIVE SOUND FROM THE 2008 SUMMER OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY BROADCAST]
Day 118, 03:11:44, step 121.
Adebayo wants the raw baseband pulled for the 07-17 frame. He fills out the form in duplicate; I sign underneath. At nine forty in the morning he carries it up to the third floor; Shen Yi approves it ten minutes later, asking no why — he writes a number on the form, that's all.
The raw baseband lives in the basement. That door takes a shoulder shove to shut. The disks are read-only; the labels are handwritten, the handwriting Adebayo's, crooked. What they store is thirty minutes of raw samples from 19:11:44 UTC, cataloged by frame number and date, one directory per layer. We took two, 07-16 and 07-17 — logged, signed, the two names side by side.
Two-person checkout — that's the rule. On the way upstairs he doesn't say a word; not until the second floor does he say one thing: he didn't sleep last night.
He re-decodes it on his own machine. Forty minutes.
What comes out is 3:1. The same as the table's line.
I pull up his 0717-1 screenshot and read the time code: 00:19:41.3.
The 07-17 frame's sports segment runs from 00:18:52.0 to 00:19:38.6.
The 07-16 frame's sports segment runs from 00:18:49.7 to 00:20:11.4.
00:19:41.3 is not in 07-17. It is in 07-16.
Both frames put their sports segments in the same slot of the program schedule, both starting in the fifty-some seconds past the eighteen-minute mark. Two windows open side by side, they look identical.
Xiao Gao magnifies that line of text four hundred times and reads it out: head-to-head record, Pingchuan, 1:1, Dingxi. The strokes are continuous, he says; the characters are not wrong.
Adebayo says nothing.
He drags 0717-1 to the recycle bin, waits two seconds, drags it back out, and saves it into a folder. The folder's name is one word: wrong.
Lao Song stands behind him, watching a long time.
He says, "Then you didn't lose."
Adebayo says, "Lost."
Lao Song says, "You misread it yourself."
Adebayo says, "Misreading it is still losing."
Lao Song says, "Oh." He says, "And the fifteen hundred?"
Adebayo says, "Sent."
Lao Song says, "Getting it back?"
Adebayo says, "Not getting it back."
Lao Song says, "Why."
Adebayo says, "The score I put out was that one."
Lao Song makes an oh sound. He pulls the plastic ruler out from under his arm, on the verge of measuring something, looks around, and tucks it back.
Adebayo says, "I'm checking every match before this one."
The checking takes him three days. From May 2 — the frame where he first verified the table was honest — through July 18, a hundred thirty–odd matches. The method: for every row of the table, find the matching frame, read the caption, compare the numbers. He builds a sheet, one match to a row, three columns: what the table says, what the frame says, right or wrong. The third column gets two symbols only, a check and a cross.
In those three days nobody helps him. Xiao Gao checks characters, because that counts as list work; Ye Zhen produces one sheet of paper at the very end. The first two days he brings his own food — two steamed buns, a bag of pickled mustard, in a plastic bag stowed under his station. The third day he stops bringing it, goes to the canteen, turns two circles with his tray, and sits at the wall table.
I brought him water once. He said thanks. He set it beside the monitor and drank only when that column was done.
Three days done, the third column is all checks.
From day 124 he switches to checking as each new frame enters the archive. The 07-24 frame: the table says Nanpu 2:0 Baihe; the caption says Nanpu 1:1 Baihe.
First cross in the third column.
He doesn't spread it around. He screenshots the segment three times and comes to me.
The first thing I do is check the dual stations. That round was S-11 and S-08; two stations decoded independently, byte-identical, and the pool doesn't arbitrate. The second is re-decoding the raw baseband myself: no packet loss, no patched frames, no trace of re-encoding, audio and video time codes in step. The third is time codes — that caption line sits at 00:19:02.1, inside the segment.
The fourth is Xiao Gao checking the characters. It's Nanpu, it's Baihe, the digits a one and a one — not a seven, not a two. He magnifies the characters four hundred times again. No error, he says.
I add one item. The first four were caption edges, font, time code, motion vectors of the text block; the fifth I had crossed out last time and marked pending. This time I compare that segment's commentary voice against the sound of the same frame's other segments, by waveform: the same commentator, matching sampling, no post-dub.
I say, then this one is real.
Adebayo says, hold off on conclusions.
On day 130 I hand in the explanation. Three lines:
One: Layer 3 has 21,969 rows decoded, growing 212 rows a day, not one day off.
Two: every entry is a structured table; no audio, no video.
Three: we don't know why it holds a constant speed.
Shen Yi reads it twice.
He says, is line three a conclusion.
I say, it's a fact.
He says, on paper, fact and conclusion look the same.
He pauses, says, are the same.
I don't say anything. He files the sheet into a folder; the folder carries a number. I note the number down.
On the stairs Zhou Yansheng asks me, you wrote it.
I say, wrote it.
He says, wrote what.
I say, three lines.
He says, and those two spots.
I say, only one so far.
He says, leave those unwritten for now.
He climbs on holding the rail; his hand pauses on it.
He keeps checking down the list. Day 139, the August 8 frame. The table: Baihe 3:1 Haifeng. The caption strip, first line: current 0:0. Second line: pre-match prediction 3:1.
The two lines on the same screen.
Second cross in the third column.
This time he sits a long while before he calls me. He says he didn't bet that match, because he'd seen the extra line in the caption and didn't know what it meant.
I ask what it meant.
He says, the line said pre-match prediction.
I say, predicting what.
He says, predicting this match.
I say, who predicts.
He says, I don't know.
I walk the same five steps again: dual stations consistent (that round S-11 and S-08), baseband clean, time code inside the segment, Xiao Gao on the characters, the voice waveform. All five pass.
Both spots are real.
I say, by procedure these two go to the pool.
Zhou says, report them.
I say, report what.
He says, report that frame and table disagree.
I say, is that our conclusion.
He says, it's an observation.
I say, isn't an observation also a kind of conclusion.
He gives me a look. He says, think it through before you report.
He says there's a meeting tomorrow at which three stations report progress. Says I can sit in.
The meeting runs in the small conference room, three stations' feeds hung on one wall, one square each. S-08 reports on baseband uploads: two stations exceeded the six hours, got dropped from the pool once, the process already changed. S-19 reports on clock sync: four stations' clocks still unswapped, grace period to October.
After the third station reports, someone beneath the screen asks: if the table and the frame disagree, what then.
The chair says you file a deviation entry, per procedure.
That person asks, do deviation entries get numbers.
The chair says, not at present.
That person says, then what actually gets filed.
The chair says, a letter.
In the three squares on the wall nobody moves. The meeting ends.
After the meeting Zhou Yansheng waits for me at the door.
He says, you heard it.
I say, I heard it.
He says, then we hold the report.
I copy the two entries' numbers onto one sheet and clip it into the ledger at page forty-seven. Two lines only, one frame number each; nothing else on the page.
The 07-24 frame holds one more thing. From 00:19:02 the camera swings from behind the goal up to the stands, sweeping the lower tier. On the lower tier hangs a banner, white ground black characters, three characters: 2:0. Along the banner's bottom hem runs a line of small print — the name of a sporting-goods store, the letters tiny; Xiao Gao makes them out.
Xiao Gao photographs the three characters and sets them against the table's line. The same. He tapes that one onto his list too, after the last item; the number written four digits, one cell left blank in front.
In the 08-08 frame, the caption strip's second line is the table's own number.
Adebayo says, both these matches, somebody knew in advance.
I say, how do you know.
He says, the number on the banner is the table's number. The number in the caption is the table's number too.
I say, then that says the table is accurate.
He says, the table is accurate. The people aren't.
Ye Zhen hears it through, goes back to her station, pulls her tables. She copies the two matches' attendance onto one sheet, and his forty-two matches onto another.
She says, your forty-two — the biggest gate was twelve thousand.
She says, these two — forty-one thousand and fifty-eight thousand.
I say, and what does that mean.
Ye Zhen says, it means the people who came that day weren't there for the ball.
She lays the two sheets side by side, caps her pen — only then looks up.
Lao Song stands in the doorway a while. He says, then this isn't television.
I say, what is it.
He says, it's a weather report.
Nobody takes it up. He doesn't say more either; he picks up his mug and goes. The mug's chipped enamel has shed another flake — the notch is new.
Day 145 Shen Yi calls me up to the third floor. He stands at the window; he doesn't sit.
He asks what Adebayo has been up to lately.
I say, checking scores.
He says, checking what.
I say, whether the table and the frame match.
He says, are the mismatches many.
I say, a hundred thirty–odd matches, two spots.
He says, and two spots means what.
I say, I don't know yet.
He says, tell me when you know.
I say, all right.
He says, don't tell anyone else first.
Once I ask Adebayo what his table is.
He says, fixtures and scores.
I say, who compiled it.
He says, no idea.
I say, does the table have a date column.
He says, it does.
I say, up to what day.
He says, to September 26.
I say, and after that.
He says, there is no after that.
August is hot. The air conditioner's outdoor unit at the corridor's end drips into an iron pan; Tong lays a rag in the pan, says it makes the sound smaller. The rag is wet at noon every day and dry again by afternoon.
Adebayo now sends two sheets of odds a day. On his cousin's end somebody staked eight thousand at once; which match was that side's own pick.
I say, and if they pick wrong.
He says, picking wrong is still a number off the table.
He says, through last month, no wrong picks.
He uses two envelopes now. One holds the winnings, one holds what goes out tomorrow. Both are institute envelopes; the same spot of print blacked out in his hand on each.
Tong counts the gatehouse's three printed pieces again. Still three, still unopened. You can't open them while counting, he says; opened, it isn't counting anymore.
Ye Zhen says the August 11 frame gives one street — in the city, not another province. She recognizes a dozen-odd shops; one has changed its signboard twice, both changes in her index database, six years apart. Another sells reading glasses; she copied its doorplate twice, because in that frame a tree covers half the number.
She says this one can go into the second version.
Lao Song took the card home. He sticks it into an old phone and keeps the phone in his desk drawer, powering it on once at noon every day. Ye Zhen says that doesn't count either. Lao Song says he knows. He says he just likes to let it ring a bit.
When she's done she turns the sheet over; the back is blank; on that side she writes one line: City · First Block · To Be Continued.
Tong once sees the third-floor room's door standing open. On the desk, he says, a stack of printouts, the top one lying sideways.
He says, what we produce is vertical.
A week before the exam Nian says that day the teacher won't let parents in.
She says, so you'll wait outside.
I say, I will.
She says, don't leave.
I say, I won't.
She erases the two characters — bone — from her score, then writes them back in pencil, deeper than before.
Adebayo tells jokes again — one a week, laughing first himself when he lands it. Once Lao Song doesn't get it; Adebayo explains; Lao Song says oh. Adebayo says, laugh a little. Lao Song laughs once, short.
One morning Nian tells me a classmate's father knows people through television, people who can look up what hasn't happened yet.
I say, look up what.
She says, whether you pass the exam.
I say, what did you tell her.
She says, I told her it can't be looked up.
She says the classmate says her father did look it up, and she'll pass.
I say, well, that's nice.
Nian looks at me a while. She says, Mama, can you look it up.
I say, no.
She says oh. She shoulders her backpack and, at the door, turns back to say one more thing: I don't need you to look it up.
At night I keep the Red Lantern on, shortwave band. In the band log the line my father wrote is still there: unknown station, female voice, counting numbers, stops at seven. I read it through once and close the log.
Day 152. Layer 3: 26,633 rows.
Adebayo's three-column sheet lies spread on the desk. He circles the 07-24 and 08-08 rows, then writes five words across the top: the ones who read it.
When it's written he caps his pen and pushes the sheet to the middle of the table.
Nobody takes it.
Shen Yi stands in the doorway ten seconds.
He says, what are you all doing.
Nobody answers. He goes.
I carry the water glass from the desk to the sink, pour it out, set it back where it stood; the ring at its bottom still there.
That night, 03:11:44, step 156. Tong finishes writing and pushes the book back.