Courtyard House: A Major Power's Heavy Industry, Hand-Crafted Nuclear Fusion

Guangzhou, the Canton Fair.

October in the south is still hot and humid, but what's even hotter than the weather is the crowd in front of the "Red Star Electronics" booth.

This may be the craziest scene in the history of the Canton Fair.

Just a few hours ago, this was just an inconspicuous corner with a few handwritten posters hanging there. But when the first prototype was turned on and the familiar Tetris background music started playing, the entire exhibition hall instantly descended into chaos.

"Line up! Please line up!"

The staff member, covered in sweat, shouted through a megaphone, but his voice was instantly drowned out by shouts in various languages.

"I want 10,000 units! Cash! I have US dollars in cash!" A Middle Eastern businessman with a full beard waved a thick wad of US dollars, trying to climb over the cordon.

"Get out of my way! I'm the purchasing manager of Carrefour France! We're buying this entire shipment!" A European man in a fine suit was jostled and lost his shoes, looking utterly disheveled.

"Make way! Make way! I work for Walmart in the US..."

At the outermost edge of the crowd stood several Asian faces with gloomy expressions.

They were wearing black suits with badges on their chests featuring a unique "N"-shaped variant of the logo.

That was a delegation from Nintendo, the electronics giant from Japan. The delegation was led by Koichi Yamada, the deputy head of the marketing department.

"Yamada-kun, is it really that exaggerated?"

An assistant looked at the frenzied crowd with some disdain, "Isn't it just a game console that can only play blocks? We've had our Game & Watch for a long time."

"You don't understand."

Koichi Yamada's face was ashen, and he was clutching the "Red Star GB" prototype that he had just managed to snatch with great difficulty.

"This is not a toy."

He pressed the power button with trembling hands.

The screen lit up. It wasn't one of those blurry, low-end LCD screens, but a dot-matrix screen with extremely high contrast and a very fast response time.

As the boot animation flashed by, the clear words "Powered by RedStar" came into view.

"Give it a try." Yamada handed the machine to his assistant. "Play a game."

The assistant took the machine and began operating it nonchalantly.

The block falls.

Move left, move right, rotate, accelerate.

A minute later, the assistant's expression changed.

"This...this feel..."

The assistant looked up in disbelief. "It's so smooth! The button feedback, the screen refresh rate, and the sound... Is this really an 8-bit machine? It feels even better than the next-generation console we're still developing!"

"Of course it's strong."

Koichi Yamada gritted his teeth and said, "I just had a knowledgeable technician look at it. The chips used in this machine have a clock speed of 3MHz! And they're manufactured using a 1-micron process!"

"What?!"

The assistant nearly dropped the machine. "3MHz? 1 micrometer? Have the Chinese gone mad? Using missile-grade chips to make a game console? How much would one cost? Five hundred dollars? Or a thousand dollars?"

"This is the scariest place."

Koichi Yamada pointed to the huge price tag above the booth.

Written in bright red paint above was a number that would leave all competitors in despair:

$49.90.

"Forty-nine...dollars?"

The assistant felt dizzy. "This can't be! Our Game & Watch still has that old-fashioned segment display, and it's selling for $59! They're dumping it! They're doing charity!"

"No, they are committing massacre."

Koichi Yamada closed his eyes in despair. "Military-grade performance at street vendor prices. At this price, our products... are all garbage."

……

Meanwhile, in the temporary office behind the booth.

Su Zhengzheng sat with his legs crossed, sipping his herbal tea, listening to the clanging sounds of money being collected outside.

Sitting opposite him were several foreign trade department leaders who couldn't stop smiling.

"Minister Su, we've really made a name for ourselves this time!"

One of the leaders slapped his thigh excitedly, "I just did the math, and the potential orders this morning alone have exceeded fifty million US dollars! Fifty million! That's more than we make selling shirts for a whole year!"

"This is just the beginning."

Su Zheng put down his teacup and said calmly, "Game Boy is just an appetizer. We still have dessert to serve."

"Anything else?" The leader was stunned. "What could be more profitable than this?"

Su Zheng pulled a colorful, egg-sized plastic object out of his pocket.

It has a small chain hanging from it, only three buttons, and a screen that is only the size of a fingernail.

"What is this?" the leader asked curiously as he took it.

"This is called an 'electronic pet egg'."

Su Zheng smiled and said, "The Game Boy is for boys. This is for girls and office workers."

"There's an electronic dinosaur living in here. You need to feed it, clean its poop, and play with it every day. If you don't take good care of it, it will die. If you take good care of it, it will evolve."

"this one?"

The leader was somewhat incredulous, "Anyone actually plays with this thing?"

"This thing exploits human 'maternal instinct' and 'loneliness'."

Su Zheng pointed to the egg, "Moreover, its cost is extremely low. It uses those 'leftover' chips with the lowest yield rate, which even the Game Boy wouldn't use. The cost... is probably less than two yuan."

"So, how much are you planning to sell it for?"

$19.9.

"Cough cough cough!"

The leader spat out a mouthful of tea. "How much? Over a hundred RMB? Selling this plastic egg? This...this is faster than robbing a bank!"

"Give it a try."

Su Zheng hung the egg on his boss's briefcase. "You can take it back and let your granddaughter try it. I bet she won't be able to sleep tonight."

……

As it turns out, Su Zheng's grasp of human nature was even more accurate than his grasp of technology.

If the Game Boy was a bombshell, then "digital pets" were a viral phenomenon.

When these colorful "eggs" appeared on the display stand, the ladies who had originally come to shop with their husbands or fathers were instantly captivated.

"Oh! So cute!"

"It's hungry! It's meowing!"

"I want to buy this! Give me a dozen!"

In less than two hours, all 50,000 "electronic pet eggs" brought by Su Zheng were snapped up.

Those low-end chips that were originally considered "industrial waste" have been transformed into money-printing machines that are even more profitable than gold.

In the evening, a victory celebration banquet was held.

Old Chen was drunk and wouldn't let go of Su Zheng's hand.

"Minister Su, I'm convinced. I'm truly convinced."

Old Chen stammered, "I used to think that manufacturing meant building big machines and huge lumps of iron. I never imagined... that this little toy could bring in so much foreign exchange! With this money, our Workshop 701... our Phase II project..."

"The second phase of the project can be started immediately."

Su Zheng took a sip of his drink, his eyes clear. "With this money, we can buy better centrifuges and purer reagents. We can even... try smuggling a few used ion implanters."

"As long as the funding chain is in operation, our technology iteration can get started."

Su Zheng looked out at the night sky. "Today we're selling toys. Tomorrow, we'll sell computers. The day after, we'll sell standards."

……

Across the ocean, in Japan, at the headquarters of Nintendo.

The atmosphere was as somber as if a memorial service were being held.

President Hiroshi Yamauchi stared at the disassembled "Red Star GB" on the table, his face so gloomy it could drip water.

"We lost."

The technical director, head bowed and voice hoarse, said, "Whether it's the hardware architecture or the design of that game called 'Tetris,' we've lost miserably. This machine's performance is sufficient to run complex action games, while our product... is still playing with LCD stickers."

"How could the Chinese possibly create such a thing?"

Hiroshi Yamauchi abruptly smashed the teacup in his hand. "Isn't their semiconductor industry still stuck in the Stone Age? What's going on with this chip? What's with this packaging technology?"

No one can answer that.

That chip, its serial number polished off and now bearing only a single red five-pointed star, was like a black ghost, mocking their ignorance.

"Price reduction".

Hiroshi Yamauchi gritted his teeth and ordered, "Follow suit and lower prices! No matter the cost, we can't lose the market!"

"President... we can't lower the price."

Marketing Deputy Manager Koichi Yamada said with a long face, "Our cost is $35, selling it for $49 is just asking for trouble. And... and I've heard that Red Star Corporation is already developing the next generation of color screen printers..."

"Baka!"

Hiroshi Yamauchi slumped into a chair.

He knew that an era had ended.

That era of Japanese video game monopoly was abruptly cut short before it could fully begin, by a ghost from the desert.

……

Christmas 1978 was a red Christmas for Western children.

In New York, in London, in Paris, in Tokyo.

Under the Christmas trees of countless families, there is that gray box with the red star logo.

"Mom! I got a Game Boy!"

The children's cheers resounded throughout the world.

Behind these cheers was a steady stream of foreign exchange flowing like a tide to the distant East, to that mysterious base codenamed 001.

In Workshop 701, new equipment is being installed.

More advanced lithography machines are being tested.

Ye Xinyi sat in front of her newly purchased high-performance workstation, with new code flashing on the screen.

It was a circular icon.

Below is a line of text:

Project: RedFlag OS (Pre-Alpha)

Project: Red Flag Operation System (Pre-research Version)

Su Zheng stood behind her, looking at the icon.

"Games are just a means, not an end."

Su Zheng said softly, "We've taken over their living room with toys. Next, we're going to use this..."

He pointed to the operating system kernel on the screen.

"Go and take over their studies, take over their offices, take over their...brains."

"What's the next step?" Ye Xinyi asked without turning her head.

"We have enough money, and the people should be in place by now."

Su Zheng looked at the world map on the wall, his gaze falling on that point on the west coast of the United States—Silicon Valley.

"Some people have been wandering for too long. It's time to bring them home."

Su Zheng smiled slightly. "I heard that a company called 'Fairchild' is going out of business? And a Chinese genius surnamed Huang is looking for a job?"

"Xinyi, please book me a plane ticket."

"Where to?"

"Hong Kong." Su Zheng straightened his collar. "I'm going to see a few 'old friends,' and while I'm at it... to set up a bigger scheme."

……