Chapter 93: The Dawn of the Big Data Era

Fat Girl, Unit 25 screamed, “Is this leaving anyone alive? How can you expect us to exchange such terrible-tasting food for something?”

Feng, Unit 3: “Anyway, my family still has plenty of pepper and soy sauce to trade for rice. Those clothes and bedding can only be exchanged for mushrooms.”

Wang Cuihua sent a voice message: “Who would want to exchange such disgusting food? Aren’t they deliberately trying to incite more people to commit robberies?”

Wang Qiqi, Unit 13 said: “@Everyone, by the way, I forgot to mention, now you can also exchange kitchen knives, machetes, various metal sticks, etc., for a piece of meat or a bun. If your family has kitchen knives, you can go trade them. I heard the quota is limited, so if you go late, there won’t be any left. Anyway, no one is cooking anymore, so just exchange what you have.”

Wang Cuihua sent another voice message: “With the chaos outside, who dares to exchange knives? We need to keep some defenses. But we can look outside. Also, we can go into the houses of those deceased in our community to grab some knives for food, right?”

Wang Qiqi, Unit 13: “Yes, the keys are all with me. Let’s search tomorrow and see if there’s anything useful left.”

Jing Shu squinted her eyes. Yes, she didn’t quite understand in her past life, but now she seemed to get it. It seemed like the government was doing this on purpose. If people didn’t want to eat the free food and started causing trouble or complaining, then they would switch to another method.

There’s no such thing as something for nothing. If you want to eat, you have to give something in return.

Jing Shu now realized, appreciating the government’s clever tactic. By using this small method, they could clearly separate those willing to obediently eat the communal meals from those who would resort to robbery, thus providing clear-cut data for big data analytics.

Those who refused to exchange anything would continue to commit robberies, while those who were willing to trade items for food generally wouldn’t engage in theft.

In the era of big data in 2023, no one had any privacy in the face of big data.

For example, a person’s location, what food they received at a certain time, through mobile phone location tracking, what places they visited at specific times, how long they stayed there, even chat monitoring, property assessments, and purchasing power.

Frankly speaking, it’s possible to know where you were with your lover and how many times you had intimate encounters in a week.

Even the Wucheng police could track where deaths occurred and what cases happened there, which people visited those places during that time, and use satellite imagery and surveillance captures to identify suspects.

Soon, everyone would have a score linked to their ID cards. The higher the score, the more dangerous the person was considered, indicating a higher likelihood of having committed robberies or murders.

Jing Shu told Wang Dazhao to absolutely avoid being caught by cameras or scanned by information systems, implying that if a person frequently appeared at crime scenes like murder or robbery sites, they would be classified as “high-risk criminals.”

Some people thought that not carrying a phone or having no tracking records would keep them safe, but big data would still analyze things like whether you collected food, your past purchasing power, and your previous buying habits to determine and analyze your behavior.

If the data showed that you had no money, hadn’t bought anything, hadn’t stockpiled grain, but suddenly appeared to collect free food without any prior record, where have you been during this time?

Such people often received the highest scores and were deemed “high-probability criminals.” If they were also captured by satellites or cameras, or had phone records showing they visited chaotic places, and their communications indicated involvement in robberies, they would be recorded as suspects.

This is the power of the big data era—few can escape it. The most crucial point is that everyone now believes the world is ending, the government is indifferent, and the police aren’t coming out to catch criminals. They think they can do whatever they want without any precautions.

After all, without a third party present, without being discovered, and without police involvement, these people couldn’t have imagined that their whereabouts would be so transparently tracked.

Originally, big data was invented by “Ma Baba” (a fictional name, possibly a reference to a powerful figure) to expand business and make money. No one thought it would be used to catch people in the apocalypse.

When the government of Wucheng first tried to quell unrest and robberies through free food distribution, this plan failed. They then initiated a second plan: using various materials to exchange for food.

The goal was to incite robbers to commit secondary crimes and use big data to record who had collected free food and then had no records of exchange. These individuals would be placed under the surveillance network for close monitoring.

Oh, and if Jing Shu remembers correctly, big data started in 2017. When the dark days began, “Ma Baba” had already succeeded in this area. Now, “Ma Baba” was responsible for using big data to monitor the entire China, analyzing who might be criminals and other related tasks.

It proved that truly capable people are formidable wherever they are.

The next day, when Jing Shu’s family went to Aijia Supermarket to collect water again, the supermarket had changed significantly for the third time. They had added a place for recycling old items, divided into seasoning, metal knives, and household goods sections.

The scene was bustling with people holding their items in the respective sections. Recycling kitchen knives, machetes, and other lethal weapons offered cooked meat or buns on the spot, attracting countless people eager to exchange. Some had already planned to swap one or two knives, frantically thinking about what else they could offer from their homes.

Some even with schemes in mind thought of stealing knives from kitchen stores or finding metal sticks from factories to exchange.

The seasoning recycling involved large barrels. Based on weight assessment, the staff would scan IDs once, completing a seasoning exchange.

Recycling bed sheets and clothes had the longest queues. While there weren’t many people with seasoning left at home, there was quite an abundance of clothes and fabrics.

Jing’s grandmother: “Jing Shu, look what they’re doing here?”

Jing Shu: “Grandma, they’re recycling old items. For example, you give seasoning to the staff since everyone at home has nothing to eat. The staff will scan your ID records, treating it like loading money onto your ID card. With your ID, you can collect white rice.”

Jing’s grandmother: “They’re so high-tech.”

Jing Shu always thought that the knife and metal exchange tactic was ruthless. In the short term, it might not seem significant, but within three months, no one in China would be able to hold onto their knives unless they were wealthy. Since robbers were accustomed to eating white rice, when they finally couldn’t steal anymore, they’d have to exchange knives for food.

Food was originally meant for the common people to eat. The state wasn’t losing anything, but by exchanging and collecting unused knives, those intending to rob were disarmed, effectively removing their “tiger teeth” and reducing the frequency of unequal-force robberies.

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Author's Note:

While eating, I rushed to finish the manuscript and even posted some pictures for everyone to see. Thanks to *Yueyue's Fairy Tale*, *Tian Qiuqiu*, and *Yaya Qiao* for their generous rewards! 🥰