The conference room attendant, Ethan Franklin, himself didn’t even know why he acted so impulsively. Taking advantage of the empty room during the lunch break, he wrote down that drawing number on Samuel Lawson’s notepad. When he saw Samuel Lawson’s gaze, sharp as an awl, fixed on him, he suddenly felt a bit uneasy:

　　Was it really appropriate to expose himself in such a blunt way?

　　Was he truly ready to rush to the forefront of this turbulent era right now?

　　Ethan Franklin was a temporary worker hired by the logistics department of the Metallurgical Bureau, recruited according to the “policy implementation” regulations. Previously, after graduating from junior high, he became a sent-down youth, working in a poor county under Nanjiang Province, wielding a hoe for more than three years. Only then did he return to the provincial capital with the wave of returning sent-down youths and enter the Metallurgical Bureau. Due to his low education, lack of skills, and the fact that the office discriminated somewhat against sent-down youths who weren’t from the “old three classes,” Ethan Franklin was assigned to the logistics department as a general laborer. His daily routine consisted of sweeping the corridors, fetching water, or working as a porter and the like.

　　This time, Samuel Lawson brought six or seven officials from the capital to the Metallurgical Bureau to discuss budget cuts, and Ethan Franklin was assigned to serve in the conference room. He and several other general workers had moved this pile of blueprints from the storeroom. He had done similar work more than a dozen times over the past year.

　　Every time the Japanese came for negotiations, Ethan Franklin and the others had to move several tons of blueprints from the storeroom to the conference room, then sort and stack them by category. During the negotiations, Ethan Franklin and his colleagues had to take turns on duty in the conference room, guarding against fire, theft, and spies… if there were any spies. When the negotiations ended, Ethan Franklin was again responsible for returning the blueprints to the storeroom for safekeeping, also sorting them by category so that the technical staff could access them at any time. It could be said that even engineers like John Lewis didn’t know these blueprints as thoroughly as Ethan Franklin did.

　　Of course, all this described the Ethan Franklin from more than ten days ago. The one now standing before Samuel Lawson was no longer the former returnee youth with only a junior high diploma, unable to even write the ABCs. Inside his body was a soul from forty years in the future.

　　As the director of the Strategic Department of the National Major Equipment Office, hailed as the youngest, most capable, and most promising reserve cadre, Ethan Franklin had no idea what mechanism he had accidentally triggered, but he had somehow been swept through the vastness of time and space, arriving in Nanjiang Province in 1980, possessing the body of a temporary worker in the Metallurgical Bureau. When he first arrived in this time and place, he wasn’t even used to the “Great Unity” design on the banknotes and couldn’t stand the cramped living quarters without a bathroom. After more than ten days, he had finally almost fully absorbed the original soul in the body, could calmly call his parents “Mom” and “Dad,” and had learned to dangle a cheap cigarette from his lips, slinging his arm around the shoulders of the other young guys in logistics, calling them brothers.

　　This coordination meeting was the first high-level meeting Ethan Franklin had attended since his time-travel, though to say he “attended” was really giving him too much credit—his role was only to serve tea and water. Until that very moment, Samuel Lawson hadn’t even looked at him directly; perhaps he hadn’t even noticed his presence in the conference room.

　　Others treated Ethan Franklin, standing in the corner, as if he were invisible, but Ethan Franklin himself felt deeply immersed in the proceedings. Listening to everyone talk endlessly, yet never hitting the key point, he had to restrain himself several times from rushing to the conference table, slapping it hard, and shouting: “All of you, shut up! This is not how things are at all!”

　　In his previous life, as the director of the Major Equipment Office, Ethan Franklin had attended countless coordination meetings of even higher level than this, and had participated in numerous negotiations with foreign businessmen. When it came to steel equipment, he knew every detail—nothing could escape his eyes. More importantly, regarding the 1780mm hot rolling mill at Nanjiang Steel Plant, Ethan Franklin had conducted specialized research. Like everyone in the conference room, he knew the history of this rolling mill, but he also knew its future in great detail.

　　When Ethan Franklin joined the Major Equipment Office, the 1780mm hot rolling mill at Nanjiang Steel Plant was still in operation, but it was already on the verge of being scrapped and dismantled. The introduction of this hot rolling mill had been a sensational event in the early 1980s, and also a very sensitive topic in the equipment industry. Some of the issues that arose during its introduction were always carefully avoided in public discussions.

　　Once, Ethan Franklin had the chance to deliver some holiday gifts to a retired senior leader. On the wall of the old leader’s home, he saw a yellowed blueprint, with the word “Shame” scrawled in thick red ink. At that time, Ethan Franklin was of low rank and little influence, so he naturally didn’t dare ask the leader about the story behind it. Later, by subtly inquiring with other colleagues, he learned that the blueprint came from the Nanjiang 1780 hot rolling mill, and that the old leader had been one of the officials involved in the negotiations for its introduction.

　　According to staff who had worked with the old leader back then, at the celebration banquet for the mill’s commissioning, the old leader got thoroughly drunk, and after returning to the guesthouse, broke down in tears, saying that the introduction of the 1780 hot rolling mill was the shame of his life. After dedicating most of his life to the revolution, he had, just before retirement, committed such a grave crime against the country and the people that he no longer had the face to meet the martyrs.