Chapter 5: The Son Has Grown Up

After purchasing the candy, fountain pen, ink, and loose-leaf paper, Ernie pedaled his bicycle home without a moment’s rest.

At home, Mary had finished the laundry and canning fruit. She was sitting in the living room, using a pencil to map out the household expenses in her ledger while listening to *Dan Harding’s Wife* on the radio. Unlike George, Mary rarely concerned herself with the state of the war in Europe; she much preferred the soap operas on NBC. Such dramas usually focused on domestic life and emotional entanglements. Mary seemed to find some resonance in them, or perhaps she simply used them as a distraction to help her forget the war looming just over the horizon.

When she saw Ernie return, Mary looked up from her ledger immediately, her eyes filled with hope. "Ernie, how much did you get in workers' compensation? It should at least be two weeks' pay, right?"

She was banking on two weeks of his salary—twenty-four dollars—which would be a significant boost to their budget. It would allow her to go to the market, buy more vegetables and fruit, and put up more preserves. Although Mary didn’t believe the United States would enter the war, she believed in being prepared; stocking up on non-perishable food was never a bad idea in these turbulent times.

"Uh..." Ernie rubbed his nose. "Unfortunately, Mom, the compensation I received was a pitiful two-thirds of a week's pay."

"What?" Mary let out a howl, her voice sounding as if someone had pulled on the elastic band of her undergarments and suddenly let go. "Damn those capitalists!"

"I bought candy, a fountain pen, ink, and loose-leaf paper," Ernie said, trying to lighten the mood. "The bag of candy cost seventy-five cents, the Waterman entry-level fountain pen was one dollar and ten cents, and the hundred sheets of loose-leaf paper cost twenty cents. The good news is, when I bought the pen, the owner thought I looked handsome and gave me a bottle of ink for free."

"You are a handsome young man, that you get from me," Mary said with a smile, her brow finally smoothing out as she recorded Ernie’s expenses in the ledger. In these lean times, the key to managing a household was "bookkeeping"; it saved the family a great deal of money. It was thanks to Mary’s frugal nature that a family of four could stay fed and clothed on a limited income.

"But why did you buy so much loose-leaf paper?" Mary wasn't being stingy, but Ernie had never spent money on stationery before.

"Well, I thought I’d try to do a little studying now and then," Ernie said, telling a small, effortless lie.

Mary misunderstood, unaware that Ernie simply wanted to "secretly become a great writer behind everyone's back." She sighed and said with a touch of shame, "Once we get through these days, I'll see if George can find another job at the factory. Maybe then, you'll be able to go back to school."

*Poor George,* Ernie thought.

"Mom, I don’t exactly have a talent for schoolwork," Ernie said, realizing the misunderstanding. He took a piece of candy from the paper bag and handed it to her.

Mary tucked her worries away, sucked on the candy, and went back to her ledger and the soap opera. Ernie poured the remaining candy into a glass jar, then retreated into his room, using the excuse of "writing a resume" to lock himself away and begin his work.

Counting the hours, he didn’t have much time for writing. His sister would be home from school by four o'clock. Liu Cixin’s *Morning News* was about 16,000 Chinese characters long; using a standard translation ratio of 1 to 1.5, he would need to write roughly 24,000 English words. His speed with a fountain pen was around 500 words per hour, not including time spent thinking. If he wanted to finish the story quickly, he had to race against the clock.

The good news was that the strength of Liu’s stories lay in their plot rather than their literary prose, so he could recreate a similar story by following the narrative arc. The most convenient aspect was that Liu’s cold, detached writing style was easy to translate into English. The only thing he had to be careful about was that the theory of "vacuum decay" didn’t exist yet, so he would need to explain the theory within the story itself.

A realization dawned on him: his strategy for plagiarism should focus on narrative strength rather than literary merit. But then again, isn’t writing a novel just telling a story? In a literary world currently obsessed with prose, a novel with a strong narrative might just emerge as a dark horse.

Sitting at the only desk in his bedroom, Ernie entered a state of flow and began to write. The words spilled from his mind onto the nib of his pen, forming slanted script:

*"There is something I have wanted to tell you for a long time," John said to his wife and daughter. "Most of the space in my heart is occupied by physics; I have only managed to squeeze out a small corner for you. It pains me, but there is truly no other way."*

*His wife, Linda, replied, "You’ve told me that two hundred times."*

*His ten-year-old daughter, Lily, added, "And a hundred times to me."*

*John shook his head. "But you have never understood the true meaning of my words. You do not understand what physics truly is."*

*Linda laughed. "As long as it isn't a woman, I don't care."*

*At that moment, the family of three was sitting in a small car traveling at five hundred kilometers per hour, driving through a steel pipe five meters in diameter. The pipe was thirty thousand kilometers long, circling the Earth along the 45th parallel north.*

Liu’s story was easy to adapt, and Ernie had no trouble aligning the elements with the current era. He changed the background to a world where the Allies had defeated the Axis powers and, having conquered the Earth, were now focused on "conquering the solar system," consolidating all human resources to focus on technological breakthroughs. Thus, the "Equatorial Accelerator" was born. Ernie chuckled to himself, feeling as though he were writing something like *The Man in the High Castle*.

It wasn't until noon, when Mary called him for lunch, that Ernie pulled himself out of the story. He rubbed his wrist and looked at the pages filled with handwriting, a sudden sense of satisfaction rising in his chest. As it turned out, every writer who complained about the "drudgery of writing" was secretly hooked; it was like a craft—even if it took a toll on the body, one couldn't help but be drawn to it.

"What have you been doing in your room all morning?" Mary asked. "And why are you rubbing your wrist..."

Mary stopped mid-sentence, the plate of macaroni in her hands hovering in the air. She looked at Ernie, and her expression shifted. *Could it be... has my son finally grown up?*

*Of course! He’s an eighteen-year-old young man! Some boys were taken to the courthouse by their parents to get married at fourteen!*

"Here, son, have some more meat," Mary said, a meaningful smile spreading across her face as she turned back to the kitchen to grab another can of luncheon meat.

"Mom, what’s put you in such a good mood?" Ernie asked, curious as to why the meal was so extravagant today.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Mary said. "By the way, son, what kind of girl do you like? Let Mom see if I can find someone for you at church."

Ernie: "?"