Reality Programming Association

Chapter 113: Chapter 46: ”Major Discovery

”Wen Xiao, something’s come up. I have to go. Be careful on your way back to campus.”

”Oh...”

Wen Xiao froze for a moment. She lowered her head and bit her lip, but she quickly looked back up.

”Wait! Yu Xian, don’t go yet. I want to show you something!”

She pulled out her laptop, had Yu Xian hold it for her, and started searching through its files.

”These past few days, besides researching that audio file, I also made a little something...”

”’A little something?’” Yu Xian looked down at the screen, curious.

”Yeah! It’s a... a chat application. It doesn’t have a name yet,” Wen Xiao said as she worked on the computer.

”A chat application? Are you trying to start a business?” Yu Xian was a bit confused.

”The IM—instant messaging—field is so saturated and monopolized by giants. Why would you want to make a new chat app?”

”It’s not a normal chat app!” Wen Xiao’s confidence clearly grew as the conversation shifted to her area of expertise.

”With the internet and all communications down these last few days, we’ve been completely cut off from the outside world. It felt so helpless and hopeless! So I started thinking... could I make a piece of software that allows for long-distance communication without relying on the internet or cell towers?”

Yu Xian frowned.

’No internet? No cell towers? Then how does it communicate? Telepathy?’

’Without a medium, how could you transmit information?’

’This isn’t some fantasy novel. How could something like that even exist?’

Wen Xiao lifted her chin, looking a little smug.

”Hehe, I bet you haven’t heard of this, have you? The principle isn’t actually new. Do you know about Apple’s AirTag tracker?”

”I do,” Yu Xian nodded. He used to follow developments in the tech world quite closely.

”You hang it on your keys, and even if you lose them, you can use the location data on your phone to track them down.”

”Then have you ever wondered how that little thing—with no SIM card, no Wi-Fi connection, not even a GPS module—updates and transmits its location to your phone?”

Yu Xian paused. He’d never really thought about that before. He ventured a guess, ”Could it be through Bluetooth? But that’s not right... Bluetooth’s range is only about ten meters. It can’t cover that long of a distance...”

Yu Xian was stumped. ’Yeah, that really is a blind spot.’

”Because it uses Apple’s ’Find My’ network.”

Wen Xiao explained:

”Apple has hundreds of millions of devices around the world. When you lose your AirTag, as soon as any iPhone passes by it—even if the owner is a total stranger—their phone will secretly pick up the AirTag’s Bluetooth signal, encrypt the location data, upload it to the cloud, and finally push it to your phone.”

Yu Xian’s eyes widened in realization.

”So that’s how it works... It turns every passerby into a signal relay station?”

”Exactly. It’s called a ’Bluetooth crowdsourced network,’ and my software works on the same principle!”

Wen Xiao pointed excitedly at the screen.

”When you send a message to someone a few kilometers away, even though you have no network and your Bluetooth can’t connect directly, the message will use an algorithm to ’hop’ to the nearest phone, Phone B. Then Phone B will hop it to C, C to D... and so on, until it reaches the target phone!”

”’Like a relay race?’” Yu Xian understood.

”Yes! That’s why I’m calling it a ’Multi-Hop Relay Communication Protocol.’ As long as everyone installs this app on their phone, every single device becomes a miniature signal tower.”

Wen Xiao looked at Yu Xian, her face clearly fishing for a compliment.