[Fat Girl No. 25]: "Are they even letting people live anymore? This food tastes terrible, and they still expect us to trade for it!" The complaint was followed by a string of angry emojis.
[Feng No. 3]: "Well, I still have plenty of pepper and soy sauce saved to trade for rice. Clothes and bedding, though, can only be exchanged for mushrooms, not the good stuff." A pragmatic assessment.
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message, "Who'd want to trade for such disgusting food? They're just doing this on purpose to make more people turn to looting. Mark my words."
[Wang Qiqi No. 13]: "@Everyone, oh, I almost forgot! They're also accepting kitchen knives, cleavers, and all kinds of metal clubs. One of those can be traded for a piece of meat or a steamed bun. If you have spare knives at home, go swap them! Supplies are limited, so go early or you'll miss out. No one's cooking anymore anyway, so just trade them."
Wang Cuihua replied "Who dares trade away knives when it's so chaotic outside? We need them for self defense. But we can look for more elsewhere. Oh, right, those who died in our community… we could search their houses and trade their knives for food, right?"
[Wang Qiqi No. 13]: "Yeah, sure. I've got all the keys. Let's search tomorrow and see if we find anything useful."
Jing Shu, reading the chat on her phone, narrowed her eyes. In her previous life, she hadn't quite grasped the full strategy, just endured the shifts. But this time, with hindsight, she got it. The government was doing this deliberately, a calculated chess move.
You don't want free food, you cause trouble, and you're picky? Fine, let's change tactics.
There's no such thing as getting something for nothing. If you want to eat, you have to pay a price.
Thinking it over now, Jing Shu had to admit a cold admiration for the brilliance of this plan. In just one simple, public move, they separated those willing to obediently eat the free, terrible food from those who preferred looting or hoarding, creating a stark, actionable divide in the data.
Those unwilling to trade anything, to give up even a useless knife or some old clothes, would likely continue to rob, their profiles marked by non participation. Those willing to trade, to engage with the system even in this small way, probably wouldn't be the ones out looting with those same knives. It was a filter.
It was 2023, the tail end of the era of big data, where privacy had been virtually nonexistent for years. The infrastructure was all still there, just repurposed.
Take a person's movements, for example: the exact date and time they collected food, where their phone's GPS (if they still had one charged) said they went next, how long they stayed there. Add in the monitoring of group chats, wealth assessments based on past purchase data, and spending habits, and you had a shockingly complete profile.
To put it bluntly, they probably even knew exactly where and how many times a week someone had been sneaking off to a love hotel with a lover before the collapse. The data didn't disappear.
In Wu City, the police had already been solving murders and other crimes with these methods for years. By reviewing who'd been in certain areas at certain times, cross referencing satellite photos, and catching faces on the surviving surveillance cameras, they could pinpoint suspects even in the chaos.
Soon, every time someone scanned their ID card for water or a trade, it would update their personal risk score in some hidden database. The higher the score, the more dangerous they were considered, likely having committed robbery, murder, or other crimes. The system was building a list.
This was precisely why Jing Shu had warned Wang Dazhao to avoid cameras and ID scans at all costs. Anyone frequently present at murder or robbery scenes, even by proximity data, would be flagged as high risk.
Some thought they were safe by leaving their phones behind. But big data also evaluated their recent food collection patterns, past spending levels, and purchase history. If you used to be broke, had no supplies stocked up according to old supermarket loyalty data, and only showed up for the initial free food but skipped every trade based food collection afterward, where had you been during that time? How were you eating?
Such people would earn the highest danger scores, quietly labeled as high probability criminals. If patchy surveillance footage or a stray phone ping later placed them in a suspicious area, a place that just so happened to have been robbed, their names would go straight into the enforcement database, a target.
That was the terrifying, silent power of big data. Almost no one could slip through its net once it was focused on public order.
Many captured criminals in her previous life couldn't believe how their movements were so thoroughly exposed, despite having no live witnesses or police nearby at the time. They didn't understand the digital ghost that followed them.
The system's goal now was clear: to push the looters into acting again, to force a move, and then use the accumulated data to track them. If someone had picked up free food the first week but disappeared from the distribution records afterward, never trading, they'd be placed under heavy, invisible watch.
And sure enough, the truly skilled always left traces, no matter how clever they thought they were. The digital world had long memory.
The next day, when Jing Shu's family went to Ai Jia Supermarket again to collect their meager water ration, they saw the place had changed dramatically for the third time. A new section had been hastily erected in the concrete square: a covered area to recycle unused household goods, divided into three clear sections, seasonings in one, metal knives and tools in another, and daily necessities like fabrics in a third.
The crowd buzzed with a nervous, speculative excitement as people lined up to trade, clutching bags and bundles. The knife recycling section was fenced off separately with sturdy metal barriers and had the most guards.
The biggest draw, as advertised, was trading in knives, metal clubs, and other potential weapons. In exchange, people got a small piece of cooked, unidentifiable meat on a stick or a plain steamed bun on the spot, handed over immediately. This simple, immediate reward tempted countless people, some already racking their brains for what else they could bring in from home or scavenge.
A few enterprising souls even considered, in whispers, stealing from shuttered knife shops or searching abandoned factories for iron rods to swap.
The seasonings section had large barrels on scales. Items were weighed, the person's ID card scanned, and the trade was logged to their profile like a credit system, presumably for future better rations.
The longest, slowest lines were for trading sheets, towels, and clothes. Most households had little seasoning left, but plenty of unused fabrics and old clothes now that no one went to work.
"Jing Shu, what are they doing over there?" Grandma Jing asked curiously, peering at the bustling new section as they passed with their water bottle.
"Grandma, they're collecting unused items. Like, you give them your spare spices. Since almost no one has good food to cook, seasonings are useless now for most. In return, they scan your ID, and it's like adding credit or proving you're cooperative. Then maybe later you can use your ID to get a bit of white rice instead of mushroom mash." Jing Shu explained it simply.
"So high tech!" Grandma Jing marveled, though her tone was skeptical.
Jing Shu had to admit, the knife trade was a ruthless stroke of genius. It wouldn't seem like much right away, just people getting rid of extra cleavers. But give it three months: anyone who still had a knife they hadn't traded, especially a good one, would stand out in the data as either wealthy enough not to need the trade, connected, or dangerous. Even hardened robbers, once they'd had their fill of stolen white rice and found themselves unable to steal more easily, would eventually, quietly hand over their spare knives for a guaranteed bun.
Grain was meant to feed the people anyway. The government wasn't losing anything by giving out mush. But by encouraging people to trade in unused knives, they'd pulled the tiger's teeth in advance, stripping potential robbers of easy weapons and reducing the tools for violent crimes. It was a quiet, clever disarmament.