We simply couldn’t obey his orders fast enough for him, and Abing seemed to be growing anxious. He stood up and asked if he could handle the radio himself. He turned the dials several times, finally settling on a precise number of revolutions per minute. He instructed Section Chief Chen to switch stations at this rate. Chen and I were both stupefied. The rate at which Abing wanted the channels to be switched was five times the normal speed. At this speed, neither I nor Chen could discern anything; the radio seemed to be uttering one long continuous ‘dash’ or ‘dot’. At that speed, all the different sounds seemed to merge into an indeterminate whine. To use an inadequate analogy, imagine that you were attempting to identify a particular signal amongst the airwaves, similar to trying to find a single soundtrack on a recording. Because what you are looking for is mixed up amongst so many other things that everything seems to be more or less the same, naturally you would want to use a normal rate of speed to scan through the airwaves, and even then it might not be all that easy to find what you are looking for. But suppose that as you are scanning through the broadcast waves, someone asks you to increase the speed at which you are working. Of course, such an increase in speed would save time, but everything would blow by you in an instant; it’d all be a blur. How could you identify what you are looking for?

It would be impossible!

Section Chief Chen looked at me and seemed to be at a loss as to what to do.

I considered for a moment and then thought that since Abing had already grown somewhat agitated before, it was better to do as he said. After all, though it was impossible for us, maybe Abing could do it. So Section Chief Chen followed Abing’s instructions. To my ears, it all sounded like indistinguishable static and I started to become nervous; it was impossible for me to sit still. But Abing sat quietly upon the sofa, still smoking his cigarette, listening in the same intense manner as before, his fingers tapping away on the armrest.

Ten minutes.

Twenty minutes.

Half an hour passed.

Abruptly, Abing shouted, ‘Stop!’ He then instructed Section Chief Chen to turn the dial back to the previous frequency; he wanted to listen to it one more time. ‘Slower … yes, that’s it, this one. Save this frequency, tune it a bit more …’

Section Chief Chen attempted to fine-tune the signal.

Abing listened for a moment and then began to nod his head. ‘Unmistakable: it’s this one.’ He laughed and then said to me, ‘This is more difficult than identifying broadcasts on my radio.’