Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 30 : July Is Still in the Backup

The blue register book at the guard post lay open on the desk, a pen tied to the corner of the desk with a dirty string. She wrote her name, paused at the ”work unit” column, and filled in Zhengping Law Firm. The guard flipped the courtʼs letter to the last page, made out the red seal, then raised the barrier and pointed into the building: turn left, second floor, donʼt wander.

Ma Jianjun parked his electric scooter by the row of iron railings outside the wall. The guard looked at him, then at her. She told him to wait here. He said he wasnʼt going in—”whether or not I actually made that run that day, the paper in there will say. Iʼll wait at the gate.”

The second-floor conference room had a long table. On the wall, a strip of tape residue hadnʼt been fully peeled off. The court clerk who came was very young. When she came in, she first counted the people present, then pulled three Confidentiality Undertakings out of a kraft paper document envelope and laid them out one by one. Lü Hang sat opposite her, his tie pulled tight, a laptop at hand. Lu Jibai sat beside him, his overcoat draped over the back of the chair, saying nothing.

The man from Yunfan Cloud pushed open the door and came in. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight, blue work jacket, a badge on his chest, two access cards strung on the lanyard, a plastic document basket in his hand, and an empty disk case lying in the basket. He glanced at the screen first, then looked up and said, ”Iʼm Engineer Ruan, on duty. Everything requested today is on this machine.”

”Let me start with procedure,” Lü Hang said. ”Todayʼs retrieval scope covers the access, operation, and backup logs. It does not cover business data. Restoring duplicate copies of business data exceeds the scope, and our side reserves its position.”

”What I applied for is the backup and recovery records.” She pushed the courtʼs retrieval order forward an inch. ”Which day the logs were cleared and who cleared them—thatʼs what the backup has.”

The clerk wrote down both sidesʼ statements and had them sign. After she signed, Lü Hang added a line under his signature: ”reserve objection to scope.” The clerk recorded that too.

Engineer Ruan typed a few keys. ”The channel youʼre asking about—its logs were cleared once.” He turned the screen around, and a work order appeared on the projection: December 10, 10:46 a.m. The submitter was an account made up of letters and numbers. The reason column read ”data governance.” The cleanup scope column contained only one channel number. In the approver column was a printed name—Wang Yuhai.

”Were you the ones who cleared it, or did they submit it?”

”The customer submits the work order, and we carry it out. The work order stays on file. Who submitted it, what day it was submitted, who approved it—itʼs all there.”

”Only this one channel was cleared?”

”The scope is filled in by the customer. We donʼt control which channel he clears.”

She opened her hardcover notebook and copied down the date, the time, and that line of channel number, finally writing down Wang Yuhaiʼs name. When she finished, she looked up. ”The statement they submitted on the eighth says that July through September ʼcan no longer be retrieved.ʼ Two days later, they submitted a work order themselves to clear this channelʼs logs.”

The clerk recorded that as well. Lü Hang tapped his fingers on the laptop twice and didnʼt respond.

”Is that cleared segment of logs in the backup?”

”Logs donʼt go into backups,” Engineer Ruan said. ”The only thing that can prove it was cleared is this work order.”

”Print a copy of the work order and attach it to the record,” she said.

Engineer Ruan looked at the clerk. The clerk nodded. ”Print it. Stamp it.”

[Thud. The person who cleared the logs left behind a work order pointing at himself.]

”How long do you keep backups?” Lu Jibai asked, his voice low.

Engineer Ruan paused for a beat before answering. ”One year.”

”Who set that number?”

”Itʼs written in the contract. The customer can also change it in the backend themselves.”

Lu Jibai didnʼt ask anything else. Lü Hang tilted his head toward him, then quickly turned back.

One year. In her mind, she turned over that ledger: July 18 to today, a hundred and forty-eight days. The days that a ninety-day window couldnʼt cover were still in the backup.

”I request restoration,” she said. ”Limited to the three business data tables—dispatch, settlement, and attendance—for July 1 through September 30.”

Lü Hang opened his laptop. ”Restoring duplicate copies of business data—our side—”

”Attorney Lü.” The clerk looked up, carried her phone over to the window, spoke in a low voice for a while, then came back and said, ”Restore it. Limit it to those three tables, up to September 30. The restored material is to be sealed on the spot. Each side keeps one duplicate copy. The material is for this case only, and the undertakings each side signed will hold you to that.”

”If it goes quickly, by three this afternoon,” Engineer Ruan said.

At noon she came out. Ma Jianjun was squatting at the base of the wall, his hands tucked into his sleeves. Inside the wall, two rows of air conditioner condenser units were all running, humming through the wall. Next to the guard post was a sheet-metal stove selling baked flatbread. She bought two, one for each of them, steam rising from the mouth of the paper bag.

”Three oʼclock.”

”What about three oʼclock?”

”At three, weʼll know whether that page in the machine still exists.”

”And if it does?”

”If it does, then that day you really did run it.”

Ma Jianjun lowered his head and bit into the flatbread, his cheeks bulging. After a while he said, ”That day the rain was heavy. I fell on the bridge. The scar on my knee is still there. The station people said, if itʼs not in the system, then it doesnʼt exist.”

She didnʼt answer. She crumpled the flatbread wrapper into a ball. The wind came from the north, making the plastic sheeting hanging on the iron railings rattle.

At exactly three oʼclock, Engineer Ruan set a disk case on the table, a printed label affixed to the front. He also handed over a Data Recovery Statement: backup cycle, recovery time, data table names, and on the last line a checksum, a string of letters and numbers.

”Whatʼs been recovered can be copied from this disk as read-only, not writeable. No matter how many copies you make, the checksum stays the same.”

The clerk copied the checksum into the record. Four copies were made in total: one sealed and kept by the court, one for each side, and one for Yunfan Cloud to keep on file. Lü Hang shoved his duplicate into his briefcase on the spot. Her copy was wrapped in kraft paper and then covered with another layer of plastic.

Someone opened the restoration result on the screen. Lü Hangʼs first sentence was to have Engineer Ruan narrow the scope to just Ma Jianjunʼs account; the information on the other people in the list was irrelevant to this case.

”Just have that requirement entered into the record,” Lu Jibai said.

The screen scrolled down to the July 18 entry. Account: Ma Jianjun. Station: Chengnan Station No. 1. Clock-in: 6:40. Dispatch method: ”system dispatch.” Dispatching entity: a full name—Hurricane Express (Jiangzhou) Network Technology Co., Ltd. Overtime deduction: 30 yuan, recorded against the platform settlement account. The account the money came out of: Wang Yuhai.

[Thud. The hand that assigns the work and the hand that pays the money are not the same hand.]

She copied that page into her notebook word by word. Below it, the screen still showed the station list, a string of station names that couldnʼt be scrolled to the end. Under each station name were rows and rows of accounts, with Chengnan Station No. 1 at the very top. This disk contained more than just Ma Jianjunʼs name.

”Who signs this statement?”

”Iʼll sign.” Engineer Ruan fished a pen out of the basket and wrote his name and the date on the last page.

[Thud. Backups keep records for people; they donʼt speak for them.]

The wind was even stronger when they came out of the building. Lü Hangʼs car was parked at the bottom of the steps. He got in and drove away. Lu Jibai didnʼt get into the car. Carrying a document envelope, he walked toward the bus stop. Ma Jianjun wheeled out his electric scooter and looked at that receding figure. ”That Hengzheng guy takes the bus too?”

”I donʼt know.”

”I thought they all drove.”

At 7:40, Zhengping Noodle House. Two of the three tables downstairs were occupied. He Xiufen was peeling garlic by the kitchen door. A phone on the table chimed with two voice messages. Xiao Duan was calling out in the group chat: the station was pressing them about their business licenses again. She spread the copy out on the table and, through the steam, read aloud to Ma Jianjun:

”Account: Ma Jianjun. Clock-in at 6:40. Dispatch method: system dispatch. Dispatching entity: Hurricane Express (Jiangzhou) Network Technology Co., Ltd. Overtime deduction: thirty yuan.”

Ma Jianjun turned the paper around and pressed his finger over the cell with his name, holding it there for a long time before lifting it. He didnʼt recognize every word, but he recognized his own name.

”So that day counts as me having run it?”

”The machine remembered for you: at 6:40 you got to the station, the order was dispatched by the system, and the thirty yuan was deducted by the system too.”

”And the thirty yuan?”

”Itʼs on its books. Not one cent was refunded to you.”

”Make me a copy,” he said. ”Iʼll keep it in my pocket.”

She went into the back room and made a copy for him. He folded the paper into quarters, tucked it into the inner pocket of his padded jacket, and pressed it down.

He Xiufen came over wiping her hands, glanced at the statement, and finished it in a couple of lines. ”Tell me yourself—how many things does this disk make clear?”

”The platformʼs system dispatched the orders. The same system recorded the deductions and fines. The money came out of Wang Yuhaiʼs account.”

”Whatʼs missing?”

She thought for a moment. ”For a machine to manage people, someone has to press that button on the machine. Sun Jianhuaʼs backend key was issued by the platform.”

”One more thing.” He Xiufen laid her chopsticks across the bowl. ”The contracts. The outsourcing contracts between those three entities are in their hands. You say the system is managing people. They say the system is only a tool and itʼs the station that manages people—once the contracts come out, who handed work to whom is right there on paper.”

”The documentary evidence is in the other sideʼs hands. We can apply to the court to order them to produce it.”

”So on this disk, is there only Ma Jianjun?” He Xiufen asked.

”The station column scrolls down without end. Under Chengnan Station No. 1 thereʼs a row of accounts, and there are ones for the north and east of the city too.”

He Xiufen dried her hands on her apron. ”What goes to the court tomorrow is the three tables in your application, not this whole disk. What you hand over and what you keep on you are not the same thing—hold on to that point.”

”Two things tomorrow: get this disk to the court before the nineteenth, and file the application for the contracts. Lü Hang is talking about administrative reconsideration to drag you past the evidence submission deadline. Donʼt get dragged along with him.”

The landline in the back room rang. He Xiufen answered and listened for a moment, then covered the receiver and called upstairs for her.

”Hengzheng. That Lu guy.”

She came downstairs and took the receiver. The other end spoke first: tomorrow afternoon he was free, and she could choose the place. She asked what it was about. The other end paused, then said, ”Some things are better said face-to-face.”

She put the receiver back. He Xiufen sat down and resumed peeling garlic. Only after peeling two cloves did she speak. ”In that room today, what did he ask?”

”How long backups are kept, and who set that number.”

”Anything else?”

”He had Lü Hang enter the checksum into the record.”

He Xiufen swept the garlic skins aside. ”If he really wanted to win this case, he wouldnʼt have needed to ask any one of those three things. Go tomorrow. And when you go, ask him one thing—who exactly is he guarding this case for?”

Upstairs in the small room, the case file lay open on the desk. She listed what she needed to submit tomorrow: the restored material, the explanatory statement, and the checksum from the retrieval transcript. After listing those three items, the pen tip stopped on the paper. She placed the disk, still in its kraft paper, under the hardcover notebook and pressed down on it.

Through the two layers of paper, the disk was cold. As for the first thing he would say tomorrow afternoon, she couldnʼt guess a single word.