Carter stared intently at the radar screen. The coordinates matched the Marching Ant Company's warning almost perfectly, but everything felt… calm. No tremors. No strange weather. Not even the sound of an underwater quake rolling through the sonar.
Could the seismograph be a scam?
The thought crept in uninvited. A device that could predict earthquakes two hours in advance? It sounded like science fiction. If it were real, Marching Ant would be more than a tech company—they'd be rewriting the rules of disaster prevention.
As doubt bloomed in his mind, a sudden jolt rocked the entire warship.
Carter stumbled, slamming into the bulkhead. Crew members on the deck yelped, some falling, others grabbing onto railings to avoid being tossed overboard.
"What the hell was that?" Carter barked, straightening as the ship steadied.
"We're not sure," one crewman replied, his voice tight. "There's no storm. No wave surge. It felt like… something massive moved under us."
On the open sea, in calm weather, sudden movements like that meant only one thing.
Something was happening beneath them.
Carter's expression darkened. He didn't need a scientist to tell him the seismograph might be right. They were getting close.
"Resume course. Full speed to the signal source."
He had a mission: secure the Marching Ant instrument and return it for analysis. No matter what.
Half an hour later, the world changed.
The U.S. Geological Survey issued an urgent bulletin:
Western Pacific Ocean – 7.9 magnitude earthquake
Location: 37.2° N, 146.0° E
Depth: 20 km
A tsunami warning was immediately issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.
The Island Nation's Meteorological Bureau followed within minutes with their own confirmation and tsunami alert. The timing… was almost exactly two hours after the Marching Ant Company's vague "anomaly warning."
And just like that, the internet imploded.
In China, netizens had waited impatiently, fingers hovering over keyboards, skeptical eyes on the countdown. Some mocked. Others questioned. Many accused.
By the final twenty minutes, the Marching Ant Company's official Weibo had become a battlefield of sarcasm and insults.
"Still no earthquake. Snake oil confirmed?"
"Maybe it's just a submarine toilet flushing."
"How many billion RMB wasted on a toy?"
Some articles were already scheduled to publish headlines like "Marching Ant's Seismograph Exposed as Hype!"
Then came the quake.
A 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Exactly where the company warned. Exactly when they warned.
The world stopped.
In a dingy apartment in a southern coastal city, Liu Qiang stared at his screen. His face pale. Hands trembling.
He had just finished writing yet another paid smear piece against the Marching Ant Company. Another job for the "Water Corps," as online trolls-for-hire were called. Years of lies, twisted facts, coordinated harassment campaigns—for a paycheck.
But now…
They were right.
Liu Qiang dropped his cigarette, ignoring the embers on his shirt. His hometown had been leveled in an earthquake when he was a teenager. He had lost family. Friends. The memory was a scar that had never fully healed.
And now he realized that the company he had been paid to mock… was trying to prevent disasters like that.
Suddenly, his whole career felt disgusting.
Tears welled up, unbidden.
With shaking hands, he deleted the article draft, opened a new document, and began typing:
"We Owe Chen Mo an Apology"
Liu Qiang was not alone.
Across the country, dozens of freelance writers, influencers, and media workers deleted scheduled smear pieces. Many began rewriting from scratch, their guilt impossible to ignore.
Even major news outlets that had mocked the Marching Ant Company an hour earlier scrambled to change headlines or retract posts. For the first time in years, China's online world unified—not in outrage, but in shame.
"Chen Mo, we're sorry."
"Marching Ant, we misjudged you."
"The world changed today, and we nearly missed it."
The company's official Weibo was flooded with millions of comments within minutes. The servers briefly crashed—not from attack, but from sheer user traffic.
And unlike the usual comment mix of memes, trolling, and sarcasm, these were sincere.
"This is real science."
"Thank you, Chen Mo."
"You might've just saved lives."
In stark contrast, Western media fell into a stunned silence.
Just hours earlier, CNN, BBC, and other networks had run tongue-in-cheek reports poking fun at China's "tech hubris." But now, after the earthquake hit exactly where predicted, they didn't know what to say.
Silence reigned.
Social media influencers who had mocked the announcement began quietly deleting tweets and removing videos. Others tried to pivot to discussing "international reactions," desperately avoiding the uncomfortable truth:
A Chinese company had done something no Western power had accomplished.
The most cynical began trying to reframe the narrative.
"Even if it works, is it ethical to withhold this tech from the world?"
"How do we know it wasn't staged?"
But they were drowned out.
The story was too big.
The Marching Ant Seismograph wasn't a theory anymore.
It was proof.
Back in the Pacific, Carter stood in the command cabin, staring at a sonar image.
"Sir, we've located the source of the signal," a technician said.
A strange object was displayed on the screen, partly buried in the sediment. Clean lines. Compact design. Alien to their military sensors.
"Prepare the submersible and recovery lines," Carter ordered, his voice tight with excitement.
This was it.
An earthquake-predicting device—possibly containing submarine communication tech they couldn't replicate. If he could bring it back, his name would be on every intelligence report, every scientific journal.
His career would skyrocket.
"Sir," another crew member interrupted, "the island nation's fleet is approaching. ETA five minutes."
Carter sneered.
"Let them come. They want it too. But they're not getting it."
"That device is mine."
He licked his lips and stared back at the sonar.