Interlude I — ON SILENCE
Welcome! If you’re new here, please visit the Table of Contents to catch up on any File releases you may have missed.
Archive Tag: Private Memoir / Observer K — Not for Transmission
(Private entry dated April 4, 2025 — two days after Liberation Day)
For forty-eight hours the networks have screamed without a breath.
Every screen displays charts, opinions, and counter-opinions.
In our hallways, silence feels almost foreign.
Zhao keeps the television muted, but I still see the reflections of moving lips on the glass. He once asked, “Do you ever tire of knowing more than you can say?” I told him knowledge is just a slower form of noise.
Deng once said, “Hide your strength, bide your time.” People remember the first half and forget the second. Waiting is not hiding. Waiting is design. In their tariff noise, the Scholar’s trap weaves ambiguity—grain flows pivot from their fields, rare earths stall their mines. He said, “No total shut off—keeping the import/export tight and loose, on and off, sometimes Ying and sometimes Yang.”
I sometimes wonder how long a man can live inside a system built on discretion. My chest still burns from the dust of the vault; the inhaler helps — but not the weight.
When I speak to my wife Yang Ping and son Rico on secured video calls, the air seems lighter on their side. Their faces on the screen is a fleeting anchor to a life outside these vaults.
Zhao stands by the door, eyes averted — the way soldiers guard a shrine. He understands that not all protection is physical.
Tonight, the forecast consoles are quiet. DeepSeek hums in idle mode. Even machines need to exhale Silence again — our truest ally.
I write this to remind myself that in war, declared or economic, the loudest side is usually losing.
— LHJ
Continue Reading: File #2 — The September Directive