02 · We are Zero cm away from War
The certainty of the world is collapsing. 5,765km from China to Gaza, 50cm from my eyes to the screen, and yet our psychological distance from war is 0cm.
Yesterday, it snowed in Beijing. It was cold.
I sat in the classroom, fixing a bug that only seemed to multiply as I worked. The terminal flushed red, line after line.
I looked up and saw my classmate scrolling through his phone. He was reading a viral post: "We Are 0cm Away from War." I opened my phone too. News alerts: the Middle East is escalating. Experts dissecting energy, alliances, and geopolitics.
The room was noisy. Some discussed Operating System experiments; others planned for their next vacation. This contrast felt absurd.
The Fragility of Certainty
We sit steadily in a bright university classroom, coding, discussing, and dreaming of the future.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, cables are being severed and algorithms are being weaponized. Those in the "faraway" places of our imagination—do they feel the cold right now?
When there are no more discussions of cafes or cathedrals, when faith cannot solve the urgent crisis of survival, everything before us becomes a bubble that could burst at any moment. I suddenly understood why that article said we are "0cm" from war. It’s a subtler feeling: the certainty of the world is collapsing, bit by bit.
The Background Noise
We are used to assuming life is stable: Graduation → Job → Promotion → Life. But reality is more like a program. You think the logic is sound, then the system suddenly throws a completely unhandled exception.
Is this anxiety a rational crisis prediction, or just fear amplified by algorithms? We think we are thinking independently, but we might just be drifting in information cocoons.
I put down my phone. The code on the screen was still throwing errors.
China to Gaza: 5765km
Eyes to Screen: 50cm
Mental Distance: 0cm
I went back to the code. Not out of numbness, but because common people have so little they can grasp—except for what is in our hands and in our minds. The 0cm anxiety is the background noise I must coexist with.
If one day the world truly turns into a mess of unreadable code, that grand "Error" is something no single person can fix. Until then, I only hope to clear my own errors, one by one.
See you.
— Maggie
Beijing · 5 March 2026