In Chapter 7, Wang attempts to characterize his interactions with Shen Yufei, a woman who appears as a blank slate to him—emotionally void, impenetrable. He uses a metaphor for this comparison:

Wang subconsciously thought of her as the long-obsolete DOS operating system: a blank, black screen, a bare “C:\>” prompt, a blinking cursor. Whatever you entered, it echoed back. Not one extra letter and not a single change. But now he knew that behind the “C:\>” was a bottomless abyss.

In the above excerpt, Wang compares Shen Yufei to an obsolete computer program. At first, he attributes her blankness to a lack of depth—the emptiness of a computer that can only echo a person's words. Wang realizes instead that her blankness is a "bottomless abyss," full of knowledge. He compares this bottomless abyss to the "C:\>" of an operating system, also known as the command line. One can access pretty much everything on a computer from its OS command line, if only one knows the right command. Similarly, Shen's knowledge and depth open up if one only knows the correct approach to take. This former sentiment derives from Wang's perspective, of course, originating from his determination to comprehend the world around him. Ever the inquisitive scientist, he remains optimistic that he can access the "abyss" if only he tries.