Tales of the End of the Century

Bai Ye was awakened by his right hand. Not from pain, but from an itch. The white mark on his index finger, almost invisible, looked like an ant crawling on it. He opened his eyes, held his right hand up to his eyes, and examined it closely in the morning light. Nothing had changed. His fingernails were clean, the scab on his palm had hardened, and the edges were slightly raised. The white mark on his index finger was still there, even fainter than yesterday.

He lowered his hand. Suddenly, he realized he had been looking at his right hand. But he was used to using his left hand. He never used his right hand to look at things.

Bai Ye sat up, staring at his right hand. It lay quietly on the blanket, its five fingers slightly curled, like a sleeping little animal. He tried to move his index finger; it moved. His middle finger moved. His ring finger, little finger, thumb—each one obeyed his commands. But he couldn't remember when he had started using his right hand to pick things up.

The sound of an axe chopping wood came from the courtyard. One stroke, one stroke, steady and methodical. Bai Ye put on his shoes, stood up, took two steps, and stopped. He looked down at his feet. Today, he stepped forward with his left foot first. He had originally planned to step forward with his right foot first; he had thought about it repeatedly before going to bed last night—right foot, right foot first. But when he got out of bed just now, without thinking, his left foot had already stepped forward.

He stood on the threshold for a while. The shadow of the jujube tree was still short, and the sun had just climbed over the roof. Tie Niu was chopping wood, shirtless, steam rising from his back. Old Hu squatted at the kitchen doorway, brushing his teeth, spitting white foam into the corner of the wall. Lan Susu came out of the east wing, her hair tied in a ponytail, holding a notebook in her hand.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning," Bai Ye said. He realized that when he answered, his lips moved a beat slower than his voice. It wasn't intentional; he was just slow. Like a signal delay.

Lan Susu glanced at him but didn't say anything.

Breakfast was noodles cooked by Lao Hu, with soy sauce and minced garlic. Bai Ye ate under the jujube tree, and halfway through, he noticed that he had picked out each clove of garlic from his bowl, arranging them neatly along the rim. He couldn't remember when he had started picking out garlic. Lao Hu loved to put garlic in his cooking; he had eaten it for years and had never picked it out before.

He put down the bowl and looked at the row of minced garlic.

"Old Hu, do I eat garlic?"

Old Hu squatted down next to him, holding a bowl and chewing noodles. "Eat up. You eat as much of the vegetables I put in the stir-fry as you want; I've never seen you pick and choose."

Bai Ye carefully scraped the minced garlic cloves off the rim of the bowl back into the noodles, mixed them well, and continued eating. The garlic flavor was strong, but he didn't seem to notice it.

After Lan Susu finished eating her noodles, she put the bowl back in the kitchen and came out holding Sergei's notes.

"I looked at it again last night. There was a page I missed yesterday in Sergei's record of the fissure period." She turned to the page. The edges of the paper were wet, the writing was blurred, and several parts were illegible.

"Has it been translated yet?" Bai Ye asked.

"Most of it." Lan Susu sat down under the jujube tree. "Sergei said that the Rift Period isn't just about that thing practicing how to use your body. It's also about it practicing how to become you."

"What's the difference?"

"Using the body is superficial. Walking, drinking water, picking things up, drawing patterns on paper. Becoming you is deeper." Lan Susu pointed to a passage on the paper, "It learns your habits. Which hand you like to use, which leg you take a step with first, which side you start brushing your teeth from, what food you pick up first when eating. These are things you would never even think about, it learns them one by one."

"Have you learned it?"

"Once you learn it, it starts using your habits to deduce your thoughts," Lan Susu said. "If you're left-handed, it will make you use your right hand. If you're not used to it, you'll notice. Once you notice, it knows you're watching it. It's building a connection with you."

Bai Ye looked down at his right hand. The white mark on his index finger was completely gone. But the itch from the ants crawling on it was still there, very shallow, like a thin film, beneath his skin. Tie Niu finished chopping firewood, put on his clothes, and came over.

Did Sergei say how to interrupt this?

Lan Susu turned to the next page. "He said, the way to interrupt is not to stop being learned. It's to learn it."

"Learn it?"

"Yes. It learns from you, so you learn from it. It uses your habits to deduce your own, so you use its methods to deduce its own." Lan Susu read the translation aloud, "'It doesn't have its own habits. Its habit is imitation. If you start imitating its imitation, it won't know who it's imitating.'"

Bai Ye thought for a moment. "It means that if it tells me to use my right hand, I will use my right hand. But not passively letting it push me to use it, but actively, deliberately, and even exaggeratedly. To the point that it can't tell whether the action is it pushing me or me doing it for it."

"More or less." Lan Susu closed her notebook. "Sergei calls this 'anti-imitation.' He only tried it on two subjects. One lasted seventeen days, and the other lasted twenty-three days. Neither of them made it. But it's not that the method was useless; it's that they discovered it too late. The gap period was too long, and that thing had already learned most of the habits. Anti-imitation can only delay it, not eradicate it."

"Eradicate it?"

Lan Susu shook her head. "Sergei didn't find it. Or maybe he did, but didn't have time to write it down."

Tie Niu leaned his axe against the jujube tree. "Let's use what we can for now."

Bai Ye finished the last bite of noodles in her bowl and stood up. "Starting today, if it imitates me, I'll imitate it."

Old Hu squatted in the corner, spilling the tea leaves from his enamel mug. "What you're saying sounds to me like that—two mirrors facing each other. Looking back and forth, no one can tell who's inside or who's outside."

"Pretty much," Lan Susu said. "That's the same analogy Sergei used."

"And then what happened?" Old Hu asked.

Lan Susu did not answer.

Bai Ye took a walk around the yard that morning. Not a stroll, but a walk. He made sure every step he took was different from usual. Usually, he'd step with his left foot first; this time, he'd step with his right. Usually, he'd land on the ball of his foot first; this time, he'd land on his heel first. Usually, his arms would swing naturally; this time, he'd deliberately keep them still. At first, it felt awkward, like wearing ill-fitting shoes. After a few laps, the awkwardness turned into a strange feeling—not getting used to this new way of walking, but the act of "walking" itself had become unfamiliar. It was as if he wasn't walking, but imitating someone else's walk.

He stopped and stood under the jujube tree.

Lan Susu sat on the doorstep, watching him. "How are you feeling?"

"Strange," Bai Ye said, "like he's imitating himself."

"It's about learning from yourself," Lan Susu said. "You don't usually think about how to walk. Now that you're thinking about it, you're learning."

"I'm learning that too."

"Yes. You two are imitating the same person. Let's see who can imitate them better."

Bai Ye continued walking. From the jujube tree to the courtyard gate, and from the courtyard gate back to the jujube tree. He walked back and forth more than a dozen times, each time changing his walking style. He would step with his left foot first, then his right; or with his right foot first, then his left. His soles would land first, then his heels. His arms would swing, but remain still. Eventually, he couldn't distinguish which way of walking was his original way. It was all learned; none of them were truly "real."

He stopped and noticed that Lan Susu was still watching him. Her gaze wasn't one of observation, but of confirmation. Confirmation that he was still there.

"Sergei also wrote something in his notebook," she said. "Doing too much anti-imitation work can cause a problem."

"What's the problem?"

"You'll start to doubt everything you do. Drinking water—is it really the body drinking? Talking—is it really the body talking? Blinking—is it really the body blinking?" Lan Susu closed her notebook. "Finally, you'll doubt even the act of 'doubting' itself. Is it making you doubt, so you can think you're still conscious?"

Bai Ye remained silent for a moment. "How did Sergei resolve it?"

"He didn't solve it. He said the only way was—" Lan Susu paused, "to accept. To accept that you can't distinguish anymore. To accept that there might be no distinction between 'you' and 'it'. To accept that the barrier between you and 'it' never existed in the first place."

"And then what?"

"I don't know. His notes stop here."

Bai Ye walked to the middle of the courtyard. Sunlight shone down from above, casting a small shadow. He looked down at the shadow.

"Tie Niu, which foot did you step with first this morning?"

Tie Niu was squatting under the jujube tree, sharpening his knife, without even looking up. "Left foot."

Are you sure?

"Sure."

How can you be so sure?

Tie Niu stopped what he was doing and thought for a moment. "I'm not sure." He flipped the knife over and continued sharpening. "But when I say I'm sure, it's sure. When I say I'm not sure, it's not sure. Choose one."

Bai Ye stood in the sun. His shadow lay motionless at his feet.

"Left foot," he said.

He stepped out with his left foot and walked towards the courtyard gate. Halfway there, he suddenly forgot where he was going. Standing in the middle of the courtyard, the sun warmed the back of his neck. He looked down at his feet; both were on the ground. Had he stepped out with his left or right foot? He couldn't remember.

But he didn't stop to think. He kept walking, reached the courtyard gate, turned around, and walked back. Every step was uncertain, every step was a choice.

In the afternoon, the man in gray came again. He stood across the dirt road, in the shade of the poplar trees, wearing his dark gray long coat, his hands in his pockets. This time he neither smiled nor spoke; he simply stood there, looking into the courtyard. Bai Ye was walking from under the jujube tree towards the gate. After a few steps, he stopped. The two men faced each other across the dirt road.

The gray-clad man's gaze changed. It wasn't observation, nor scrutiny. It was confirmation. Like someone seeing themselves in a mirror, confirming that the face was their own.

Bai Ye suddenly understood. He wasn't here to see Tie Niu, Lan Susu, or Lao Hu. He was here to see me. The way he looked at me was the same way that thing looked at me. He was confirming whether he had imitated him correctly.

Bai Ye stood in the middle of the courtyard, sunlight casting his shadow on the ground. He didn't look away. He looked at the gray-clad man's face, into his eyes. Then he made a gesture. He raised his right hand, slowly opening it, palm facing the gray-clad man.

The man in gray's eyes flickered slightly. Very subtly, like the surface of water rippled by a breeze for a fleeting moment.

Bai Ye withdrew his right hand and put it in his pocket. The man in gray stood for a few more seconds, then turned and walked along the dirt road towards the east end of the town. His leather shoes trod on the dirt road, one step at a time, neither fast nor slow. He turned past the row of poplar trees and disappeared.

Tie Niu stood up from under the jujube tree.

"What did you just do?"

I showed him my hands.

Why?

Bai Ye thought for a moment. "The way he looked at me was to confirm. To confirm if I was the person he was imitating. I showed him my hands so he could confirm. But he couldn't confirm."

Why can't it be confirmed?

"Because I don't know whose hand it is."

At night, Bai Ye lay on the kang (a heated brick bed), raising his right hand to his eyes. Moonlight streamed in through the window, clearly outlining his palm. He slowly bent his index finger, then straightened it. He bent his middle finger, then straightened it. One finger at a time, he repeated this several times. Each time, he started with a different finger. Index finger, ring finger, thumb, little finger, middle finger. Thumb, middle finger, little finger, index finger, ring finger. Middle finger, index finger, thumb, ring finger, little finger. No two repetitions were ever repeated.

He stopped. His palm rested quietly in the moonlight, his five fingers slightly spread. He didn't remember when he had stopped. Nor did he remember whether he had done those actions himself or whether something had watched him do them.

He lowered his hands and tucked them into the blanket. A breeze blew outside the window, the branches of the jujube tree gently scraping the glass. He closed his eyes. The person in the mirror was still there. It had his face, but the blinking frequency was different. Bai Ye looked at it, and it looked at Bai Ye. Bai Ye raised his right hand and opened it. The person in the mirror also raised their right hand and opened it.

Then Bai Ye put his right hand back into his pocket. His reflection in the mirror seemed a beat slower. His hand remained outstretched in mid-air, as if he'd suddenly forgotten what to do next.

Bai Ye opened his eyes. The crack in the ceiling was still there. He pulled his right hand out from under the covers and held it up to the moonlight. He opened it, then clenched it into a fist, then opened it again, then clenched it into a fist. Then he tucked his hand back under the covers, turned over, and faced the wall. A patch of plaster on the wall had bulged out, shaped like a hand lying on its side.

He pressed the plaster down on the wall with his left hand. After a while, it bulged up again. He didn't press it down again.