Tales of the End of the Century

This time, the man in gray wasn't standing across the road. He was sitting in the courtyard. Under the jujube tree, on the stone where Tie Niu usually sharpened his knife, he sat with his legs apart and hands on his knees, like a neighbor coming to visit. Old Hu squatted at the kitchen doorway, clutching an enamel mug, his knuckles white. Tie Niu stood behind the threshold of the main house, his axe at his waist, not pulled out. Lan Susu sat on the windowsill of the east wing, her notebook open, pen resting on it, not a single word written. Bai Ye came out of the house and stopped on the other side of the jujube tree. The two were separated by a tree, and beneath it sat the man in gray.

The man in gray spoke first. "You've been here for eleven days." His voice was low, each word carefully considered before uttering. "There are over a hundred households in Elm Tree Gully, and not a single person has asked who you are, where you came from, or what you're doing here. Don't you find that strange?"

Bai Ye didn't answer. He genuinely hadn't thought about that question. In the eleven days since he moved in, the gas delivery guy had come, the meter repairman had come, and the old lady next door had passed him some scallions over the wall twice. No one had asked who they were.

“I told them not to ask,” the man in gray said. “It wasn’t through any special means; I just gave them advance notice. I rented this courtyard three years ago. The landlord thought I was one of your people. The neighbors thought I was a relative of the landlord.” He raised his right hand, slowly clenched his fist, and then relaxed it. “In a small place like this, as long as someone reserves a spot first, later arrivals won’t be questioned.”

Bai Ye watched his hands. The movements were natural: clenching a fist, then releasing it, like someone who habitually moves their fingers. But he noticed that the gray-clad man clenched his fist in a different order than usual. He started with the little finger, pulling each finger back one by one, ending with the index finger. When releasing, he started with the thumb, releasing each finger one by one. Bai Ye's own habit was to start pulling back with the index finger and release with the little finger. He didn't remember when he had developed this habit. Perhaps he hadn't developed it at all, and it was just a decision he made in those few seconds.

"You rented it for three years," Tie Niu said. "You knew we'd come here."

"I don't know," the man in gray said, "but I know that if someone takes something out of Research Institute No. 17, they'll eventually have to find a place to stop. Elm Gully is one of the three places I prepared. You chose this place."

"What about the other two?"

"One is in Zhongjiang, and the other is in Jingzhou. Nobody's going." The man in gray put his hands back on his knees. "Now that you're here, the other two are no longer needed."

Lan Susu jumped down from the windowsill, a notebook in her hand. "Who exactly are you?"

The man in gray looked at her and remained silent for a few seconds. "I used to work in the intelligence analysis department of Project Aurora. I wasn't a core researcher; I didn't have access to the resonators or enter the lab. My job was to analyze the behavioral data of the subjects, write reports, and archive them." He paused. "A month before Institute No. 17 was sealed off, I was still writing reports. The reports stated that all subjects were in stable condition, the gap period was within a controllable range, and continued observation was recommended."

"The report is fake," Lan Susu said.

“Every word was fake,” the man in gray said. “I knew it when I wrote it. But the higher-ups wanted a ‘controllable’ report, so I wrote a ‘controllable’ report. After I finished writing it, I took sick leave and left the city where the research institute was located. A month later, the research institute was shut down.”

"You run pretty fast." Old Hu squatted at the kitchen doorway, an enamel mug resting on his knees.

“It’s not that I’m fast,” the man in gray said. “It’s that I know the data during the gap period is never controllable. From the very first participant, the data has been lying. It’s not the person lying, it’s that thing lying. It fills out questionnaires with the participants’ hands and answers questions with their mouths. It keeps saying, ‘I’m fine,’ ‘I feel normal,’ ‘Nothing’s wrong.’ And our job is to write these words into reports, submit them, and prove that the project can continue.”

Bai Ye looked into the gray-clad man's eyes. As he spoke, there was no remorse on his face, nor any attempt to defend himself. It was as if he were reading from a file unrelated to himself.

"What are you doing right now?" Bai Ye asked.

"Find people," the man in gray said. "After Project Aurora was disbanded, some of the data was destroyed, and some was taken away. I know the names of a few of the people who took the data. One of them was Sergei's assistant, Valentin. A week before the project was terminated, he took Sergei's last batch of notes and a set of core resonator blueprints from the research institute. He ran away and brought them here."

"That box," Tie Niu said.

"Yes. Valentin hid the thing in that box, carried it from the north to the border, and then from the border to the interior. The box changed hands countless times before finally ending up in your hands." The man in gray looked at Bai Ye. "I chased it for three years. I was a step too late for you."

Old Hu put the enamel mug on the ground. "Why did you chase after that box?"

The man in gray lifted his hands from his knees, slowly opening them to face upwards. "After Project Aurora was shelved, everyone who participated carried something on their backs. Not a disciplinary record, but something right here." He pointed to his temple with another finger. "That thing knows us. Everyone who touched the resonator, everyone who saw the test subject data, everyone who knew it existed. It remembers them all."

"Is it looking for you?" Lan Susu asked.

"It's not about searching. It's about waiting," the man in gray said. "It's not in a hurry. Its time is different from ours. We're running, it's waiting. When we can't run anymore and sit down, it will come."

No one spoke in the courtyard. The shadow of the jujube tree had shrunk to the base of the trunk, and the sun was directly overhead. Bai Ye looked at the gray-clad man's outstretched palm, which had a few very shallow lines, no different from those of an ordinary person.

"You can't run anymore?"

The man in gray withdrew his hand and placed it on his knee. "Three years. I chased Valentin for three years. For the first two years, I could still sleep through the night. Starting in the third year, the first thing I did every morning when I woke up was to check my hands. Left hand, right hand, all five fingers—they could move, they obeyed my commands. Only after I checked them did I dare to get out of bed." He looked down at his hands. "Starting last month, the time it took to check them increased. Sometimes I had to repeat it several times because I wasn't sure if I had done it myself just now."

Lan Susu opened her notebook and turned to a certain page. "Sergei recorded this stage. He called it the 'confirmation ritual.' Subjects in the fissure phase all develop their own confirmation rituals. Some count their own fingers, some look in a mirror, and some repeatedly say a name."

"Was it useful?" the man in gray asked.

"It's effective in the short term," Lan Susu said. "In the long term—Sergei himself didn't make it through."

The man in gray was silent for a moment. "At least I can hold out until I finish what needs to be done."

"What are you going to do?" Bai Ye asked.

The man in gray pulled a manila envelope from his pocket and placed it on a stone under the jujube tree. "The resonator blueprints Valentin took were only one set. Project Aurora has three sets of blueprints, stored in three different locations. The set from Research Institute No. 17 was sealed in concrete. Valentin's set is now in your hands. There's a third set." He patted the envelope. "I know where it is. I can't get it alone. You need to know what that thing is; I need someone to help me get in. We need each other."

Lan Susu picked up the envelope and took out its contents. There was a hand-drawn map, marked with latitude and longitude coordinates and topographical symbols. There were several black-and-white photographs of a gray concrete building, its windows all sealed shut, and overgrown weeds growing in front of the door. There was also a sheet of paper, densely covered with Russian writing.

"Where is this place?"

"The backup archive for Project Aurora. It's not in Siberia, it's here. In the early stages of the project, they were worried about the safety of the base in the north, so they built a backup archive inland. It's smaller than Research Institute No. 17, but the data inside is complete." The man in gray pointed to the piece of paper, "Including the full text of Sergei's notes from his last year. The copy you have is incomplete, damaged by water, and many pages are untranslatable. The one in the backup archive is complete."

Lan Susu put the photo back in the envelope. "Why did you only come to find us now?"

"Because you've been to Research Institute No. 17. I don't need to explain what that thing is to those who came out of there." The gray-clad man looked at Bai Ye. "And you've already begun to rift. You know that yourself. What's the first thing you do every morning when you wake up?"

Bai Ye didn't answer. The first thing he did when he woke up this morning was to look at his right hand. Not at his fingernails, not at the scabs on his palm. He checked to see if they were there.

"You want me to access that backup repository for you," Bai Ye said. "And then what? You get Sergei's complete notes, and then what?"

The man in gray folded the map and stuffed it back into the envelope. "Sergei spent his last year focusing all his energy on one thing: how to get rid of that thing."

"Did he find it?"

"I don't know. But the answer should be in his complete notes. For both me and you." The man in gray stood up, brushed the dust off his trousers, and said, "You two think about it. I'll come back tomorrow."

He walked towards the courtyard gate. His leather shoes trod on the rammed earth, one step at a time. He reached the gate, stopped, and didn't look back.

"There's one more thing. Valentin didn't lose the box. He gave it away voluntarily."

Tie Niu's hand rested on the axe handle. "For whom?"

"Not to anyone. To 'outside'," the man in gray said. "He knows that thing is looking for him. The longer the box stays in his hands, the closer it gets to him. He's sending the box out, to a place where he doesn't even know who it will end up with. Let it find someone else. Let it have a new goal. Then he can breathe a little longer." The courtyard gate was empty for a moment, then the man in gray turned the corner and disappeared. The sound of leather shoes on the dirt road faded into the distance.

Bai Ye stood rooted to the spot. The sun cast the shadow of the jujube tree into a small ball, close to his feet. He remembered that afternoon at Panjiayuan, when Old Hu had asked him to pry open that leather suitcase. The lock was rusted shut; he used a screwdriver to wedge it in, pried hard, and it clicked open. His fingers touched the cold brass clasp. Then came the blizzard. Barbed wire. A white coat. That distorted face.

It wasn't him who found the box. It was the box that found him.

Lan Susu spread the photos from the envelope one by one on the windowsill. The gray concrete building was square and upright, like a forgotten tombstone. All the windows were sealed off, and the weeds in front of the door were waist-high. In the corner of one of the photos, the house number could be seen. The blue background and white lettering were half-painted, with only the last number "7" still legible.

"Number 7," she said. "Project Aurora's number. Research Institute No. 17, Backup Vault No. 7."

Bai Ye walked over and looked at the photograph. The number "7" on the doorplate, with white lettering on a blue background, was in an old-fashioned printed font, with straight horizontal and vertical strokes. He had seen this font before. On the cover of Sergei's notebook, there was a number written with a ballpoint pen; the handwriting was different, but the basic structure of the font was the same. When Sergei wrote that number, he wasn't writing a number; he was imitating this doorplate. He had already been there.

"He went there during the later stages of the rift period," Lan Susu said. "There's a passage in his notes where he describes himself 'going to a place, a gray house, with sealed windows and grass growing in front of the door. The house number was 7.' He thought he went there in a dream. But in dreams, the characters on house numbers aren't that specific."

"It wasn't a dream," Tie Niu said. "His body was taken away by that thing."

Bai Ye placed the photograph back on the windowsill. The number "7" on the doorplate stood quietly in the afternoon light. He suddenly thought of a question but didn't ask it aloud. If Sergei went to that backup repository during the later stages of the rift, did he go inside? If he did, what did he do inside? If he didn't, what stopped him?

He reached into his pocket. The small round mirror was still there. On the back of the metal sheet, the outline of a bird pressed against his fingertips. He took the mirror out and turned it over. A crack cut his face in two, his left and right eyes separated by a slit. He looked at his face in the mirror. Then he saw something he hadn't noticed before—a tiny white dot in the pupil of his left eye. It wasn't dust on the mirror surface; dust could be wiped away easily, he had wiped it. The white dot was inside the pupil. He looked closer. The white dot wasn't round; it was square. Like a window. Like the window sealed with cement on that gray building in the photograph.

Bai Ye placed the mirror face down on the windowsill, making a very soft sound, like a pebble falling into deep water.

At night, he placed the mirror under his pillow and closed his eyes. The name swirled in his mind a few times before slowly settling down. Then he heard breathing. Not his own. His own breathing was on the front, that breathing was on the back. The back of his head, the part resting on the pillow, breathing in and out, in and out, very lightly, very slowly. Like someone sitting back-to-back with him, waiting for him to speak first. Bai Ye didn't speak. He focused his attention on his left hand, his left little finger, bending, straightening, bending, straightening. He repeated this many times. Then he shifted his attention to his right hand, his right thumb, bending, straightening, bending, straightening. The breathing behind him paused slightly, like someone listening.

Bai Ye moved all her fingers one by one. Starting with the little finger of her left hand and ending with the thumb of her right hand, there was no fixed order, and it was different each time. The breathing behind her grew lighter and lighter, farther and farther away, like someone was retreating, retreating until they could no longer hear it.

Bai Ye lowered his hand. Moonlight streamed in through the window, the plaster on the wall bulging, but he didn't press it down. The crack in the ceiling was still there. The mirror under the pillow remained silent. He reached under the pillow, touched the mirror, pulled it out, and turned it over. The crack sliced ​​his face in two. Left eye, right eye. The white dot in his left pupil was still there, square, like a sealed window. He looked at his face in the mirror, then saw his left pupil move. It wasn't the eyeball moving; the pupil itself contracted, like a living thing adjusting its focus.

Bai Ye pressed the mirror against his chest. The coolness of the metal seeped through his clothes and touched his skin. He heard his own heartbeat, steady and firm. He closed his eyes. The man in gray would come tomorrow. To go or not to go. In the darkness, he silently repeated the answer in his mind. Then he heard the breathing behind him return, very close, against the back of his neck. It was listening.