Tales of the End of the Century

The departure time was set for four in the morning. Tie Niu said the roads were emptyest at that hour, and even the guards at the checkpoints were getting sleepy. Bai Ye got up from the kang (a heated brick bed) and dressed in the dark. He put his right hand into his sleeve first, then his left, doing the opposite of yesterday. He stood on the ground, unable to remember how he had dressed before.

Flashlights were already on in the yard. Tie Niu was checking the car, the hood up, a flashlight in his mouth. Lao Hu took out his travel bag, stuffed it into the trunk, and went back to the kitchen to fill a bag with steamed buns and pickled vegetables. Lan Susu sat in the passenger seat, clutching her canvas bag, using the roof light to check Sergei's notes one last time. The man in gray stood under the jujube tree, his hands in the pockets of his dark gray long coat, motionless, like another tree that had lost all its leaves.

Bai Ye got into the car last. Tie Niu closed the hood, turned off the flashlight, and the car was plunged into a brief darkness. Then the engine started, the headlights came on, and two beams of light pierced through the gate and shone onto the dirt road.

"Read the address again," Tie Niu said.

The man in gray recited a string of place names from the back row. It wasn't some classified unit; it was an old archive in a county town, abandoned in the 1980s. The backup repository for Project Aurora was hidden underground in the archive, built back then under the guise of a "wartime archive," and no more than five people knew its details.

"Is Valentin one of them?" Bai Ye asked.

"Valentin was the one who repaired it," the man in gray said. "He used to be a combat engineer, and after retiring, he joined Project Aurora, where he was in charge of infrastructure. He led the digging of the underground warehouse, and he also drew the blueprints. After the project was disbanded, he hid the resonator blueprints there. Nobody else knows how to open the entrance except him."

The car left the dirt road and turned onto the provincial highway. It was still dark, and the bare farmland on either side of the road flashed by in the headlights. Bai Ye leaned against the window, the glass cold. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and placed them on his knees. Left hand, right hand. He curled his fingers one by one, then straightened them. He'd done this gesture too many times lately; he couldn't remember when it started. He only remembered the man in gray saying that subjects in the Rift Phase would develop their own confirmation rituals: counting fingers, looking in a mirror, saying their names. He now possessed all three.

As dawn broke, they stopped to rest beside an abandoned brick kiln. Tie Niu turned off the engine and got out to stretch his legs. Old Hu squatted by the roadside, munching on a steamed bun, and broke off half, handing it to the man in gray. The man in gray took it, thanked him, and slowly chewed. Bai Ye stood a little further away, looking at the half-collapsed chimney of the brick kiln. The rising sun cast a long, thin shadow across the ground, like a finger joint.

Lan Susu walked over, holding Sergei's notes. "I looked at them again on the way. There are three records of Sergei going to the backup database."

"Three places?"

"The first place he said was, 'I found that place.'" Lan Susu turned to the page with the note. "The second place was, 'The door was sealed tightly, but I remember how to open it.' The third place was, 'I went in. I don't remember how I got out.'"

Bai Ye stared at the lines of translation. Sergei had drawn a question mark next to the third instance in red pen, then crossed it out with blue pen. He didn't know what Sergei meant by crossing out the question mark. Did it mean the answer was no longer important, or did he already know the answer?

"What's in the backup repository?"

"I don't know. Sergei didn't write it in his notebook." Lan Susu closed the notebook. "He only wrote one sentence: 'It's very quiet inside. Much quieter than outside. Like someone is waiting.'"

Around noon, the car entered the county town. The man in gray gave directions, leading the car through several dilapidated streets before finally stopping in front of a gray brick building. The building wasn't tall, only three stories high, with all the windows shattered and the doorway sealed with sheet metal, on which incomprehensible symbols had been spray-painted. The weeds in the yard were waist-high, and an abandoned truck lay rusted in the grass, its tires all flat.

"This is it," the man in gray said.

Tie Niu parked his car across the street and turned off the engine. He didn't get out immediately, but sat in the driver's seat and observed for a few minutes. There weren't many people on the street; occasionally, someone would ride a bicycle by, but no one would glance in their direction. The gray brick building was too old, so old that it had become part of the street, like a stone that had stood for many years, and no one would give it a second look.

"The entrance is in the back." The man in gray pushed open the car door.

They got out of the car and went around to the back of the building. The backyard was even more overgrown, with weeds so thick they made it difficult to walk. The man in gray parted the weeds, revealing a sloping concrete ramp leading down to a green iron gate. The paint was bubbly, and the frame was covered in moss. There was no handle on the gate, only a rusty iron wheel, about the size of a washbasin, like the wheel of an old-fashioned ship.

"A valve," Tie Niu recognized. "An explosion-proof door."

The man in gray nodded. "Valentine was built to fortification standards. Once this door is closed, it's tightened from the outside and can't be opened from the inside."

Bai Ye stared at the iron wheel. It was badly rusted, unlike anything recently touched. The gray-clad man gripped the wheel with both hands and tried to turn it to the left. It wouldn't budge. Tie Niu stepped forward, and the two of them, their faces flushed red, strained. The wheel let out a shrill cry and began to slowly rotate. After about seven or eight rotations, a muffled thud came from inside the door frame, like a latch coming loose. Tie Niu turned it two more times and stopped. A finger-width gap opened between the door and the frame. A stench escaped from the gap. It wasn't foul, but stale. Like the air in a room that had been closed for a long time, stagnant and suddenly stirred.

Tie Niu and the man in gray each pushed open a door, the hinges creaking sharply as they inch by inch. The flashlight beam shone inside, revealing a corridor. It resembled Research Institute No. 17: green half-painted walls, a grayish-white ceiling, and linoleum flooring. The difference was that there were no signs of it being emptied. Signs hung on the walls along the corridor, in Russian, white with red lettering. Lan Susu shone the flashlight and translated them one by one.

"Archives."

Data storage.

"Duty room."

At the end of the corridor was a double glass door, the glass frosted, allowing light in but not making it transparent. A piece of paper, yellowed with age, was taped to the door, bearing a line of Russian text. Lan Susu leaned closer to look, pausing for a few seconds.

"What does it say on it?" Bai Ye asked.

"Entry requires written approval from the project leader. Unauthorized entrants will be held responsible for any consequences." Lan Susu pressed down the curled corner of the paper. "There's another line of handwriting below."

"What did you write?"

"The handwriting is Sergei's. 'I have already approved myself.'"

Tie Niu pushed open the door. The glass door made a screeching sound as it slid along its tracks. Behind the door was a much larger room, about half the size of a basketball court. The ceiling was high, with several fluorescent light tubes hanging from it, all blacked out, like sections of burnt-out tungsten filaments. In the center of the room was a long metal table, with several folding chairs scattered around it. Against the wall was a row of metal cabinets, some doors closed, some ajar, their folders lying on the floor.

There were footprints on the floor. They weren't theirs. Dust was evenly spread across the floor, except for a single set of footprints that stretched from the doorway to the metal cabinet. The footprints only indicated that the shoes had gone in; none had come out. The footprints weren't large, and the tread patterns on the soles were illegible; all that could be made was that they were flat shoes, not boots.

"Sergei was here." Lan Susu shone her flashlight on the footprints. "He went in but didn't come out."

Old Hu squatted down and wiped the floor with his finger. The dust was thick. "These footprints weren't made more than ten years ago. The dust is too thick; footprints from more than ten years ago would have been covered by new dust long ago." He rubbed the dust off his fingers. "These footprints are at most a year or two old."

The man in gray stood beside the tin table, his flashlight shining on it. Several coffee cups sat on the table, the bottoms of some dried brown stains, the cracks resembling miniature riverbeds. In the ashtray lay half-smoked cigarette butts, the filters mostly buried in ash. He picked one up, turned it over, and examined the label on the filter—an old Northern brand that had been discontinued for many years.

"There's movement here." It wasn't Sergei, it wasn't Valentin. It was someone or something else that had been here before.

Tie Niu walked to the metal cabinet and shone his flashlight on the labels on the door. Lan Susu read the Russian characters on the labels one by one. "Subject Files. Numbers 001 to 050." The next cabinet, "Subject Files. Numbers 051 to 100." The next one, "Experimental Data. 1980 to 1982." The next one, the label was torn off, leaving only half a yellowed piece of paper. Tie Niu opened the cabinet door. It was empty. Not emptied, but every shelf was spotless, without a speck of dust. In this place where everything was covered in dust, there was a clean, empty cabinet.

"Someone took everything," Tie Niu said, "and then wiped the cabinet clean."

Why only clean this one cabinet? What did he take? Who took it? Sergei? When he came in, he took something, then cleaned it and put it back. Then he left, leaving no footprints. Or perhaps he didn't leave at all; or maybe it wasn't him who left.

Bai Ye glanced at the trail of footprints on the ground. Only in, never out. He recalled a sentence in Sergei's notes—"I went in. I don't remember how I came out." If you don't remember how you came out, maybe you never came out at all. Maybe the one who came out wasn't the one who went in.

Lan Susu walked into the small, glass-enclosed room. The beam of her flashlight swept across rows of shelves, which were stacked with cassette tapes, microfilm, and several piles of yellowed printing paper. In the corner was a metal writing desk, with a few loose sheets of paper spread out on its surface, weighed down by something—a coffee cup, the coffee stains at the bottom of which were no longer just dried cracks, but had turned into a thick layer of brown crust.

She removed the coffee cup from the top and picked up the few pages of paper. The flashlight beam shone through the back of the paper, revealing handwritten Russian text in blue ink that had faded to a light gray. She read one line and stopped.

"It's Sergei's handwriting," she said. "It's the pages he tore out of his notebook."

Bai Ye walked over. The edges of those pages were jagged, clearly torn from a notebook hastily, with small pieces even ripped from the corners of the next page in some places. Sergei had torn the last few pages of his notes from the backup library, leaving them for someone else—or perhaps not for anyone at all.

"What does it say on it?" Bai Ye asked.

Lan Susu started reading from the beginning, translating line by line. "‘I no longer record the rift period. The concept of the rift period itself is wrong. A rift is not a crack, it's a channel. That thing didn't come in through a crack, it met me in the channel. I've been thinking, why did it want to learn from us? To imitate our actions, our habits, our memories. Now I understand. It didn't want to become us. It wanted to become 'me.' Not any one 'me,' but every 'me.' It's a mirror, but the reflection in the mirror doesn't want to be a reflection anymore. It wants to come out. It wants to flip from the side being reflected to the side reflecting."

Lan Susu turned to the next page. The handwriting was even more illegible, with several places where the pen tip had pierced the paper.

"I did an experiment today. I made that thing write. Not me, but it. I let go of my hand and let it control my fingers. It wrote a line on the paper. It took me a long time to recognize my handwriting. There was only one difference. When it wrote, the pen tip moved from left to right, not from right to left. Russian is written from left to right, and I've been writing it for decades. It wrote it backwards. It was mirroring me. After that, I turned all the papers over and looked at them against the light. Some pages had writing on the back. Not me, but it. On the back, which I had never looked at before."

Bai Ye remembered that some pages in Sergei's notebook had blank backs. They had never turned them over to look at them against the light.

"It says: Let every mirror stand face to face. They will keep reflecting, reflecting to the deepest depths. I will wait for you in the deepest depths."

Lan Susu stopped. The flashlight beam flickered slightly on the paper—not because the flashlight was shaking, but because her hand was trembling.

Bai Ye took the paper. He held it face down, facing the flashlight. The paper was thin, and the ink shone through from the front, forming some reversed Russian letters. At the very bottom, a few words weren't visible through the ink, but were written directly on the back. They were very light, written in pencil, practically invisible unless you looked very closely. He couldn't read the Russian, but he recognized the handwriting—Sergei's.

"What's written on the back?" he asked.

Lan Susu took it and examined it against the light. Her lips moved slightly, but no sound came out. She looked at it again.

"It's not Russian."

"What?"

"It's English. Very broken English. The grammar is all wrong." She read it aloud, "'I am not him. He is not me. We are not. But we will be.'"

Bai Ye put the paper back on the table. He remembered that morning, he was standing in the yard, the sunlight casting his shadow on the ground. He had looked down at that shadow and suddenly realized that the shadow's posture was different from his. He was standing, his hands in his pockets. The shadow had one hand outside.

"In the last few days of his rift, he couldn't distinguish himself from that thing anymore." Lan Susu turned the paper over, right side up. "When he wrote this, he was probably writing both at the same time. One sentence was written by him, and the other by it. The handwriting was the same, the ink was the same, it was the same hand."

Bai Ye reached into his pocket. The small round mirror was still there. He took it out, turned it over, and looked at the face split open in the mirror. Left eye, right eye. He tried to lift the right corner of his mouth slightly—very slightly, so slightly that you wouldn't notice unless you were staring intently, just like last time under the moonlight. But this time he wasn't alarmed. He turned the mirror over, back side up. The bird on the tin was still there, wings folded, head tilted to one side, as if listening to something. He put the mirror back in his pocket.

"What else did Sergei write?" he asked.

Lan Susu turned to the last page. It was also written in hasty blue ink, with several places where the ink had seeped through due to water.

"If these things are discovered, it means I'm no longer here. Or rather, I'm no longer 'here.' I don't know where I'll be. Maybe behind a mirror. Maybe on the other side of that door. Maybe in your eyes, watching you read these words. If so, please read on. I need you to know one thing. That thing is not invincible. But it cannot be driven away, only replaced."

"replace?"

"It learns from us by occupying our habits, memories, and preferences. But these are all the past us. It doesn't learn who we are becoming. It can't learn the future. So don't look back. Don't try to confirm whether you are still yourself. Don't ask 'Who am I?' ask 'Who am I going to become next?' It will always be one step behind you, and as long as you don't look back, it will never catch up with you."

Lan Susu placed the flashlight on the table, its beam shining onto the ceiling. The reflection on the table made her face appear slightly brighter. Bai Ye carefully collected Sergei's notebook pages, folded them neatly, and tucked them into Lan Susu's notebook. Then he walked to the metal cabinet, looking at the clean, empty door. A label was pasted on the inside of the door, with a line of handwritten Russian text on it. Lan Susu approached and shone the flashlight on it.

"What does it say on it?"

"It's not Russian. It's a name. In English. The name Sergei gave himself, the name he said to himself in the mirror every night, written on this label and stuck in this cabinet. After he came in, he emptied the cabinet, cleaned it, and put his name on it. Then he lay down inside."

Bai Ye ran his hand along the inside of the empty cabinet. The metal felt smooth, as if someone had polished it. He imagined Sergei lying inside, in the darkness, murmuring his secret name. Once, twice, three times. Until the name lost all meaning, becoming a string of random sounds. Then he got up, closed the cabinet door, wiped away the fingerprints, and walked out of the backup vault. Or perhaps, it wasn't him who walked out.

They began organizing the data in the backup repository. Tie Niu packed up usable tapes and microfilms, Lan Susu meticulously reviewed the subject files one by one, Lao Hu was in charge of packing, and the man in gray stood at the door, watching for any movement outside. Bai Ye was in charge of the bottom drawer of the metal cabinet. The drawer was stuck, so he squatted down and pulled hard. The drawer sprang open, and its contents scattered all over the floor with a crash. Not documents. Some personal belongings. An old watch with a broken strap. A badge bearing the Aurora Project logo. Several black and white photographs of the subjects' daily lives. A work diary with a name written on the cover; he didn't recognize Russian, but he could tell it wasn't Sergei's handwriting.

He picked up the items one by one and put them back in the drawer. Then he saw the mirror.

It wasn't one of those small, round mirrors he carried in his pocket. It was a square mirror, about the size of a book, face down at the bottom of the drawer. He turned the mirror over. The mirror was clean, spotless, completely out of place with the dusty drawer. The mirror reflected his face, the metal cabinet behind him, and the silhouette of Lan Susu organizing files not far away. Then he saw—on that face, his own face, looking back at him from the mirror.

His mouth kept moving, opening and closing, opening and closing. Just like Sergei described on the tape, just like the subjects described in their final days. He wanted to look away, but he didn't. He looked at the mouth in the mirror, and then he understood. Not that he understood what it was saying, but he understood the shape of the lips themselves. That shape of his lips. It was the tiny, unconscious movement his lips made every day when he brushed his teeth in front of the mirror. The left corner of his mouth would turn up first, then the right. That thing had learned the movement, and now it was using that movement to speak to him. What it said didn't matter; what mattered was that it had learned how to speak with his lips.

Bai Ye reached into his pocket and touched the small round mirror. The outline of a bird on the back of the metal sheet pressed against his fingertips. He took the mirror out, its surface facing him, opposite the square mirror. The two mirrors faced each other, their images layered upon each other. On the outermost layer was him, holding the small round mirror. Inside, another layer showed him holding the small round mirror. Further in, smaller and darker, layer upon layer, until it reached an unseen depth.

He stared at the deepest mirror. The mirror was so small that he couldn't see the face reflected in it; there was only a tiny, square dot of light, like a sealed window. Then that dot of light blinked.

Bai Ye put away the small round mirror and folded the square mirror back into the drawer. His knees felt a little weak when he stood up, but he managed to stay upright.

"What did you find?" Lan Susu asked.

"A mirror," he said. "An old one."

He pushed the drawer back.