Tales of the End of the Century

After exiting the backup repository, Bai Ye felt lighter.

It wasn't that he'd lost weight. It was that his density had decreased. It was as if something had been sucked out of him, leaving him loose and flimsy, ready to crumble in the wind. He put his hands in his pockets, touching the small round mirror. On the back of the metal sheet, the outline of a bird pressed against his fingertips. Wings folded, head tilted, as if listening to something. He didn't take it out. He'd already brought enough from the backup vault: tapes, microfilm, Sergei's last few pages of notes, and that square mirror.

Fang Jing is now wrapped in Lan Susu's trench coat and placed at the bottom of her canvas bag. Not because she's afraid it will break, but because she's afraid it will reflect onto people.

It was already evening the next day when they returned to Yushugou. The car stopped at the gate, and Lao Hu was the first to get out, carrying a travel bag into the kitchen. Tie Niu opened the hood and checked the radiator. The man in gray leaned against the jujube tree, legs crossed, eyes half-closed, like a sculpture casually placed there. Lan Susu carried the canvas bag into the east wing, and when she came out, she was holding the square mirror, still wrapped in her trench coat, only a corner showing. She placed it on a stone under the jujube tree, took a step back, like a bomb disposal expert who had just lowered a fuse.

“Sergei mentioned this kind of mirror in his notes,” she said. “He called it a ‘reflecting mirror.’ It’s not an ordinary mirror. The mirror surface uses a special coating, which Project Aurora made themselves. It can reflect more than just light.”

"Reflect what?" Tie Niu asked.

"Consciousness frequency. Sergei's notes say that ordinary mirrors reflect visible light, while reflection mirrors reflect a portion of the EBR band. When a person looks in an ordinary mirror, they see their appearance. When they look in a reflection mirror, they see—" She paused, choosing her words carefully, "...the thing inside."

Bai Ye looked down at the trench coat. It was dusty and covered up completely, so nothing could be seen.

"Whom did Sergei experiment on?"

“It was him,” Lan Susu said. “In the later stages of the rift, he looked at his reflection in the mirror for half an hour every day. On the first day, there was nothing unusual in the mirror. On the second day, he noticed that his reflection blinked at a different frequency than him. On the third day, the reflection began to do things he hadn’t done—when he sat, the reflection stood up; when he didn’t move, the reflection walked around in the mirror. On the fourth day, he asked the mirror, ‘Who are you?’ The reflection answered in his voice, ‘I am you.’”

Old Hu came out of the kitchen carrying an enamel mug and squatted on the doorstep. "The answer is correct. The you in the mirror is, of course, you."

"Sergei thought so too. So he asked again." Lan Susu looked at the trench coat. "He asked, 'Which one of me are you?'"

No one spoke in the courtyard. The sparrow in the jujube tree came again, hopped a few times on the branches, glanced at the people below, and flew away. Bai Ye looked down at the trench coat. He squatted down and reached out to touch the edge of the coat. The gray cloth was rough, and his fingertips could feel the cold glass beneath.

"White Night," Old Hu said, "No."

"I don't want to look in the mirror," he said. "I want to see my back."

He lifted a corner of his trench coat. The square mirror was facing up, its edges made of sheet metal, the rivets at the four corners rusted. A line of Russian text was printed in the center of the back, white paint faded with age, but a few letters were still legible. Lan Susu walked over, squatted down, and took a look.

"Property of the Aurora Project Backup Vault No. 7. Number: 3-14. Scope of use: Controlled experiment. Unauthorized access will be at your own risk." She looked up. "The wording is the same as the note on the glass door of the backup vault. After 'at your own risk,' Sergei added a handwritten line."

"What did you write?"

"I don't know what the consequences will be. But I'm still using it."

Bai Ye pulled his trench coat back up. He thought of the subjects' personal belongings in the bottom drawer of the backup vault. An old watch, its strap broken. A badge, the symbol of Project Aurora. Black and white photographs. What happened to the owners of those things? Sergei knew their fate. He recorded their periods of vulnerability: left, right, both, all. He knew better than anyone what would happen next. But he still spent half an hour every day looking in the mirror, watching his reflection stand up, walk back and forth, answering his questions. Like someone who knew there was a cliff ahead, walking and taking notes, the pen still not stopping on the last page.

"What else did he write?" Bai Ye asked.

Lan Susu stood up and brushed the dust off her knees. "Sergei made a list of questions at the end of his notes. Not answers, but questions. He said the answers vary from person to person, and you have to find them yourself."

"What's the problem?"

"First question. When you look in the mirror, does the person in the mirror blink at the same frequency as you?"

Old Hu placed the enamel mug on the ground. "Has anyone noticed this?"

"You never noticed before," Lan Susu said, "but now you're starting to notice. This is the beginning of the rift period."

Lan Susu continued asking questions, reading Sergei's questions aloud one by one. Second: When you wake up in the morning, is the first thing you look at your hands? Third: Have you ever done something so skillfully that you don't remember when you learned it? Fourth: Have you ever said something and then felt that you didn't say it?

Old Hu picked up the enamel mug and took a sip. The tea was completely cold. His fingers traced the rim of the mug, as if trying to find an uncertain shape. "I put sesame oil in my cucumber salad last time, but I don't remember adding it. Does that count?"

"Yes," Lan Susu said.

Fifth question. Have you ever heard someone call your name, but when you turned around you found no one there?

Tie Niu took the axe from his waist and placed it on his knee. "At Research Institute No. 17, while patrolling, I heard someone call my name. Not shout, but whisper. At the end of the corridor. I went over, but no one was there," he said. "After that, I heard it every time I patrolled. After that, I stopped walking down that corridor."

Sixth. Have you ever seen your own expression reflected on someone else's face?

No one answered. Bai Ye pulled his hand out of his pocket, palm up. The scab from the glass cut had fallen off, revealing pink, tender new skin. He tried clenching his fist, releasing it, clenching again, releasing it. Starting with his thumb, he released it, reversing the order. He could control the movement. But he couldn't remember when he started changing the order of his fist clenching. He only remembered the gray-clad man saying that it learned his pattern. If the pattern changed, it had to relearn. But he couldn't remember the last time he used the original pattern. Was the original pattern still there? He forgot. Completely forgotten, as if he had never used it.

The man in gray suddenly stopped and stood up straight, glancing at the dirt road outside the courtyard gate. The road ended empty, the poplar trees standing silently, no sign of human presence. "Someone's coming. Not from town." Tie Niu stood up, tucking his axe back into his belt. Old Hu placed the enamel mug on the windowsill, his knee cracking as he stood up.

Bai Ye didn't move. He squatted under the jujube tree, his palms still outstretched. His newborn skin glowed a pale pink in the setting sun. He looked at the dirt road outside the courtyard gate. He could already hear footsteps; there was more than one person. Leather shoes trod on the rammed earth, one step at a time, neither fast nor slow, just like when the man in gray first came. But this time, there was more than one pair. He suddenly had a thought. It wasn't the person he was waiting for who had arrived. It was the person who had waited for him for a long time who had arrived.

The sunlight began to dim, the shadows of the jujube trees grew longer, and Bai Ye slowly rose, carefully wrapping the square mirror again and tucking it under his arm. Lan Susu stood behind him, her canvas bag tightly wrapped around her. Tie Niu stood by the courtyard gate, his hands behind his back. Old Hu picked up and put down the enamel mug, the remaining tea inside sloshing slightly. The man in gray leaned against the jujube tree and spoke softly, as if talking to himself.

"I've only mentioned finding shipping containers to one person."

At the end of the dirt road, the first figure had already turned past the poplar trees. Wearing a gray coat, of medium height, his face was still obscured, but his gait was relaxed—a relaxed ease, as if he were returning home. Two more followed behind, walking in unison, one to the left and one to the right.