Tales of the End of the Century

The relay station door was pried open by Tie Niu. Not with an axe. With a crowbar, which Vasily had pulled from the trunk; it was rusty, with sticky black tape wrapped around the handle. Tie Niu wedged the crowbar into the crack in the door, and with a pull, the door frame screamed as if tearing apart. The wooden planks sealing the door snapped in the middle, revealing a dark entrance behind it. A smell rushed out, not musty, not ash, but the smell of something burned, as if someone had lit a fire in this sealed house, and it had burned for a long time, so long that even the walls were soaked with tobacco ash.

The flashlight beam shone in. The foyer wasn't large; scraps of paper and an overturned metal cabinet were scattered on the floor. An electrical box hung on the wall; the wires had been cut cleanly, not ripped off, but rather cut with a tool. Tie Niu bent down and picked up a scrap of paper, turning it over. The back bore the logo of Project Aurora, mostly burned away, leaving only a broken eagle claw.

"Someone burned documents here," Tie Niu said.

"No one's there." Vasily walked past him, his flashlight shining into the depths of the corridor. "It's me."

The corridor wasn't long, ending at a half-open iron door. Behind the door was a much larger room, about half the size of a classroom. All the fluorescent light tubes on the ceiling had exploded, shards scattered all over the floor, crunching underfoot. In the center of the room was an iron bucket filled with paper ash. The ash was very fine, almost powdery; some pieces of paper weren't completely burned, their edges curled, and a few Russian letters were still legible. More scraps of paper, trampled and soaked, were scattered around the bucket, crumpled into balls.

Vasily squatted down beside the iron bucket, shining his flashlight on a large scrap of paper. It contained handwritten formulas, densely packed, with several sections crossed out and rewritten. Below the formulas was a line of notes, the handwriting messy but still legible.

"Resonator Phase 3." Lan Susu leaned closer, shining her flashlight on the annotation. "Sergei's handwriting. This is what he wrote. The annotation says: Frequency lock successful. Subject's consciousness can be synchronized with external signals. Side effect: During synchronization, the subject cannot distinguish between their own consciousness and external signals. Footnote: This is not a side effect. This is a function."

"He's developing the side effects as if they were functions." The man in gray bent down and picked up another piece of scrap paper from the edge of the iron bucket. It had only half a sentence on it, in Russian, with the last part of the sentence burned off, leaving only a short and somewhat abrupt syllable.

"What is it written?" Bai Ye asked.

Lan Susu took the piece of paper, the flashlight shining through from behind her. She looked at it for a few seconds, her lips moved slightly, and then she read aloud, "'The door is open.'" She turned the paper over; there were more words on the back, also in Sergei's handwriting, but even more scribbled. The burned edge cut off the second half of the sentence, leaving only an illegible suffix. She held the paper up to her eyes, comparing the two sides, trying to reconstruct the burned letters, then stopped, no longer attempting.

"The door is open. It's not on the other side of the door. It's here."

Bai Ye shone his flashlight into the metal bucket. In the pile of ashes lay a partially burned notebook, its black cover identical to the one in the leather suitcase at the antique market. He brushed away the ash with his fingers and pulled the notebook out. The gold lettering on the cover was burnt to a crisp; only the last letter was legible. Opening it, he found most of the pages had been burned to ash, with only the last few pages barely preserved because they were at the bottom.

There was writing on the last page. Not Russian, not English, but Chinese. Sergei couldn't write Chinese, but on this page, every character was written with extreme neatness, straight lines, like a tracing from a calligraphy book, the strokes without a single tremor, as if the writer's hand was so steady it seemed inhuman. Only the last line was crooked Russian, the handwriting suddenly changing from neat to sloppy, as if someone who had written this line had suddenly regained their hand.

"What does it say?" Tie Niu asked.

Lan Susu read the last Russian sentence over and over again. She closed the notebook, laid it on her lap, and held the flashlight under her chin, the light shining upwards onto her face.

He said, "I learned to write Chinese. Not me, but it learned. It practiced the new language with my hand. It learned very quickly, much faster than I did."

Tie Niu turned his flashlight to the other end of the room. Along the wall was a row of iron shelves, all emptied except for a few rusty screws. Behind the shelves, in a corner, lay several moldy quilts and a military overcoat. Beneath the overcoat, a pair of old leather shoes peeked out, soles up, their treads worn smooth and covered in dried mud.

"He lived here," Tie Niu said. "Not for a few days, but for weeks, even months."

Bai Ye found a mirror in another corner of the room. It wasn't a reflecting mirror, just an ordinary square mirror, taped to the wall, level with his chin, facing the metal bucket. A line of Russian text was written on the mirror with marker, the writing already faded. Lan Susu came over and looked, saying it was Sergei's handwriting, which read: "Use a mirror to confirm your identity. Don't look at yourself in a reflecting mirror anymore, it's too dangerous."

Bai Ye stood in front of the mirror, looking at his reflection's face, smudged with dust and cold sweat. He took his hand out of his pocket, opened it, and placed it on the mirror. His reflection mirrored it, perfectly synchronized. He withdrew his hand, and the reflection mirrored it as well. He put his hand back in his pocket, and the reflection mirrored it as well. Then he saw himself in the mirror, taking his hand out of his pocket, opening it, and placing it on the mirror.

Bai Ye looked down at his hands. They were still in his pocket. He slowly pulled his hands out. His hands were trembling, not from the cold. It was because, for a moment, he couldn't tell who had moved first. He pressed his hand against the mirror, meeting his reflection's. Fingertips touched fingertips, palms touched palms. Same size, same lines, same temperature.

"Bai Ye," Lan Susu called him from behind. He didn't turn around. He looked at the face in the mirror, and watched the lips that looked exactly like his move slightly.

"You're calling me," Bai Ye said. Lan Susu stood behind him, silent. Bai Ye withdrew his hand from the mirror. The hand in the mirror remained pressed against the surface, motionless. After a few seconds, it slowly withdrew, its fingertips tracing a sweaty line across the glass.

Bai Ye turned around. Lan Susu was looking at him, her notebook open in her hand.

"Someone has come back from the ruins," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Sergei wrote this sentence backwards in his notebook. From the last page forward. Written with his left hand. He broke his right thumb and couldn't use it for the time being. The words written with his left hand are crooked and slanted, each stroke like a person struggling to climb out of deep water." She read the translation aloud, "'I am in the water. The water is shallow, just up to my knees. But I can't stand up. Every time I try to stand up, I see my reflection on the water's surface, pressing my head down. It's not it pressing me down, it's me pressing myself down. I don't know which one is the reflection.'"

Tie Niu placed the crowbar against the wall. The man in gray and Vasily stood on either side of the iron bucket, each holding a few scraps of paper in their hands, ashes sliding down their fingers like fine sand slipping from an invisible hourglass onto the floor. Old Hu stood in the doorway, holding an enamel mug, the bottom of which tapped softly against the doorframe.

Lan Susu turned to the first page of the notebook. It read Sergei's name, and below the date was a huge question mark that filled the entire page. She crossed it out with blue pen and replaced it with an arrow pointing to his own name.

"You just said someone came back from the ruins," Bai Ye said.

"Yes. Sergei's notes, in the later stages of the Rift, repeatedly mention a person, whom he always refers to as 'you.' At first, I thought he was talking to himself. Later I realized he wasn't. Several pages in the notes mention this person, saying he looks like he crawled out of the ruins, covered in ash, but with bright eyes. The earliest record of this is shortly after the backup vault. Sergei said: 'I thought the mirror was deceiving me, but when I looked at that ordinary mirror again, he was standing there too, covered in ash, smiling at me with the exact same face as me.'"

Bai Ye looked down at his hands. The edges of the scabs on his palms were raised, revealing tender pink flesh. He remembered the dream. In the dream, he was walking on water, shallow, just past his ankles. He looked down into the water, and there was his reflection on the surface, also looking down at him. Then the reflection reached out, across the water, and grabbed his ankle. He woke up.

"Who is that person?" Tie Niu asked.

Lan Susu closed the notebook. "Sergei didn't say his name. He only said one sentence—'He's more like me than I am.'"

Bai Ye put the flashlight in his pocket and walked to the mirror on the wall. Sergei's handwriting on the mirror was so faded that it was almost illegible, but the warning was still there, after so many years and so far away, as if it had been left for him. He turned around and looked at everyone in the room.

"Search separately. Gather all the files in the hallway, take them if they are readable, regardless of whether they are complete or not."

Tie Niu nodded. The man in gray and Vasily had already begun to sort through the clutter under the pile of bedding in the corner. Old Hu squatted down next to the iron bucket with an enamel mug in his hand, using chopsticks to pick through the still identifiable fragments in the ashes, muttering "objects can talk," but his fingers were as careful as if he were appraising an antique.

Bai Ye walked to the metal bed in the corner. The mattress had been overturned; the springs had pierced the fabric, revealing rusty metal rings. Under the bed was a canvas suitcase, its clasp broken and held together with wire. He knelt down, unscrewed the wire, and opened the lid. Inside were several neatly folded, faded clothes, folded uniformly, all buttons facing the same direction. Underneath the clothes were several sheets of paper wrapped in a sealed plastic bag.

He took out the plastic bag and opened it. The first page was a sketch, a pencil drawing, depicting a person standing on a lake, the water up to their ankles. The reflection in the water was facing the opposite direction to the person. He turned to the second page, also a pencil drawing, the same person standing on the water, which was deep, up to their knees. The reflection was still below the surface, but the reflected hand was already through the water, clinging to the person's ankle. The third page was blank, containing only a line of text. It wasn't Russian, but English, written from left to right, the exact opposite of Sergei's handwriting.

"I finally finished drawing it."

Bai Ye folded the three sheets of paper, put them back in the plastic bag, and sealed it. When he stood up, his knee cracked, just like the sound Lao Hu made when he bent over. He tucked the plastic bag under his arm.

Old Hu said he found another notebook case by the metal bucket, with only two pages left inside and a photo tucked inside. The photo showed a gray house with all the windows sealed off, waist-high weeds in front of the door, and a number "7" on the doorplate. On the back of the photo were two Chinese characters written in blue ink, each stroke extremely neat.

Bai Ye took the photo, glanced at it, flipped it over so the back was facing up, and put it in the plastic bag.

"What did you write?" Old Hu asked.

Bai Ye didn't speak. He stuffed the plastic bag into his jacket, tucking it close to his chest. Those two words echoed in the darkness, mirroring his heartbeat.