Tales of the End of the Century

On the ninth day, Tie Niu's left-handed axe finally embedded itself in the center of the chalk circle. It wasn't a mere glancing blow, nor did it just dangle for three seconds; it was firmly embedded, the blade embedded in the trunk, the handle slightly upturned, exactly at the same angle as when he threw it with his right hand. He stood at the other end of the yard, his left hand still in the throwing posture, fingers slightly spread, arm straight. Bai Ye sat on the threshold, holding an enamel mug, a small patch of chili oil floating on the surface. He placed the mug at his feet, stood up, walked to the jujube tree, and reached out to touch the axe handle. It was made of elm, polished to a shine, the end of the handle wrapped with black tape, already sticky from sweat. The axe blade was embedded about half a finger deep in the trunk, the bark around the nail hole peeling back, oozing fresh sap. He pulled his hand back, turned to look at Tie Niu, who was taking off his right glove and putting it on his left. The gloves were from the trunk of his Jeep; the leather was worn smooth at the knuckles, and he'd originally worn them on his right hand, but now he'd switched them to his left. He fastened the wristbands, clenched his fist, released it, clenched his fist, released it, then walked to the jujube tree, pulled the axe from its sheath, returned to his original position, switched back to his right hand, and threw it again. It hit the center of the chalk circle perfectly. He turned to look at Bai Ye, his face expressionless, but his eyes held a different look than usual.

"Both my left and right hands are mine." He took off his gloves, folded them, and stuffed them into his back pocket.

Bai Ye returned to the house and jotted these down in his notebook. Date, weather, Tie Niu's left-handed axe throw hitting the target. Then, after a moment's thought, he added, "Tie Niu said that both his left and right hands belonged to him."

After finishing writing, he stared at the sentence for a long time. He knew what Tie Niu meant—not that he could throw an axe with his left hand now, but that the thing had used Tie Niu's left hand to do things Tie Niu couldn't remember: those midnight movements, the mud on the soles of his shoes, the footprints outside the hotel window—and now he had taken it back. Not driven away, but taken back. He had learned with his left hand what his right hand could do; that hand was no longer its conduit, but his own tool. Bai Ye put down his pen, opened his right hand, and placed it on his knee. The scab on his palm had fallen off, revealing tender pink flesh, a little softer than the surrounding skin. He bent his thumb, then straightened it; bent his index finger, then straightened it; there was no fixed order, each time different. Then he opened his left hand as well, placing it next to his right, doing it with both hands together, left and right, in different orders, different rhythms, like two people playing different pieces of music. He did it once, then again, until the fingers of both hands began to ache. He turned his hands over, comparing the lines on his palms. His left and right hands were similar, but not exactly the same. The life line on his left hand was a little longer than the one on his right, and the wisdom line on his right hand was a little deeper than the one on his left. He had never noticed these things before, but now he did. He put his hands together, interlaced his fingers, clenched his fist, loosened it, clenched his fist, loosened it. Whether clenching or loosening his fist, it was all done by himself.

Lunch was cooked by Tie Niu. He usually only knew how to make instant noodles and roasted potatoes, but today he stir-fried a plate of eggs with scallions and salt. The heat was just right; the eggs were taken out of the pan as soon as they solidified, so tender that they trembled when picked up with chopsticks. Old Hu took a bite, chewed for a while, and said there wasn't enough salt. Tie Niu took another bite and tasted it himself. After chewing, he nodded and said to add half a spoonful more salt next time. Bai Ye looked down at the scrambled eggs in his bowl. The edges of the egg pieces were slightly burnt, indicating the oil was too hot, but it didn't affect the taste. He finished his meal and made a note in his notebook. After thinking for a moment, he added: "Add half a spoonful more salt next time."

On the twelfth day, Lan Susu made a breakthrough in her homework. She wasn't copying; she was creating. She drew a map, a map of consciousness completely different from Sergei's—not mountains and abysses, but a river, without a fixed course. Every flood would change course, and each change would carve out a new riverbed. After the old riverbed dried up, grass would grow, turning it into grassland, making it impossible to tell that it had ever been a river. She spread the map on the stones under the jujube tree, shone a flashlight on it, and showed it to Bai Ye and Tie Niu. She said this was her model—Sergei's model was a fixed terrain, with mountains and abysses, from which that thing could climb out; but if consciousness wasn't terrain, but a river that changed course, every time it changed course, that thing had to relearn—it couldn't learn from water that hadn't yet flowed out.

Bai Ye looked down at the drawing. It was drawn in pencil, the lines very fine, with dotted lines indicating the forks of the river, and dates marked next to the dotted lines. She had given each tributary a name that only she knew, and these names would not appear in any official records.

He returned the drawing to Lan Susu.

"What about what it learned before? Our habits, memories, patterns, things it has already learned."

"It's still there." Lan Susu put the drawing away and tucked it into her notebook. "But after the river changed course, the old riverbed is dry—it's just an empty shell. It can stay in the empty shell as long as it wants, but it can't touch the water anymore."

The gray-clad man and Vasily arrived on the same night as the breakthrough. They emerged from the east wing carrying a cassette tape, one of Sergei's voice recordings left in the backup library, recorded around 3 a.m. on a day during the later stages of the rift. They played side A of the tape repeatedly; the content was nothing more than subject data, resonator frequency calibration reports, and Sergei's usual calm narration. Side B was initially the same, until they discovered an extremely weak signal in the background of a certain recording—not machine noise, not circuit interference. The gray-clad man extracted that segment, played it back repeatedly, listened to it with headphones pressed to his ear, and then handed the headphones to Vasily without saying a word. Vasily listened and then handed the headphones to Lan Susu. Lan Susu's expression changed after listening. She instructed Tie Niu to connect the portable oscilloscope from the toolbox, converting the tape signal into a waveform and displaying it on a small green screen. Sure enough, beneath Sergei's voice lay another layer of signal, at an extremely low frequency, outside the optimal range for human hearing, yet with a remarkably clear waveform. It wasn't speech; it was a regular series of pulses—first a long tone, then two short tones, repeated once, then again, as if someone were sending a signal in extremely slow Morse code, and the sender wasn't hiding elsewhere—it was Sergei himself.

Lan Susu deciphered the signal based on the waveform; it consisted of only one sentence. She wrote down the translation and handed the note to the man in gray. He took it, looked down at it, and stared at the note for a long while before showing it to Vasily. They simultaneously placed their hands on their knees, spread them out, looked at the lines on their palms, glanced at each other, and simultaneously curled the corners of their mouths upwards.

The note read: I'm still here. I'm not alone.

The man in gray folded the note and put it in his inner pocket. Vasily turned off the oscilloscope. The two sat side by side on the threshold, their hands on their knees, without making any confirmation gestures, as if it were no longer necessary.

At night, Bai Ye and Lan Susu were organizing all the records from this period under the jujube tree. There were change logs, confirmation diaries, excerpts from Sergei's notes, torn pages from their notebooks, and the river map Lan Susu had drawn. She copied the river map again, added today's date, and wrote a line in the blank space: "Breakthrough isn't about driving it away, it's about making it fall behind." Bai Ye flipped to the last page of his notebook, which was densely filled with notes from the past few days. He crossed out the last line and wrote a new one.

Lan Susu watched him write.

"What are you thinking about?"

Bai Ye put down his pen, closed his notebook, placed it on his lap, and looked up at the jujube tree. Moonlight filtered through the branches, illuminating the axe marks of varying ages. The deepest mark was the one Tie Niu had driven in with his left hand earlier that day; the bark was peeling back and sap was still seeping out.

"A breakthrough isn't a single point. It's a line." He picked up his notebook, turned to the first page, and wrote, "From chili peppers, to brushing teeth with the left hand, to stepping forward with the left foot, to Tie Niu throwing an axe with his left hand, to frying eggs, to changing the way you hold a pen, to those names that only you know, everyone is drawing this line." He closed the notebook. "We're all doing the same thing: making our future selves one step ahead of our previous ones."

Lan Susu put away the river map, tucked it into her notebook, and then opened Sergei's first workbook to the title page. The red-painted letters on it had faded to almost invisible, but the printed text on the last line was still as clear as new. She held the notebook up for Bai Ye to see.

"Get out of here," she said.

Bai Ye nodded. The sparrow in the jujube tree had long since flown away, leaving only a small patch of gray down at the base of the tree. He bent down, picked up the down, placed it on a stone, weighed it down with the bottom of an enamel mug, then reopened his notebook and added another sentence below the line he had just written. He didn't read it aloud, and Lan Susu didn't ask. She turned the kerosene lamp's flame to its lowest setting, then sat up against the wall and closed her eyes.

The next morning, Bai Ye woke up, turned to a new page in his notebook, and wrote a short title in the header. After writing, he put down his pen, slipped his feet into his shoes, first his left, and then began brushing his teeth from the left side. He squeezed toothpaste onto the front of the bristles and brushed from the inside out, changing direction with each stroke, never repeating the same motion. The person in the mirror was also brushing, in sync with him, without any delay.

He put down his toothbrush, looked at himself in the mirror, then picked up his pen and added a sentence to his notebook, his handwriting more forceful than usual, the strokes piercing the paper, almost showing through to the back. After finishing, he closed the notebook and walked out of the house. In the yard, Tie Niu had already started practicing throwing an axe with his right hand; the axe marks from his left-hand throws were still on the jujube tree, the bark peeling back, the sap half-congealed, like a scar in the process of healing.