Tales of the End of the Century

Bai Ye pulled the enamel mug from the side pocket of his backpack, bent down and placed it at the very edge of the canvas, then stood up and looked at the sealed door that had been cut open with an oxy-acetylene torch. The door was old, but not the kind of rusted old that lingered in the old Wei cave dwellings—it had been used for a long time and had been carefully maintained; the hinges were oiled, and the weld marks on the cut edge were smooth. The warm yellow light shining through the crack in the door was extremely faint, extremely steady, without flickering or shaky. He reached out and grasped the doorknob; Tie Niu pulled out his axe and stood behind him, while Lan Susu held the oscilloscope in her arms. The door was gently pulled open.

Behind the door was a sloping alley, shorter than the previous one, its surface compacted gravel, with thin wire hoops—used to secure the floor-laying ropes—between the stones; the ropes had long since been removed. At the end of the alley was a low table, on which rested a reflecting mirror, a used oxy-acetylene torch, and a nearly empty roll of reflective rope. A man in worn-out work clothes sat behind the table, his head slightly bowed, his hands folded on his knees, as if he had been waiting for so long that he no longer needed to watch the doorway. He looked up at Bai Ye, his lips moving slightly.

"I know you." His voice was low but steady. "Through the wind, it sinks from the derrick all the way down to the bottom of the well. Old Wei never pried into gossip, but the mirror he handed over had not a single speck of light. He only ever let go of someone in his life—the one who taught him to clean the mirror."

Bai Ye took a step forward. The mirror on the table was facing up, with a tiny symbol and a number engraved on its back, identical to the one he recognized in the backup database; face down, several pages of torn paper from the test subject list lay beneath, their edges charred, yet a few lines of Russian handwriting were still legible. On the top page, another hand had added a new pencil annotation, filling the blank space after the transfer date with the same word—"line."

A silver badge adorned his work pocket, its edges worn smooth and gleaming, older than those of Lao Wei and Sergei. Most of the rust-preventive paint had been worn away, revealing the underlying copper base. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his forearms were covered in overlapping scars of varying ages. The calluses on his palms were identical to those Tie Niu had seen in the Aurora Project security team. He was one of the first test subjects for Project Aurora—not the ones from the Rift Phase, but even earlier, recruited while the project was still under construction. "My name is Lao Wei," he said, his gaze sweeping silently across the quiet alleyway behind Bai Ye before looking up at him, his tone declarative.

Bai Ye was stunned. He remembered Lao Wei—the nameless man who had entered the mining area before Lao Wei, the gatekeeper who led Lao Wei into the first chamber, cut a passage in the sealed door, and brought in all the transferred test subjects one by one and sent them into the depths one by one. Lao Wei had never said his name.

"His name is also Lao Wei," Bai Ye said.

"Yes." Old Wei took the enamel mug out from under the low table; there was still a layer of dried tea stains on the bottom. He turned the mug towards Bai Ye, as if to replenish his water supply, something every mining area should have. "His name is Old Wei. My name is Old Wei. Everyone here is called Old Wei. Old Hu, who sat under the jujube tree in Elm Gully, adding sesame oil to his cucumber salad, almost became Old Wei too—but he didn't come in and stayed on the mountain path of Yunlong Temple. Everyone who knows what's behind this door ends up with the same name."

He was describing the way Old Wei led them into the first chamber—he rarely asked who you were, where you came from, or what your number was; he would simply shove the jar into your hand and let you drink the water first. He never used the phrase "returning to the center," but instead wrote a single character on the cave wall each day. No explanations, no slowing down, no rushing. Some people understood immediately; others needed a long time to grasp it. He was waiting—Sergei needed to see the character through the drag marks beneath the north window, the man in gray needed to finish knocking on the Millennium Night signal outside the wall before reciting its sequence, Old Wei had it carved on the iron door frame, and he tucked it into every old scar on his rolled-up sleeves.

Lan Susu placed the oscilloscope on the low table, where a faint pulsating signal on the screen rose and fell steadily. "It has never gone out." She looked up at Lao Wei. "From the day Project Aurora put you on the transfer list, this signal has never truly disappeared—it has just shrunk into a single point deep within, resonating every time a light source gets close."

Old Wei pulled a stack of experimental records wrapped in canvas from under the table. "These are all the files for this batch of subjects. Number, name, start date of the rift period, training records. Project Aurora doesn't know. They thought being transferred meant being cleared out, but we took the rift with us. To a place they can't see, so we can do our own thing."

Bai Ye took the canvas bag. It was heavy. The pages inside were yellowed and brittle, some soaked in water and then dried, the writing blurred into a blurry blue blotch. He remembered something Lao Hu had said—"Objects can talk. Some things say things that shouldn't be said." These files said the things that should be said most, but Project Aurora never wanted to hear them, nor dared to.

Tie Niu placed the axe on the low table and looked at Lao Wei. He had some questions—after Project Aurora was shut down, the mining area had remained closed off; where did the supplies come from? Test subjects were coming in batches, requiring food, water, batteries, and reflective ropes—things that couldn't just grow on their own in the mine. Lao Wei took out a rusty toolbox from under the low table, opened it, and inside was a neatly stacked pile of old receipts, invoices, and supply and marketing cooperative statements. The paper was yellowed, but the handwriting was clear. Each one bore the same signature—White Dove.

Tie Niu's lips twitched as he looked at the signature. Bai Ye picked up the top statement, dated the autumn of the year before last—before Bai Ge handed over the Yunlong Temple photos under the jujube tree in Yushugou, he had already delivered supplies to this mining area countless times. He said he was just an information broker, only responsible for delivering the information, never accompanying people on the rest of the journey. But he had transported boxes of reflective ropes, medical tape, spare batteries, and enamel mugs along this road—he was the one squatting outside pushing the things past the gas cutting vent, never stepping into the cave. He had been making up for a debt he never spoke of to his small antique shop that had been shut down. Bai Ye put the statement back in the toolbox, stood up, and looked at Lao Wei. "He didn't dare come in, but he knocked on every door that needed to be opened beforehand."

Old Wei didn't answer. He turned the reflection mirror on the table over so that its surface was clean and tidy. He looked down at his face in the mirror, and the reflection looked back at him, in sync, without delay. He extended his thumb and traced it very lightly and slowly across the mirror surface—the very movement that Bai Ye had seen countless times in the reflection mirror before stepping into the realm of resonance. "He's right. This path doesn't need extra hearts to beat for others. But with each additional knock on the door, my shadow fades a little. He brought you to the door—and the ones who pushed the door open were still yourselves."

He flipped the mirror over, back side up, and pushed it in front of Bai Ye. Then he stood up and walked to the cut-open sealed door at the entrance of the alley, taking an old-fashioned flashlight, worn smooth from use, from the wall. Bai Ye looked down at the engravings on the back of the mirror, then looked up at the row of unfamiliar footsteps stretching deeper into the alley, and suddenly knew where to go next. He slung the stack of old files wrapped in canvas over his shoulder, placed the enamel mug on the table next to Old Wei's mug, then stepped over the threshold and walked towards the last door at the end of the alley that hadn't yet been cut open by the oxy-acetylene torch.