Tales of the End of the Century

When Tie Niu said "we can't stay any longer," he meant we had to leave immediately. Old Hu got up from the ground, dusted himself off, went to the inner room, and came out carrying an old-fashioned canvas travel bag, bulging with moisture. He put the bag on the table, unzipped it, and inside were several stacks of cash, two bankbooks, a metal box for holding documents, and something wrapped in oil paper.

"When did you tidy this up?" Bai Ye asked.

"Last month," Old Hu said, zipping up the bag, "Those of us in this line of work are always ready to run away. You think this is the first time?"

Bai Ye was speechless.

Tie Niu dragged the two unconscious men into the inner room, tied their hands and feet with packing rope, and gagged them. His movements were as swift as packing a package. As he left, he closed the inner room door behind him and clapped his hands.

"How long will it last?" Lan Susu asked.

"Until tomorrow morning," Tie Niu said. "After that, it's none of our business."

The four men exited through the back door of Jubaozhai. Old Hu was the last to leave, standing at the back door and glancing back at his shop. The roller shutter door was half-closed, the inside was dark, and the old objects on the shelves sat quietly. He looked at it for a few seconds, then closed the door, leaving it unlocked.

"Not lock it?" Bai Ye asked.

"Why lock it? Those guys want to get in, what good will a lock do?" Old Hu said, carrying his travel bag and walking forward. "Let's go. Lock it or not, the thought is what counts."

Tie Niu's car was parked two blocks away. It was a gray van with the words "Guangming Moving" printed on it. Half of the paint was chipped off, and the rearview mirror was wrapped with tape. Bai Ye glanced at it but didn't dare ask if the van had come from the right place.

Tie Niu drove, Lao Hu sat in the passenger seat, and Bai Ye and Lan Susu sat in the back. The car smelled of engine oil. Half of the back seats had been removed, and several cardboard boxes and an old carpet were piled up inside. Lan Susu hugged her canvas bag tightly; inside were the blueprint, the notebook, and her tarot cards. Bai Ye leaned against the car window, watching the streetlights recede one by one.

The car drove for twenty minutes without anyone speaking. Finally, Bai Ye spoke first.

"Old Hu, how did you meet Tie Niu?"

Old Hu glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"That was a long time ago. Back in the 80s, I was doing business in the north. I collected secondhand goods, all kinds of things. One day in a border town, I saw him squatting by the roadside, wearing only a thin shirt, in minus thirty degrees Celsius. I gave him a military overcoat."

"and then?"

"Then he ate my food, wore my clothes, and followed me around for three days without saying a word. On the morning of the fourth day, he was gone." Old Hu took out a cigarette, lit it, rolled down the car window, and let the cold wind rush in. "Two years later, I received a shipment of goods and was targeted. Three strong men cornered me in an alley. He appeared out of nowhere and took down all three of them. After that, he left without saying a word."

"that's all?"

"That's how it is. We bumped into each other a few more times after that, and gradually became familiar with each other." Old Hu flicked his cigarette ash. "He's a man of few words, but he remembers kindness. If you give him a coat, he'll remember you for a lifetime."

Tie Niu drove the car with no expression on his face, just like Lao Hu was talking about someone else.

The car left the city and headed north. The buildings on both sides of the road thinned out, replaced by farmland, bare in winter, with only a few poplar trees occasionally peeking through the gray sky. Bai Ye didn't know where he was going, nor did he ask. Asking wouldn't have mattered. From the moment he pried open that suitcase yesterday afternoon, he had already drifted off course beyond his control.

"That research institute," Lan Susu suddenly spoke, "Number 17. You just said you were the only one who escaped."

Tie Niu did not respond.

"What's inside?"

The carriage was silent for a while. Bai Ye thought Tie Niu wouldn't answer. Then he spoke, his voice flat, as if he were reading a report that had nothing to do with him.

"November 1983. The project had been going on for over four years. They built a machine. A resonator. It could raise the frequency of ordinary people's consciousness to a level where they could perceive things."

"The Realm of Candlelight," Lan Susu said.

Tie Niu glanced at her in the rearview mirror and nodded.

"Yes. But the machine is unstable. It's easy to lift it up, but hard to get it down. Most subjects don't make it past the third week. Those who make it to the fourth week start to lose consciousness. It's not madness, it's shattering. Like a mirror exploding from the inside, with fragments everywhere. You stand in front of it, you can feel it looking at you, but it's not it looking at you. It's something else."

Bai Ye felt goosebumps rise on her arms.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," Tie Niu said. "Sergei—the deputy chief engineer—thinks that human consciousness is like a door. Normally, the door is closed. The resonator opens the door. But after the door is opened, what comes in isn't necessarily light."

The carriage fell silent again.

"And then?" Lan Susu asked.

"Then one day, after the door opened, something came in. It didn't come in from the test subjects. It came in directly. Everyone in the institute felt it. Some people said they saw something, some people said they heard something. Sergei tried to close the door with a resonator, with the power on full blast, but it wouldn't close. Then the institute was sealed off from the outside. Not an accident handling. It was sealed off. Concrete was poured in, blocking all the entrances and exits. I stayed inside for three days."

"How did you get out?"

Tie Niu didn't answer. He turned the steering wheel to the right, and the car turned onto a dirt road with bare fields on both sides. In the distance, there was a row of bungalows with a light on.

"We're here," he said.

The bungalow was an abandoned farm machinery station. Tie Niu parked the vehicle in a garage without a door, rummaged through a cardboard box, and lit a kerosene lamp. The dim light illuminated the four gray walls, the dry grass on the floor, and in the corner, there was an iron-framed bed with a military green quilt folded on it.

"We'll make do here tonight," Tie Niu said. "We'll leave first thing tomorrow morning."

Old Hu didn't stand on ceremony, stuffing his travel bag under the bed and sitting on the edge to take off his shoes. Lan Susu found a corner, put her canvas bag behind her head, wrapped her coat tightly around herself, and closed her eyes. Bai Ye sat down against another wall, the dry grass tugging at the back of his neck, not very comfortable, but not much worse than the half-collapsed bed in the tenement building.

The kerosene lamp wick was turned down, and the room darkened. The wind howled outside the window, slapping something against the wall.

Bai Ye couldn't sleep.

His mind was filled with Tie Niu's words. Consciousness is like a door. After opening it, what comes in isn't necessarily light. There's also Sergei. The middle-aged man with a scar on his left eyebrow, his mouth opening and closing, trying to tell him something.

He turned over and found that Old Hu was also awake. Old Hu was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the black notebook he had taken out of the suitcase, turning the pages one by one by the moonlight streaming through the window. He couldn't read Russian, and he didn't know what he was looking at.

"Old Hu," Bai Ye said in a low voice.

Old Hu raised his head.

Why did you get involved? This has nothing to do with you.

Old Hu closed his notebook and remained silent for a while.

"Xiao Bai, do you know how many years I've been collecting secondhand goods?"

"have no idea."

"More than 30 years. I started in this business at 16, and I'm over 50 now. I've handled at least 80,000 to 100,000 items. Most of them are junk and worthless. But some things, once you hold them in your hands, you know they're different."

"Why is it different?"

"It has warmth," Old Hu said. "Not the kind that's really hot to the touch. When you touch it, you can feel what it has been through. An old pocket watch, worn by its owner for forty years, wound up every day, and that watch becomes something of its owner. A mirror, reflecting a woman for decades, from a young girl to an old lady, that mirror remembers her face."

"Information residue," Bai Ye said.

"You scholars love to give things names." Old Hu placed his notebook on his lap. "I call it 'Objects Talking.' Most of the objects talk about ordinary things: firewood, rice, oil, salt, birth, aging, sickness, and death. But some things say things that shouldn't be said."

"What did that box say?"

Old Hu didn't answer. He handed the notebook to Bai Ye.

"Look at the last page."

Bai Ye took it. Tucked into the last page of the notebook was a black-and-white photograph, about three inches in size. The photograph showed a middle-aged man in a white lab coat standing next to a piece of equipment. He had a scar above his left eyebrow.

Sergei.

But this wasn't the photo Bai Ye had seen on Lan Susu's computer before. In this photo, Sergei wasn't looking at the camera. He had his head slightly tilted, his gaze fixed on something off-screen. His expression was strange. Not fear, not tension, but something Bai Ye couldn't quite put her finger on.

"What is he looking at?" Bai Ye asked.

"Look carefully," Old Hu said.

Bai Ye brought the photograph closer. The kerosene lamp was too dim, so he got up and went to the window to look at it by the moonlight. Then he saw it.

In the corner of the photograph, in the direction Sergei's gaze fell, there was a mirror. The mirror hung on the laboratory wall, and its surface reflected the object standing opposite him.

not human.

It was a blurry, shapeless shadow. Like smoke, like fog, but with edges clearer than smoke and fog. It "stood" there, about two meters away from Sergei.

Bai Ye's hands began to tremble.

"What is this?"

"I don't know." Old Hu's voice came from the darkness. "But I've been collecting old goods for over thirty years, and I've never seen any of these items speak with the same coldness as this photograph."

Bai Ye turned the photo over. On the back was a line of handwritten Russian text, the ink already faded. He showed the photo to Lan Susu. Lan Susu didn't know when she woke up, or perhaps she hadn't slept at all. She took the photo and, by the moonlight, tried to decipher the text.

“Sergei wrote it,” she said. “It says: ‘It gets closer to me every day. Since yesterday, I can see it without turning my head.’”

No one spoke inside the room.

The wind outside the window stopped. The farm machinery station was as quiet as a graveyard. Bai Ye put the photo back into his notebook, closed it, and placed it on the ground. He lay back down on the haystack and closed his eyes. That distorted face appeared again, its mouth opening and closing. This time, he finally read the lip movements.

It wasn't a cry for help.

It means "run fast".