Tales of the End of the Century

Before dawn, the jeep was already parked at the gate. Tie Niu tossed the last two bundles of reflective rope into the trunk and checked the fuel level in the spare tank again. Lan Susu sat in the passenger seat, the oscilloscope resting on her lap. The three faint signals from the direction of the old industrial area were still on the screen, slightly brighter than yesterday—not because the intensity had increased, but because the distance had narrowed. She looked down at the screen, then glanced back through the dusty rear window towards the jujube tree. Since returning from the mining area, she had stopped using the word "tracking" and started using "connecting." Every time one of the scattered subjects began to move a little closer to Yushugou, that faint frequency would rise slightly.

Bai Ye came out of the house, placed the enamel mug on the stone table, bent down and picked up a pebble, placing it next to the pile of pebbles. This pebble was one Zhao Zhiyuan had found in his woven bag yesterday; he said he'd picked it up at the border farm—that day, he'd met the man in gray and Vasily outside the abandoned transfer station. The two men had helped him move the metal cabinet blocking the entrance and given him a jug of water and a packet of compressed biscuits. Before leaving, the man in gray had drawn an arrow on the dirt road, pointing south. He'd found this pebble next to the arrow and held it in his hand all the way to Yushugou.

Bai Ye straightened the pebble, placing it next to the one Zhao Zhiyuan had placed on the pile on the first day. The two pebbles were about the same size and color, both being flat and round, with smooth edges from the river water. One came from the White Dove supply line, and the other from the border farm. He stood up, walked to the gate, opened the car door, and got into the back seat.

As the car started, Old Hu was squatting by the kitchen door peeling garlic. He swept the garlic skins into a winnowing basket, stood up, walked to the gate, and watched the jeep turn past the poplar stump, its taillights slowly shrinking in the morning mist. He didn't say "come back soon," but simply placed the enamel mug on a stone, took out a cigarette from his pocket, and lit it.

The old industrial area was quieter than Bai Ye had imagined, filled with dust. Not the dust of a mining area, a mixture of slag and rust, but cement dust—the peeling paint from the factory walls, the powder from collapsed precast concrete slabs, blown back and forth by the winds of the northern wilderness year after year, accumulating in a thick layer on the ground. Three cooling towers stood side-by-side in the heart of the factory, their shadows seemingly enveloping the entire open space. The top of the tallest tower was half collapsed, its steel bars protruding from the broken concrete like broken ribs. Railway tracks stretched from the factory gate to the depths of the workshops, a flatbed wagon parked on them, its cargo bed piled high with pipes long since rusted into scrap metal. Faded slogans painted red on the workshop walls were mostly illegible, only the last two characters still legible.

Tie Niu parked the car at the factory gate. The iron gate's railings had long since rusted and broken, pushed aside, leaving only a narrow passage for one person. Before leaving, the person who pushed the gate tied a small piece of reflective rope to the only rust-free hinge—one end was tied in a figure-eight knot by a skilled hand, the other end pointing towards the nearest guardhouse. He squatted down to examine the knot, then turned to Bai Ye and said, "It's the same kind he tied on the iron gate in the ventilation alley. Bai Ge never went into the cave, but he waited outside."

Lan Susu opened the car door and stood beside the fence. She glanced towards the guardhouse, then looked down to check the location on the oscilloscope screen. Three faint tracks were all concentrated in the old factory buildings behind the cooling tower ahead—one was approaching them extremely slowly, while the other two remained stationary. She put the oscilloscope in her backpack and casually pulled out a small piece of chalk she had prepared in Yushugou from her side pocket. "The person pushing the doors doesn't stop in front of them, but leaves the same end of rope outside each door. He's afraid of getting too close and extinguishing their own lamp wicks."

Bai Ye stepped across the threshold first, his feet landing on the factory floor, his shoes crushing a thin layer of cement dust. He had walked through the same ashes deep in the mine, where Old Wei had burned all his practice records. Zhao Zhiyuan followed behind him, pointing softly to a small section of reflective rope at the foot of the cooling tower, a rope that had been stepped on more than once. "When he pulled me out from behind the metal cabinet at the transfer station, he also tied this kind of figure-eight knot, with the knot facing south. I stood there in the snow for half the night, holding the end of the rope, and finally followed it to your gate." He then pulled a small piece of the rope he had kept from his pocket, the end stained with dried machine paint.

They circled halfway in the shadow cast by the cooling tower before entering the main factory building. Most of the skylights were shattered, and morning light slanted through the holes, cutting sharp beams of light across the ground. Fine dust particles floated within these beams, each slowly swirling. The overhead crane tracks in the workshop still hung in mid-air, their hooks dangling and swaying gently in the wind. Against the wall was a row of workbenches, their instrument panels long since smashed, a few rat droppings mixed in with the shards of glass. Beneath the workbenches lay a stiffened canvas, on which rested two enamel mugs and a very short piece of chalk. The mugs had been washed, but a layer of watermarks remained on the bottom.

Zhao Zhiyuan squatted down and righted the two jars. There were no chalk marks on the bottom of the jars. He pointed deeper into the factory area and said, "They haven't started writing on the bottom of the jars yet. It's the same as before I encountered the gray-clad men at the border farm—their actions have changed, but they're just not sure if they can write anymore."

Bai Ye squatted under the control panel for a while, then stood up and walked to the load-bearing column in the center of the factory. A yellowed engineering drawing was pasted on the column, and in one corner, someone had written a single character in chalk—the handwriting was very light, hesitant at the beginning, but with a long, drawn-out finish. He recognized the handwriting; it was exactly the same pressure Old Wei had used when he drew the last symbol on the door frame of the containment room deep in the mine. "He's already here. He didn't go into the workshop; he just pasted this drawing on the load-bearing column. He knew that later people would find the chalk by following the drawing."

He withdrew his hand from the pillar and continued deeper into the room. Before him lay a substation with half a wall removed, containing a reflecting mirror. The mirror, dust-free, sat between two red bricks, next to a half-full bowl of water with a few grains of sand at the bottom. Before Zhao Zhiyuan could speak, Bai Ye sensed someone behind a rusty cabinet deep within the substation—the person had been crouching there for a long time, breathing heavily, the edge of the reflecting mirror icy cold in their hand, afraid to put it down.

Bai Ye didn't enter the electrical distribution room. He squatted down at the doorway and gently placed the enamel mug on the ground, bottom up, so that the blurry white characters inside reflected the light filtering through the workshop ceiling. Then he extended a finger and tapped three times on the dusty iron plate next to the bottom of the mug—pausing for a long time, then tapping three more times. The motionless figure deep inside the electrical distribution room suddenly trembled. He slowly flipped the mirror over, placing it back-up between the red bricks, stood up, walked around the rusty cabinet, and headed towards the door. Behind him, the two signals that had been stationary further away also began to move in the same direction simultaneously. The wind from the top of the cooling tower blew through the broken window, gently causing the piece of chalk on the control panel to flutter slightly.