Tales of the End of the Century

The backup camp's door was a riveted steel door, embedded deep within the mountain at the end of an abandoned old tunnel. A crack ran through the concrete beam above the doorway, and seeping from it wasn't water, but wind—an extremely fine, cold wind, carrying the year-round snow dust from the western mountains and the distinctive rusty smell of the old exploration camp. Tie Niu pulled his axe from his waist and tapped the cement grout around the rivets with the back of the axe. The grout had crumbled; it crumbled at the tap, revealing the steel door frame beneath, soaked with rusty water.

"This door was bolted from the outside. The bolt is rusted, but there's oil in the bolt hole." He crouched down, his headlamp illuminating a very fine scratch on the bottom of the door frame—not made with a tool, but with a fingernail. Seven deep scratches followed by one shallow one, the last stroke flicking upwards half an inch, exactly the same shape as the fingernail mark on Old Wei's iron door frame deep in the mine. "Someone oiled this door from behind. He couldn't get out, but he didn't want the door to rust."

Bai Ye crouched down, examining the row of scratches. He recognized the pattern—seven deep, one shallow, the last stroke rising half an inch. Old Wei, deep in the mine, had carved the same mark on his iron gate frame; the tall man under the cooling tower in the old industrial zone had carved the same mark at the base of the electrical substation; and the man at the overseas transfer station, helped up from under the jujube tree wall, had also carved the same rhythmic marks on the side of the sleepers before the white dove drew the arrow on him. Everyone who survived the seven weeks of the fissure period had used these marks to calculate time: the seven deep marks represented the number of days each reflection ceased to resist; the shallow mark represented the morning when he first no longer needed to see the reflection. The last stroke rising—not because it was crooked, but because his fingertip had slipped against the iron gate frame for a moment after carving the last mark. He knew he didn't need to carve another one.

He reached out and touched the crack in the door. His fingertips touched an extremely thin barrier less than an inch from the crack—not a solid object, not wind. It was light. Silvery white, extremely faint and soft, seeping from the inside of the crack, gathering into a barely perceptible warmth on his fingertips. This light shared the same origin as the silvery glow embedded in the north wall of Old Wei's cave deep in the mine: it didn't reflect any external light source, but rather seeped out from the rock wall itself extremely slowly and restrainedly, like someone pressing the warmth of their fingertips into the stone. This small halo of light before him was even narrower and thinner, resting motionless on the surface of the air currents in the dark space behind the crack.

"This is the last lamp Old Wei left." Bai Ye withdrew his fingers from the crack in the door, stood up, and grasped the doorknob. "It wasn't left for us; it was left for the person behind the door. He can't open this door himself—his light is too bright. He was the originator of these markings, the anchor point among all those transferred who held on until the seventh week. If he gets even half a step closer, the person behind the door will dim their light. He's waiting for us to open this door he can't open himself."

Tie Niu tucked the axe back into his waistband, braced his hands against the steel door frame, pushed off the ground with his feet, and braced his shoulders against the door panel. The steel door didn't budge. He changed his angle, bracing his left shoulder against the right side of the door frame, allowing Bai Ye to insert the crowbar into the crack from the left. The crowbar was the one Old Wei from the mine had left them; the black duct tape wrapped around the handle was now sticky with sweat. The two of them exerted force simultaneously, the crowbar bent in an arc, and the steel door let out a deep, muffled screech. Rust slag fell from the crack above the door frame, and a ring of rust powder broke off at the base of the rivets. The door opened.

Behind the door was a small space, even smaller than Old Wei's cave, so small that Tie Niu had to duck to stand upright. The cave walls weren't rock, but artificially poured cement, covered with a thin layer of ice crystals—not from condensed water vapor, but from the extremely low temperature, where even exhaled carbon dioxide condensed into fine dry ice mist on the walls. In the center of the cave was a folding cot, with a frozen wool blanket on the bed frame. On the low table beside the bed was a mirror, its surface facing upwards, clean and free of cracks or chalk dust, with a kerosene lamp, long since burnt out, placed in the center. On the corner of the table was an enamel mug, its bottom covered with dried, dark brown tea stains. Next to the mug were a broken ballpoint pen that had long since lost its lead and a fragment of a test subject's list that hadn't been burned, pressed under the kerosene lamp base.

A man sat in the corner, his back to the door. His hair was completely white, almost transparent in the darkness. He wore an old work uniform from Project Aurora, the cuffs worn frayed, the collar rolled up, revealing a small patch of skin below his collarbone, red from the cold. He didn't turn around. But Bai Ye knew—he sensed it the moment he stepped into the cave—that there were two frequencies of consciousness within it. One was himself, and the other was this man who had sat there for many years, his back to the door. The Rift Period fluctuations emanating from this man were no longer a struggle, no resistance, no tearing sensation between reflection and reality. It was a continuous, extremely stable resonance radiating outward—his frequency of consciousness had merged with the row of mirrors behind Old Wei in the mine, the row of enamel mugs on the threshold of the cooling tower, and the pile of stones on the stone table in Elm Gully, warmed by different hands, all merging into the same light.

He pulled the old enamel mug from the side pocket of his backpack and gently placed it on the low table, next to the mug belonging to the man who had sat there for years. The two mugs were about the same size, and their age was obvious at a glance. Then he placed the pebbles he had brought along the way, one by one, on the edge of the low table—the gray pebbles Zhao Zhiyuan had brought from the farm abroad, the flat, round pebbles the young man surnamed Ji had brought from the riverbank in his hometown, the cement fragment, the old nut, and the red clay bead that the three men in the old industrial area had each placed in the direction of the cooling tower, and the last small piece of lime that Old Man Chen had found at the bottom of his satchel before leaving the old outpost. There was one more, which Old Wei had picked up in the corner of the mine and given to him. He placed the igneous rock fragment at the front. The man with his back to the door did not turn around, but the old enamel mug vibrated slightly on the table, as if a finger had tapped the inside of the mug—he had gone too far to speak, but he could still tap the wall.

Bai Ye turned to look at the tunnel stretching towards the mountains. Tie Niu and Lan Susu stood at the entrance. He put the jar back in his backpack's side pocket, squatted down again in front of the low table, and gently tapped three times on the edge of the stone threshold with a finger. He paused for a long time, then tapped three more times. The door had already been pushed open from the direction of the mining area, and the knocking sound carried along the old tunnel into the depths of the mountains. He left the person with his back to the door with the last pebble, and also left a coordinate for those faint frequencies still scattered further away, one that no longer needed to hesitate. Then he stood up and continued walking towards the other side of the mountains.