Tales of the End of the Century

Before Bai Ye fully regained consciousness, he had been staring at the crack in the ceiling for almost an hour. The light changed from grayish-white to grayish-yellow, then back to grayish-white. The shadow of the jujube tree shifted from the left to the right of the windowpane. Old Hu coughed in the yard, Tie Niu chopped wood, Lan Susu rummaged through papers in the side room—these sounds returned one by one. But the heartbeat remained. It was soft, slow, close to his own heartbeat, like two people sitting back to back, neither speaking.

He sat up, put on his shoes, and pushed open the door. Tie Niu was just raising his axe. When he saw him, the axe stopped in mid-air, then fell, splitting the wood.

"Didn't sleep well?" Tie Niu asked.

Bai Ye squatted under the jujube tree, picked up a piece of firewood, and twirled it in his hand twice. "Tie Niu, I'm asking you. After leaving Research Institute No. 17, have you done anything you can't remember?"

Tie Niu put down the axe and wiped his hands on his trousers. "Yes."

"What happened?"

"Once, in a border town, I stayed at a small hotel. When I woke up the next morning, I found the soles of my shoes were covered in mud. It was dry and clumped together." Tie Niu squatted down, picked up a twig, and scratched it on the ground. "It didn't rain the night before. I didn't go anywhere. But the soles of my shoes were muddy."

"And then?"

"Later, I started cleaning the soles of my shoes before bed. I checked them every morning." Tie Niu broke off a branch and threw it into the woodpile. "The mud never appeared again."

"Didn't you ever think about figuring out what happened?"

Tie Niu was silent for a while. "I thought about it. But then I stopped thinking about it."

Why?

"Because one time, I found more than just mud on the sole of my shoe." He stood up, tucked the axe back into his belt, "there was blood. Not my blood. No one was injured in the hotel that day, and an elderly couple stayed next door; they even greeted me in the morning. I didn't know whose blood it was, nor where I went that night. From that day on, I decided never to ask about the sole of my shoe again."

Bai Ye put the firewood back into the woodpile. Sunlight filtered through the branches of the jujube tree, casting dappled patterns on the ground.

Lan Susu came out of the east wing, holding a page of paper she had just finished translating. "There's a passage about this in Sergei's notes." She sat down on the threshold, spreading the paper on her lap. "He called this state a 'crack'."

"A crack?"

"A blank space appeared in your consciousness. You might appear awake, walking, talking, and doing things. But that 'you' isn't the usual you." Lan Susu pointed to a passage on the paper. "Sergei observed fourteen subjects, and each of them experienced a gap period before their consciousness collapsed. It could be as short as a few days or as long as a few weeks. During the gap period, they would do things they couldn't remember at all."

"What are you doing?"

“Various. One subject would get up every night and rearrange the furniture in his dormitory into a perfectly symmetrical pattern. When asked the next morning, he couldn’t remember anything. Another started writing a diary. In a language he had never learned before.” Lan Susu turned to the next page. “Sergei compared it to a variant of Old Slavic that had been lost for at least six hundred years.”

Old Hu came out of the kitchen carrying an enamel mug and squatted down beside it. "What happened to the subject afterwards?"

"The period of rupture lasted eleven days. On the morning of the twelfth day, he sat on the bed, looked at his hands, and asked the nurse, 'Whose hands are these?' The nurse said, 'These are your hands.' He said, 'No, these aren't my hands. My hands are outside the door.'" Lan Susu closed her notebook. "That night, his consciousness completely collapsed. Not that he went mad, but that he was 'empty.' He was still alive, able to breathe, able to open his eyes, but there was nothing inside him. Like an empty house."

Bai Ye felt that Old Hu's enamel mug was steaming, but his own hands were cold. Tie Niu finished chopping firewood, leaned his axe against the jujube tree, and patted the sawdust off his hands. "That thing. It's practicing in the crack."

Lan Susu nodded. "Sergei thinks so too. He said the rift wasn't accidental; it was that thing 'testing it out.' It came in when the consciousness was off guard, learning how to use this body. At first, it was just small movements—pouring a glass of water, moving a chair, drawing a few lines on a piece of paper. Once it had enough practice, it could stay longer. Until one day, the original consciousness woke up and found itself locked out."

Bai Ye looked down at his right hand. The extremely fine scratch on his index finger had already scabbed over. He tried to recall how he got the scratch. From paper. What kind of paper? From a notebook. Which page? He couldn't remember.

Old Hu stood up and placed the enamel mug on the windowsill. "How long did Sergei say the fissure period would last?"

"Not necessarily. Sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes a few weeks." Lan Susu paused, "But he mentioned one exception."

"What's the exception?"

"Himself."

The courtyard fell silent. A sparrow hopped a few times in the jujube tree and flew away. Lan Susu turned to the last page. "Sergei admitted in his notes that his gap period was longer than any of the other subjects. It may have started in the middle of the project. He himself didn't even realize it." She read the translated passage aloud, "'November 20th. Today I was looking through my early experimental records and found some passages that I didn't write. The handwriting is mine, the wording is mine. But I have absolutely no recollection of writing those things. There's a page covered in swirls, exactly like the ones I've drawn recently. But that page is dated last June.'"

Bai Ye recalled the human figure drawn in pencil on the last page of his notebook. A swirling head, three question marks, circled in red pen. He didn't remember drawing it. But that drawing was now tucked inside Lan Susu's file folder, pencil and red pen, every stroke his handwriting.

"And then?" Old Hu asked.

"Sergei knew the rift had been there for too long, and he could no longer distinguish which memories were his own and which were left behind from that thing's practice. He decided to conduct an experiment." Lan Susu turned to the last page, where Sergei had written a few lines in red ink: "Every night before he went to sleep, he would place a glass of water by his bedside. Full. Then he would tell himself: If the water is less the next morning, it proves that it came. If the water isn't less—"

"That proves he drank it himself," Lao Hu interjected.

"Yes." Lan Susu put down the paper. "Sergei's experiment lasted for seven days. The water level decreased each day. He remembered getting up to drink water in the middle of the night every morning. Very clearly. He could recall the temperature of the water, the feel of the cup, and the moonlight outside the window. On the morning of the seventh day, the water level decreased again. He remembered getting up to drink water in the middle of the night. But when he looked down at his hands, he found that his fingernails were filled with dirt."

"soil?"

"After the research institute was sealed off, there was no soil inside. The floor was concrete, the walls were concrete, the ceiling was concrete. The soil could only have come from one place." Lan Susu looked at them. "Outside. That night, something used Sergei's body to find a way out. And it came back."

Tie Niu reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, but didn't light it. Bai Ye sat on the doorstep, looking at his hands. His fingernails were clean.

Old Hu picked up the enamel mug and took a sip. The tea had gone cold. "So that thing has been practicing how to be a 'person' all along." He put the mug down. "First, it learns the movements, then it learns to remember. Finally, it learns how to get out."

"Sergei said it has learned the first two steps. For the third step, it is waiting for an opportunity," Lan Susu said, looking at Tie Niu, "someone who can take it further."

Tie Niu took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and held it in his hand. "It chose me. I brought it with me for six years after it came out of Research Institute No. 17. I didn't even know it myself." He snapped the cigarette in half, scattering tobacco everywhere. "That hotel in town. Mud and blood on the soles of its shoes. It's practicing."

Bai Ye suddenly remembered the gray-clad man standing across the street yesterday morning. He said, "You didn't escape; you were released. It needed someone to take it out. You've been taking it out for six years without even realizing it."

"Does it still need me now?" Tie Niu asked.

Lan Susu was silent for a moment. "Maybe it's not needed anymore. It already has new cracks."

Bai Ye looked up. Lan Susu was looking at him. Her gaze wasn't reproachful; it held something he couldn't understand—sympathy, or something more complex than sympathy.

"I."

"Yes. It saw you the moment you touched that suitcase. For every step you took deeper in, it took two steps toward you." Lan Susu put away Sergei's notebook, folded it page by page, and placed it back in the file folder. "Sergei said it likes people like you the most. Naturally gifted. The door was already ajar. It didn't need to knock, it just pushed it open."

Bai Ye looked down at his hands. His fingernails were clean, and the scab from the glass cut on his palm was almost healed. The scratch on his right index finger was now just a white mark. He clenched his fist, then relaxed it. He could still control it. He could still be sure this hand was his own.

Tie Niu stood up and walked up to Bai Ye. "Did Sergei say how to get rid of it?"

Lan Susu shook her head. "He only said it's afraid of two things. First, people who don't know who they are. It can't learn things that are uncertain."

"And the second one?"

He was only halfway through his sentence when the door was kicked open.

Tie Niu was silent for a moment. "The first thing is not knowing who you are. What does 'not knowing who you are' mean?"

Lan Susu thought for a moment. "It might not be the literal meaning. It's not amnesia, it's not madness. It's—" she carefully chose her words, "it's that in that person's consciousness, there isn't a fixed, imitable shape."

Bai Ye looked up. "What do you mean?"

"Each of us is constantly changing. The you in the morning is different from the you at night. The you when you're angry is different from the you when you're calm. The you when you're alone is different from the you in a crowd. But these changes have boundaries. Like a river, it has a riverbed that governs it, so no matter how fast the current flows, it can't overflow." Lan Susu looked at Bai Ye. "That thing learns from people by learning from the riverbed. Fixed patterns, repetitive habits, stable memories. If a person doesn't have these in their consciousness—if that river doesn't have a riverbed, and can change course at any time, can become another river at any time—it can't learn. It's not that it can't learn, it's that it doesn't dare to learn. Because it itself doesn't have a riverbed. It's afraid of falling into the water and never being able to get back up."

Bai Ye placed his hands on his knees. "You mean, to avoid being learned by it, you have to make yourself uncertain?"

"It's not about changing," Lan Susu said. "It's about acknowledging. Acknowledging that you are inherently uncertain. You think you have a fixed 'self,' but that's an illusion. That thing comes in by exploiting that illusion. It pretends to be you because you've always been pretending to be you too. If you stop pretending, it has no chance."

The night fell silent. In the courtyard, the shadow of the jujube tree had shrunk to its roots. The sun was directly overhead; the winter sunlight had no warmth, only a bright glare.

Tie Niu picked up the broken cigarette and threw it into the woodpile. "Give it a try."

"What?"

Try not to pretend.

Bai Ye looked at him. "How do we try?"

Tie Niu thought for a moment. "What's the first thing you do when you get up this morning?"

"Put on your shoes."

"Left foot first or right foot first?"

Bai Ye opened his mouth, only to find he couldn't remember. He tried to recall, remembering the feel of the shoelaces, the sensation of the shoe upper brushing against his ankle, but which shoe he put on first? It was all a blur. "I don't remember."

"Okay," Tie Niu said. "Tomorrow morning, wear the right shoe first. No reason, just to change it."

Lan Susu chimed in. "It's not just about wearing shoes. You can change everything you're used to. Whether you brush your teeth from the left or right, which leg you step with first when walking, which dish you pick up first when eating. Your usual order is your riverbed. Disrupt it."

"Won't that thing keep up?" Bai Ye asked.

"That's what Sergei thinks," Lan Susu said. "It learns your model. When the model changes, it has to relearn. If you change fast enough, it will never finish learning. It will never be able to get in."

Bai Ye stood up. The bare branches of the jujube tree remained motionless. He took a few steps in the yard and stopped.

"When I walk now, which leg should I step with first?"

No one could answer that. He didn't know either.

At night, Bai Ye lay on the kang (a heated brick bed). Old Hu's snoring came from the main room. Tie Niu sat under the jujube tree, an axe across his knees. Lan Susu's window was still lit. He closed his eyes. The mirror was still there. The person in the mirror had his face, but the blinking frequency was different. It looked at him, its mouth opening and closing. Bai Ye stared at that mouth.

This time, he didn't try to decipher the lip movements. He looked away. Not away from the mirror, but away from the very thought of "trying to understand it." I don't need to know what you're saying. You imitate me, I change. You change, I change again. Let's see who's faster.

The mouth in the mirror stopped. It looked at him, and the look in its eyes changed. Bai Ye couldn't quite put his finger on what it had become. Not anger, not confusion. It was—uncertainty. Like someone reaching out in the dark, touching nothing. Bai Ye opened his eyes. The crack in the ceiling was still there. There was wind outside the window, and the branches of the jujube tree gently scraped against the glass. He pulled his right hand out from under the covers and spread it out in the darkness. The white mark on his index finger was so faint it was almost invisible. He clenched his fist, then released it; he clenched his fist, then released it. Each time, he started with a different finger.