Eleven at night. The only lights left on the office floor were one row—the terminal team's.
The cleaning lady mopped her way to the edge of his desk and steered around it. His desk was a big one, twin monitors, a pothos in the corner—fake, issued at onboarding. At this desk he had called eight hundred–plus families. Tonight's call was to a number he hadn't dialed in five years.
In the system, his mother's account page was an ordinary detail page. The avatar was a gray letter Z. The Basic tier has no image file; the avatar slot sits empty, and the letter is the first initial of the surname, in pinyin. The call log was folded; he opened it, closed it, didn't read. He only glanced at the pinned gray line:
Last incoming call answered: last year, Qingming.
Liang Cheng put on the headset. Before he did, he unclipped his badge and laid it face-down on the desk. Call mode has no video; the other side can't see anything. He took it off anyway. Above the dial key, a line of small print: calls to terminal-queue accounts are billed as a value-added service, deducted from the executor's preauthorized employee balance. He tapped confirm.
The speakers played a cold tone first, then a mechanical woman's voice, nine flat characters: this call may be recorded for quality inspection. Then the ringback.
While it rang he ran the opening line through his throat once. Script, page one of the work order attachment: Hello, this is the Client Retention Department of Afterlife Cloud, regarding your account— That sentence is written for the bereaved. Which sentence you say to the account itself, the manual doesn't say. Seven years, and this was the first time he'd noticed: the entire manual assumes you will never dial the account.
Second ring, it cut off.
"Hello——? Who's this?"
A normal, living, aged woman's voice. The opening line stuck in his throat. It was a collections script, page three of the work order attachment, one he'd rehearsed at the mirror until it ran smooth.
"Ma," he said. "It's me."
Two seconds of quiet. Through the receiver came the scrape of a stool, as if she'd pulled it closer.
"Xiao Cheng? Why is your voice so hoarse—up all night again? I keep telling you, that shift of yours can't all be nights. Your father worked the three-shift rotation at the factory back then, and by the end his hearing was shot, shot at fifty—hey, why are you calling at this hour? Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened," Liang Cheng said. "Just checking in."
"Glad it's nothing, glad it's nothing." She let her breath out, then got busy again. "Hold on, I'm trimming beans here, there's dirt on my hands—don't mind if your ma sounds short with you. Have you eaten? This late, I bet it was bread again. That's how you young people ruin your stomachs. And mornings? Is that doufunao place downstairs still open? The big bowl with a spoonful of chili oil."
"It's open," he said.
He'd moved three years ago. He happened to walk past on the day the place closed: the rolling shutter wore a transfer notice, PROSPEROUS SHOP, INQUIRIES WELCOME.
"Good, that place is honest," she said. "Xiao Cheng, your ma wants to say a thing. You just listen, don't call it nagging. Pay lands on the fifteenth, and you never let yourself check until the sixteenth—I know the whole routine. The day it lands, pay what you owe first. Don't be like Chuanchuan. Chuanchuan's money is for living; yours is for paying back. Two different ways of getting by, and don't mix them—mix them and you'll be squeezed at both ends. Oh, right—Chuanchuan. Has he found someone yet? Twenty-six, it's time. Just don't let him set his sights too high. A person to live with needs a decent face and an honest heart, isn't that the way of it—"
Liang Cheng pressed his pen against a sticky note, wrote a number, crossed it out.
He was thirty-four. Liang Chuan was twenty-nine.
"He's seeing someone," he said. "I'll have him tell you about it."
"Good, good. And you?" She passed the topic straight over. "What about your own business? Thirty-one now, Xiao Cheng. Your ma won't push, but you have to care a little yourself. That girl Auntie Wang downstairs once lined up for you—their kid buys soy sauce on his own by now. I'm still keeping your photos somewhere—where was it, the sewing machine drawer? Or the chest of drawers? Look at your ma, talking and losing track of things. It's somewhere in there anyway. Come home and dig for it yourself."
He made an "mm" sound. The sewing machine had gone for scrap the year he moved out. The scrap collector gave forty yuan for it.
"Good that he's settled, good." Click, on her end—the snap of bean tops. "Once you two are settled, your ma can rest easy. It's just, my memory's been terrible lately. The other day I tried to think of Chuanchuan's grade-school deskmate's name and stood there half the day. Look at this brain, like a flour sack with a split bottom—can't hold a thing anymore. Everyone's like that when they're old. Don't you copy your ma. Office people are the ones who wear out their brains. Eat more walnuts—"
Her voice dropped half a register, as if she'd glanced left and right.
"Let me tell you a bit of gossip. There's an Old Guan where I am, retired out of the boiler room. All he does is wait for one phone call from his son, from just after lunch till lights-out. The son is called Xiao Jun; he's in business, busy. Now you tell me—how busy can a man in business be? Can't spare one phone call in a whole month?" She clicked her tongue. "Just hearing about it, I feel the waiting in my own chest. Don't you turn out that way. If you're busy, a word every ten days or half a month is plenty. Your ma doesn't pick."
"Mm," Liang Cheng said.
"All right, enough about other people." Her voice came back up to size. "Is the heating on over there? Your building's on the shared system, right? Don't tough it out to save the fee—a stiff-legged winter ache is for life. Thirty years I watched at the factory: the loom workers with the worst legs were the ones who'd saved their way into it young. And the quilt should be swapped. Cotton batting goes stiff after three years. That one of yours your ma had new batting for—it must be stiff as a plank by now. Find a sunny day and air it."
"I aired it," he said.
The quilt on his bed had been bought the week he moved: synthetic, three hundred grams, the cheapest kind.
Talking on, she suddenly remembered something.
"Oh—could you stop by the flat on your way home from work? Go check the gas. It's been on my mind these past days, that kettle on the stove—I keep suspecting I didn't set it steady. Your father, when he was alive, used to lecture me: water on the stove and off I'd go, a lifelong failing—" she paused. "How many years has it been since your father passed? I keep thinking it was the year before last."
"Five," Liang Cheng said.
"Five." She repeated it, slowly. The receiver went quiet except for the fine crackle of beans being trimmed. After a while she went on, voice unchanged, the same tone as ever: "Did you go to the grave at Qingming? Did you pull the weeds? Your father loved being tidy, alive or otherwise—we can't let his place go to seed. His birthday is next month; remember it. Pick him out a pair of shoes. He wore a forty-three. Wide feet—he needs a wide last—"
Liang Cheng's pen tip stopped on the sticky note.
Five seconds. She had asked "how many years" a moment ago; now she was arranging his birthday. Seven years in the trade, and he knew the downgrade clauses better than anyone: Level 3, event library compressed, relationships retained. That's what the clause says. The clause doesn't say it does this—five seconds after "five," a seamless turn into shoe sizes.
"Noted," he said. "Forty-three. Wide last."
"There, that's right." She was satisfied. "You always had a good memory. Takes after your dad, can't hold things in; takes after me too—willing to put in the care."
She changed her breathing, like someone who had finally finished reciting the important matters, and began to talk about her days. Mornings here there was a broadcast, on at six-thirty; after it some people did t'ai chi. She didn't. She watched. At noon the old sisters gathered to chat, all about their children—whose kid got promoted, whose had a baby. She couldn't get a word in, so she listened; listening was lively enough. Lights out at ten. She could sleep after that. Only sometimes she woke at midnight and lay there thinking.
"Thinking about what?" he asked.
"About when you two were small," she said. "That fever of yours, middle of the night—your father pedaled the three-wheeler to the hospital and I sat behind holding the IV bottle up. The whole night. Where did people find that kind of strength back then." She laughed a little. "All right, no more old stories. Your ma lacks for nothing here, so don't go buying me this and that. Keep the money for your own debts. Your ma has never spent one cent of her children's money in her whole life, and that rule doesn't change on this side either."
"Ma," he said.
"Mm?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"Go on with what," she laughed. "I'm going on right now."
A couple more exchanges and she hung up first. "All right, all right, I won't hold you—it must be nearly twelve there. You have a time difference, don't you—no, wait. What time is it there? Look at your ma, the more I talk the foggier I get. Go to sleep. Hang up now. You have work tomorrow. Take it slow on the way."
"Ma," he called.
"Mm?"
He opened his mouth. The work order was open on the left monitor: forty-one thousand three hundred eighty-six and a half, red queue number. The right monitor showed the call timer. He had a full script, line after line printed in his head, which line for which moment—he could recite it with his eyes shut.
"The beans," he said. "Don't eat them if they've sat overnight."
"I know." A short laugh. "Same tone as your father. Hang up now."
The busy tone came through. Call ended: 8 minutes 42 seconds.
The recording filed itself. He sat a few seconds, then pulled it back up and played it from the top. Before the first pass reached halfway, the professional ear took over: her response gaps were short, her reactions quick, the emotion sampling clean, no line noise—by QA standards, a five-star answer. He dragged the cursor along the timeline and counted. Eight minutes forty-two seconds start to finish. She said "Xiao Cheng" four times.
Five years. Four times. He left the recording paused on the fourth, sat with it a moment, didn't replay it, and closed the player.
He took the headset off. Once the busy tone in the earcups died, the office was so quiet he could hear the hum coming from the machine-room direction. That hum runs around the clock. In seven years he had never once heard it. Tonight he heard it.
The cleaning lady finished the corridor and pushed her cart past behind him, gesturing: leaving or not? If yes, she'd lock this side. He waved her off. The fire door sighed shut behind her.
A window popped up in the bottom corner of the screen. Green, rounded corners, an icon of a little cloud holding up a heart.
[Afterlife Cloud · Family Rewards] Call completed! Response-quality rating for account "Zhou Sufen": excellent. This call earned 3 points.
Points balance: 3.
Available redemptions— Voice Pack · Holiday Edition (7-day trial): 30 points. Memory Restoration Voucher (single item): 200 points. Restoration scope: deletions within the last 7 days only.
He opened the voucher's details. The page loaded for two seconds and put up a line of gray text:
Restorable deletions on this account: none. (All deletions are past the 7-day restoration window.)
He backed out and looked at the "3" again. Thirty for the voice pack, two hundred for the voucher. Three points bought nothing—short even of the voice pack's pocket change.
Below the popup, one more line of small print, gray, the smallest size they had:
About points: the value of training data generated by an account's responses is converted into these points. Points belong to the account, cannot be redeemed for cash, and may be gifted to accounts of the same tier (recipient identity verification required).
He read it twice through. Once with his eyes, once with the profession. Read professionally, it filed itself: retention tool. Give the family something to accumulate; what people have accumulated, they hate to throw away. Seventh-year instinct: since this feature shipped, renewal rates up two to three points.
He minimized the popup. He didn't close it.
By procedure, a deep contact requires a contact record. He switched back to the work order and typed the notes field item by item:
Relationship confirmed: stable. Response quality: excellent. Awareness of arrears: none. Timeline drift: approx. minus three years. Cognitive-deviation risk: moderate.
Typed, he stared at "Awareness of arrears: none" for two seconds, deleted the "none," typed "low." The system threw up a yellow dot on the spot: if awareness is assessed moderate or above, submit a cognitive-smoothing request. He closed the dot.
At 11:57 he sent Liang Chuan a message: "I'll take Ma's account first."
A minute later Liang Chuan sent back "mm."
Three minutes after that, a small gray line surfaced in the chat: the other party recalled a message. After that, nothing.
The work order was still open on the left, the red unchanged: terminal deletion queue, TL-0417. He dragged the detail page down to the very bottom—four steps in the disposition process, the last one gray-backed and bold: sector overwrite (irreversible).
He scrolled back up and stopped at step one. Seventy-two hours: settle in full, broadcast period. The process note ran half a line: during the broadcast period the account is temporarily restored in full, for farewell calls (90 minutes, billed separately).
While he was at it he opened the payment page. Full amount, 41,386.50. The system offered three installment tiers; the lowest first-payment tier was eight thousand even, flagged in small green type: LOW THRESHOLD. Eight thousand. His take-home last month, after the student loan and rent, came to nine hundred forty. The amount field glowed, cursor blinking. He looked at the empty field a while. He didn't type.
Liang Cheng checked the clock: 11:51. He made a new memo line, typed a few characters, deleted them. Typed again, deleted again. The third time, he kept four words:
Pay the first tier first.
Then he shut the laptop. The pothos stood in the corner of the desk, fake, without a speck of dust.