Tuesday, 9:28.
He tipped the water glass from his desk out into the sink, flicked the last of it off the bottom. Rule one of the execution notices: no food or water in the thirty minutes before connection. He hadn't eaten after eight last night. This morning he passed the noodle shop without going in. The owner was mopping at the doorway, looked up at him.
"Not eating today?"
"Not eating."
The owner drew the mop back a little and let him past.
The west end of the third floor was the DA area, four doors. On DA-P01 the magnetic card had been flipped to its red side, occupied. On the handle of DA-P02 hung a plastic tag, "maintenance" written by hand, thick strokes, the writer had used a marker. DA-P03's card was green.
The tech on duty was Wu Yan, OPS printed on his badge, employee no. L-0562. He was blowing dust off a keyboard with a pink rubber bulb, squeeze by squeeze, the dust jumping up out of the gaps between keys.
"Work ID."
Liang Cheng handed it over. Wu Yan scanned it, then had him press a fingerprint, right index finger, twice — the first press didn't read.
"Blood pressure."
The cuff was old, the hook-and-loop gone to pills. The numbers came up: 132/86, pulse 88. Wu Yan read them out and tapped "pass" on the screen. He unwrapped the cuff, rolled it into a ring, fastened it with the strap, pilling side inward.
"Fasting, sign here."
Liang Cheng signed. The line on the form read: applicant self-reports no food or water within thirty minutes prior to connection. Self-reports. He only saw that word after he had signed.
"Wait outside ten minutes," Wu Yan said. "The last one just came out. The slot has to run a cleaning cycle."
The waiting area was three chairs bolted in a row; two people sitting in it made it crowded. On the wall, under lamination, hung a page of Notes on Deep Visits, corners curling, the characters bleached white by the sun — the third item's line was past reading. Next to it hung a small whiteboard: "Visits this month: 11," and after the 11 a horizontal stroke that wouldn't wipe off.
At the other end of the row sat a woman, forty or so, a kraft-paper document envelope in her arms, the mouth of it wound shut with cotton string. She was looking down at her phone. The screen was black.
From the door at the far end of the corridor came a noise, somebody calling a slot: DA-P04.
She stood, hitched the envelope higher against her, and went. Passing him she carried a faint smell of medicine with her. The seat cushion she'd been sitting on puffed slowly back up.
He took the two folded sheets out of his inner pocket, looked at them, put them back. The thermal-paper one had gone a little softer than Friday, the crease furred over.
At three minutes to ten, Wu Yan called P03 from inside the door.
The chair was the kind with a backrest. One armrest worn pale in a patch, the leather on the right armrest torn away in a piece the size of a fingernail, the foam inside showing, yellow. On the seat lay one white hair, longer than his own. He left it there.
Wu Yan pressed the pads on: two at the back of the neck, two at the temples. The conductive gel was cold and smelled like the paste they used in primary school.
"Don't run once you're in," Wu Yan said. "Run, and the rendering can't keep up — you'll watch yourself stutter. If something blocks you, don't shove. Go around."
"Understood."
"The timer's top right, mind it. Last thirty seconds it blinks." He straightened the wires. "When the blinking stops you're out. You don't drop — the scene drops."
The screen put up a confirmation page, three checkboxes.
□ I understand that physical contact with the persona is prohibited, including the passing of objects. □ I understand that a single session is capped at 30 minutes; on expiry the session ends by force, with no make-up time. □ I understand that the session is recorded in full and minutes are generated; minutes are retained for three years.
He ticked all three.
[Pre-authorization held: 60.00 yuan. Billing on actual duration once the session ends; any part of a minute is billed as one minute.]
Below that sat one more line, a size smaller: the cost of this visit is added to the outstanding balance of account AC-0417.
"One more thing." Wu Yan dropped the bulb into a drawer. "When you come out, don't stand right up."
Ten-oh-one, loading.
[Scene list] Kitchen (complete) Balcony (included · landscape module not purchased) Living room (deleted · placeholder) Bedroom (deleted · placeholder) Bathroom (not purchased)
[Sensory modules] Hearing (included) Vision (included · clarity 720) Touch (low precision) Taste (deleted) Smell (deleted)
The progress bar stopped at half for two seconds, then ran on to the end.
The sound came first.
An aluminum kettle sat on the burner, the water close to boiling, the lid lifting and falling back, over and over, metal on metal. Another sound, nearer, crisp, in short lengths: green beans being snapped.
Then the light.
The kitchen wasn't big, four and a half steps to the far wall. White tile behind the stove, the grout gone yellow, the run of grout nearest the wall holding grease that no longer washed out. Two burners on the gas stove; the right one held the kettle, the left sat empty, a ring of dried soup at the edge of the plate. On the side panel of the range hood a utility bill was taped up, the date soaked through with grease, the figures gone. A rag lay over the faucet, folded in three, corners squared. On the windowsill, a glass jar of Sichuan peppercorns; the lid belonged to some other jar and didn't sit tight. A nail had been driven in behind the door, and on it hung a bundle of plastic bags, bags tucked inside bags.
She sat on a low folding stool, an aluminum basin propped on her knees. A navy cardigan, the sleeves rolled twice, the forearms showing under them very thin. Plastic slippers; the strap of the left one had cracked once and been glued with something. Her hair was pinned back behind one ear with a black clip, and the clip was short one small bead.
She snapped a bean, tipped off both ends, broke the middle in three, dropped it in the basin. The white at the break came through sharp; one string still held on. The lines on the back of her hand dissolved at a certain distance into a flat patch of skin color, and the edges of the nails gave out before you could find them.
Liang Cheng looked down at his own hand. The old burn on the webbing of the left one was gone — oil spattered off a pot of noodles three years ago, gone pale pink only last year, and now that patch of skin was clean. A twenty-seven-year-old's hand.
He looked up. She hadn't looked at him yet.
The sliding door stood open a crack. A clothesline ran out across the balcony with three plastic clips on it; the line reached two meters out and stopped at nothing. Beyond it, gray. An even sheet of it, no light, no dark, no edge, nothing out there the eye could set down on. Scallions grew in a flowerpot, the scallions green, a ring of white alkali at the rim.
"Heavy fog today," she said. "Don't open the door."
The figure at the top right: 28:41.
He drew his foot back half a step and stood straight.
"Good morning. I'm a terminal-account disposal specialist with Anxu Tech, employee no. L-0284."
She snapped a bean in two.
"I've come today to give you in-person notice concerning the standing and the fees of the account registered in your name."
"Sit down, comrade," she said.
Beside the low stool stood a square stool, a faded round mark on its seat where something had stood for years. She reached out and shifted the stool toward him, and as it moved the legs scraped once on the concrete.
Liang Cheng didn't sit.
[Script playing (1/3)]
"According to system records, from the date of upload to the present, your account has accrued storage service fees, downgrade operation fees, and late fees. As of today the total outstanding is forty-one thousand three hundred eighty-six yuan and fifty cents."
The kettle boiled. She set the basin down, got up, and turned off the gas, one clean motion, the wrist pressing the knob flat to the bottom. She lifted the kettle and poured into the thermos. At seven parts full she stopped, checked the waterline, and poured a little more.
"You'll have water or you won't."
"No."
"Fresh off the boil."
"I won't."
She pressed the stopper down into the thermos and went back to sit.
There were six more lines of itemized detail, one item per line, one date per line. The script didn't carry those six lines, only the total. He didn't read them out.
[Script playing (2/3)]
"As these amounts were not settled within the prescribed period, the account has entered the terminal queue, queue no. TL-0417. While the account is in queue, slot occupancy fees accrue by the day, at a rate of fifteen yuan per day."
"Fifteen," she said.
He stopped.
"That won't buy a pound and a quarter of pork," she said. "And don't stand there. Standing, the legs get tired."
He looked down at his shoes. Twenty-seven-year-old leather shoes, the right toe knocked white in one small patch — a desk leg in the training room had done it.
She was saying what fifteen yuan could buy. He waited two seconds, made sure she wasn't going to ask about anything further on, and read on.
[Script playing (3/3)]
"If the full arrears are not settled before the schedule runs out, the account will enter the deletion process. After deletion, data cannot be recovered, and the operation is irreversible. You have now been notified of the above. This session is recorded in full."
When the word "irreversible" came out, he heard his own voice. A thirty-four-year-old's voice, coming from the place where a twenty-seven-year-old's face stood.
[Script completion 3/3. Filed script reading concluded.]
Top right: 18:20.
One hundred forty-seven characters, plus the places where she had cut in, had used up eleven minutes and forty seconds.
[Note: statements made outside the script must be recorded separately in the minutes.]
The compliance annotation, on the paper in his pocket: recommend retaining the explicit term "debt." What he had just read out was "arrears." What the script had printed was also "arrears." Nobody in that filing round had changed the word.
She raked the snapped beans in toward the middle of the basin.
"These beans I bought this morning, one yuan two," she said. "Dear. The place up the street has them at eight mao; they hadn't put their stall out today."
"Mm."
"Don't mind that they've gone limp. The limp ones take the flavor in." She stripped the string off one. "Your pa won't eat these. Says they wear his teeth out."
"Mm."
"You eaten yet."
"Eaten."
"What did you eat."
He paused a moment. "Noodles."
"Noodles first thing, they bloat you," she said.
She folded a bean into three.
"That room of yours, the heating any good."
"Warm."
"Warm's all it needs. If it goes cold, I've an electric pad here, bought in the eighties, still going."
"No need."
"I'll keep it for you," she said.
The recording marker sat in the lower left of his vision, a red dot, not blinking.
"His birthday's next week," she said. "I'm buying him shoes. Size forty-three, and they have to be the wide last — the narrow ones he can't wear, two days of walking and the top of his foot comes up red in a stripe."
Liang Cheng watched her. Her hands didn't stop.
"Auntie Wang came the day before yesterday," she said. "Brought a photograph round to show me — her second sister's girl, runs the pharmacy at the hospital. I told her my eldest is busy."
"She left the photo. It's sitting on the sewing machine."
She tipped the ends off a bean.
"I sold that machine, forty yuan," she said. "So now there's nowhere to lay the photo."
She laughed once at her own words, and when the laugh was done she went on with the beans.
"Your brother phoned," she said. "Says he's busy."
"When."
"Day before yesterday." She thought. "Or last week."
He let it go.
She grabbed the handful of snapped beans and lifted them a little, toward his side.
"Hold this."
The rim of the aluminum basin came up level with him. He stepped back half a pace.
[Contact blocked] [Reminder: physical contact with the persona is prohibited, including the passing of objects (execution notice 6)]
The line hung in front of his eyes for two seconds, then thinned away.
She drew the basin back, set it on her knees, gave him a look.
"My hands are washed," she said.
"I know."
"You people, when you come to the door, none of you will take anything," she said. "The one who came last time was the same. Poured him water and he wouldn't drink it."
The one who came last time. He ran through it in his head: the executor's operation record, five years, two entries — the signing, a voice session. Onsite deep visit, this was the first. There was no caller at any door in the system.
"When did he come."
"Couldn't say which day," she said. "Wore a badge, near enough like yours. He stood a while and then he went."
She bent back to the beans.
"That shift of yours, what time does it let out."
"No set time."
"No set time means late," she said.
Top right: 15:52.
A door led further in from the kitchen, a wooden frame, half the paint gone, the door standing open.
Behind the door stood a sheet of gray.
The wall had thickness, and shadow, and a baseboard. The gray lay against the doorframe, flush with the edge of it — not out by a hair, not in by a hair. He took two steps that way; the third step never happened. In front of his shoe tip was a layer that would not let him through.
"That room's a mess," she said behind him. "Don't go in."
"The living room."
"I hadn't tidied up yet this morning," she said. "There's clothes piled on the sofa."
He came back. The door stayed open. The gray on the frame didn't move.
He glanced toward the balcony.
The line broke off at two meters. The break wasn't ragged, and it wasn't smeared; it simply wasn't there anymore. The gray waited on the far side of it, without one movement. The three plastic clips hung on the line, the gaps between them all the same width.
"When the fog lifts, go and stand on the balcony a while," she said. "This flat faces the wrong way for sun."
"There's nothing out there."
"Fog like this, that's how it goes," she said. "Before, you could see the block opposite. That cage on their balcony — they kept birds. Any clear day and you'd see it."
"When does it clear."
She didn't answer. She pulled a bean's string from head to tail, it broke, and she took up the pull again from where it broke.
The burner was dripping — beads of water off the kettle's base. They fell onto the stove plate, a very small sound.
He put his left hand into his pocket. There was nothing in the work clothes' pocket — the avatar had no pocket, and there were no two folded sheets of paper. His hand pressed at the cloth and came down on his own leg.
[Note: internal clock runs 1:1 with the outside. Time remaining 14:09.]
He didn't tap the line. It had come up on its own, and once it was up it went.
She set the basin on the floor, wiped her hands on her trousers, and lifted her head.
Looked at him.
She looked longer than before. At the face, at the tie, at the crooked knot in the tie.
"That tie of yours is still crooked," she said.
Liang Cheng didn't move.
Her eyes went down an inch, came back up, and settled on his chin. Her lips moved once, as if checking something against a list.
"You're Xiao Cheng, aren't you."
In the kitchen there was only the water dripping off the kettle's base.
"The voice has changed," she said. "The person hasn't."