Top right: 13:41.
"I'm a terminal-account disposal specialist with Anxu Tech," Liang Cheng said.
"Fine," she said. "You're a comrade."
She wiped her hands on her trousers once more and pushed herself up by the knees — her left hand pressed the edge of the low stool on the way, and only then did she come up steady.
"Then today you're not leaving just yet," she said. "I'll cook something."
Execution notice 5: onsite staff may not disclose any account information beyond the arrears amount. He ran the clause through his head, and when he was done he found he had nothing to disclose.
She pulled open the fridge door.
The fridge was the two-door kind, white, a black line on the seal where the door closed. No light came on inside. She reached in and felt around.
"The light's gone," she said. "Two years now. A new bulb is five yuan; a man coming out to the house is twenty."
She felt out a slab of pork belly in a freezer bag, the mouth of the bag twisted into a knot. The meat was frozen hard, a skin of white frost along the edges.
A note was stuck to the fridge door.
White paper, torn off a sheet, the top edge uneven. Ballpoint, blue:
Did you turn off the gas?
Under the note a magnet held it down, round, red-rimmed, a pharmacy's name and phone number printed in the middle. The number ran seven digits, two missing out of the middle, and where they should have been was blank space, with no dashes.
Liang Cheng looked at the note. The little hook on the "le" character, fourth along, kicked upward, kicked smartly. He looked over at the stove. Another sheet was stuck up at the edge of the counter, white paper too, reading "Rice is in the cupboard." Did that one have a "le" on it? It didn't. He looked back at the first note. He went to look at the corners of the two sheets. Both right-hand lower corners lay flat, not a curl on either.
"Who wrote it."
"I did," she said. "The memory's bad. I stick them up for myself to look at."
She laid the meat on the cutting board and took up the knife.
"You get old, you've got water on the stove and you can walk away from it. Walk away, and it's gone from the head," she said. "Don't learn that from me."
The knife was dull. Each cut took two draws back and forth, the second one with force added from the hand. The meat was frozen; halfway through a cut the knife stopped dead, and she lifted it out and set in at another place.
The cubes came out uneven, the big ones the size of a matchbox, the small ones half that. She picked the big ones out and laid them to one side.
"The big ones are for you."
Old knife scars ran across the board, stroke over stroke, slanting and crossing, and the middle of it had been chopped into a shallow hollow. She wiped the frost scraped off the bag onto the edge of the board, then shook the freezer bag out twice, turned it inside out, folded it into a square, and slid it into the drawer under the stove. There was already a stack in that drawer, held together with a rubber band.
"Wash these and they'll do again," she said.
The wok was iron, a layer of black built up on the outside of its base. She set it on the flame, turned the fire to middle, waited for the water vapor inside to cook off, then poured in oil. The oil came out of a plastic cruet; the prints of the last hand that had held it were still on the sides.
"Blanch it first," she said. "Into cold water, and when it boils, skim the froth. Skim it clean, or the meat goes gamey."
The meat went into the water. She stood by the pot with a strainer waiting, and as the froth rose she skimmed it out spoonful by spoonful into an empty bowl. The froth in the bowl was gray-white, heaped up.
"The sugar color takes knowing how," she said. "Pot hot, less oil, two spoons of white sugar, and the moment the sugar melts and the color turns red, in goes the meat. One second slow and it's bitter."
"Two spoons is how much."
"Just two spoons," she said.
Her hands were steady at it. The sugar spread out across the bottom of the pot, small bubbles rising first at the edges, the bubbles linking from the rim in toward the middle, the color going white, then yellow, then red. She pushed the meat in all at once, and the pot cracked out loud once. She turned it with the spatula, seven or eight turns, and every piece took on the color.
"Half a spoon of dark soy, one star anise," she said. "Too much goes bitter. Your pa hates bitter."
She looked up and pulled the cord hanging under the range hood. The machine gave a clack, turned half a turn, and stopped turning.
"This one's broken," she said. "When my son comes back, he'll fix it."
The smoke went up, slanting toward the window.
"Boiling water poured in, up over the meat. None of it cold — cold hits the meat and it seizes up tight."
She poured the water from the thermos in, and the sound in the pot went dull the moment it went in.
"Lid on, low flame, twenty minutes."
Top right: 11:20.
Eleven minutes.
She pressed the lid down tight, carried a small stool over, and sat in front of the stove, hands laid on her knees. Steam began to push out from under the lid's edge, one thin thread, always from the same notch.
"Your Uncle Guan came knocking a few days back," she said. "The one retired off the boiler room. He was waiting on a call from his son, waited the whole morning shut up in his room, and his face went white."
She shifted the lid open a crack, looked in, and put it back.
"I said, come sit at my place, I've got water here. He wouldn't sit. Said he was afraid of missing it."
"Did the call come through in the end."
"I didn't ask," she said. "A person waiting like that — it's not worth it."
The sound in the pot stayed dull, coming and going in waves.
"Twenty minutes you can't wait out," she said. "I'll fish you a piece first."
"It won't be cooked through."
"Underdone, you can still taste it," she said. "You taste it for me."
She reached her chopsticks into the pot, took up the biggest piece, and held it out toward him.
[Contact blocked]
Her hand stopped in midair; the meat on the chopsticks trembled. Her arm drew back, then reached forward once more.
[Contact blocked]
"This child," she said.
She set the meat down in a white porcelain bowl, a small chip in the rim. She put the bowl on the counter and stepped back a pace.
"Take it yourself."
Liang Cheng picked up the bowl. The system put up no reminder. The bowl was warm — warm in a very particular way, a ring of scald across his fingertips. He shifted it to his left hand.
He bit off a mouthful.
The meat was soft; the skin layer clung; the teeth had to pause a beat going through before it gave. The lean part ran in fibers, the fibers all in one direction. Hot.
[Taste module: deleted (downgrade batch D-03)] [Current rendering: none]
The two lines hung at his lower right, a shade dimmer than the timer figures.
He chewed seven times, and swallowed.
"Salty or not," she asked.
"Not salty."
"Wait a moment."
She lifted the lid, took hold of the salt jar, and scattered salt into the pot. When she'd scattered it she stirred with the chopsticks, dipped a little, and pressed it to her own lips.
She scattered it once more.
"Ma's tongue has gone no good these days," she said. "Everything comes out one taste. A while back I drank medicine, bitter stuff, and I couldn't tell that either."
A third time she reached for the salt jar.
"Enough," Liang Cheng said.
Her hand stopped on the jar.
"If you say enough, then it's enough." She set the jar back on the windowsill. "Long as you can taste it, that's all that matters."
She pressed the lid back down.
She sat back down on the small stool.
"You wouldn't eat meat as a little one," she said. "A year and a half old, whatever we fed you came straight back up, so thin you could see the cords in your arms. Then the fever, forty degrees, your pa was out on the road, and I pedaled the trike and got you to the hospital, middle of the night, not one soul on the street. And when we got there you smiled at me."
"You've told me this one."
"Told, then told," she said. "Me saying it again costs nothing."
She laid her hands flat on her knees and looked at him once, from the feet up.
"You've gone thin."
"I haven't."
"There's no meat left in your face," she said. "It used to be round here, at your cheeks."
She raised a hand and measured it against her own face; when she'd measured she put the hand down.
"That shift of yours—"
She stopped.
Three seconds stopped. She wiped her hands along her knees.
"Never mind," she said. "There's meat in the pot."
Top right: 08:05.
He set the bowl back on the counter.
"There's something I need to tell you."
"Go ahead."
"There's an item in the system called voluntary downgrade," he said. "The account persona can apply of its own accord to drop a tier, and the fees come down with it. Your present tier is forty-five a month. At the lowest tier, it's eight yuan a month."
She was nudging a little piece of concrete grit beside the stool leg.
"Eight yuan."
"Ninety-six a year," he said. "The application needs you yourself to confirm it; my side reviews within seventy-two hours. When you confirm, they record one sentence, spoken by you."
"Ninety-six." She went over the number once more.
"Mm."
"Then what do you people live on," she said.
He didn't answer.
She gave one nod.
He waited.
"Do you eat garlic or not," she said.
"What."
"Some people put garlic in this dish," she said. "Your pa wouldn't have it, said it stamps on the flavor. If you eat it I'll peel you two cloves."
Liang Cheng looked at her. Her eyes didn't dodge. Her hand went on nudging the grit until it passed under the stool leg, out of reach, and then she stopped.
"I don't," he said.
"Then none goes in."
Execution notice 5: no disclosing any account information beyond the arrears amount. What he had just said went past it. The system hadn't stopped him. The minutes would carry it down.
Top right: 04:12.
The sound in the pot had gone smaller; the water was drawing down.
"Strip those bean strings clean," she said. "That basin of mine — there's a few I didn't do properly, my eyes are no good. The old strings won't bite through; they wedge in the teeth."
The basin was on the floor, up against the low stool.
"The string starts at the tip; you pull down," she said. "If it holds at the bottom, fold back and pull on from there."
[01:00 remaining]
The figures had gone a shade whiter.
Liang Cheng bent down and reached out.
His fingertips stopped at a layer just above the basin's rim. They wouldn't press down through it — like pressing on a layer of something, nothing hard about it, it simply would not let him past.
[Contact blocked]
He drew his hand back.
She watched his hand.
"Never mind," she said. "You sit."
She picked the basin up herself, set it on her knees, felt out a bean, and hunted for the string.
"That shift of yours isn't busy," she said. "You've been here half the day."
[00:30]
The figures began to blink.
Her hand was on the bean. The kettle was on the burner. The notch in the lid let out its thin thread of steam; the thread rose half a foot and came apart.
The gray was outside the balcony.
Black.
The leather of the chair back, the foam at the torn place on the armrest, his right middle finger resting on it. He didn't stand up.
His mouth was dry. His tongue lay against the roof of it behind the front teeth, and it took force to part them.
Wu Yan peeled the pads off one by one; the two at the back of the neck he took off slower.
"Water."
A paper cup, half full, warm.
"Slow," Wu Yan said. "One mouthful at a time."
Liang Cheng drank twice; going down, the water sounded once in his throat. He kept hold of the cup, didn't set it down.
The clock on the wall: ten thirty-one.
The screen had it up.
[This deep visit has ended] Slot: DA-P03 Account: Zhou Sufen / AC-0417 / TL-0417 Connected 10:01 — Exited 10:31 Session length: 30:00 (billed as 30 minutes) Billing: 2.00 yuan/min × 30 = 60.00 yuan
[Settlement] Pre-authorization drawn successfully.
His phone buzzed once in the drawer. He pulled the drawer open and looked: bank debit 60.00, balance 3,357.62.
The screen's second panel:
[Account outstanding balance] Arrears principal and late fees: 41,386.50 Disposal cost of this visit: 60.00 Total: 41,446.50
[Minutes generated] Two items to fill in.
Item one: whether the visit's purpose was achieved. The dropdown held three options.
○ Persona clearly expressed a wish to continue ○ Persona clearly expressed a wish to give up ● No clear expression of will obtained
He picked the third.
Item two: persona cooperation. Three options: cooperative / fair / uncooperative.
Execution notice 4 said the persona may not refuse an answer to onsite staff and may not end the session. She had refused nothing and ended nothing. What she'd talked about was beans, sugar color, shoe sizes, eight yuan a month. The full recording would become a transcript, and in a transcript all of that counts as responses.
He scrolled the minutes down; the last line read: these minutes were generated automatically by the system and have not been reviewed by a human.
He tapped "cooperative."
Submitted.
[Minutes no. DA-R-0417-001, retained three years.] [Quota remaining this month: 3 visits.] [Next available connection: 2023-11-22 10:31.]
The page hadn't closed; a small box floated up from the bottom:
[Rate this connection experience (optional)] ★★★★★
The five stars were hollow. Beside them a line of small type: your rating will be used for service optimization.
He clicked the X at the top right. The box folded away; before it went it blinked once.
Wu Yan was coiling the lines, winding each of the four back onto its clip.
"Yours held steady enough," he said. "Last week one went in, and eight minutes later he pressed the red button himself."
"You can press the red button?"
"You can," Wu Yan said. "Out here you can. The one in there can't."
He took the rubber bulb out of the drawer and gave the keyboard one squeeze.
Liang Cheng finished the water left in the cup and stood. Standing, his sight went black for a second, and he steadied himself on the chair back.
He looked down at the webbing of his left hand. That pale-pink thing was there.
On his way out he passed under the whiteboard. "Visits this month: 11" — the 11 had been wiped away and changed to 12. The hand that changed it shook, and the bottom of the 2 trailed off into a stroke.
By the stairs, at the water dispenser, stood Su Man, filling her thermos.
"You're out."
"I'm out."
"Did she know you?"
"She did."
Su Man screwed the lid on; it took two tries before the catch caught.
"Finished reading?"
"Finished."
"Did she refuse you."
"No."
"She can't," Su Man said.
She carried the cup up the stairs, and on the third step stopped.
"That plan of yours."
"Not filed yet."
"No hurry," she said.
Two more steps.
"Don't fill in the experience rating," she said. "Fill it in and they take it to meetings."
The washroom faucet worked by sensor; your hand had to go under it, a little left of center, before the water came. He scooped water twice and threw it on his face, then looked up. Around the mirror's lower rim ran a ring of dried toothpaste spots. He hadn't put on a tie today; the lanyard of his work badge lay pressed into his collar and had pressed a crease into it.
He looked at his own cheeks in the mirror. For two seconds.
The water stopped itself.