Wednesday, 8:50.
The morning's list held fourteen orders. He worked them to eleven o'clock: nineteen calls dialed out, four picked up, and two of those were nothing but a dead-number tone.
The third call picked up. A woman, a child crying somewhere behind her. He got as far as "the minimum installment tier is three hundred yuan a month"; she said "this month I really don't have it"; he said "the three hundred can split into two payments, one on the fifteenth and one on the twenty-fifth"; she said "wait a moment" — then the sound of a phone being set down, the crying came up a little louder, and two minutes later the call was hung up.
In the system that column flipped over by itself: outcome of contact — follow-up required.
The fourth call brought money in. Two hundred, a man, who said "I'll scan it to you"; after the scan there was a wait on his end, and one more line — "It's my mother's debt. I'll own it." — and he hung up. The payment notice came through six seconds after the hang-up. Liang Cheng clicked the case closed in the system.
In the remarks field he typed: infant in the home; for follow-up, suggest avoiding meal times. He read it over once, deleted "suggest avoiding meal times," and put in "call back next Tuesday."
At the facing desk Xiao Zhou was printing a form; the printer went on clacking. Su Man hadn't come in — the thermos wasn't at her station. The ledger lay open on her desk, and on the top page one column had been gone over in red pen: 78 struck out, 60 written in.
At eleven twelve he finished the batch in hand.
He opened TL-0417's page twice a day.
The yellow strip at the top: plan awaiting submission. 290 days left on the schedule. Occupancy fees accruing daily, at 15.00 yuan/day.
Last Friday this column had read two hundred ninety-five. Five days, five numbers dropped.
Below it, a new line, yesterday's record:
[Deep visit DA-R-0417-001 archived] Outstanding balance 41,446.50.
He dragged down, past "disposition plan," past "call records," to the bottom-most panel, called account health.
Under account health sat three sub-items: persona continuity, response quality, resource usage.
He opened persona continuity. Inside was a stack of charts, dates along the x-axis, the y-axis scored in numbers he couldn't read. Below the charts ran one line of linked text, blue, small:
Introspection cache (IL)
He clicked it.
[Introspection cache description] Personas at Tier 3 and above generate 1–3 self-reflection entries daily, used for persona-continuity calibration and drift correction. This cache is not shown on the family-facing end and does not count toward service content. Access requires Level-2 clearance and a stated purpose of access.
He had Level-2 clearance. Purpose was a dropdown, six items; he picked the second: collections-necessity review.
[Note: this access will generate a logged record, retained three years. Non-essential access counts toward the quarterly compliance score.]
The access number came out: AR-118836.
He clicked confirm.
[Introspection cache · account AC-0417] Current entries: 2,913 Purged entries: 1,146 (storage optimization, unrecoverable) Generated in the last year: 108 entries Sort: by generation time, ascending
The first entry's date: five years ago, the 23rd of the third month. Nine days on from the day of upload.
> Third Month, 23rd Day > > The place is clean. The walls are white, no smell to them. > They took a photograph of me and had me say three sentences. I said them. > I don't know whether this counts as being alive. Nobody's asked me.
[41 characters] [Sentiment: neutral] [Drift: 0.00]
> Third Month, 25th Day > > Forgot to write yesterday. > I'm keeping a case record on myself. The doctor said write things down and the pattern shows — when it hurts, how long, what I've eaten. > Nothing hurts now, and there's nothing to eat either. So I write down other things.
[48 characters] [Sentiment: neutral] [Drift: 0.01]
> Fourth Month, 2nd Day > > Xiao Cheng on the phone. Asked how I was keeping. I said fine. > That job of his keeps him busy. Someone was calling to him from the side while he talked. > I didn't say much. Long distance is dear.
[39 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.02]
Liang Cheng copied the entry's date onto a sticky note, then went and opened the call records. For the week of the 2nd of the fourth month, April five years ago, the call records had no call from him. He paged two months back and two months forward. Nothing.
The one call he'd made that year was in December.
He dragged on down. The entries from the two middle years came thick, two or three a day, most of them what there'd been to eat, and who had come.
> Seventh Month, 11th Day > > Old Guan downstairs — his son came, carrying two bags of tangerines. > Old Guan told me his son's busy. > Busy, then busy. The tangerines were good tangerines.
[33 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.09]
> Ninth Month, 28th Day > > That price I remember. I've the number in my head; I've stopped asking. > Having the number is enough.
[17 characters] [Sentiment: neutral] [Drift: 0.14] [Flag: semantically incomplete, excluded from calibration]
He stopped on this entry a while. The entries before and after were weather and vegetable prices. This one had no subject.
He moved the cursor onto the entry and right-clicked, to see whether there was a "linked context." There was one, gray, unclickable; resting the mouse on it brought up a note: the session linked to this entry has been purged (batch 2019-Q4).
Eight entries further down, this one.
> Tenth Month, 19th Day > > The things in this flat are fewer today. > The sofa in the front room is gone. The place the sofa stood is gone too. > I asked out loud. Nobody answered. > I shut the door.
[34 characters] [Sentiment: negative] [Drift: 0.38] [Linked action: cognitive smoothing (no. 17), executed same day 21:40] [Operation: reduce sensitivity to scene differences]
The 19th of the tenth month. He went and checked the downgrade records. That day one downgrade had taken effect, operation fee 1,200.00, trigger reason "account holds no prepaid balance."
The same day. Fees by day, smoothing by night.
> Tenth Month, 23rd Day > > Your pa didn't come home today. I waited till ten. > That man — out the door, and never a word. > I stood a while on the balcony. Heavy fog out there.
[30 characters] [Sentiment: negative] [Drift: 0.29] [Linked module: spouse (active)]
From there on, the entries grew short.
> First Month, 7th Day > > Nothing today. > Gone cold.
[9 characters]
> First Month, 8th Day > > Nothing today. > Gone cold.
[9 characters] [98.6% overlap with previous]
> First Month, 9th Day > > Nothing today. Gone cold.
[9 characters] [100% overlap with previous] [displayed merged]
Three entries squeezed into one; at the right, "expand (4)." He clicked it open: four days.
> Sixth Month, 5th Day > > I counted. They phoned four times this month. > Can't fix it in my head — four times or three. Call it four. > Good.
[26 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.05] [Flag: inconsistent with call records (actual that month: 0 calls), excluded from calibration]
Three months further down, this one.
> Fourth Month, 16th Day > > Today I forgot Chuan Chuan's face again. > Thought a while and got the shape of it, more or less. The eyes won't come. I couldn't even say whether they're double-lidded. > This is the old person's forgetting. My mother had it too. > Don't tell the children. They're busy; if they knew, they'd have to take leave.
[62 characters] [Sentiment: negative] [Drift: 0.41] [Linked action: cognitive smoothing (no. 29), executed same day 22:16] [Operation: lower retrieval weight of related memories] [Post-action drift: 0.06]
After the "operation" line sat a question-mark icon. He rested the mouse on it.
A paragraph floated up: lowering the retrieval weight of related memories reduces the persona's repeated self-confirmation of her own condition, prevents the accumulation of negative drift, and improves session stability.
He read it through. Read it twice.
At the page's top right was an export icon. He clicked it.
[Introspection cache cannot be exported, printed, or screenshotted.]
He looked at the keyboard, took his hand off the mouse, pulled a sticky note, and copied out two lines:
Fourth Month 16th — don't tell the children smoothing no. 29, 22:16
When he'd copied it he folded the note into four.
Further down, the entries thinned out. Three or four a month. Under every one hung the same small tag, gray:
[Adopted as training sample] [Points contributed: 0 (redemption not offered on this channel)]
He rested the mouse on "redemption not offered." Nothing floated up.
He paged back and read the tag entry by entry. Of the two thousand nine hundred thirteen, better than eighteen hundred carried it. On the back of the sticky note he wrote one line — 1800×0 — and laid the pen down.
At the top of the page sat a search box, gray field, a line of prompt text preset inside: search this account's self-reflection entries by keyword.
He typed two characters: Xiao Cheng.
[411 hits]
Cleared. He typed: Chuan Chuan.
[96 hits]
Cleared. He typed: money.
[3 hits]
All three fell in the first year — two on vegetable prices, one on the electricity bill.
He typed one more character: pain.
[7 hits]
All seven in the first year, the earliest in the fourth month. He read the seven through and closed them.
He typed one more: owing.
[0 hits]
Below the search box a line of gray type appeared on its own: no matching content found. You may try other keywords.
Xiao Zhou at the facing desk came back with the printed form and, passing his desk, stopped a moment.
"Ge, that IL under account health — what is it?"
"There's no such thing," Liang Cheng said.
Xiao Zhou gave an "oh" and went back. His chair rolled back and knocked the cardboard box behind it, and something inside the box sounded once.
> Eleventh Month, 13th Day > > Xiao Cheng phoned. It was evening; I'd gone to bed and got up again to answer. > We talked half the night. He asked was I cold. > I said no. There's heating in the flat, and I sleep under that quilt — the quilt I carded the cotton for, for him. > After we hung up I sat a while longer.
[58 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.03] [Actual call length: 08:42]
He looked at the two lines of figures. Half the night. Eight minutes forty-two.
The second one below:
> Eleventh Month, 14th Day > > Yesterday Xiao Cheng phoned. He asked was I cold. > I told the neighbor.
[22 characters] [Sentiment: positive]
The 15th, the 16th, the 17th — one entry each, and in every one the line "Xiao Cheng phoned." By the 18th the line had turned into "Xiao Cheng phoned the other day."
The 19th and the 20th had none.
The last one.
> Eleventh Month, 21st Day > > Xiao Cheng came. > He's gone thin. No meat in his cheeks. > I didn't dare ask about work. > He ate one bite of my pork and said nothing about the salt. I added salt twice more. He said enough. > He stood. Stood the whole time. I moved the stool over for him. > When he left, he didn't say when he'd come again.
[66 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.22] [Generated: 2023-11-21 10:33:04] [Cognitive-smoothing assessment: Pending review]
Ten thirty-three. He had left the connection slot at ten thirty-one.
In those two minutes she sat on the small stool, the pot still on the flame, and wrote all this down.
After "Pending review" came a small triangle; clicking it open gave two options:
○ Submit for human review ○ Leave to system scheduling (default)
The default was already selected. He left it.
At the bottom of the page sat a row of buttons, the same gray as everywhere else: Mark as purgeable.
He moved the mouse off that button, over to a blank patch of the screen, and stopped it there.
The sidebar carried one more item, called action log. He opened it and filtered for cognitive smoothing.
[Cognitive-smoothing execution log] 41 in total.
A column of dates, a column of times, a column of trigger reasons. The trigger column read the same word down all forty-one lines: perception fluctuation. The last line was the 13th of the eleventh month, twenty-three forty-seven.
He checked the forty-one dates against the dates in the introspection cache. Twenty-nine matched; the remaining twelve had no match — on those twelve days she had written nothing.
Su Man still hadn't come in by noon. The thermos gone, the ledger lying open, the red pen resting on the column changed to 60. Feng Tuo passed the edge of her station, stopped half a second, and did not stop a second time.
At twelve-oh-one, Feng Tuo dropped the weekly-report template into the group chat.
Liang Cheng opened the input field and typed: completed one deep visit yesterday; session 30 minutes; persona cooperative.
At "persona cooperative" he paused a moment. Didn't delete it.
After it he added one more line: account plan not yet filed.
He sent it.
Someone in the group replied "received" — from the neighboring team; two minutes later the reply was withdrawn. Feng Tuo didn't reply.
He unfolded the sticky note, looked once at the line "1800×0," folded it back, and slid it in behind the badge sleeve. The sleeve had held only one card before; with the note added, it sat tighter, and getting the card out now took a fingernail.
The clock on the wall reached twelve-oh-three.
At the work terminal's lower right sat a small bubble, put up automatically by the system:
[Account AC-0417 connection window open (from 10:31). Quota remaining this month: 3 visits.]
The bubble hung there six seconds and folded itself away.
He didn't click it.