Wednesday, 12:40.
The disposition-plan page was due by Friday. The yellow strip had hung there three days; "pending submission" lit up once a day, then dimmed on its own.
Three plans, stacked vertically.
A, settle in one payment. Amount: 41,446.50. Two lines of small print below: principal and late fees 41,386.50, disposal cost 60.00.
B, pledge against the Filial Score. Available credit 186,000.00, sixty installments, monthly payment 3,100.00. To the right a gray button, "not for now," in the selected state.
C, deferred disposal. A queue occupancy fee of 15.00 yuan/day charged daily, the schedule counting down; when the schedule hit zero, terminal disposal would execute.
He clicked none of the three.
At the very bottom of the page, one line of blue text, a size smaller than the body: Other Deferral Options (1).
He clicked it.
[Kinship Call Schedule Deferral] Eligible tiers: Level 1 / Level 2 / Level 3 personas. (The Level 4 cold-storage tier is not eligible.) Rules: within a single calendar week, calls dialed in by the registered surviving family and validly answered by the persona, totaling 05:00 or more, may offset 7 days of the downgrade schedule. At most one offset per week. Billing: answered-call rate 1.20 yuan/minute, partial minutes billed as full, charged to the account's outstanding balance and merged in on the next billing date. Note: voice sessions initiated by the executor do not count toward this total.
He read the last line twice.
The executor doesn't count. That eight minutes forty-two seconds on Monday night doesn't count.
Five minutes. He ran the calculator: 5 × 1.20, six yuan. Seven days of schedule, six yuan.
He clicked the word "billing"; beside it sat another panel, the rate sheet for the Level 3 tier:
[Level 3 Tier · Answered-Call Rates] Call fee: 1.20 yuan/minute, partial minutes billed as full. Billed party: the caller. Where the caller has no prepaid balance, the fee is charged to the receiving account's outstanding balance and merged in on the next billing date (the 14th of each month). The persona side is not billed.
Next billing date: December 14.
The progress bar was below:
[Family inbound calls this week: 00:00 / 05:00]
Gray text: last valid inbound—last Qingming, 00:12.
He opened the response log. Five years, three rows.
| No. | Date | Caller | Duration | Hung up by | |---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | Five years ago, Qingming | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:21 | persona | | 2 | Three years ago, Mid-Autumn | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:14 | persona | | 3 | Last year, Qingming | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:12 | persona |
Total: 3 calls, 47 seconds.
On November 21 she had stood at the stove trimming beans, head down, and said your brother called, he said he was busy.
In the log, after last Qingming, not a single row.
In the introspection cache the two characters "Chuan Chuan" hit ninety-six entries. He set the two numbers side by side for a while and thought no further.
Nine work orders that afternoon. Three were dead lines. Two started cursing the moment they connected and hung up on their own by the fourth minute. One closed: twelve installments, first payment two hundred; the other party was a daughter, who said, "I accept what happened with my dad. Just stop pressing my ma."
He typed into the notes field: contact changed to the caller herself.
Typed, he opened the queue page. The TL-0417 row: 290 days left on the schedule. The row below was TL-0416, account name Guan**, Level 4 cold-storage tier, 76 days left. Last Friday when he'd looked, it was 81.
Xiao Zhou beside him was working through an apple and looked up mid-bite. "Cheng-ge, that 'other deferral options' at the bottom of the plan page—how come I've never seen it?"
"New."
"Which tiers can use it?"
"One through three."
"Oh." Xiao Zhou took a bite. "So it's no use to our team. Ours are all Level 4."
Liang Cheng didn't answer. Xiao Zhou didn't wait; he turned back to his screen, the apple core laid on a tissue, the tissue folded into a square.
He closed the page.
In the onsite-deep-visit column, three visits remaining this month; the next available session showed as from Wednesday 10:31 this week. He didn't click.
Off work at 6:40; the shuttle left at 6:55.
He took the window seat, second from the back. The heater was running high and the glass had fogged over; someone up front wiped a patch clear with a sleeve, and it fogged up again. Someone was on the phone about a renovation, saying "can that wall in the bathroom come down," and said it for four stops.
He opened the bank app first. Balance 3,357.62. The student-loan line: 18,513.25, next debit December 15.
Closed it. He scrolled his contacts, four screens down, and stopped at "Liang Chuan." No note after the name. Just the name.
Dialed. Four rings.
"Hello?"
A TV in the background, volume low, the evening variety kind; the studio audience was laughing.
"Me."
The laughter got quieter.
"...Ge."
"That number of yours, you still on it."
"Still on it."
"Ma's side. Can you call her."
The TV laughed once more. He waited.
"To call that. What does it cost."
"You dial in, one twenty a minute. You pay."
"Then what do I say."
"Anything."
No answer from that end. He heard him shift where he sat, sofa or bed, a spring creaked once.
"She can tell it's me?"
"She can."
"I... I've been working late. These weeks."
"Five minutes," Liang Cheng said.
"Ge."
"Five minutes."
Two more seconds.
"Fine," Liang Chuan said. "I'll call in the next day or two."
"Before Sunday," Liang Cheng said. "The calendar week runs through Sunday."
"Oh."
"Don't say Ma is in there."
"I know, I know."
Someone over there was calling for Liang Chuan, a woman's voice, half a call; Liang Chuan covered the mouthpiece, didn't cover it well; you could hear.
"Hanging up," Liang Chuan said.
The line cut. Call duration: 4:11.
He brought the phone down and opened WeChat. The pinned post was still there, a call screen, 00:12, captioned: chatted with Ma for a bit. Thirty-seven likes. He didn't tap in; he backed out, and the screen went black.
Outside the window the streetlamps walked past one by one. He put his forehead against the glass. Cold. The fog melted a patch around it.
Thursday, 15:26.
A box popped in the corner of the work client: [Account AC-0417: 1 new answered inbound call].
He clicked. The list now had four rows.
| No. | Date | Caller | Duration | Hung up by | Fee (yuan) | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | Five years ago, Qingming | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:21 | persona | — | | 2 | Three years ago, Mid-Autumn | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:14 | persona | — | | 3 | Last year, Qingming | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:12 | persona | — | | 4 | 11/23 15:26 | Liang Chuan (younger son) | 00:47 | caller | 1.20 (pending merge-in) |
In the hung-up-by column, the first three rows read persona. The fourth read caller.
He opened "call transcript" at the bottom of the fourth row. A line of small print beside it: this transcript is machine-generated from speech, kept for the record only, not valid as evidence.
[00:00.0] Inbound call connected; persona answer delay 2.1 s [00:02.1] Persona: Hello? [00:03.4] Caller: Ma, it's me, Chuan Chuan. [00:07.0] Persona: Chuan Chuan. Have you eaten. [00:12.5] Caller: I have. Ma, you're doing all right over there? [00:19.8] Persona: All right. Your brother came by the other day— [00:26.3] Caller: Okay, Ma, I'm in a meeting here, got to go. [00:36.0] Caller: Ma, I'll call you again. [00:44.2] Persona: All right. [00:47.0] Caller hung up; call ended.
He read the transcript top to bottom, then read it again.
Forty-seven seconds.
From three years ago to last year, three calls added together, forty-seven seconds. This one call by itself, forty-seven seconds.
She had said four sentences, twenty-odd characters. At one twenty a minute, those four sentences cost one twenty.
He clicked playback. The earphones were in the drawer, the old kind with one dead side; he switched to the other jack.
The recording carried only the persona's track; the caller's side wasn't recorded. Two seconds of silence to start, then "Hello?", then "Chuan Chuan. Have you eaten." The spacing was slower than he remembered, every word distinct, no breath between them. Of the fifth sentence only an "All right" came through, then the disconnect tone, two short and one long.
He took the earphones off, coiled them, put them back in the drawer.
The progress bar read the same:
[Family inbound calls this week: 00:47 / 05:00]
A new line had appeared at the right: [Deferral this week: not achieved]
On the account page, 290 days left on the schedule, unchanged. Outstanding balance 41,446.50, with a new gray line beneath: pending merge-in 1.20 (merges on next billing date).
He rested the mouse on "pending merge-in." No tooltip came up.
Friday morning, 10:20, he filled in the access purpose, chose option two, clicked confirm.
Access log no.: AR-118907. A line followed: [You have accessed this account's introspection cache 2 times this quarter.]
> November 23 > > Chuan Chuan called. > He asked if I'd eaten. > I said I had. That boy's never told the truth since he was small. > It was noisy on his end; maybe he was outdoors. > Before I got two sentences out he hung up. I still wanted to ask whether he'd eaten his greens. > > [63 characters] [Sentiment: positive] [Drift: 0.02] [Actual call length: 00:47]
He read the entry twice.
Nothing new below it. Since November 21, just this one entry. He closed it and went back to the work orders.
At noon he ran into Su Man in the tea room. She was back, thermos in hand, the ring of tea stain at the rim the same as ever.
"Plan turned in yet?"
"By Friday."
"Today's Friday."
He didn't answer.
She set the cup on the counter, unscrewed the lid and screwed it back on. "If you can't finish it, pick C, write deferral. A blank looks worse than C. Leave that field blank and the system enters 'executor failed to submit' in your file."
"Understood."
She took two steps, cup in hand, then turned back. "You've been pulling that account a lot these two days."
"Verification."
Su Man gave an "Mm" and asked nothing more. Her ledger was under her arm; the top page carried one correction in red pen, in the recovery-probability column.
Tuesday, November 28. Third access, log no. AR-118994.
Four days in between; five entries had piled up.
> November 24 > > I told the neighbor Chuan Chuan had called. > The neighbor said, what a good son. > I said, not bad. > > [26 characters][Sentiment: positive][Drift: 0.03]
> November 25 > > Chuan Chuan said he'd call again. > I tidied the place up, washed the rag, wiped the stove twice. > In case he calls again, I need somewhere decent to sit. > > [38 characters][Sentiment: positive][Drift: 0.05]
> November 26 > > No call today. > Maybe tomorrow. > > [11 characters][Sentiment: neutral]
> November 27 > > Old Guan came over and sat a while. I told him Chuan Chuan had called. > He said good. > He sat half a cigarette's time and left, said he was going back to wait. > > [39 characters][Sentiment: positive][Drift: 0.04]
> November 28 > > I remembered: Chuan Chuan wouldn't eat green peppers when he was little. I'd pick them out and set them at the side of his bowl. > Next time I'll tell him that. > He has to call before I can say it. > > [43 characters][Sentiment: positive][Drift: 0.06]
Four of the five carried the same gray tag: [Adopted as training sample][Points contributed: 0 (redemption not offered on this channel)].
He moved the mouse off the tag.
At this end of the office someone was running the shredder; it ground on a long time, the paper jammed, someone was swearing.
Friday, December 1. Fourth access, log no. AR-119043.
[You have accessed this account's introspection cache 4 times this quarter.]
> November 29 > > No call today. > > [5 characters][Sentiment: neutral]
> November 30 > > How come Chuan Chuan's stopped calling again. > Did I say something wrong? > I went over what I said that day, over and over. What I said was "Have you eaten." Just that one sentence. I never got to the rest. > Maybe he's busy. > Next time he calls, I won't hang up first. I'll wait for him to hang up. > > [71 characters][Sentiment: negative][Drift: 0.31] > [Cognitive-smoothing assessment: Pending review]
After "pending" there was a small triangle. He didn't click it.
The two options at the bottom of the page were still there: submit for human review / leave to system scheduling. The default one was already selected.
On the account page, 281 days left. Last Wednesday it had been 290.
He closed the browser. Bottom right of the desktop: 10:41.
The pen in his drawer had gone dry; he scratched two lines on a sticky note, white streaks. He took out another.