Monday, 10:12 in the morning.
A message popped up in internal messaging.
He Yu: 3 p.m., B2 machine-room door. I'll walk you around.
Liang Cheng replied with one word: okay.
The status under the other avatar turned "read"; then "typing" blinked two seconds; nothing came through.
Five to three, he went downstairs.
B2's door was a turnstile plus a registration book. The book was held in a plastic clamp, the pen tied on a cord; the cord was short—you had to pull the book toward you to write.
Eight columns: date, name, employee no., purpose, escort, time in, time out, whether personal electronic devices were sealed.
"Purpose, what're you putting," the attendant asked.
"Tour."
"Tour's fine. Last guy wrote 'looking at things'—got sent back to refill it."
He filled it in line by line. In the escort column he wrote: He Yu. Looked at it a while after. Didn't change it.
The shoe-cover machine stood inside the door; one step, one cover. He stepped, nothing came; stepped again, and one blue cover dropped out.
He handed the phone to the attendant; it went into a translucent antistatic bag, the seal torn over and pressed dead shut; he got back a plastic tag stamped 07. The attendant hung the tag on the board. 01 through 06 were all empty.
Inside the door was a small waiting area; a screen on the wall looped the safety notices. Item three: enter the cold aisle only in pairs, single stays under forty minutes. On his third time through, He Yu arrived.
The door opened.
The first thing was the cold. The second was the noise.
Not the noise of machines at work—a sheet of even wind-sound with no rise or fall in it, pushing up through the seams of the floor. A small screen on the wall, green characters: temp 19.6℃ humidity 42%.
The cabinets stood in two rows, numbered from CS-A01. Between them ran the cold aisle, glass doors, each one shut. The floor was raised; footsteps sounded hollow on it, every step a little louder than outside.
Wu Yan pushed through a door from inside, the pink breathing trainer in his hand. He saw him. "Yo."
"He-zong's ask."
"Tour," Wu Yan said. "Keep up. Touch nothing—one zap off those cabinets and I'm not fixing it."
He turned sideways to let Liang Cheng past and, in passing, slapped the door of the third cabinet; then looked back to see whether anyone had seen.
Liang Cheng walked in. At the CS-B04 column he slowed by half a step.
Bay seventeen. Slot 3. The indicator light was green, one blink a second. A person pared down to one sentence left, 1.7 MB, eight yuan a month.
Two or three cabinets had yellow stickers on their doors: pending clearance.
He didn't stop.
He Yu stood at the end of the aisle, gray sweater, no coat, a paper cup in his hand.
"You came," he said. "Something to drink? It's over there, pour your own; don't drink much—there's no toilet in here."
"Nothing."
"Suit yourself." He Yu set the cup on a small ledge beside a cabinet. "That thing you asked about. It exists."
"It exists?"
"It exists. Not what you're imagining," He Yu said. "I'll walk you around; by the end you'll know."
He started with the CS-A row—bay density and heat dissipation, an even pace, no piled-up jargon. Halfway through he stopped, pressed a hand flat on the cold aisle's glass door. "It's eighteen degrees in there. We usually stay under forty minutes. Stay longer and your ears ring for half a day after you're out."
"The ones with yellow stickers are empty?"
"Cleared out," He Yu said. "Schedule hits zero, execution runs, the slot opens up. This row, five cleared last month."
"Opens up for who."
"The next one." He said it the way you'd say what the weather was doing. "The slots in this building are a fixed number. If none opened up, we'd have to lease another floor."
He talked as he walked—bay density, heat dissipation, how this floor's monthly power bill came to not much under the whole company's payroll. An even pace; not one sentence sounded memorized.
"That Filial Score from the last launch." He Yu said suddenly. "You activate it?"
"No."
"A hundred eighty-six thousand."
"Mm."
He Yu said nothing further.
"How much space does a Level 3 persona take." Liang Cheng asked.
"Your ma's, cold backup, 1.42 G," He Yu said. "A Level 4, that one over there—CS-B04, bay 17, Slot 3—1.7 MB."
He lifted his chin at it.
"One tier down, the size drops three orders of magnitude. Taste, smell, pain—the big pieces go. Pared down to the end there's one sentence left, 1.7 MB, fits on a floppy disk."
"You sell slots."
"We sell slots," He Yu said. "Hard line to say at a launch. Fine to say in here."
He walked on, to a row of low cabinets. Half the height of the racks, a bank of drawers, each drawer labeled.
"What you're asking about is here."
He pulled one drawer open: boxes of plastic cartridges, gray-blue, white labels on their sides.
"Cold backup. Offline archive, Blu-ray disc cartridges, one cartridge per account, numbered from K. This library isn't networked. The network goes down, it's still here."
He slid one out, turned it over to check the label, slid it back.
"Your ma's is in K-11. Fourth bay, seventh from the left."
Liang Cheng looked at the bay. A dozen-odd cartridges, gray-blue, white labels on the sides, small characters, all serial numbers—no telling one from another.
"When was it stored."
"The day of upload."
"Untouched for five years?"
He Yu glanced at him, smiled faintly. "Stored the day the line went live; never called since. Times anyone in the company has called one: zero."
"How does restoration work." Liang Cheng asked.
"Three steps. Pull the disc, rebuild, calibrate." He Yu counted on his fingers. "Pulling the disc takes hands; the discs aren't in this building, they're at the Changping library, half a day by van. Rebuild starts at forty-eight hours."
"What does the calibration step do."
"The rebuilt persona finds the time doesn't line up," He Yu said. "She remembers the day of upload, opens her eyes, and it's today. The five years between are blank. She'll notice the blank herself; once she notices, drift climbs. So after the rebuild there's one smoothing pass. Standard procedure."
"Smoothing."
"Cognitive smoothing. You're in disposition; you've seen it," He Yu said. "No signature needed. System-scheduled, automatic."
Liang Cheng gave an "Mm."
"Calibration runs three days fast, nine slow, depends on the persona. We quote five to nine working days."
"How much."
"Eight thousand six. Disc 2,400, rebuild 4,800, calibration 1,400," He Yu said. "That's cost. We don't mark it up."
Liang Cheng added the two numbers in his head. Eight thousand six, and forty-one thousand four hundred forty-six point five. Fifty thousand forty-six point five.
On the sheet from the day before yesterday, the balance had been forty-five sixty-two.
"Preconditions."
"No outstanding balance on the account," He Yu said. "Yours I won't look at. You know the figure."
Liang Cheng nodded.
"The Filial Score can pay for it."
"It can. Restorative spending—that product's exact use case," He Yu said. "Your credit covers it. You haven't activated it. Why not, I'm not asking."
He pushed the drawer back in, stopped halfway, hand resting on the drawer's edge.
"Liang Cheng, one honest word," he said. "This feature has been live three years. People who've used it: zero. You asking me today—I'm glad. I'm not here to sell you something. I just think somebody should be asking."
Liang Cheng said nothing.
Wind came up through the floor seams, cold on his trouser legs.
"That 'restoration' you want," He Yu said. "It brings back the copy from five years ago. The one running now gets wiped."
He Yu's phone sat on the ledge, face up, lit.
Liang Cheng hadn't meant to; bending over the drawer, his line of sight landed square on it.
It was a screenshot.
The family-end call screen, green field, one name across the top: Lin ** (ex-wife). Center: in call. Below, the duration: 21:06. One line of small print further down: ended. Top right, a date: November, three years ago.
He Yu picked up the phone, checked the time, set it back down, face up.
"This one I don't change," he said.
Liang Cheng didn't ask.
He Yu offered no explanation. He moved the phone half an inch aside, to the middle of the ledge, and went on about the discs.
A stack of printouts lay weighted on the ledge; the top sheet was an Offline Archive Retrieval Register. Blank but for the header, the date column printed with that day's date.
The attendant pulled the records up on the terminal. The keyboard was the old kind; the keys made noise.
The screen turned around. White ground, black characters.
[Account AC-0417 cold backup snapshot] Snapshot time: five years ago, Mar 14, 09:52:11 Data size: 1.42 GB Tier: Basic (never downgraded) Media bay: K-11 Retrievals: 0 Status: intact
Nine fifty-two.
Upload completed at 10:31. At that hour he had been on the expressway, traffic stopped, nineteen kilometers showing on the dash.
He ran the three facts through once in his head, said nothing.
"And the copy running now." Liang Cheng asked.
"Hard to say; it changes by the minute," He Yu said. "Smaller than 1.42 G either way. Five years of deletions, five years of writing; net, it trends down."
"After restoration it runs on the Basic tier," He Yu said. "Forty-five a month."
"Mm."
"That version has everything. Smell, taste, Spring Festivals before '98, your father's face." He Yu counted them off. "If you're asking whether it's worth eight thousand six—it's worth it."
He paused.
"But that version doesn't have the five years since."
Liang Cheng watched the screen.
"Not the 2,913 introspection fragments. Not the her that came after forty-one smoothing passes. Not the pot on the stove, not those forty-seven seconds on November 23," He Yu said. "The afternoon she recognized you—November 21—none of that is in it."
"I know."
"You're thirty-four this year," He Yu said. "Five years ago you were twenty-nine. In that version, you're twenty-nine."
Liang Cheng said nothing.
"And the procedure."
"The application needs the executor's signature," He Yu said. "You are the executor."
"I know."
"So nobody can stop you, and nobody can do it for you." He Yu took his hand off the drawer's edge. "I've said that twice now; today was the second. The last one who asked me was three years ago."
"Did he go through with it."
"No."
"Why."
"He said he'd thought it through," He Yu said. "Last month his account's schedule hit zero."
Liang Cheng looked at the drawer. Half open, cartridges inside, gray-blue, white labels on their sides, characters too small to read.
"Which one you want, think it over yourself," He Yu said. "I'm not rushing you. This doesn't count toward the quarterly review; we carry no target for it."
"Take your time." he added. "A disc doesn't spoil. It's just a disc; in ten years it's the same disc."
The attendant turned the screen back; the keyboard clacked twice.
On the way out he had to enter his departure time in the book.
He wrote: 16:08. The pen was running dry; he flicked it twice.
The phone came back out of the antistatic bag with a film of fog on the screen; he wiped it with his sleeve. Seven missed: two sales calls, five @-mentions in the work group.
He didn't look.
A bin sat under the shoe-cover machine by the door; he pulled the covers off and dropped them in. A pile of blue ones already there.
A sheet of A4 paper on the wall by the elevators: MACHINE-ROOM VISITORS PLEASE WEAR SHOE COVERS. Under it someone had drawn a ballpoint smiley face, crooked.
By the time he left the building the sky was fully dark. The two trees at the entrance stood bare, a plastic bag snagged on a branch, swelling and slackening in the wind. The guard at the door was taking in deliveries—seven or eight boxes stacked on the trolley, the top one wrapped twice in tape.
In the elevator his ears were still ringing, that even wind-sound, ringing all the way to the sixth floor.
His computer at the desk was still on, screensaver up, all blue. He nudged the mouse; the account page came back.
Schedule: 278 days left. Outstanding balance 41,446.50, the gray line still beneath it: pending merge-in 1.20.
He dragged the page to the bottom, dragged it back up. Onsite deep visits: three remaining this month.
He took the badge off his neck, worked a fingernail in along the edge of the sleeve, and pried the sticky note out.
The back already carried four lines: 1800×0; Xiao Cheng 411, Chuan Chuan 96; money 3, owe 0.
At the bottom he added one more line:
K-11 09:52:11
Added, he folded it and worked it back into the sleeve. The sleeve bulged a little; swiping in at the entrance now took a firm press.
He hung it back around his neck and straightened it. Down at the end of the corridor the water dispenser was heating; it gave one gurgle.
The subway was crowded; he stood holding the rail for two stops and got a seat at the third.
Seated, he held the badge up and looked at it. The photo was from the year he joined the company; that year he was twenty-seven. The tie was centered, not crooked.
He looked two seconds, turned the badge over, and put it back in his pocket.