Monday, 10:04 a.m., the system popped up a notice.
[Staff Violation Notice] No.: VT-2023-1187 Subject: Liang Cheng (L-0284) Grounds: disposal-assistance operation required but not executed (cognitive smoothing; related minutes DA-R-0417-002) Basis: Terminal Account Disposal Operating Standards, Article 11, Clause 3 Decision: one demerit; 100 points deducted from the annual conduct score Appeal period: five working days Copied to: Feng Tuo, HR, Compliance
He opened the appeal page for one look. A line of gray at the top: an appeal does not stay the decision's effect. He closed it.
Below the notice hung a gray link: violation history. He clicked it. Seven years of his own accruing: blank. Just this one entry. A page blank for seven years loaded faster than the other pages—fast enough that the system seemed to have known all along there was nothing here worth seeing. He read the one entry top to bottom again, reading his own name, read it twice.
Su Man came back from the tea room, passed his desk, stopped half a step, glanced at the heading on his screen. Seven years passing this desk; the times she had stopped could be counted on one hand.
"Which year now."
"Seventh."
"First time I've seen one."
"Seen what."
"Refused." She walked on as she said it, thermos in hand, lid not screwed down. At her own desk she set the cup down on the coaster; water sloshed out a little; she pressed a tissue to it.
In the afternoon he pulled AC-0417's points ledger. Logged access AR-119112.
The ledger had two lines in all.
2023-11-13 Voice access (executor) Answer quality: Excellent +3 2023-11-23 Inbound answer Valid answer 00:41 Below rating threshold +0
Balance: 3.
In the knowledge base he looked up the Kinship Rewards · Answer Quality Rating Rules, V1.3, live date October 26 this year; small print underneath: calls before go-live are not retroactively rated, not back-credited.
Three rating bands. Excellent: complete answer, active engagement, positive affect — 3 points. Good: one item missing — 1 point. Fair: two or more missing — 0 points. Threshold: a single call's valid answer must reach one full minute.
He opened the small print on the points explainer too. Transferable to same-tier accounts (recipient must complete identity verification). He read it once with his profession's eyes: a retention tool—give the family a little something to accumulate; things accumulated are hard to throw away. That read turned up nothing new.
He clicked into the repair voucher's detail page as well. Items restorable on this account: none. All deleted items are past the seven-day restoration window. He had read that line once in mid-November; the words hadn't changed.
The office was quiet that afternoon. Across the aisle Xiao Zhou was checking off a stack of thermal-paper slips—check one, stamp; check one, stamp. The stamp ink ran uneven; some came out clear, some blurred.
He took a pen and worked it out on a sticky note. Repair voucher two hundred; an Excellent call is three points; sixty-seven calls. Four calls a month, seventeen months. He did this sum fast, because it was simple: two numbers, one division, and out came a number out of reach.
Today the schedule read two hundred seventy-one days.
He put the pen down, picked it up again, started another line: deferral, five minutes, seven days. One week buys one week. That line he wrote slowly, because it wasn't simple.
The two numbers written together cancel out exactly. Someone has to call the full five minutes every week, no week broken. 1.20 a minute, five minutes six yuan; whether the money lands on him or on the account, it lands.
He pulled out the photocopy of his own repayment sheet, added a line, pen tip stalling; struck it out. Struck it out, then wrote it back. The words on that line were smaller than on any other line.
What he wrote: deferral proxy payment, 6.00/week. Add the occupancy fee, a hundred and five—one hundred eleven a week, four hundred forty-four a month. He circled that number, then wrote it once more outside the circle. He folded the photocopy in half, slid it into his badge sleeve, where it crowded in with the sticky note.
Friday morning, the text messages came in a queue.
Tuesday's still sat on top: payment on behalf · queue occupancy fee 105.00, balance 3,087.62.
06:02 Rent 2,400.00 debited. Balance 687.62. 09:12 Salary 9,020.00 received. 09:15 Student loan payment 2,180.00 debited. Balance 7,527.62.
He read the three through and pocketed the phone. The rises and falls of the balance he noted on the back of the sticky note by habit: 687.62 he looked at two seconds longer. It was the thinnest number in the string, alive only for the three hours before payday—every year the same; he had long since got its measure. The noodle shop's shutter was half down; inside, the owner was moving steamers, heat walking out through the gap in the door.
The DA area. The whiteboard read "Accesses this month: 5." The bench was empty. Wu Yan had the blower squeezed in one hand.
"Again."
"Again."
Blood pressure 126/81, pulse 90. Fingerprint, first pass. Sign, patches, three ticks.
[Pre-authorization frozen: 60.00 yuan.]
10:01. Loading.
What came first was a damp warmth.
The dough basin sat on a square stool, its mouth covered with a damp steaming cloth; a ring of darker wet had seeped through the cloth. She stood at the basin's edge, lifted a corner of the cloth, pressed the dough with a finger. Press down, watch the dent rise, lay the cloth back over.
"You're here." She didn't turn around. "Dough's just taken its strength. Sit. Mind you don't step on that cloth."
Top right: 27:58.
On the stove top lay the two insoles side by side, rolled into one roll, bound with a rubber band.
"There. Your pair," she said. "Take them together, alternate the two—don't wear one pair to the end."
He picked the roll of insoles up off the stove top and held it in his hand.
"Give them a try. A few steps."
He held them against his feet. The avatar's feet were still in those leather shoes with the scuffed-white toes.
"Thick, right," she said. "First time, they need pressing in. Stitched this close, they won't flatten."
She pressed the dough. "These days I don't go by my nose—nose's no use, everything smells of the same thing. Go by hand: the dent rises quick, it's risen through."
"Too much soda and it yellows; too little and it sours," she said. "Ma can't pin it down these days—what comes out of the steamer is yellow, or dead at the center. Today's dough—" she paused— "looks right."
"Ma, let me ask you something."
"Ask."
"From now on, when anyone calls, say a few more sentences."
"They're busy."
"Ask if he's eaten, what he's wearing, is the room cold, how's the trade going, how are the children doing at school. Cover it all and their side credits you points."
"What points."
"Work points," he said. "More work, more pay."
Her hands floured, she thought a moment. "Their side keeps work points too?"
"Keeps them."
"Whose head do they go on."
"Yours."
"What does Ma want with points," she said. "No use to Ma."
"They buy things," he said. "Vouchers for getting things repaired."
She didn't ask what could be repaired. She turned the dough over, folded it in three, pressed down with the heel of her hand.
"Same as the production team," she said. "In those years, with work points, Ma was a first-grade hand among the girls. Eight li for stitching a sole, one fen for spinning a hank—Ma's hands were quick. Your side honors that too."
"Honors it."
"Keeping work points took literacy in those years," she said. "In the team, only me and the accountant could read it all. At year-end settlement I read the work ledger out for them, from cock-crow to lights-out. Misread one number and a whole year of someone's work was for nothing; I read every number three times."
She lifted the cloth and looked at the dough, and covered it again.
"Who does the reckoning on your side."
"The system does."
"The system—" she thought a moment. "So, their side. They keep the books; nothing gets missed."
"I'll be Chuan Chuan," he said. "You answer once."
"Like it's real?"
"Answer."
"Hello—Chuan Chuan? Eaten yet? What did you eat? Is your room cold, is the boiler on? Don't tough it out to save that bit of money. How's the trade, have the creditors gone? Don't stay up late—money can't all be earned, sleep can't be paid back. And your brother? Are you two together? If not, you call him. He's the kind who carries it inside and says nothing..."
She went on; no pausing to think in between.
He listened. Complete, active, positive. By the standard, that passage was an Excellent.
"Good," he said. "Just like that."
"Just like that?" She half didn't believe it. "That gets points?"
"It gets them."
"If I'd known sooner," she said. "Ma wasted this whole year."
"What does Ma have to ask to cover it all?"
"Food, clothes, health, the trade, the children."
"Won't hold it in my head. I'll write it down."
From the drawer she fished half a pencil and a cigarette-pack paper, spread it on the stove top, had him read the items out, and wrote. Three lines came out: Eaten yet. Cold or not. How's the trade. The question marks dotted hard. Done, she blew the paper clean and pressed it under the fridge magnet, next to "Did you turn off the gas?"
"If I forget, I'll look," she said.
She rolled the dough into a long rope and cut it into portions, each pinched off the same size.
"But if they're truly busy," she said, "and Ma holds them ten minutes on the phone—doesn't that hold up their work?"
"It doesn't."
"And the phone bill? Keep it short; what's saved is yours."
"It's nothing."
"You people," she said. "All you know is 'it's nothing.'"
"And if something urgent comes up while they're on the phone?"
"If it's urgent, they'll say so."
"That's true," she said. "When you two were small you'd hog the phone doing homework; people came knocking at the door. Your pa locked the telephone in the cabinet, key in his undershirt pocket—wore out three undershirts, never lost that key."
The portions turned under her hand, pressed flat, one by one laid into the steamer; at the fifth she evened out the spacing by feel, so they wouldn't stick when steamed.
"Old Guan next door—does his room get points too?"
"It does."
"That phone of his doesn't ring once all year," she said. "Who's the record for."
She said no more after that; she pressed the last one flat in the steamer and set it straight.
Into the steamer. The cloth wetted and spread flat; she set the lid on, and weighted the top of the lid with a dishcloth.
She ladled half a bowl of warm water, set it at the far end of the stove top, stepped back a pace.
"It's there. Wet your throat."
He picked it up, drank a mouthful, set the bowl back.
[04:12 remaining.]
She straightened up, wiped her hands twice on her apron, looked at him. What she looked at was the place on his chest where the badge hung.
"Comrade," she said. "Ma wants to ask you something serious."
"Ask."
"These points—can they be used for someone else?"
He remembered the front half of that small-print line: transferable. The back half he couldn't call up for the moment.
"They transfer," he said. "The other party has to... I'll look it up for you later."
"No need to look," she said. "If they transfer, that's enough."
She turned the flame down to medium and put a kettle of water on.
"When it boils, you go," she said. "None of last time—standing there like a fool."
[01:00 remaining.]
The number went a shade whiter.
"The buns take twenty minutes," she said. "You can't wait."
"Can't wait."
"Come eat next time," she said. "This time the soda's right."
[00:30]
The number began to blink.
She lifted the dishcloth on the lid and checked the flame. The ring of blue flame was even.
Black.
He opened his right hand. Nothing in the lines of his palm. The insoles had been in there; they couldn't come out.
Dry mouth. Water, half a cup, warm, a mouthful at a time. The wall clock: ten thirty-one.
[This deep visit has ended.] Connect 10:01 — disconnect 10:31 Session duration 30:00 Fees: 2.00 yuan/min × 30 = 60.00 yuan [Settlement] Pre-authorization debit successful.
The phone buzzed once. Bank debit 60.00; balance 7,467.62.
[Account outstanding balance] 41,507.70 (1.20 merged on the 12/14 billing date) [267 days left on the schedule.]
Two fields to complete on the minutes. Purpose achieved: no clear expression of intent obtained. Cooperation: cooperative. Submit.
[Minutes no. DA-R-0417-003, retained for three years.] [Off-script statements recorded separately: 3 instances.] [Remaining quota this month: 1 visit.] [Next available access: 2023-12-16 10:31.]
Back at his desk, he messaged Liang Chuan.
"Saturday, ten a.m., call Ma. Make it five full minutes—not one second less."
The other side showed "typing" for a long while, then stopped. Forty-odd minutes later came one line:
"Five minutes of what."
He sent back: "Whatever she asks, answer her."
Nothing after that.
He laid the phone face down on the desk. The corridor PA announced a fire drill that afternoon; staff were asked to file out in order by the emergency exits. Nobody in the terminal area looked up.
He opened the account page and pulled the points column up close. Balance: 3.
Below it, the redemption catalog. Voice package, thirty. Repair voucher, two hundred. Half a screen further down the page, the word "More", in gray. He didn't click. Three times today he had looked at this column; the number hadn't moved. Points are like that: look as many times as you like, they don't multiply.
He closed the page. A pushpin on the cubicle partition held last quarter's little red flag, the paper faded pale. He reached over and straightened it a little. The pin wasn't loose; his hand had been heavy when he hung it. The paper couldn't have been off by much. He straightened it anyway.