Six twenty-seven, he woke before the alarm. The porridge was in the pot, rice soaked the night before; bring to a boil, low heat, twenty minutes, flame off, let it sit. He washed up, drank half a bowl, turned off the flame, left the other half-pot sitting lidded on the stove.
Out the door at seven ten. ID card and badge stacked on his shoes; he picked them up, slid the ID into his coat's inner pocket, hung the badge around his neck. The subway was crowded; he held his bag to his chest. Someone in the car was on the phone, saying, Ma, I'm coming back next week, don't buy groceries, I'll bring them. He listened for one stop; the man got off, sentence unfinished.
He read last night's numbered sheet once more. Three items on it; one never written.
Eight forty, Tower B floor 1. The card reader beeped him through—a beep shorter than usual; the screen flashed: visitor mode. The lobby was near empty; the receptionist was setting up the Christmas tree, last year's baubles on it, one of them deflated.
He waited by the desk. Eight fifty-two, the elevator came down, and He Yu stepped out. Gray sweater, no phone in hand.
"Have you eaten." He Yu said.
"I have."
"Then let's go."
He held his ID card out to the desk. The receptionist brought out a sheet, A4, landscape, headed Visitor Escort Registration (Product Side). He Yu signed the escort column and had Liang Cheng sign as the escorted. Done, she filed the sheet and said, "Mr. He, the machine room runs cold." He Yu said he knew.
The elevator went down. B1, B2. In the car He Yu said nothing, and Liang Cheng asked nothing. It stopped, the doors opened, and the cold air met him—nineteen point six, same as ever. The corridor lights came on by sensor, one section ahead of him lighting after another.
"We're not going through the application page today." He Yu said as he walked. "You're suspended—no work orders can be filed, no applications run. I'm taking you through the ops side, the product reverification channel, registered under my name. Don't be nervous; the channel's always existed. Few people use it."
"This channel doesn't go through people." Liang Cheng said. "Your words, yesterday."
"Mm." He Yu pushed open the glass door. "Not through your people. Through me."
The machine room was as before. The fan noise layered on fan noise; on the whiteboard "Onsite this month: 11" had been changed to 21, that dragged-out stroke still there. The DA-area door stood open, someone on shift inside, the pink balloon parked on the desk. Wu Yan looked up, saw him, and paused.
"You today—"
"Product reverification." He Yu said. "Registered under me."
Wu Yan gave an oh, picked up the balloon, and blew the dust out of the keyboard seams; he asked nothing more. They were two steps past when he added from behind: "Next time give a day's notice—I'll save you a seat further in; that row's warmer."
He Yu didn't head for the DA area; he turned the other way, to the ops-log desk, the same old computer on it as before.
He Yu switched it on and pulled up a page. Liang Cheng knew that page—the Offline Archive Retrieval Register; back in chapter 14 he had stood beside this desk and seen it, a blank form. It was blank still. Three header columns: retrieval account, disc retriever, appointment time. Small print beneath: disc retrieval requires the person themselves at the library with an ID card; library address: Changping.
"First, your three questions." He Yu said, setting his phone on the desk face down. "What you sent last night—I read it. Installments: no. The precondition is fixed; the terms don't bend. Offset: yes—credit funds enter the account, square the outstanding balance first; once squared, status changes, and the queue recognizes it. Nothing wrong with that step."
"But."
"But the lender reviews your cash flow. You're home suspended, pay at 60%; the pledge clause wants your salary income for the next sixty months. The bank takes one look at your current number and approval is up in the air. Reinstate first, then apply; the odds are far better." He Yu said. "It's not me holding you up. It's the teeth the Filial Score grew for itself."
Liang Cheng stood where he was. This layer he hadn't computed yesterday. He had computed fifty thousand and one hundred seven; he hadn't computed "approved or not."
"Second question." He Yu said. "During suspension, does the executor's signature count. It doesn't. The system recognizes authority, not persons. The morning of the 26th at ten thirty your findings come out; whether your authority comes back that day depends on the findings. If it comes back, your signature is valid that day."
"Third question. Level 1 account—kinship-call deferral, does it apply."
He Yu pulled over another screen and tapped a few times. "Rule text, the same one posted back in November—applies to Levels 1, 2, and 3. Level 1 is on the list." He turned the screen around. "But look clearly at what it defers—the downgrade schedule. She's Level 1 now. Below that there is no Level 2."
Liang Cheng read the line. Below that there is no Level 2.
"Level 4." he said.
"The Level-4 frozen tier. The emotional outline plus one looping sentence; everything else deleted." He Yu said. "So those five minutes now work like this: call the full five minutes, a week buys seven days, and what it buys is her not dropping to Level 4. The answer to your brother's question is yes, it works. More than it did last month."
Liang Cheng logged the clause into his phone. Done, he asked: "Her response records. Right now."
He Yu tapped a few times and brought up a maintenance screen. AC-0417, Level 1. Base voice: normal. Call module: normal. Single-scene rendering: normal. Calls today: 0. Calls this week: 0. He stared at the two zeros.
"Your brother asked yesterday whether he could still call." He Yu said. "He didn't."
"Mm."
"Not pushing him." He Yu closed the screen. "With calls like these, every push costs you one."
Then He Yu took a key out of the drawer—not the machine-room door's, a small one, brass. He walked to the far end of the room, where a row of metal cabinets stood, sheet-iron, about the height of a man, locked. He Yu opened one. Inside weren't discs but file folders, slotted one to a compartment, kraft paper bags standing in them.
"The library's in Changping; the discs are there—no K-11 in this building." He Yu said. "What's here is this."
He drew out a paper bag. The label read: AC-0417 Restoration Preliminary Review · Materials (Product Side). He set the bag on the desk and drew out a stack of paper.
"Three years ago, someone got as far as this step of yours." He Yu said. "Halfway through asking, he stopped asking. Said he'd thought it through. His materials have sat in this bag ever since. I kept them for him—kept them until his account's schedule ran to zero. It hit zero last month."
Liang Cheng said nothing.
He Yu drew out the bag beside it, older, the label gone yellow: AC-2846-0912 Restoration Preliminary Review · Materials (Product Side). He slid out the appointment slip inside. The name field was blank; the date field half filled in, November 2021; in the remarks field one line had been struck through, struck hard enough to raise the nap of the paper. Liang Cheng leaned in; under the strike-through he could make out half a character: the character for wait.
"He got this far and stopped." He Yu put the paper back. "You're one step past him—the step you're taking today."
He pushed the new bag over. "The preliminary materials I've prepared for you. Appointment slip, application form, an ID-copy field. Today you do exactly one thing—decide whether to put your name on the first line. Sign it, and the disc pull is yours in person, in Changping, your name on the register, no way around it. Don't sign, and the bag goes back in the drawer, filed next to the one from three years ago."
Liang Cheng looked at the bag. He asked: "The man three years ago. Why didn't he sign."
"He said he'd thought it through." He Yu said it a second time. "I asked him, thought through what. He said, his wife wouldn't know the man he is now—and if she did, it wouldn't help; the debt couldn't be paid off. His account owed forty-three thousand."
The fan noise layered on fan noise. Liang Cheng drew the papers from the bag one sheet at a time. The appointment slip was blank, name field blank, date field blank. On the application form the retriever field was blank. The last page was a notice; he read it clause by clause:
> Notice on Offline Archive Restoration (Product Side, V1.1): > 1. Restoration takes the snapshot time point as governing; all data added after the snapshot is deleted, irrecoverably; > 2. On completion of the rebuild the system automatically performs one cognitive smoothing pass; no separate application is required; > 3. After restoration the account is billed on the Basic tier (45.00 yuan/month); where the original schedule and outstanding balance are unchanged, queue rules apply as usual; > 4. Disc retrieval requires the person themselves at the library with an ID card; travel time and expenses borne by the retriever; > 5. Once the Blu-ray disc cartridge is removed, the rebuild must be completed within seven working days; past due, the cartridge returns to the library and fees are not refunded.
He read clause five twice. Seven working days. The cartridge comes out, and the clock starts running.
"Mr. He." he said. "Let me ask one thing. Your ex-wife's—"
He Yu's knuckle rapped the table edge once, not hard, just once.
"The account exists." He Yu said. "Level 3. The schedule I don't look at."
"Why don't you—"
"The money isn't the problem." He Yu said. "What I make in a year buys ten of her. The problem is, the me she'd recognize is the one from before the divorce, and recognizing him just means the fighting goes on. Fight about what—that household's days are ones I can't live again." He closed his hand over the key. "You're different. Your account recognized you; inside it you're clean. Your brother fought with her for three years. You never did. There's still time for you to be clean."
Liang Cheng stood there. Half a minute in the machine room, that sentence working its way through. He thought of the one in there asking him, and your brother—he's the kind who carries it inside and says nothing. Of her waiting a whole week for Chuan Chuan's call. Of the November 30 line: Next time he calls, I won't hang up first. I'll wait for him to hang up.
The clean one was her. She had cleared out the negative, 4.5%; the positive was 86.4%. If he restored, what these five years wiped wouldn't be only the account.
"Your screensaver." he said. "The 21:06 one."
"Mm." He Yu said. "I don't change it. If her end ever calls, mine has to be picking up. What do you call that—keeping one line alive. About you selling the apartment: no opinion, and I won't talk you out of it. One question, that's all—settle, delist, restore, three steps done: the person standing in there. What does she call you."
"Xiao Cheng." Liang Cheng said.
"The last time she called you Xiao Cheng was a few months ago." He Yu said. "You're sure the one after restoration still calls you that?"
Liang Cheng didn't answer. This question's answer sits in the terms; the terms would answer it for him. The snapshot governs. The last time the person in the snapshot called him Xiao Cheng was five years ago, the night of March 13, two forty in the morning, in the corridor outside after she signed. After that she fell asleep, and by the time she woke again he had arrived—standing in the stairwell, not going in.
He stood over that appointment slip a long time. At ten twenty, he picked up the pen.
The name field: he wrote Liang Cheng. Disc-pickup time: he wrote Thursday 09:00. Done, he set the pen down and left the third column unwritten.
The third column was remarks. Under the remarks field ran a gray example line: relationship to account.
In the end he left the remarks blank. He slid the slip to He Yu. He Yu glanced at it, drew up the register's electronic page from the kraft bag, and keyed the row in.
The Offline Archive Retrieval Register, two years empty, had words in its first line:
> Retrieval account: AC-0417 Disc retriever: Liang Cheng Appointment time: Thursday 09:00
"Thursday I drive." He Yu said. "You cover gas; the rest is on me. There, you register; I'll wait. With the disc pulled, it's four hours there and back—you can sleep in the car."
"Why you." Liang Cheng asked.
He Yu put the bag back in the cabinet, locked it, dropped the key in the drawer. "The one three years ago, when he reached this step, there was no one beside him to say any of it." he said. "I just wanted the next time to be different. The next time turned out to be you."
At eleven they walked out. At the machine-room door He Yu paused and looked back at the row of racks. Liang Cheng stopped too. Small lights sat on the racks, green, blinking steadily. Which one was hers, there was no telling. They all blinked the same.
The elevator went up. At the first floor the doors opened; the lobby Christmas tree stood where it had, the limping bauble turned round to the back.
"One more thing." He Yu said. "Tomorrow morning, your review findings. If they go against you, I hold this appointment slip; the day your authority comes back is the day it takes effect. Keep the person safe first—the disc isn't going anywhere."
Liang Cheng nodded. He walked toward the subway, a dozen-odd steps, then looked back. He Yu was still standing at the entrance to Tower B, not gone in, watching him. Seeing him turn, He Yu waved a hand and went inside.
He worked it out: from lobby to out, an hour forty. Day three of suspension, an hour forty in the machine room, not one work order touched, not one step past that line.
In the afternoon he went home. The porridge still sat lidded in the pot, cold by now. He reheated it; the lid rattled; he turned the flame down and the rattling stopped. This pot he'd bought last year with money left from the move, thirty-odd yuan. The aluminum pot that had been inside went with the kitchen, deleted Saturday afternoon.
Two o'clock, Liang Chuan called. He answered.
"I asked Niuniu." Liang Chuan said. "She wants to call Grandma. I said fine. She asked what to say when she calls. I said, just say, Grandma, it's Niuniu, I got two hundreds on my finals."
"Good." Liang Cheng said. "Let her call. Any time."
"Any rule about how many minutes?"
Liang Cheng repeated what the screen in the machine room had said: "Five minutes. A week with the full five minutes is enough. More is fine too; extra minutes are billed, 1.20 a minute."
"One twenty." Liang Chuan did it on his end. "Five minutes is six yuan."
"Six yuan."
"Six works." Liang Chuan said. "Filial piety at six yuan a week—cheap."
Liang Cheng didn't take that up. He thought of fifty thousand and one hundred seven, of the eighty-thousand down payment, of the six-yuan-a-day arithmetic. Said none of it.
"Have her call tonight." Liang Chuan said. "Once she's called, I'll stop asking."
At six forty in the evening a push came into the app:
> [Afterlife Cloud] Account AC-0417: 1 call answered today, caller: Liang ** (granddaughter?), connected 03:41. This week's surviving-family calls total 03:41/05:00.
The question mark in the push was the system's. When Liang Chuan registered Niuniu, he'd probably left the relationship field unselected; the system guessed, couldn't be sure, and hung a question mark on it.
Three minutes forty-one. One nineteen short.
Seven minutes later, the second push:
> [Afterlife Cloud] Account AC-0417: 2 calls answered today, caller: Liang ** (granddaughter?), connected 01:36. This week's surviving-family calls total 05:17/05:00. This week's deferral target met; downgrade schedule deferred 7 days. Days left on the schedule: 239.
Liang Cheng read the two pushes top to bottom. Niuniu had called twice. The first time she talked three-odd minutes, probably got the two hundreds said. Hung up, consulted somebody or other, then called again, a minute and a half.
He texted Liang Chuan: target met. Niuniu called twice, made the difference.
The reply came fast: she insisted on a second call herself, said the first time she forgot to say English was a hundred too.
One more below it: three hundreds, six yuan.
He screenshotted the line, sent it to no one.
Liang Cheng looked at it and set the phone on the desk, screen up. The two pushes were still lit. He looked at the question mark on "granddaughter?" for a long time.
The system doesn't know who Niuniu is. The system guessed. Whether the one in there knows, he didn't know. One thing he knew—if nobody went and changed it, that question mark would hang there for good.
He texted Liang Chuan: on the family end, file Niuniu's relationship properly—under my account contacts. Don't make the system guess.
The reply: how.
He typed out three lines of steps and sent two more screenshots. Ten minutes later Liang Chuan came back with "done." He pulled the pushes to refresh; both still read "granddaughter?"—probably pending review. He set the phone down. Tomorrow.
At nine, the team lead texted: tomorrow 10:30 a.m., small conference room, Tower B floor 3, review findings. Bring your badge.
He sent back: noted.
He plugged the phone in, sat at the desk, took out yesterday's numbered sheet, and on the back wrote tomorrow's two items:
One: ten thirty, the findings. Two: the question mark.
Done, he pressed the sheet under the sticky note. Eight lines on the note now; the eighth was "ask whether the Filial Score can offset." He drew out the pen and below the eighth added a ninth:
Thursday 09:00, Changping.
Done, he read it through from the top. Nine lines; the first was 1800×0, the last a place-name. The note had traveled with him over a month, grown from three lines to nine, the edges of the paper gone furred. He slid it back into the badge sleeve and hung the badge on the back of the chair, facing the bed.
Tomorrow at ten thirty, the findings first.