[ECHO ARCHIVE · LAYER 3 · 20.8% DECODED · KEY: LIVE SOUND FROM THE 2008 SUMMER OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY BROADCAST]
Day 91, 03:11:44, step 94.
At seven twenty in the morning the June 21 frame enters the archive, this round S-11 and S-08. Forty minutes, two local items: one on the district's high-school entrance exam cutoff scores, one on a bridge refitted with a load-limit sign, the sign reading twenty tons. Xiao Gao checks two place names; one matches, one can't be found in the 2079 database — he draws a question mark after that item and doesn't cross it out.
Layer 3: 13,701 rows. I copy the number onto a sticky note, reading it right to left twice. When a strip fills thirty notes you start another; the second strip starts today.
Adebayo has driven a nail into the wall to the right of the whiteboard. A sheet of A4 a day, printed and threaded onto the nail, the new pressing down the old. The top sheet carries three lines: match number, handicap, odds. The three blank lines underneath are long gone.
In the sheet's upper right corner he writes a number. Match ten.
The ninth was won on day 90, off Xiao Gao — twenty yuan in cash, crumpled; Xiao Gao took it from his trouser pocket and smoothed it flat before handing it over. The tenth is the match in today's frame: home team giving one goal, and he wins two hundred. Cash again; he clips it into the notebook with the bank advertisement on the cover.
Adebayo used to be the one who told jokes in the group. That summer he stopped. Once Lao Song told one — about the canteen's meatballs — and laughed twice at his own; nobody picked it up.
In the canteen he sits at the wall table, facing the wall. The table's other three chairs are still there.
I carry my tray past his table and sit at Lao Song's. Lao Song nudges the meatballs my way. I say I don't eat them.
Lao Song says, "I talked to him."
I say, "About what."
He says, "I told him I'm out."
I say, "And what did he say."
Lao Song eats the last meatball. He says, "He didn't say anything."
He takes the plastic ruler out of his pocket, holds it above his tray, doesn't measure, stuffs it back. He says he went home for the weekend.
I say, "Did you get it done."
He says, done. Says the service counter wanted a face scan; his mother-in-law stood in front of the white wall and blinked three times before it passed. She asked, does this thing cost money. He said no. She said oh.
I say, "And the card."
He pulls his work badge out of its sleeve. The card has been cut down, the smallest size, taped to the badge's back with clear tape.
Ye Zhen comes over with her tray. She gives it one glance.
She says, "This card is in your name."
Lao Song says, "So what do I do."
She says, "Transferring it needs the person there in person."
Lao Song says, "My mother-in-law is eighty-three."
Ye Zhen doesn't answer. She picks the winter melon out of her tray piece by piece and lines it up at the edge.
She says, "Then this doesn't count as backfill."
Lao Song says, "Then I ran over there for nothing."
Ye Zhen says, "Not for nothing."
She stops a moment. She says, "The card in your name is you being there. Not her."
Lao Song makes an oh sound. He slides the badge back into its sleeve, clips the sleeve back on his chest, and presses it once with his palm.
Lao Song said once that in his mother-in-law's village seven people died last winter. Four of the seven, he said, had no phones. When he finished he rested the spoon across the bowl's rim and didn't drink.
Adebayo finishes first and leaves. His tray goes back to the window, squared up with the other trays, set straight.
The shop catty-corner from the institute gate changed its sign in mid-June, red ground, white characters. In July Tong says they've added a service: enterprise directory lookups, 4,800 a time, paid upfront. A new line has gone up on the glass door: in-operation status available.
I say, what do people want that for.
Tong says, to check whether they're in it.
I say, and if they are.
Tong says he doesn't know. Says a few days ago someone came out of there holding the paper sideways.
Tong says what we produce is vertical.
I walked past that shop once after work. Three lines on the glass door still, and pressed beneath them a smaller line, its words half swallowed by the QR code. Behind the counter a woman sits clipping her nails; when she's done she stands the clipper up on the counter, upright.
Since school let out Nian practices an hour and a half a day. The exam is set for the last Saturday of August. The third section's staccato is still heavy; the teacher says that note is the bone of this piece — heavy doesn't matter, but every time it must be equally heavy. Nian carries the line home and writes it on her score in pencil. Two characters: bone.
She asks me whether bone means the thing that can't be changed.
I say it can't be changed.
She says then she won't change it.
In the morning I'm up before her. The kitchen lamp gives warm light; I stand at the stove waiting for the water to boil. When I hear her turn over in the back room, I turn the flame off.
At night I set out the next morning's things in the kitchen. The Red Lantern radio is on in the living room, shortwave band, hissing. My father had a rule: before you listen, listen to ten minutes of static first — it settles the ears down. I listened to ten minutes.
In the ten minutes there was nothing.
The next time I write anything in the duty log is day 107. Sixteen days between.
The steps climbed sixteen notches, to step 110. Sixteen frames received, 06-22 through 07-07. Layer 3: 17,093 rows.
In those sixteen days:
The lamp in the east room on the third floor burned past two in the morning on four nights.
The man in the light-gray shirt appeared in the canteen once. He carried his own tray, sat at the table by the door, and on finishing returned his tray to the window, squared with the other trays. Nobody went over. Tong timed it on his watch: the meal took fourteen minutes.
The gatehouse's tally counter jammed at half a digit and Tong replaced it. The old one sits with the seven boxes of business cards. He presses the new counter once: it jumps to 001.
A fourth postcard reaches Tong. The same hand again, again only one date, the postmark another city again. He says he doesn't plan to reply.
The gatehouse's three piles of letters, the third the thickest. Tong says one letter inside holds a single sentence: is my son still alive in 2079. The letter carries no sender's name, he says — only a post-office box number.
Ye Zhen's city block has grown to sixty-nine addresses; the full street segment still hasn't come. The other-province block she's still waiting on, she says; she has written the waiting into the plan itself, third line.
She ran Baini River and Erdaogou through again. Still nothing in the 2079 database. She says she's come to feel that the nothing is what's normal.
Xiao Gao has filled in the empty number on his list. Filled it with a new place name, not the old one. An empty slot itches worse than a wrong one, he says.
Those sixteen frames I go through one a day, hunting the camera position at the institute gate. Nothing. Line by line into the duty log's remarks column: 06-22, no. 06-23, no. At the sixth I pause, and make the "no" the same size as the ones before.
The paper on Adebayo's nail thickens to three fingers. He has won his way to match twenty-seven.
From day 108 the fixtures crowd. July runs two matches a day, sometimes three. He changes the book to two sheets a day — one up in the morning, one in the afternoon.
Day 110 he has won his thirty-first. At noon in the canteen he says a line — he says, thirty-two. I say thirty-one. He says, tomorrow there's one. Nobody takes it up. Lao Song is drinking soup; he finishes and sets the bowl down. Xiao Gao lifts his tray and goes. Adebayo laughs once, to himself, says he's counting for fun.
The stakes go from two hundred to eight hundred. The notebook can't hold the bills anymore; he switches to a kraft envelope — an institute envelope, the institute's name blacked out in his hand.
I asked him once who those bets were with.
He says, my cousin.
I say, does your cousin know the game.
He says, no.
I say, then who does.
He says, nobody. Says people just put money down.
I say, how much.
He says, two or three thousand a day.
I say, and can you keep winning.
He says, can I keep winning. Saying it he looks at me — two seconds — and laughs. He says it again: can I keep winning.
Once, very late, when the group was down to the two of us, he says abruptly: have you ever checked.
I say, checked what.
He says, the table.
I don't say anything.
He shuts his screen off. He says, I haven't either.
I say, you're in that table every day.
He says, I look at other people in the table every day.
He stands and drapes his jacket over the chair back. He says, I don't look at my own.
He made a phone call once in the stairwell, voice pressed low. I was coming down from the fourth floor; the moment he saw me he stopped talking.
I say, who.
He says, my mother.
I say, oh.
He says, it really was my mother.
Once he explained odds to someone in the corridor, six minutes' worth. The man left saying he'd understood two. Adebayo says that's enough.
Ye Zhen printed out the city block's list and showed me once. She stood, the sheet spread on my desk, a finger resting on one line. This shop's license went electronic in 2019, she says — the fastest year for converting, because there was a subsidy that year.
I say, what do you want the years for.
She says the second version needs them. The first version is one block only; people can say that block is special. Three blocks with the same result, and it isn't special.
When she's done she caps her pen — only then does she look up at me.
The canteen's wall table: three chairs at first, then two. At noon on day 114, one. Tong says the neighboring group borrowed it and didn't bring it back.
On day 116 at noon I see him stand in the middle of the canteen with his tray a moment, turn two circles, and end by sitting at the wall table after all. That table has no other chairs.
He eats with his head down. Someone behind him does an impression of his odds voice — one line, one laugh. He doesn't turn around.
I stand two seconds with my tray, then sit at Lao Song's table.
Lao Song says, "Go sit with him."
I say, "I have to leave when I'm done."
Lao Song says, "Oh."
Tong says that afternoon that nobody in the group eats with him now.
I say, mm.
Tong says he doesn't eat with him either.
I say, you never ate in the canteen anyway.
Tong says, "That still counts."
Once the stack on his nail comes up one sheet short — torn off, the tear at the staple, ragged. He says nothing; the next day he prints another and pins it up in the old spot.
Day 112, afternoon, Shen Yi stops me in the corridor.
He says, the ten-thousand-row explanation.
I say, Dr. Zhou hasn't set a date.
He says, I'll set one.
I say, what day.
He says, day 130.
I don't say anything.
He says, you're having difficulty.
I say, I don't know what to write.
He says, write the part you don't know.
He goes.
I passed Shen Yi's cabinet once. A corner of kraft paper shows in the gap of the bottom shelf's door; the pencil writing can't be seen. I didn't touch it.
The next day I meet Zhou Yansheng on the stairs, him going up, me down. He holds the rail; his hand pauses; he lets me pass.
He says, Shen Yi has asked for it.
I say, he has.
He says, what did you tell him.
I say, I didn't tell him anything.
He says, then don't write it yet.
He says, when I say write, you write.
Two steps up he stops again. He says, it's nearly twenty thousand rows now.
I say, nineteen thousand two hundred.
He says, four days. Says at twenty thousand rows he'll report it in the pool once.
I say, report what.
He says, report that we have this thing. Says it has to be reported sooner or later.
Day 116, the July 16 frame: he wins his forty-second. The table has that match as Pingchuan against Dingxi, home team giving one goal, 3:1. He staked fifteen hundred.
He writes forty-two in the sheet's upper right, caps his pen when it's written, uncaps it again, and changes it to forty-three.
I say it hasn't happened yet.
He says, write it ahead.
Day 117, seven twenty in the morning, the July 17 frame enters the archive — this round S-11 and S-23. Layer 3: 19,213 rows. I cover half the number on the monitor, leave the last three digits showing, read them out, then check against the whole. Checked, the note goes up: second strip, twenty-seventh sheet.
The sports segment is at 00:18:52.0.
I go to fill my water cup; when I'm back he has already turned his screen ninety degrees, toward the aisle.
The caption strip reads: Pingchuan 1:1 Dingxi.
He opens the table; the line there reads: Pingchuan 3:1 Dingxi.
He doesn't speak. He replays the segment five times — the fourth at double speed, the fifth frame by frame.
He copies the frame number onto paper — last digit a 7 — and checks it twice.
He has Xiao Gao read the caption's characters. Xiao Gao says it's Pingchuan, it's Dingxi, the score is one to one. Xiao Gao says, what do you want me to check. He says the characters. Xiao Gao says the characters aren't wrong.
His table searches leave traces too. Layer 3's search strings are kept a hundred and eighty days, with one report a day. He searched twice that day, two different strings — "Pingchuan" the first time, "Pingchuan Dingxi" the second. One report goes to Zhou Yansheng, one to Shen Yi.
He comes to me for the raw baseband of 07-17. I say it needs a request form. He says he knows. He fills it out in duplicate; I sign underneath.
At noon he doesn't go to the canteen. Lao Song, coming out with his tray, glances his way and doesn't go over.
At four he transfers the money out. Done, he sets the phone on the desk, screen down.
After hours he's still there. He plays the sports segment through once more.
I ask whether he wants to leave it for tomorrow.
He says, tomorrow is the day after tomorrow's business.
I say, what.
He says, if you didn't get it, forget it.
Done, he saves the screenshot into a folder, types four characters, deletes them, types four again: 0717-1.
The corridor light dies. He stamps a foot; it comes back on.
That night, 03:11:44, step 121. Tong finishes writing and pushes the book back.