[ECHO ARCHIVE · LAYER 3 · 49.3% DECODED · KEY: LIVE SOUND FROM THE 2008 SUMMER OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY BROADCAST]
Day 180, 03:11:44, step 183.
Nian was up before me. I came out of my room at ten past six and she was already sitting at the table, her chin propped in one hand.
She said, "This tooth of mine has gone loose."
She pushed her lower front tooth forward to show me. In the gap six months empty, a speck of white had come up, the size of a grain of rice.
I said, "Don't rock it with your hand."
She said, "I don't use my hand. I use my tongue."
I said, "Not the tongue either."
She drew the tooth back in and bent over her milk. A ring sat around the rim of the cup, left from yesterday — she hadn't washed it when she finished.
I walked her to the school gate. The hoarding along the way had come down; the new asphalt was black and had a smell to it, and the smell followed us all the way to the crossing. Before she went in she looked back at me once, said nothing, and went in.
At the institute by six forty. The corridor light wanted a stomp; I stomped twice. The old VCR clock on the wall, eleven minutes fast, read six fifty-one. Tong was in the gatehouse, three piles of mail spread out in front of him, the rightmost pile the thickest.
I spread the duty log open and wrote the date in the header: September 18. Finished, I capped the pen.
At seven twenty the September 18 frame entered the archive; the pairing this round was S-11 and S-23.
Layer 3: 32,569 rows. Sticky notes, third strip, sheet sixty.
Segments rotate by the last digit of the frame number against the station number; this round, local segment two fell to us.
First the usual four: frame number, timecode, duration, subtitle timecode. 1 minute 47 seconds, starting 00:19:33.6, ending 00:21:20.6. Bit rate same as yesterday, audio 48 kilohertz, stereo, subtitle timecode on the second line inside the segment. All four checked.
First item in the local segment: a district underground pipe overhaul finished, road surface restored, a paving machine parked at the edge of shot, mud on its tracks. Third item: water cut along one road from September 20 to 22, a seven-digit number left under the caption. I had both done before ten, one line apiece in the summary field.
The second was an autumn sports day at a primary school. The playground had new rubber underfoot, red; the lane lines were fresh white. As the children ran, the camera panned with them, and at the last stretch it tilted up and swept the stands. A row of parents sat there, most of them holding up phones.
In the summary field I wrote: autumn sports day at a primary school. I checked the timecode through once more and filed it to the paired station.
S-23 decoded independently, identical byte for byte. The result came back at eleven thirty.
That day I ran not a single search query. Run or not, the archive keeps the record, one hundred eighty days.
Adebayo came by at eleven forty. He set his phone on the corner of my desk, a table on the screen.
He said, "The 09-18 match is on the table."
I said, "I'm not looking."
He said, "Not showing you the score. Showing you something else."
He scrolled the table up a stretch and pointed at the square past the last column.
He said, "I'm adding a column."
I said, "Adding what."
He said, "People. How many were in the stands."
I said, "How would you know how many."
He said, "The two figures Ye Zhen copied down. I copied them off her."
He took the phone back and stayed standing.
He said, "You haven't been watching lately."
I said, "Mm."
He said, "Have I been in your way."
I said, "No."
He went, "Oh." Leaving, he pushed his chair back in; halfway it jammed, and he lifted it, then pushed again.
Lunch in the canteen was cabbage and meatballs. Lao Song sat down with his tray, took an old phone out of his trouser pocket, and set it beside the plate, screen up.
He said, "I'll wait two minutes."
I said, "Waiting for what."
He said, "I switch it on once a day, at noon. It has to sit a while after it comes on before there's signal."
The phone was old, a few scratches across the screen. He ate a bite of cabbage first, eyes on the screen.
After two minutes a message popped up.
He said, "There it is."
He picked it up and read. He said, "From the carrier. My plan runs out in three days."
He laughed — one note, to himself.
He said, "It still texts me."
I said, "Mm."
He said, "Does that count as it still being here."
I said nothing.
He switched the phone off and pushed it back into his pocket. He said, "I know."
He ate a couple more bites, then said, "My mother-in-law's number — I'll make the trip again next month."
I said, "Didn't we say the transfer needs the holder there in person."
He said, "In person, then. Eighty kilometers."
I didn't pick that up. He finished the meatballs and left half a bowl of cabbage.
At two in the afternoon I met Zhou Yansheng on the stairs. He was on his way down, and he stopped at the windowsill on the landing.
He said, "You didn't work late yesterday."
I said, "I didn't."
He said, "Oh."
He looked out the window. From this angle you could see the patch by the institute gate, a corner of the steel plate showing.
He said, "Did Nian finish her exam."
I said, "She finished. The certificate came."
He said, "What grade."
I said, "Grade Three."
He said, "Good."
He paused.
He said, "You look a little off."
I said, "I didn't sleep well last night."
He said, "Oh."
He said, "Will there be anything added to that statement."
I said, "No more."
He said, "Three lines, then three lines."
I said, "Mm."
He said, "The twenty-thousand mark — did I report that to the pool once, or didn't I."
I said, "You didn't."
He said, "Then I misremembered. I thought I had."
I said, "The thirty-thousand mark passed too."
He said, "How many days back was that."
I said, "Twelve."
He said, "Then report them together."
He went on down, one hand on the rail, and his hand stopped on the rail a moment.
Two steps on he said, "If something's wrong, you can tell me."
I said, "Nothing's wrong."
He said, "Mm."
He didn't ask again. I stood two seconds and went up.
I took a form up to the third floor. The door of that room stood closed; the light was on, a warm light, leaking one thin line under the door.
Coming back down I passed Shen Yi's cabinet. From the gap of the bottom locker poked a corner of kraft paper; the pencil writing wasn't visible.
At four twenty in the afternoon Ye Zhen came up, a paper bag in her hand, and asked whether the 08-26 frame held a street number anywhere. I pulled it up for her. She stood beside me and watched it through twice; at the second pass she said that was enough.
As she left she said, the out-of-province patch might come through in a day or two.
I said, "How long have you been waiting."
She said, "Three months and nine days."
She clamped the bag under her arm and went.
After work I walked a hundred meters east into a small shop that sold stationery and did copying. A copier inside was humming, nobody using it. From the rack I took a notebook, blue plastic cover, twenty-four pages. Three and a half yuan. The owner tore a receipt off a steel clip for me; I didn't take it.
On the way home I passed the pit again. The paint on the word "slow" on the steel plate had chipped a little where the cars ran over it; the missing patch was on the left.
Across from the gate a gray car was parked. I didn't know whose.
Nian practiced forty minutes that day. The staccato in the third section still landed heavy. When she finished she said it herself: heavy again.
I said, "Mm."
At dinner she said another one was gone from her class today.
I said, "How many now."
She said, "Four this week." The teacher had said there'd be a parents' meeting tomorrow.
I said, "What time."
She said, "Seven." The teacher said one parent coming was enough.
I said, "I'll go."
She said, "You have work."
I said, "I'll take leave."
She bent over her food, saying neither yes nor no.
She was asleep by nine thirty. I washed the bowls, wiped down the stove, wrung out the dishcloth and hung it on the tap.
I sat down at the table and opened the notebook.
On the first page, first line, I wrote: Things the me of 2079 won't get to see.
After writing it I sat a while; the pen tip bled one dot into the paper.
Then I went on down the page.
1. How tall she'll be at fourteen.
2. What that front tooth looks like when it's grown in.
At the second item I put the pen down and went to look into the inner room. She was asleep, mouth slightly open, the speck of white just visible.
I came back and drew one line after the second item, and called it done.
That night I wrote only two.
Day 181, 03:11:44, step 184.
Duty log header: September 19.
At seven twenty the September 19 frame entered the archive; the pairing this round was S-11 and S-08.
Layer 3: 32,781 rows. Sticky notes, third strip, sheet sixty-one.
One item in the domestic segment: an old street in a county in another province. The camera swept east to west, forty-seven seconds. Trees along the road, electric scooters, one stretch of wall painted white. Shopfronts shoulder to shoulder, signs stacked over signs.
I cut the segment and sent it to Ye Zhen.
At ten past ten she came up. She stood beside me and watched it three times through. On the third pass she hit pause and tapped the screen with her finger.
She said, "Sixty-one."
I said, "Sixty-one what."
She said, "Shopfronts. Counted from the east end to the west, the ones whose signs I can make out — sixty-one."
She set the paper bag on my desk and drew out a stack of printouts. She said, "The rest I'll verify today. Tomorrow you'll have the number."
She went downstairs.
In the afternoon Xiao Gao brought a slip of paper to ask me about a character, from a banner in the 09-19 frame. Cursive, the strokes run together; at first glance it read like a si. I said: there's a heart on the right, and a horizontal stroke through the middle — that makes it hui. He stuck the slip onto his list, bringing it to item forty-six.
On the glass door of the shop across from the institute, the third line had been changed. It used to read no find, refund; now it read company registry lookups · 4,800 a search · same-day results. Three people stood waiting at the door, all peering inside.
In the afternoon Tong laid the postcards out on the gatehouse windowsill again. He said this month's hadn't come.
I said, "What date did last month's arrive on."
He said, "The nineteenth."
When he finished he pressed the tally counter once, and it jumped a number.
That night I added two items to the notebook.
3. Who the person standing in the doorway is.
4. The two things the obituary left out: which day, and how.
I closed the notebook and put it under my pillow. The next morning I took it out again and put it in my bag.
Day 182, 03:11:44, step 185.
Duty log header: September 20.
At seven twenty the September 20 frame entered the archive; the pairing this round was S-11 and S-17.
Layer 3: 32,993 rows. Half. Sticky notes, third strip, sheet sixty-two.
Copying the figure onto the sticky note I wrote one digit too many, struck it, and wrote it again.
Lao Song's phone lit up at noon again. He didn't say what the message was. He set the phone beside his plate, waited two minutes, read, switched it off, put it back in his pocket — the whole sequence the same as yesterday.
At two thirty in the afternoon Ye Zhen came up. She set the paper bag on my desk and drew out a stack of sheets, the top one handwritten.
She said, "Of the sixty-one, forty-four are in."
I said, "In means what."
She said, "In the archive and in the frame both. Sign, street number, business scope — two of the three will match."
She said, "Seventeen are out."
She said, "Of those seventeen, fourteen are zero. Same as the first version."
She said, "Three are not zero."
She slid the top sheet across. Three lines on it, one shop to a line, a few dates after each.
She said, "The first had broadband installed once, in 2009; suspended it in 2013. Two entries in all."
She said, "The second got a card in 2016 and bought one train ticket the same year. Three entries. Nothing after."
She said, "The third opened in 2007, and that opening month carried six entries: the license, tax registration, two purchase invoices, one hiring notice, one utility debit. Not one entry after that."
She capped her pen, and only then looked up.
I said, "And the fourteen."
She said, "Zero."
I said, "Then it isn't the same."
She said, "That's what I thought too, at first."
She drew out the sheet underneath. On it, a column of figures, dense, one pressed against the next.
She said, "The forty-four that are in, I counted every one. The least of them is one hundred seventeen."
I said, "One hundred seventeen."
She said, "One hundred seventeen. It's a shoe-repair stand, middle of the street, no street number, a sign written by his own hand."
I said, "And he has one hundred seventeen entries."
She said, "He watches shows on his phone after he packs up every day. Eleven years of it."
I said, "Oh."
She said, "In the first version I wrote zero. That was wrong."
She said, "It isn't zero. It's few."
I said, "Few down to what."
She said, "I can't say."
She said, "The farthest I can go is 'few.' Few, and short."
I said, "Short means what."
She said, "That third shop's six entries, all inside that one month of 2007. Twelve years after, not one."
I said, "But there was something."
She said, "There was. It stopped."
She laid the two sheets side by side and capped her pen.
She said, "My sister's four don't count. Those I backfilled myself, four months' worth after twenty years of nothing. She doesn't enter the statistics."
I said, "Mm."
She put the sheets back in the bag.
She said, "I'm going to sort it all again. When it's sorted I'll tell you the number."
I said, "Which number."
She said, "How few it takes before it's gone."
She left then. At the door she turned her head.
She said, "Engineer Lin."
I said, "Mm."
She said, "Nothing."
And she went.
That night I added three items to the notebook.
5. After September 26.
6. What comes after minute forty on my father's unlabeled tape.
7. Whether she remembers that day's dinner.
When I finished I counted them through: seven items.
I closed the notebook and put it in the middle drawer of the writing desk. In the drawer: a pair of reading glasses, three batteries, a pen that no longer writes. As the notebook went in, the pen rolled half a turn.
I pushed the drawer shut.