Day 18.
05:47, boil water. 3 grams of pre-rain, 80 degrees, pour it down. Smell it 3 times. Pour it out.
There is ink in the well of the inkstone. Twenty turns. I write today's date: November 21, 2125. The strokes come out tight. Done, I crumple the paper and press it under the paperweight.
The pothos is watered. The soil is damp. Both leaves still there.
The envelope is on the desk, under the inkstone, pressed there all night. I put it in the inside pocket. In the inside pocket: the slip of paper, the extraction card, the bottom copy of the consultation form. No stolen page today; the stolen page is at the very bottom of the desk's left drawer.
06:12:00, the commuter car pulls in, empty. 06:12:08, the doors close. The car passes City Hall; the red characters on the sign sweep across the glass. A thin breath of condensation on the car window; I wipe a stroke with my fingertip, and the stroke closes up again in 10 seconds.
The locker is to the left of the entrance, no. 4471. Drawer two, 7 bandages. I take one and press it onto the pad of the right index finger. The cut smoothed over yesterday; what I'm bandaging is a spot. Drawer three, the seal.
The new card pins at the left breast. The pin tight. From the locker room to Zone C, I press it 3 times.
07:00:00, the desk lights up. First in the queue, 77413. The reroute order follows in the lower right corner.
> Status: Overdue > Overdue by: 326 hr 09 min > Clock: running
The head-of-queue item I haven't touched. Day 16. Today it resends for the 14,834th time.
Morning stamping. First, a review of the waiting list for subsidized rental housing, human impact Grade 3, 512 names in the annex. I count 512. Stamp. Second, fuel subsidies for motorized wheelchairs for disabled persons, 73 names in the annex. Third, a stepped adjustment of the residential water price, human impact Grade 2 — no stamp, to the execution tier. Fourth, a proof-of-life confirmation summary for the old-age allowance, 1,001 names in the annex. I count 1,001.
Names counted this morning: 512, 73, 1,001. I don't keep totals. I count one, and it's one.
The head-of-queue item pinned at the top, unmoving. I've looked at it twice today.
09:15:02.
My hand shakes. 0.4 seconds. The seal stops in midair, comes down, face square. Item in hand: 3,289.
10:40, I open drawer two and look. 7 bandages again. Restock time 09:12, handler blank. I close the drawer.
11:52, the canteen opens. Meat is soy-braised duck and hairtail fish; vegetables are napa cabbage and kelp. I take napa cabbage and kelp, 1 scoop of rice.
Lao Ge doesn't come. His spot is empty, the stool pushed in. The woman at the serving line glances toward his end of the room and takes the glance back.
Xiao Zheng comes over with his cup, stands at the far end of the table.
I say: Where's Lao Ge.
He says: Gone for his annual physical.
I say: So the notice came down.
He says: This morning. He went the same afternoon. 20 years, never missed one.
He stands 3 seconds, walks off with his cup. The water in it is full.
I sit down with my tray. Halfway through I switch my chopsticks to my left hand; the bandage on the right index finger has grazed soy sauce, the edge curling a little. I press it flat.
12:58, hall-leave register. Reason: delivering a letter. Expected return, 15:10.
The afternoon 13:12 commuter car. Empty. 13:12:00 it pulls in, 13:12:08 the doors shut. I get off at Old Town station.
The old post office building stands at the street corner. Gray, 3 floors, the bricks gone crumbly at the base. 42 stairs; the sound light dies at the 20th step. I stamp my foot and it comes back on.
3rd-floor corridor. The ticket machine in its old place, G-118, screen lit on its standby page. I don't take a number. 4 chairs in the waiting area; the collapsed one still collapsed, nobody in it.
On the glass of the door of 307, Article 9 of the Public Advocates' Practice Code. A light on inside. The letters on the desk stacked higher than last month; the pile by the window has reached halfway up the sill. No screens in the room, only paper, and a clock with hands. The fee notice on the wall is still in its plastic sleeve, corners yellowed: public service quota, 120 minutes per person per year; beyond that, billed by time. Article 9 is stuck to the door; that line I don't need to read.
I knock. Cheng Xu looks up from behind the letter stacks. Seeing it's me, he sets down the letter knife.
He opens the door. He says: Your quota is used up.
I say: I'm not consulting.
I say: I'm delivering a letter.
He looks me over, top to bottom. He says: Come in.
He pulls the door shut and nods at the chair that isn't collapsed. I don't sit. I take the envelope from the inside pocket and hand it over.
He looks at the envelope. He says: The writing is yours.
I say: Mm.
He says: Saves the work on the salutation.
He opens it. His way is to start at the sealed edge, the blade running flat and even. The letter opens out, folded twice. He reads it standing at the desk, 3 times through. First time fast, second time slow, third time only the 3rd line — the line with the bloomed ink dot.
He presses a fingertip on the ink dot.
He says: Your hand stopped while you were writing.
I say: It stopped.
He says: How long.
I say: Under a second.
Through with the second pass, he lifts the letter to the window and tilts it at the light.
He says: The paper is old paper.
I say: The last batch from home.
He says: Old paper suits this letter.
Done, he folds the letter back and presses it on top of the stack.
From the stack he draws the 3 that came today and fans out the first half-line of each for me to see. 3 letters, the salutation identical to the character: To the one who can see me.
He says: Before year 7 I counted them one by one. After year 7 I stopped counting. There is no second salutation.
From a drawer he takes a receipt, handwritten, and tears it off for me when it's done.
> Objection — receipt of acceptance (GY-0219 · handwritten copy) > Received: 1 item Manner of receipt: in person > Salutation: To the one who can see me > Nature: objection (not a consultation · does not draw on the quota) > Handling: pending reply > Handling deadline: none > Received by: Cheng Xu (practice seal GY-0219)
In the lower left corner of the receipt, his practice seal — the seal color leaning purple, the impression landing a little off center.
He puts the letter knife back in the drawer. The drawer is full of letters, drawer after drawer, stacked even.
He says: I've taken the letter.
He says: Today I'm not taking anything else. I'm taking a few words of yours.
He comes around the desk and settles back into his chair. The clock with hands runs at his elbow.
He says: What you're out to prove is that no one was present.
He sits; the chair gives a creak, the springs old.
He says: Those 4 characters, I've seen them in letters for 11 years. 11 years, more than 40,000 letters, and not 1 of them written out of the hall. Yours is the first.
I say: I'm only asking about one case.
He says: I know which one.
He says: I'm advising you to stop.
I look at him. He doesn't dodge.
He says: I advocate abolishing the seal — 11 years I've advocated it. What you're doing now goes further than abolishing it. Abolition takes the ceremony away and lets what comes after come after. What you'd do is flip backward — and at the far end of backward is 80 years.
He says: 80 years, every year, every item, stamped with a natural-person approval. The seal is real, the ink is real, the numbers are real, the files are real, the straddle teeth not 1 short. Only the one who stamped—
He stops there.
He says: Break through this layer and 80 years void at a stroke. Property deeds void, pensions void, verdicts void. The dead line up again; the living go bankrupt first. The system couldn't fill it back in, not in a day, and neither could people.
He says: Behind every door in this city there's a person standing, a stamped sheet clutched in hand. You want them to know what that seal is.
He says: The year before last there was a decision with a wrong number. 6,000 items restamped; the restamp took 9 days. Those 6,000 hung in the air for 9 days — school enrollment, an elder's medicine, all of it hanging. That was a wrong number. What you'd overturn this time isn't a wrong number. It's right and wrong themselves.
He says: Can you carry it?
I say: I can't.
I say: I'm not planning to void 80 years either.
He says: That isn't yours to decide.
He says: There's no half of it in a thing like this. Lift one corner and the whole sheet is yours. Article Zero, that one sentence — 80 years and no one has run it. Why has no one run it? And what if you win? What the winner won was an objection good in perpetuity — she won, and the file goes on resending forever. Nobody sees that more clearly than she does.
I say: So she kept the door.
He says: She kept the door, and she kept the debt.
He says: You think you're petitioning on her behalf. You're signing receipt for the whole city.
He says: You think what you want is a seal. What you want is a person who can sign.
He asks: How many more of you are in the hall?
I say: 3,000 desks.
He doesn't ask again.
The room goes quiet for a stretch. The clock with hands makes 2 rounds. Someone climbs the stairs below; the sound light comes on and goes out.
I say: You said your position has a hole. After the seal is withdrawn, who answers for it — you had no answer.
He says: The hole is still there.
He says: So I'm advising you to stop. I can't talk you around, you can't talk me around — then let's at least neither of us jump into the hole.
I stand. The top letter in the stack is mine, ink dot facing up.
I say: Cheng Xu.
I say: The door of Article Zero. The self-verification door.
I say: Can you get through it.
He turns the clock with hands over on the desk, face down.
He says: Me?
He says: We can't get through that door either.
He says: This trade, 37 people — not 1 has ever made it through.
Having said it, he stops. He turns the clock back over; it's still running, not 1 second lost.
I counted the clock's 2 rounds. 120 ticks, not one mark off.
I say: That door — have you ever tried it.
He says: Article 9 of the code, you saw it. We don't connect to search.
He says: A man who won't even take the connection — you ask him about doors.
He says: That line just now — take it as never heard.
I say: Which word.
He says: All of them.
He takes my letter off the top and slides it into a middle stack, slid in so you can't tell where.
He says: I won't reply to the letter. What had to be said was said just now.
He says: Keep the receipt safe. A thing pending reply has no deadline. The thing you're waiting on does.
He says: The door has stood there 80 years. Your 3 days, your 5 — it won't notice.
He says: Go. At 19:00 I still have 3 letters to open.
I get to the door, hand on the handle, and he speaks again behind me.
He says: Shen Yan.
He has known me 11 days, called me you the whole time, or friend. This is the first time he calls my name.
He says: Take it slower.
I open the door and go out.
On my way out I pass the ticket machine. On the standby page a line of small print: the public service quota runs by calendar year. Bottom right of the screen, today's date and time, exact to the second. The seconds jump, one cell at a time, not fast, not slow.
42 stairs; at the 20th step going down the sound light dies. I don't stamp. I stand 2 seconds in the dark, finish the count, and the light comes back on by itself.
Outside the wind is starting. Along the row of shops at the corner, 3 have their roller doors half down. I wait for the 14:36 car. On the platform beside me is an old woman with an insulated carrier; she doesn't watch the cars, she watches across the street. A ring of condensation on the carrier's lid. Across the street, nobody crosses. The car comes; she doesn't board. I do.
The car passes City Hall, the red characters on the sign sweep across the glass.
15:02, to the Head Office. 15:10, back at Zone C. 2 hours 12 minutes out of the hall. The desktop queue has reached item 38; I start stamping from the first. Item 41 is a determination of basic living support for orphans, 26 names in the annex. I count 26.
The right hand is steady on the stamps. The bandage on the pad of the finger, still that spot.
15:37, up for water. 40 steps there and back. The water sits at my right hand. Not one sip.
16:20, no new cc at the top right of the desktop. The file handed in on day 6; today, day 18.
16:44, day-close.
> Reviewer: HZ-4471 > Stamps today: 7,040 > Net time: 4 hr 15 min > Average: 2.17 sec/item > Errors: 0
I run the numbers. 7,040 at 2.17 seconds comes to 4 hours 14 minutes 37 seconds. The sheet says 4 hours 15 minutes. 23 seconds off. These 20 years, every day-close has rounded off like this; the lost time is in the sheet, not in my hand.
Past the standings screen. First line, not me. Day 13.
16:51, seal return. Seal back in drawer three. Drawer two, bandages: 7.
17:12, the commuter car pulls in, empty.
Home. The inkstone unwashed. The pothos watered. Dust on both leaves; I don't wipe it; the water goes on all the same.
The receipt is on the desk, under the paperweight, stacked with this morning's crumpled date sheet, writing face down. That seal in the lower left corner, purple-leaning, a little off center. A ring of wear around the seal's rim, worn even, as if carried on a person every day, stamped every day.
A handwritten receipt, a hand-pressed seal. How much handwriting is left in this trade, I've never counted.
11 years in practice. He stamps his own seal and advises me not to touch anyone else's. He can recite Article Zero in full — 11 years reciting. When he advises me to stop, point by point, every point holds.
I take out the slip of paper for a look. 10 lines on the front, 2 on the back. Today I add nothing.
The letter is in his drawer, slid into a middle stack, no telling where. The receipt says pending reply, no deadline. The thing I'm waiting on has one; the clock line reads: running.
That sentence he said — nowhere I write would I write it. He said it and called it unheard. I heard it and don't call it unheard.
We can't get through that door either.
Their door and my door are the same door.
Tomorrow is day 19. First in the queue, still 77413.