by Chen Qiufan
6
“Hey, Fake Foreigner, now do you understand why the boatman didn’t dare to land the sampan?” Mimi had asked, that night at Tide Gazing Beach.
They were in a mass graveyard. A few random wooden plaques stuck into the dark-colored soil indicated that bodies were buried in this plot of land. However, the plaques contained only the year of death; there was no year of birth or name. Scattered here and there were a few slips of ghost money and some bits of burnt incense and candles. In the pale light of the moon, the sight seemed especially ghastly. Mimi put her hands together, lowered her eyes, and muttered a prayer.
“These are…” Kaizong lowered his voice, as though afraid to disturb the nameless, homeless ghosts.
“They’re anonymous bodies washed ashore by the tides; some were trying to smuggle themselves into Hong Kong; some were supposed to be women and children killed by the natives in their … ceremonies…”
Despite being a staunch atheist, Kaizong shuddered at this. However, he quickly calmed himself down: This is surely nothing more than an urban legend made up by the migrant workers to smear the natives.
“You dragged me all the way here in the middle of the night just for this?”
“Of course not. Look! Over there!” Mimi tilted her head, indicating an immense shadow in one corner of the graveyard.
“Wow.” Kaizong stopped in front of the object, stunned by its size and eerie appearance.
He took out his ruggedized mobile phone and wiped off the condensation. The screen emitted a pale glow that illuminated this Buddhist-Daoist guardian of the graveyard—an almost three-meter-tall exoskeleton robot, a mecha. The alloy armor was covered by Daoist charms so that it was no longer possible to tell the armor’s original paint color; from every protrusion in the armor hung strings of plastic or wooden Buddhist prayer beads that struck each other in the breeze like wind chimes; even the joints were covered with bright red ribbons representing wishes for good fortune.
Compared to the Su-35 fighters being auctioned on eBay, this mecha wasn’t so impressive, nothing more than a toy abandoned by some impulsive, wealthy individual. The increasingly esoteric development of material sciences and manufacturing techniques made reverse engineering into a difficult and impractical art. Take the example of the mecha’s electroactive artificial muscle fibers, which took the place of traditional hydraulic actuators: even if you figured out all the details about the fibers’ structure and composition, you would have no way of replicating them. The era when it was possible to intercept and capture an enemy fighter and use it to significantly improve a nation’s own aeronautical-engineering capabilities was long gone.
Kaizong was curious: How did this mecha come to be here? And why does it look so strange?
Mimi opened her eyes after her prayer. As if she had heard his unspoken questions, she hesitated for a moment, and then said, “It’s because of Brother Wen.”
Brother Wen had claimed the rare find as soon as it arrived in Silicon Isle. In his private laboratory shed, he managed to repair all visible signs of damage and reconnected the virus batteries to a source of power. Further exploration revealed two sets of controls for the mecha. The first was remote control. He tried to crack the communication pro tocols, but for some reason, the system failed to respond. Defeated, he turned to the other control system: force-sensing linkage. This required someone to climb into the cockpit of the mecha and pilot it by having the powered armor sense his movements and mirror them.
Of course he wouldn’t take the risk himself. Instead, he chose Ah Rong, an orphan.
Skinny Ah Rong made a striking contrast against the bulky metal exoskeleton as he climbed into the cockpit, his face full of pure joy. He shifted his arms and legs around until the indicator lights lit up. Excited, Brother Wen shouted at him to start moving. Since the machine wasn’t properly tuned to this specific pilot, the movements of the mecha were slow and clumsy, like an astronaut walking on the moon. Hundreds, even thousands, of times a second, the force sensors communicated their data to the central computer, which, after making the required calculations, transmitted signals to the electroactive muscle bundles, causing them to contract and making the mecha move. If delay intruded into any link in the process, the pilot would feel like he was moving through a viscous liquid, where motion fell significantly behind will.
Based on Mimi’s description, Kaizong managed to get a pretty good picture of what had happened.
Ah-Rong-mecha’s movements gradually became smooth and agile. Ah Rong also grew excited, wielding the robot’s mechanical arms to crush the junk heap. He began to run, and the crowd of spectators ran along with him.
It was an unbelievable combination of strength and speed. Ah-Rong-mecha ran with Ah Rong’s characteristic light, open stride, but each footfall smashed against the ground, rumbling dully. He ran with no destination or direction in mind, like a blinded Hercules in search of an outlet for his brute strength.
Brother Wen ran after him, breathing heavily. He shouted for Ah Rong to stop, realizing before anyone else that something was wrong.
Ah-Rong-mecha seemed to be trying to shake off something; he swung his arms and legs wildly, destroying the houses, trees, and cars that got in the way. The terrified crowd scattered, trying to get out of the way of this out-of-control metal monster. The beast, trailing a cloud of dust, debris, broken branches, and glass shards, left the territory of the Luo clan and headed for the no-man’s-land of Tide Gazing Beach.
The waste children running ahead of the monster screamed with ignorant joy: Ah Rong is on fire! Ah Rong is on fire!
Indeed, puffs of black smoke emerged from the cockpit of the galloping exoskeleton, carrying the odor of burnt flesh. Only now did the crowd understand that Ah-Rong-mecha’s goal was the sea.
But he didn’t make it.
By the time Mimi rushed to the scene and shoved her way through the dense crowd, she saw Ah-Rong-mecha standing still next to the mass graveyard. The boy’s scrawny body, charcoal black, was smoldering and smoking in the alloy armor like an overcooked piece of shriveled bacon. Uselessly, Brother Wen tried to put the fire out with armfuls of sand. Some wires short-circuited, and sparks flew everywhere. The spectators’ expression showed horror with traces of satisfaction underneath, as though they were enjoying some dramatization of death. On Brother Wen’s face, she saw a complicated expression, an amalgamation of regret, defeat, and perhaps a trace of sorrow.
Within three days, the tragedy had turned into another episode in the legends surrounding Tide Gazing Beach, and the orphan Ah Rong became, in the retelling, another example of the relentless logic of karma— his fate was surely the result of some sin committed in a previous life.
No one remembered the role played by Brother Wen.
Kaizong examined the burn marks left inside the cockpit: the seat was still caked with traces of the fat from the incinerated corpse, as well as silicate crystals left by the fire, stuck around the logo of Lockheed Martin. Earlier short circuits in the electrical systems must have led to overheating, he thought, remembering the scene from Xialong Village. He wanted to throw up.
“No one wants to touch junk associated with death.” Mimi put her hands together again in a pose of prayer. “Everyone feels this area is filled with bad luck, and if anyone stumbled in here by mistake, they had to buy ghost money and incense to make offerings to this … deity. They all say that it had brought Ah Rong here for payback.”
Mimi’s tone was filled with uncertainty, as though she didn’t quite believe what she was saying, but also dreaded the metal armor.
At first, Kaizong didn’t understand the source of her dread; he even thought her superstition a bit funny. However, as they were leaving, he glanced back and seemed to see a cool, blue flash of light inside that infernal armor that had once smelted an innocent soul. When he tried to get a closer look, it turned out to be only the reflection of the lighthouse in the distance sweeping its beam across the desolate graveyard and pale white beach, ca
rving an ephemeral trail across the surface of the sea, culminating in a bright point in the distance.
* * *
The sea at night was like a slumbering, black beast whose even, potent exhalations were infused with a hypnotic power. This was a place where few set foot. Years ago, the place had also been a mass graveyard for the anonymous corpses who had failed in their attempts to smuggle themselves into Hong Kong. Luo Jincheng gazed at the shore rising and falling through the window of the car, like some bone-white blank funereal scroll slowly unfurling under the light of the moon and the lighthouse. At the end of the scroll was an orange glow that brought some feeling of warmth to the chilly scene.
That was his destination, the place that people in private referred to as the “Hall of Charity and Piety.” On Silicon Isle, the living didn’t need charity, only the dead.
The girl turned out to be even younger than he had imagined. Her chest heaved violently, and the wounds from scraping against the ground had not yet stopped bleeding. Animal-like moans emitted from her gagged mouth, and her eyes were filled with terror; however, they revealed no confusion, as if she had long anticipated the arrival of this day.
Luo Jincheng indicated that they should untie her. After a few coughs, the dirty rag in her mouth fell onto the ground, soaked with her spit, like some hairball coughed up by a cat.
“Don’t be afraid.” He squatted down and smiled kindly at her. “I’ll let you go as soon as you answer a few questions.”
The fear on her face did not diminish one whit.
“Have you seen this boy?” Luo Jincheng held up his phone to show her the wallpaper.
Her pupils dilated and then dimmed immediately.
“Tell me, what did you do to him?” Luo Jincheng’s tone was placid, and bystanders might even have thought they detected traces of pity.
The girl remained still for a few moments, and then began to shake her head convulsively.
Luo Jincheng looked up at the ceiling lamps and the warm yellow light they cast over everyone in the room, creating the comfortable, homey atmosphere one might see in a sitcom. Without their glinting metal instruments, perhaps the actors would look even more appropriate for the scene. He sighed.
“Why is that American always with you?”
A dreamlike expression flitted across the girl’s face, as if she was asking herself the same question. After a while, she said her first line.
“He said he likes talking with me…”
Knifeboy and the two other thugs erupted into hysterical laughter. The howling was so loud that the hanging lamps seemed to sway.
Luo Jincheng turned back angrily, and the laugh track cut off. He shook his head and looked back at this waste girl, so fragile that she could snap in half at any moment. I’m fucking wasting my time. He stood up.
“Keep her here; bring her to me on the eighth day of the lunar month.”
Luo Jincheng walked to the door and seemed to remember something. He turned around and, taking note of the unnamable excitement on the faces of these rascals who had followed him for so many years, he realized that he was looking at versions of himself from years ago. He raised his voice.
“I need her alive.”
* * *
Kaizong ran in a panic; it was long past the hour he and Mimi had agreed on. An invisible hand seemed to be squeezing his stomach in time with his wildly beating heart, and a feeling composed of suffocation and nausea tumbled in his body with each stride. He couldn’t push away the horrible scene in his imagination; he couldn’t believe that such barbarism had been the custom in the land of his birth for thousands of years, that the blood in his veins bore such a savage heritage.
He had difficulty catching his breath, as though he himself were that suffering dog whose limbs had been tied and then tossed into the heaving waves, left there to struggle against death, surrounded by surging bubbles and blue-green patterns of light, and carried by an irresistible force to be dashed against the distant beach. The dog turned into a baby, a child born out of wedlock whose soft skin turned pale and wrinkled in the briny water like swollen maggots, spinning and tumbling in the vortices stirred up by the tides, and slowly, like dancing kelp, the baby unfurled into a young woman whose soft waist was seized and flexed by the hidden currents, whose body was forced into impossible poses like some stringless puppet, suffused with a fragile and vicious beauty.
Unchaste women and their bastard issue. The elder’s words echoed in his mind like some spell. They leave no trace in Silicon Isle, like the unofficial history I’ve been telling you.
Then how can you know these things so well? As soon as he spoke, he regretted it.
Slowly, the corpse of the woman in his imagination spun around in the tide and the seaweed-like hair parted to reveal a bloodless face.
Mimi’s face.
Finally, Kaizong was at Mimi’s shed. He leaned over and grabbed his knees. Sweat poured down his back and he gulped for air, ignoring the odd looks the women waste workers cast his way. She wasn’t at work, and she wasn’t in her shack. Mimi was gone and no one knew where. Anxiety landed on Kaizong like a murder of crows. His whole body trembled as he had when he had seen the blue sparks flying out of the eyes of the leader of the Chen clan.
He would never be able to forget the expression on the elder’s face as he revealed the answer to the riddle.
I am also an observer of the tides. The old man’s face was utterly calm. His entire conversation with Kaizong had been laying the groundwork for this moment.
Or perhaps he had only intended to make Kaizong late for his date.
Kaizong stood in the dim, humid dusk, gazing at the empty end of the road, waiting for something that would never come, lost. The muscles on his face contracted and twisted, as if he was struggling to dismiss some idea, some thought that would not leave, like a buzzing fly. But the harder he tried, the more the premonition swelled and multiplied, like proliferating cancer cells that took up every inch of space in his mind.
He would never see Mimi again.
PART TWO
IRIDESCENT WAVE
For all tomorrow’s parties.
—SBT (Silicon-Bio Technology) advertising slogan
7
Every fifteen seconds, a bright white beam shot through the only window, appearing and disappearing in a moment, temporarily bleaching the dim yellow light in the room. The shadows seemed to come to life and, panicked, dodge the beam with circular motions and climb up the moldy and cracked walls until they merged into dark obscurity.
The first time she saw the beam of light, Mimi had thought she was catching a glimpse of hope. Frenzied, she had thrown herself against the wall and cried out for help in a hoarse, blood-spittled voice. Then, the light had disappeared, and all was silence except for the sighing of the ocean.
By the time the beam of light appeared for the seventh time, Mimi’s mouth was sealed by duct tape. No matter how much she struggled, her hair a mess, her eyes looking wild and crazed, in the end, all she managed to accomplish was to leave a depression in the smooth, silvery surface where her lips were. Her hands were taped behind her as well, the arms having been pulled back until her shoulder blades formed an obtuse angle. Tears and sweat mixed together on her face, stinging her eyes and soaking her collar. She felt pain all over her body but couldn’t tell where the wounds were, as though innumerable ants were nibbling at the ends of her nerves, as though she was slowly being put to death through a thousand cuts.
The only parts of Mimi’s body that remained free were her legs. Earlier, she had kicked hard at the crotch areas of the men, and even tried to run through the iron gates; they had easily picked her up and dragged her back to the corner on her knees like some stray cat.
The bright beam swept through for the fifteenth time. The men’s faces were illuminated, and the glowing, colorful films applied to their shoulders seemed to dim in the strong light; she could see the hairs on their upper arms, the blood vessels under the skin of their elbow pits, and the
bloodstained needle; their movements slowed in the steamy, humid air; sweat dripped from their faces, and the corners of their mouths cracked open, revealing waxy, yellow enamel.
Someone said something, and peals of laughter overwhelmed the sound of the surging tides and the humming from the refrigerator’s compressor.
In despair, Mimi watched as Knifeboy’s Adam’s apple moved up and down, his breath quickening, his pupils dilating, his consciousness slackening. But the thing she feared most didn’t come to pass. Knifeboy didn’t undo his belt and remove his loose, baggy forest-green sweatpants. Instead, he put on an oddly shaped helmet and stood right in front of Mimi.
The helmet was connected by a cord to an augmented-sensing device shaped like a six-tentacled octopus. Skinhead and Scarface hauled it out of a tank filled with nutrient fluid and wrapped the dripping, pale gray, translucent tentacles around Mimi’s body and limbs. The cold, slimy sensation brought out goose bumps all over her skin.
Knifeboy gestured for the other two to back away. He closed his eyes, as though to concentrate. After he gave a heavy sigh, the red light on top of the helmet lit up, signaling a successful connection.
Mimi had heard of devices like this. It was what Brother Wen had warned against, as he begged her to have restraint in her use of Halcyon Days. It would only lead to wanting more, he’d said, craving more, until you would do anything, pay any cost for the next hit.
In the pale light, the tentacles looked otherworldly, a tech of nightmares. The tentacles would create a shock of pain in one person and transform it into a shock of pleasure in another, Mimi had heard. For the person wearing the helmet, it was an experience richer, more encompassing, more addictive than that of any drug in the history of mankind.
The tentacles came alive and tightened abruptly around her, glowing crimson. The nanoelectrodes buried under the synthetic skin assaulted her pain nerves with fierce pulses, and an unspeakable agony covered every inch of her. A keening like that of a dying animal emitted from her throat, and tears rolled down her face. She looked pitifully at her torturer, her body convulsing as though suffering a seizure.