by Chen Qiufan
Mimi didn’t show any sign of fear or hesitancy, as he had feared. She simply gave him a light smile.
“My life hasn’t been mine since that rainy night when I offered it to that spirit.”
The waste people around her put their hands together in a gesture of prayer.
“If that is so”—Kaizong spat the words out from between his teeth—“then why did the spirit make us meet?” Now his body trembled from equal parts rage and cold.
Mimi’s eyes softened. She wiped away the mud on Kaizong’s face and rested her hands on his shoulders.
“Maybe this was all part of the spirit’s plan, to bring you to me. Look at you: You’re no longer the same as the old you. You’re not an American, not a man of Silicon Isle, and not a waste person. You’re one of us. You should fight with us.”
Everyone in the room put their hands on Kaizong’s shoulders.
Kaizong was speechless. He gazed at the girl in front of him, the most complicated, contradictory person in the world, exuding an incomprehensible draw that made everyone around her obey her, even look at her with an irrational devotion. He had once been moved by her pure ignorance, but now, he was the ignorant one. Under that frail exterior and gentle voice, was there a hidden demon skilled at pretense and acting who was waiting for the opportunity to tear off her mask and reveal herself?
Even more inexplicably, he found himself unfazed by this risk. His heart beat faster and his veins bulged. It was a fatal sensuality based on the attraction of the unknown.
“All right, I’ll stay.” If she’s not leaving, Kaizong decided, I’ll just have to stay by her side. He knew he couldn’t protect her. But he wanted that feeling, not only to be part of Mimi’s incomprehensible plan, not only to recover that sense of belonging that he had long not felt, but most of all, to feel the indescribable vitality this young woman brought with her, which made him feel alive. He was staying for himself, not for anyone else. A few loud barks drifted into the room, mixed with the sounds of the storm. The chipped dogs in the shack all started barking furiously at once in response.
“They’re here.” Gentleness disappeared from Mimi. She clenched her fists like a fierce warrior, and rage shot from her eyes.
* * *
The lackey running next to Luo Jincheng struggled stubbornly with the umbrella. Over and over, the raging wind turned the umbrella inside out. Finally, Luo had had enough of the farce and shouted at the young man to let go. The black umbrella rose into the air, spinning and tumbling like some giant bat, and vanished in the darkness.
Their cars became stuck in the mud not long after they entered Nansha Village. Holding on to the leash for Knifeboy, Luo Jincheng led about twenty of his most trusted thugs on foot to brave the fury of Typhoon Wutip and look for the final bright spot in Hard Tiger’s projection. He could have commanded many more, but the sudden network cutoff made it impossible for him to get in touch with them. Luo was unhappy with the situation, but there was nothing he could do.
They broke into every shack along the way, cursing, smashing, threatening, bashing—just to find that waste girl.
The chipped dogs barked at them madly, an intermittent beat in the storm caused by the beating of a butterfly’s wings, like the drumroll before a big performance.
Luo Jincheng raised his hand, indicating that everyone should gather around him. There was no need to comb through every shack. The woman they were looking for was standing in front of him. She appeared so tiny in the dark rain that it seemed a gust of wind could break her or blow her away. At first, the waste people from nearby shacks watched warily, but gradually, they emerged from their homes and stood behind Mimi. Their faces were resolute with anger, and the electronic accessories on their bodies glowed only faintly due to short circuits from the rain. Like statues, they stared at Luo and his men, the recycled prostheses on their bodies glinting with a crude light. They were like a long-dormant volcano that possessed great energy, just waiting for the moment of eruption.
“Please don’t misunderstand. We’re not here to cause trouble.” Luo Jincheng wiped away the rain on his face to reveal a generous smile. “We’re here to apologize.”
A brief, confused murmur rippled through the ranks of the waste people. The expression on Mimi’s face, however, didn’t change. Kaizong stood right next to her, glaring at Luo.
The rattling of an iron chain. With a powerful kick, Luo sent the naked, wet Knifeboy sprawling in the mud between the two sides. Confused, he looked around, and pitifully crawled back to his master for comfort. But Luo kicked him even more forcefully in the ribs, and with a scream, he tumbled a few meters back and curled up on the ground.
“This is the culprit who abused Mimi. I’m giving him to you to do as you like.”
No one knew what Luo Jincheng was really planning.
“But I also have a request.” Luo Jincheng looked around at the crowd of waste people. “On the night that Knifeboy committed his crime, two of my men died horribly on Tide Gazing Beach. All the evidence indicates that there was only one other person there at the scene.”
Like a gentleman, Luo bowed to Mimi, and lifted his left arm in a gesture of please.
“Mimi, can you tell me, and tell everyone present, who was the killer?”
Kaizong felt Mimi’s body tense, and her expression changed by just a trace.
“And if that’s impossible, perhaps Mimi could come with me to the police to help with the investigation?”
“Absolutely not!” Kaizong stepped forward and shielded Mimi from Luo. All the waste people shook off the rain, and anger returned to their faces. They had all seen or heard too many similar stories of “cooperation” with the police, and all of them ended tragically.
“What a hero!” Luo Jincheng applauded sarcastically. “A Silicon Isle native who speaks for the waste people! An American willing to sacrifice an eye to protect the Chinese! Chen Kaizong, I truly admire your loyalty to TerraGreen Recycling. Would you be so kind as to reveal how much you and your boss are getting as your fee for this deal so that you would go to so much trouble to ensure that Mimi is brought to the United States?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaizong said. “I don’t categorize people the way you do. All men and women are created equal.”
“I’m sure that’s what the Americans had in mind when they treated the rest of the world as their private landfill.”
“You’ll reap what you sow.” Kaizong glared at Luo. “It’s just a matter of sooner or later.”
Luo Jincheng smiled and swept his hand decisively. “Since negotiation has failed, I have no choice but to resort to violence. Remember, everyone, I want Mimi alive, and I don’t want the American harmed—well, not too much.”
Body films of various colors lit up on Luo’s thugs. Beneath the skintight, waterproof Lycra shirts wrapped around their bulging augmented muscles, the glowing patterns appeared as sigils climbing up their limbs and bodies. The metal electronic accessories on their hands and arms flashed and made crisp dings in the wind as they banged them against each other. The pack of thugs grinned wolfishly, and leisurely advanced against the waste people.
Kaizong grabbed Mimi and dragged her to safety behind the crowd. He could feel her struggling to get away, but he held on. No matter how much power this girl had once demonstrated, she had not yet recovered from the exertions of the trip to Shantou, leaving her in the body of a mere mortal. She needed powerful protection, but there was no superhero here.
The secondhand prostheses of the waste people were clearly no match for the quality equipment worn by Luo’s thugs. Dao Lan rushed forward, her fish-bone blade raised, but the thugs grabbed her arms and legs and one of the phosphorescent men forcefully detached the fish-bone blade from her arm and stabbed it into her chest. Blood spurted and mixed with the rain, soaking her agonized face.
Dull thuds of body striking body filled the night air. Luo’s thugs adjusted their augmented muscles to the maximum enhancement setting, and the
prostheses bulged disproportionately on their bodies, like cosmetic surgery gone wrong. They tore into the ranks of the waste people, breaking limbs and tearing off prostheses. In the tumult, the wounded waste people went limp like garbage bags with holes punctured in them, and cloudy white viscera dripped out. Tossed carelessly aside by Luo’s henchmen, some of the waste people were impaled on sharp protrusions, some had their necks wrung, and still others tried to keep the innards from spilling out of their torn bodies as they howled desperately at the impassive sky, their screams soon overwhelmed by the roaring wind.
The noble victors displayed their artificially enhanced shells and stepped over the bodies of the lowly vanquished, gradually closing in on their ultimate prey, the waste girl named Mimi. As the raging rainstorm washed away the blood on the ground, the crimson streams coalesced and flowed toward the sea. The furious wind shook all things rooted to the ground, vowing to break them, shred them, scatter them to the sky, until these products of civilization, boastful of their refinement and ruggedness, had turned into smithereens sunken into the earth, where they would twinkle silently and wait for the next cycle of life.
The faces of the thugs no longer held any pride or dignity, no meaning, no goal, not even enjoyment; all that was left was the mechanical, repetitive act of killing.
There would be no winners in this game.
* * *
Mimi tried to reach the exoskeleton robot hiding in the shed with her consciousness, a repeat of the miracle that she had accomplished on that other rainy night long ago. But she couldn’t.
Perhaps it was because the fructose mixture hadn’t been able to replenish the ATP she had consumed in the draining trip to Shantou; perhaps it was because the screams from behind distracted her; but there was an explanation that Mimi was most reluctant to admit and that was also most likely to be true: she could call upon the power to leap across space, to enter the remote-control system of the battle armor without the aid of any wireless communication, and to become Mimi-mecha, only when she was on the verge of death.
It was just like the sacrificial beings who struggled painfully against death in palirromancy: the closer they were to death, the closer they were to the spirits.
She shielded herself from the inference of the outside world. The dying cries instantly became faint and distant, as though a thick wall had come down between her and them. Once again, Mimi focused all her energy, as though searching for a candle light in the endless night. Her face was pallid; her skin was clammy; and the muscles over her body spasmed. She had failed again.
Mimi. She seemed to hear some voice caressing her ear out of the rain.
Mimi. The cry seemed closer. She let down her shield.
Mimi—the bellowed name was like a thunderclap at her back that extended into a low, deep, continuous rumbling. Shocked, Mimi turned around and saw Kaizong shouting her name in extreme slow motion, his facial muscles twisting and deforming like a semisolid. Behind him, blood-covered Luo clan thugs were leaping and running in similar slow motion. The phosphorescent patterns on their bodies left glowing trails through the air, like a solidified flood rolling toward her.
Kaizong tried to stop them with his body, but a deformed, bulging arm swept at him, and he rose into the air, floated over the crowd, and fell toward a mountain of e-waste. The mountain collapsed and buried him underneath.
The beasts did not pause but headed straight for Mimi. She could almost smell the stench spewing out of their mouths.
The augmented-reality glasses on her face lit up.
Mimi’s consciousness gushed forth like the flood from a burst dam. All her imprisoned and repressed energy was released at once, and the pleasure of freedom filled all time and space. She knew that Anarchy.Cloud had succeeded. We have a deal. She smiled, and within milliseconds connected to the steel god of war of Tide Gazing Beach.
It’s time.
With a loud explosion, Mimi-mecha broke out of the shed. Twisted metal fragments flew in every direction, and a few sliced through the limbs of the slow-moving phosphorescent men, suspended in air, and stuck into the ground. Mimi was still unused to the weight of this massive skeleton, and momentum carried her into a few of the thugs, trampling them. She lost her balance and fell slowly like a toppled tree at another thug lying on the ground, paralyzed with terror. Mimi tried to hold herself up with her steel arms, but ended up crushing half of the man’s skull and an arm.
The wolfish horde were stunned by this abrupt new invader in their midst. Yet their murderous rage could not be quelled. They tried to surround the steel hulk of Mimi-mecha in an attempt to discover and ex ploit a weakness. In their limited experience, such a gargantuan robot had to be slow and clumsy.
They were wrong.
Mimi-mecha extended the supersonic blades hidden in her arms. Vibrating at the rate of forty thousand times per second, the blades cut through molecular links with practically no resistance while simultaneously cauterizing the wounds with intense heat. They were truly weapons that killed without spilling blood. She danced gracefully, like some spinning lathe whirling to the syncopated rhythms of jazz. The raindrops turned into steam as they struck the blades, and anyone who tried to approach her would leave with an unforgettable memento—clean, smooth, bloodless stumps as smooth as mirrors, with a faint aroma from charred meat.
Very soon, SBT had more than a dozen new consumers for their prostheses.
She looked around. Among the fleeing figures, she did not see Luo Jincheng. But she noticed another gift: Knifeboy holed up in a dark corner. Mimi-mecha leapt to him and lifted the chain attached to his nose ring. She enjoyed the faint crackle from breaking cartilage as well as the animal-like screams. Terror had deformed Knifeboy’s face beyond recognition, and tears and mucus spilled everywhere. He struggled to get away, but dared not apply too much strength. Finally, he lost control of his sphincter, and dark excrement slowly flowed down his thighs.
Mimi, disgusted, raised her right arm. She was going to cleave him in half down the middle the way a butcher might dress a pig carcass.
Don’t kill him, Mimi 1 said.
Why not? Mimi 0 retorted angrily. With a jolt, she realized how close she had come to becoming the other Mimi subconsciously, like an octopus changing its color endlessly to match its image in the mirror.
Save him for someone who wants to kill him even more than you do.
Mimi-mecha dropped Knifeboy like a bag of trash, wrapped the iron chain around his neck twice, and tied it to the water pipe. She departed from the steel shell and left this spirit in front of Knifeboy. Like the Buddha’s hand that had pressed down on the Monkey King, this inanimate guardian would guarantee that Knifeboy would not dare to escape.
Around her, everything was in ruins. The typhoon had conspired with the evil in men’s hearts to complete a sacrificial rite. Except that the spirit the greedy men had summoned was an uncontrollable force that was going to destroy them.
Mimi went to help a wounded man who had lost his limbs. The painful sight activated her mirror neurons, and she empathized with him. Pain and desperation pressed against her consciousness and made it hard for her to breathe. Trembling, she connected to the network and reached out to the other waste people, calling for help.
She searched through the trash heap for Kaizong, tossing junk every which way as though she had gone mad. She found him, finally, lying on the ground. His wounds appeared fairly light, and after repeated, gentle calls from Mimi, he slowly opened his eyes. Weeping with joy, the iron grip over her emotions imposed by her other personality momentarily shattering, Mimi held Kaizong’s muddy face and sealed his mouth with a deep kiss.
Kaizong felt a wave of dizziness and gazed up at the deep sky. Faint purple-red lights flickered behind the clouds like in a dream. He still couldn’t quite believe all that had happened and all that was still happening; perhaps it was all a hallucination forcefully inserted into his consciousness by another power.
* * *
Scott straddled the Duca
ti and gazed at the storm-blurred Nansha Village in the distance.
Through his night-vision glasses, the cold raindrops appeared even darker than night. The wind drove the dark, slanted lines slowly across the sky, while the seams of the shacks in the village leaked heat, limning them with bright white outlines. A brutal fight was over, and the rain washed away the residual heat of blood and lost limbs, which cooled and darkened until they melded into the surroundings, dead.
It’s not time yet. Scott congratulated himself on having had the foresight to not drive a car here. He watched as the clumsy metal boxes floated in the water, where they were impelled by rolling waves into spinning eddies; some were sunken into the quagmire the muddy roads had turned into; still others were trapped under tree trunks and branches broken by the typhoon. The nimble giant beetle he rode, however, could navigate through the flooded terrain with ease, stopping on a dime, turning in place, squeezing through narrow road segments, dodging tumbling utility poles, and dashing up steep inclines under full throttle.
He saw a dog paddling madly in the water.
The terrain of Silicon Isle resembled the irregular caldera of an extinct volcano, though with a far gentler slope. At this moment, Scott was at the highest point on the rim. Away from the center, the land sloped down to the e-waste-processing zone, extending all the way to the sea. Toward the center was the depression in which most of the inhabitants of Silicon Isle Town lived.
The ancient builders of Silicon Isle had constructed an elaborate system of drainage ditches to prevent flooding, a common problem in the region’s monsoon-driven subtropical maritime climate. Taking advantage of gravity, the system of terraced ditches overcame the adverse conditions of nature. However, after hundreds of years, the world had been transformed by civilization far beyond the imagination of the ancients: the soil had grown poisoned, salinized, and desertified; and the ditches had collapsed, become clogged, or been repurposed for acid baths. The overflowing rainwater could no longer be smoothly diverted. Like trapped beasts, the surging currents threatened to devour and destroy everything.