Time Travel Omnibus, page 1179
The beautiful man smiled and got up. As he was about to walk out the door, he turned around. “Remember to fix yourself before you get up there. This will be livecast to the whole world.”
Ruofei stared into the blurry mirror, trying to remember how many faces he had gone through. He failed, but he knew that the face he wore now would be the penultimate one, one worth remembering. He smiled at himself in the mirror, perfect and fake.
Memories from centuries ago swept back in a wave. Is all this worth it?
Jingjing’s eyes flashed through the mirror.
He rubbed the special ointment over his face until his face from three hundred years earlier returned.
Amidst thunderous applause, Ruofei slowly climbed onto the dais. Spotlights followed him as his pale, asymmetrical face was projected onto the giant screen. He smiled, and the crowd exploded into cheers. The media had been crafting the narrative that Ruofei was a hero who had escaped from the kidnapping attempt by the Three-Legged Crow.
On the other hand, Jingjing, the sleeper agent, had been completely wiped from the story, as though she had never even existed.
After his eyes had adjusted to the bright lights, Ruofei saw the VIP seats filled with elegant, beautiful men and women dressed in the clothes of a bygone age. The beautiful man who had threatened him sat among
them. He smiled at Ruofei, revealing shell-like teeth.
He experienced a sense of deja vu. Everything was as he had dreamed during his coma, except backwards.
He nodded, and the crowd quieted. The slate in his hand glowed, revealing scrolling text.
People of the new world, fortune’s favorites! he read. His amplified voice sounded like the booming voice of the gods revealing an oracle. Camera flashes flickered in the dark seats, as though the twinkling stars had formed a ring around him.
. . . Three hundred years ago, we used to have games like these. Back then, our motto was “faster, higher, stronger” because we were slow, base, and weak. All pain came from physical deprivation and our imperfect bodies. Humans fought and oppressed one another for a place closer to the narrow apex of the pyramid. For so little, so many sold their bodies and souls, suffered unbearable horrors. We saw no way out—at least I couldn’t . . .
He waited for the encrypted data in his memory-manager to come alive.
. . . Three hundred years later, you’re free from that old nightmare. You can change your home, your job, your mate, and even your body without a second thought. Your philosophy is to derive pleasure from each coming second. Your motto is, “newer, newer, newer!” On your faces, I observe joy and satisfaction that I’ve never seen. So when some of you tell me that you yearn for the past, I confess that I’m utterly baffled. Maybe I’m simply too old to understand. After all, a three-hundred-year-old brain is not the latest model . . .
He paused and surveyed the millions in the darkness who hung on his every word, as though he had rehearsed for this moment. Letters and words coalesced out of the darkness and floated in front of his eyes.
. . . I can think of only one possibility. Ruofei read from the speech crafted for him by the Three-Legged Crow. Quickly, he glanced down at the thin slate and his face froze.
The slate was showing the exact same speech.
. . . Your bodies, pulled by an irresistible tide, are surging toward the future, but your souls are anchored to the same place . . . you’re tired; you want to slow down, to take a break . . .
Struggling to suppress his panic, Ruofei’s eyes darted between the two speeches, comparing and finding no contrast. His speech slowed and grew hesitant. Sweat beaded on his brow. Was this a joke or had he been deceived?
. . . but always, a voice reminds you, faster, faster! Something new is ahead of you, and you don’t want to fall behind, to be out of fashion, to be forgotten . . . the voice never stops, because the force that propels you toward destruction is also the source of the voice’s . . .
Life.
Ruofei stopped, staring into the darkness without expression, as though finally in possession of the secret of this world.
A wave of noise, like the bursting of foamy bubbles when the tide recedes, gently swept across the arena. It was the sound made by all the electronics in the arena being destroyed by an EMP strike. All the lights went dark, and the audience turned into a panicked mob, pushing, shoving, climbing, scrambling over one another. Silver beams from emergency lights came to life outside the arena and swept across the clouds, illuminating the broken seats, the simulhol dispensers, quick- mold masks, aphrodisiac sticks, and used injectors glinting everywhere like seashells on a beach.
Several people dressed in black dragged the stunned Ruofei off the dais and rushed through the emergency evacuation tunnel. A silver hover car was already in place. They pushed him into the car, and the car sped away at an incredible speed, through streets and alleyways, highway recharge stations, tunnels, valleys, and mountains.
The black-clothed people injected Ruofei with something. Gradually, he could no longer feel his body. He felt his consciousness stretching, expanding and extending in every direction until it was so thin and so diffuse, like fog or wind, formless, ungatherable, adrift.
He saw himself preaching from an altar. The faithful of the new world, draped in black capes, kept their heads lowered. A monotonous, cold electronic music swelled and ebbed like the tides—upon closer examination, it was the sound of millions chanting sacred scriptures. He felt himself growing smaller and smaller as the faithful in the congregation grew larger and larger until they were like a forest of statues, falling toward him. Their faces emerged from the shadows, and Ruofei found himself struggling to breathe—teachers, classmates, relatives, neighbors, convenience store clerks, garage mechanics, doctors, nurses, passers-by who looked at him oddly . . .
And they smiled at him, all at once. That trademark, frozen, fake smile.
In despair, he curled up. There was no escape.
A rumbling came from behind the faithful, followed by crisp or subdued crashing noises. The statues, like bowling pins, fell and broke into pieces. The smiles broke up into torn flesh and torrents of blood. His salvation screeched to a stop: a gigantic, silver hover car, its wings and windshield bloody and covered by scraps of flesh. The wipers came to life, clearing out a view of the inside of the vehicle.
It was his mother.
He wanted to hug her, but he found himself stuck in place, unable to take a single step. Two trails of bloody tears ran down her face. Slowly, oh so slowly, his mother swung a spade covered in wet sand. The metallic blade swept through the air, sloughing off tiny sand grains like clouds and birds, suspended in midair, their motion only detectable by the glint of the sun.
The spade struck the left side of Ruofei’s face, the sand ground against his skin, and his body was propelled into the air by that enormous force.
Everything faded to black. He seemed to hear voices murmur.
Wake up, now. Wake up.
Ruofei came to a view of pure white. He found himself inside the communication chamber of the data tower. The room was completely empty except for him.
He tried to stand up. The effects of the drug hadn’t completely dissipated, and he felt dizzy, weak. He leaned against the wall like a fly about to drown in a sea of milk.
How do you feel? The booming voice seemed to pierce straight through his chest.
“Why . . . why am I here?”
You’re actually dead. This is Heaven, or maybe Hell. It all depends on whether you cheated on your taxes.
You’re not amused? I thought this joke was from your time.
“I’m not in the mood. Did you bring me back here for the surgery?”
Oh, there’s no need for that. You’ve already served your historic purpose.
“I don’t understand.”
Which part, exactly, don’t you understand?
“The speech you forced me to make and the speech the Three-Legged Crow wanted me to make were exactly the same. Why?”
The Three-Legged Crow believe that everything in the universe is connected, don’t they? We all exist together in one large system. You, at this time, in this place, served the system. It mattered not who you chose to represent.
“If the ultimate result would be the same regardless of who I chose, then why did you go to so much trouble?”
That’s part of the compact.
“What compact?”
A long silence.
“What compact?” Ruofei shouted.
A gigantic face loomed out of the ceiling, an unfamiliar, refined, but tired-looking face. The image broke up into countless smaller faces, all with the same expression. The faces swirled like a kaleidoscope, coalescing into different scenes: streets, dance parties, intimate lovers, predators seizing prey, wild deserts . . . it was impossible to tell how the scenes were connected with one another, but the colors grew ever darker over time, as though indicating different eras, until everything turned black; yet, in that darkness, bits of light flickered: hover cars at midnight, a lighthouse beyond the sea, the gaze of a lover . . .
Suddenly, all the scenes swirled into a single spot, vanished, and the room returned to empty white.
The compact between me and humankind.
“Who are you?”
I’m the manager, the data center, the algorithm. I’m the god who can predict the future.
“Predict the future?”
The probability it will rain, the employment rate, the popularity of a new face, the fashion trends next season, demographic projections, behavior patterns of individuals or groups given certain conditions . . .
“You use these to . . . control humanity?”
I prefer the term “guide.” Humanity is too sensitive, too weak, like reeds in the wind.
“Then why does the Three-Legged Crow exist?”
A chess game requires two players. Civilization, like life itself, requires endless stimuli. Otherwise, it will age and die.
“Then I’m nothing more than another stimulus? Out of all the hibernauts, why did you pick me?”
Your companions were largely the elites of the old world, those who had achieved much success. They would not be content to follow the path laid down by another, even if it were newer and better. They possessed too much ambition, too strong a desire to lead, to conquer fate, to take arms against a sea of troubles. Ultimately, their trajectories bent toward destruction. We tried, but the stimuli they gave this world were too strong. But you . . .
The androgynous voices seemed to tremble with laughter.
Ruofei’s face flushed with heat and his heart pounded. He knew the answer. He felt like a defendant waiting for the verdict.
. . . you are nothing like the rest of them. You’re an unfortunate wretch, passive, gentle, content, patient. You’re like a mirror that brings attention to the diseases of this new world. You allow everyone to reflect on their own life, but not so much that they begin to doubt the foundation of the system. To be honest, you were slightly too passive. That’s why we had to give you a mate—
“Jingjing was also a part of your plan?”
Oh, please don’t misunderstand. Everything she did was out of her own free will. She wanted to study how people in the past built emotional relationships; she analyzed your character. In her mind, everything she did was for the compact. We simply allowed her to go where she was already heading.
Ruofei felt utterly ashamed. He thought his fate had been transformed with the lottery, but in fact nothing had changed at all. He was still a failure—even worse, he has been failing for three centuries.
“You’re all frauds!” He pounded the wall. He felt such anguish, but tears would not come out.
Once again, scenes appeared on the empty ceiling. They were shots from all over the globe: elegant, earnest young people held signs and gathered to protest in front of landmark buildings in every city. They were orderly and calm, their hands raised and their eyes full of doubt. Their shadows fell across the clear glass walls like ranks of angels waiting to take flight. Suddenly, a burning meteor flew over the crowd and struck the wall, breaking apart the perfect reflections.
The cameras closed in on a single youthful face. Rage, confusion, and anxiety warred across those perfect features. Then, the face smiled.
The reckless smile spread everywhere, like a plague.
Like we said, a certain amount of wildness is good for health.
Ruofei stared at these new humans, at their fascination with this new fashion. He began to understand.
“What’s going to happen to Jingjing?”
She has a choice to make. Like many other former members of the Three-Legged Crow, she could choose to become one of us, and enjoy the privileges of the new world. She could also choose to become an idol of wildness. But, as you know very well, idols are mere symbols. They exist solely in stories.
Jingjing’s eyes flashed before Ruofei’s eyes. His heart clenched hard.
“What about me? What choice do I have?”
The communication chamber returned to its pure white state. The voices sank into silence, as though absorbed by some complicated computation.
A confused Ruofei stood in the streets of Shanghai.
Skyscrapers, elevated highways, narrow alleys, streets lined with Chinese parasol trees. Everything was as he remembered.
A man brushed by his shoulder, his face at once strange and familiar, as though they had met once. In fact, everyone on the crowded sidewalk was astonishingly beautiful. They looked at Ruofei, and behind their gazes there lurked some hidden meaning that he couldn’t decipher.
He had long become used to the odd looks others gave him due to his condition, but this was different.
A young woman approached him from afar, seemingly surrounded by a golden haze.
The sun suddenly dimmed, as though a giant cloud had drifted overhead. Everyone stopped in the street to stare at him.
He squinted, waiting for the woman to come closer.
Her face gradually emerged from the haze, growing clearer. Compared to the beautiful faces all around him, hers was plain and imperfect.
The woman stopped on the other side of the street and smiled at him. Instantly, the cloud overhead seemed to move away, the world brightened, and everyone resumed their own course.
Ruofei used every ounce of strength he had to return the woman’s smile.
A light came on in the darkness, illuminating the stiff smile in the hibernation capsule.
A few white tentacles fell away from the glass and retracted into the octopus-like machine. A woman dressed in black swept the data shown on a thin membrane onto the giant ceiling-screen.
Name: Du Ruofei
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Initial hibernation period: 2018.06.26-2322.07.01
Time awake: 281 days
Suggested course:
The blue cursor blinked for a few moments, and then:
Resume hibernation
A droning filled the room, as though many voices were arguing. Gradually, the voices grew quieter, stopped. The woman in black approached the hibernation capsule and, slightly curious, glanced at the face that belonged to a bygone age. A moment later, she pressed a button. The capsule retracted into the hibernation tank, and the cover whorled close.
Behind her stood a row of identical circular hibernation tanks.
The light went out, and darkness poured in.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.
Jerry eBooks, Time Travel Omnibus
