“Please bring back her answer,” Qin Tian said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Help yourself to the fridge if you get hungry. Just stay put here and wait for the Change.”
Lao Dao looked outside the window. He couldn’t get used to the sunlight, which was a bright white, not the yellow he was used to. The street seemed twice as wide in the sun as what Lao Dao remembered from Third Space, and he wasn’t sure if that was a visual illusion. The buildings here weren’t nearly as tall as buildings in Third Space. The sidewalks were filled with people walking very fast, and from time to time some trotted and tried to shove their way through the crowd, causing those in front of them to begin running as well. Everyone seemed to run across intersections. The men dressed mostly in Western suits while the women wore blouses and short skirts with scarves around their necks and compact, rigid purses in their hands that lent them an air of competence and efficiency. The street teemed with cars, and as they waited at intersections for the light to change, the drivers stuck their heads out of the windows, gazing anxiously ahead. Lao Dao had never seen so many cars; he was used to the mass-transit maglev packed with passengers whooshing by him.
Around noon, he heard noises in the hallway outside the apartment. He peeked through the peephole in the door. The floor of the hallway had transformed into a moving conveyor belt, and bags of trash left at the door of each apartment were shoved onto the conveyor belt to be deposited into the chute at the end. Mist filled the hall, turning into soap bubbles that drifted through the air, and then water washed the floor, followed by hot steam.
A noise from behind Lao Dao startled him. He turned around and saw that another of Lao Dao’s roommates had emerged from his bedroom. The young man ignored Lao Dao, his face impassive. He went to some machine next to the balcony and pushed some buttons, and the machine came to life, popping, whirring, grinding. Eventually, the noise stopped, and Lao Dao smelled something delicious. The young man took out a piping hot plate of food from the machine and returned to his room. Through the half-open bedroom door, Lao Dao could see that the young man was sitting on the floor in a pile of blankets and dirty socks and stared at his wall as he ate and laughed, pushing up his glasses from time to time. After he was done eating, he left the plate at his feet, stood up, and began to fight someone invisible as he faced the wall. He struggled, his breathing labored, as he wrestled the unseen enemy.
Lao Dao’s last memory of Second Space was the refined air with which everyone conducted themselves before the Change. As he looked down from the window of the apartment, everything seemed so orderly that he felt a hint of envy. Starting at a quarter past nine, the stores along the street turned off their lights one after another; groups of friends, their faces red with drink, said good-bye in front of restaurants. Young couples kissed next to taxicabs. And then everyone returned to their homes, and the world went to sleep.
It was ten at night. He returned to his world to go to work.
3.
There was no trash chute connecting First Space directly with Third Space. The trash from First Space had to pass through a set of metal gates to be transported into Third Space, and the gates shut as soon as the trash went through. Lao Dao didn’t like the idea of having to go over the flipping ground, but he had no choice.
As the wind whipped around him, he crawled up the still-rotating earth toward First Space. He grabbed on to metal structural elements protruding from the soil, struggling to balance his body and calm his heart, until he finally managed to scrabble over the rim of this most distant world. He felt dizzy and nauseated from the intense climb, and, forcing down his churning stomach, he remained still on the ground for a while.
By the time he got up, the sun had risen.
Lao Dao had never seen such a sight. The sun rose gradually. The sky was a deep and pure azure, with an orange fringe at the horizon, decorated with thin, slanted wisps of cloud. The eaves of a nearby building blocked the sun, and the eaves appeared especially dark while the background was dazzlingly bright. As the sun continued to rise, the blue of the sky faded a little, but seemed even more tranquil and clear. Lao Dao stood up and ran at the sun; he wanted to catch a trace of that fading golden color. Silhouettes of waving tree branches broke up the sky. His heart leapt wildly. He had never imagined that a sunrise could be so moving.
After a while, he slowed down and calmed himself. He was standing in the middle of the street, which was lined on both sides with tall trees and wide lawns. He looked around, and he couldn’t see any buildings at all. Confused, he wondered if he had really reached First Space. He pondered the two rows of sturdy ginkgoes.
He backed up a few steps and turned to look in the direction he had come from. There was a road sign next to the street. He took out his phone and looked at the map—although he wasn’t authorized to download live maps from First Space, he had downloaded and stored some before leaving on this trip. He found where he was as well as where he needed to be: he was standing next to a large open park, and the seam he had emerged from was next to a lake in that park.
Lao Dao ran about a kilometer through the deserted streets until he reached the residential district containing his destination. Hiding behind some bushes, he observed the beautiful house from a distance.
At eight thirty, Yi Yan came out of the house.
She was indeed as elegant as Qin Tian’s description had suggested, though perhaps not as pretty. Lao Dao wasn’t surprised, however. No woman could possibly be as beautiful as Qin Tian’s verbal portrait. He also understood why Qin Tian had spoken so much of her mouth. Her eyes and nose were fairly ordinary. She had a good figure: tall, with delicate bones. She wore a milky white dress with a flowing skirt. Her belt was studded with pearls, and she had on black heels.
Lao Dao walked up to her. To avoid startling her, he approached from the front, and bowed deeply when he was still some distance away.
She stood still, looking at him in surprise.
Lao Dao came closer and explained his mission. He took out the envelope with the locket and Qin Tian’s letter.
She looked alarmed. “Please leave,” she whispered. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
“Uh… I don’t really need to talk to you,” Lao Dao said. “I just need to give you this letter.”
She refused to take it from him, clasping her hands tightly. “I can’t accept this now. Please leave. Really, I’m begging you. All right?” She took out a business card from her purse and handed it to him. “Come find me at this address at noon.”
Lao Dao looked at the card. At the top was the name of a bank.
“At noon,” she said. “Wait for me in the underground supermarket.”
Lao Dao could tell how anxious she was. He nodded, put the card away, and returned to hide behind the bushes. Soon a man emerged from the house and stopped next to her. The man looked to be about Lao Dao’s age, or maybe a couple of years younger. Dressed in a well-fitted dark gray suit, he was tall and broad-shouldered. Not fat, just thickset. His face was nondescript: round, a pair of glasses, hair neatly combed to one side.
The man grabbed Yi Yan around the waist and kissed her on the lips. Yi Yan seemed to give in to the kiss reluctantly.
Understanding began to dawn on Lao Dao.
A single-rider cart arrived in front of the house. The black cart had two wheels and a canopy, and resembled an ancient carriage or rickshaw one might see on TV, except there was no horse or person pulling the cart. The cart stopped and dipped forward. Yi Yan stepped in, sat down, and arranged the skirt of the dress neatly around her knees. The cart straightened and began to move at a slow, steady pace, as though pulled by some invisible horse. After Yi Yan left, a driverless car arrived, and the man got in.