1

On the fifth day of my treatment, or rather at the end of my fifth session, a girl from my ward died in her cell.

She died like a bird steeped in blood, poised for flight, straining with all her strength, as if trying to break free of the narrow space that held her.

No one found her until the chief physician made his rounds. Judging by the scene, she had been dead for at least five hours. All that time, the rest of us in the ward had been in treatment, and none of us noticed the tragedy quietly unfolding right beside us.

When I was first admitted, my attending physician had asked her to show me around. She made a poor guide. Whenever I trailed after her through the halls, she kept glancing about warily, asking me again and again if I knew where the windows were. But even I knew there were no windows here. Before I could answer, she would ask whether I had ever seen a fawn by the sea.

The next day, I asked my doctor for a different guide.

We spoke a few times, but I never learned her name. In fact, no one here remembered their name. According to my doctor, by the time I could recall my real name, my treatment would be nearly over.

The trouble was, I was in no hurry to leave.

Life here was full and good. The hospital was simple and elegant, the cafeteria food wholesome and delicious, my doctor conscientious and kind. Best of all, the treatment was remarkably pleasant, and my memories really were coming back, little by little.

The hospital held more than a thousand patients across over a hundred wards, seven to a ward. Each ward was a perfect square, its four walls lined with black and white tiles, like a giant Rubik's cube pieced together from chessboards. The white tiles gave off a faint glow that made the seven floating, transparent cells in the room gleam like crystal. Each cell was a self-contained room, furnished with a bed, a desk, cabinets, and everything one needed to live.

The cells drifted slowly about the room to simulate the accelerations of the real world. Curiously, I never saw two of them collide. Then again, perhaps I had simply never paid attention. After all, for most of the time we spent inside them, what we saw was not the real world.

It truly was a marvelous experience. Thinking of it, I couldn't help marveling at how far technology had come.

When I first arrived, my mind was a blank. Apart from knowing I had come to recover my memories, I knew nothing about my own life. Looking around that vast black-and-white room, I was struck by a wave of dizziness. Only after a doctor and a nurse helped me into a hospital gown did I regain a little strength.

One side of each cell had no wall; that was the way in. I stood before the cell assigned to me, unsure whether to step inside. There was no privacy here at all. How could anyone live in a place like this? Could a design so avant-garde and oppressive really put people at ease enough to be treated?

My doctor seemed to read my doubts.

"You needn't worry about fitting in here," he said with a smile. "This place was designed to help you fit in."

I still didn't understand.

"No rush." He waved a hand at the wall of the cell, and a pale blue control panel appeared.

He told me to step inside. I did.

"A session lasts twelve hours, and there's no limit on how many you can have. Statistically, most people need about thirty." As he spoke, he pressed the confirm button on the panel.

At once a clear glass door slid down over the entrance. Then the cell's twelve edges lit up one by one, and a soft white light filled the space. It wasn't harsh at all; if anything, it had a reassuring warmth. The cell rose slowly and hung in midair. Meanwhile, the glass gradually frosted over, sealing me off from the world outside.

I began to panic.

"It won't fall, will it?"

"No. It runs on a precise, stable electromagnetic track, built specifically for treatment."

His voice drifted up from below, but all I could see was his blurred figure growing smaller.

"For treatment?"

"Yes. You'll understand in a moment." His voice grew fainter and fainter. "Good luck."

I felt gravity slowly ebbing away. Or rather, some force was canceling it out. Little by little I lost all my weight and floated in the center of the cell.

Before I could get used to the sensation, a black hexagon appeared before my eyes, as if someone had slit the pure white space open with a knife. New hexagons kept budding from its edges, devouring the surrounding white cell by cell. By the time the last of the light was gone, I could no longer tell where I was.

I looked around and noticed a tiny point of light at the far edge of the horizon. I reached out to touch it.

At that moment a fierce wind came roaring in. I raised my hands to shield my face. It howled past my ears, laced with a faint, broken crackle of electronic noise. The whole world seemed to be blowing away into the distance, yet the point of light only grew brighter.

The next instant, there was nothing before me but a vast, blank white.

After a moment of blindness, a scene began to emerge. Like a drop of black ink falling on snow-white rice paper, the world spread outward from a single point, slowly revealing a long street.

At first, the street's colors and shapes kept shifting. Buildings twisted, then melted; the texture of the pavement flickered like data that hadn't finished loading.

After a while, everything settled.

Sight came back first, then taste and hearing, and touch last of all. The wind brushed my cheeks, the flowers and grass by the road gave off a fresh scent, and the feel of my clothes against my skin grew clearer. Everything around me became more and more real, so real that I forgot what I had just been through.

I started walking down the street. The street gave way to a valley, the valley to a desert, the desert to a beach. The scenes changed as fast as a carelessly cut montage. They had nothing to do with one another, yet somehow they joined seamlessly, so seamlessly that I couldn't tell what was unreal. It was as though the world had always been this way.

At last I sat down on a black-sand beach, closed my eyes, and listened quietly to the waves.

A question came to me: once my eyes were closed, did the world still go on existing?

A lilting birdsong broke into my thoughts.

I opened my eyes and saw a small grayish-brown bird perched on a rock not far off. It looked utterly unremarkable, yet its song was astonishingly clear, one call after another, as if it were calling out for something.

It was a nightingale.

Suddenly my doctor's voice came from the edge of the sky.

"How are you settling in?"

I nodded. "What is this place?"

"Ha, that I can't answer," he said. "All I can tell you is that it's inside your head."

He went on to explain the principles of Blue Therapy and the rules to follow during treatment. He was rather vague about it. Putting what he said together with my experience over the next few days, I boiled it down to six points:

1. Blue Therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which the patient takes an active part. At its core are the sessions in the cell and the question-and-answer conversations with the attending physician during treatment.
2. The virtual images in the cell come from the patient's conscious or subconscious mind. Put simply, the cell is the patient's subconscious space.
3. These images help patients recover their memories, and help doctors analyze and treat their psychological and mental illnesses.
4. Since all patients are amnesiac, medical staff may not prompt them by any means other than the images in the cell.
5. Patients must not take off their hospital gowns during treatment, or the somatosensory system will fail.
6. A single session must never exceed twenty hours, or it may cause permanent trauma.

When he had finished, I finally understood. The cell was a window through which patients traveled the world.

Over the next few days, I saw the storms that lay hidden in the depths of my subconscious.

Purple lightning split the night sky and struck an endless sheet of ice. A blue whale too vast to see from head to tail burst up through the ice, flinging up a cloud of snow that blotted out the sky.

Missiles shrieked through plasma clouds, their blasts loud enough, it seemed, to level a city.

Countless giant hands came down from the sky, reaching for the ground, grabbing and grabbing until they had torn the earth up by its roots and let molten lava swallow everything.

I never knew what these visions had to do with my life. Yet strangely, at the end of every session, I recovered another small piece of the puzzle that was my blank life. At each of our talks, my doctor wrote down everything I remembered, bound it into a booklet, and gave it to me to read.

The first thing to come back was a tall iron gate, its paint flaking away in patches. I stood at the gate hugging a stuffed fawn, my fingers red with cold.

"Who were you waiting for?" my doctor asked.

I shook my head. All I remembered was that I had waited a very long time.

In later sessions, a streetlamp appeared beside the gate, and beneath it stood two blurred figures. Later still, the figures gained faces and voices. They bent down and took my hands. At last I remembered: they were my parents.

"Your parents loved you very much, didn't they?"

I nodded, my eyes stinging. I remembered the warmth of their palms, the street awash in golden sunlight, the stuffed fawn in my arms.

Another scene came back the same way, a little at a time.

At first there was only an afternoon. The sky was bright, almost painfully bright. I wore a long white dress, and something cold had been slipped onto my finger. Everyone around me had their heads tipped back, gazing at the sky, while the windowpanes in the distance hummed and rattled. I wanted to look up too, but it was as if something were holding my neck down.

"What were they looking at?"

"I don't know."

"Then let's leave it for now," my doctor said gently. "Take your time."

Each time after that, the sky was a little softer than before. Sunlight fell on the lawn, the wind lifted the hem of my dress, and someone held my hand. Fewer and fewer people were looking up, until at last they all turned and smiled at me.

"So few people. Doesn't that seem a shame?" my doctor asked, leafing through his notes.

"No." I thought about it. "I suppose I just don't like crowds."

He smiled and wrote a few lines in the record.

Meanwhile, some words both familiar and strange began surfacing in my mind.

State.

Citizen.

People.

I knew their most basic meanings, but I couldn't grasp what they meant in society today.

"Understands the basic definitions, but not the meanings modern society has given them..." My doctor flipped through his notes. "Hm. That's new."

Though I had forgotten so much, I didn't feel the loss. Getting my memories back felt wonderful. The fragments that had once made up my life were like shards of glass scattered in the dark. I didn't know how much I had lost, but each piece I found let me see a little of the light that had always been mine.

I read those records over and over. The earliest pages always felt a little foreign, like sentences someone else had written. Perhaps back then I hadn't truly woken up yet. I longed for the day I would remember my own name. Just thinking of it often brought me to tears.

And so, right up until the end of my fifth session, all went smoothly.

Then the girl died.

2

As soon as the body was found, the nurses and doctors sealed off the ward. With practiced efficiency they cleared the scene, removed the body, and scrubbed the floor, as though it were a drill they had rehearsed a hundred times.

The chief physician solemnly informed everyone in the ward that there was as yet no official finding on the cause of death, that no one was to spread unverified information, and that he trusted we would all understand.

I, of course, had no intention of stirring up trouble. The others might not be so restrained. In the end, word got out.

A patient's unexpected death is no small matter. Within days the whole hospital was on edge. Many no longer wanted to go on with treatment. Some applied for transfers; some even demanded their sessions be stopped at once.

My doctor told me it was the first death he had seen since he started working here. As for the cause, the patients had theories aplenty, and even the doctors couldn't agree among themselves. So it would most likely remain a mystery.

I asked him what would become of those who wanted to leave.

"As far as I know, as long as their families agree, most patients will continue treatment under the agreements they signed."

"And the rest?"

He glanced at me.

"That small minority will regret leaving."

His tone was flat. For a moment I didn't know what to say.

Then, to my surprise, he burst out laughing.

"Hahaha, pay all that money and walk out uncured? Of course they'll regret it."

Only then did I realize I didn't even know what the treatment cost, or whether my family could afford it.

"But you needn't worry," he went on. "Your husband is very good to you. He fully supports your treatment."

Then he stopped short.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Husband? So I was married.

I thought of that sunny afternoon, the long white dress, the cold thing on my finger, and the hand holding mine. So that had been my wedding.

Without thinking, I looked down at my fingers. They were bare.

Before I could ask anything more, he changed the subject.

"Oh, right. A new patient is joining your ward today. Be sure to show her around."

The new patient was C02, a young woman with long black hair and bright eyes. There was a quickness in her gaze that set her apart from everyone around her. By any measure, she didn't look like someone with a mental illness.

Still, her first session was dramatic. Screams and error alarms went off one after another, and in the end the staff had to drag her out of her cell. I had just finished my sixth session and saw the whole thing.

Once she had recovered a little, I sat down beside her in the cafeteria to carry out the task my doctor had given me.

"Hi. I'm C04."

"C04..." she repeated under her breath. She still seemed shaken from her first session. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the veins at her temples kept twitching.

"Not used to it yet?" I smiled. "Don't worry. A few more sessions and you will be." The moment the words were out, I realized my own first time had been nowhere near as rough as hers.

She was silent for a long while before she looked up.

"Aren't you... afraid?"

"Of what?"

"That maybe..." She hesitated. "I mean, what if that world is the real one?"

I was taken aback. So her clever look was only a front. Sure enough, anyone who ended up here had to have something wrong with them.

"How could it be? That's your subconscious. It changes with your thoughts. It doesn't follow common sense to begin with..."

"Do you know what common sense is?"

The question caught me off guard.

"Common sense is... the things everyone knows."

"But we don't even remember the world we used to live in. How would we know what common sense is?"

I wanted to argue, but it suddenly struck me that every judgment I had made rested on the world the hospital had shown me. In truth, I had no real proof that this place was reality.

She looked around and began searching for windows again.

"Why are there no windows here?"

I thought suddenly of the girl who had died. The same gestures, the same look. For an instant I had the strange sense that the two of them were somehow connected.

"Because they don't want us to see outside," C02 answered herself. "They're hiding something."

Over the next several lunches, she shared all manner of outlandish theories with me.

Sometimes she suspected the place was running human experiments, and that "cured" patients were never sent home at all but shipped off to factories to be taken apart. Other times she thought we weren't human at all, but artificial intelligences built by the hospital, and that the researchers kept refining our models until our minds were identical to real humans'.

Once she even picked up a table knife and tried to cut open her forearm to see whether blood or engine oil would come out. Luckily, I stopped her in time.

"Now I see why you ended up in the hospital."

"Because you think I'm crazy?"

"So you know."

"I'm not crazy." She set down the knife. "I've just questioned a few more things than you have."

"Questioned what?"

"The things all of you take for granted."

I shook my head, unwilling to argue any further.

"So, any new theories today?"

"Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think my theory from the first day might be right after all."

"How so?"

"Let me ask you something. How do you tell dreams from reality?"

"Reality is more normal, and you're more lucid..."

"See? You never question anything."

She gave a smug little smile.

"In a dream, you usually can't remember your waking self, but awake, you can remember your dreaming self. So when you're awake, you can find the line between dream and reality, and you feel lucid, while the you in the dream has no choice but to accept a... script."

I had to admit she had a point.

"But now, when we enter that so-called subconscious world, we can still remember our lives in the hospital."

"And," I picked up where she left off, "here in the hospital, we can also remember what happened in the subconscious world."

"Exactly," she said. "If both worlds can remember each other, then what's the difference between them?"

"Then how do you tell them apart?"

"I don't know."

She propped her chin in one hand and idly twirled her fork.

"Dreams can't explain it, and common sense can't settle it. Worse, we don't even know how much time we've actually lived through." She paused. "So I'm still thinking."

Though I still refused to accept her absurd ideas, the girl's unexplained death, the hospital sealed off day and night, and this peculiar form of treatment meant I could no longer feel as easy as before.

I began to doubt. I just wasn't ready to admit that I doubted.

It was in those same few days that I remembered something else.

I was lying in a white hospital bed, my belly hollow. My husband sat at the bedside, gripping my hand. The curtains were half drawn, and the room was very quiet.

"Were you sad at the time?" my doctor asked.

"No," I said. "We talked it over many times. We both felt it was the best decision."

The words came out almost of their own accord, smooth and composed, like an answer prepared long in advance. The moment I said them, I faltered.

Was I really not sad?

I tried to go back to that hospital room, to see my husband's face clearly, but it stayed blurred. All I remembered was how tightly he held my hand, so tightly it hurt. There seemed to be someone else in the room as well, silently watching us the whole time, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't recall what that person looked like.

The harder I tried to remember, the quieter the image grew, as quiet as a photograph someone had carefully wiped clean.

"C04?"

I came back to myself and found tears had fallen on the back of my hand. But I couldn't have said why I was crying.

My doctor put down his pen and looked at me for a long time.

"C04, you seem a little emotionally unsettled." He closed the record book. "Shall we postpone today's thirteenth session?"

I shook my head. Even if there was something wrong with the treatment, I wanted to recover my past. That was why I had come here, and I didn't want to give up halfway.

And so, as the cell slowly rose, the ink-wash scroll unrolled before my eyes once more.

I was back on the black-sand beach. The waves washed over the shore again and again, leaving dark, damp traces behind.

The rock was empty. The nightingale hadn't come in a long time.

A rapid buzzing sounded behind me.

I turned and saw a small, dark red bird hovering in the air.

It looked like a hummingbird, though not quite like the hummingbirds I remembered. Its body was astonishingly small, its wings beat so fast they were almost invisible, and its dark red feathers caught the light with a near-metallic sheen.

It circled me a few times, then flew straight off toward a distant hill and alighted on the summit.

Curious, I followed. Just as I drew near, it flew off somewhere farther still. After this had happened several times, I finally realized it seemed to want me to follow.

Was my subconscious leading me toward something?

I followed the hummingbird along rugged mountain paths, across vast plains, and through a raging river. I don't know how long I walked before I came at last to the foot of a mountain. There was a cave there, glowing a faint blue. From deep inside came the soft sound of running water.

I decided to follow the sound in, but at that moment the hummingbird vanished.

The cave was studded with blue crystals whose faint glow lit only a small patch of ground at my feet. I had to steady myself against the rock wall and inch forward.

The dripping of water drifted near and far, now clear, now muffled. Whenever it suddenly grew louder, I froze in fright and strained to hear whether some other sound was mixed in. Footsteps? Breathing? Something else? Whatever it was, I was fairly sure it was following me.

Whenever I stopped, so did the sound. I spun around but saw nothing. Whatever it was, it was wary, always darting away the instant I turned my head.

I walked on, no longer looking back, and watched the reflections in the crystals on the wall instead. In their faint refractions I finally made out what was following me: it looked like a fawn.

I pretended not to have noticed and kept walking, waiting for the right moment to catch it. Gradually the faint blue glow became light, the light became beams, and the beams converged into a blue ocean at the end of the cave: a pale blue wall of light, like water, like ice.

As I stared at the wall in a daze, I realized I could see the fawn behind me clearly in its reflection. So I found the right angle, backed slowly toward it, then whirled around and grabbed it.

It didn't try to escape. Instead it nuzzled my hand, as if glad I had finally caught it. Then it lowered its head and calmly tore open its own belly. There was no blood inside, only a gleaming, crystalline bone.

I was stunned. The fawn gave a few cries and pointed at the bone with its nose, as if it wanted me to take it out.

I took it out and held it up to the blue wall. In the pale blue light, the bone shimmered with endless fractals, as if it held a whole galaxy.

I felt that its random facets might form something, so I kept turning it. Before long, three characters faintly appeared inside.

It was...

In an instant, it was as if a hundred keys had turned in their locks at once, and countless chains snapped apart.

Emotions, images, words, and sounds came flooding out all at once. They didn't feel like memories. They felt like countless sharp knives stabbing into my brain together. The sheer weight of information nearly tore every nerve apart.

Alarms blared. Red and yellow warning windows popped up one after another, piling over each other until they covered the whole image of the cave. Then, with a thunderous roar, the blue wall of light came crashing down. All those images, words, and sounds vanished with it in an instant.

I jolted awake.

Glaring light stabbed straight into my eyes. I raised a hand to shield them, only to find my body bound by countless cables. I couldn't move. Several people gathered around, untangled the lines, and helped me lie back down.

Where was I? A moment ago I had been in the cave.

What had I seen? What were those three characters?

I tried hard to remember, but all that remained was a blurred image. Something seemed to have been flying toward me, and then the roar of an explosion swallowed everything.

Hurried footsteps approached. My doctor had arrived. He pulled on gloves, shone a penlight into my right eye, and said gravely, "C04, your condition is very worrying. I said from the start we shouldn't have rushed the treatment."

It was a long time before I could see clearly. I was lying on an enormous, semi-enclosed hospital bed. Several nurses were wheeling a medicine cart out of the room, while my doctor sat at the bedside checking the readings on various instruments.

"You were rushed into the ICU," he said. "Any later and we couldn't have saved you."

I wanted to ask him why, but no sound came from my throat.

"Your session ran nearly twenty hours! Why didn't you hear the time-limit alarm? What on earth did you run into in your subconscious?"

"A bird..."

Something caught in my throat and I broke into a violent coughing fit. It was a while before I could go on. "There was a..."

I stopped short. How could the doctor not know what I had seen in the cell? If it was all computed by a machine, he ought to know exactly what I'd been through.

"C04, what's wrong?"

I didn't answer.

I remembered the hummingbird leading me in search of something. It seemed I had remembered something because of it, but then the treatment was abruptly cut off, and the doctor knew nothing about it.

As I thought and remembered, the beeping of the instruments grew faster and faster.

The doctor didn't press me further. Instead, he called for a nurse to prepare some kind of injection.

I looked around in silence and saw that I was in a sealed ward. A nurse swiped the door open with the access card on her chest and came toward my bed carrying a steel tray full of medicine and syringes.

Fear crept into me, little by little. Perhaps I had remembered, without meaning to, something I wasn't supposed to.

"This isn't the hospital." I stared at my doctor. "What is this place?"

"What are you talking about? Of course it's the hospital."

"Then why is there a window?"

He paused and turned toward the wall, as if to make sure what I meant.

In that instant, I tore the cables from my body, sat up, and shoved him to the floor. I leapt off the bed, but my legs were too weak, and I fell hard at the nurse's feet. She cried out and lost her balance. The tray flew from her hands, scattering vials and instruments across the floor.

Ignoring the pain, I scrambled up, snatched the access card from her hand, and ran out of the ICU.

"C04 has escaped! Emergency, requesting backup!" my doctor's hoarse shout rang out behind me.

Red alarms lit up one after another along the corridor. I ran as hard as I could, trying to avoid the cameras and the staff coming and going. My body was so weak it could barely carry me, but I grew more and more certain that this was not the hospital where I had been living. At least, not a place I could ever have reached.

Rapid footsteps sounded behind me. I changed direction at once, only to find people coming from the other end as well. The footsteps grew thicker and thicker. It sounded like at least twenty people were closing in.

I stopped.

"Is this the end...?"

I leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor.

"Then again, maybe it's better not to know."

I bowed my head and buried my face in my curled-up body, waiting for someone to take me away.

But they didn't come right away. I raised my eyes just enough to see the gleaming corridor floor. Suddenly I noticed a line of text reflected on the floor not far off.

I looked up and saw, beside a tightly shut door, plain as day: Age-Eligible People's Therapy Center.

The words were like a decoder constantly tuning its frequency. The blurred images in my mind began to flicker, bright then dark. As the words came into focus, so did the images. Then, at a certain moment, they stopped shaking and became sharp and clear.

Click.

I was once abandoned by my parents at the door of the People's Therapy Center, with nothing left beside me but a stuffed fawn. The staff of the People's Welfare Home took me in. Later they told me my parents believed their upbringing would limit my future, so they had decided to give me up.

I once received distinguished clients on the ground floor of a skyscraper, worn to the bone by their unreasonable demands. Every day I checked my performance ranking over and over. Even in my dreams I was filling out forms, just to make the month's quota and not be replaced.

I once married my husband on a clear afternoon, with only a handful of guests. Just as I put on my wedding ring, a fleet that blotted out the sky emerged from the clouds. A barrage like fireworks tore the sky apart and blasted a building that sheltered the Underground into rubble.

I can no longer remember whether the wedding music ever played. But the voice proclaiming that "State Power must not be defied" lingered in every corner of that day, along with the smell of smoke.

I once argued all night with my husband about whether to keep the child in my belly. The broken fluorescent tube on the floor reflected his haggard face. He buried his face in his hands and wept, telling me he didn't have much time left. He had to stake our whole family's fate on it and give it everything he had.

So the child could not be kept.

I once rode the rail car to and from work every day. In the carriage, propaganda about the nation's achievements played on a loop, the screens scrolling with rousing news. Late at night I rode home on a rail car plastered with discount ads.

I often felt an inexplicable pride, and just as often an anxiety I couldn't name. Through the car window I could always see the city ablaze with light. But in the window's reflection, all I could see was a faint flicker of flame, wavering in the wind.

I once watched a coworker, plagued by heart disease and obesity, drop dead while working overtime. Even as he died, he kept murmuring: "Must become a Citizen... must become a Citizen..." I knew I couldn't take sick leave. The moment the Citizens learned I was ill, they would find someone healthier to take my place.

I once walked my husband out of the hall where the Citizenship Assessment was held. His face was ashen, his eyes hollow, his legs barely able to hold him up. Swallowing my own grief, I kept comforting him, telling him he would have another chance.

But he just kept muttering: "Just two points short."

"Just two points short..."

I once saw a coworker off in the morning as she went, near tears, to her People's psychotherapy session, then ran into her that same evening, all smiles. She took my hand and told me, from the bottom of her heart: "In an instant I realized I'd just been so ungrateful. Why think so much? Life is so beautiful!"

She smiled and patted my shoulder.

"You should understand that too."

Then she turned away cheerfully and melted into the crowd.

"C04! Stop resisting, put your hands on your head, and come out slowly!"

My pursuers' voices dragged me back to reality, and time seemed to start flowing again.

In that one instant, most of the puzzle of my life had been filled in.

I pressed a hand to my forehead. I wanted to laugh, but couldn't. I wanted to cry, but had no strength left. How bitter it was, getting my memories back. I finally knew what I had lived through, yet I couldn't draw the slightest comfort from it. The life I had forgotten had not grown any more beautiful for returning to me.

All I could do was let out a rueful sigh.

Was Blue Therapy meant to make me remember, or to make me forget? Was it protecting me, or destroying me?

I thought suddenly of C02. That half-mad woman and all her seemingly absurd theories. Could it be that she knew something, and was only feigning madness? And the girl who died, why had she died?

I didn't want to be dragged back like this. There were still so many questions without answers. To lose my future here before I had even remembered my own name was more than I could accept.

I raised the stolen access card and tried to open the door of the People's Therapy Center.

Nothing. I swiped it again. Still nothing. The hospital must have already deactivated the card.

"Final warning! Come out now, or we will use force!"

The footsteps drew closer. With nowhere left to go, I pressed my back against the door and squeezed my eyes shut.

Just then, the lock clicked. The door opened.

There was no time to think. I rushed inside. The door swung shut behind me just before my pursuers arrived, shutting them out.

Someone was helping me!

My first thought was of the hummingbird. But could something from the subconscious really reach into reality?

As the lights in the room came on row by row, I finally saw what lay before me.

Thousands of cylindrical containers stood in neat rows, stretching farther than I could see. Each was sealed shut, with no way to tell what was inside.

They moved to a fixed rhythm: every minute, one row would rotate and descend; half a minute later, it would rotate and rise back into place.

In front of each container was a display showing its row and number.

Row A, No. 8 【Injected: 30/30 sets】【Status: Complete】

Row B, No. 8 【Injected: 27/30 sets】【Status: In Progress】

...

When it was Row C's turn to descend, I noticed one container still standing in place.

I ran over at once. The display read, plain as day: Row C, No. 4 【Injected: 13/30 sets】【Status: Error】

The container required iris and fingerprint verification. I completed both. With a hiss of steam, it slowly opened. It was empty.

I looked around. There was no other way out. Summoning my courage, I stepped inside, but the container didn't close on its own. I felt along the inner wall, searching for whatever came next.

Suddenly I felt a bump on the wall behind me. I turned sideways and ran my hand over it. It seemed to be a switch. I tried pressing it, flipping it, but couldn't make it work.

The familiar buzzing sounded again, and I whipped my head around. Before I could even glimpse the hummingbird, the floor beneath my feet vanished, and I plunged into a vast space.

It seemed to be a dark red movie theater. All around was silence; only a dim light traced the outlines of the seats and the screen.

But just as I was about to land, the whole theater vanished into thin air, like a projector switched off.

Thud.

I hit the floor of my cell.

I was back?

"C04, how are you feeling? Does anything hurt?" My doctor was watching me anxiously through the glass. Beside him stood the other patients from my ward.

I looked around. Black-and-white walls, floating cells, familiar light. This was where I had been living all along!

So everything that had just happened had taken place in my subconscious?

"You've been in there for almost twenty-four hours!" There was open alarm in the doctor's voice. "It's a miracle you came to at all!"

The cell door opened, and C02 rushed in and threw her arms around me.

"I'm so glad you're okay!"

There were tears in her eyes. I smiled helplessly and reached out to wipe them away. She caught my hand and said she could do it herself.

The other patients came over one by one to hug me. Finally, my doctor stepped up in front of me.

"C04, your vitals look normal for now, but to be safe, we'll need to run another checkup." He paused. "After all, someone in this ward has already died."

I nodded. Tense, I clenched my fist without thinking, and suddenly felt something in my palm.

After my doctor left, I opened my hand. It was a folded slip of paper with just three words on it: Don't trust him.

I looked up at C02. She had already slipped quietly back into the crowd.

I couldn't be sure the note had come from her, but I no longer believed this hospital was just an ordinary treatment facility.

During the checkup that followed, I dodged my doctor's questions as best I could. But so as not to rouse his suspicion, I drew on my earlier memories and told him about the black-sand beach, the blue cave, and so on. For the time being, he seemed to lower his guard.

After the checkup, I went back to the ward. Thinking over everything that had happened that day, it seemed C02 was the only one who knew anything. I decided to find a quiet corner of the cafeteria and trade what I knew with her, starting with the hidden door I had found.

But no sooner had I sat down beside her with my tray, before I could say a word, than she was called away by the staff. She was strangely meek, head bowed, without a word.

I rushed over and caught hold of her. The staff immediately warned me not to interfere with a patient's treatment. I had no choice but to let go.

How could I get a message to her? Countless phrases flashed through my mind, but none was both veiled enough and clear enough.

I would just have to gamble!

I took a deep breath and called after her: "Little Bird?"

C02 stopped. She turned around and looked me straight in the eye.

"Fawn?"

3

This session, I found myself in a forest.

It was the most agonizing wait I could remember. I kept wondering: how had C02 gotten into my subconscious? How could she guide me to that cave? Was she a madwoman or a genius? A friend or an enemy?

At last the familiar buzzing came from deep in the woods. The dark red hummingbird appeared before me once again.

Just as I was about to speak, it hovered right at my lips.

I hesitated, then realized I couldn't speak freely. So I chattered about nothing in particular while wandering aimlessly through the forest.

Suddenly the hummingbird settled between my hands. I cupped it, not knowing what it wanted.

"Little Bird, you..."

Before I could finish, my teeth and the tip of my tongue touched something hard.

I froze. The hummingbird's beak was in my mouth!

A tingling current spread from my mouth to my brain, and I could no longer move.

What was happening? What was it transmitting to me?

Everything went black.

When my sight returned, C02 was standing in front of me. We were in a pitch-black space. No sky, no ground, nothing to get my bearings by.

"Now we can talk freely," she said with a smile. "This is a zone the outside can't detect. But it'll only hold for half an hour at most."

I still hadn't gotten over the shock.

"Just now, you and I..."

"Just a little kiss for Fawn, that's all."

She said it so calmly that I had no idea how to respond. For a few seconds I said nothing.

"Fine. Who are you, really?"

"Not so fast. I need to confirm who you are first." Her smile faded. "What were you trying to tell me at lunch?"

There was no point hiding anything now.

"I found a hidden door. Behind it there seemed to be a movie theater."

Her eyes lit up.

"Then I don't need to keep you in suspense either."

She tied her hair up in a high ponytail and gave her head a shake. All at once she looked far sharper.

"I'm an undercover agent sent by the Underground. My mission is to rescue the People undergoing treatment."

"The Underground? The organization that resists State Power?" It came out before I could think, and then I paused, as if I didn't quite understand what I had just said.

"That's right." As she spoke, she called up a floating control panel. "Have you remembered what State Power is yet?"

I shook my head.

"Then for now, all you need to know is that it's the system that runs this country."

She flicked rapidly between screens.

"The most important thing right now is finding the theater. Everything else can wait."

"What is the theater, exactly?"

"An emergency liaison post. A foothold the organization has planted in the network."

She reached out and swept a finger across the panel. A thin, dark red line stretched from her fingertip and wound its way through the darkness.

I recognized it at once. That gentle curve was the shoreline of the black-sand beach; those few sharp angles were the hills I had climbed; that violent tremor was the river I had waded through. It was the path the hummingbird had led me along.

But the line reached only as far as the cave, then broke off. All that remained of the rest was a few scattered points of light, flickering in the dark.

C02 stared at them, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper. "The theater is farther on."

She drew the broken line forward bit by bit with her finger. It bent, shrank back, then stretched out again, as if feeling its way along an invisible road.

"Why did you take me to the cave before?"

"The cave is where your data package was stored." She stared at the broken line and sighed. "Too bad State Power cut the process short. I went the long way around, and you still couldn't hold out even a minute."

"So you have my memories?"

"Yes and no." She frowned. "We have some data packages, but only you can unlock what's inside."

Before I could make sense of that, a blinking point of light lit up on the line her finger had traced.

C02 let out a breath of relief and closed the panel.

"Let's go."

We walked toward the light. All around us was still pitch black, but as we walked, I noticed the point of light always stayed about the same distance away. I stopped, but the darkness beneath my feet didn't. It kept flowing slowly to one side, carrying me forward, as if I were standing in an invisible river.

Without looking back, C02 grabbed my wrist. "Don't stop. It won't wait for us."

Along the way I told her everything: waking in the ICU, escaping the ward, getting into the People's Therapy Center.

At that, she looked up at me sharply. "You're sure you went to the hospital in your subconscious?"

"Of course. I was running around in there for ages."

"But the only door I opened for you was the hidden one."

I froze. "You didn't open any other door for me?"

"No."

Then who had opened that door just before my pursuers arrived?

I looked her in the eye. "Why did you open the hidden door for me?"

She avoided my gaze and said calmly, "I used to be a nurse. Once I cared for a patient who'd had a miscarriage. She told me she wanted to give the daughter who was never born a pet name. Fawn."

Some overlooked corners of my memory suddenly fell into place. That day, when my husband sat by my bed gripping my hand, the one who had silently watched us, whose face I could never recall, was a young nurse with black hair.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

"Maybe it's fate," she said with a smile.

"Why do you still have your memories?"

"Do you remember my first session?" she said.

Of course I did. That session had nearly killed her.

"My amnesia is real," she said. "It was just planned. A data package was implanted in my brain. The moment I connected to the treatment system, it unlocked by itself."

"Like how I found my name?"

She nodded. "Catching a little bird is no easy thing, you know."

I thought of how clumsily I had chased the fawn through the cave, and felt a pang of fellow feeling.

"But with all that commotion, how come they never sent you for a checkup?"

"By rights, they should have, long ago." She lowered her eyes. "The girl who died in her cell covered for me. Her mission was to poison this hospital's treatment system. Once she infected it, all my abnormal readings got logged as a new patient's stress response. That's also how I've been able to open up this space inside your subconscious."

So the likeness I had sensed between C02 and the girl who kept asking me where the windows were hadn't been my imagination after all.

"So the Underground wiped your memory first, then hid the key inside your head?" I asked.

"Yes. But that's nothing next to what State Power does," she said. "Every member of the People is forced into treatment at forty-five. To make you cooperate, they wipe your memory first, then hand you a reason for being treated."

"So I was never in a car accident?"

"Hard to say. Sometimes they make use of accidents that really happened."

I thought of the displays I'd seen in that enormous room. "On the container's panel outside, the screen said I'd been injected with thirteen sets. What does that mean?"

"Simply put, complete brainwashing," she said without looking up. "During treatment, the system injects thirty sets of special characters into your nerves. Together they form a cocoon that filters out any emotions and information deemed unnecessary."

"Unnecessary information?"

"Like the People's memories of Citizen life. Their envy of Citizens. Their discontent with reality. Any thought of resistance." She looked at me. "It makes you take your own memories out of context, so you keep only the interpretations that pass. In the end, you come to believe, quite naturally, that the world was always right."

A chill ran down my spine. "So I've already been nearly half filtered?"

"That was the plan," she said. "But when you unlocked the data package, it tore a hole in the cocoon. That's why your memories came back."

I thought of the agony in the cave that had nearly ripped my nerves apart. So that was what it felt like when the cocoon tore.

"But a hole can be patched. Once all thirty sets are done, the cocoon seals for good. After that, there's no turning back." She sighed, then went on. "Still, forced or not, whatever the method, people all seem to want their lives to be a little easier."

I fell silent.

She was right. For the People, treatment wasn't entirely a bad thing. If forgetting could ease the pain, if you could be happy just by not thinking, then why would anyone resist?

I looked around at the pitch-black space and suddenly felt it was no different from the world outside. Perhaps my husband had already been treated after failing the assessment. Perhaps I had been too. Even if I really did escape the hospital, what then? Join the Underground?

I didn't even know how much was left in me that could still be called a self.

"We're here."

C02 tapped the control panel, and a rift opened in the black space. Through it I could dimly make out rows of dark red seats, exactly like the theater I had fallen into before.

I started to step through, but C02 stopped me with an outstretched arm.

"Wait."

She pressed her palm against the edge of the rift. A stream of tiny symbols poured out from beneath her hand and raced along its outline. She brought up the panel and checked the symbols line by line against a set of characters she had stored long ago, her lips moving soundlessly.

"Lately, State Power has started forging liaison posts." She didn't look up. "They look exactly the same from outside, but whoever goes in never comes back out."

I held my breath and watched the symbols scroll past, line after line.

One second, two seconds...

A ring of soft green light lit up around the edge of the rift.

Only then did C02 let out a long breath. "It's real."

We went in and sat down in two seats at random.

The screen lit up. In the center was a huge line of white numbers:

06:42

The numbers ticked down, second by second.

"This place won't hold much longer," C02 said quietly.

After a burst of static, a steady male voice spoke: "My brave comrades, my fighters, welcome."

There was an excitement in his voice he could barely contain. "Though I'd like to exchange a few pleasantries, I can't wait to share the news of our victory. In the ten-odd days you've been undercover, the world has been turned upside down."

C02 and I exchanged a look.

"Just the day before yesterday, the Underground seized twelve of State Power's base stations. Today, we will destroy its communications satellite."

Victory had come so suddenly, yet I felt no joy at all. I turned and saw that C02's eyes were already brimming with tears.

"You must withdraw from the network at once, because all of this is about to cease to exist. In three hours, we will take over the hospital's network and set the People free!" The man could barely hold back his excitement.

C02 rose to her feet without thinking and saluted the screen.

The numbers on the screen ticked down to 02:15.

"Any questions?"

I raised my hand.

"When did the war start?"

"The day you were admitted." His voice turned grave. "Your car accident was no accident. It was a missile strike."

In my mind, a blurred image suddenly came into focus. I saw a missile falling from the sky. The blast threw up billowing smoke and swallowed the entire car.

At last I remembered what had happened that day.

"You were fleeing treatment at the time," the man went on. "That's why we noticed you, and why we chose you to be among the first rescued."

I sat frozen in my seat. So that was it.

But there was one more thing I had always wanted to know. "The girl who died in our ward. How did she really die?"

For a moment the screen was silent.

"Her cover was blown, and the system seized control of her during treatment." The man's voice dropped. "So as not to give away the plan for what comes next, she had no choice but to take her own life in her cell."

C02 bowed her head.

My throat tightened. So the girl who had died like a bird steeped in blood, poised for flight, had traded her life for all of this.

The numbers on the screen had ticked down to 00:19.

"We're almost out of time." The man spoke faster. "I sincerely invite you to join the Underground. If you haven't made up your mind yet, you can give me your answer once we've gotten you out."

I opened my mouth, but before I could answer, his voice rose again, rousing: "Comrades, see you in three hours."

00:00

The screen, the seats, the whole theater went dark in the same instant.

4

I sat in my cell and said nothing for a long time.

Once I got out, how was I supposed to go on living?

I looked over at C02's cell. She had already lain back down on her bed, apparently gathering her strength for what was to come. I looked at the others in the room, but could make out only blurred shapes through the frosted glass. They were evidently still lost in their own subconscious. I didn't know whether to envy them or pity them.

I don't know how much time had passed when a dull thud sounded in the room.

I looked up sharply. Two running cells had collided.

The patients inside didn't seem to notice at all. They went on drifting through their own subconscious.

I stared blankly at the two cells. "So they do collide after all..."

Before the words were out, there was another violent crash. This time the whole ward shook.

C02 sat up at once and looked at me.

I looked back at her and nodded.

The rescue had begun.

By the time the cell doors began opening one after another, the battle outside had been raging for twenty minutes.

C02 showed a side of herself entirely unlike her usual one. She immediately organized the other patients in the ward, directing everyone away from the crossfire and out through the emergency exits.

The hospital was choked with smoke, the walls pocked with bullet holes. The bodies of medical staff and Underground fighters lay strewn across the floor, and explosions sounded in the distance. I stumbled through the corridors with the crowd, so terrified by the shells and gunfire I could hardly speak.

At last we boarded an Underground armored transport. As the doors closed, that familiar male voice spoke again.

"Comrades, you've been through a great deal."

He shook hands with the patients one by one, telling them they were safe now, that there was no more need to be afraid.

Then he went up to C02 and shook her hand. "You took on a mission at a moment of crisis and lived up to every expectation! Thank you for all you've done for the organization. Now our fallen comrades can rest in peace."

"Secretary..." C02 gripped his hand, her eyes welling up again.

Finally he held out his hand to me. "Comrade, you and Comrade Hummingbird played an indispensable part in this operation. I hereby sincerely invite you to join the Underground!"

I looked at that hand. It was thick and broad, coarse-pored and heavily haired, covered in calluses and scratches.

Was I really ready?

But if I didn't take it, where else could I go? Back to my husband, back to that calm, dreary life, to go on swallowing my pride while the things in my life were taken from me one by one?

My job, my child, my memories. In the end, was anything truly mine?

Perhaps nothing. All of it would disappear sooner or later. Some of it was already gone.

I thought of the girl who had died like a bird steeped in blood, poised for flight. I thought of the child I never got the chance to call Fawn. I thought of my husband repeating "just two points short" over and over.

I thought of every person in that hospital who was called a "patient." Like me, each of them had once had a name.

The vehicle lurched, and the armored car drove out beyond the hospital walls. Outside the window, the once-bustling streets lay in ruins, full of smoke and fire and people running in every direction.

I turned to the Secretary, no longer hesitating.

I took that burning-hot hand. "I will."

The Secretary smiled and squeezed back hard.

"Good, that's wonderful! You're a decisive one, aren't you?" His tone grew much lighter. "I meant to extend the invitation back at the liaison post and give you time to think it over, but the line cut out so suddenly."

I froze and glanced at C02 without thinking. She was stunned too.

"But I remember," I said, turning to the Secretary, "you did say..."

"Say what?"

"That you invited me to join the Underground."

The carriage suddenly went quiet, save for the roar of the engine.

The smile on the Secretary's face slowly froze.

"The connection dropped before I could invite you," he said slowly. "Those words weren't mine."

"That's impossible. The liaison post was real!" C02's face went white. "Unless... someone in the middle was listening in..."

The Secretary snatched up his radio. "All vehicles, change course immediately! The plan has been compromised—"

Before he could finish, a blinding white flash lit up the road ahead.

The armored car in front of us was reduced to ash in an instant. Our vehicle swerved violently. I was flung against the side of the carriage, my hand nearly slipping out of his.

But the Secretary didn't let go. Instead he clamped down on my hand. "Comrade, the hardest hour is upon us!"

A second white flash came down.

Boom!

The shriek of tearing metal exploded in my ears, and the vehicle was split clean open. The ringing in my ears and the concussion left me unable to think. Freezing wind poured into the carriage, so sharp I could barely breathe.

I looked down at the hand still gripping mine. It was still burning hot, but it was no longer attached to anyone.

I screamed and flung it away.

C02 lay slumped across from me, pinned fast by the twisted carriage. She didn't panic or cry for help. She only gazed out at the fire filling the sky, her face calm.

She turned and looked at me, her face full of release. "Looks like this is the ending." Her voice was very soft, and the wind swallowed it almost at once.

She closed her eyes and said no more.

The armored car shook violently, then the blast wave of an explosion hurled it into the air.

The world spun.

I had escaped the hospital barely five minutes ago. Was it all really going to end here?

I closed my eyes.

In that instant I seemed to see a gray expanse, and at its far end, a glimmer like scattered diamonds.

The glimmer slowly stretched into shining star trails that wrapped around me, layer upon layer, until nothing was left of the world but white.

From matter, to concept, to code, to the very edge of mathematics. In the end, even mathematics disappeared.

Only nothingness remained.

...

I drifted awake.

Several medical staff were bustling around me, the data on the control panel changing constantly. I found myself lying inside an enormous container, my body too heavy to move.

Something familiar pressed against my back. There was a bump on the container's inner wall, digging into me.

I had felt this before, I was sure of it. I tried hard to remember, but no matter what I did, I couldn't.

"You're awake?" My doctor let out a long breath of relief.

"There were a few hiccups along the way, but the treatment was a success in the end. If we hadn't salvaged it, I'd probably be done for, hahaha."

"You've got some nerve saying that!" another doctor cut in impatiently. "Hurry up and wheel her out. One person's been hogging this thing forever, and there's a whole line waiting!"

My doctor gave a sheepish laugh. "Come on, I earned some credit this time, didn't I? If I hadn't opened the door for her right when I did and let her walk herself back, the line never would have connected so smoothly. This time, not a single one got away."

"You're the one who lost her in the first place. Hurry up!"

The container slowly opened.

I was settled into a hovering wheelchair and pushed into a sunlit corridor, my doctor walking alongside.

Sunlight fell on the gleaming floor, so bright I could hardly keep my eyes open. For some reason, the corridor seemed strangely familiar.

"Where am I?"

"You're back in the real world now," he explained with a smile. "Think about it. You should still remember what happened in the virtual world just now, but while you were there, you couldn't remember anything from this side."

I nodded vaguely. But my memories were already in pieces, and all I could recall were scattered images: a green forest, a black-sand beach, a blue cave, a dark red theater, and a girl's face...

"After all, you lived through a month in a single day," the doctor said. "Remembering this much is pretty good! Some people can't remember anything except that they went in."

I froze. "Only a day has passed?"

"More than a day," he corrected me. "The sun's almost up by now. Pulling an all-nighter is torture. I'm going to catch up on some sleep in a bit!"

With that, he stretched. Then he pushed open the door behind him. "Don't think so much. Your husband is waiting for you."

In the warm, amber-lit room beyond the door stood a man. It was my husband. He was much thinner than I remembered, but he still wore that gentle smile. He bent down and held me softly.

"Honey, how do you feel after the treatment?"

"Not bad." I leaned against him. "It doesn't hurt."

In fact, looking at his face, I had never felt so happy.

Just then, the doctor's terminal rang. He glanced at it and gave a resigned smile. "I've got a meeting to get to, so I'll leave you two alone."

He backed out of the room and quietly shut the door. A few faint grumbles drifted through it, probably complaints that now he wouldn't get his sleep after all.

My husband and I sat bathed in the morning light, nestled together in silence.

Everything in the past seemed to have drifted away. The war, the conspiracies, the memories, and the truth I had once longed so desperately to know, all of it now seemed distant and hazy.

It occurred to me that maybe I really didn't need to remember anything anymore.

Outside the window, a small dark red bird flew past, its feathers flashing with a metallic sheen in the sun.

I turned my head and watched it pass through the treetops, rise through layer after layer of cloud, and fly on to where my gaze could not follow.

Above the clouds there seemed to be a vast black shadow. It hung there in silence, as though it covered the whole sky.

I stared at it for a while.

For some reason, I had lost all interest in finding out what they were.

So I looked away and turned to my husband.

"Honey," I asked with a smile, "how shall we enjoy life from here?"