Once We Lived in Nanjing

"Yang! Want to go out for some fun? How about a walk?"

"No, I'm good. You guys go ahead."

Standing outside the firmly shut door, mom caught a glimpse of dad at the entrance and gave him a look: He's not going! And then the two of them happily went out.

Bai Yang confined himself in his room, having sat for two hours already. He propped his head up, motionlessly seated in his chair, with a time capsule on the desk in front of him. Its glossy stainless steel case stretched his face, making him look like an image in a distorting mirror.

He felt he had done something foolish.

Pressing his lips together, Bai Yang silently locked eyes with the distorted reflection of himself on the surface of the time capsule.

He had been convinced that BG4MSR was spouting nonsense, that drama queen was playing a prank on him, and that no form of time travel communication was possible—no matter how one looked at it, that seemed like the only reasonable explanation. Einstein and Mr. Maxwell would surely agree, and Bai Yang was ready to unwaveringly cling to this belief for a hundred years, yet Uncle Wang's visit today brought new doubts to him.

Wang Ning said he couldn't hear the voice of BG4MSR.

This didn't necessarily prove that BG4MSR really existed twenty years in the future, but it did indicate that the matter wasn't as simple as Bai Yang had thought.

The "Neighborhood Garden" plan had failed; the other side didn't receive the time capsule.

But it could be because he had dug the capsule up himself.

In other words, he had sabotaged his own plan.

— If Bai Yang's attempt was compared to a blind man feeling an elephant, then at this moment he vaguely started to comprehend the true form of this elephant named Time Slow Delivery.

That night, he turned off the lights, lay in bed, closed his eyes, and time flowed chaotically through the darkness, soundlessly rushing by. He was like a tiny person drowning, spinning in the silent torrent.

Bai Yang couldn't sleep.

He got up, connected the power, and turned on the radio.

The current time coordinate was October 5, 2019, at 22:33:43. It had been 4.4 million years since the birth of humanity, 360 million years since the first vertebrates walked on land, 4.6 billion years since the Earth formed, and 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang.

The spatial coordinates of this radio set were 118 degrees 49 minutes 53 seconds east longitude and 32 degrees 1 minute 54 seconds north latitude, located within the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, Laniakea Supercluster, the Local Group, the Milky Way Galaxy, on the Orion Arm, the Solar System's third terrestrial planet, on the Eurasian Continent of the People's Republic of China, Jiangsu Province, Nanjing City, Qinhuai District, in Bedroom 804 atop that old desk.

If there exists a super-civilization that transcends four-dimensional spacetime, it could find Bai Yang's Icom725 radio according to the coordinates above, but Poincaré recurrence is such a terrifying mathematical monster. It makes the universe feel like a videotape on infinite loop, and in the endlessly long past and the endlessly long future, Bai Yang sitting at his desk calling out might be the first or perhaps the trillionth quadrillionth...

When such a super-civilization pauses to think, tracing infinitely forward, they too would not find which among the Bai Yangs was the first to make the above choice.

When you gaze into the universe, it's already in a loop. The Big Bang has occurred a trillion times in the past, and it will happen a trillion times more in the future.

In the unfathomably long span of time, Bai Yang still has to stop that girl a trillion times, to repeat the same words a trillion times:

BG4MSR, I want to try one more time.

...

...

...

He's going to try again.

Once bitten, twice shy. This time, Bai Yang was smarter. He couldn't make the same mistake again. The last failure to send the Time Slow Delivery was because he dug it up himself, making Bai Yang realize—during the process of sending Time Slow Delivery, the biggest interference might come from himself.

Seeing that the National Day holiday has two more days left.

Two days is enough time for him to fiddle with this time capsule.

Bai Yang glared fiercely at the stainless steel capsule on the table: You just wait! I won't rest until I get to the bottom of this.

Stubbornness flares up, no one can talk him out of it, he must find the truth.

Time capsule: Blame me, why don't you?

Bai Yang decides to re-bury the time capsule—not in the same place, of course, because BG4MSR said she didn't find the capsule under the corridor's floor tiles. Assuming she's telling the truth, that would mean the capsule buried there will definitely go missing within the next twenty years and not end up in the other party's hands. Therefore, he needs to pick a different spot.

The last time he buried the time capsule, he picked four possible locations.

This time, for burying the time capsule, he'll randomly choose one from the remaining three spots.

This time, Bai Yang, following in Mr. Lu Xun's footsteps with carving "zuǎo" on the desk, first writes "Do not dig up!" on a piece of paper and then sticks it on his own desk.

He needs to constantly remind himself not to dig up the time capsule, no matter what happens, it mustn't be unearthed—not even if he's forced at gunpoint. Bai Yang swears a venomous oath in his heart: If I dig up the time capsule in the future, I'll write my name backwards! If I dig it up, from now on, the braised chicken I eat must all be with ginger! Any coin I drop must roll into the drain! Whenever my phone is out of battery, I must not find a power bank! Everything I buy from Taobao and Jingdong must be marked up by big data algorithms!

This oath is vicious.

After making ample mental preparations to ensure he won't tamper with the time capsule again, Bai Yang quietly slings the capsule and shovel on his back and goes downstairs.

The location he's chosen this time is beneath a rockery in the square's lawn within the residential area.

The night is deep and still, nearing two in the morning. Only a few windows in the residential buildings have lights on. Like a thief, Bai Yang sneaks across the light of the streetlamps with his bag.

He looks left and right for blind spots in the surveillance cameras, then dashes into the dense shrubs when the cameras are not focused on him.

Once he's in the bushes, the surveillance can't catch him.

Bai Yang sets the backpack down, hides in the shadow of the bushes, kneels on the lawn, and starts digging a hole. He first carefully digs up a piece of turf intact and sets it aside, so he can cover it back after he buries the time capsule, then he takes up the shovel to start digging the hole. The ground beneath the lawn is initially soft, but less than a foot down it starts to get hard. Inserting the shovel, he can clearly feel the hard stone underneath.

To completely cover the twenty-centimeter-long time capsule without making it easy for anyone to discover, the hole must be at least forty centimeters deep. Bai Yang uses the shovel to outline a circle of about ten-plus centimeters in diameter on the ground, then he digs down within the circle. When the hole reaches a depth of thirty centimeters, he then vertically tests fitting the time capsule to make sure it's suitable.

Bai Yang is working with great fervor when suddenly from the path outside the lawn, a gruff voice calls out:

"Who's there?"

That voice nearly scared the soul out of Bai Yang.

"Who's that? What are you doing?"

Following the voice are footsteps. Bai Yang looks up to see a bright beam of light from a flashlight sweeping over.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

Bai Yang breaks into a sweat.

Security!

He's alerted security!

He was so focused on digging that he didn't notice someone nearby!

The footsteps are getting closer. The patrolling security guard steps onto the lawn, and continues calling out.

"Is someone there? Come out, come out!"

Bai Yang has no time to clean up. In a rush, he stuffs the shovel into his bag and scuttles backward, away from the rockery. The time capsule is still in the hole as there's no time to retrieve it. At this point, he can't worry about that; being caught by security would be social death. Digging a hole in the residential area's lawn at the dead of night? He'd be all over Nanjing's local news tomorrow. Saving his own hide is the priority now.

Bai Yang beats a hasty retreat, glancing back to see that the security guard hasn't followed. His flashlight is shining on the edge of the rockery, clearly having spotted the hole and the time capsule.

At this moment, two words dominate Bai Yang's mind:

Fuck.

(Reviewers, don't randomly delete the content of my text!)