“Yang! Want to go out? Let’s take a walk?”
“No thanks, you guys go ahead.”
Mom stood outside the tightly closed door, hearing Bai Yang’s response, and exchanged a glance with Dad at the entrance: He’s not coming!
Then the two happily went out.
Bai Yang had shut himself in his room, sitting motionless for two hours with his head propped up in his chair. On the desk in front of him sat the time capsule, its smooth stainless steel surface stretching his reflection like a funhouse mirror.
He felt he had done something stupid.
Bai Yang pressed his lips together, silently staring at his distorted reflection on the time capsule’s surface.
He had originally convinced himself that BG4MSR was talking nonsense, that drama queen sister was just pranking him, and there couldn’t possibly be any cross-temporal communication—from any angle, this was the only reasonable explanation, Einstein and Mr. Maxwell would surely agree with this view. Bai Yang had been ready to hold firmly to this belief for a hundred years without wavering, but Uncle Wang’s visit today made him hesitate again.
Wang Ning said he couldn’t hear BG4MSR’s voice.
This didn’t necessarily prove that BG4MSR lived twenty years in the future, but it showed that this matter wasn’t as simple as Bai Yang had thought.
The “Community Garden” plan had failed; the other party hadn’t received the time capsule.
But the reason might be because he had dug up the capsule himself.
In other words, he had single-handedly destroyed his plan.
—If Bai Yang’s attempt was like a blind man touching an elephant, only now was he starting to faintly grasp the true form of this time-delivery elephant.
That night, lying in bed with the lights off and eyes closed, time rushed past in the darkness like turbulent water, silent but fierce. He was like a drowning figure, spinning in the quiet torrent.
Bai Yang couldn’t sleep.
He got up, plugged in the power, and turned on the radio.
At this moment, the time coordinates were 22:33:43 on October 5, 2019, CE, 4.4 million years since human emergence, 360 million years since the first vertebrate crawled onto land, 4.6 billion years since Earth’s formation, and 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang.
The radio’s spatial coordinates were 118°49’53” East longitude, 32°1’54” North latitude, located on that old desk in bedroom 804 in Qinhuai District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China, on the Eurasian continent of the third terrestrial planet in the Solar System on the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Local Group of the Laniakea Supercluster in the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex.
If there existed a super-civilization transcending four-dimensional spacetime, it could locate Bai Yang’s Icom725 using these coordinates, but Poincaré recurrence is such a terrifying mathematical monster that it makes the universe like an infinitely looping videotape. In the infinitely long past and infinitely long future, the Bai Yang sitting at the desk calling out now might be the first, or he might be the one-trillion-trillion-trillion-trillion-trillion-trillion-trillionth.
When the super-civilization pauses to think and traces infinitely backward, even it cannot find which Bai Yang was the first to make the above choice.
When you gaze into the universe, it’s already on repeat—the Big Bang has happened a trillion times in the past and will happen a trillion more times in the future.
In the infinitely long timeline, Bai Yang will stop that girl another trillion times, saying the same words a trillion times:
BG4MSR, I want to try again.
He wanted to try again.
Learn from your mistakes—this time Bai Yang was smarter. He couldn’t fall into the same pit twice. The last time-delivery failed because he dug it up himself, making him realize—during the process of sending a time-delivery, the biggest interference might come from himself.
Looking at the National Day holiday calendar, there were still two days left.
Two days was enough time for him to mess with this time capsule.
Bai Yang glared fiercely at the stainless steel capsule on the desk: Just wait! I won’t rest until I figure this out.
His stubborn streak had kicked in—nobody could stop him now. He was determined to find the truth.
Time Capsule: Blame me?
Bai Yang decided to bury the time capsule again—certainly not in the original spot, because BG4MSR said she hadn’t found the time capsule under the corridor tiles. Assuming she was telling the truth, it meant that in the next twenty years, the time capsule buried there would be lost and wouldn’t reach her, so he had to change locations.
The last time he buried the time capsule, he had chosen four potential spots.
This time, he would randomly select one from the remaining three locations.
This time, imitating Mr. Lu Xun carving the character for “early” on his desk, Bai Yang first wrote “DO NOT DIG UP!” on paper and stuck it to his desk.
He wanted to remind himself constantly: don’t dig up the time capsule, no matter what happens, don’t dig it up, even if someone holds a gun to his head, don’t dig it up. Bai Yang swore in his heart: if I dig up the time capsule in the future, I’ll write my name backward! If I dig up the time capsule, all my future braised chicken will be full of ginger! Every coin I drop will roll into a drain! When my phone dies, I’ll never find a power bank! Every purchase on Taobao and JD will be price-discriminated by big data!
That was a harsh oath.
After thoroughly preparing himself mentally to ensure he definitely wouldn’t touch the time capsule again, Bai Yang quietly shouldered the capsule and shovel and went downstairs.
This time, the chosen location was under the rock garden on the community square lawn.
In the dead of night, almost 2 AM, only a few windows in the residential buildings still had lights on. Bai Yang sneaked through the streetlight’s glow like a thief.
He looked left and right searching for surveillance camera blind spots, then darted into the thick shrubbery when the cameras weren’t watching.
Once in the bushes, the cameras couldn’t see him.
Bai Yang put down his backpack, hiding in the shadows of the shrubs, kneeling on the lawn to start digging. He first carefully cut out an intact piece of turf and set it aside—he’d need to replace it later to restore the appearance after burying the time capsule. Then he started digging with the shovel. The soil just below the grass was relatively soft but less than a hand’s depth down it began to harden. When the shovel was forced in, he could feel the hard rocks.
To completely bury the twenty-centimeter-long time capsule without it being easily discovered, the hole needed to be at least forty centimeters deep. Bai Yang first traced a circle about ten centimeters in diameter with the shovel, then dug down inside the circle. At thirty centimeters deep, he tried inserting the time capsule vertically to check if it fits.
Bai Yang was working with intense focus when suddenly a gruff voice came from the path beyond the lawn:
“Who’s there?”
That shout nearly scared Bai Yang’s soul right out of his body.
“Who’s there? What are you doing?”
Footsteps followed immediately. Bai Yang looked up to see the bright beam of a flashlight sweeping over.
Holy shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!
Bai Yang broke into a cold sweat.
Security guard!
He’d alerted security!
He’d been so focused on digging that he hadn’t noticed anyone nearby!
The footsteps were approaching as the night patrol guard stepped onto the lawn, continuing to call out.
“Is someone there? Come out, come out!”
Bai Yang had no time to clean up. He frantically stuffed the shovel into his bag and backed away from the rock garden, leaving the time capsule in the hole without time to retrieve it. At this point he couldn’t worry about that—if the guard caught him he’d die of shame. Digging holes in the community lawn at three in the morning, he’d make the local Nanjing news tomorrow. Saving face was the priority.
Bai Yang made a hasty escape. Looking back once, he saw the guard hadn’t pursued—his flashlight beam had stopped at the rock garden, apparently discovering the hole and time capsule.
At this moment, Bai Yang had only two words in his mind:
Holy shit.