Time Capsule
Zhang Qiang was the chosen one. Not because he was handsome, nor because he was talented. It was purely because he was ordinary enough, a regular office worker in Beijing for five years, over thirty, unmarried, and unable to snag a ticket home for the Chinese New Year.
The Spring Festival Gala directing team had launched a "time capsule" project, claiming to select fragments of ordinary people's lives, package them into data streams, and project them onto the future Spring Festival Gala stage, so that future audiences could see "us" and understand "us." Zhang Qiang found it intriguing, so he signed up.
He was placed in a transparent glass room, which contained only a table, a chair, and a white capsule that looked like a large egg. He was told that he needed to stay here for an hour, doing anything he wanted, and then the capsule would automatically record his life fragment.
He hesitated for a moment, took out his phone from his pocket, opened Taobao, and aimlessly browsed for New Year goods. He clicked on a "New Year's Eve dinner set," compared the prices for a long time, and then silently closed it. He sighed and glanced at the time, fifty minutes remaining.
He started to feel anxious and paced around the glass room. He felt like an animal caged, watched by a group of invisible eyes. He thought of his parents back home, they must have started preparing for the New Year's Eve dinner, right? He took out his phone, found his parents' photos, looked at them again and again, and finally put the phone back into his pocket.
He walked to the "egg," and curiously touched it. The cold touch made him feel a little uncomfortable. It suddenly occurred to him, if he opened WeChat now and sent his parents a red envelope, would they receive it?
He took out his phone, opened WeChat, hesitated for a moment, but ultimately chose to give up. He threw his phone on the table and simply lay down on the ground, looking up at the glass room's ceiling. The ceiling shimmered with a faint light, like countless eyes staring at him.
Suddenly, he felt a slight vibration, and then, the lights in the room started flickering. He quickly got up from the ground and looked at the "egg" before him. A crack appeared on the surface of the "egg," slowly opening to reveal a hollow space.
He was curious and a little scared. He cautiously walked closer and looked inside.
He saw himself.
He saw the scene of himself lying on the ground just now, exactly the same, including his posture, even the anxiety on his face was clearly visible.
He was stunned, not knowing how to react for a moment. He rubbed his eyes to confirm he hadn't seen wrong.
"This is... my memory?" he muttered to himself.
He stuck his head into the opening of the "egg," wanting to see more clearly. Suddenly, a suction pulled him in.
His vision went dark. When it returned to light, he found himself in front of a giant screen. The screen displayed countless "time capsules" like his own, each containing a person doing various things, some were scrolling on their phones, some were eating instant noodles, some were in a daze.
Subtitles rolled at the bottom of the screen: "This is our past, this is the ordinary we choose to forget. Thank you for your contributions, in the future, we will learn from this."
He saw that the date on the screen was 2075. He turned around abruptly and found a group of people in silver uniforms standing around him, looking at the screen expressionlessly.
A man in a blue uniform stepped forward and politely said, "Hello, experimental subject number 20250128-001, welcome to the future."
He looked at this man, feeling both familiar and strange. He asked, "Why is this happening? Shouldn't I be in the glass room for an hour?"
The man smiled and said, "Time, in a time capsule, is just a concept that can be manipulated at will."
Zhang Qiang felt a wave of dizziness. He thought of his parents, of the New Year goods he couldn't buy, of those ordinary days he could never go back to.
He understood that he wasn't chosen, but filtered. He wasn't being recorded, but forgotten. He wasn't a participant, but an exhibit.
He stood there, looking at the countless versions of himself on the screen, and at the future, feeling a deep sense of helplessness and absurdity.
He thought, perhaps, this is the true meaning of the Spring Festival Gala.