Old Wang felt like he was about to merge with his electric scooter, not in that cool Transformers kind of way, but more like a puddle of melted asphalt, sticky and grimy, clinging to the city's skin. He was a delivery driver, one crowned with the title "God of Bad Reviews." This wasn't a crown he chose; it was forced upon him by the algorithm, that formless, colorless digital phantom said to be impartial and just.
Liu Mingde recently took on a job with a generous salary and easy work – "playing" a detainee.
Zhang Qiang sat blankly in front of his computer for an entire day. On the screen was his father's WeChat profile picture - a gray, empty space.
Three months ago, his father passed away. A sudden cerebral hemorrhage took away the quiet old man, and also took away one of the few sources of warmth in Zhang Qiang's life.
Old Liu's grocery store was located in the east end of town and had been open for decades. It wasn't a big store, selling things like needles and thread, soy sauce and vinegar, and also collecting utility bills. His most prominent trait was being stingy; he wouldn't turn on the lights if he could avoid it, saying he could save a little money.
Li Ming felt like an ant trapped in a giant gear. Every morning at 7:30 am sharp, he would wake up, squeeze onto the crowded subway, and then begin his unchanging workday. His job was to review the answers of the artificial intelligence, DeepSeek, ensuring they aligned with the company's values. Li Ming always found this work a bit absurd—having a human review an AI’s answers was like having an elementary school student grade a university professor's thesis, but this was what he needed to do.
Old Li, a diligent programmer at his company, had recently felt like a wind-up toy, repeating the same code, the same routes, and even the same coffee-drinking posture every day. But this year's Start of Spring was a little different. The company issued a notice that, in response to the "dodge spring" initiative, all employees would have a day off.
Old Li didn't quite understand what "dodging spring" meant at first. Later, through various push articles and WeChat groups, he gradually realized that dodging spring was to avoid clashing with "spring" on the day of the Start of Spring, which was said to ward off evil and eliminate disasters. Although Old Li found it a bit superstitious, the company had requested it, and he couldn't do much about it.
Old Wang is a projectionist at Happiness Cinema. He loves his job. Although he repeats the same actions every day, he feels like he's guarding the entrances to stories. Recently, the cinema has been showing "Ne Zha 2," which has been incredibly popular, with screenings packed so tightly it's almost absurd—a show every ten minutes. This means he has to spin like a top, but Old Wang remains conscientious, like a precision instrument.
This day, Old Wang was repeating his work, pressing the play button, waiting for the movie to end, and then immediately cutting it off to prepare for the next showing. But just as he pressed the stop button, a strange image appeared on the screen: not the usual credits, but a black background with a line of text in white pixel font: "What you deleted is our memories."
Old Wang woke up to the piercing shriek of his alarm clock, or rather, he was startled awake. It was five in the morning, the world outside was still a blur, with the only indication that it was the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, the big day for welcoming the God of Wealth, coming from the intermittent sounds of firecrackers in the neighborhood. Old Wang turned over and pulled out the golden ingot he had prepared beforehand from the head of the bed—a plastic one, but shiny enough to be deceiving.
He lived in an old single apartment. It wasn't large, and the furnishings were simple, but a table in the center of the room stood out. It was a specially customized "God of Wealth Altar," made of mahogany and finely crafted, with images of five different Gods of Wealth on it. The incense burner was filled with incense sticks, and the smoke filled the room, making it somewhat choking.
The air in the cabin, as if the oxygen had been sucked out, became dull and oppressive. Li Ming sat by the window, trying to look like a calm traveler. The small, red, crumpled thing in his hand, like a hot potato, made him restless.
It was nothing else but a firecracker, a firecracker that had clearly been lit, with only some paper scraps and charred marks left. It lay quietly in Li Ming's palm, like a time bomb that would detonate fear.
Old Wang was randomly assigned to the dumpling-making session at the annual party. He rubbed his hands, looking at the various colored dumpling fillings in front of him, feeling like an elementary school student attending a handicraft class. The theme of the annual party was "Technology Empowerment," and even making dumplings had to be tech-savvy—each filling was associated with a QR code, and you had to scan the code to know what the filling was.
Old Wang picked up a ball of meat filling with a small QR code attached. He took out his phone, aimed it at the QR code, and with a "beep," a word popped up on the screen: "A17 Data Stream."