AUS Chapter 2: I Want to See Liu Jiang!

If I had to pinpoint a starting point, it would probably be the news broadcast that morning.

I was driving to work that day. I had been working in Beijing for two years at that point, still hadn’t bought a place, and was renting an apartment in Shahe while my office was in Haidian. Every morning, I’d get up early to drive, stuck in traffic that couldn’t get any worse. So, I turned on the car radio for the news, but that morning’s broadcast lacked the usual lighthearted tone.

“…The recorded data shows the largest tidal shift in fifty years, which may trigger observable changes in tidal patterns. Meanwhile, meteorological observations from various regions indicate that extreme disaster weather is expected in the near future…”

I didn’t like starting my day with negative news, so I switched channels a few times.

“…Our country is urgently recalling citizens abroad to prepare for potential anomalies…”

“…Authorities are urging residents not to drive, not to panic or hoard supplies blindly, and to await unified instructions from relevant departments. Please remain calm…”

I turned off the stereo, baffled by why they were airing such bizarre news.

When I reached the parking lot, I got out of the car and looked into the distance. The sky was a bit overcast. The company building looked the same as always. I swiped my card to enter, grabbed a coffee, sat at my desk, and opened my computer, only to receive a phone call.

For a fleeting moment, I thought it might be Liu Jiang. After all, if something weird was happening, he’d be the first to call me.

But it was my mom.

It was chaotic on her end, and her tone was frantic. “Hurry up and take leave! Take leave and drive to every supermarket nearby to buy daily necessities, food, water—buy whatever you see! Your dad and I are stuck in traffic and can’t move. People are saying it’s gone crazy in Changping, everyone’s hoarding!”

I found it odd that she’d heard such strange rumors. I stood up, walked to the window to take the call and get some air, and when I looked out, I saw a line of cars stretching to the horizon. The sky had grown even darker than earlier—not just overcast, but a vivid orange, like apocalyptic sand.

I turned back to the office and realized the entire floor was nearly empty.

That’s when it hit me: the end of the world didn’t come crashing down like in sci-fi movies. It was like an underground vein of fire, burning silently for decades, waiting for the day humanity noticed, only to reap the consequences.

I joined the hoarding frenzy too. I’d never seen anything more like hell. When I returned to the parking lot, I found my tires slashed—probably someone’s petty revenge for not getting to vent their frustration. I walked over ten kilometers to my parents’ place, only to find my dad with a bloody head from a fight over supplies. Thankfully, the wound wasn’t deep, and the bleeding stopped quickly.

After settling them down, I thought of Liu Jiang again.

The last time he called me was two years ago. That day, I was at a department dinner when he called, saying he had something to tell me and that I absolutely had to wait for him.

I brushed him off with a couple of vague replies and hung up, not waiting for him to reach out again. At first, I thought I’d done something to upset him, and he was playing another one of his cold war games. So, I didn’t bother with him, figuring he’d come around when he was ready.

But I ended up waiting for over a year.

In that year, he didn’t say a single word to me. By the end of that year, I couldn’t take it anymore. On New Year’s Day, I sent him a forwarded New Year’s greeting, the kind that looks like a mass text.

He didn’t reply. His social media hadn’t been updated, and no one around me mentioned him. A complete ghost.

During a long holiday, I went back to Liancheng, his hometown, and even made a point to visit the place where he used to live. The old alley hadn’t been demolished yet, but just looking at the windows, I could tell he didn’t live there anymore. I asked the auntie at the convenience store downstairs, and she actually knew Liu Jiang.

She said the elderly folks in that family had passed away a few years ago, and the whole family moved out after that. I asked if she knew where they’d gone, and she shook her head, then asked me, “You’re so concerned—why don’t you just ask him yourself?”

I wished I could.

I opened my phone and sent another message to his WeChat, which hadn’t responded in two years. I turned on the TV, and the news was reporting the same things I’d heard that morning.

Back then, I still held a sliver of hope. I thought it was probably just a man-made disaster, that order would be restored soon, and we’d quickly return to the lives we were living just yesterday.

But that didn’t happen.

When I was wrapped in a survival blanket, heading to the relief point to collect supplies, I finally realized: the end of the world had come.

During that time, residential areas began rationing water and electricity on a schedule. When there was no power, I’d sit in the living room, looking outside. My parents’ place was in a great location—you could see the Olympic Tower in Chaoyang District with the naked eye, and at night, you could see its lights. But now, even on clear days, I couldn’t see it anymore. There were no truly clear days, only times when visibility was slightly better. That’s when we’d head out early to line up for supplies: compressed biscuits, distilled water, and vitamin tablets, distributed per person.

Later, seats in the shelters started being sold.

If the hoarding frenzy was hell, the shelter era was hell within hell.

Theft, fraud, robbery, escape—these were common occurrences. From overseas news on the radio, I learned that many third-world countries had descended into anarchy.

Shelter seats were limited, with residency rights distributed by government lottery. Despite repeated radio announcements urging people to wait for official updates, some individuals claimed to have shelter seats and offered them for exorbitant prices.

When the final results were announced, my family drew two spots.

I decided to stay outside. My mom threw a fit, crying and yelling, insisting on finding her so-called reliable middleman to buy more seats.

In the end, the money was spent, but no extra spots were secured. The night before the shelter opened, she and my dad refused to leave.

What did I say to convince them to go?

Maybe I said I’d heard reliable information that if those with seats arrived on time, the government would open passages for remaining family members as soon as possible.

Or maybe I said money was worthless now, that spending it made no difference, and that I had enough supplies to survive.

In any case, they left, leaving me alone in a house where opening the curtains revealed a blood-red sky.

Why did I want to stay behind?

Perhaps a faint, misplaced sense of responsibility and mission suddenly surfaced in my mind. I didn’t want to just give in to reality. I wanted to return to my old life. I wanted to live normally again.

And at that moment, I thought of Liu Jiang again.

He might be out there, somewhere in the world, living a life as desperate as mine. So I should stay outside, because maybe one day I’d see him.

Or perhaps he was among the millions migrating to the shelters. Then I should definitely stay outside, because the day he walked out, I might see him.

Later, I started to think staying outside was probably the right choice.

After the mass migration to the shelters, conflicts among the humans left on the surface seemed to lessen. Even nature seemed to give humanity a break. In the years that followed, I even saw a few sunny days.

I heard life in the shelters wasn’t bad. The survivors seemed to have stepped into a utopia straight out of sci-fi novels, wearing standardized shelter-issued clothing, living in uniform cubicles, and receiving supplies based on labor.

People inside could communicate with the outside world once a month. That’s how I pieced together this information, and you can imagine how long it took to gather it all.

During this time, my first decision was to move back to the apartment I’d been renting before the disaster.

I couldn’t reach the landlord, and there was nowhere to send the rent I’d prepared. Perhaps rent itself no longer mattered. I set up some wires, connected the house to a backup generator, and finally had light outside of rationed power hours.

I also modified the rooftop water storage equipment, creating a water storage system. The filtration and purification setup took a lot of effort. To figure out how it worked, I made several trips to the city library, assuming it would be abandoned and that I should take books, leave tokens, and return them later, like a guardian of human civilization.

To my surprise, there was still someone there. He was wearing the usual librarian uniform, sitting at the service desk near the exit.

I handed him the books I’d selected. He logged them into the system, stamped them, and handed them back. This routine, so ordinary before the disaster, now shone brightly under today’s crimson sky.

The next day, I made a decision. I dug through my closet and found pre-disaster dress pants and a turtleneck. I was going to start going back to work.

I headed out, braving the sandstorm to the subway station. I planned to take the underground passage as a shortcut, only to discover one line was still running. There was even an employee at the ticket booth. Seeing me waiting on the platform, he came over to explain that there was only one train now, so it would be slow.

Like when I met the librarian, I felt that meeting someone else who’d stayed behind in this apocalypse warranted at least a brief chat. But we acted as if we’d met in peacetime: he explained what was necessary, and we each returned to our posts.

I wasn’t complaining. I was just marveling. It was rare—we were still dreaming of returning to the past.

The subway took nearly an hour to reach the company. The building had no security, the doors weren’t locked, and my employee card still worked at the gate. I stood in front of the facial recognition machine at the entrance.

It beeped, then began its voice prompt: “Clock-in successful. Friendly reminder: Mr. Yang, you have been absent for three hundred and ninety-seven days. Please contact the HR department promptly to avoid impacting your performance evaluation.”

Everything except “three hundred and ninety-seven” was in a human-like tone; only the number was robotic. This usually dull and jarring voice prompt made me pause for a second, then burst into laughter until I could barely breathe.

Laughing and laughing, tears started streaming down my face, but I couldn’t stop. Still laughing, I made it to my desk, which was covered in a thick layer of dust.

The company still had electricity and, surprisingly, running water. I grabbed a bucket from the janitor’s closet, rolled up my sleeves, and spent the morning wiping down half the floor from south to north. But then I hit a practical problem: where was I going to eat lunch?

Following muscle memory, I went to the cafeteria, not expecting to see anyone there.

It turned out one food stall was still operating. I wasn’t the only one who’d returned to work in this building, and this stall was run by some of them. They’d started a vegetable garden on the rooftop, and meat and staples came from pre-disaster stocks.

The menu was, of course, limited compared to before, but I ate with satisfaction. After lunch, I placed my tray in the return area and decided to finish cleaning the rest of my desk.

From that day on, I went back to working at the company, just like before.

In the mornings, I took the subway to the office, clocked in, ate lunch at the only stall, worked after a lunch break, and left before dark, taking the rattling subway back home.

Gradually, my life started to become routine again.

I discovered there were still people living on the surface in this city, people like me who wanted to keep living their pre-disaster lives. Though the world was in chaos, we held on to our old habits.

Occasionally, I’d see restaurants still open on the streets. There were vendors selling homegrown apples in the underground passages. Later, the city’s museum even reopened.

And I restarted the company’s pre-disaster project—a holographic simulation of scenes from the user’s memories.

We didn’t use traditional VR and sensor setups. Instead, we used brainwave connections for simulation. This technology required no additional equipment beyond a headset, allowing users to truly immerse themselves: hearing sounds, touching objects, smelling flowers, tasting food, and achieving a literal “what you see is what you get” experience…

Doesn’t that sound like something you’d read in a game’s promotional pamphlet?

You’re right—I copied it from the pamphlet.

Before the game’s beta version went live, I tested it a few times. Though I could only experience a small, pre-set portion of the map, it was true: I could see, touch, smell, and hear clearly.

My next step was to keep pushing this project forward.

It might sound impossible for one person to handle the entire peripheral function development, packaging, testing, and launch. But thankfully, this was a major company, and my former colleagues were reliable. In the database for the unreleased project, I found usable code they’d left behind.

For a long time after that, I worked alone in an empty cubicle, coding, testing, fixing, and retesting. From day to evening, through acid-rain-soaked overcast days and dust-storm-filled tempests, I encountered bandit gangs on my way to the office, a nature-revelation cult trying to recruit me, massive subway power outages, and even a wild deer charging into the building.

It seemed that without humans, this planet was being reclaimed by nature.

But we were still holding on.

I want to say—but don’t dare—that I persisted in finishing this project just to go back and take one more look at the past.

I still wanted to see Liu Jiang.

Finally, in my second year of returning to work, our project reached a stage where it could go live. I remember we’d come up with names during the beta phase, but none were finalized. The product team’s suggestions were all grandiose—Holographic, Cross-Century, Future World.

But my dream was simple, so I named it the As Usual Plan.

To experience sunshine and clear skies as usual—that was my dream. Of course, seeing Liu Jiang would be even better.

I picked a good day and arrived at the company early. The testing room for the As Usual Plan was a conference room. I sat on a low stool in the middle of the servers, putting on the headset for the holographic simulation.

The servers started, and I smelled the familiar scent of motors and dust. Then I plunged into the abyss of the virtual world.

I felt like I was standing still with my eyes closed until a mechanical male voice woke me:

“Greetings, tester. Please look around when you’re ready to test limb movement coordination and sensory real-time response. Please take your time. The system will wait until you’re ready to proceed with further simulation.”

Oh, this must be the so-called intelligent assistance system I’d found in the files.

I slowly opened my eyes, and a springtime scene rushed into my view.

I was standing on the day I first met Liu Jiang, on that springtime hill, with grass fluff swirling and willows swaying. In front of me was a church that looked strikingly like the school’s gate.

Maybe because I’d been in the apocalypse too long, the spring before me seemed almost too vibrant, though still within an acceptable range.

I did it.

The As Usual Plan succeeded!

At the church’s entrance, the man dressed as a priest bowed to me again. He asked, “Are you here to seek the truth of God’s love for the world?”

I opened my mouth, and it worked, so I said, “I’m not looking for that nonsense.”

He reacted to my words, his expression slightly shocked but still calm and courteous.

But I wasn’t calm or courteous. I said, “You’re just an NPC. What’s the point of talking to you about this?”

Politeness matters in the real world, not in a virtual one.

With that, I turned and headed down the hill.

Looking back, I think my words to the priest were partly me venting. I was pouring out everything I’d been through in my thousand days on an apocalyptic Earth, as well as the clamor in my mind at that moment.

My brain was screaming at me nonstop—I was going to see Liu Jiang.