In 2046, I stood in front of what used to be a Dicos restaurant. Now, it's an unmanned convenience store selling pre-made meals. The cold, robotic arms waved under the dim lights, resembling the opening scene of some apocalyptic movie.
I found out on a Tuesday afternoon. On the radio, an announcer read the news in a flat tone: Wannian County, Jiangxi, would no longer be hiring English teachers starting in 2025. I was making coffee, and the hissing of the boiling water mixed with the announcer's voice, like some kind of old jazz.
I put down the moka pot and went to the window. Outside, the rain was relentless. The gray sky was like a giant, damp old newspaper, the words on it blurred. I thought of my English teacher, a middle-aged man who liked to wear plaid shirts and gold-rimmed glasses. He always played Beatles songs during breaks. He said they were memories of his youth. And now, English, along with those songs, seemed to be disappearing from this small county.
Old Zhang has been feeling a bit troubled lately.
It's not because of anything in particular, it's just that he feels like he can't understand the world anymore.
Lao Li has been feeling very uneasy lately.
I heard this story in a jazz bar.
That night, Tokyo was experiencing a dense rain, like some invisible, viscous substance threatening to devour the entire city. I sat alone in a corner of the bar, nursing an excessively expensive whiskey. The ice cubes swirled slowly in the amber liquid, like time itself, melting away silently.
I felt the earthquake at 3:17 PM.
At that time, I was sitting at my computer, trying to finish the ending of my novel. Outside the window was the uniquely gloomy sky of Chengdu, like a gray towel soaked with water, pressing down heavily. The air was filled with the mixed smell of hot pot base and damp earth, the familiar scent of Chengdu.
Lin Chenxi stared at his badge, his brow furrowed.
The blue badge, once a symbol of glory and status, was now becoming transparent at a visible rate. A week ago, it was only slightly blurred around the edges, as if lightly erased by an eraser. Now, the company logo in the center was so faint that it was almost invisible, leaving only the name and employee number barely legible.
This world, it's getting harder and harder to understand.
It's 2045, a year shrouded in both smog and information cocoons.
I'm sitting in my cramped rental room, refreshing the job website for the Nth time. On the page, titles like "Senior Short Video Emotional Blogger," "AI Mood Regulator," and "Metaverse Virtual Asset Appraiser"... these glamorous positions are like soap bubbles, shimmering under the screen's blue light, only to quickly burst.
Li Mei stared at the bright red numbers on her phone screen: 2000.00. Not a loss, but a profit. On her very first day of trading gold, she had made two thousand yuan. This should have been a moment of celebration, but instead, a secret fear, like a vine, wrapped itself around her heart.
She remembered Old Zhang's warning from work: "Nothing good comes for free. Money that comes this easily is probably dirty." Old Zhang was known at work as a "stick-in-the-mud," always clutching a yellowed copy of Das Kapital and skeptical of everything new. Li Mei had initially scoffed at his words, but now they felt like needles, pricking her with anxiety.