The Senior Official waved away Song Cheng, then leaned against the back of the chair. He exhaled, slowly, subsumed in a sense of relief and release.
After Song Cheng left, the clock struck six. Bai Bing entered the office on the dot, carrying the briefcase that contained the digital mirror of history and reality.
The Senior Official invited him to sit. Looking at the superstring computer resting on the table, he said, “Young man, I have something to ask of you: May I see my own life in the digital mirror?”
“Of course you can, no problem!” Bai Bing said, opening the briefcase and booting up the computer. He opened the digital mirror software, then set the time to the present and the location to the office. The two occupants appeared in real time on the screen. Bai Bing selected the Senior Official, right-clicked, and activated the tracking capability.
The image onscreen began to change rapidly, so rapidly that the whole image window filled with a blur. But the Senior Official, as the subject of the search, remained in the middle of the screen the entire time, steady like the center of the world. He was flickering rapidly, too, but the figure was discernibly becoming younger. “This is a reverse chronology tracking search. The image recognition software can’t use your current form to identify younger versions of you, so it has to track you step by step through your age-related changes to find the beginning.”
Several minutes later, the screen stopped flashing through time, now displaying a newborn baby’s slick, wet face. The maternity ward nurse had just removed him from the scale. The little creature didn’t laugh or scream; his eyes were open and charming, taking stock of the new world around him.
The Senior Official chuckled. “That’s me, all right. My mother always told me that I opened my eyes as soon as I was born,” the Senior Official said, smiling. He was clearly feigning lightheartedness to conceal the breach in his calm; this time, unlike many other times, he wasn’t particularly successful.
“Look here, sir,” Bai Bing said, pointing to a menu bar below the image. “These buttons let you zoom and change angles. This is the time slider bar. The digital mirror program will continue to move forward in time following you as the search object. If you want to find a particular time or event, it’s not that different from how you’d use the scrollbar to look up things in a large document in a word processor. First find the approximate location with large steps through time, then make smaller adjustments, moving the slider left or right based on scenes you recognize. You should be able to find it. It’s also similar to the fast-forward and rewind functions on a DVD player, although, of course, this disk playing at normal speed would take—”
“I believe nearly five hundred thousand hours,” said the Senior Official, doing the mental math for Bai Bing. He accepted the mouse and zoomed out, revealing the young mother on the maternity bed, and the rest of the hospital room. There were a bedside table and lamp in the plain style of that era, and a window with a wooden frame. What caught his attention was a spot of red-orange light on the wall. “I was born in the evening, about the same time as now. Perhaps this is the last ray of the setting sun.”
The Senior Official shifted the time slider, and the image again began to jump rapidly. Time flew past. When he stopped, the screen showed a small circular table lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. At the table, his plainly dressed, bespectacled mother was tutoring four children. An even younger child of three or four, clearly the Senior Official himself, was clumsily feeding himself from a small wooden bowl. “My mother was an elementary school teacher. She liked to bring the students having trouble with schoolwork back home for tutoring. That way, she could pick me up from nursery school on time.” The Senior Official watched for a while. His child self accidentally spilled the bowl of porridge all over himself. His mother hurriedly got up, reaching for a towel. Only then did the Senior Official move the time slider.
Time skipped forward a few years. The screen suddenly lit up in a blaze of red, apparently the mouth of a blast furnace. Several workers in dirty asbestos work suits were moving, their silhouettes flickering in and out of the furnace flames. The Senior Official pointed to one of the figures. “That’s my father, a furnace worker.”
“You can change the angle to the front,” said Bai Bing. He tried to take the mouse from the Senior Official, who refused him politely.
“Oh, no. This year, the factory worked everyone overtime to increase production. The workers had to be brought meals by family members, and I went. This was the first time I saw my father at work, from this exact angle. His silhouette against the furnace fire impressed itself into my mind very deeply.”
Once more, years passed in the wake of the time slider, stopping on a clear, sunny day. The bright red flag of the Young Pioneers of China waved against the azure sky. A boy in a white shirt and blue trousers gazed up at it as other hands fastened a red scarf around his neck. The boy’s right hand flew above his head in a salute, passionately announcing to the world that he would always be prepared to struggle for the cause of Communism. His eyes were as clear as the cloudless blue sky.
“I joined the Young Pioneers in second grade of elementary school.”
Time jumped forward, and a different flag appeared: that of the Communist Youth League, against the backdrop of a memorial to the fallen. A small group of older children were swearing their oaths to the flag. He stood in the back row, his eyes as bright as before, but tinged with new fervor and longing.
“I joined the Youth League first year of secondary school.”
The slider moved. The third red flag of his life appeared, the flag of the Communist Party this time, in what appeared to be an enormous lecture hall. The Senior Official zoomed in on one of the six teenagers taking their oaths, letting his face fill the screen.
“I joined the Party sophomore year of college.” The Senior Official pointed at the screen. “Look at my eyes. What do you see in them?”
In that pair of young eyes could still be seen the spark of childhood, the fervor and longing of youth, but there was a new and yet immature wisdom, too.
“I feel you were… sincere,” Bai Bing said, looking at those eyes.
“You’d be right. Until then, I still meant every word of the oath.” The Senior Official wiped at his eye, the motion minute enough that Bai Bing didn’t notice it.
The slider moved forward another few years. This time it sped too far, but after a few small adjustments, a tree-shaded path appeared on the screen. He stood there, looking at a young woman turning to leave. She turned her head to look at him one last time, her eyes bright with tears. She gave a powerful impression, solemn but resolute. Then she left, disappearing into the distance between the two rows of tall poplars. Tactfully, Bai Bing got up and prepared to leave some space, but the Senior Official stopped him.
“Don’t worry, this is the last time I saw her.” He put down the mouse, his gaze leaving the screen. “Very well, thank you. You may turn off the computer.”
“Don’t you want to keep watching?”
“That’s all I have worth reminiscing.”
“We can find where she is right now, no problem!”
“That won’t be necessary. It’s getting late; you should leave. Thank you, truly.”
Once Bai Bing left, the Senior Official telephoned the security station, requesting that the building guard come up to his office for a moment. Soon after, the armed police guard entered and saluted.
“You’re… Yang, yes?”
“You have an excellent memory, sir.”