Yang is sitting next to that window made of shiny glasses. He is supposed to listen to teacher's tedious long speech talking about two boys feeding each other with lemonade and both died from hyper-acidity. His deskmate, or his brother, sitting next to him smiles at teacher. Actually, they are both drifting. While teacher transfered the topic to the real content of the textbook, bright white light from the horizon rocketing into the mid-air spreads towards Yang.
It turned out that this was an explosive wave from an atomic bomb. When it came to classroom, Yang can't see anything. The world was full of white shinny light. He fainted, and fell on the ground. He didn't know how long the time has passed. When he woke up, his brother Chi was beside him, however, without an eyeball, debris was upon him, probably dead.
He said to himself, “I’d rather shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know I’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays I want, if I can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time he ever heard he say it was a sin to do something, and he asked another himself called "ration" about it. “You are right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except enjoy the daily lives. They don’t eat up government’s gardens, don’t nest in rich people's corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” While he looked around the desperate enviornment, he cried.
He took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of his heart, "I am, I am, I am." Suddenly, the sky darkened.He fainted again.
While he was about to wake up, a voice came from darkness,"We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires—we believe it because otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. We do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our desires change. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. We have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so imperceptible has it become.” Yang opened his eyes seeing one person surrounded by several people, he was on a bed, it seemed that he was in a hospital with dim light and decayed wall.
“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart," said an old man holding a knive walking towards him, " Be careful sir, the world has changed a lot."
Then Yang was led to another room. "Wow, another patient recovered." yelled from a cleaner stepping on the threshold. " Well, he didn't really hurt a lot, kids can always survive, you know." The old man dropped his knive into a bucket labeled "weapon temp" beside that door, and then walked into that big room. A tall young man was standing on the stage in the center of that room and being surrounded by a crowd, saying, "Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Yang was observing the new world carefully.These men look so different from the people he knew.They look cold-blood and warm-heart.Weapon and kindness?It is strange.He thonght.He was worried about his brother Chi,did he survive?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” said a fat man sitting in the corner with a corn cob in his mouth. Yang quickly recognized him, that's his math teacher Bob. "Hey, I can't believe you survived, Mr.Bob!" said Yang, " Do you happen to know that where Chi is, my brother, the one with yellow hair?"
Mr.Bob got shocked by this little guy, " Damn, you scared me, I thought you all dead. Unfortunately, I don't know where is your brother, but you can take a chance to ask that tall young man over there, he is The Commander."
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” the commander glanced at the corner and walking towards Yang, "You can't just directly find someone else, everybody has their jobs, you know?" However, Yang is confused, "Where are we?"
The commander pointed out of the window which was embeded into a wall, "see that? there is no light here, and we eat fish and sea grass everyday, if you ever try to go out, you will be compressed by the pressure of water to meat paste."
Yang seemed scared, "Weren't you scared? It's so deep and dark here."
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” the commander said.
An old woman emerged from the dark corner, saying, "“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” (Don’t let the bastards grind you down)
The commander's face suddenly turned pale, "Mum, sorry for that, he is the new 'baby', not 'bastard'."
"Well, some babies are," she rotated her neck and sit back in the wheelchair.
"Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever," she said, "You might want to think about that. You forget some things, don't you, Jack? You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."
The commander Jack muted.
"What you said can not change anything.I have nothing to do about finding my lost memory."The commander Jack said.
The old woman was irritated and stood up yelling at Jack, "You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it’s a catch-22: all of those things you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you’ve lost yourself.”
Jack muted again. After a while, he walked towards Yang, and said, "Sorry, kid, you are not one of us." Before the sound of one's voice had died away, he drew his sword out.
Yang say :“Why are you pulling your sword?or say What are you dissatisfied with?”
Jack turned back and thrust towards the old woman's chest, dark red blood splattered out. "How is that feeling, my old stinky lady?" Jack snapped.
"You, you are ridiculous!" The old woman struggled.
"No, Jack, what are you doing? Are you mad?" Mr.Bob panicked.
Jack giggled and showed his yellow teeth, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
"And I, don't want to be controlled by anyone, especially an old useless woman."
Quietly, the corpse of that old woman had been dragged away.
Yang thinks the world is so crazy，last second the mother advises the child, the next the child kill the mother，he watching the blood spray on his face，but he didn't know what to do?So he stood there in a daze
Yang watched the blood was flowing on the dirt floor, splashing warm blood on his skin. He stared at Jack. The threat of death came upon him.
He almost growled “ Cold-blooded person! Do you have feelings?”
“Survival is everything.I don't care any Mockingbirds .Winner's decision is law.”Jack calmly wiped the blood from the knife with his head down.
Jack raised his head slowly and looked thoughtfully at Yang.
A beautiful voice coming from Yang's back, "Ok, let's go my little buddy, you need a place to rest." He turned back and found a beautiful girl waved to him. Then he followed her, "Is Jack always like that?" he asked.
The girl stopped and the smile on her face disappeared, "He is... I have no idea." Her eyes dimmed and drifted. " He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
Yang nodded, "Then that's why he could kill his mother easily."
The girl pointed towards the end of the corridor, "See? That's your room, clothes and stuff are there, you got the level-1 room, which may be a little nasty but we all start here."
Yang was confused and walked into that room.
The room was not big but clean and tidy.It seems no mouse here.Well,Yang was clam down. He was scared about mouse.
Yang went to bed and wanted to clear his thought .He didn't want to sleep ,but strange,he fall asleep quickly.
Oddly, his mind was active in the dream. He thought of the girl he had a crush on, the math classes he had hated, and his brother he could play jokes . Now, brother's life is unkown, there is no silly worry. He didn't even know if he was in a real world or a parallel world.
A voice in his mind told him: “It didn't matter. It seems that there are only two ways to live in this world. One is to be controlled by others, or you control them. Your destiny is in your own hands.
When you want something with all your heart, that's when you are closest to the Soul of the World.All the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”
Yang's eyes flew open.He had to plan something.
Yang decided to keep a diary. He thought the dream would be long, it's a postwar world.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"Mr.Bob, can you lend me a pen and a... like a notebook?" Little Yang was asking to the man leaning on the door across the corridor.
"Boy, umm," He lowered the volume, "it's actually illegal to keep a book and pen."
"What the hell is..."
"Hey boy, listen, you can communicate with each other, you can have your thoughts, but you can't, record anything."
Yang scratched his hair, "So, waht are you? Did them change your mind or anything?"
He sighed, “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”
Yang muted.
Yang looked Bob up and down，“All right, I don't record. Please tell me what happened during my comait and where the hell we are."
“I think you can guess without saying that there was a war two months ago.The destruction of the war was unprecedented.The war is still going on and we don't know when to stop.You should be glad you're alive.”
“Would I be happy to live for nothing? I can't do this. I'm gonna freak out！So where are we now？”Yang felt that he had lost everything.
Bob replied, “I don't know. Jack won't let me know. I know you don't want to be in this dark space, but it's the safest. Stop trying to know where you are. It's a protection. You have no ability to face the damage of war.”
After hearing Bob's words, Yang felt a little dizzy.
He was just an ordinary sophomore in high school. He never fell in love with study, but because he was clever, he got good grades. Unfortunately, a sudden burst of gunfire landed him in a place he'd never been before, and he didn't even know if his parents were still alive or not.
"damn it, it's awful," he kept repeating, though it didn't make any difference in his chaotic life. He had to say that he missed his obese orange cat, even though he liked to pee on the carpet in the Yang room.
He came out of his reverie and read carefully what Bob had just said, which seemed so sincere, only to find that the real purpose behind the war was not so simple. Bob said he couldn't face the war, but he had to find out the truth behind it.
Mr.Bob said, " I gotta go little guy, I it's 10 o'clock in night right now, just go to bed and sleep."
So Yang got on his bed and started to count the stars on the sky.
Wait, what? I am in a submarine so wtf is the sky?
Yang thought.
Then he looked around--
He is lying on the desert, and a storm is coming from distance.
"Don't panic, I am the messenger, you are sleeping, I mean, dreaming." The storm starts to speak in a metallic and deadly voice.
Yang was still suffering from the shock, trembling and said, "Why are you a storm? Are you...hungry?" He released a litlle since he knew it's a dream.
"I said, I am just a messenger, I am here to tell you something, you are stupid so you need your sub-consciousness to remind you." Storm started approaching to yang.
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Storm was talking without a single pause, it seems that there is no punctuation in his sentences, just like a machine conveying information.
Yang got bored and tired of hearing that speech, he would fall asleep in his own dream.
Storm sighed intentionally, "Poor boy, you will understand."
After that voice, storm and desert disappeared, all was quiet and dark again.
He woke up suddenly and found the clock still pointing to three.At that moment, an envelope with a skull carved on its skin was slipped through the door.Yang opened it carefully，it reads, “A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others”. This is an anonymous letter.Yang was not only confused but also anxious.Who would like to send him such a private message at night?Is this a threat or a reminder?
Yang was curious. He didn't know which girl wrote it to him（“Don 't kid yourself.”He thought no girl would worry about him at this time）, or it was just a warning.Anyway,he still wanted to know more about the war.
He wanted to escape from the chamber like Harry Potter, but there was neither Ron nor Hermione, only a group of people who had warned him not to do it.
Don't worry. There were other young people who wanted to do it as Yang.He would have met his Hermione and Ron.At least the impulsive boy would not walk alone in the dangerous storm.
Yang sat in bed thinking stuff. Suddenly a figure kicked his door open and ran in. Because of the dim light, Yang could not see who the man was, but the figure hit Yang to the ground and pinned him down with his knees.Yang heard a broken sound coming from his back.
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
The man said, "But now, what I can hear is your bones breaking."
"Who are you? I can't see you clearly."
The man shocked, "You didn't feel the pain on your back? Damn, you can still talk." Then the big man stepped on yang's head and thrust yang's neck by a knife.
As the knife pointed into Yang's neck, Yang felt the cooling of the metal in his neck, and the blood in the artery was shooting out as a fountain, and Yang felt dizzy but he couldn't faint, because then he would die completely.
"Don't..." Yang was trying to say "don't kill me", but he found he couldn't speak a single word anymore because his throat was totally broken. The world gradually darkened.
Outside that room.
When that man rushed into Yang's room, the girl who led Yang to his room was sleeping in her room right next to Yang's room. At the moment she heard the crushing sound of that door, she sat up in horror. Just as she was about to turn on the light, a bearded man rudely knocked down her door and tied her up with rope.The girl was at a loss to break away from him, but was struck by a club. By the time she knew what had happened, she was firmly pressed into a chair. The rude man tied her up with chair and left, then The Commander Jack strode in with his thigh-high boots taking off his white gloves slowlyand sat down opposite her.
"Lydia, good evening." said Jack gently, "Have you ever heard about The Revolter?"
Suddenly, Lydia's eyes widened in a second but recovered really fast, "I've heard it mentioned before, you know, people always talk some stuff."
Jack Laughed, and laughed again, loudly, it seemed that the glass was gonna break. Then he stopped laughing and stared at Lydia seriously. With Jack's hands clapped, a box bleeding blood was sent in by that bearded man. "Put that on the table." Then the man put that on that table.
Jack smiled mysteriously, "Guess what, TADA!" He opened that box, a bloody head was in that box. It's Yang's head.
"No, no, no, how can you do that, he is just a boy!"
"Yeah, I know, but he is revolter! Look, this is the letter he was received this night, this is Revolter's private message, and since you are the neighbor of that door," Jack stood up and got close to Lydia 's ear lowering the voice, "Have you happened to be ... A REVOLTER?"
She didn't speak a word, just shaking her head.
Jack giggled,“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
"Now look at me," Jack's face turned black, "I'm listening."
Lydia's face turned green, "I am angry about your suspicion. I worked for you for like 5 years, every day I helped you clean the submarine, and you now, suspect a cleaner?"
Jack smiled, he thought Lydia is lying, "I don’t have any problem understanding why people quit their jobs or cheat on each other or break the law or spray-paint walls. A little bit outside of things is where some people feel each other. We do it to replace the frame of family. We do it to erase and remake our origins in their own images. To say, I too was here.”
Jack continued, “I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn’t afford expensive presents and they didn’t want us to think we weren’t as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one.
'Pick out your favorite star', Dad said.
'I like that one!' I said.
Dad grinned, 'that’s Venus', he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.
'I like it anyway' I said.
'What the hell,' Dad said. 'It’s Christmas. You can have a planet if you want.' And he gave me Venus.
Venus didn’t have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth’s, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. 'So,' Dad said, 'when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they’ll have to get permission from your descendants first.'
We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. 'Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,' Dad said, 'you’ll still have your stars.'"
Jack stopped for a while, his face became sad, "However, I lost my daughter last year. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what The Revolter, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged Revolters, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."
Lydia said, "So you said revolter killed your daughter last year? How?"
Lydia thought, it's actually true, It's been 2 years since that explosion of the nuclear bomb, and revolters appeared as soon as the bomb exploded, but wait, has Yang passed out for 2 years? Maybe the doctors had a hard time to recover Yang so they could only maintain his metabolism in The Dormancy Tank
Jack found that Lydia's face turned a little solemn. Jack said, "Oh, girl, I think you had a boy friend and he abandoned you, didn't he? But you should let it go, it's not a big deal, don't be upset, my girl. And, he is probably another revolter right? You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right — that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he. You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.”
“…I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.” Jack murmured.
“I don’t let anyone touch me,” Lydia finally said.
"Why not?”
"Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn’t come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. (…) It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn’t want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette.”
Jack laughed, "Oh well, that's so bad."
"Let's talk about my wife. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”
But Jack suddenly became very sad, his face crumpled together.
“But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.” Jack said.