Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
The Municipal Building appeared like any national institution: a modern glass façade, the entrance adorned with a vibrant city emblem, and a revolving door perpetually bustling with individuals carrying documents. Surveillance cameras were mounted on the walls, and the ceiling occasionally emitted white noise, as if it were continuously mending some echo of human voices.
Zhang You was a new outsourced employee in the Data Department, twenty-eight years old, single, and commuting daily from Zhongli. The job paid reasonably well; he didn’t have to face people, only handling electronic documents: proofreading for typos, coding data, verifying addresses, and reformatting reports. He didn’t feel important or find the work interesting, but he appreciated this “unremembered job.”
Until one day, he received an internal communication with a simple subject line: “Transfer to 21st Floor.”
He paused for a moment. The Municipal Building was supposed to have only twenty floors.
The internal communication included a temporary access code and elevator authorization. As he swiped his card and entered the elevator, it slowly ascended to the next floor. When the number reached 21, a strange shiver ran down his spine—not from coldness, but from a sensation as if a thin layer between his skin and the air had been pulled away, as if something had withdrawn a membrane from behind him.
The elevator doors opened.
This floor had no ceiling; only layers of white fabric hung down like countless silk ribbons. The air was filled with a pungent mix of cooked meat and alcohol, each breath feeling like being pushed into an autopsy room.
The walls were painted an unnaturally bright white, excessively so, as if covering something up. The floor was tiled, but pink liquid seeped from the cracks, bubbling slightly. Stepping on it produced a squelching sound.
Following instructions, he found his desk labeled “21-F-07.” The surface was tidy but emanated an indescribable dampness. As he set down his bag, he inadvertently brushed against something hard and slightly elastic beneath the chair. Leaning down to look, he saw a small piece of something resembling skin with fine hairs growing on it.
He recoiled and turned to search for colleagues, but the entire floor was eerily silent. Shadows occupied the seats, but they all hung their heads low, appearing to read or perhaps asleep. Zhang You approached one person to greet them but noticed that their eyes were entirely grayish-white; their mouth moved slightly as if they were chewing gently.
He dared not speak and returned to his desk. The screen lit up with a system voice announcing: “Welcome to the 21st floor; please begin pairing processing.”
The display showed a form filled with names, ages, health statuses, social identities, and scoring numbers. Each column had an option beside it: “Retain” or “Clear.”
He tried to select "Retain," but a prompt appeared: "Insufficient reason, please reassess."
He clicked "Clear."
The screen displayed: "Match successful. Seventh clearance."
The monitor emitted a soft sound, and he heard a warm liquid dripping into a tray from the right side of the desk. He looked down to see a small silver cup that had appeared on the desk, filled with an excessively red liquid.
He instinctively recoiled.
—
That night, when he returned home and took a shower, he noticed a patch of new skin growing on his left shoulder. It was slightly darker in color, resembling the new layer that forms after a wound scabs over. The texture was smooth, and there was no pain. He thought it might be an allergy, but before bed, he realized that something beneath the skin seemed to be pulsating, as if something were trying to burrow its way out.
He wanted to report this to his supervisor but discovered that his original Data Department account had been canceled, and his phone could not dial any municipal numbers. He attempted to contact a friend, but when the person answered, they said, "Who are you... may I ask who this is?"
The next day, he was forced to return to the 21st floor. On his desk lay a thick stack of paper application forms, printed with various labels: "Mind Function Dissolver," "Financially Ineligible," "Public Image Inadequate," and so on.
He understood what he was doing. He was not sorting documents; he was acting on behalf of the city to "cleanse" humanity. This place was a soundproof chamber on the fringes of the system, an operating table for excising surplus organs from civilization.
Each signature he made was a silent disembowelment.
—
One midnight, while working late alone, someone in the adjacent seat stood up without making a sound, their clothes soaked through. The person walked into the dark area behind the white cloth, began removing their clothing piece by piece, and started to peel off their skin—each movement slow and deliberate, as if fulfilling some kind of contract. Once the skin was completely removed, it hung on the cloth while the body remained standing—headless, faceless—with the Spine exposed, bones trembling in the air conditioning.
Zhang You sat still, unable to move. He could not leave. This was not work; this was duty. This building had no exit because when you entered, you had already surrendered your place at the door to someone else.
He was now part of that table, his data sealed within a drawer, swallowing a cup of thick red liquid every day before continuing to sift through information.
His skin was nearly worn out.
Zhang You began to dream of forms. Not dreaming of filling out forms, but dreaming that he himself was a form.
In the dream, his back was a grid page, nerve lines pinned into straight columns; his organs became the field descriptions; a large red stamp marked his liver: "Processing." In the dream, he heard the sound of fingers gliding over his ribs, like turning pages.
When he woke up, he found that his right index finger was swollen, with deep blue liquid seeping from between the joints. His phone could not be unlocked; the system identified his fingerprint as that of an unregistered user.
—
The lighting on the 21st floor grew increasingly unstable. The white fabric hung lower from the ceiling, as if something were quietly descending, obscuring his view above. A few times, he noticed that the papers appearing on the desk were not printed—they seemed to "grow" from the surface, like a piece of paper skin peeling away from wood grain, words faintly emerging, sometimes still warm to the touch.
He could no longer clearly see the contents of each form. His eyes began to automatically skip over applicants' names and gloss over addresses. Only the red options remained: "Clear," "Allocate," "Deconstruct for Use."
—
One day, he received an internal message notification: "You have met the participation criteria for Human Document. Please proceed to Room 21-B for reconstruction surgery."
He tried to escape, stepping into the elevator and pressing any floor button; the numbers remained unresponsive, the buttons felt like soft flesh, slightly rebounding when pressed by his fingertip. He retreated back into the corridor, where faces began to sprout from the walls of the 21st floor—not living faces but photocopied skins affixed to the wall, expressionless, each one opening its mouth toward him.
Each mouth was stuffed with perforated A4 paper, teeth marks clearly visible.
Room 21-B was smaller than the other spaces, resembling a hybrid of a dental clinic and a data repository. Several half-human figures hung on the walls, each one reminiscent of an incomplete predecessor: some had their chests opened like file folders, while others had shredders installed in their abdomens.
Lying on the operating table was an "assistant," a woman without a mouth, her eyes sewn shut, leaving only two openings for fingers to be inserted. She wore an office uniform stained with fresh blood, and her name tag read "Zhang You."
A "director" emerged, clad in a bloodied white coat, his face wrapped in transparent plastic film, with his eyes floating beneath it like unpeeled raw meat packaging. He spoke, his voice sounding like a tape being played in reverse:
"Mr. Zhang You, please confirm your identity and sign below your navel." A pen ejected from his mouth, still warm and coated with saliva. He handed the pen to Zhang You, pointing at the skin just below his navel—there, words formed into a "Consent Form," written in bodily fluid with line spacing that fluctuated according to his level of fear.
He signed it, and his skin emitted a hissing sound as the writing was absorbed beneath the surface. He felt something crawling into his abdominal cavity through the signature site, as if it were beginning to gnaw at his insides to create a folder.
—
Next came an unspeakable phase.
He lay on the operating table, his limbs restrained. Mechanical arms extended from the walls—not surgical knives but rather deformed structures of staplers, paper cutters, scanning pens, and reading devices.
He watched as his fingers were cut open one by one, each segment placed into plastic sleeves labeled "Digit Joint Record Archive."
He heard his skull being opened, brain matter flowing like glue into document molds, gradually pouring into paper trays. The director smiled as he pressed stacks of "His Memory Print" into volumes while saying:
"Your experiences will flow into next week's City Decision Simulation Model. Please cherish them." The final procedure involved implanting an "Approval Stamp" beneath his tongue. Every word he uttered would automatically imprint a transparent seal in the air: Retain / Discard / Expired / Unreviewed.
As he left Room 21-B, walking felt like being pushed on a wheeled desk, with his feet stuck to the seals of expired documents. Someone behind him murmured:
"Zhang You has been reconstructed and will be available until June next year. If there are no objections by then, it will undergo demagnetization and incineration."
He now sits at desk 21-F-07 every day, processing forms that do not need to be processed. Occasionally, he thinks of his parents' names, but when he tries to say them, his tongue instinctively recoils, and the seal appears: "File not registered / Non-traceable."
Zhang You is no longer human. He is a document template pieced together. He cannot remember the streets he once walked but can accurately tell you which type of "case" is most likely to go missing without anyone noticing.
He now has a code name: D-21-07.
If you walk into the Municipal Building and take the elevator to the 21st floor, you will pass that desk. The keyboard on the desk looks like skin stitched together, with pulsating veins beneath each key. Zhang You will lift his head to look at you and nod.
He will not speak. He has long lost his language.
Do you still want to come in?
Comment 0 Comment Count