Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand . . . Anxiety crawls just below the surface of his skin, across his back and down his limbs. He willfully deadens his body, ignoring it so he can concentrate on his work.
His right hand is crammed with small plastic nozzles. His right thumb and the portion of his palm near it roll a single nozzle toward his fingertips. His thumb and index finger mount the nozzle on the end of a short hose held in position by the fingers of his left hand. He presses a plastic lever, propelling a tiny jet of water through the end of the nozzle, watches the water spray, and decides whether the jet of water is good—strong—or if it is bad. If the jet of water is strong, the nozzle gets tucked into his right hand and the cycle starts again.
Select. Mount. Press. Strong . . . no, this one showed a split stream. He quickly tosses it aside and selects another.
In this dream, Vin hasn’t seen much yet, just the space around his hands: a huge bin full of tiny plastic nozzles on his right that he dips into to fill his hand, and the bin on his left where he occasionally deposits tested nozzles. As he becomes more aware, Vin feels a terrible discomfort around his waist. He has been testing nozzles for a very long time. He is bored, but he cannot change what he is doing.
He’s inspecting the nozzles because it’s his job. He’s wearing goggles. Bits of moisture gather on them so he must sometimes wipe them on the loose sleeve of his green uniform.
The person Vin inhabits, a man named Gao Cheng, looks up from the small space where his hands diligently manipulate the flow of nozzles. Like a river of iron shavings in the presence of a sun-sized magnet, his attention immediately and unshakably fixes on a woman working on the line across from his, at a station four places ahead of his—Li Yehao. Gao himself spins through the void, orbiting her cosmic presence.
He looks back at his hands, which have continued testing nozzles while he was away. Vin realizes that the pain at Gao’s waist is a furious erection, one that no matter how he shifts his weight continues to press with iron intensity against the limits of his restraining jeans. At that very moment, Gao shifts in his wheeled chair, pushing his rump backward as far as he can and flattening and straightening his lower back to decrease the pressure from the fabric at his crotch.
Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. His right hand is full of nozzles. Any more and he risks dropping one and slowing himself by bending to pick it up. He stretches and empties his hand over the lip of the large bin he is filling with pieces that have passed inspection.
Vin feels the shivering tension in Gao’s body even while his eyes are relaxed and staring at his hands. Vin wants the hands to stop moving. As thoughts shape themselves in his mind, Gao quickly flattens them to nothing or starves them of attention so they fade like smoke. In his mind there is a background hum of frustrated interest like a current of buzzing gnats, but Gao’s attention is as implacable as a moving sculpture, and he defies Vin’s explorations with single-minded, clockwork motions that also radiate an oily fear. Vin can’t figure out how to influence this dream, so he thinks about the person he is dreaming himself to be.
For Gao, who is almost twenty, this job is a temporary solution to the problem of earning money, and a starting point for his ambitions. He will not put his future at risk by doing things that will slow down his work—standing, for example, or talking more than necessary, or thinking about odd things. At the same time he is riven by a fear so strong as to be almost disabling. It has many tributaries: fear of exposing himself as a failure; fear of hunger; fear of discovering himself to be a weak man; fear of the choking pain in his throat and chest when he has to talk with influential people; fear of the way his body shakes and trembles when women look at him or notice him in any way; and, most particularly, a fear of his inexplicable, durable and lawless erections. His lanterns of shame.
If he works diligently he will not need to stand up, and so will not risk exposing his mutinous part. He hunches tightly over his work and focuses his mind. His shift has five more hours.
Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand.
Miss Li’s breath must be scented. Gao’s father used to talk about his mother’s breath, of how it smelled of ginger and green onion, like good soup. “Fragrant breath,” his father told him, “is a gift you will appreciate when you marry.” The thought of marrying nearly blinds him for a moment. His hands continue despite it.
Miss Li’s cheeks are round, and beneath them her face straightens into the lines that eventually curve around her pointed jaw. Some people probably don’t think she’s as pretty as other women in the factory. Her jeans fit loosely, her legs are thin but strong, and she has a sweet and capable air that has captivated Gao since he first noticed her, two weeks ago. She smiled at him and he was able to trust that she meant it because he had the impression that she was a genuine kind of person, a person who wouldn’t try to fool anyone.
Since then, she has noticed him watching her. She sometimes glances over her shoulder, and has looked directly at him. When their gazes have met they have both been jolted into breaking the connection. So far, they haven’t spoken.
This line of thinking makes his jeans so uncomfortable, so painful, that he gasps. He has to shift in his chair and stealthily pull at the denim, allowing himself just a momentary distraction before resuming his work. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. A bad one. Toss away.
Vin is trying to make Gao stand up. He slowly becomes aware that Gao believes that his jeans will tighten and the pain at his crotch will be worse if he stands. In frustration, Vin eventually relents, and relaxes into the rhythm of the work.
Gao is remembering the lean muscle on Miss Li’s arms and contemplating the hint of her breasts implied by the swelling of her blouse. She wears the blouse of the green uniform most often, but twice he has seen her wearing a white blouse with a crease under each arm.
Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand. Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand.
It’s difficult to imagine what the next step on his path at work will be. How can he advance quickly enough to become more attractive to a woman as desirable as Miss Li? An echo of loneliness wrinkles through his chest, collapsing his ambition. The only path that would allow him to speak with Miss Li regularly is to become a boss. Without that, which could take years, he simply does not know how to overcome his fear of talking with her.
Vin, who wants to stand and walk over to Miss Li’s station and say hello and be done with it, feels the acute pain of this paralyzing combination of fear and urgent infatuation. But Gao simply will not consider Vin’s direct scenario, so Vin looks for a tool to draw the young man’s attention, and in the scrum of Gao’s thoughts he finds a name, Mr. Zhang. The name pops up, like a cork that had been held underwater. Vin focuses himself on one single thought, repeating and repeating it: “Look at Mr. Zhang.”
And then, Gao almost does, he almost glances toward the spot on the factory floor where he believes that the tall, thin, powerful and handsome Mr. Zhang is likely to be walking past a row of workers, his stiff, switching step making his neatly groomed head bob up and down.
Mr. Zhang is the B Group Quality Monitor, and directs all the bosses. Gao has considered working his way into a job like that before, but it is almost unthinkable. Though Gao doesn’t know the actual numbers, he is certain Mr. Zhang must earn enough money to be attractive to any woman in the factory, maybe even to some of the higher ups. If Gao had that job, Miss Li would notice him. But how could he ever manage it?
Vin hears the question, feels the fissure of doubt. He responds instinctively and immediately, as if he were responding to a deep concern of his own, with an emphatic yes. “Yes, you can do it! Certainly you can!” At which point Gao lifts his head and looks over at Mr. Zhang. Did Vin make that happen?
Gao’s erection had subsided but now when he looks back at his hands, his chest is lightened by hope and the erection returns full strength. With Gao so uncomfortable and desperate for relief, Vin recognizes an opportunity to experiment with influencing his behavior.
Vin thinks about shifting in his seat to relieve the pain, imagining the precise motion very clearly, and is stunned by a sudden movement as Gao does just that, exactly as Vin imagined. Vin thinks about pulling at his jeans again to entrain another moment of relief. Gao doesn’t do it. Vin concentrates on pulling out at the waist of his jeans, vividly imagining the freeing sensation, even if it only lasts for a short time. Gao pulls at the waistband of his jeans. As he does, he has a fleeting thought that the movement is only a short interruption and the relief is very welcome. Vin imagines it again and Gao immediately repeats the movement. Vin has made something happen.
Select. Mount. Press. Strong. Right hand.
Over the next few hours, Vin finds that Gao will complete small actions that Vin suggests, but Vin has to imagine the act physically—think it in images and sensations—and it has to be something that Gao considers relevant to his own concerns. After the erection has subsided, Vin manages to convince him to stand and to stretch his lower back. As he does, he looks about the factory.
Gao’s station is a part of a tan steel structure that stretches the full, impressive width of the factory floor. It supports a central column powering a line of fluorescent lights. On either side of it are heavy steel desks notched with stations like his. To his right, row on row of these structures—tan metal columns supporting central lighting and winged on either side by ranks of individual workstations—stretch into the far and very dim distance, fading eventually from sight in a haze of light created by the endless rows of low fluorescent tubes that mixes with a yellower, clearer light pouring in from high windows. There is no visible end to the ranks of desks and workers. They simply fade away.
Lining both sides of every row are workers in factory-issued green jackets. As the rows recede into the distance, people are identifiable by the small spot of color on their heads—either the yellow of the official bandana or the black smudge of loose hair. Occasionally a worker will stand and swivel about, replenishing a stock of pieces, checking a reference or handing something off. Along every few rows, a quality monitor paces back and forth.
Gao stretches his arms upward and swivels left and right at the waist. On his left, the scene is just as it is on his right, but there is a distant wall, a faintly visible end beyond the rows of workers.
Gao won’t extend his break for long. He won’t avoid his work. He feels lucky to have a job and his anxiety started to accumulate as soon as he stood. He sits back down and bends over his nozzles again. A few moments later, a buzzer and a bell both sound. Final break of the day.
Today is payday. Gao likes to be paid in cash. He empties his last handful of inspected nozzles into their bin, and opens his right hand over the bin of un-inspected nozzles. His palms have pink dents from holding the little plastic pieces, and are pruned and shiny from the water.
Gao is slow coming out of his station. If he’s being honest with himself, his erections and fantasies are the only excitement he has on a workday, but they keep him tense, too, which he believes makes him more tired late in the day.
“Problems with the plumbing?” Guo Hua says. He’s another wide-faced country bumpkin, like Gao. They usually stick together but Guo Hua seems fed up with something recently and has been a little mean.
“Yeah, Gao. Good work,” says Peng Jun, filing out right behind Guo Hua and nodding as he passes Gao. Gao is confused. What are they talking about? Then he notices the stain on his crotch. His spunk. Leaking out. Shit. Of course, it’s happened before. He should have known. He quickly turns to face his desk so no one else can see it, and he considers his options.
He still has to walk to the pay line to retrieve his envelope. He should be making deposits like most people, but having that money in the company account makes people more free with it. Gao likes to see what he’s spending. It helps him save and every little bit counts.
There’s no way to hide the stain on his jeans. He’ll just have to ignore it and walk over there as if he’s already a boss.
He’s just about to step into the file of workers heading out—is imagining doing it—when he sees Miss Li standing four feet away from him, looking at him. If she sees his pants, she’ll know what kind of person he is. She’ll know what he spends all those work hours thinking about. She’ll connect it with the times that she’s noticed him watching her. Then, he will die.
She half smiles. Workers are still walking out, creating a temporary distraction that he can use to avoid looking at her, but now that he’s seen her, she’s waiting for him to say something. He notices that when he looks toward her and her smile broadens, she has a small extra wrinkle under each eye. The observation lances through him. That really is her and not the imaginary her he has been dreaming about. She can’t see him like this.
Despite Gao’s lust, shame, and dedication to his work, Vin has been better prepared for this dream than he was for the others. As Gao powered through the day, setting his steely will against his own inclinations and slowly cutting through the minutes that led to this crisis, Vin has paid close attention to his own thoughts and feelings, and how they were affected by the dream.
But try as he might, he can’t reset even small segments of time. He can’t go backward and do things over. He can’t will the erection away. In fact, he hasn’t been able to change anything in the physical world, not the number of nozzles in Gao’s hands or the display on the factory clocks. He hasn’t been able to raise Gao’s body into a moment of levitation above the factory floor, make a wall of the factory transparent, or turn even one of the nozzles into a feather. None of it has worked. But he has influenced Gao’s actions. Now, while Gao is aflame with panic, ashen with fear, Vin tries again.
“Run,” he thinks out loud, inside Gao’s head. “Run away from her.”
“No,” comes the clear response. Gao is answering Vin’s thought. Gao hears him and is talking with him. Vin has succeeded in affecting the dream again. “This is my chance,” Gao is thinking. “I can’t run. She was brave enough to come here to talk with me. I have to be brave too.”
“No,” Vin says, feeling the thrill of real influence and improvising a relevant argument to change Gao’s mind, so Vin will be certain that he has had an effect. “You must hide from her.” Vin speaks to Gao’s experience. “She will hate you if she sees what you’ve done.”
Vin creates a mental image of the front of Gao’s jeans and the stain where his erection had pressed against them. The truth is, Vin doesn’t think the stain is all that impressive. Gao’s two friends Peng Jun and Guo Hua must have noticed it because they’ve had similar problems. But now Vin imagines the stain as very dark and very large—a big wet spot, as if Gao had emptied a bowl of semen into his underwear. Vin imagines trying to explain to Miss Li, and in his image of it, he emphasizes the horror of that moment. She would stare in shock as she took a step away from Gao. Then she would fall into the distance and be gone forever.
“Run,” Vin thinks loudly. “Protect yourself. Avoid the shame.”
It all happens in less than a moment. Gao ducks his head so he is looking down and can no longer see Miss Li’s hopeful face, then he steps quickly into the passing line of workers and walks as fast as he can away from her.
There is a deadness to the air, to the sounds of voices around him. The slight chill on the breeze carries a rasping premonition of endings, of winter. Running away from Miss Li, humiliating her when she made such a brave gesture—Gao is hollowed out, and Vin with him. After such an act, there can be no consolation. Vin can barely maintain a firm enough mood to keep himself coherent and avoid dissolving in Gao’s morose feelings.
Gao is remembering when he found the dead body of Xiao Hui, the dog who was his best friend, lying under leaves on a day just like this. Xiao Hui’s throat was torn, and one leg chewed. A tough, smart, black-and-gray terrier with wiry hair. Whatever killed him had passed very close to the back of Gao’s house. But Gao didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t help Xiao Hui.
Now as Gao waits in line, the gray sky piles itself on the back of his bent neck. Peng Jun came over to smoke a cigarette with him but Gao couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything to him, couldn’t even look at him. Peng Jun eventually punched his shoulder softly and left. Work breaks are too precious to spend them feeling bad. Gao only has a few more minutes to gather his pay, and then he should hurry over to the team meeting for the final part of Mr. Zhang’s summary of how the day has gone so far.
The gold envelope is pushed toward him. Gao makes his mark on the sheet, lifts the envelope and steps away from the line. The envelope is so small and light, filled with only paper. Everything he wants is all around him, but all of it is inaccessible to him. At this moment, everything he owns is in the palm of his hand. He pulls the lip of the envelope out and unfolds it.
He looks up and sees massive clouds thundering in the silent distance. He sees so much air. Only a few years ago, everything that Gao felt in the world—even the mild chill on the wind—carried promise. He would never have imagined his life narrowing to such a sharp point so quickly, his choices flattening so completely, leaving his future to be wholly determined by such a tiny mutiny. And all in pursuit of this, these paper bills in a paper envelope. Taken together, this was the shape and limit of his future.
Vin has stopped trying to affect Gao, or change his actions. Gao pulls the short pile of colorful bills from the envelope, leaving a few coins within. He lets the envelope drop to the black asphalt and takes a step away from it. The bills in his hands are wrinkled, faded, green, purple, brown and red. He fans them out. This is his life.
In a single, swift movement he lowers his hands and then throws the money up at the sky, flinging the small pile of bills and watching it scatter on a gusting wind. The money flutters as the breeze strengthens, and then the bills begin to drop, twisting slowly toward the paved ground. He walks away from them.
Gao walks all the way to the distant dormitory room that he shares with five other men, all of whom are at work. He curls up on his thin mattress and faces the wall. For the rest of the dream, Vin counts the moments ticking past. The dream has become very painful, and terribly boring.
Vin tries to get Gao out of bed. He tries to imagine elaborate conversations with Miss Li in which they both recognize that they’re destined to be with each other. He visualizes walking to the mess area and trying to find her during the evening meal. Some of the ideas he has, he repeats over and over: Maybe Miss Li will try again tomorrow; maybe she’ll forgive Gao, especially if he apologizes. Nothing, no matter how extravagant or quotidian, draws a response from Gao. Gao, convinced that he has humiliated Miss Li when she was most vulnerable and has missed his only appointment with fate, has descended beyond depths from which mere imaginings might recover him.
Gao now knows he is the kind of person who behaves callously toward others and is too frightened to be brave. He imagines the consequences of his actions. Devastated by the loss of face, Miss Li will quit her own job and move back to her country village. Her parents won’t welcome her. Things will go badly.
No, Vin insists, from his place inside Gao’s thoughts, that’s ridiculous. Go back to your station now and you’ll see her at hers. She might even smile at you.
But Gao can’t allow himself a hope so intoxicating. He is not going to complete the last part of his shift. The world is merciless and his supervisor will note his absence. Miss Li is crushed. Gao is nearly penniless and soon will be unemployed and homeless. Nothing will ever be good again.
