‘SEE YOU MORNING' 138 Moral Bondage

It felt like he had returned to his university self, in the dormitory with eight bunk beds, where only Li Haojun and two other roommates were present. The previous exams had left his mind in a fog; he had completed so many Chinese, math, and physics papers that the volume was overwhelming, and some he hadn’t even had time to finish.
At that moment, military personnel from the Armed Forces Department pushed open the door and entered to screen recruits. The Armed Forces personnel took one look at Li Haojun and disqualified him immediately—his height wasn’t sufficient. He felt secretly relieved. The other two were selected. One of them left the dormitory, presumably for the next step of the medical examination. It seemed there was a requirement for those who were selected: their kidneys had to be compatible for transplant between them. A strange requirement, and rather unsettling.
The other roommate was a tough one. He sat on the upper bunk, hands clenched together. Li Haojun looked closer and saw that, to avoid military service, he had bitten off a section of his own index finger. Li Haojun made a gesture, calling him to lean in, then leaned close to his ear and whispered,
“That won’t work. The severed piece of finger has to disappear, otherwise they can still reattach it if they operate on you now.”
The other person agreed wholeheartedly with Li Haojun’s suggestion and reached out, holding the severed finger up to him.
“Help me destroy it,”
“Huh?” Li Haojun agreed and reached out to take it, but his hand trembled and he dropped it on the floor. He stared wide-eyed, searching all over the ground, when he suddenly opened his eyes. What a strange dream.
It must have been before dawn, but the night was still dark. The room was a bit chilly—the desert cooled down drastically at night, and he must have been woken by the cold.
He went to relieve himself and came back, checking on Malaya. She had changed positions and was now sleeping on her side; she wasn’t meditating anymore. He touched her feet—they were cold too. He had no choice but to fold the only blanket they had into a double layer, lie on his side, and wrap it around both of them.
This time it was a bit warmer. When Li Haojun opened his eyes again, it was already broad daylight. Malaya was sitting at the head of the bed, looking at him. Her hair was loose, still damp—she must have just washed it. Li Haojun stared blankly into Malaya’s eyes, recalling the tall woman from his dream who had been pulling a suitcase, inviting him to board a plane.
“Who is she?” Malaya asked,
“I don’t know. In the dream she was my former colleague, but I don’t remember any former colleagues,”
“Do you like her?”
“Heh, I don’t know either. I don’t even know her, so how can I talk about whether I like her or not,”
“Hmph, isn’t she my sister?”
“No, she seems taller…” Li Haojun was comparing with his dream memories, and before he could finish answering, he noticed Malaya was staring at him, examining him. Only then did he realize—was she hinting at something, or did she know something.
“Then? Was it you who projected that dream for me?” Li Haojun asked tentatively.
“No,” Malaya replied briefly and playfully, then stood up, turned around, flipped her long hair, and walked away. The tips of her hair landed right on Li Haojun’s face, carrying a faint fragrance, leaving him with a face full of confusion. You could never figure out women.
After breakfast, Li Haojun received his new work instructions: continue attending the exhibition today. However, the company’s testing equipment he had installed was damaged and had been collected; a new one would be sent here, and he would need to install it upon arrival.
Li Haojun was still a bit puzzled—a liquid nitrogen leak shouldn’t have damaged the equipment in the high-rise building, should it? It was just a coincidence that the hazardous materials truck had crashed right into the plaza in front of that building.
They settled the bill and left this remote small hotel on the outskirts of the city, taking a taxi with Malaya to the exhibition venue. The city seemed to have returned to normal. Flipping through local news, yesterday’s accident was already all over the feeds. Li Haojun tried to report his safety to Qin Wenjing and Kesiya far away, but found they had no idea what had happened here. Strange—did local news really stay confined to just the local area?
At his company’s booth in the exhibition, Li Haojun had lost interest in talking to visitors. He held his terminal device and kept searching for local conditions. He couldn’t understand why news of such a serious local hazardous material leak hadn’t spread elsewhere, and he was curious why people in the city center looked young, beautiful, and elegant, while the residents in the suburbs seemed to be barely surviving.
Although the U.S. federal government was gone, the state governments should still be maintaining their administrative functions. Li Haojun found state-level public news organizations, but their condition was worrying. Some had limited resources and almost no reach or influence; others, supported by different local sponsors, seemed to have drifted away from public welfare and credibility. The remaining self-media outlets only circulated within local circles, their attention focused more on their own living conditions, completely uninterested in what was happening in the wealthy downtown areas.
So what was the wealthy class’s reaction to all this? Li Haojun didn’t know any affected wealthy people, and they hadn’t posted any post-disaster reflections on their private social media. So Li Haojun thought of contacting the government’s public security and rescue departments to check for casualties, but they refused on the grounds of personal privacy. He then tried to learn about the registration of the truck involved, but was told the incident was under investigation and details couldn’t be disclosed.
Ah, what a perfect display of bureaucratic obstruction. Yet such dismissal of citizens’ right to know didn’t provoke any local protests—it was still an outsider who cared about the details.
Having hit a wall, Li Haojun thought about those young people at yesterday’s noon news, the excitement on and off stage at that game awards ceremony, and he let it go. A degenerate generation raised on electronic drugs—how could you expect them to monitor their government and defend their rights? They probably didn’t even remember their ancestors’ Declaration of Independence.
Looking up with a sense of melancholy toward the window, the distant desert held its eternal earth, blue sky, and white clouds. Li Haojun got up and walked to the window, cracking it open. Though the summer wind outside was hot, he still wanted to breathe natural air. He turned around, about to return to his seat, when he noticed Malaya was smiling at him.
“What’s wrong, Ethan? Not happy?”
“Heh,” Li Haojun laughed at himself and shrugged,
“I, heh, I’m overthinking it,” he knew that sometimes Malaya knew what he was thinking. Maybe she had sensed his gloomy mood just now,
“No, I think you’re just curious about the locals’ living conditions. Actually, this is a continuation of your judgment from last night—when we were walking before dinner, those old men watching us. Your mind wants to understand their living situations so you can better judge their behavior and the potential threat level to me.”
“Oh,” Li Haojun replied, gazing into Malaya’s large eyes. The ethereal quality in her eyes made him feel both close to her and far away at the same time.
Seeing Li Haojun’s confusion, Malaya smiled and explained,
“I checked the company data. The impoverished population around Las Vegas isn’t very aggressive. The data suggests they’ve been domesticated. It’s just unclear whether it’s through drugs, gene editing, or artificial selection.”