The First Report

The Gongdeng City Joint Road and Public Safety Service Station looked nothing like Xu Linchuan had imagined. He had assumed that any place connected to a stargate accident ought to have at least one very heavy door. When he arrived, he found that the station shared a forecourt with community health services, market affairs, and road appeals, and by eight in the morning every seat was taken. Someone was holding a broken household appliance while waiting for a liability assessment; someone else was supplementing a gateflow record; an old man followed a clerk from window to window, demanding to know why a compensation form from ten years ago was two characters shorter than his old copy. As Tang Yi led them upstairs, she noticed Xu Linchuan was still looking back. “Disappointed?” “A little.” “What did you think it would look like?” “At least like somewhere that handles stargate accidents.” Tang Yi released the second-floor access lock. “Most days, we spend more time finding out who parked a freight truck at the wrong gate.”

Lian Zhi, walking behind them, laughed when she heard that. She had worked another night shift the evening before and looked exhausted, but she had insisted on coming today. Yike had not. He had an objects class today and did not want to take another day off for an old ring that had already been taken out of use. Xu Linchuan thought that was perfectly reasonable—a child’s life could not be reduced forever to “that old ring.” The meeting room was small, and a sealed evidence box had already been placed on the table. He Qi joined remotely from the school, and Mihe’s mother was online as well. Inside the transparent box, the Muyuan Type III looked more like a piece of evidence than it had at school: numbered labels marked all four corners, the yellow out-of-service tag remained attached, and an inert support film lay beneath the old ring.

Tang Yi pushed the procedure sheet toward them and said they would do only two things today: confirm the physical object’s identity and examine it without damaging its structure. The sealed cavity at the bottom had been registered, but neither Lian Zhi nor Mihe’s mother had consented to opening it. No one would touch it today. Lian Zhi looked at the sealed box. “How much can you find without taking it apart?” “We’ll start with what the outside can tell us,” Tang Yi said. “If we truly reach the point where it needs to be opened, we’ll ask you again.” The woman responsible for verifying the continuity of the device’s main body was named Wen Shu. She arrived ten minutes early. Her mechanical body had not been deliberately made from a uniform material. Her left hand was nearly black, her right was pale alloy, and fine lines from several replacements were visible at the joints of her shoulders and neck. After entering, she did not look at Mihe’s ring. Instead, she asked the staff to bring two old rings of the same model. “You’re not examining just one?” Xu Linchuan asked.