The Ghost Shift (31 page)

“So, Jiang Jia. All familiar, yes?”

“Yes, except—” Mei hesitated, not knowing whether to be honest. She trusted him even less than before.

“Tell me! Don’t be frightened. Is there something unusual, something you don’t understand? Speak up.”

“They aren’t making tablets. They are taking them apart.”

“Yes!” The instructor clapped his hands and laughed. “You’re right, of course. You wouldn’t miss that.”

It was the strangest assembly line she had seen, one that ran backward
from the delivery bays to the end. Instead of parts coming from trucks into the bays, workers were unloading pallets stacked with finished tablets in boxes, shrink-wrapped and ready to be sent along the Pearl River to the world. Each box had on it the Poppy logo, a photograph of the device, and a hologram. They were identical to the one Feng had recovered from the Wolf’s house.

The workers stripped the packaging and brought each one to the start of the line, where they were unpacked and placed on the belt. The empty boxes were put to the side. Mei watched as the line rolled into action on each tablet, starting with the final screws being taken out, the frame unhinged. The tablet passed down the line, each component being stripped and placed in a slot on a tray. The tray was wheeled down the line by the matching device until the frame was removed from the rear plate and laid in with the other parts.

Within twenty minutes, the operation of assembling the Poppy tablet had been reversed. It was back in pieces.

“Here, take a look.” They walked to the end of the line, and the instructor pointed to one of the trays.

It was a marvel of precision. Every screw, every spring, every chip and battery had a place in the tray’s rubber inset. Even the box in which the tablet had been wrapped stood nearby.

Other workers in red tunics hoisted the trays and stacked them twelve-high on a cart, then pushed them in a long line to the edge of the hangar, and out of the building through sliding doors.

“Do you have a question?” The instructor smiled mischievously.

“Why are they doing this?”

“Can you guess?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think.”

“What is the third value of Long Tan?”

“Discipline,” she said.

“Which means quality. The highest quality in the world, that is what Cao requires. We have quality checks, but we cannot see
inside
our devices. Sometimes, we must take them apart.” He laughed. “To go to all that trouble to build them, and then do this. It is a tribute to his discipline.”

“I see.”

He looked at her. “Come on, Jiang Jia. I see you have another question. What did I tell you? Speak up!”

“Why are there so many? Why do you have to open all of these devices to check on them?”

The instructor shook his head. “Cao Fu has very high standards, he does not take chances. If you were the boss, we would check one or two. He checks many thousands. Could you run the best factory in the world?”

Mei tried to look humble. “I couldn’t.”

“No, you couldn’t. Cao Fu is the only one who can. That is why we should not question him.”

The instructor fixed his customary grin in place and clapped as if he’d taught Mei a useful lesson. But he strode back up the line with a touch of impatience. He wasn’t happy.

Taking apart the tablets was trickier than putting them together. Mei had a place halfway along the line, in sight of her roommates but far enough that she couldn’t talk. Her task was to unscrew the logic board from the panel, lifting the bar that held it down after removing two screws. Then she took a scalpel and slit the black rubber encasing the board—it had been heat-sealed on the other line, and there was no way to open it. She put the bar in a foam rubber slot, next to the parts that had been removed up the line, and the tablet moved onward.

The problem was the screws that fastened the board. Most were easy to take out; she slotted the bit into the star-shaped screw head and, as she applied torque, they lifted. But some were so stiff that the tool slipped, and she had to wrench it to make it turn. It made her hand ache and spoiled the screw, which she would then discard in a bin. When it was impossible to shift, she had to alert a supervisor, who took the tablet to a workstation near the line for a remedial crew to work on. It felt like a failure every time—she was mangling the job.

Mei cursed those who had made her job so hard, until she recalled that she’d been one of them, rushing to fix the thing together on the other line, not knowing that all her work was for nothing. The tablet would be loaded on a truck and taken to P-1 to be ripped apart again. It was her second morning on the line and, although the work was frustrating, it was less tiring than in the original Poppy facility. The pace was slower, and she had time to pause, even rub her feet between jobs. Many fewer tablets passed by. Things moved so slowly that she
was able to look around the facility, staring into the rafters until a guard met her stare. Mei dropped her gaze to the wall that divided the building. She couldn’t see through it, but she heard the hum of machines.

It was then, standing at the line, that she noticed something. The workers in red who wheeled the trolleys full of trays passed through a sliding door to her rear about a hundred feet away. The door closed behind each one. But half an hour later, the same worker would return through another door, this one in the central wall behind her, to pick up another cart. The whole circuit took twenty minutes from exiting to entering again. After a while, she could predict exactly when the next one would arrive. They were in a permanent loop—taking a cart, delivering it, returning it empty.

Mei wanted to see where the sliding door led, but it was impossible from where she stood. She started to flex one leg as if suffering from a cramp and pace around between tasks. She slowly lengthened her circuit until she could peep through the door briefly as it opened into a long, curved hallway.

“Jia, are you ill?” The instructor’s voice boomed in her ear, making her jump.

“It’s just a pulled muscle.”

“Carry on, then. But you can always see the doctor. We take good care of our family.”

She fixed a smile on her face and caught the eye of Ling, who frowned, warning her of danger.

Supper was fish
steamed in ginger,
choi sum
greens, and yellow bean tofu. Here, they could leave their dishes on the table, with plates unfinished and rice to spare, and the kitchen staff would collect them. Ling had been talking to a friend at another table, but as Mei finished her food, she came across.

“Let’s take an evening stroll. You haven’t seen everything.”

“I’ll come.” Shu rose from her seat.

“Please do,” Ling said, and Shu sat again, obeying the coded command.

Ling led her from the back of the building to the recreation field.
It was empty—Mei hadn’t seen anyone playing sports on it since she’d arrived—and they stood out in the night. It was a thousand feet to the perimeter fence and, beneath the moon, she saw a dog leaping playfully as his guard led him along the fence. The guard’s flashlight swept the dark ground inside the fence.

“You’re curious,” Ling said.

“Am I?”

“That’s not good.” Ling took her arm. “They don’t like anyone to be so interested. Don’t worry, they can’t hear us here, I think. But you should be careful. He saw you looking.”

They were on a soccer field, its lines glistening in the moonlight. The outline of P-1 lay ahead—the assembly building and a smaller square attached to one side by two tubes. One of them must be the hallway she’d seen on the other side of the sliding door. They were windowless, but skylights glowed on their roofs.

“How long have you been here?”

“A year,” Ling said. “I’ll never get out.”

“Why don’t you go?”

“They won’t let us. If you ask, they say you’re disloyal. You’re putting your ego above the collective. We can’t speak to our families. They won’t allow us home for the New Year holiday.”

“Does nobody leave?”

“A few do. That’s a big deal. We have a party for them to celebrate. Wu Ning, the girl who was in our room before you? She did. She complained, and they let her leave. They made a cake.”

Ling smiled as if encouraged by the example—that she might be lucky. She didn’t know what had happened to Wu Ning, Mei realized. They were kept sealed away, not knowing that death was the only way out.

“Can’t you escape?” Mei pointed toward the border fence.

Ling’s eyelids fluttered. “
Someone
did.”

“When?”

“About a month ago. There was an alarm one night—the lights flashing and the sirens going. They came to our rooms and searched them. They wouldn’t say why, but I heard a girl had disappeared.”

Mei’s heart felt as if it had stopped and she heard herself breathing loudly in the night air. “Who was it?”

“A girl on the trolleys. She hadn’t been here long. I saw her a few times. She looked like you.” Ling’s voice was guileless.

“She got out?”

“That’s what they said.”

The lights were on in the dormitory building, and they stood on a wide-open space, exposed to view from all sides, encircled by fence. The only other buildings were the two that formed P-1. It was perfectly designed to encircle its occupants, with nowhere to hide. Mei turned in a circle, trying to see how Lizzie might have done it. The sniffer dog barked to her left and, as she looked toward it, she noticed one weakness—a tiny flaw.

“We should go,” Ling said.

As they walked, Mei thought of Lizzie. She imagined her sister out in this field, gazing around; on the assembly line, figuring out how to unlock P-1’s secrets and to take them with her. She’d suspected Lizzie of being foolish, of behaving recklessly to impress Lockhart, but now she saw how clever she had been. She’d had a plan, and it had almost worked.

It was eleven o’clock, nearing the end of the morning shift, when the girl who did the task opposite slipped away to the restroom, leaving Mei alone. She looked over her shoulder. The supervisor had drifted along the line to ensure that the flow of tablets would not be held up by a jam of trolleys. Mei had just taken both screws from the securing arm and placed it in the tray. There wouldn’t be a better moment.

She took the scalpel in her right hand and bent her shoulders so she could not be seen. Then she placed her left hand against the tablet and, with a swift, deep stroke, slashed the tips of three fingers. Blood spurted, covering the tablet, and she reeled away from the line, clutching her wrist and crying in pain. This part she didn’t have to pretend: It hurt like hell. She’d tried a light slash—the most blood for the least injury—but she’d cut down to the bone.

There was a commotion, and a klaxon sounded as the line halted. Ling rang to her and wrapped a cloth around her hand, but the blood would not stop. The white cloth turned red and blood dripped down her uniform. A supervisor brought a chair and she sat, shaking and feeling faint.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so stupid.”

“How did it happen?” Ling asked.

“I looked the wrong way as I cut.”

A gurney came, pushed by two nurses. They strapped her hand and helped her onto it, then wheeled her the length of the line, with the workers gazing at her as she went. She lay facing up, observing the ceiling of the factory. Even the guards on the walkway peered at her.
In the medical room, near Dr. He’s office, a doctor placed strips on the cuts and bandaged up each finger separately. She was given a tetanus shot, a painkiller, and, finally, a cup of
Longjing
tea. It was the most efficient emergency care she’d experienced in her life.

Mei was dozing when the instructor came.

“Jia! The last person I’d expect to have such an accident on the line. You are always precise.” He sat by the gurney, bending forward to look at her bandaged fingers.

“I’m upset to have let you down. I don’t know what happened. I feel so ashamed of myself.”

“You mustn’t. Cao Fu says in his book: ‘If someone attacks us, we strike him harder. If they are troubled, we help them.’ What did I tell you on the day you arrived? Love comes first at Long Tan. You will rest until you are recovered. Only then will you need to work again.”