One

I massaged my temples, and looked sideways out the window at the mass of gray buildings. From here on the 28th floor, the ground was invisible. The only green was a few plants dangling out of a window across the way. I barely had a chance to catch my breath between appointments before my sixth patient knocked at the door. He was a slightly balding, middle-aged man. His body was stiff, and his movements—closing the door, walking to the chair—were deliberate. I knew he was an anxiety patient before he spoke a word. He sat up straight, like a puppet, two eyes staring forward vacantly.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said to him. “You can lean back, adjust the chair as you like.”

He allowed himself to recline against the chair cushion, just slightly, yet he remained rigid. I offered him an approving smile, encouraging his effort.

I opened with my standard greeting, “What brings you here today?”

“I think I’m being controlled by something.” He once again sat straight and still in the chair, if leaning slightly in my direction. “A lot of the time I feel that it’s not me talking, like there’s something controlling what I say.”

He spoke almost in a whisper, as if he were telling me a secret; patients with delusions of being controlled are often like this. I simply wrote down the words delusions of control in my notebook and asked him, “Can you tell me something about the last time you felt you were being manipulated?”

“The last time was in our company conference room. I was meeting with a certain client of mine to discuss a proposal. I was well prepared for the meeting, and my thinking was sharp, clear. I was explaining my plans to the client, using my hands to clarify certain points.” He did not—perhaps could not—move his hands now.

“Then I saw, just outside the window, the holiday cactus that was planted there—the flower pot had been there as long as I can remember—suddenly tip and fall. The conference room is well-insulated; you can’t hear anything that happens outside. There was no sound, though I knew that since the pot fell from the ninth floor, it must have been destroyed. It was as if the plant had fallen into a bottomless pit.

“I did not stop speaking; I continued with my presentation, concentrating with all my might. But after a while the client stopped me and asked, ‘Why are you crying? Are you OK?’ Only then did I realize I had been weeping. Something else must have been controlling me. It must have been . . .”

Then he kept repeating versions of the same phrase: “I am sure this thing that won’t stop talking is not me.”

I wrote, Uncontrolled emotional outbursts, crying without clear cause and interrupted him by asking, “Did you like that particular cactus?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that every time I gave a presentation in that conference room, I could always see it out of the corner of my eye. It was something that drew my attention.”

“Can you tell me something about the cactus flowers? What were they like?”

“Its leaves were always coated with a layer of gray. It didn’t look like it could possibly live very long, yet last week I saw it bloom.”

“What were the flowers like?”

“Small, like fingernails. Red like a rose.”

“You clearly observed it carefully. Although you say you didn’t particularly like it, your subconscious actually saw it in detail.”

He choked up a bit, and his body slid down slightly along the back of the chair. That was good. He was starting to relax.

I pressed my advantage and asked, “Is that client very important to you?”

“Yes, very important. And in two weeks I have my promotion review. Every account is important now.”

So this was a case in which the motivation to succeed was so powerful that it became counterproductive. As I took a moment to think about what to say next, I glanced out the window, and felt suddenly that I was just like him, concentrating on the plant in his periphery while talking with clients about their projects.

“Then you must have put a lot of effort into this account.” I had to offer him approval before I could expect him to listen to what I was about to say.

“Yes . . . I have to work hard. I can only keep working hard.”

“Do you ever feel that sometimes the goal toward which you strive is too distant, that it is out of reach, and that therefore . . .”

A large shadow flashed past the window, falling, like a heavy black trash bag dropped into a dumpster. It moved so fast, there was only time for me to catch a glimpse of the shadow’s edge before it disappeared. A man’s black leather shoes. It was a person.

“. . . therefore you are not fully absorbed in your work?” I completed my speech fluently, without a pause, as if someone else were speaking through me. My visitor was covering his face and wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. He had apparently not noticed the scene outside the window.

Strange, unnatural feelings swept through my heart, but I did not have time to consider them. Practiced words of comfort flowed out of my mouth: “After all, people are not machines, and even machines cannot always maintain a perfectly functional state.”

My timer buzzed gently, and looking at the visitor I pursed my lips slightly toward the sound, politely signaling that his session was over.

“I recommend that when you go back to work, do your best to adjust your goals. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. For example, take the sense of accomplishment you feel with each account, any one account, and regulate that feeling to the level that you now feel after closing three successful accounts.”

He nodded, got to his feet, and left wearily. I set down my smile as if laying down a heavy load. I was finally done.

Two

Stepping out of the office building, I saw a group of people forming a circle in front of it. I knew it must be where the man had landed. The body had already been carried away, but there were dark-red blood stains on the ground, and a single black leather shoe. It was the one I had seen through the window in my office.

Someone in the crowd whispered, “Who was it? I can’t think of who that…”

“I know him. It was that sales rep from the insurance company on thirty-four. His name was Shen Xin. He always did have a bit of an odd look.”

Once I heard the name Shen Xin, I remembered that I had met him once myself. I had run into him in the elevator, a young man in a proper suit, his tie straight. As a salesperson, he seemed to have boundless enthusiasm for his work: he enthusiastically asked me what floor I was going to, enthusiastically pressed the button for me, enthusiastically introduced himself, and then enthusiastically tried to sell me an insurance policy.

Yet he still had a sense of the meticulous about him. He held his shoulders straight and rigid, and every high-pitched greeting seemed to be pre-recorded and played back. It seemed that observing fixed forms was in his bones. Why would this utterly conventional young man jump off a building?

Then there was the mystery of my reaction. This had to have been the first time I had witnessed someone jumping to their death, yet I had neither stopped what I was doing in amazement, nor had I cried out in panic: “Someone just jumped off the building!” Instead, I had smoothly continued telling my patient precisely what I thought I should tell him. A sense of unreality again spread through me, like an eerie touch from a ghostly hand.

I shuddered and quickly shook these thoughts away. I did not have time for foolish ideas; at home, I had to face a daughter who never stopped crying and a husband who didn’t do anything at all. There was no room in my brain for foolish notions.

When I pushed my apartment door open, there was my daughter, two-and-a-half years old, sitting on the floor, barefoot, playing clumsily with a doll, and giggling idiotically. The picture book I had bought for her had been tossed carelessly aside.

My husband Rick, the man whose singing used to move me, sat to one side of this scene cradling his guitar and playing a cheerful tune without a hint of anxiety or care. Seeing me come in, he raised his head and looked at me with his simple, artless eyes, like a child expecting praise.

I stepped forward and pressed his guitar strings with my palm, silencing the instrument. He was stunned, his puzzlement showing plainly on his face.

“We agreed you would read that picture book to our daughter from seven to eight in the evening. What are you doing?”

“I did. I read to her. She didn’t like it. You can see how happily she’s playing now.”

“She’s almost three years old. Our daughter can only say a few words; she can’t put together a complete sentence. Aren’t you even a little concerned about that?”

“Look, she’s laughing. She laughs as soon as I pick up the guitar. Her musical sense is highly developed. Maybe she has a gift for music, like me!”

This man who had aspired to be a musician, but ended up a music teacher—wasn’t he embarrassed to talk about musical gifts? I couldn’t stop myself from raising my voice. “This has nothing to do with gifts! I have told you many times. Ages two to three are critical years for developing a child’s reading skills and logical capabilities. After this crucial period is over, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, there is no way to catch up on those skills!” I heard myself overstating for effect, reciting the most rigid of the older theories.

“Wen…” He said my name as if he wanted to placate me, but I was in a rage, and there was no stopping me.

“After age two, she immediately enters the stage of making calculations and connections. If our daughter’s language and logic skills are not well-developed, she’ll have more trouble with the next stage of concept formation. She’ll fall behind her peers. Can’t you be a little more responsible, a little more like a father?”

“Wen.” He called my name again, apparently louder this time, but I only saw his mouth open and shut. Whatever he was saying, I could not hear it clearly. I kept talking, like a loose slot machine spitting out coins.

“I know you’re psychologically immature. I know this. You’ve always been like a big child in this marriage. This was pre-determined for you by your original family circumstances, because when you were young your father abandoned your mother, so your mother spoiled you. I don’t blame you for this. But we have a daughter now, so can you just pretend to be an adult, just a little?”

“Wen!” He had raised his voice again. “She’s crying!”

“I know that!” I yelled, though in truth I had only just noticed. My daughter’s sobs had turned into an open-mouth wail. The sound of the crying upset me, made me anxious. “But I have to make you understand that our marriage constitutes our daughter’s original family and will determine her future. Do you understand that you are influencing her just like your family influenced you?”

“Fine. You’ve said your piece. Good. Are you done?” Now he was furious as well. “Don’t spout your psychological theories at me.”

“She will grow into a child who does not have a sense of trust in men. She will not be able to understand or rely on half of the members of society!”

“Wen!” he burst out suddenly. “Would it actually be so difficult for you to talk to me like a human being?”

The blue veins in his neck protruded, and his voice was heavy as a drum. It echoed through the room and resounded in my ears. I finally was quiet.

The scene from earlier in the day floated up before my eyes.

The heavy, black garbage bag fell.

“Do you ever feel that sometimes the goal toward which you strive is too distant, that it is out of reach, and that therefore…”

Men’s black leather shoes flashed past the window.

“…and that therefore you are not fully absorbed in your work?”

Was that really what I had said? Was it really me saying it? As a man jumped to his death right before my eyes?

Ghostly hands spread across the dark room, reaching toward me, grasping at the back of my head. My body slowly stiffened, and I lost all control over my limbs.

Three

“I think I’m being controlled by something.”

At these words Professor Xu, sitting across from me, displayed a broad smile, and the fine lines in the corners of his eyes wrinkled softly, very different from my own dry and shriveled smiles.

Professor Xu was a veteran consultant with twenty years of experience. He had been my practicum advisor in school and became my own therapist—a therapist for therapists. More than that, he was a friend I trusted implicitly. Only here with him could I let down my guard and speak my true mind. With him I could enjoy a self-indulgent tone, almost like a spoiled child, and say such foolish things as “I think I’m being controlled by something.”

He did not criticize me for my lack of professionalism, but simply asked kindly, “Communication with Rick is still rough?”

The problems between me and Rick had been going on for a long time. I was a very deliberative person, and Rick was used to doing whatever he felt like in the moment. The strange thing was that I did not realize this until we were already married.

When we were younger, we talked about everything. We would meet on the university quad, chatting from the bright afternoon to the slight chill of the moonlit night. I thought we were sufficiently familiar with each other. I thought that continuing our relationship was a rational decision founded on adequate communication, but clearly he had approached the situation differently. Perhaps for him our relationship was nothing more than a romanticized manifestation of long-repressed hormones.

I sighed. “We had another argument last night, and it made my daughter cry.”

“The evolution of intimate relationships requires time and patience, and during this process it’s best if you can avoid quarreling in front of your daughter. Even if she is only two-and-a-half years old, such scenes can have adverse effects.”

“I know that. Of course I know. The problem is that even when I clearly saw her crying, I was still fully engaged in explaining my reasoning. Somehow I couldn’t stop myself and comfort my daughter first. It’s not that I don’t know the importance of promptly consoling my child. How could I have set my sobbing daughter aside for the sake of an argument?” I pounded my forehead with a fist in self-recrimination.

“First of all, Wen, don’t rush to blame yourself.” Professor Xu’s voice was full of comfort. “You have always been a highly rational person with a great deal of self-control. Have you recently encountered any additional stressful situations?”

Dark ghosts again enveloped me, and I told him about the man who had jumped from the building.

Professor Xu calmly wrote something in his notes and then said to me, “Is it possible, because you saw this man falling from the building and you yourself did not take any action, that you feel some guilt because of your passivity?”

“But I didn’t know him at all. I had only seen him once. I barely knew his name.”

“Can you tell me something about the circumstances of the day you met him?”

I thought back to that day.

Just as I had done every day, I folded myself into the flow of commuters pouring into the office building. I stood quietly at the elevator door and waited. At the ding of the elevator bell, people entered, hurriedly but still keeping a polite distance from one another.

There was a brief period in which voices called out floor numbers and polite thanks to those who pressed the buttons, followed by a stillness like dead water. In that silence, only Shen Xin was able to speak, to look into the cold and indifferent face of someone near him and introduce himself.

“I did not respond to his self-introduction or to the ovarian cancer insurance policy he presented to me. When I walked out of the elevator, he was still talking, giving his pitch every last ounce of his effort, and I didn’t even turn my head to look back at him.

“Later, he fell to his death right before my eyes, and again I was indifferent, did nothing, did not even give him a second of my time.”

When I finished describing the scene to Professor Xu, his response was familiar: “See, you remember it all very well. You are not as uncaring as you think.”

I was pierced by an icy arrow that flew out from the darkness around me. I held tightly to the armrest of the chair, swallowed by the shame that seeped from my wound.

As always, I rode the elevator up to my office, but on the way I could not recover any sort of calm. The elevator rose and stopped, rose and stopped, and the red number indicating the floor continued to rise.

The twenty-eighth floor arrived, my floor, and I did not get out. Professor Xu’s words still echoed in my ears: “The feelings of guilt come from a kind of fantasy that if only you had done something, taken some action, you could have prevented the undesirable outcome. If you were to go and try to understand this man’s life and the cause of his death, you would naturally find many factors over which you could have had no control whatsoever.”

Perhaps to atone for my indifference that day, I pushed the button for thirty-four. I would try to understand the man’s life and why he died.

His floor was exactly the same as the floor where I worked. The ceiling was low, and the space was carved up into several office areas separated from the hallway by frosted glass. The door to each area was affixed with a company name. I saw a door labeled People’s Insurance Company and knew that must have been where Shen Xin worked.

I told the receptionist at the front desk that I was looking for Shen Xin. She wrinkled her nose, as if she smelled something odd, and told me coldly that he was dead. I confessed awkwardly, “I know. I just wanted to ask, why did he commit suicide?”

“Who knows? He was always a little strange. There was a period when he worked like mad, like sales was his whole life. He would sell to anyone. As long as he was talking to a person, he could make a sale. He was top salesman for several months. But recently, in the last sales period, he hadn’t closed a single deal for a few weeks in a row. Then he just jumped.”

It sounded like his suicide was related to work frustration and this professional setback. “Did anything specific happen just before he committed suicide? For example, did the company plan to let him go?”

“What would I know about that? I only know what I hear from my coworkers. His mother’s here today. Why don’t you ask her?” Her plump finger pointed toward the interior of the office. An elderly woman, dressed like she had arrived directly from the countryside, was packing up one of the work stations. She was hunched over and appeared frail, a figure stricken with grief.

I moved toward her and saw Shen Xin’s name still printed on the cubicle nameplate. The old woman was a little embarrassed, not knowing what to do about my presence. I hesitated for a moment, then said that I was a friend of Shen Xin’s.

“Oh, oh . . .,” the old woman responded. She apologized repeatedly for not knowing me, saying that her “Little Xin” had not talked to her very much about his life. Even the things he had told her, she simply didn’t understand.

I helped the old woman pack up the few items Shen Xin had left behind. We put his tea cups, pens, books, and folders one by one into a cardboard box. On Shen Xin’s table, there were several large volumes on scientific subjects. This I had not expected to see.

The old woman chattered on long-windedly about the past. She talked about how Shen Xin grew up polite and with a good understanding of things, and how he always studied diligently. Although she and his father were both illiterate farmers, Shen Xin’s dream was to be a scientist.

He originally wanted to continue his studies as a graduate student in biology, but then his father found out that he had stomach cancer, and the treatment was very expensive. Hearing that salespeople could make fast money, Shen Xin went to the city to sell insurance.

So, it turned out Shen Xin had been forced by the exigencies of life to give up his dream, I thought to myself.

“My little Xin, he was a good boy. Why did he take everything so hard? Why would he . . .?” The old woman choked with sobs and wept soundlessly.

“Perhaps he simply felt that life was too exhausting.” I tried to comfort her with these words, although I did not really know anything at all.

I wanted her to answer her own question. Why did she think Shen Xin had committed suicide? But this was not the time for such pointed questions, and in any event, the elderly woman would not necessarily have any clear insight into her son’s motivations.

The receptionist came over from the front desk and politely asked us to be a little quicker in finishing our task. The old woman stopped crying; I lowered my head and silently continued packing things into the box.

A notebook about the size of my palm fell out of a book titled The Robot’s Rebellion, and I immediately squatted down to pick it up. I stayed there behind the desk for a few seconds, flipping quickly through the notebook. The first line on the first page brought me up short: “If I die someday soon, know that I did not kill myself.”

The densely packed text was thick as grain in the field, and the thin sheets of paper etched deeply by the heavy handwriting gave off a strong air of the personal; these notes were clearly not related to his work. I stealthily tucked the notebook into my coat pocket. The answer to the riddle was surely within. It burned me through my clothes like a glowing piece of coal, but I could not throw it away. I could not wait to open it as soon as I had returned to my office.

Four

“They have been controlling me for a while already. I have encountered the following situation many times: I meet a new person in a public place. We exchange the conventional pleasantries, talk about the weather and so forth. After this initial greeting, I immediately and involuntarily start in on my sales pitch for an insurance policy.

“At first, I didn’t think this was a problem. I thought it would improve my sales numbers. Maybe, I thought, it was actually me subconsciously trying to improve my numbers. After all, I had practiced so many hours in front of the mirror, how to greet a stranger and how to talk spontaneously about the products I was trying to sell.

“Eventually, however, there were times when I clearly saw the disgust in the face of the person I was talking to. In those moments, I should have known how to be tactful and stop talking or change the subject, but I found myself unable to stop. It was as if I were an actor, and the lines I had memorized must all be recited before I could leave the stage.

“(Conclusion: They are not able to discern human emotions.)”

This read like the typical ravings of a patient suffering from delusions of control, but the detailed descriptions that followed drew me in and kept me scanning the pages.

“Later, the situation developed to the point that every person I saw became a potential customer, no matter who it was. I would try my pitch on literally anyone I met; it didn’t matter whether they were realistically a potential client or not. Whenever I saw a person, I automatically began the process of greetings, small talk, and then sales, as if a switch had been flipped.

“For a while, I sold ovarian cancer insurance, but I even tried to sell it to men! When one of them swore at me and walked away, something terrible happened. I still couldn’t stop talking, and the torrent of words poured out into the air, directed at nobody, until I had finished describing every last detail of the product.

“(Conclusion: They probably have no sense of sight.)”

A knock on the door; my next patient had arrived. I hurriedly shut the notebook, adjusted my posture, and said, “Please come in!”

It was the anxiety patient from two days previous. He sat down opposite me, still stiff.

“How have you been feeling?” I asked him with a smile.

“Doctor, I don’t think I’ll ever get better.” His dejection and hopelessness were beyond my expectations. “I think the situation is worse. I can’t stop talking about my account proposals with people, even people who are not clients. I’m less and less able to control myself.”

“What did you say?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I can’t control myself.”

“No, before that, please.”

“I can’t stop talking about my accounts, going over my presentations and proposals, even with people who are not my clients.”

These words, so perfectly consistent with the description in Shen Xin’s notes. Could it be mere coincidence?

Five

“I work in a building with thirty-eight floors. There are approximately 20,000 people working in this building. I have tried to sell insurance to practically every one of those 20,000 people. There have been some successful attempts, but many more failures. I have seen everyone’s indifference, if not their hostility. Before I fall asleep at night, those faces play back one after another in my mind, each one carved with contempt, contempt for me. I don’t know how to go on living like this.”

When I finished reading this passage in the midst of turbulent rush-hour traffic, remorse once again oppressed me. Mine was one of the contemptuous faces that had haunted Shen Xin in the night.

When I got home that evening, Rick was watching TV in the living room. He chuckled at something on the screen, and his silly expression was exactly like that of our daughter when she played with that doll. I was suddenly and violently irritated at the thought that my daughter had inherited half of her genes from him.

This world might possibly be undergoing a complex and radical transformation, and he was completely unaware. He was still watching his favorite variety show and laughing sardonically. His ignorant and happy eyes turned to me, and he uttered a completely insubstantial, “You’re back.”

“The new clothes I bought for her online should have arrived today. Are they OK? Is there any problem with them?”

“Clothes? Ah, when I got back today, I forgot to go pick up the package. I’ll go tomorrow.”

Again, thoughtless. I thought of Professor Xu’s advice, “Don’t carry stress with you into the home.” With great effort I resisted the urge to spit a complaint at my husband. Instead, I went directly to the bedroom and opened the notebook.

“I became reticent, afraid of talking with anyone. And that worked. After I stopped talking, they could not control me anymore, but the price of this freedom was that my monthly sales numbers dropped to zero.

“The manager called me into his office and berated me harshly. He gave me a new insurance product and said I had to sell at least five policies within the month or I would be let go. There was no way out.

“I went home and began to familiarize myself with the new policy documents. As I recited the materials softly to myself, they took control of me again. They forced me to talk to myself in front of a wall for two hours. They made me describe every single insurance product I have ever tried to sell, one after another!

“Like a dog that has been stuck in a room for too long, it runs even faster and more wildly than usual as soon as door opens. And this dog had been stuck in the room for a very long time. It went crazy.

“But these things are different from dogs. They are of a collective. They are used to doing things as a group. All it takes is for one of them to be mentioned, and then the other ones that are linked with it will pour out of one’s mouth.

“I have done experiments to test this hypothesis. They do not respond to random everyday words unrelated to any system. Only words that belong to a certain systematic framework will bring about the endless talk. They are essentially like genes, each of which is composed of a specialized vocabulary. The particular set of words that belong to it are like the specific nucleotide sequence that comprises a particular gene.

“Their reproductive instincts are also the same as genes; their goal is to make as many copies of themselves as possible and thereby expand their population! And human consciousness is their medium; linguistic communication between humans (both oral and written) is their vector of transmission!”

“That feeling that we talked about last time, the feeling that you were being controlled—has that situation improved?” Professor Xu’s mild voice embraced me.

“Ah? What?” I snapped out of a reverie. Shen Xin’s dense handwriting still floated in the air around me, as it had for more than a week.

“Have you experienced any compulsive behavior recently? For example, any movement of your body that you feel did not originate with you?” Professor Xu continued, “If so, it may be an anxiety disorder.”

“It’s not anxiety.” I spoke in a low voice. “It’s them. They have taken control of me. They are controlling humans.” My body trembled unnaturally, and I knew I probably sounded incoherent.

“Wen? Are you all right?” Professor Xu asked. “Are you feeling controlled right now? Wen, just stay calm. Do you hear a voice in your head? Are you seeing something unusual?”

He went on in one long breath to talk about all the symptoms and principles of delusion, but I didn’t hear a word of what he said. Why was he talking at such length about all these things? These are principles with which I was quite familiar. Was Professor Xu also being controlled? He sounded like Shen Xin, unable to stop talking until he had finished his entire sales pitch.

As I walked down the road that led toward home, it seemed that the voices of the people on the street became drawn out and attenuated. A man holding a mobile phone talked without pause about a certain plan of his, all the way down the street. A salesperson at the door of a store introduced her product in full detail without taking a breath, a tedious and redundant recitation. The huge electronic screen in the city’s central plaza was broadcasting a program about the law, and the lawyers in their impeccable suits rattled on and on about the legal clauses and subclauses of some legislation. Every voice was so strange.

Were they all being controlled? Or was this how the world had always been? Was it merely that Shen Xin’s notebook made me pay attention to these details?

My head was buzzing. No. I had to find more reliable evidence.

Six

“I found a forum about them on the internet. There’s a group of people like me who suffer under their control. I try to tell people around me that they are here, trying to control humans.

“At first, I was able to talk without interference about the forum and the name those victims gave to ‘them’. What I mean is that, even though people often looked at me strangely, nevertheless, I was able to speak about ‘them’ unhindered. But very quickly it all changed, and I could not mention details about the forum, and I could not say ‘their’ name to anyone. I only have to try to mention that term, and I am instantly mute, as if I have a sensitive word filter in my brain.

“I suppose this is proof that that name is the true name of the collective. They can cause me to rattle on endlessly, or they can hide away in my consciousness and refuse to come out. If this is true, very likely they control human thought simply by deciding what to output and what to block. Here I enter the most frightening territory, and this is why I am writing down these words.

“I have an ominous presentiment. If some misfortune should happen to me, please look at chapter seven of The Robot’s Rebellion. The name is there.”

The Robot’s Rebellion was the book on Shen Xin’s desk from which this notebook had fallen. His mother had taken it away with her. I searched for the book online, and it was there. The seventh chapter was titled “From Genes to Memes.”

The chapter opened, “Meme: an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation. Just as genes are transferred from one individual to another through sperm and egg, memes are propagated from one brain to another to carry out cultural reproduction.”

After a little time with a search engine, I soon found the forum that Shen Xin had written about. I read page after page of posts, read until my palms were sweaty and my head burned. The experience of being controlled that the members described was virtually the same as Shen Xin’s. Although, because of their different occupations, each individual had been colonized by different types of memes.

For example, mathematicians were colonized by memes from within the mathematical system, and architects were colonized by memes related to construction and design. Advertising agents were colonized by their own marketing campaigns.

I could even analyze the similarities in their descriptions to abstract the symptomatic stages of meme control. First, there was the inability to stop speaking to people when it was clearly appropriate to stop. Then there was the rigidity of the body, anxiety and tension. Then the steady flow of speech with total disregard for one’s audience, if there even was an audience.

God, I was a psychiatrist, a scientist. Was I actually going to blindly accept the statements of a delusional patient? The only way to disprove or confirm these statements was going to be through experimentation.

I faced the mirror, took a deep breath, and arranged for myself a simple experimental method. I spoke the first word: “Hello.”

My throat and palate vibrated softly, causing the air in my ears to ripple as if with small concentric waves of water. After the brief quavering of sound dissipated, the air recovered its calm, and I did not continue to speak or excite any other special response.

I continued on to my second experimental phrase: “My name is Wen.”

No response.

Once again I drew in a deep breath and carefully enunciated the third statement of my experiment: “Subconscious.”

That one word was all I had planned to speak, but then I saw, or thought I saw, a dark-yellow, creeping vapor surge from my mouth like a dense swarm of bees.

“This refers to those things that cannot become conscious under normal circumstances, such as desires that are repressed deep in one’s innermost being and cannot be considered by the conscious mind…”

They were here. They occupied my brain and used my throat as a channel. I desperately tried to cover my mouth, but they flowed out through the tiny gaps between my fingers. I smashed the mirror and pushed down a towering pile of books, but the loud noise failed to shake the momentum of their inexorable march forward.

Rick rushed over from the living room and shouted my name through the locked door. Paralyzed, I slumped to the ground. I was unable to open the door or respond. He forced the door and entered, shocked to see the disorder in the room. He held me and asked anxiously what was going on. But I could not reply. My linguistic capabilities were entirely under their control.

“…Freud believed that the unconscious functions actively, that it spontaneously exerts pressure and influence on human character and behavior…”

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you talking this way?” Rick asked.

“…Things that may seem insignificant, such as dreams, words misspoken or miswritten, and clerical errors, are all initiated by latent triggers in the brain. They reveal the hidden, unconscious self, though their appearance in these forms constitutes another kind of disguise…”

“Oh, now I understand what you mean. I get it.” Rick laughed bitterly. “You’re saying that because I forgot to pick up the package for our daughter and didn’t read the book to her that that’s all intentional, that it means something! You’ve decided in your heart that I’m a child with no sense of responsibility, and now you think I’m making these unconscious mistakes because I want to escape responsibility. Is that it?”

I couldn’t explain to him what was going on; I kept spitting out words like language-repeating software. Rick flung the door open and was gone.

Theories of the subconscious are vast and labyrinthine. I had opened the floodgate, and it could not be closed again. After Freud’s dynamic unconscious, I talked about Jung’s collective subconscious in minute detail, followed by Adler’s inferiority complex and Fromm’s social unconscious. As the misty dawn brightened the sky, I finally stopped talking. Heedless of my extreme thirst and burning tongue, I rushed to the office as quickly as I could and pulled all of our practice’s client files from the past three months for statistical analysis.

Once I excluded all patients who began their therapy earlier, I discovered that the number of new anxiety patients had tripled in the past three months. The symptoms they described all included stiffness, sometimes paralysis, delusions of being controlled, and workplace situations during which the patient was unable to stop speaking once they started. These all demonstrated a high level of consistency with each other as well as with the descriptions by those who posted to the online forum.

Trembling, I printed out the reports and went to find Professor Xu.

The corners of his eyes again creased with gentle wrinkles, and he asked me kindly what was the matter.

“This is extremely urgent, Professor Xu,” I said. “Many of our patients are being controlled by cultural memes and are in grave danger. We must do something now.”

“What are you talking about? What memes?” Professor Xu looked at me, puzzled.

“I know this sounds absurd, but it’s true. I have experimental evidence and data to back it up!”

I handed the reports over to him. He looked them over solemnly for a time, and then, his face gentle as before, said, “Wen, your findings are correct. In recent months, cases of anxiety and delusions of control have increased, not only in our practices—they have increased all around the world. However, your conclusions are wrong. The situation is not what you imagine; in truth, there is no meme controlling humanity.”

“Then what is the truth?”

His smile was both mysterious and oddly gratified. “The truth is, humans have evolved.”

Seven

The psychological community had never held a news conference on such a grand scale. There was not an empty seat in the auditorium, and even the aisles were packed tight.

I took a closer look at the podium and the table at which sat the distinguished panel of presenters. In addition to psychologists, top scientists from every field crowded the front row of seats, alongside reporters from all of the major media platforms around the world. Their cameras flashed without pause at the stage and the words projected on the screen behind it: The Evolution of Human Consciousness: A National Academic Report.

Professor Xu stood up on the broad rostrum, and on the screen was now projected a massive and detailed schematic of the human brain. This image was different from the typical diagram in that here the surface of the cerebral cortex was blanketed by a network of fine lines, like a spiderweb, and this net was highlighted in glowing green.

“The past six months have seen a marked increase in patients all over the world complaining of intense anxiety. Many of our peers in the psychological community have noted this phenomenon. Psychologists have performed many independent and in-depth investigations into the reasons for this, and have finally discovered these nodes that form a net around the brains of these anxiety sufferers.

“The links between these nodes are marked on this image with thin green lines. At first, the researchers thought that these were brain lesions indicating pathological mutation, but it was soon discovered that these tissues and the structures they form could also be found in the brains of many control-group individuals, subjects with no complaint of acute anxiety.

“These other individuals were found to be primarily professionals in fields requiring a relatively high degree of dense cultural knowledge—such as scientific research, law, and finance—and without exception, these subjects were all outstanding members within their field, with a prodigious capacity for knowledge acquisition and clear logical thinking.

“After completing complex comparative research, psychologists have concluded that these net-nodes are not pathological, but rather evidence of the evolution of human consciousness! The anxiety disorder that has appeared in the past six months is merely a symptom of an individual’s unsuccessful adaptation to this new stage of human evolution.”

Cameras flashed and reporters’ hands shot up. The theory had been published, of course, and a few articles written already in the previous month, but no interviews had been granted. Everyone wanted to be the first to ask a question. Professor Xu, however, carried on with his prepared speech.  I sat quietly, thrilled to be in the room. I never imagined that I would witness such an important scientific discovery in my lifetime.

Pictures of the brain’s net-nodes were frequently cited in academic papers and were even quickly added to scientific textbooks. And Professor Xu’s speech at the conference, like a manifesto for a new age, flooded people’s eyes and ears wherever they went.

Professor Xu was on TV, dignified in his suit: “We all know that human beings emerged out of fifty million years of ceaseless evolution. Only after those eons were they able to transform themselves from their origins among ancient ape-like species into what they are today. Human psychology and consciousness have also experienced a prolonged period of development, even longer than the evolutionary history of the human form.”

Professor Xu’s statements appeared on the front page of the newspaper: “From the first appearance on earth of a single-celled organism worthy of the name ‘life’, each stage of the species’ development has left significant traces in human consciousness, just as ancient creatures, long-extinct, left their fossils in the rock layers of different ages. Fear, escape, attack, predation—these are instincts developed in the cold-blooded reptilian stage. The emergence of mammals necessitated the development of more delicate perceptions and emotional responses and led to the construction of what we now call the subconscious as the basis for human psychology.”

Professor Xu’s speech was even on the big screen in the city’s central plaza: “It was not until humans developed language and used that language to communicate that humans truly possessed consciousness, reason, and intelligence. Only then were humans able to create such a rich and magnificent civilization. And now, after instinct, the subconscious, and consciousness, the human brain has evolved a higher level of psychological mode: the post-conscious. The birth of post-consciousness benefited from the advanced development of human language and reason. It closely follows the organizational structures of rational logic and knowledge. Post-consciousness will transform humanity into a higher order civilization!”

Every time I heard that last sentence, I got goosebumps, as if the initially neutral word “post-consciousness” were suddenly and roughly brushed over with red paint. The shock this discovery brought to the psychological community was tremendous. One conference followed right on the heels of the previous one. Scholars did battle with words, their mouths like weapons; I could see them, or thought I could, spout forth all different colors of writhing vapor. Some people’s light-colored smoke was swallowed by the darker, denser smoke of others, leaving only the most powerful vapors to blend together and evolve into blurry and indistinct new colors.

Those with anxiety disorders and who thought they were being controlled were considered to have a post-conscious maladaptive disorder. The psychological community quickly developed a drug for the treatment of these patients: Levizodone. Its principle was more or less the same as that of antidepressants that eliminate depression by regulating hormone levels. Levizodone reduced the activity of the brain’s limbic system, which is mainly responsible for producing the subconscious mind, thereby expanding the space available for conscious and post-conscious activities.

The middle-aged man with the anxiety disorder came to consult me ​​again. He told me about the day he had found the smashed pot of the holiday cactus in the dumpster behind the company building.

“Its bulbs were completely exposed, and several limbs had been broken. It was too horrible to look at. I couldn’t stop myself from crying when I saw it.” He went on, “You were right. I actually did really care about that plant, subconsciously.”

“It’s OK. These things don’t matter anymore,” I said.

I made a note in his file recommending the prescription, two courses of Levizodone. “Go down to Psychiatric to pick up the prescription. After you take this, you won’t have any more trouble.”

He took the referral slip and left, half-believing and half-doubting. But he faithfully took the medicine according to the treatment course, and when I saw him again a week later, his condition was much improved. He showed no signs of stiffness, and his speech had become easy and fluent again, although he didn’t talk about anything other than his advertising accounts, which was tedious for me.

There was a bottle of Levizodone in ​​my pocket also, which Professor Xu had prescribed for me. I hadn’t taken it yet; I hadn’t even torn open the packaging. The idea of needing the medicine made me feel powerless, like admitting that I really was seriously ill and unable to rely on my own resources to make myself well again.

The vapor I saw spewing from my own mouth when I spoke was gradually changing into the same color as that of my colleagues in the office. The sense that I was being controlled still afflicted me, and the stiffness in my back prevented me from falling asleep at night. I was becoming an insomniac on top of everything else. Already I could no longer say the word “meme” to others, just like Shen Xin before he died.

The online forum was inexplicably shut down. All online articles on meme theory, already very few in number, also disappeared, as if they had never existed.

At the same time, the concept of post-consciousness spread quickly. It spread in-person, too. Its color was an ashy-blue. It had tough roots as well as strong legs and feet. On many occasions I had seen it dashing from one person to another in the exchange of smoke from their mouths, so very fast it was. And it quickly rooted deep in the minds of everyone I knew… except for Rick.

Rick was the only exception I knew personally. He didn’t seem to have any of these things in his mind, and there was no filthy smoke in his mouth. He remained pure as the afternoon we first met in college when we sat on the quad, separated only by a few blades of green grass, silent.

He had fiddled with the strings of his guitar and raised his eyes from time to time to meet my gaze. I held a book, but forgot I was supposed to be reading it. Two people growing first warm toward each other and then passionate.

But all of that was far behind us, and it could not be recovered. And yet I could not wholeheartedly accept this new world. Which was more absurd, really—to believe that one was being controlled, or to believe that humanity had evolved into post-consciousness?

I walked to the window and opened it, my head pounding from lack of sleep. I climbed half over the railing, straddling it. Vertigo made me dizzy, and my legs went soft. Before I lost consciousness, I saw Rick rushing toward me, his face pale, his lips trembling, and I saw deep within his enormous pupils nothing but the most pure fear and the most genuine concern. This is what I saw: the final innocence of humanity.

Eight

When I regained consciousness, I found myself lying in a hospital bed. The bottle of Levizodone, which had been in my pocket, now sat on the bedside table. The packaging was torn, and the bottle’s seal was broken. The hallucinations that had long troubled me had disappeared, and the feeling that I was being controlled was gone. My entire body felt relaxed as never before, and I was alert and clear-headed. I felt as if I had become smarter.

“You’re finally awake.” Rick’s face appeared before me. He seemed to be crying tears of joy, just as foolish as ever.

Professor Xu stood beside my bed as well, with a rare expression of severity on his face. “Being a doctor yourself, how could you not take your medicine? Your anxiety worsened, and you almost jumped out of a window. Fortunately, Rick was there to save you.”

I laughed. “Huh. If I had known it would be like this, I would have taken the medicine. I feel much more comfortable now.”

When I got home, I found Shen Xin’s notebook was still on my desk. I opened it again, but inside the pages were blank, not a word written on them. Half of the pages were deformed by what seemed to be water damage; the paper was covered with ripples and bumps and discolored patches. It really had been a delusion, after all, memes controlling humanity. I laughed derisively at my own foolishness and tossed the notebook into the trash bin.

More and more people adapted successfully to post-consciousness. The number of academic papers on every subject in every field grew exponentially. New theories and technologies emerged constantly, and with no end in sight.

Aerospace research, which had been stagnating for quite some time, now made rapid progress again, and even migration to alien planets soon came within our reach. The media were full of programs focused on various professions, while shows produced merely to make people laugh and other simple-minded entertainment all but disappeared.

I watched the people on TV with keen interest. They spoke faster and faster every day, and every day I consumed ravenously all the new knowledge and novel concepts I could find.

For my part, I did my best each day to produce and verbalize valuable new ideas. Human culture was a train moving at full speed along its track, and there was no stopping it. People’s daily communication omitted a great deal of complicated etiquette and small talk; everything was more efficient.

But Rick never changed, and that was odd. He neither developed a complete post-consciousness nor did he show signs of a post-conscious maladjustment. He was like a static, unevolved man. I talked to him less and less. He never could keep up with my train of thought, and I felt that his words were invariably vacuous. Listening to him was a waste of time.

I read the latest research that claimed some human beings were incapable of developing post-consciousness and that this was a normal phenomenon in times of evolutionary shift. Such people would gradually be eliminated in the course of natural selection.

Professor Xu explained that Rick and those like him would eventually be completely unable to understand the language of post-conscious humans. This, he said, was akin to how two AIs, after long communication with each other, will generate a unique AI language system that humans cannot understand. When that time comes, people like Rick would hear the conversations of post-conscious humans without the slightest comprehension. Rick and I would eventually be people of two worlds.

But my daughter was still young, and her tender and malleable brain was still in the developmental stage. If she continued to have contact with Rick as she grew, she would be affected negatively. This would not be conducive to the successful development of post-consciousness.

To make it easier for Rick to understand this matter, I described the rationale behind our divorce in a letter and gave it to him along with the divorce agreement. It was gratifying that he signed the agreement quickly, and I obtained full custody of my daughter.

When that was settled, I sent my daughter to a post-consciousness training institute that had been set up especially for children. My daughter quickly reached the linguistic level expected of post-conscious humans, so I no longer worried about her development.

One day, when I brought my daughter home from the institute, I ran into Rick at the door. It cost him great effort to make me understand that he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me and spend some time with his daughter as well. He missed her very much. Out of pity, I decided to satisfy his simplistic emotional needs, and my daughter and I walked with him to a nearby cafe.

Rick called out to the girl using her old nickname, trying to start a conversation with her, but she held tight to the institute-issued electronic screen the entire time, her plump fingers dashing back and forth over the touchscreen.

“Say hello to your father.” I pointed to Rick as I spoke to my daughter.

She looked up for a moment and then provided a perfectly coherent and correct definition: “Father: a form of address for a man with children.”

The electronic screen recognized the girl’s words and gave her a congratulatory cheer: “Correct!”

The girl continued speaking: “In the biological sense, a father is a male who has contributed half of the chromosomes to his children.”

The electronic screen gave her a more enthusiastic commendation: “Correct! The second-level cognitive association has been achieved!” Rick’s expression darkened.

I smiled. “Her post-conscious language learning progresses quickly.”

“It’s okay,” he sighed. “I’m actually just here to see whether or not I made the right decision that day.”

I could not stop to listen to him as I excitedly began to elaborate on post-conscious language learning.

“Their post-consciousness training is based on micro-current stimulation of the cerebral cortex, combined with medications that reduce the activity of the limbic system, coupled with cognitive association training to promote the formation of net-nodes on the cerebral cortex . . .”

“These past few years you and I quarreled constantly. You were always saying things that I didn’t understand. Then you said that memes were controlling you. I know that no one else believes in memes now, but I believe. Because I saw that your fear was real and urgent, even as your mouth was saying something unrelated or irrelevant.

“That night you tried to jump out the window, I saw your eyes. They were asking me for help. You were asking me for help. I knew that it wasn’t you who wanted to jump. That thing controlling you wanted you to die. You were resisting it; you had been fighting it all along.

“When you arrived at the hospital, Professor Xu said that you had tried to kill yourself because you hadn’t taken the medicine. He said that you had become another kind of human being, and if you wanted to live, you must take the medicine.

“He asked me to make the decision. I couldn’t watch you die, but I didn’t know whether or not after taking the medicine you would be completely controlled by that thing, whether or not you would still be yourself. I decided to gamble. I let them give you the medicine to keep you alive.

“I was betting on you, betting that even if you took the medicine, you would still be able to fight that thing until the very end.”

“. . . After only a month of training, her cerebral cortex had already formed two net-nodes in the post-consciousness network . . .”

“So, I came to ask you, somewhere inside this thing that speaks through you, are you still yourself? Are you still the girl who sat with me on the grass pretending to read as the wind rose and the evening fell?”

“. . . As long as she persists in her training for half a year, her post-consciousness network will be able to mature fully, and she will be among the first cohort of human children to use post-conscious thinking from such a young age . . .”

“I know you can’t stop saying what you’re saying. It’s OK. But if you are still that girl, if she’s still in there, just blink your eyes, just one time.”

I blinked, one time, and forced a single warm teardrop to fall from the corner of my eye.