The Memory Manipulator

Chapter 6: The Testimony of Voice

The abandoned seedling nursery in the eastern suburbs is located on the edge of theancient town. It used to be an experimental base for the county agricultural researchinstitute. The institute relocated in the late 1990s, and the place fell into disrepair. The rustyiron gate was ajar, and the lettering on the gate sign was faded and illegible. Lin Mo parkedhis car by the overgrown roadside. As he pulled out his keys, his pocket watch vibrated in hispalm-not a real vibration, but a deep-seated, visceral sense of mistime.

He glanced down at his watch: 2:14 PM.

The phone displayed: 2:17.

Three minutes late. Another three minutes. This number is like a thorn, stuck at everypoint of time misalignment.

Pushing open the iron gate, the hinges groaned in despair. Inside lay a scene of decay:collapsed bamboo frames, shattered glass greenhouses, and weeds growing wildly from thecracks in the concrete. The wind whistled through the empty window frames, sounding like amournful cry. Deep inside, greenhouse number 7 still retained a relatively intact skeleton, itsplastic film mostly peeling off, like the shed skin of a dying beast.

Lin Mo gripped his sidearm tightly and moved quietly. The iron door of the greenhouse washalf-open, and a faint, continuous humming sound came from inside.

It's not a machine. It's a human voice .

The low, indistinct chanting sounded like some kind of scripture or incantation. Lin Mopressed himself against the door and peered through the crack.

Zhang Hao knelt on the cement floor in the center of the greenhouse, his back to the door.Before him lay the pot of wheat seedlings, the white plastic pot gleaming pale in the dimlight. He held an old, red-covered notebook in his hands and was reciting. His voicetrembled, broken and halting:

"... admit that on the night of August 12, 1993, my father, Zhang Jianjun, accepted RMB50,000 in cash from Zhou Guofu as compensation for relinquishing the ancestral property inthe Eastern District Wheat Field..I promise that I will never pursue the matter that occurredthat night..If I break this promise, I am willing to accept the consequences.."

Zhang Hao's voice trailed off. He coughed violently, his shoulders twitching. The notebookslipped from his hands and lay open on the floor. Lin Mo saw a handwritten guarantee onthe yellowed pages, ending with three signatures-exactly the same as the signature on hisfather's land requisition document.

"Zhang Hao." Lin Mo pushed open the door.

Zhang Hao whirled around, his eyes bloodshot and red. He looked like he hadn't slept allnight; his beard was unkempt, and his work pants were covered in mud. "Officer Lin.. how...how did you find this place?"

"Lu Mingyuan told me." Lin Mo holstered his gun, but his hand remained in the holster. "Whatare you doing here?"

"I" Zhang Hao's eyes were unfocused. "I received a letter. It was slipped under my door.The letter said that if I wanted real peace, I should come here and read this guarantee to thewheat seedlings."

"Whose letter?"

"I don't know. It's printed, but unsigned." Zhang Hao rummaged in his pocket and pulled outa crumpled A4 sheet of paper. On it was a sentence printed in Song typeface: " GreenhouseNo. 7, noon. Read aloud the words your father signed. Only then will your shadowreturn to its place. "

Noon. It's past 2 PM now.

But Zhang Hao still came.

"Why did you listen to him?"Lin Mo squatted down and picked up the red notebook. Thepages were so brittle they were almost falling apart, and the ink had smudged. Besides theguarantee, there were several receipts pasted to the back-receipts for purchasing "Calmingand Tranquilizing Oral Solution," dated three years ago, once a month. Purchase location:Mingyuantang Psychological Clinic.

"I can't…" Zhang Hao clutched his head. "I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see… I seemy dad lying in front of the bulldozer. He said that night, they didn't actually leave. They tookthe money, but they felt resentful, so they went back. And then they saw…"

"What do you see?"

Zhang Hao's lips trembled: "They saw something under the bulldozer... not rocks, but.. ahuman figure. Curled up. Then Zhou Guofu came over, waved, and the bulldozer continuedto move forward. The lights were too bright; they couldn't see clearly. They didn't dare tosee clearly either."

Lin Mo's heart sank. The nighttime construction thirty years ago. Villagers obstructed. Thematter has been resolved.

"Your father told you that?"

"He said it when he was drunk. After he finished speaking, he slapped himself and said, 'Ishouldn't have said it, I shouldn't have said it." Tears streamed down Zhang Hao's face."After that, he started buying that oral liquid. Dr. Lu said it could calm the nerves. Later, Istarted buying it too. If I didn't drink it, I would have nightmares all night."

Oral liquid. Lin Mo thought of the cup of tea on Lu Mingyuan's table. He thought of those"legal" prescription drugs.

Why did you go to Lu Mingyuan's clinic last night?

"I didn't go!" Zhang Hao suddenly looked up. "I received a call from someone who said hewas Dr. Lu's assistant. He said Dr. Lu had noticed that my medication wasn't working welllately and asked me to go to the clinic to get a new prescription. I went, but the clinic wasdark and no one was there. So I went home."

What time is the phone call?

Around 2:40 a.m.

Lin Mo noted it down. At that time, Chen Jianguo had already fallen from the building. LiWen's house had not yet been broken into.

The timeline is tightening.

"Zhang Hao," Lin Mo looked at him, "do you know that a videotape was stolen from Li Wen'shouse? The videotape of Wheat Field from August 12, 1993."

Zhang Hao's face instantly turned deathly pale. "The videotape...is still there?"

"It was stolen. But you know what was inside, right?"

Silence. Only the rustling sound of the wind tearing through the plastic sheeting. After a longsilence, Zhang Hao said in an almost inaudible voice, "My dad said... Li Wen's dad brought avideo camera that night. He said he wanted to 'keep some evidence.' Later.. later he hid thetape and didn't show it to anyone."

"Why?"

"Because seeing it will kill me." Zhang Hao looked up, his eyes filled with pure fear. "My dad'sexact words: 'Some things, if you see them, you can't live."

Lin Mo's phone vibrated. It was Xiao Li, sending a message:

"Team Leader Lin, we've found it. The 'Calming and Tranquilizing Oral Solution'prescribed by Lu Mingyuan's clinic mainly contains benzodiazepine sedatives, but it'smixed with an experimental neurotransmitter modulator-which can enhancesuggestibility. Long-term use may lead to memory confusion and hallucinations. Thismedicine doesn't have an approval number; he concocted it himself. "

Self-prepared medication. To be taken long-term. To increase suggestive receptivity.

Lin Mo put away her phone and looked at Zhang Hao: "Did you drink that oral liquid lastnight?"

Zhang Hao nodded hesitantly: "I couldn't sleep... so I drank a bottle."

"Now," Lin Mo said, enunciating each word clearly, "I want you to listen carefully to what Ihave to say. What you hear and see may not be what you truly hear and see. Someone maybe altering your memories through drugs and psychological suggestion. Do youunderstand?"

Zhang Hao blinked blankly. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"Now, I want you to recall." Lin Mo squatted down in front of him, keeping their eyes level."Yesterday afternoon at 3:17, you were at Dawn Square. What did you see? Don't thinkabout what others say, don't think about what you 'should' have seen. Just your own firstimpression."

Zhang Hao closed his eyes, cold sweat beading on his forehead. His breathing grewincreasingly rapid, and his fingers dug into the cracks in the concrete floor.

"II was unloading goods," he said hoarsely. "Valuable water from the supermarket. I parkedthe car on the west side of the square. Then I hearda scream. I looked up and saw…"

He stopped.

"What do you see?"

"I saw Mayor Zhou fall down. Then someone ran away." Zhang Hao frowned. "But thatperson didn't run from the direction of the sculpture. He ran out from… from the directionof the public toilet on the east side of the square."

The direction is towards the public restroom. Completely opposite to the direction of thesculpture as stated by all eyewitnesses.

What are you wearing?

"Dark blue...no, it's black. It looks like a black hoodie. The hood is on, so you can't see hisface. He's not holding a knife. He's empty-handed."

Empty-handed. No knife.

"Then what?"

"Then he ran to the middle of the square, and suddenly... stopped. He bent down, as ifpicking something up. Then he continued running west, knocking over the potted plant."Zhang Hao opened his eyes, his pupils dilating. "The flowerpot... he didn't knock it over. Theflowerpot fell over by itself. It had fallen over before he ran over it."

A chill ran down Lin Mo's spine.

If Zhang Hao's memory is true-then the murderer didn't come from the direction of thesculpture, didn't have a knife, and the flowerpot fell over by itself.

So where did the knife come from? Why did all three witnesses "see" the knife? Why did theyall "see" it coming from the direction of the sculpture?

"Zhang Hao," Lin Mo pressed down on his shoulder, "you've never told anyone about thesememories, have you?"

"II thought I remembered it wrong." Zhang Hao trembled. "Dr. Lu said that trauma cancause memory distortion. He said that what I saw might be a projection of my fear. He saidto believe what most people see."

I believe most people have seen this.

When three people say the same thing, the fourth person's different memory becomes a"mistake".

Lin Mo stood up and looked around the greenhouse. Torn plastic sheets fluttered in thewind, and sunlight filtered through the holes, casting dappled patterns of light. His gaze fellon a corner-where a pile of discarded flowerpots lay, several of them dark blue plasticpots, exactly the same as the flowerpots for the green plants in Morning Light Square.

He walked over and picked one up. There was dried mud at the bottom of the pot. Heturned the pot over and saw a line of small print on the bottom: "Anning Town Municipal

Greening, No. 014".

Flowerpot No. 014. The number of the second potted plant on the east side of the square,recorded in the crime scene report.

This flowerpot shouldn't be here.

Unless someone moves it here.

Lin Mo put the flowerpot into the evidence bag. As she turned around, she saw Zhang Haostaring blankly at the pot of wheat seedlings.

"He's coming," Zhang Hao suddenly said.

"who?"

"The man in the hat," Zhang Hao's voice drifted, "He always appears after I take mymedicine. He stands in the corner, doesn't say anything, just watches. Dr. Lu said it's ahallucination. But I always feel. he knows me."

Lin Mo followed his gaze to the corner of the greenhouse. There was only shadow andweeds there.

But on the ground, there was half a blurry shoe print. The pattern on the sole of thesneaker was similar to the shoe print of the "murderer" described by Li Wen.

He walked over, squatted down, and measured. The shoe size was approximately 42, andthe gait was normal. But next to it, there was another set of shoe prints- the prints of workboots, the same as the boots Zhang Hao was wearing.

Two sets of shoe prints overlapped in the corner.

Zhang Hao had been here many times. And another person had been here as well.

Lin Mo's phone vibrated again. This time it was Shen Jing.

He walked to the greenhouse entrance to answer the call.

"Officer Lin." Shen Jing's voice was soft, with the sound of pages turning in the background."I've been organizing the clippings from the library's old archives about the 1993 landexpropriation incident. There's a paragraph in the corner of one of the reports that someonecircled in red pen."

"What did you say?"

"The report said: The village representatives finally accepted the compensation plan, sayingthey would use the money to send their children to study in the city, away from the land."Shen Jing paused, "But what was circled in red was not this sentence. It was a blurry figure inthe background of the accompanying picture. That personwas holding something in theshadow of the bulldozer."

"What is that?"

"Like a camera. Or... a telescope."

Li Wen's father's camera. He was filming that night.

"Furthermore," Shen Jing's voice lowered, "I checked the library's borrowing records. Overthe past three years, the books Dr. Lu Mingyuan borrowed most frequently were 'TheFormation and Manipulation of Collective Memory,' 'Frontiers in Neuropharmacology,' and'The Influence of Sound Waves on the Subconscious."

Sound waves. Lin Mo recalled Shen Jing saying that the fountain in the square stopped twiceduring the incident, each time for 43 seconds.

"Shen Jing," he said, "can you recall again what unusual sounds were heard besides thefountain stopping when the incident occurred? Any sound will do."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Only Shen Jing's steady breathingcould be heard.

"Yes," she finally said. "About five seconds before the first fountain sound stopped, I heard avery short, high-frequency sound. Like an electronic notification tone, or… the beeping ofsome kind of equipment starting up. It was very high-frequency and lasted less than 0.5seconds. The location was on the west side of the square, in the direction of that row ofsmall buildings."

The small building on the west side. Lu Mingyuan's clinic is over there. The workwear store isnext door.

And that window with its dark curtains always drawn.

"Thank you," Lin Mo said. "Keep in touch. Be careful."

He hung up the phone and walked back to the greenhouse. Zhang Hao was still kneelingthere, muttering to himself as he looked at the wheat seedlings. The red notebook lay openon his lap, its pages rustling in the wind.

Lin Mo read the last page and wrote a line of small print in pencil:

"When everyone says left, right becomes wrong. But when both left and right arewrong, where is the truth?"

Signed: Lu Mingyuan, 1998.

1998. The year Lu Xiaoyu was born.

It was also the year Lu Mingyuan switched from neuroscience to psychology.

Lin Mo helped Zhang Hao up: "Come back to the station with me. You'll need to be placedunder protective custody."

"No…"Zhang Hao broke free. "I can't leave. He said… if I don't finish reading, my wife andchildren will be next."

"Who said that?"

"It's what the letter says," Zhang Hao said, pointing to the printed paper on the ground."Look at the back."

Lin Mo picked up the paper and turned it . The back was printed with the same Songtypeface:

"Read the guarantee three times, with a twelve-hour interval between each reading.When you finish the third reading, plant the wheat seedlings back in the flower bed inthe square. This is atonement. Otherwise, Li Wen's videotape will be sent to yourdaughter. She is seven years old this year, the same age as Xiaoyu back then."

Light rain. Lu Xiaoyu.

Lu Mingyuan's daughter.

Zhang Hao's daughter is also seven years old.

Lin Mo stared at that sentence, his blood slowly turning cold.

This is not revenge.

This is a meticulously crafted, intergenerational ritual.

The silence of the older generation is exchanged for the fear of the younger generation.

The square today was built using wheat fields from thirty years ago.

Lu Mingyuan is not the murderer.

He is a director .

Direct a memory drama in which everyone must participate.

The script was written long ago. It was written thirty years ago.

Lin Mo pulled Zhang Hao up: "Come with me. Now."

This time, Zhang Hao didn't struggle anymore.

As they left the greenhouse, the setting sun cast a crimson glow over the entire seedlingnursery. Lin Mo glanced back at Greenhouse No. 7. In the last ray of light, he saw somethinghanging from the steel frame of the greenhouse roof-

A small, black speaker.

Plastic casing, dangling wires.

It was exactly the same as the device he had imagined that emitted a high-frequency"beep" sound.

The wind suddenly picked up. The speaker swayed gently in the wind, like a black eyeblinking.

Lin Mo shoved Zhang Hao into the car and started the engine.

The pocket watch was in his pocket, its hands jumping wildly before finally stopping at a newtime:

18:30。

Sunset.

The moment when the shadow is longest.

It is also the moment most easily faked.

Because when a shadow is stretched, its source can be hidden anywhere.

For example, a man-made lamp.

Or, a lie.