FRAGMENT 89
My Finger Paused on the Door
Fragments: An Audio Signal I Had Never Heard Before
Time & Location: Autumn 2017 · Conrad Residences, Tengri Dream World, Almaty Region
The grass turned yellow.
Then green.
Then yellow again.
One weekend, Xu Yanan informed me that the Bunker No. 3 project had been suspended indefinitely.
Afterward, she took me through every section of the sealed facility.
We inspected everything twice.
Carefully.
Methodically.
Neither of us spoke.
When we finally reached the concealed exit inside the casino, bright light spilled toward us.
The moment she saw it, she threw her arms around me and burst into tears.
My chest became damp.
I wondered whether her tears could bring back the five years that had disappeared.
“Mr. Bai.”
Assem appeared in the doorway, her beautiful face peeking into the room.
“Special Envoy Xu just returned from Beijing.”
“All right.”
“Thank you.”
My apartment occupied an executive suite within the Conrad.
Additional kitchen equipment had been installed at my request.
It allowed me to remain indoors for days at a time, cooking for myself and enjoying the solitude.
Most of my hours were spent wandering through the internet.
Learning programming.
Handing myself over to the world of binary code.
I had registered accounts on nearly every major social media platform.
I spent countless hours lurking on Twitter and YouTube, watching more and more people attempt to explain the meaning of life in virtual spaces.
At the same time, I accumulated enormous collections of anthropological, biological, and zoological data.
Then disappeared into them.
Knowledge produced a peculiar sense of freedom.
A feeling of seeing farther.
Daily operations were handled by Assem.
I retained the title of president while successive waves of executives appointed by Xu Yanan gradually removed real authority from my hands.
I offered no resistance.
Pornographic websites had long ago vanished from my browser bookmarks.
I had become a strange kind of monk.
I did not chant.
I avoided women.
Yet I could never abandon meat.
One evening, I walked down the corridor and stopped outside a room at the far end.
My finger hovered above the door.
I heard voices inside.
“Dear sister, I miss you.”
The speaker was the Kazakh intelligence officer.
She was speaking English.
“Your sister thinks about you every moment.”
Xu Yanan answered.
What emerged from her throat was unlike anything I had ever heard before.
A frequency rising from somewhere impossibly deep.
Lingering at the edge of speech.
Flowing with desire.
Silence followed.
Several seconds passed.
Then came the soft friction of fingers against skin.
The movement of bodies.
The increasing rhythm of breath.
I covered my ears and stepped backward.
Quietly.
The hotel's walls and doors already possessed world-class soundproofing.
The suites occupied by Xu Yanan and me had been further reinforced.
To avoid unnecessary interruptions, even the doorbells had been removed.
And yet—
I could still hear everything.
FRAGMENT 90
A Low Moan I Had Never Heard Before
Fragments: “Daddy” | A Mating Song Sweetened by Blood | One Word Breaches My Audio Defenses
Time & Location: Autumn 2017 · Conrad Residences, Tengri Dream World, Almaty Region
I returned to my computer and resumed my life.
“Daddy.”
On WeChat video, Sha Dao bobbed his little head, responding dutifully to prompts from his mother.
“Yes, my good son.”
Unlike him, I was not pretending.
It was the voice I most wanted to hear.
Yet my ears betrayed me.
The sounds from the other end of the corridor suddenly overwhelmed Sha Qingqing's gentle voice.
A long cry.
Almost like a cat.
My hearing was dragged into the private world of the Special Envoy.
The female officer's voice lacked Xu Yanan's brightness.
It was lower, heavier, more primal.
Not the language of flirtation described by novelists, but two living creatures surrendering to instinct, their hearts pounding in disordered rhythms.
Xu Yanan's carefully maintained "envoy frequency" had shattered into something entirely different.
The contrasting breaths continued for several minutes.
I never looked at the clock.
It felt much longer.
I pushed my fingers into my ears.
Still, I could hear them talking.
I was astonished.
The woman named Agrigay Nurlan spoke while recounting the long grievances between her family and the President.
Her quiet sobs soon dissolved into uncontrollable crying.
Then I heard something I had never encountered before.
A low-frequency moan that seemed to rise from somewhere deep beneath ordinary speech.
Moments later, the tears transformed into a burst of raw emotion.
I wanted to block out the waves of desire coming from the neighboring room.
Instead, I opened a folder of Sha Qingqing's radio programs and randomly selected an interview about stories from the Forbidden City.
The whispers next door continued, persistent as my fingers tapping on a keyboard while programming.
Then a single English word broke through my defenses.
Assassination.
At once, a memory surfaced.
Years earlier, beside the missionaries' graves, I had immersed myself in the history of the Assassins—the legendary order of killers once led by the mysterious Old Man of the Mountain.
Fragments of memory drifted through my mind.
I kept listening.
They were discussing plans to assassinate Nazarbayev.
What struck me was not the content itself but the emotional frequency behind it.
A cold determination.
A ruthless intensity.
Something impossible to ignore.
With access to billions of dollars, I could help construct monumental projects in stone and steel bearing the signature of a powerful ruler.
Yet I had never liked him.
Only months earlier, his chief steward—a former world boxing champion—had lured me to the President's country residence.
I had been intoxicated.
Russian models had been brought in.
The attempt at blackmail ultimately failed.
But the shadow of that episode lingered.
The contempt I carried within me happened to resonate with the bitterness carried by those women.
And so I found myself wanting to see their next move.
FRAGMENT 91
An Extremely High-Frequency Interference Signal
Fragments: Dream-Talk with a Primitive Wildness | An Attack Frequency of Terrifying Precision | An Extremely High-Frequency Interference Signal
Time & Location: Autumn 2018 · Conrad Residences, Tengri Dream World, Almaty Region; Xian Xinghai Avenue, ALMATY
Before long, I learned that both Agrigay and her mother had once been reduced to sexual property under an authoritarian system.
They had received rewards.
Jewelry.
Promotions.
Privileges.
Everything except dignity.
The appetites of power had ultimately cost her father and brother their lives.
None of this had anything to do with Xu Yanan.
Yet the heartbeat I heard from her was no longer the measured rhythm of a diplomat directing affairs of state.
Whenever she was with Agrigay, her blood seemed to move faster.
Thicker.
Warmer.
What bound them together was a solidarity that felt immovable.
One woman emerging from a lifetime of concealment and restraint.
The other escaping a world built on unquestioned male dominance.
Their lives became intertwined.
Like two serpents winding around each other.
Heart against heart.
I often heard their voices through the walls.
My body responded with nothing.
No desire.
The more I listened, the calmer I became.
What interested me were the conversations that followed.
Those discussions were not politics.
They were dream-talk.
Wild and instinctive.
Listening to them, I realized for the first time how fragile humanity's so-called grand causes really were.
Faced with dopamine and oxytocin, even the mightiest ambitions seemed no sturdier than a sheet of manuscript paper from the 1980s.
I picked up a crystal picture frame and wiped away a trace of dust.
Sha Dao's clear eyes stared back at his father.
Somehow, the two women managed to gather fifty crows.
They raised them carefully.
Lavishing upon them a strange tenderness that seemed to blend motherhood and obsession.
The birds, of course, cared only for food and reproduction.
Months later, the training began.
Again and again, the crows were shown a fabricated story.
In the footage, the President personally twisted the neck of a crow.
Its dying cries became engraved into the birds' legendary memory for grievance.
Through my acoustic arrays, I frequently heard them from more than ten kilometers away.
Every wingbeat carried a frightening precision.
An attack frequency.
Late that autumn, temperatures in Almaty had already fallen below freezing.
Ordinary crows had long since disappeared from the skies.
The President arrived at a university campus to greet students.
Then suddenly—
several crows dropped from the rooftop and rushed toward the enemy they had been taught to hate.
Watching from a distance, I saw dozens of bodyguards scrambling in confusion.
A few were secretly laughing.
Winter snow drifted across Central Asia.
Heat escaping from nearby buildings filled the air with tiny droplets of moisture.
I wanted to know how the story would end.
For that reason alone, I chose not to warn the authorities through Assem.
Her father happened to be directing the President's security operation.
Later, the President appeared on Xian Xinghai Avenue.
The Yellow River Cantata thundered through my ears.
Before my eyes floated rows of synchronized mouths opening and closing in song.
I sat nearby smoking.
Above the crowd, the crows rose slowly into the sky.
They formed what looked like an aerial honor guard.
Citizens gasped in amazement.
Phones emerged everywhere.
Photographs were taken.
Then—
all fifty birds folded their wings at once.
They plunged downward.
Twenty-eight meters per second.
Straight toward the man waving to the crowd below.
The black shapes streaked across my vision.
A flood of images followed.
Sha Dao covering his mouth inside the crystal frame.
Assem leaning through a doorway, her gentle voice sounding like birdsong.
Villagers from Huaxi turning their heads together as clay bowls shattered in their hands.
Dawa Yangzong calling out, “Awu Kezhu,” while the long-departed Living Buddha floated silently behind her.
Even my mother—whom I had never known—stood beside my father, calling something toward me.
There was no sign of Orchid.
Only the faint sound of a stone touching a Go board.
I woke with a start.
The crowd was cheering.
Their voices carried a strange harmony.
Hands rose into the air, forming the shape of hearts.
My scalp tightened.
A ringing filled my ears.
There was no time to hesitate.
Immediately, I transmitted an extremely high-frequency interference signal.
The ringing intensified.
It felt like a final judgment upon the magnetic-strip evil hidden inside Gao Yong's sleeve forty years earlier.
A decisive blow against the delusions consuming those two women.
In a single instant, the fatal attack deviated.
Only three meters from its target.
The entire flock turned simultaneously.
Lifted their heads simultaneously.
Rolled in the air simultaneously.
Braked simultaneously.
Then climbed toward the sky.
Toward rooftops radiating warmth.
“How could the wind change?”
Xu Yanan sighed.
Agrigay covered her face and wept.
The presidential motorcade departed at once.
The crow assassins vanished.
Several weeks later, Agrigay fell from a building.
The dull sound of a human body striking stone seemed to linger for days.
I sat before my computer for hours.
No typing.
No reading.
No smoking.
Only silence.
From the far end of the corridor came endless crying.
That animal impulse, destined to decay into something darker, continued in broken waves for days.
Eventually, Xu Yanan emerged.
Impeccably dressed.
Exhausted beyond words.
Her body still carried traces of a lover's touch.
Then she left Almaty alone.
Soon afterward, the city government issued an emergency ban on crows.
Meanwhile, dozens more crows began gathering around me.
Night after night, they called without rest.
I slept very well.
