Zhang Yian's Mutation and the Last Trace of AutonomyNovember 2024 · The Resistance of What Remains
Tuesday, November 5th
He returned to the precinct.
No one had called him.No one expected him.
He simply walked in—uniform crisp, steps practiced, voice steady.
As though nothing had happened.
Someone whispered:
"Weren't you still on medical—?"
He smiled.
His tone, clean and sharp:
"The system said I'm on duty today. So I came."
Everything he did that day was flawless.Precise. Composed.
Except—he no longer signed documents "Yu Yong'an."
He left them blank.
—
16:23.
He requested the past three months of duty logs.
"I need to verify how many days I was absent."
The systems officer scanned the screen, troubled:
"You've been here almost every week.At most, one missing day.Location logs, footage, signatures… it's all there.You've been working."
He went quiet.
Then, softly:
"…That wasn't me."
That night, in his notebook:
[2024.11.05｜Tuesday]I used to believe I was Zhang Yian, slowly being replaced.
But now I see—I was the backup,discarded outside the timeline.
I only thought I was the original.
I was never meant to appear.
I'm the one interfering with his integration.
That was the last time he could write in full sentences.
—
Friday, November 8th
He locked himself in an unused office.
No lights. No movement.
When found hours later,he sat in a chair, whispering over and over:
"The cross within the cross…it's more than memory."
His notebook lay open.
Taped to the page—a drawing of the triple cross,and at its center: a number.
12.17
It was as if he had foreseen a moment of closure.
The AI mistook his murmuring loopas a language attack protocol gone wrong.
—
Tuesday, November 19th
He could no longer write.
The pen trembled in his grip,but no marks came.
Only circles, and cross after cross—drawn endlessly.
In one surveillance clip, he appeared before a glass wall,scribbling what looked like a conversation:
Him: Are you still here?Reflection: I've been waiting for you to leave.
Him: Can I walk out of here alive?Reflection: No. But you'll stay—just in another form.
The glass showed no writing.But when rewound in the footage,his words appeared—then vanished one by one.
—
Friday, November 22nd
He attended the full-staff meeting.Silent. Sitting in the corner.
After the session,every attendee found the same handwritten line in their notes:
"For December 17th, all members will review the Longjing migrant case.Prepare contingencies.Subject continuity terminates on that date—integration will begin."
No one remembered hearing it.No recordings contained it.
But the handwriting—identical in every journal.
Zhang Yian never claimed authorship.
After that day, he stopped responding.No words.No blinking.Only presence.
Like a letter sealed in time—waiting to be delivered.
The Unified Self
Zhang Yian's Final Mutation and Threshold of CompletionDecember 2024 · Terminal Shift and Conscious Integration
Tuesday, December 3rd
He arrived at the outskirts of the Longjing migrant factory.
No orders.No entry on the duty roster.
Still, he wore his uniform.Badge straight. Movements precise.
He was meant to be there.The reason—unspeakable.His body, already obedient.
CCTV caught him standing by a weathered wall, waiting.
Then, his hand touched the surface—and the footage glitched.
Static. Dropped frames.Then recovery.
The wall now bore a carved outline:
A cross.
—
Anqing / Anting · Unspoken Dialogue in the Time Layer
It came not to him—but through him.
A flicker across the glass panel near the exit. A soft voice, not spoken aloud but resonating within the space behind his ears.
"You said… we'd see each other again, in a world without mirrors."
The voice was soft. Familiar. It did not belong to Zhang.
It belonged to someone who had once whispered to the wind beside the riverbank,and to another who had heard it—but in the wrong timeline.
The scene fractured.
Two girls stood beneath the fading light of a bus stop—their backs facing each other, yet somehow overlapping.
One held a folded piece of paper: a number sequence.The other, a piece of a poem—unfinished.
"If I forget you, do I forget the part of me that was most human?"
"No. You only forget the part that tried to survive."
Their words were not answers—but reflections. The kind time rarely returned.
Then—
A crack.
Reality restitched. Zhang's breath caught. He wasn't there.But they had been.And now, that echo lived in him too.
---
Back at his desk, he found a note:
[You are about to recover everything.][Remember—it's not that you couldn't endure.It's that this world refused to let you remember.]
[December 17th is not the end.It's the day you become him.And he becomes you.]
That night, he did not return.
—
Friday, December 6th
He was seen in the corridor,speaking to a reflective glass:
"After Anqing died…he sealed away every version.Left only the weakest one to keep living…"
In his hand—
The triple cross.
Its first real manifestation.
Metal. Glass. Unknown circuits.At its core: an untranslatable script.
They said he left it in the archives that night.
By morning—it was gone.
Only one system note remained:
[Object tag: 'Return to origin.'][No ID. No login trace.]
—
Tuesday, December 13th
He sat at the riverbank bench in Xinan.Eyes closed.A faint smile.
He wasn't unraveling—he was letting go.
A witness said:
"He looked like he was listening to music.But his earphones weren't connected."
He nodded with the silence.Mouthed words to the wind:
"Anting, I remember—your smile never showed your gums…""If the world gave us one more chance,I'd forget accounting.I'd be a poet."
Words he had never said.Not Zhang's language.
They were Yu Yong'an's.Or perhaps—both of theirs, finally merged into one voice.
—
Tuesday, December 17th
That day, duty records glitched.
Every staff log had an extra handwritten line:
"AAN.112. Integration."
No one wrote it.No one remembered it.
But the handwriting—identical across the precinct.As if one mind had moved through dozens of hands.
—
19:04.
CCTV showed him standing outside the precinct's front gate.
He had stood there for a long time.
Waiting.
Then he smiled.
"I'm here."
And disappeared.
Not walking away.Not stepping out of frame.
Just—gone, frame by frame.
—
Final Note｜2024.12.17｜Tuesday
Zhang / Yu: Integration complete
→ No one is a substitute.
→ We were always here.Just out of order.
→ The cross has returned.
→ The world finally let us see each other.
But we will never meet.
Because that—was our promise.