Zero and Other Fictions by Huang Fan

above-mentioned query as well as hinting at the possibility of further developing a friendship. I, however, actually felt depressed, extremely depressed. Good Lord! What had happened? What was wrong? Originally I had brought along my picture to help explain, but I had made a simple matter overly complicated, even deviating from my main purpose. It was the same as when I wrote that sci-fi story titled “The Eight-Limbed Alien.” On account of a few technical errors, neither readers nor author could tell which was hand and which was foot.
    Well, what eventually happened to those two young ladies? I’m sure a number of readers will be interested in learning if I became friends with one of them or if we fell in love.
    I won’t say yes and I won’t say no.
    My answer is that the future developments with the two young ladies have nothing to do with this story. They returned to their real lives. Like you, as far as they were concerned, this matter was simply one of those occasional variables in life.
    As you read this story, you also are “involved in” the story; it’s just that the way you enter the story is completely different from the way those two young ladies entered.
    The difference is that “you” are not a specific, well-defined object. But if you read this story in the morning paper one day, and before finishing the piece, you contact me at once, then in that case you might really set foot in my story.
    But given the present circumstances, this might be hard to achieve in terms of technique, unless, that is, the way literary supplements do things changes completely. (For example, a short story appears in its entirety in one month, publishing just once a week, or you change your conception of the integrity of a work of fiction.)
    For this reason, the two young ladies must exit the stage. They nearly dragged me off track. So I called and told them that the matter of measuring the width of a ditch had been nothing but a big joke.
    6
    Allow me to record the following passage:
    We understand the outer world through our senses. When we perceive some phenomena, we sometimes endow certain of them with special significance as a result of how our senses function and how our brain processes stimuli. There is an extremely important feature to this process: we fragment the gestalt of the time-space continuum surrounding us and for this reason perceive our environment as being composed of distinct categories of objects as well as breaking the flow of time into a series of discrete units.
    After going through the unexpected twists and turns between fiction and reality, we feel a bit more courageous and intelligent when it comes to facing the actual events that occurred on May 30, 1960.
    The Truth
    May 30, 1960.
    By the time we reached the big ditch, there were only four of us left. (Chen Jinde had returned home at the last minute.)
    Lai Xiaosheng, Zeng Yiping, Lu Fang, and I.
    The four of us lay facedown on the concrete bank of the ditch, looking down at the reflections in the water. Actually the sky was very clear, and the water flowed clear, making the surface a mirror.
    â€œI can see the future,” I said to my friends.
    â€œThen tell us our fates,” said Lai Xiaosheng.
    â€œLai Xiaosheng, you will mail me a postcard in 1975,” I said. “Zeng Yiping, you and I will lose contact.”
    â€œAnd me?” asked Lu Fang.
    â€œI don’t want to say.”
    â€œTell us, tell us, tell us.”
    â€œYou guys are forcing me—I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
    â€œTell us.”
    â€œLu Fang, you will die in a traffic accident in 1976.”
    â€œWhat nonsense!”
    â€œWhat about you?” asked Zeng Yiping.
    â€œIn 1985, I will write a piece titled ‘How to Measure the Width of a Ditch.’”
    â€œWhat! You’re saying that you are going to measure the width of a ditch in the future?” asked Zeng