The sky buzzed under the weight of holographic billboards. Each beam cast adverts of monotonously smiling citizens, vending the latest products that no one could do without—or so the Corporation claimed. Deep in the maze of Tangpu District’s weathered skyscrapers, old as sedimentary rock, a peculiar man named Lao Du roamed from workshop to workshop. His bizarre mission? Borrowing drills.
“Lao Du!” The rasping voice of Uncle Fang echoed from behind a stack of rust-riddled oscillators. “You still haven’t brought back my drill from last week! Is this your new hobby? Collecting tools like some kind of archaeologist?”
Lao Du, a wiry man with sharp eyes that hid behind square glasses, tugged at his greasy denim jacket. “Uncle Fang, chill, don’t take it so personally. It’s… um… I’m conducting a 品质检测—quality control,” he said, twirling his hands like a conductor of whimsical excuses. “To ensure Tangpu District’s 民用设备安全 regulations live up to code.”
“Bollocks!” Uncle Fang spat on the ground but made no move to stop him. Everyone knew that Lao Du wasn’t malicious—just hopelessly peculiar.
From stall to workshop, factory floor to alley-side repair kiosk, Lao Du carried on his mission. The trusty satchel by his side bulged grotesquely with drills of every make and model: compact handhelds, sleek plasma-powered pistons, archaic Soviet-style monstrosities forged from brutalist dreams. Tangpu’s residents had grown used to his requests, though they rolled their eyes and muttered various colorful curses behind his back. Why argue with someone who always returned their drills—eventually—and never quite explained his reasons?
In a smoky noodle shop at the end of the day, Lao Du sat opposite Xiao Mei, a sharp-tongued engineer known for her bluntness and knack for diagnosing tech three decades past relevancy. Her cyan hair glowed faintly under the neon strips hanging above them.
“You’re spinning a grand tale of nonsense, as usual,” Xiao Mei said, idly stirring soup. “You know what people say? That you’re collecting drills because you’ve gone mad. Drills, for heaven’s sake.”
Lao Du grinned rakishly. “Everyone’s mad if you analyze them with the wrong matrix.”
She arched a dark brow, hiding her usual smirk. “Fine. Spill it. What are you actually doing with half the district’s metalwork reserves?”
Lao Du leaned in close, his voice barely piercing the sizzle of grease from the kitchen. “I’ve found a genius way to escape.”
“Escape what? Rent payments? Your own reflection?”
“No, no.” He waved her off impatiently. “The Loop. This Loop. Tangpu, but also… everything. The way each day runs like a broken recording. Repeated smiles on those holograms, Uncle Fang ranting over rust, us slurping the same noodles every damn Tuesday. Don’t you ever feel… like the world’s an artificial drill itself, endlessly burrowing but never reaching anything?”
Xiao Mei paused. Her cheek twitched, unsure whether he was pulling her leg or orbiting some bizarre philosophical breakthrough.
“Go ahead,” she muttered, “lay out the crackpot plan.”
“Each drill,” he explained, brimming with excitement, “contains encoded fragments of Tangpu’s core algorithm—the program that shapes our outcomes, our ‘choices.’ These drills? They’re a bug in the matrix. A redundancy embedded by whichever alien or bureaucrat built this sham of a world. You collect enough drills, rewire their motors sequentially, and bam—escape hatch. Poof. Out.”
The punchline didn’t come. Xiao Mei stared, baffled into rare silence. Before she could manage a response, Lao Du downed his last gulp of tea, grabbed his satchel, and burst through the noodle shop doors.
Weeks passed. Xiao Mei heard rumors, of course—Lao Du holed up in an abandoned telecom center near the eastern wall, drills piled high like the absurd artwork of a madman. But she resisted the itch of curiosity. That is, until the blackout.
The famed drills? They activated simultaneously, short-circuiting Tangpu’s industrial energy grid. When Xiao Mei arrived, summoned as part of the local volunteer crisis squad, she pushed past sparking consoles and broken equipment only to find Lao Du calmly sipping a beer amidst the wreckage. Beneath him, a series of drills buzzed in perfect unison, forming a spiraling vortex, a hole that wasn’t a hole—but a gateway.
“So… it works?” she asked dryly, arms crossed.
Lao Du shrugged. “Works for me.”
Before she could respond, the vortex sucked him in, leaving Xiao Mei alone with one drill left behind. It was scrawled with messy handwriting: “For troublemakers only. Your turn, if you dare.”
Xiao Mei tucked it under her arm. Somewhere, deep in her gut, she almost believed the crackpot. Tangpu’s holographic billboards wouldn’t let her sleep that night.