Ch. 007| Advanced

13:32. Qiu Che stood at the door of his own apartment, put on his Skylink, and tapped the gate sensor pad beside the shoe cabinet.

Skyvault's female voice sounded deep in his ear canal:

Mr. Qiu Che, good afternoon. Your advanced visual calibration appointment is at 14:00, location: Consulting Room C-1, the Second Health Station on the Seventh Ring Road. Estimated travel time eighteen minutes. We recommend you take Driverless Car No. 8 on the Seventh Ring Road. It has been booked for you. The vehicle will arrive downstairs at 13:48.

Not "please book," not "we recommend you take," but "it has been booked for you." Same tone as that line yesterday morning, "automatically arranged for you." By afternoon, the tone had climbed back up.

Qiu Che didn't answer Skylink. He stepped into the elevator and pressed Floor 1.

---

13:58. Qiu Che stood outside the glass doors of the Second Health Station. Same spot as a few days ago, same angle, same closed-ring emblem.

Mr. Qiu Che, please proceed to Consulting Room C-1. The guide lights will open for you.

Inside the health station, the same white as a few days ago, the same brightness, the same strip of guide lights—but today that strip didn't run left, it ran right. It led him down a corridor he hadn't walked before, and at the end of the corridor was a stairwell.

Mr. Qiu Che, Consulting Room C-1 is on Basement Level 1. Please follow the guide lights downstairs.

Qiu Che went down.

The basement corridor was narrower than the ground floor, the lighting a touch colder. The strip of guide lights led him to the third door. The door had no number on it. Just a pale blue ring emblem, exactly the same as the one on the health station's front entrance.

The door opened.

---

C-1 was not like B-3.

B-3 had been a pure AI system, a white room, twelve street-scene visual calibration assessments, Qiu Che alone at a screen doing the questions.

C-1 was—a chair.

A single chair set in the middle of the room, the back tilted slightly, a semicircular metal hood over the headrest. Inside the hood was a dense array of small sensors. It looked like a salon's hair dryer hood, except in a cold metallic tone.

The other three walls of the room were pale gray glass, nothing visible behind them.

Mr. Qiu Che, please be seated. This advanced visual calibration will be conducted in sync with optic-nerve response, pupil tracking, and EEG baseline assessment. Estimated time thirty-five minutes.

"EEG baseline assessment" was a new term.

Qiu Che walked up to the chair, looked at the metal hood for three seconds, and sat down.

The hood lowered on its own and stopped about 8 centimeters above the crown of his head, not touching. A ring of pale blue light came on along the inside of the hood; with his eyes closed Qiu Che could feel where that ring of light was.

---

Please look at the screen directly ahead.

A wall in front of the chair lit up—not a screen, the entire wall became a screen. The image was a field of pale gray, and at the center a small white dot.

Please keep your gaze fixed on the white dot. The test will begin.

The white dot began to move. Slow, regular, left and right, up and down, around in circles—at each position some sensor inside the metal hood tracked Qiu Che's pupils.

Over the next ten minutes the white dot became a street-scene thumbnail, became a human face, became geometric shapes, became still life—each image held for 1.5 seconds, then switched. Different from the twelve a few days ago in B-3—this round had more than four hundred.

Qiu Che wasn't counting; the counter in the lower right of his Skylink showed it: Samples completed 379 / 540.

At sample 380, the wall suddenly went black—not the flicker between switches, the whole wall went completely black.

Qiu Che closed his eyes, opened them, closed them, opened them. The wall stayed black.

Then at the center of the wall—a pale blue closed ring appeared.

Not one of the samples, not a test figure, just a closed ring, motionless, held for about three seconds.

Qiu Che stared at it.

That ring was exactly the same as the emblem on the health station's front entrance, exactly the same as the one on the C-1 door, exactly the same as the one on the convenience store's glass door two days ago, exactly the same as the one on the plaza sculpture in the park two days ago.

After three seconds the ring vanished, and the samples resumed from number 381.

Qiu Che sat there, kept watching the samples—but he knew that for those three seconds just now, the metal hood had been recording something entirely different from the test samples.

---

When the samples finished, the metal hood retracted upward. A line of text lit up on the wall:

Visual calibration — complete
Optic-nerve response — complete
Pupil tracking — complete
EEG baseline — complete
Assessment report generating, estimated three minutes

Qiu Che didn't stand up.

Mr. Qiu Che, during the assessment, an advisor will have a brief interview with you. Please remain seated.

"Advisor." New term.

A pane of pale gray glass on the side wall slid open, and someone walked in.

Forties, female, dark gray suit jacket, white shirt, hair tied back in a low ponytail. No Skylink—at least not anywhere Qiu Che could spot at a glance. In her hand she held a thin metal slate—it looked like some kind of terminal, but thinner than any Skylink interface Qiu Che had ever seen.

She sat down on the small chair on the other side of the metal hood.

"Qiu Che." She said it—not a question, just his name. "My surname is Gu. I'm the consulting advisor for this assessment."

She didn't put out a hand to shake, didn't smile, didn't do any of the standard "first meeting" gestures.

"Hello," Qiu Che said.

---

"Let me be clear up front—I'm not a physician at the health station, and I'm not Skyvault customer service." Ms. Gu said. "I've been sent by an independent research group, to provide additional observation and recommendations in advanced calibration cases."

"An independent research group," Qiu Che repeated.

"Yes." Ms. Gu took a card from the inside pocket of her jacket, set it down between them across the metal hood, and slid it over to Qiu Che's side. "My contact information is here. If you're willing, you can reach me later."

Qiu Che picked up the card.

The card was pale cream, its surface carrying a fine texture, not the standard sensor material a Skylink could scan. It was pure paper, the kind with weight to it. On it were only four lines, printed, not handwritten.

Li Research Group
Advisor
Gu Wen
Contact: [tap this card]

"The last line says 'tap this card,'" Qiu Che said. "But this card isn't a tap card."

"Correct." Gu Wen said, her expression not changing at all. "Hold this card 3 centimeters above your Skylink. The microcircuit inside the card will activate and automatically dial my contact channel. The Skylink itself won't log that you placed a call."

"Won't be logged."

"Won't."

Qiu Che put the card into the inside pocket of his jacket.

---

"There are a few results from your assessment today. Let me tell you first." Gu Wen said. She pulled up some image on the metal-slate interface, but only her side could see it. "Your visual calibration score is up another 0.14 from the B-3 session a few days ago. Pupil tracking shows you have a marked recognition delay on certain 'closed ring' patterns. Across the whole test, the EEG baseline had two significant fluctuations outside the expected range—both occurring during windows outside the standard samples."

"Windows outside the standard samples."

"Before sample 381," Gu Wen said. "Those three seconds."

Qiu Che didn't answer.

"What did you see?" Gu Wen said—a question, but the tone wasn't an interrogation, it was a confirmation.

"A ring," Qiu Che said.

"Correct," Gu Wen said. "Skyvault wanted to know whether your response to that ring would exceed the standard threshold. You exceeded it."

Qiu Che thought for three seconds, then asked: "Why does Skyvault want to know?"

"Because your numbers now are already close to the effective upper limit of Skyvault's standard perception calibration." Gu Wen said. "A few days ago in B-3, Skyvault hoped to use visual calibration to bring your deviation back down. It didn't come down. It went up instead. From the health station's standpoint, the next reasonable option is intervention by an advanced module."

"An advanced module."

"A calibration-assist module." Gu Wen said. "Grain-of-rice size, implanted subcutaneously behind the ear, local anesthetic, thirty-minute recovery. Its function is to balance the noise in your perceptual layer in real time during your daily life."

"In real time?"

"Yes," Gu Wen said. "You won't notice it. The module is passive—it issues no commands, doesn't control your behavior. It only filters out, within your perceptual layer, the signals Skyvault judges to be 'interference.'"

"Can it be removed?" Qiu Che asked.

"It can be removed." Gu Wen said, paused a second, then added: "But removal requires returning to the health station, performed by a physician, the procedure taking about an hour. The default state after the module is installed is permanent residence."

"Permanent residence."

"Yes."

---

Qiu Che looked at Gu Wen. Gu Wen looked at Qiu Che.

Her eyes weren't empty—at least not the kind of empty the boy in the health station waiting area had, not the kind of empty the girl in the third-floor corridor had, not the kind of empty the old man in the park had. She was looking at Qiu Che, waiting for his reaction.

But she didn't press him, didn't explain why he should install it today, didn't try to persuade.

"You can refuse," Gu Wen said. "The advanced module is only installed with your own consent. You can refuse today, reconsider at your next visit, refuse forever—all of these are fine."

She paused half a second, then added:

"Refusing is also fine. Skyvault has its own follow-up process. I'm not at liberty to comment."

As she said "not at liberty to comment," her gaze shifted briefly toward the metal hood.

Qiu Che nodded.

"I'll think about it," Qiu Che said.

"Good," Gu Wen said. "You can reach me anytime, or not at all. We're done for today."

She stood, walked to the wall, the glass slid open, she went out, and the sliding door closed.

---

15:47. Qiu Che walked out of the Second Health Station.

Skyvault pushed a notice:

Mr. Qiu Che, advanced calibration complete. Driverless Car No. 8 on the Seventh Ring Road has been booked for you. The vehicle will arrive at the door at 15:51.

Qiu Che didn't take the car. He stood at the door for thirty seconds, then walked west—not the direction home, the opposite direction.

Skyvault pushed a second notice:

Mr. Qiu Che, today's walking-recommended route has been revised. Please follow the new route home.

Qiu Che kept walking west.

Skyvault pushed a third notice:

Mr. Qiu Che, your current route deviates from the recommendation. Please return home via the booked vehicle.

Qiu Che walked into an alley at the junction of the Seventh Ring Road and the Sixth Ring Road and stopped. There was no strip of guide lights in the alley.

He leaned against the wall, stood for a minute, then walked west, crossed the Sixth Ring Road, reached the mouth of a certain alley his Skylink map marked "Under Rezoning," took one look, didn't go in, turned, and headed home.

---

17:23. Qiu Che got back to his own apartment.

His mother was cooking in the kitchen. She looked up and greeted him: "Che, how was the health station?"

"Normal," Qiu Che said.

"What did the physician say?"

"Go again next time."

"Okay." His mother turned back and went on chopping vegetables, didn't push.

Qiu Che went into his room, unlocked the drawer, took out the notebook, a fresh page, and wrote:

Advanced calibration — complete
Optic nerve / pupil / EEG, three items
540 samples, "ring pattern" inserted for three seconds before sample 381
I reacted, it was recorded
Advisor — Gu Wen — Li Research Group
Proposal: calibration-assist module, grain-of-rice size, implant behind the ear, removable but default permanent
Refuse — Gu Wen says I can, Skyvault has its own follow-up process, she's "not at liberty to comment"
Inference: follow-up process ≠ this room today, ≠ a level Gu Wen can speak about.

He stopped a moment, then wrote more:

When Gu Wen said "not at liberty to comment," her gaze shifted toward the metal hood.
The room is recording. She can't say it in the room.

New page.

Li Research Group = ?

Just one line, on its own.

---

He took Gu Wen's card out of his jacket, set it on the desk, didn't tuck it into the notebook.

He took the Skylink off his ear, set it on the desk, about half a palm's width away from the card.

He pushed the card toward the Skylink.

3 centimeters short, he stopped his hand.

The card lay quietly on the desk, a little more than 3 centimeters from the Skylink, no trigger, no dial, no sound at all.

Qiu Che drew his hand back, sat there, looked at the two things.

Outside the window, the dusk of the Seventh Ring Road, driverless cars turning on schedule, ad projection boards cycling on schedule.

On the desk, the distance between the card and the Skylink, unchanged.

【Ch. 007 End · home, Seventh Ring Road, the New Capital → Consulting Room C-1, the Second Health Station → the alley between the Seventh and Sixth Ring Roads → home apartment】