How did we end up here?

The humans before me had the same physiological traits as I did, yet still we had no means of communicating with one another.

I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Words and phrases spilled from their mouths, a torrent of sounds bleeding into one another, syllables pouring out in a drum roll, unending and uninterrupted. To their ears, my speech was perhaps like an endless song; syllables dragging at an agonizingly slow pace over a never-finished sentence.

I couldn’t see their faces clearly, either. The high-frequency movements of their facial muscles blurred their features, and their waving hands left behind after-images like the fluttering of insect wings. To their eyes, perhaps my own movements were like those of an action figure with a dying battery; propped up on its last bit of energy, but never able to reach the position it desired.

I knew that if I waited, then their black hair would rapidly turn white, that wrinkles would grow on their faces, that their teeth would fall out, that their inner organs would sicken and cease to function. They would be like the plants that surrounded them—rapidly growing and rapidly deteriorating; rotting in the mud, then replaced by the next generation. And that next generation’s speed would be even greater. Their lifespans would be even shorter. Yet still they would not sense that anything was out of the ordinary.

When all was said and done, entropy would reach its maximum level and heat energy cease to circulate. There would be no distinction between past, present, and future. The heat death of the universe, the collapse of time—all would grind to a complete stop.

There was nothing we could do to stop it anymore. This process couldn’t be reversed. We once had an opportunity, but no one had really tried. We saw it all happen with our eyes wide open—some actively, some passively, all racing to the end of the story.

I don’t know what to do, except to record a few people and their words. They’re like me: the slow and lonely ones among the masses, the ones who chose not to speed up of their own accord. They’d all glimpsed a hint of what was coming from the start, and they’d tried to escape their fate by refusing to accelerate. But they hadn’t expected the whole world to be swept up in this madness.

We were strangers who had come together by chance in the slowest dimension. We met, we spoke, and then we parted ways. I don’t know where the others are today; or which speed dimension they’re living in. The specific year, month, or day holds no meaning; our old conventions of marking dates and times don’t work anymore. But I’ll do my best to record how they appeared when I first met them, and to record everything they told me. I’ll try to leave some archival material for future generations.

That is—if there are any future generations.

Mo Xin, about twenty-seven years old, Metamedia Streamer

People in my line of work were FastForward’s first users.

Back then the FastForward had just been approved to go on the market, so the company was reaching out to lots of streamers to push their product. They launched a marketing campaign on every social media platform, targeting every audience group. I got the sense that they simply hadn’t thought through how best to position their product, so they’d opted for the simplest strategy: pouring buckets of money into advertising.

I was ranked in the top twenty on BiJie.com in terms of site traffic, and my follower loyalty and conversion rates were pretty good, so my fees and stipulations were pretty demanding for potential brand partnerships. At first, I was a bit hesitant when their marketing rep reached out to me. I’d mainly done promotions in fashion and cosmetics, and those had little to do with the FastForward. But they told me that the FastForward would be the start of a new era, that it would set off a time revolution, that everyone everywhere would want to speed up. They were, therefore, hoping to leverage my influencer reach and elite status to kick off this revolution. I was quite flattered by this. Around that time I was also trying to expand and transform into a lifestyle brand—and the compensation they were offering was quite generous besides. So I said yes to a brand partnership.

Before their first time on the FastForward, every new user had to go to a FastForward Acceleration Center for a complimentary physical and equipment installation. The physical was very simple—they just measured your heart rate and blood pressure, and if they didn’t flag any problems, then a store assistant would fit you with a headset. The FastFoward involved the newest generation of semi-invasive brain-computer interface technology, known to be the safest possible prototype on the market. It was even safe for use by children and the elderly. The device looked like a small, delicate shell—you could customize its shape and color. It was installed behind the ear, corresponding to the location of your cerebellum. Stored within the shell was a small amount of T-42, a natural element extracted from rare meteorites. It was completely harmless to the human body, but it could, by speeding up neuron activity, increase a person’s thinking and reaction speed within a unit of time, thereby increasing their efficiency.

All this I could rattle off with ease. I was a beauty streamer; I typically had to memorize even more details about the ingredients of cosmetic products I was promoting. I also knew that these ingredients and their supposed effects were just marketing phrases, something to boost the product’s premium. In this regard, I thought the FastForward was pretty clever. They weren’t just selling equipment, they were selling the necessary components and services. Think about it—this little toy was just like a skincare product. It could be used up, and therefore would need to be replenished. It wasn’t like clothing or handbags. If a customer bought one, they weren’t very likely to buy another, identical product. You had to keep designing newer versions. Everyone in this industry knew that to the average consumer, mid-to-high end skincare products had a lower entry threshold than clothing did, with strong customer loyalty and a high repurchase rate of the same product.

FastForward claimed that it could provide only a small amount of T-42 to each user every month. It was stored in the shell, and every time we needed to use the device, we would simply press down. The dose would be injected into our brains and start taking effect. It would only work for a set period of time; but when the period expired we could press it again immediately. However, when the T-42 ration was used up, we’d have to wait until the next month for a refill. Their reasoning made sense: they wanted to prevent customers from becoming addicted and misusing the product. The ingredients were so rare they were difficult to acquire, and the timely rationing would ensure the best experience . . . Of course, I knew that all this was just to manufacture scarcity to justify higher prices.

I streamed my first visit to the clinic and my installation process on my Bijie.com channel. The total number of viewers reached fifty million. When my device was installed and I tried it out for the first time, the number of simultaneous online viewers exceeded thirty million.

I still remember the feeling of that first time. When I pressed the button on the shell, the live broadcast feedback I saw to my left suddenly slowed down. The netizens who’d been vigorously flooding my screen fell silent all at once, and it seemed to take forever for their comments to start reappearing one by one.

How does it feel? Has time sped up for you?

Xinxin’s too cool, even high-tech products like these want to partner with her. Truly my idol!

The previous comment was wrong—from Xinxin’s point of view, time should feel like it’s slowed down.

God, finally caught up! I’m here to witness Xinxin making history!

A fan has sent a gift heart.

. . .

To the right of my display, I could see the viewer count steadily ticking up. A smile twitched across my mouth. I faced the holographic camera suspended in the air before me. “Thanks, everyone! I feel pretty good. Time indeed has slowed down. It’s like I’m watching a movie in slow motion. Here’s the store assistant helping me today. He’s lifting his left hand very slowly right now, which is funny.”

More sporadic comments popped up again in the left of my display.

Xinxin’s talking so fast! Cuuuute

Cut the bullshit and give it to us straight—does that thing work?

Watch your language. Don’t come into our Xin’s channel if you’re going to be rude.

The store assistant’s hand had finally reached his head. He touched the shell behind his ear. Accordingly, his movements sped up to normal from my perspective.

“Miss Mo, may I ask if you’re feeling all right?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m fine. It just seemed like the world had suddenly slowed down.”

“That’s normal—it means that the product is working. Our experiments show that the FastForward can triple a user’s perception of a unit of time. During this period of time, your efficiency also triples. Currently, one dose of T-42 works for an average of thirty minutes. When that runs out, your perception of time returns to normal.”

I noticed that the broadcast duration counter to my right display was also ticking up three times slower than usual.

“This feels amazing. I recommend everyone try out the FastForward if you’re eligible. I can already think of so many ways to use this. It’s not just good for everyday work or study—you can also use it when you’re playing video games and shooting monsters, or when you’re running late getting ready, or if you ever get into an accident, or if you’re in danger. If you use it at the right moment, this might even change your future. I have a discount code today, which I’ll share with everyone . . .”

After that livestream, FastForward made over $100 million in sales.

And then? And then I myself became a loyal FastForward user. Who doesn’t want to be more productive? By investing just a few thousand RMBs a month, I could get more work done in a single unit of time. I could create more content, draw in more fans, and earn more money. I got my value back for my investment. At that time, my Bijie.com ranking rose by five spots—a whole five spots in half a year! I wouldn’t have even dared to imagine that before. I immediately renewed my FastForward subscription for three years.

If Mandy hadn’t noticed the wrinkles around my eyes, I probably would have kept using the FastForward forever.

That night, we were snuggled up on the couch watching a movie. By then I hadn’t watched a movie on normal speed for a long time, and I thought the pacing was too slow. But Mandy liked it—she said that old movies deserved to be watched slowly. I forget what that movie was called; I remember only that it had to do with being in love and growing old.

As we watched, I fell asleep on Mandy’s shoulder. I didn’t wake up until the closing credits. I lifted my head and saw that her face was covered in tear tracks, with more tears spilling out the sides of her eyes. I reached out and wiped her face, and she turned towards me. The fluorescent lights from the TV screen reflected in her glistening tears, rendering her both pitiful and adorable. I wanted to kiss her.

She gazed back into my eyes. Suddenly, her expression changed. She turned on the light, wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, and grasped my chin to take a closer look at my face.

A few seconds later, she declared, “You’ve grown wrinkles!”

Mandy dragged me to a beauty salon for a skin test. The results indicated my skin indeed appeared two to three years older than it should have given my age. I’d prematurely developed wrinkles. Usually I pay a lot of attention to my skincare routine. I’ve never stayed up late, I only use the highest quality beauty products, and I never pull at my skin; I always rub it as gently as I can.

When she saw me and Mandy heatedly debating what had caused my wrinkles, the beauty technician asked, “Do you use the FastForward?”

I nodded.

“That’s it, then.” The technician had a knowing look on her face. “We’ve seen a lot of clients like you recently—their skin prematurely ages after they use the FastForward. They’ve sped up time, after all. Keep an eye on it, try to reduce how often you use it, and take extra care with your skin. We’ve recently developed a new protective cream for FastForward use—it can help slow the skin aging process. I can give you a sample today . . .”

I bought the cream, but I stopped using the FastForward. At first, withdrawal was terribly painful. I felt sluggish at everything I did, and I was always fighting the impulse to press the empty space behind my ear. But Mandy was always by my side. Our relationship grew stronger and stronger. I also pivoted successfully to a career as a lifestyle influencer, which meant I didn’t need to spend so much time every day selecting products to promote. The pace of my work slowed down, which meant of course my income also got smaller.

But I’d thought it through. At the end of the day, speeding up time meant also speeding up aging and death. Would you think that was worth it?

Yan Dongdong, Percussion Instructor

It was during a rehearsal that I first noticed something wasn’t right. That rehearsal left a very deep impression on me, because I rarely have such embarrassing moments.

I’d graduated from a conservatory with a concentration in percussion, and my grades were middling to low. After graduation, I became a teacher, and spent several years teaching percussion to children—mostly those who needed to pass their extracurricular music exams. After a while, I got increasingly bored with it, and I began missing performing on a stage. With a resume like mine, I couldn’t imagine joining a premier orchestra—they only accepted top graduates. But after looking around for a while, I finally joined an amateur orchestra. There were about fifty musicians—it counted as a fairly small symphony orchestra—and I also quite liked their repertoire.

That day, I sat as usual at the back of the rehearsal hall, looking over the dark backs of everyone else’s heads, closely following the conductor standing at the front. He wore a rather ill-fitting black suit that frayed at the elbows. His shirt ran up whenever he raised his hands, revealing his potbelly. It probably hadn’t been tailored for this performance. Probably it was a suit left over from a wedding or something—a suit he’d been pulling out of the closet for years. It seemed serious and perfunctory both at once, just like everything else in this orchestra.

“One more time! With me—five, six, seven, eight!”

The conductor’s hand moved, and the violin and viola began playing from the sixth measure where we’d left off. I counted the beats silently in my mind—one, two, three, four; two, two, three, four. They got faster, then faster. The clarinet joined in, matching their rushing rhythm, but the conductor seemed not to react at all. Anxious, I furrowed my brows. What was going on? The pacing had gotten out of control—why wasn’t anyone yelling stop? Seven, two, three, four, eight, two, three, four . . . my entrance was approaching. I lifted my mallets, counting down the bars to my approach. Dong, dong dong, dong, dong. Dong, dong, pause, dong.

“Stop, stop, stop!” The conductor made an impatient fist. “Bass drum, what’s wrong with you? Why is your beat dragging? You’re supposed to guide the rhythm of the entire piece—how is anyone supposed to play if you’re going so slow?”

Everyone turned around to stare at me. My cheeks burned; I heard a sudden buzzing in my ears. I was the slow one? How could that be? I’d obviously come in at the speed on the score. I pulled up my score again, flipped to the beginning, and confirmed—allegro moderato, a moderately quick tempo, with a BPM of about 120. There was no mistake—120 quarter notes per minute. It was the other instruments that had gone too fast—their BPMs had increased to at least 180. They were playing at presto, really . . . but how could this piece be played at presto?

“All right—we’ll stop here for today, and get back to it when the bass drum has figured out what rhythm is. Remember—you’re delaying everyone’s progress, not just your own. Keep that in mind when you go home. I don’t care if you studied at a conservatory or not—in my orchestra, all that matters is how well you can actually play. Dismissed!”

The conductor turned and left the rehearsal hall. Some players’ holograms disappeared—they’d been attending rehearsal remotely. One by one, the others leaned over and began packing up their instruments. The strings went back into their cases; the brasses were cleaned of spit, and the woodwinds were broken down. I sat staring blankly ahead, trying to calm down.

I knew the conductor had a problem with me. He knew about my background, and when I’d first joined the group, he’d asked me out privately several times, insinuating that he could promote me directly to first chair. I’d declined. Later, he’d sent me several nonsensical drunk texts. I’d blocked him right away. Now I only ever saw his group notifications to the entire orchestra.

My friend Dong Xuan leaned over and whispered, “What’s going on, Dongdong? Why do you keep messing up?”

She was first chair in the percussion section, and she was in charge of the snare drum for this piece. She was the only person in the orchestra I was close with. I had refused the conductor in the first place because I didn’t want to steal her position—and it goes without saying that I had no interest whatsoever in the conductor himself.

I hesitated a moment, and then asked, “You think I’m the one who messed up? You don’t think they were going too fast?”

Dong Xuan’s eyes widened. She reached out and felt my forehead. Her hand was cool to the touch. “Do you think you might be sick? Everyone else’s rhythm was fine, it’s just yours that was slow. Dongdong, is it because you’re under a lot of pressure right now? Do you not have enough time to practice?”

“I—I suppose I’m a little busy.” It was summer term just then, and I did indeed have a full schedule of classes to teach. I had no spare time to myself; it was hard enough to carve out time to show up to rehearsal.

“Have you ever thought about trying the FastForward? Lots of people are using it nowadays. Catching up on a report by the end of the month, packing for a business trip, finishing the boss’s errands—people use it for all sorts of things. Me, I have time to exercise now—I’m really close to my weight loss goal! Why don’t you give it a try? It’s really popular right now, and it feels really cool to be one step ahead of time.”

I shook my head. I knew about the FastForward. Some of my students’ parents used it, but it was banned at school, so none of my students had it installed. In my profession, there’s no point in speeding up time. Besides, it was too easy to destroy one’s sense of rhythm, so I was never interested in trying it out. “No, it’s okay. Relax, I’m fine. I’ve been beating these drums day in and day out. Maybe I’m having an off day. I’ll go back and make some adjustments. I’m sure it’ll be better next week.”

“All right—we’ll talk again after you’ve given it a try. I’ll send you my referral link—you’ll get a discount that way. Goodness, look at the time—I’ve got to run to my spin class. See you next Saturday!” Dong Xuan stuffed her mallets into a bag emblazoned with a gym logo and hurried out the door.

I blinked at the empty concert hall as, slowly, I packed my things. My mind wandered to the past. At school, I’d been like this too. The percussionist was always the first to come in and the last to leave. We were situated at the far back of the orchestra. Most of the time we just waited. To the rest of the orchestra, it was like we didn’t exist. But I liked it. I enjoyed surveying everything from the back of the stage, leading the rhythm. Some said that the percussion part was like a second conductor on stage; that everyone in the orchestra depended on the drums for the rhythm. When I’d first started studying the drums, I was also criticized by my teachers for dragging behind the beat, for my hands moving with uneven force, for my uneven triplets. Day after day, I slowly corrected these problems in practice, until I could play everything with assurance. I’m not sure I believed the conductor when he said I was slow, but I also didn’t understand why even Dong Xuan thought everyone else was on beat.

When I got home that day, I turned on my metronome and set the BPM to 120. Da, da, da, da. The metronome sounded out a clear, even rhythm. Da, da, da, da. But the rhythm wasn’t quite right—this beat was obviously too fast, approaching 180 more than 120. I examined the settings for a moment, but the needle was indeed pointing to 120. Was my metronome broken?

I turned on my holographic field, pulled up an online metronome, and set it to BPM 120. Da, da, da, da. I turned on my analog metronome. Da, da, da, da. The two rhythms matched up perfectly. The problem wasn’t with my metronome—but that meant the problem could only be with me. I was greatly dismayed. I’d practiced for so many years—how could my sense of rhythm have degraded like this?

I had no choice but to practice some basic skills with the metronome. Right, left, right, left; left, right, left, right; right, right, left, left; left, left, right, right. A single beat, followed by a double beat. Right, left, right, right; left, right, left, left; left, right, right, left; right, left, left, right. I practiced all sorts of combinations of compound beats. Then came the triple notes, the drum rolls, the crescendos, the diminuendos. I stopped for a break only after I’d stabilized my sense of rhythm. I’d broken out in a small sweat, and I was getting hungry.

Most of the time I cook for myself at home. Because I’m a percussionist, I can estimate time with great precision. If the recipe says I ought to stew something for three minutes, or stir-fry something for ten seconds, I can do it without a timer, and I’ll never take something off the heat more than an eighth note late or early. All that to say, I’m a pretty good cook.

That night, and every night that following week, I burned the dishes again and again. Back then, I thought it was simply because I was distracted.

The next week, I went back to rehearse with the orchestra, played at the speed of that week’s rehearsal, and once again was told I was too slow. But I knew very clearly—it couldn’t be that I was too slow. During that week, I’d gotten up early every day and practiced for at least an hour—my speed was most certainly correct. But why would the conductor and other players all think I was too slow? Was it that I was indeed slow, or were they too fast?

Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind like lightning. Everyone in the orchestra was playing too fast. My metronome was too fast. My food was getting burnt. Could it be that the world itself was speeding up? I shuddered at the thought, and the conductor’s criticism seemed to fade into the distance.

The world had gotten faster, and was getting faster and faster all the time.

What happened afterwards proved me right.

Wei Wei, about forty-one years old, corporate social responsibility consultant

FastForward contacted me after that incident.

Who wouldn’t know about that incident? At that time, all of the major media and social media networks were abuzz about it, how a so-called completely harmless natural substance had a radioactive period, which affected not only the users’ minds and bodies but also impacted their surroundings.

The mother was just an ordinary FastForward user. While she was trying to get pregnant, she hadn’t stopped using the FastForward—if anything, she used it beyond the typical time restrictions. At her company, using the FastForward was an unspoken rule. After she became pregnant, though she herself stopped using the FastForward, she still went into work and was therefore exposed to the environmental radiation caused by her coworkers’ use. She gave birth at just twenty-three weeks after a difficult labor. But the child didn’t exhibit any of the health problems typical of premature babies; in fact it was as healthy as a fully mature infant. Its height and weight were about the same as a baby born at forty-three weeks. But the mother suffered a torn uterus during labor, resulting in heavy post-partum bleeding. Though the doctors did their best, ultimately they couldn’t save her life.

The situation raised multiple angles of suspicion—the workplace conditions of pregnant women, employee exploitation, the doctors’ failure to perform a C-section in time, etc. But most of the blame fell on the FastForward. There were three questions at play: first, how could that company have obtained excess FastForward rations for its employees? Second, how did the FastForward impact pregnant women and their babies? Third, how could the FastForward be radioactive?

Clearly, FastForward knew this was going to be a problem. They immediately put a press release expressing their deepest sympathies over the woman’s death. They would donate a sum of money towards the newborn’s care, and cooperate with internal and external bodies to conduct a thorough investigation as soon as possible.

Their crisis PR team did pretty well. They must have met overnight, discussed countermeasures, put together a list of names, contacted people, and formed their incident response team. They phoned me at four in the morning.

I had fifteen years of experience in CSR and ESG—that is Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental, Social, and Corporate governance. At the start of my career, I’d worked in the procurement department of a factory, focusing on social responsibility in the construction and auditing of the supply chain. Later, I moved over to the sustainable development department of a foreign company, focusing on the impact of corporate production on vulnerable groups such as women and children, as well as the environment. Now, I worked as a CSR consultant. I helped companies build environmental, social, and corporate governance-related systems, issue CSR reports, and give the relevant training to their employees. There was no shortage of Fortune 500 companies and publicly listed companies on my client list, and I had the right CV besides, so it was no surprise that FastForward’s people found me.

There were six people on the crisis management team. Aside from me, there was the Sustainability Department Manager, the Chief R&D Engineer, the PR Manager, the Sales Manager, and the Product Vice President of the entire company. Everyone was very professional, and our meetings proceeded smoothly. On the first day, we drew up a response plan, listed our various priorities and deadlines, and drew up a list of experts external to the company.

That evening, FastForward issued a second statement explaining that the company in question had been using a commercial version of the FastForward that was still in trial phase, designed to help employees increase their efficiency. Even if its usage exceeds the monthly designated rations, it should have still been harmless to users. In light of this incident, FastForward would temporarily suspend all trials of the commercial version, recall any commercial products on the market, and strongly recommend that companies avoid pressuring employees to use any version of FastForward while at work. Moreover, FastForward would set up a nonprofit foundation for public welfare and invite labor law experts to act as consultants to help defend the rights of employees who had suffered unfair treatment at work.

Obviously, this statement had been workshopped to death. What on earth was a commercial version of FastForward? And of course excessive use of the FastForward would have side effects. What’s more, FastForward would never actually recall its product. FastForward and the dead woman’s employer had made sure their stories matched—this was the least damaging rhetoric for both parties. As long as none of their employees spoke out, they wouldn’t risk exposure. Of course, everyone was asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

A few days later, FastForward put out a third statement. Due to current limitations in sample size and available data, and the lack of clinical trials, it was still impossible to confirm whether the use of the FastForward while the user was attempting to get pregnant would impact the health of the baby or the mother. The instructions “PROHIBITED DURING PREGNANCY AND BREASTFEEDING” would be prominently displayed on the FastForward’s packaging, as well as the instruction booklet. Users were supposed to read carefully and use the FastForward as appropriate for their respective physical conditions. During follow-up physicals at FastForward clinics, a sales specialist would emphasize the risks of FastForward use during pregnancy. Moreover, FastForward would collaborate with several obstetrics and gynecology experts to establish a working group to care for the premature baby. They would closely monitor their physical condition, and care for them until they’d matured.

Announcing the FastForward’s radioactive effect on time was a more difficult matter.

To begin with, this concept was still very new. T-42 was currently the only material in the world with “time radioactivity.” Even scientists weren’t quite in agreement about what this phrase entailed. But to the general public, it was broadly understood that “time radioactivity” meant that the substance didn’t just affect the way the user-perceived time, but also the time perception of people and objects in the user’s surrounding environment. The impact was not immediate, but rather lingered in human bodies and the environment over an extended period. What’s more, the effect could accumulate. Time radioactivity did not only affect one’s subjective or mental experience, but also had material effects—it would indeed actually speed up people’s metabolic and aging processes.

One could almost say that the material T-42 had been invented by the scientists at FastForward. The meteorites from which it came had been on Earth for several years now. They’d fallen from some comet pulled onto Earth’s surface as it passed by. During its descent, atmospheric friction transformed it into a rain of meteorites. Quite a lot of these meteorites made their way to Earth, and at first they hadn’t aroused any special interest. But a member of the meteorite research team accidentally discovered that the meteorite could alter a person’s perception of time, and thus resigned from his research institution to found the parent company of FastForward. He obtained all similar meteorites that were on the market, extracted the crucial substance T-42, and put it to commercial use. FastForward was only launched several years ago—the scientific community hadn’t done nearly enough research on T-42.

Moreover, it was hard to even quantify time radiation. FastForward could precisely determine the user’s perception of time acceleration while they were using the product, but they had no way of measuring the effect of time radiation. What was its range? What about the length and intensity of the exposure? All this data could only be obtained from observations on past users. After all, FastForward couldn’t do human trials, and humans were the only species that could clearly perceive time.

In the end, FastForward had long known about the time radiation effects of T-42, but had deliberately concealed it from the public. There was no way we could spin this. One might say that what they were doing now was the human trial: a large-scale, unscreened, uncontrolled, human trial on a global scale.

This was where I started butting heads with the rest of the incident handling team.

They were all FastForward executives, so I could understand that all they wanted was to protect the company’s long-term profits. But as a CSR consultant, my obligation was to guide companies towards sustainable development and actively take matters of social responsibility into consideration. Here, FastForward’s position was quite firm: do not admit fault, do not apologize, and treat everything as rumors and conspiracies.

This was unacceptable to me.

I was most struck by the words of the chief R&D engineer: “T-42 fell to Earth in meteorites long ago, which means the effects of this so-called ‘time radiation’ also began long ago. We’re only using it to benefit mankind in a fair and reasonable way. We’ve increased individual productivity rates and simultaneously sped up society’s development as a whole. We’ve already successfully extracted even higher-grade T-42. In the future, we’ll be able to put out new products that can speed up the user’s time perception even more, letting them create more value in a shorter period of time. The whole world will enter a new era of time differentiation. If the masses panic at this critical juncture, the price will be unbearably high for all of human civilization.”

All of human civilization? Were they joking? In the end, I resigned from the incident handling committee and invited them to hire someone more qualified. My NDA? Fuck that. The world was ending; what did I care?

Everyone inside FastForward had known for a long time that time radiation was real. Every time T-42 interacted with the environment, it emitted chrono-particles—essentially, a type of energy that increased the entropy in its environment, which thus created the acceleration effect. It was not the kind of thing that would dissolve naturally into the environment.

FastForward products had been on the market for eight years, with a total user base of six hundred million people, and a total sales volume of twenty-four billion monthly rations. How many chrono-particles had they released into the environment now? No one could say.

The impact of time radiation went far past anything I’d initially expected.

People have long begun to wonder: is time speeding up? Winter has gone, spring has come, and time keeps slipping suddenly away. You blink, and another year has passed.

It’s real. It’s happening.

Are other people speaking more quickly? Are you finding more gray hairs than before? Are your pets living a shorter lifespan than you expected? Do your cyber prosthetics need more frequent maintenance?

It’s all real. It’s all happening.

Time rushes past, sweeping everyone along like a great flood. If you can’t keep up, you can only fall behind.

And that flood’s destination?

Doomsday.

Cen Xiao, about thirty-five years old, ecotourism guide

The impact of time radiation wasn’t only limited to humans.

I work in eco-tourism. All year round, we take groups into the wild and teach them about nature. These past few years, the changes to the environment have been quite noticeable. Plants are blooming earlier than they should be; insects are laying eggs earlier than they normally do, and the migratory patterns of birds and fish are all out of sync. Even the four seasons themselves have gotten shorter.

This has had a big impact on our work. We can no longer count on our years of experience—rather, finding a particular species in nature has become a game of chance. Even if we find something during an exploratory survey, there’s no guarantee it will still be there the next time we bring in a group.

Some of my colleagues are partially to blame. In order to track, observe, and photograph wild animals, they sometimes used the FastForward. And the FastForward was so easy to use! All you had to do was press a button, and your movements and reflexes would become so much faster, which made tracking animals so much easier. New tour guides didn’t have to go through painstaking training in basic observational skills or accumulate practical experience over time. All they needed was a quick crash course, and they could start leading tour groups right away. They could even catch frogs, butterflies, praying mantises, and the like with their bare hands, which delighted small children to no end (though this wasn’t very good for teaching them about ecology.)

Our biggest problem was poachers. Using the FastForward, they doubled their efforts to hunt protected species, escaping after their exploits without a trace. I’d heard that in a wild bird sanctuary in a neighboring city, patrollers had found four different waves of poaching gangs in one day. They didn’t interfere at all with one another. It was as if they’d made an agreement—they went wild poaching in their own designated territories, sweeping through like lightning. The wardens still didn’t know how many birds were killed that day.

In order to deal with the poachers, patrollers and the volunteers they’d recruited also had no choice but to use the FastForward to keep pace and rescue the animals before they were killed.

That meant a lot of humans had moved through those habitats by now, and the animals had long been exposed to time radiation. Gradually, their actions became faster and faster, which made them better at escaping from hunters. A new balance was found between humans and animals. Nature was like this—as long as it had time, it could always find a new equilibrium.

On the other hand, this only made our work harder. How were we supposed to track down animals affected by the FastForward without using the FastForward ourselves? Just thinking about it made my head hurt.

We get a lot of families on our eco-tourism outings, which means we meet a lot of little kids. They chirp and burble as we lead them about, like a flock of happy little birds. Their reflexes are generally faster than those of us tour guides, and they can never keep calm—it’s hard to get them to quiet down and listen to our explanations. They’re easily distracted by anything that flies by, runs by, hops by, digs by, or swims by. Sometimes they just get up and start chasing things, or plunge headfirst into the water without thinking. It’s as if they’re testing our ability to respond.

I always thought that kids nowadays were just like this. Times were different. And the kids were younger than us; more agile and faster to respond than we were. I thought this up until one encounter, when I met a very particular child.

That day I was leading an elementary school class on their spring outing. A little girl stood at the end of the line, and she walked more slowly than her classmates. Gradually, she lagged further and further behind the other kids. She didn’t speak to them, and they ignored her. My partner was leading the team at the front, and I was overseeing the rear. The gap in the line was getting a bit unwieldy, so I tried having a chat with her.

I spotted some wiregrass at the side of the road and pointed it out. “Look—over there! Its leaves are long and thin, with a fringe branching out at the top. Do you know what that is?”

She wasn’t shy at all. She stretched out her neck, stared for a moment, and declared, “It’s goosegrass, isn’t it? Haven’t you seen goosegrass before?”

I was a bit startled. There were few children these days who could identify wild grasses. “Of course I’ve seen it. But I’ve never seen it here before. Are you familiar with this grass?”

“I’m from the village,” she responded easily. “There’s lots of them in the orchards.”

“You’re from the village? Me too. When I was a kid, I was always helping my family harvest rye. If I didn’t harvest enough then my parents would scold me. And I was never allowed to play when I got out of school.” While we spoke, I began walking a little faster, hoping that she would follow along.

Sure enough, she kept pace. “But that’s normal, isn’t it? I also have to help my brothers wash their clothes. Boy’s clothes get so dirty, they’re really hard to wash. And I have to make dinner, do the dishes, and boil water for washing our feet. Then after I’m done with all the housework I have to do homework. But I’ve always been the first in the class, and Teacher likes me the best.” Abruptly she changed the topic; she seemed very proud of herself.

Just like that, we started chatting. I learned that her mother and father were working in the city, so she and her brothers were living under her grandmother’s care. Her parents must have gone back to the village just to give birth—one child a year, three in a row. Then they went right back to work. I didn’t know where they were employed, but I knew it definitely wasn’t somewhere they could use the FastForward. The monthly fee of that thing was not low. Its consumers were mainly urban, white-collar workers and middle-class folks—the so-called elites and those striving to become elites. There were also people such as delivery cyclists who received their FastForward doses from their employers, stored directly in their helmets. They could only use it during work hours, and were strictly prohibited from private use.

This girl was only here because she’d won a scholarship opportunity to come to the city and participate in an exchange program. She was studying at the city’s best elementary school for the semester. If she passed her final exams, then she could stay on to finish elementary school. This program was intended to give children from impoverished areas an opportunity to better their prospects through education. Her teacher had snuck her out while her grandmother was in the fields, otherwise her family would never have let her go. Who else would do the housework?

“I definitely want to stay here, otherwise when I go home Grandma will kill me,” she told me. “And Teacher Liu went to all this trouble—she had to go to our house and apologize to Grandma.”

“So do you like your new school?” I asked.

“Oh, yes! Here, the desks are big, the lights all work, and I’m so comfortable when I do my homework.” Her eyes shone as she spoke.

“Do you like your new classmates?”

She blinked forward, cupped her hands around her lips, and leaned in close to whisper, “No.”

“Why not?”

“They never settle down. They won’t pay attention in class. They’re always fidgeting like crazy, it makes it hard for me to pay attention.”

I was surprised—she’d observed the same thing I had. I asked, “Is everyone like that?”

“Oh yes—and when they talk, they talk so fast. They won’t even finish one sentence before they start another. They’re always gulping down their words. And the games they play are the same. All they want to do is see who’s the fastest, but that’s so boring! Every time I try to join in, they say I’m too slow. I’m not playing with them anymore.”

“Do you have any friends here?”

“One or two. But they’re in other classes. They’re sort of like me. They came from the countryside. We talk and walk at pretty much the same speed, so we have more to say to each other. It feels like we’re in a completely separate world from the city kids.”

Her words gave me pause. In the past, wealth and capital were probably the main barriers separating two worlds, but today’s barriers were made of time. It was very clear—this had everything to do with the influence of the FastForward. The differences were already evident between young children. Would their differences be exacerbated in the future? Would they cease to understand each others’ languages and cultures? Even if they lived in the same physical space, would they still live in different dimensions of speed, without any communication between them?

Over the long process of biological evolution, different species had split across different dimensions of speed. Mayflies hatch and die in a single day. Cypress trees can live for thousands of years. As a species, humanity has already spent far too long living on the same time. Perhaps we were now witnessing the evolution of a new species. These children who had been affected by the FastForward were better adapted to the new, accelerated world. But what about those who had failed to accelerate? What paths were left to them?

• • • •

After chronicling these stories, my anxiety has eased a bit. No matter what happens, I’ve done my best. I was able to leave behind this written record. At the very least, this chronicle is a summation of my writing career.

Over the past dozen years or so, the world has changed dramatically. Because of the FastForward’s popularity, the concentration of time radiation on Earth’s environment has rapidly increased, accelerating the passage of time on an even larger scale. Those who actively embraced the acceleration technology stride ahead of time. They consume T-42, emit time radiation, create entropy, and keep sprinting at the fore. And as for those who refused acceleration technology—even if they stayed in place where they were, they were still passively carried forward, as if they were standing on a conveyor belt. The whole world’s acceleration has become inevitable.

We all know what the end point of acceleration will look like: the heat death of the universe, the collapse of time. Everything will come to a halt. But there’s nothing we can do to stop it coming. The accelerated ones think they have lots of time before doomsday arrives, which means there’s lots they can do to prevent it. But all of their actions only speed up that day’s arrival. For everyone in the slower dimensions, that day still approaches, and the only way to subjectively delay its arrival is to choose to join the others in speeding up.

Everyone I love has entered the accelerated world. I never saw them again; I lost them to another time. At times, I envy people like Mo Xin—at least she found a partner to slowly grow old with. I don’t know if I have the courage to face doomsday alone. But I’m even less certain about whether I’m willing to give in and join the accelerated masses.

At the very least, it’s not today. Not at this moment.