Weili’s personality confuses me too. At times, there is profound wisdom in her, but in the very next moment, she turns into an indifferent, unsympathetic monster. I can never truly know what she is thinking, what she is going to do, or what she will do.
Manoj K.
< Audio Log 77 / Taklamakan Desert / Weili’s personal log >
I’ve been sitting here for six hours. Six. At the edge of this forsaken desert. This is the last large military airport before that endless god forsaken desert begins—the Taklamakan Desert. Beyond the runway, it is like the world ends, and the land peters off into a flat, cold nothing.
I flew in this morning. Woke up at 4. Ate two almonds. Took the jet to Ürümqi and then from there a rusty Russian-made helicopter for the rest of the way. Now what was I even thinking when I got on that heli? So, here I am, half-frozen, hunched in the backseat of the car, half awake, half excited, half asleep.
Still no sign of the plane.
The wind keeps changing direction. It rattles everything—loose hangar doors, rusted scaffolds, unsecured roofing sheets. The wind is mad in these parts, unobstructed for hundreds of square kilometers. It howls in your ears, like the screaming of a man falling into a bottomless pit, becoming fainter and then louder once again. And don’t forget, not only is the wind sub-zero, but it is also full of fine dust and sand, like a sand blaster stripping the life from people’s faces.
Speaking of people, there is no one here except those few dozen souls standing in the cold, by the runway. I made them stand there, and they’ve been at it for over three hours. I could’ve ordered them to stay indoors, be warm, and come out only when the Y-20 arrives, but I didn’t. I did not like the way they spoke to me when I first met them this morning. They thought I was just another government lackey and laughed in my face when I told them they had to wait in the cold until the plane came. But that changed the moment they came to know who I was. And then it was all obsequious toadying. Standing in that freezing cold, skin-ripping winds, that’s their punishment.
They know I am here, sitting in my SUV, with the heater on full. They see me from the corner of their eyes, but not a single one would dare to walk up to me and ask about the ETA for the cargo plane. They stand there staring into the bleakness. But I have time to kill. I, too, have been watching them. The soldiers have their own little theatre going on. Four of them huddle near the apron, their jackets stuffed like sausages, their faces blank with the sort of resignation that trained monkeys have. And then there’s that young one. He caught my attention because of his nose—slightly bent to the left, like it was tin, beaten out of shape, and then was put back by his village shaman. Every time he speaks, which is too often, it flares a little. People are weird. And that fellow is too excited. He keeps jumping around trying to talk to everyone, but no one seems to give a damn.
Now, where is that damn plane!!! Onboard is a portable Casimir force detector—world’s first. It was built in Guangzhou by a firm called Sino-Quanta. It was made to look like a civilian tech firm, but in reality, it is jointly owned by the military and my organization, the CNSA. Took them four months and two terminations to piece it together. Bunch of idiots, all of them. At one point, I was so upset with their incessant complaining about the deadlines that I wanted to march all of them onto a Coast Guard ship and throw them overboard into the South China Sea, fucking idiots!
However, they managed to complete it. The apparatus, which was left yesterday under a cloak of severe secrecy, was put on a military transport and spent the night en route to me.
Okay, I see it now; there it is, far on the horizon. It looks like there are crazy crosswinds. The pilot does not dare to change the landing site to another airport. Let me talk to the air traffic controllers.
<end Audio Log 77>
