Infinite Nightmares

Gazing out the window at the cities built from piles of prefabricated people, Zhang Wenda, sitting in the passenger seat, asked the driver, 2826, "Where are we going now?"

"To the airport first. We’re on a tight schedule. The trip is long, so we have no time to waste."

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Zhang Wenda saw the vast, open airport and the airplanes within it—baring fangs and brandishing claws as they chased and tore at each other across the tarmac.

Through a crack in the window, Zhang Wenda could even smell a cloying, oily stench. It was the shit the airplanes had dropped, drifting over on the wind.

Bucket loaders drove back and forth across the airfield, quickly scooping up all the airplane shit to keep the runways clean and prevent flight delays.

"Whoa. I’m really seeing the world today," Zhang Wenda said, pressing his hands against the glass.

"Never flown before?"

Zhang Wenda nodded vigorously. "Nope, never."

Everything in Thought Wave Two was so new and bizarre to him.

Boarding the plane went smoothly, though. The airplanes seemed terrified of the two Orange Light sticks wielded by the ground crew. The moment a crew member stood before one and crossed the sticks, the plane would immediately start trembling in fear.

With the help of the ground crew, a white passenger jet obediently opened its cabin door, allowing the jet bridge to connect.

"Is this thing safe? Have there been any accidents?"

Zhang Wenda fidgeted in his seat, touching things and looking all around him. He honestly hadn’t expected to have to face an ordeal like this.

The man sitting beside him, who was reading an English-language newspaper, shot him a contemptuous look.

Once the plane began to take off, Zhang Wenda discovered that aside from the seatbelt being alive, there was no other danger. Only then did he finally start to relax.

"This plane seems smaller than the one I killed. Is it a juvenile?"

Hearing this clumsy boast, the man beside him rolled his eyes so hard they nearly popped out of his head. ’Killed a plane? Might as well say you’ve killed an aircraft carrier.’

Tapping away on a phone, 2826 quickly explained, "Airplanes are creatures with migratory habits tied to the Thought Waves. When a female plane senses she is about to give birth, she will automatically collapse back into Thought Wave One. Only after leaving her children in the relative safety of the deathless Thought Wave One will she return to her original Thought Wave."

"Oh, so that’s how it works." Zhang Wenda vaguely recalled Little Fatty mentioning that a small plane had once gotten into his house. Now it seemed that must have been a newborn juvenile plane.

’Looks like both Thought Wave Two and Thought Wave One have their own logic,’ he thought. ’It’s just that their logic is a little... out there.’

"It can’t be helped. Airplanes only lay three eggs at a time, and they have many natural predators. For one to survive to this size is exceedingly rare, which is why every domesticated plane is incredibly expensive."

Once his curiosity about the planes was sated, Zhang Wenda asked, "So, how long until we reach the Bureau 507 headquarters?"

"Just wait. I told you this was an unnecessary detour, but you insisted on coming. What’s the point of being impatient now?"

"It’s better that I came. I had to make sure the entire Bureau 507 wasn’t just your one-person shell company. Speaking of which, where are we headed?"

"Shanghai."

"Really?" Zhang Wenda was surprised. He’d once spent some time trying to make it in Shanghai himself and never expected he’d have a chance to go back.

’But now he was curious... was Shanghai also a city built from piles of prefabricated people?’

The plane had been flying for nearly three hours and still hadn’t arrived. Including the commute earlier, they’d been traveling for almost five or six hours. No wonder 2826 had said it was far.

Just as Zhang Wenda was about to close his eyes for a nap, 2826 tapped his forearm. "Time to go."

"Go? Where?" Zhang Wenda looked out the airplane window and saw nothing but a vast, flat plain on the ground below. There were no buildings whatsoever.

Forget Shanghai; he’d believe it if someone told him this was Henan.

"Shanghai."

Zhang Wenda followed 2826’s pointing finger and looked up. That’s when he saw it: an upside-down, azure ocean hanging in the heavens, seamlessly blending in with the sky.

"Holy crap... *This* is Shanghai? This is really Shanghai?" Zhang Wenda stared, his eyes wide with disbelief. The absurdity of Thought Wave Two was far greater than that of Thought Wave One.

As Zhang Wenda exclaimed in awe, a cold snort came from the side. "Hmph. Country bumpkin."

"Let’s go." 2826 unbuckled their seatbelt.

"Go? How? The plane hasn’t stopped."

"This plane is headed for Mountain City. We were just hitching a ride."

Grabbing Zhang Wenda’s right arm with one hand, 2826 opened the airplane window as easily as a refrigerator door and jumped straight out, pulling Zhang Wenda with them.

"HOLY SHIT!" The fierce wind contorted Zhang Wenda’s face as he was flung far away, barely missing the plane’s propellers.

High above the empty cloud layer, 2826 rotated their drone head and, with one hand, dragged the screaming Zhang Wenda toward the distant patch of Shanghai.

Zhang Wenda didn’t consider himself afraid of heights, but this was just too high. By the time 2826 had pulled him closer to Shanghai, the color still hadn’t returned to his pale face.

He looked up at the ocean overhead. As they drew nearer, he could see exquisite islands upon its surface, dotted with people and buildings.

While Zhang Wenda had to desperately cling to a lamppost to keep from falling *off* the inverted ocean, most of the island’s inhabitants moved about with ease on the sun-drenched land, seemingly unaffected by gravity’s pull.

"Did we really have to meet here? Couldn’t you have picked a place that’s easier to walk in?" Zhang Wenda was rendered speechless by the completely upside-down city.

"This place is a minor Thought Wave. Compared to the chaos of other Thought Waves, the rules here are strict and mostly unbreakable. That’s why building a Bureau 507 branch here is safer and more stable."

"Then hurry up and take me there. It’s really hard for me to get around in a place like this."

Towed along by the flying 2826, Zhang Wenda entered a cluster of buildings on the island.

Everything here was upside-down. Zhang Wenda studied it for a long time but couldn’t make any sense of it.

He saw that he wasn’t the only one hanging upside-down in the city; plenty of other people were, too.

They used their inverted nature to find work in the city, like hanging from skyscrapers to wash windows, or holding brooms to sweep the ceilings.

The place was so crowded with people and dense with buildings that it was starting to make Zhang Wenda’s head spin. "With so many people, doesn’t it get cramped?"

"It can’t be helped. Compared to the inexplicable weirdness of other Thought Waves, this place is actually pretty decent."

A few minutes later, an automatic door slid open, and 2826 pulled Zhang Wenda into an elevator.

swiped their phone over a panel, and the elevator’s display lit up with a floor number not present on the button panel: Floor -71.

The elevator began to descend rapidly. But for the inverted Zhang Wenda, it felt like a rapid ascent, taking him up into the island’s interior.