Chapter Two: In This Room, the Dead Are Still Alive

Zhou Yuan smelled cooking oil. Not the endlessly filtered synthetic odor of a spacecraft, but rapeseed oil blooming around garlic in a hot wok. Sun-baked asphalt, drying sheets, and motor grease from a repair shop flooded his senses. He lay at the entrance to an aging alley. His spacesuit was gone, replaced by his black Yunjing uniform. The sun was setting behind crowded apartment blocks. Bicycle bells chimed in the distance while vendors called their wares. “Are we on Earth?” Old Chen rose with a tremor in his voice. Their wristbands remained. Zhou's showed July 16, twenty years earlier, at 6:40 p.m. Communications and positioning were dead. A single silver sentence floated on the screen: THE DOOR WILL APPEAR WHEN THE GUEST COMPLETES CHECKOUT.