Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Golden Age

Massive arterial bleeding leads to death in ten minutes. Brain death sets in at six. The heart, once it stops, offers thirty seconds before sudden death claims the body.

Who knows how much time had passed? Ten minutes, six, thirty seconds—perhaps only the blink of an eye.

Zhao Meiyou opened his eyes, only to find his face smothered by the overwhelming folds of a massive skirt.

Where on earth was this? The first thing he saw was a pale, snow-white thigh, its skin encased in flesh-coloured stockings that disappeared into the depths of the skirt. Following the line upward, he met the face of a young woman. She had a cigarette filter clamped between her lips and was touching up her makeup with one foot propped on a stool.

The room was brimming with mirrors, crowded with people whose hair was adorned with bright feathers. Bare feet shuffled past, along with embroidered corsets, arms draped in pearls, and eyelids coated in thick black paint. Suddenly, a woman’s breast crashed into him, as though a giant celestial body had fallen from the heavens. Zhao Meiyou instinctively caught her. She was clearly drunk—her wine sloshed all over his head and face as she collapsed onto his shoulder and promptly began to vomit.

Zhao Meiyou was no stranger to theatres; from his experience, this seemed to be a women’s dressing room.

But the atmosphere was worlds apart from any theatre. The multicoloured mirrors, the silver spoons and sugar cubes perched atop emerald-green glasses, and the frenetic music wafting in from beyond the door—it was all unmistakable. Those feverish chords, the drunken violinists, and the drumbeats brewing a tempest of crimson—they belonged to the rhythm of a can-can.

Zhao Meiyou hoisted the drunken woman onto a coat rack and, without pausing to question why no one around him seemed to find a man in their midst unusual, he pushed aside the curtain and stepped out. Like a speck of ash, he dissolved into a palette of vivid, riotous colours.

Beyond the curtain was a vast ballroom. The upstairs boxes were packed with onlookers; a painter sipped his drink while sketching furiously in his notebook, tracing the flames and diamonds of the stage. Dancers spun out from behind glass doors, stamping, kicking, twirling—then suddenly flinging their massive skirts upward, their toes shooting straight toward the chandeliered ceiling. Amid the frenzy, limbs and laughter burst forth. A bearded man twirled a cane, a clown with a painted white face stumbled about, and a string ensemble in velvet jackets sawed away at their instruments. A woman bent sharply backwards, her neck arcing like a taut bowstring, as the final high note erupted, spilling onto the teakwood floor like an overripe, juice-laden red sun. Silk petticoats soared into the air, unleashing a kaleidoscopic tempest.

Someone handed him a drink, as though Zhao Meiyou were just another reveller who had wandered into the ballroom for a night of indulgence. Sensing his bewilderment, the stranger helpfully demonstrated how to drink it: a silver spoon holding a sugar cube was balanced over the glass, and water was poured over the sugar until it dissolved and filtered into the alcohol below, creating a glass of Bohemian absinthe.

The liquid shimmered blue-green, its hue reminiscent of a woman’s eyeshadow. Once diluted with water, it turned into an opaque milky white, releasing a pungent aniseed aroma.

Absinthe. Can-can. Zhao Meiyou scanned his surroundings. He was beginning to understand where he was.

He had seen places like this before—not in the theatres of Level 33, but in old films, holographic pictures, and antique paintings. The cancan, a dance that had first thrived among the working class, later swept through cabarets. It was famous for its high-kicking moves, where dancers would snap their legs up towards their noses and ears. In practice sessions, cancan girls would prepare balloons hung high above doorways, popping them with the tips of their shoes.

This dance was born of scandal and whispers, with the dancers donning shimmering stockings and pantalettes, hiking their skirts high right as they kicked.

A bouquet of roses was thrust under Zhao Meiyou’s nose, followed by wads of cash stuffed into the waistband of his trousers. The crowd before him roared in wild celebration, as though a dressing room had fallen from the skies, scattering stockings and garter belts in every direction.

After what felt like an eternity, a figure pushed through the throng, fixing him with a sharp gaze. “Hey? Zhao Meiyou? Xi Shi?”

“Ah, Guifei.” Zhao Meiyou, already a little tipsy, raised a glass of absinthe to him with a smirk. “How come you still look like this?”

“I should be asking you that! What the hell’s going on with you?” Headliner, his stout frame as unyielding as ever, shoved bystanders aside as he approached. “I’ve been searching everywhere—how’d you end up a woman?”

“No idea,” Zhao Meiyou replied, resigned to his fate. He glanced down at his chest. “When I noticed, I was already like this.”

As he spoke, he hefted the two mounds of soft flesh on his chest. “I even found a bathroom to check myself out earlier. I’ve got to say, this transformation’s thorough—inside and out…”

“Spare me the details,” the theatre headliner snapped, looking like he was seconds away from slapping him. “You seem to be adapting just fine—you’re already drinking.”

Not just drinking—he was drawing attention. In his current form, Zhao Meiyou was a sultry bombshell with curves in all the right places. He had even raided the dressing room for a corset-style dance dress. Men—predictably—couldn’t resist. A line of them snaked around the bar, eager to buy him drinks. He was Mammon come to life.

Zhao Meiyou squeezed through a gap in the crowd, escaping with Headliner out of the dance hall and into the night. Above them, a giant red windmill spun lazily. “If you hadn’t shown up soon, I was about to pick someone decent-looking and give it a try.”

“Zhao Meiyou, could you please act normal?”

“This is normal, okay?" Zhao Meiyou shot him a puzzled look. “Wouldn’t you, if it were you?” As he spoke, he lifted his chest again—like holding two round eggplants—and shoved them in Headliner’s face. “C’mon, we're brothers, yeah? Why don't I let you have a go first?”

Headliner raised his hand, then let it fall, resisting with all his might. “I don’t hit women.”

“But seriously, what the hell’s going on with me?” Standing beneath a gas lamp, Zhao Meiyou watched carriages clatter down the cobblestone street. “We’re in the ruin now, right? Those men buying me drinks—are they even alive?”

"You can think of them as living people," said the headliner. "Ruin A173 is very accommodating to humans; its resemblance to the real world is exceedingly high."

Zhao Meiyou pointed at the gas lamp overhead. "The real world?"

In Megalopolis, the electrical grid had been upgraded countless times over, and gas lamps—antiques so rare they were hard to find even on the black market—were everywhere here, lining the streets. As far as the eye could see, nothing from clothing to food to habitation bore the slightest resemblance to the real world. How could this place possibly be called highly similar?

"I wasn't finished," the headliner continued. "The world depicted in Ruin A173 is a reality that humanity once possessed."

Before the words had fully settled, the headliner pressed two fingers to his lips and let out a whistle. A taxi came to a halt on cue. "Get in."

Zhao Meiyou sat in the back seat, watching as scenes swept past the window like fragments from centuries ago. Horse-drawn carriages trundled by, their drivers cloaked in uniforms, perched beneath the flickering light of oil lamps. Open-air cafés lined the streets, rows of violet buildings receding into the distance. Men and women sat together, smoking and savouring oysters. From time to time, a tavern door would burst open, releasing a group of drunken revelers who spilled into the cool night like a cascade of sunflowers. The crowd would grow, singing boisterously with bottles in hand, the air thickening with heat until the damp midnight chill turned into the sultry breath of a summer's night.

Zhao Meiyou turned to look out the rear window. On the distant horizon, the constellations swirled, the full moon spinning into a massive vortex. "…I’ve seen patients draw this in the psychiatric hospital."

The headliner let out a hum of agreement from the front. "That's right. Van Gogh's Starry Night."

"We’re in late 19th-century Paris, Montmartre to be precise. That dance hall you just exited? That’s the famous Moulin Rouge," the headliner said. "The final quarter of the 19th century—history calls it La Belle Époque, the Beautiful Era."

In this Parisian Belle Époque, haute couture began to emerge, gramophones and projectors were becoming commonplace, and salons lit up the city’s nights. Poets bartered recitations for meals at soirées. Artists flocked to Montmartre in numbers as countless as the stars, drowning themselves in absinthe—a hallucinogenic drink so potent it drove Verlaine to fire a gun at Rimbaud, Wilde to collapse drunkenly into a bed of tulips, and Van Gogh to slice off his own ear after drinking it.

Undoubtedly, it was a golden age. Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism—an avant-garde explosion of art brewed in the bars, shaping the course of culture for centuries to come. Within fifty years, Sartre and Beauvoir would meet at Les Deux Magots, existentialism roaring to life. Hemingway would cross the Atlantic, sleeping on the floor of a room at 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine.

In the final quarter of the 19th century, they were travelling along the Seine in a taxi. It was a surreal scene. Cars had not yet entered the mainstream, and horse-drawn carriages remained the pinnacle of fashionable transport. Yet, the men and women by the riverside accepted the bright yellow automobile without much fuss; a few daring youths even tapped on the windows, offering beer and cigarettes.

The headliner glanced at him through the rear-view mirror. “Don’t drink. The road ahead is still long.”

Zhao Meiyou studied the nightscape outside, the damp air from the Seine brushing against him. It was hard to tell if this was the chill of winter or a humid summer night; some were wrapped in heavy mink coats, while others dipped bare feet into the river. “You still haven’t answered my earlier question,” he said, tapping on the front seat. “How did I end up as a woman?”

“Every archaeologist gains a unique ability in the ruins,” the headliner said. “In your case, it seems your power might be ‘transformation.’”

Taking the implication to heart, Zhao Meiyou looked down at his current body and abruptly shut his eyes.

Headliner: “What kind of nonsense are you up to now?”

Zhao Meiyou: “I’m thinking of seeing if I can grow a—well, you know.”

“Go ahead and try,” the headliner replied. “If you pull it off, you’ll no longer count as a woman, and I’ll beat the hell out of you.”

Whether it was the headliner’s threat or not, Zhao Meiyou failed in his attempt. “Is it just me, or is this ability kind of useless?”

“Practice makes perfect. The more times you enter the ruins, the better you’ll get. Experienced shapeshifters can change into almost anything—someone even turned into air once.”

“And what about your ability, Guifei—” Zhao Meiyou abruptly stopped mid-sentence. "Ah, fuck!"

The taxi suddenly veered out of control, smashing through the riverside barrier and plunging into the waters of the Seine.

The expected suffocation never came. It felt as if they had passed through a cool mist; now they were driving along a coastal street. This was no longer the riverside of Paris. The shoreline was lined with grand, white mansions, their architecture reminiscent of the Georgian colonial era. A pier extended into the bay, and under the glittering night sky, a faint green light flickered in the distance, just across from the dock.

The car rolled past a fountain, and ahead stood a brilliantly lit villa. Their yellow taxi no longer radiated surrealism; instead, it seemed pitifully shabby. Rows of luxury cars—Lincolns, Rolls-Royces—were parked all around.

A group of revellers spilled out of the villa like a burst of vibrant confetti from a party popper. Someone tossed a cocktail bottle into the air. The women’s dresses had shortened to reveal high heels and calves; corsets had vanished, replaced by straight-cut dresses adorned with sequins and fringes. Most sported cropped, ear-length hair and smoky eye makeup; some had even donned trousers and brogues.

Fireworks burst in the sky, and then a massive chandelier, swinging like a pendulum, came crashing through the door. It shattered into a sea of crystal shards, with two acrobats still clinging to it. The crowd erupted into screams and laughter. A convertible roared past like a hurricane, its seats packed with what seemed to be an entire football team—all young men in Ivy League uniforms. The car wobbled precariously before plunging headlong into a fountain.

Zhao Meiyou glanced out the window. A man dressed like a banker handed him a cigar, which he sniffed before asking, “May I ask, where is this place?”

“Where is this place? Have you sleepwalked here?” The man laughed heartily. “Miss, this is Long Island!” He gestured into the distance. “Over there—that’s New York City!”

Zhao Meiyou pulled back and asked the headliner, “Where are we now?”

“Didn’t you ever study history?”

“In Megalopolis’s preserved records of human civilisation, much of the 22nd century is practically lost,” Zhao Meiyou replied. “My final thesis back then was on the chronicles of Megalopolis, but that only covered events after 2265.”

The headliner motioned toward the revellers around them. “Gossip columnists, movie stars, Broadway directors, Sicilians—this is America in the 1920s, an era history calls the ‘Jazz Age.’”

“Looks like we arrived too late,” the headliner remarked, watching luxury cars peel away one by one. “The party’s just ended.”

“Whose party was it?” Zhao Meiyou asked.

“Looks like your literature studies weren’t much to speak of.”

“What’s this got to do with literature?”

The headliner gave him a look, half pity, half disbelief, then pointed toward a faint green light across the bay, near the dock.

“It was Gatsby’s party.”

Zhao Meiyou rummaged through his memory. “I think I’ve heard of that book, but I’ve never read it.”

The headliner adjusted a knob on the control panel and switched the radio channel. Moments later, a resonant baritone voice poured through the car speakers—

“When I was younger and more vulnerable, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since...”

They drove along a coastal highway, passing the Hollywood Hills, where Sunset Boulevard was lined with towering movie billboards. Chaplin’s mysterious smile gleamed in the night—it was the 1930s, Hollywood’s golden age. Soon, colour television arrived. Jack Kerouac raced a truck down Route 66. Beat poets hosted concerts in Greenwich Village. The year was 1961, and Gagarin had entered space. The taxi emerged from a tunnel, and on the horizon, flames shot skyward, roaring as they reached for the stars.

“That’s Apollo 11,” the headliner said. “July 16, 1969—the first time humanity set foot on the moon.”

This was the golden age of humanity’s exploration of space, an era of “space fever” that would endure for years. David Bowie painted his face crimson, donned high heels and a silken gown, morphing into the androgynous alien Ziggy Stardust. Guitarists smashed their instruments in barroom cacophonies, record labels teamed up with radio stations, and the airwaves pulsed with the voices of Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin… It was, too, the gilded age of rock 'n' roll.

The view outside the car window streaked past in a blur—from countryside to plains, plains to desert, desert to cityscape. They traversed era after era of golden ages. Time and space seemed to lose their grip here, as though they’d tumbled into a rabbit hole. Perhaps some spidery, higher-dimensional creature lay coiled in the trunk, but so what? The taxi cruised past a toll booth, where a Coca-Cola vending machine gleamed under the artificial lights.

They crossed over the city bridge, surrounded by shimmering lights that floated like bubbles. Skyscrapers on either side of the street were adorned with GG billboards, their colours dissolving into the night like digital codes melting into darkness. From a sleek black car, a geisha with a painted white face stepped out, her elaborate kimono a cascade of vibrant hues. She bent slightly in reverence before the kabuki theatre.

“This is Ginza, Japan, in the 1980s,” the headliner announced. “The famed era of the bubble economy.”

Another golden season.

The taxi turned into a narrow alley, where the aroma of street food burst forth. Zhao Meiyou noticed the advertisement billboards had shifted to traditional Chinese characters. Airplanes skimmed low over the rooftops, and telephone poles crisscrossed the skyline. Hair salons brimmed with patrons, women seated beneath domed perm machines. Neon signs cast red and blue reflections across windowpanes. Youngsters crowded around a disco hall television, watching as a wuxia film’s end credits rolled to a Cantonese ballad.

The headliner handed cash out the window and received two bowls of fried noodles in return. “This is Hong Kong in the 1990s.”

The noodles came in white foam boxes. Zhao Meiyou snapped apart a pair of disposable chopsticks. “Aren’t we getting out to have a look?”

“Today’s just to get you familiar with the process. You can explore at leisure next time.” The headliner instructed the taxi driver, “Sir, take us via Xizhimen Bridge and onto the Second Ring Road.”

The taxi halted before a crimson gate, its towering palace walls imposing. Across Chang’an Avenue lay the world’s largest square. The headliner wolfed down his noodles, flung open the door, and stepped out. “We’re here.” He tapped on the rear window. “Get out.”

Zhao Meiyou shoved the car door open, only to be slapped in the face by the parched northern wind. Level 33 was perpetually cool, and he’d rarely encountered a chill so sharp it cut like a blade and burned like liquor. “Where is this?”

“Beijing, 21st century,” the headliner replied, his eyes fixed on the grand palace complex before him. “Tonight is the Forbidden City’s first snowfall.”

They ascended the corner tower. The deep red palace walls stretched into the snow, the city lights dazzling beyond, while within, the vast palace grounds lay silent and solemn. Zhao Meiyou pulled out a cigarette, thought better of it, and tucked it back into his pocket. “What a fine era.”

“Every era you’ve seen today is a fine one.”

“I should probably revisit the history of the 19th to 21st centuries,” Zhao Meiyou remarked wistfully.

“Illiterate,” headliner shot him a glance. “In case you’re unaware, humanity’s first two world wars both erupted in the 20th century.”

Zhao Meiyou paused.

“That was also the two centuries where human civilisation began spiralling out of control,” headliner continued. “From the First Industrial Revolution to the Third Technological Revolution, through the burgeoning of the 20th century, the gestation of the 21st century, human civilisation reached its zenith in the 22nd century. As for what happened after that, while Megalopolis didn’t preserve records of that time, you must’ve heard of the Orion War.”

Zhao Meiyou gazed at the distant snow for a while before saying, “But I still think this is a good era.”

It is still an age where we can lift our eyes to the stars, where astronauts play saxophones aboard space stations, and there are countless golden memories to cherish. It is the time when people dreamt of cybernetic futures in digital reveries, when grand palace walls had yet to crumble, mountains and lakes were not merely shades of ultramarine in holograms, Rome had not yet sunk, poets had not vanished, and on nights when people wished to dance, they could still dance. Even the original Mona Lisa remained safeguarded in the Louvre before the fire consumed it.

“I’ve thought of something,” Zhao Meiyou suddenly said. “Could it be that every bygone age can be called a golden era?”

Headliner let out a noncommittal hum.

Every dull, listless present will one day become a luminous, radiant past, and every past was once a future dreamed of with wild imagination.

From nowhere, headliner produced a theatrical mask, secured it onto his face, and struck a poised stance. Snow swirled in the air as he, in the style of a laosheng, leaned against an imaginary wall and began to sing a measured tune: “The lone sentinel pounds the wooden horse, summoning those who bring tea and wine—”

This was the duet between Emperor Zhengde and Lady Feng from The Phoenix and the Dragon. Typically performed as a dialogue between two characters, headliner took on both roles. He began with the stately cadence of the old male voice of the laosheng, then transitioned to the charming voice of the lady: “The crescent moon lights the world below; pray, my lord soldier, where is your home?”

Finding it amusing, Zhao Meiyou couldn’t help but chime in with a line, grinning, “This soldier’s home is under these skies.”

“Indeed,” Lady Feng teased, “If not under the heavens, where else could one live? Surely not above them?”

The emperor replied with a playful air, “Ah, but my dwelling is unlike any other.”

Lady Feng’s eyes sparkled. “And how is it different?”

The emperor swept his sleeve, gesturing to the thickening snow atop the glazed tiles. “I reside here, within the Forbidden City—”

They carried on, trading lines until the entire scene was sung. Finally, headliner removed his mask and turned to the snow-covered city. “Zhao Meiyou, you weren’t wrong.”

“This truly is a good era.”