01　For the Benefit of Mankind

Business was business, nothing more, nothing less. This was the principle by which Smoothbore operated, but this particular client had left him feeling bewildered.

First, the client had gone about the commission all wrong. He wanted to speak in person, which was extremely unusual in this line of business. Smoothbore remembered his instructor’s repeated admonitions three decades prior: their relationship with clients should be like that of the forehead to the back of the skull; the two should never meet. This, of course, was in the best interest of both parties.

Smoothbore was even more surprised by the client’s choice of meeting place. The opulent Presidential Hall in the most luxurious five star hotel in the city was a spectacularly unsuitable venue for this sort of transaction. According to the other party, this contract would involve processing three units. This was no trouble – he did not mind a little extra work.

An attendant held open the gilded doors of the Presidential Hall.Before he entered, Smoothbore inconspicuously reached a hand into his jacket and gently undid the snaps on the holster under his left armpit. In truth, it was unnecessary – no one would try to pull anything unexpected in a place like this.

The hall was resplendent in glittering greens and golds, a world apart from the reality outside. This world’s sun was a massive crystal chandelier, shining down on an endless plain of scarlet carpet. At first glance the room seemed empty, but Smoothbore quickly spied its occupants clustered around two French windows in the corner of the hall,lifting the heavy curtains to look at sky outside. He swept an eye over them and counted thirteen people. Smoothbore had anticipated a client,not clients. His instructor had also said that clients were like mistresses:you could have more than one, but you should never let them meet.

Smoothbore knew exactly what they were looking at: the Elder Brothers’ spaceship. It had moved back over the Southern Hemisphere and was clearly visible in the sky. Three years had passed since the Creator civilization had left Earth. Their grand cosmic visit had drastically increased humanity’s ability to mentally cope with alien civilizations.Moreover, the Creators’ fleet of 20,000 spaceships had blotted out the sky,but only one ship from the Elder Brothers’ world had arrived on Earth. It was not as bizarrely shaped as the spaceships of the Creators. Cylindrical with rounded ends, it looked like an intergalactic cold relief capsule.

Seeing Smoothbore enter, the thirteen clients left the windows and returned to the large round table in the center of the hall. When he recognized some of the faces around the room, the magnificent hall suddenly felt shabby. The most conspicuous among them was SinoSys Group’s Zhu Hanyang, whose ‘Orient-3000’ operating system was replacing the outdated Windows OS worldwide. The others all ranked in the top fifty on a list of the world’s wealthiest people. Their annual earnings were probably equivalent to the GDP of a middle-income country.

These people were nothing like Brother Teeth, thought Smoothbore.Brother Teeth had made his fortune overnight, these were dynastic heirs,the polished products of generations of wealth. They were the aristocrats of this age, utterly habituated to the wealth and power they wielded. It was just like the delicate diamond ring that sat on Zhu Hanyang’s slender finger: it was barely visible but for the occasional glint of warm light,but it was easily worth a dozen times more than the shiny, walnut-sized golden baubles that adorned Brother Teeth’s fingers.

But now, these thirteen financial princelings had assembled to hire a professional hitman to kill three people, and according to his contact, this was only the first batch.

Smoothbore paid the diamond ring no attention. His eyes were fixed on the three photographs in Zhu’s hand – clearly the units that required processing. Zhu leaned across the table and slid the photographs in front of him.

With a glance, Smoothbore felt faint frustration creep in again. His instructor had said, in the area in which he did business, it was wise to familiarize himself with units who might conceivably be processed in the future. At least in this city, Smoothbore had done just that. But Smoothbore was completely unable to identify the three faces in front of him. The photographs had been taken with a long-focus lens, and the disheveled and dirty subjects hardly seemed of the same species as the refined figures in front of him. Closer inspection revealed that one of the three faces belonged to a woman. She was still young, and her appearance was tidier than that of the others. Her hair, though coated with dust, was neatly combed.The look in her eyes was unusual. Smoothbore paid attention to people’s expressions – people in this business always did. He usually saw one of two expressions: anxious desire or numbness. But her eyes were filled with rare serenity. Smoothbore’s heart stirred faintly, but the feeling passed as quickly as it came, like a fine mist blown away on the wind.

‘This is the task that the Council for Liquidation of Social Wealth entrusts to you. This is the standing committee of the Council, and I am its Chairman.’ said Zhu.

The Council for Liquidation of Social Wealth? It was a strange name.Apart from being an organization composed of the world’s wealthiest individuals, Smoothbore could not ponder the implications of its name.Without further particulars, it was probably impossible to unravel its true purpose.

‘Their locations are written on the back. They have no fixed addresses, so those are approximations. You will have to search for them,but they should not prove difficult to find. The money has already been wired to your account. Please verify the transfer.’ instructed Zhu.

Looking up, Smoothbore found the expression on Zhu’s face to be anything but noble. His eyes were dull and empty. Somewhat to Smoothbore’s surprise, they held not even a trace of desire.

Smoothbore pulled out his cellphone and checked his account. After counting the long string of zeroes after the number, he said coolly: ‘First,not so much. My original quote stands. Second, pay half up front, and half on completion.’

‘Fine.’ Zhu sniffed disapprovingly.

Smoothbore punched several keys. ‘The excess funds have been returned. Please verify the transfer, sir. We, too, have professional standards.’

‘Indeed. These days your line of work is oversubscribed. But we value your professionalism and sense of honor.’ said Xu Xueping with a charming smile. She was the chief executive of Far Source Group, Asia’s largest energy development entity born out of the full liberalization of the electric power market.

‘This is the first order, so please handle it cleanly.’ said the offshore oil baron Xue Tong.

‘Fast cooling or delayed cooling?’ asked Smoothbore, quickly adding, ‘I can explain if necessary.’

‘We understand, and it doesn’t matter. Do as you see fit.’ answered Zhu.

‘Verification method? Video or physical specimen?’

‘No need for either. Just complete the task – we have our own methods of checking.’

‘Will that be all?’

‘Yes, you may go.’

*

As he left the hotel, Smoothbore could see the Elder Brothers’spaceship passing slowly overhead in the narrow strips of sky between the towering buildings. The ship seemed larger than before, and its speed had increased. Evidently it had reduced the altitude of its orbit. The ship’s smooth sides bloomed with slowly shifting iridescent patterns, exercising a hypnotic effect on those who looked too long. In fact, the surface of the ship was a perfect mirror, and the patterns seen by observers on the ground were only the distorted reflections of Earth below. Smoothbore imagined the ship as purest silver, a thing of beauty in his eyes. He preferred silver to gold. Silver was quiet, cold.

Before their departure three years ago, the Creators told humanity that they had created six Earths in total; the four that now remained were within two hundred light years of each other. They urged the people of Earth to devote their full efforts to technological development – we needed to eliminate our brother planets, lest we be destroyed ourselves.

But this warning came too late.

Locking their ship into orbit around Earth, emissaries from one of those three planets, the first Earth, arrived in the solar system not long after the departure of the Creators. The First Earth civilization was twice as old as mankind, and so the people of this Earth came to call them ‘Elder Brothers’.

Smoothbore took out his cellphone and checked his account balance again. Brother Teeth, I’m as rich as you now, but it still feels like I’m missing something. And you always thought you already had it all, and everything you did was only a desperate attempt to keep it. He shook his head, as if to clear the dark cloud from his mind. It was an ill omen to think of Brother Teeth now.

*

Brother Teeth took his name from the saw that never left his side.The blade was thin and flexible, its serrations razor-sharp. The handle was carved from solid coral and decorated with beautiful ukiyo-e patterns. He kept the saw wrapped around his waist like a belt, and in idle moments,he would unwind it and draw a violin bow across the back of the blade.By bending the blade and bowing across sections of different widths,he could produce haunting, melancholy music that hung in air like the mournful cries of spirits. Of course, Smoothbore had heard tales of the saw’s other application, but he had only seen Brother Teeth use it in action once. It was during a high-stakes game of dice in an old warehouse.Brother Teeth’s second-in-command, a man named Half-Brick, had gambled big and lost everything, even his parents’ house. With bloodshot eyes, he offered to put both his arms on the table in a double-or-nothing bet.

Brother Teeth rattled the dice and smiled at him. Half-Brick’s arms,he said, were an unacceptable bet. After all, the future was long – and without hands, how could they play dice together?

‘Bet your legs.’ he said.

So Half-Brick had bet both his legs – and he lost again.

Although Smoothbore was young, he had been a trusted member of Brother Teeth’s entourage. Having followed the man in his rise to power from a very young age, he was no stranger to bloodshed. When Brother Teeth finally scraped together a fortune from the bloody gutters of society and sought to shift his business empire into more respectable channels,his most loyal retainers were enfiefed as Chairman of the Board, Vice President, and other such titles. Only Smoothbore was left to serve as Brother Teeth’s bodyguard.

Those who knew Brother Teeth understood that the level of trust implied by this appointment was no small matter. The man was extraordinarily cautious, perhaps as a result of the fate that befell his godfather. Brother Teeth’s godfather had also been extremely cautious;in Brother Teeth’s words, the man would have wrapped himself in iron if given the opportunity. After many years without incident, he boarded a flight and took his assigned seat, flanked on either side by two of his most trusted bodyguards. When the plane landed in Zhuhai, the stewardess noticed the three men remained seated, as if lost in thought. A second look revealed that they were already dead. Like his godfather before him,Brother Teeth’s journey to the top had been eventful. Now, navigating society was like crossing a forest of hidden blades or a marsh cratered with pitfalls. He was truly placing his life into Smoothbore’s hands.

But Smoothbore’s new status soon came under threat with the arrival of Mr K. Mr K was Russian. At that time, it was the fashion among those who could afford it to employ ex-KGB officers as bodyguards. Having such a person in one’s employ was something to be proud of. Those who ran in Brother Teeth’s circles struggled to pronounce his Russian name,and simply called the newcomer ‘KGB’. Over time, they settled on Mr K.In reality, Mr K had no relation to the KGB. Most former KGB officers were cubicle-bound civil servants, and even those on the front lines of the secret conflict were untrained in the art of personal security. Instead, Mr K had worked in the Central Security Bureau of the Soviet Union, serving as bodyguard to Andrei Gromyko the then Minister of Foreign Affairs known in the West as ‘Mr Nyet’. He was every bit the genuine article, a true expert in keeping his clients breathing. Brother Teeth had hired him on a vice-chairman’s salary not out of a desire to boast, but out of real concern for his own safety.

From the moment of Mr K’s arrival, it was clear that he was utterly unlike other bodyguards. At the dinner table, other bodyguards would out eat and out-drink their wealthy employers, and felt perfectly comfortable interrupting their shop talk. When real danger reared its head, they would either charge in with all the art of a street thug or leave their client in the dust of their panicked retreat. In stark contrast, at banquets or negotiations,Mr K would stand quietly behind Brother Teeth, his hulking figure like an immovable wall, ready to intercept any potential threat. While Mr K never had the opportunity to protect his client in a crisis situation, his professionalism and dedication left no doubt that should such a situation arise, he would fulfill his duties with consummate expertise. Smoothbore was more professional than the other bodyguards and did not share their obvious failings, but he was fully aware of the world of difference between himself and Mr K. For example, it was a long time before he realized that Mr K wore sunglasses at all hours of the day not to look cool,but to conceal his gaze.

Although Mr K picked up Chinese quickly, he kept aloof from the people in his employer’s inner circles. He maintained this distance carefully, until one day he asked Smoothbore to step into his Spartan room. After he poured two glasses of vodka, he told Smoothbore in stilted Chinese, ‘I, want to teach you to speak.’

‘To speak?’

‘A foreign language.’

So Smoothbore began to learn a foreign language from Mr K. He did not realize he was being taught English and not Russian until a few days later. Smoothbore was a quick learner, and when they could communicate in both English and Chinese, Mr K told him, ‘You are not like the others.’

‘I know.’ nodded Smoothbore.

‘In my thirty years of experience, I have learned to accurately distinguish those people with potential from the rest. You are one such rare talent, and the first time I saw you it chilled me. It’s easy to act in cold blood, but it’s difficult to stay cold-blooded without ever thawing.You could become one of the best in this business, if you don’t bury your talents.’

‘What can I do?’

‘First, study abroad.’

Brother Teeth agreed readily to Mr K’s suggestion and promised to cover Smoothbore’s expenses in full. He had hoped to rid himself of Smoothbore ever since Mr K’s arrival, but there were no open positions in the company.

And so, one wintry night, this boy who had been orphaned at a young age and raised in the underbelly of society boarded a passenger jet bound for a strange and distant land.

*

Driving a rundown Santana, Smoothbore made his way across the city to inspect each of the locations written on the photographs. His first stop was Blossom Plaza. It did not take him long to find the man in the photo. He was rummaging through a garbage can when Smoothbore arrived, and after a few minutes, he hauled his bulging trash bag to a nearby bench. His search had born fruit in the form of a large, almost untouched takeout box; a pork sausage missing only a bite; several perfectly good slices of bread; and half a bottle of cola. Smoothbore had expected him to eat with his hands, but he watched with surprise as the tramp pulled out a small aluminum spoon from the pocket of the dirty overcoat he wore even in summer. He finished his dinner slowly and then threw what remained back into the garbage can. Looking around the plaza, Smoothbore saw the lights of the city begin to flicker on in all directions. He was very familiar with this area, but something felt off.In a flash, it occurred to him why the man had been able to leisurely eat his fill. The plaza was a common gathering place for the city’s homeless population, but at the moment, no one could be seen but his mark. Where had they gone? Had they all been processed?

Smoothbore drove on to the address on the second photograph.Under an overpass on the outskirts of the city, faint yellow light spilled out from a shack cobbled together from corrugated cardboard.Smoothbore cautiously pushed the busted door of the shack open just a crack. As he poked his head in, he suddenly found himself in a fantastical world of color. The walls of the shack were hung with oil paintings of all sizes, creating a separate wall of art. Smoothbore’s eyes traced a wisp of smoke back to the itinerant artist, who lay splayed out beneath a broken easel like a bear in hibernation. His hair was long, and his paint-splattered T-shirt was so baggy it looked like a robe. He was smoking a cheap pack of jade butterfly cigarettes. His eyes roved over his artwork, and his gaze was filled with wonder and loss, as if he was seeing it for the first time. Smoothbore guessed most of his time was spent fawning over his own works. This particular breed of starving artist had been common in the nineties of the previous century, but nowadays they were few and far between.

‘It’s all right, come in.’ said the artist, his eyes never leaving his paintings to look at the door. His tone indicated this was an imperial palace. As soon as Smoothbore stepped inside, he asked, ‘Do you like my paintings?’

Smoothbore glanced around and saw that most of the paintings were just chaotic splotches of color – paint splashed directly onto a canvas would have seemed rational by comparison. But there were a few pictures in a very realistic style, and Smoothbore’s eyes were quickly drawn to one of these: a canvas dominated by a cracked yellow earth. A few dead plants protruded from the fissures in the ground, looking as if they had withered away centuries ago, if indeed water had ever existed in this world at all. A skull lay on the parched earth. Though it was bleach-white and permeated with cracks, two green, living plants sprouted from its mouth and one eye socket. In sharp contrast with the drought and death surrounding them,these plants were green and luxuriant, and a tiny, delicate flower crowned the tip of one sprout. The skull’s other eye-socket contained a human eyeball. Its limpid pupil stared at the sky, and its gaze was filled with the same wonder and loss as its painter.

‘I like this one.’ Smoothbore said, pointing to the painting.

‘It’s called Barren No. 2. Will you buy it?’

‘How much?’

‘How much you got?’

Smoothbore pulled out his wallet and removed all the hundred yuan notes it contained. He handed them to the artist, but the latter only took two bills.

‘It’s only worth this much. It’s yours now.’

Smoothbore started the car and picked up the third photograph to study the last address. He cut the ignition a mere moment later, as his destination lay right alongside the overpass: the city’s largest landfill. He took out his binoculars and peered through the windshield, searching for his mark amongst the scavengers clambering over the rubbish dump.

300,000 junkmen made a living off the garbage of the metropolis,forming their own class, complete with its own distinct castes. The highest ranking junkmen could enter the city’s ritzy villa districts. There, it was possible to pick a daily haul of shirts, socks, and bed sheets, used only once, from the delicately sculpted waste bins – in these neighborhoods,these were considered single-use goods. All kinds of things found their way into the garbage: lightly scuffed premium leather shoes and belts,half-smoked Havana cigars, expensive chocolate nibbled only at the corners… But picking garbage there necessitated hefty bribes to the residential security guards that only a few could afford, and those who could afford it became aristocrats among scavengers.

The middle ranks of junkmen gathered around the city’s many waste transfer stations, the first collection stops for municipal waste. There,the most valuable refuse – waste electronics, scrap metal, intact paper products, discarded medical devices and expired pharmaceuticals – was quickly snapped up. These sites were not open to just anyone, however.Each station was the domain of a junk boss. Any scavenger who entered without their permission was harshly punished: perpetrators of minor offenses were violently beaten and driven off, while serious offenders could lose their lives.

Little of value remained in the waste that passed through the transfer stations to the rubbish dumps and landfills on the outskirts of the city,and yet it was this waste that supported the largest number of people.These were the lowliest of junkmen, the kind of people right in front of Smoothbore. Worthless, unrecyclable broken plastic and shredded paper was all that was left for the scavengers on the bottom rungs of junkman society. There were also scraps of rotten food, which could be gleaned from the rubbish and sold as pig feed to neighboring farms at ten yuan to the kilo. In the distance, the metropolis shone like a great brilliant jewel,its radiance cast a flickering halo over the fetid mountain of garbage. The junkmen experienced the luxury of the nearby city by sifting through its trash. Mingled in the rotten food, it was often possible to make out a roast suckling pig with only the legs eaten away, a barely touched grouper,whole chickens… Recently, it had become common to find whole Silkie hens, owing to the popularity of a new dish called White Jade Chicken.The dish was prepared by slitting open the stomach of the chicken,filling it with tofu, and letting it simmer. The slices of tofu were the real delicacy; the chicken, while delicious, was merely casing. Like the reed leaves around rice dumplings, any diner foolish enough to eat the chicken itself would become the laughingstock of more discerning patrons…

The last garbage truck of the day pulled into the lot. As it tipped its load on the ground, a group of junkmen scrambled to meet the avalanche of waste, quickly vanishing into the rising dust and debris. It was like they had passed into a new phase of evolution, unaffected by the stench of the garbage heap, the germs and the toxic filth. Of course, this was an illusion, maintained by people who only saw how they lived and not how they died. Like the corpses of insects and rats, the bodies of junkmen littered the landfill. They passed away quietly here, soon buried by new trash.

In the dim light emanating from the flood lamps at the edge of the lot, the junkmen appeared as dusty, indistinct shadows, but Smoothbore still swiftly located his mark among them. The speed with which he spotted her was due in part to his own keen vision, but there was also another reason: like the vagrants in Blossom Plaza, there were significantly fewer junkmen on the landfill today. What was going on?Smoothbore observed his mark through his binoculars. At first glance,she seemed no different than any other scavenger. There was a rope tied around her waist, and she carried a large woven bag and a long-handled rake. She was perhaps a bit skinnier than the others. Unable to squeeze through the throng of junkmen, she could only scrounge along the periphery, sifting through the trash of trash.

Smoothbore lowered the binoculars and thought for a moment,shaking his head slightly. Something truly fantastical was unfolding before him: a homeless man, an itinerant starving artist, and a girl who lived off garbage – three of the poorest, weakest people in the world – somehow posed a threat to the world’s wealthiest and most powerful plutocrats. The threat was so great, in fact, that they felt compelled to hire a hitman to deal with the problem.

Barren Land #2 lay on the back seat. In the dark, the skull’s single eye bored into Smoothbore, like a thorn in his flesh.

There was a chorus of panicked cries from the landfill, and Smoothbore saw that the world outside his car was bathed in a blue light.The glow emanated from the east, where a blue sun was rapidly rising over the horizon. It was the Elder Brothers’ spaceship, arriving in the southern hemisphere. The spaceship did not typically emit light; at night,the sunlight reflecting off its sides made it shine like a small moon. But every so often, it would suddenly illuminate the world in a bluish glow,thrusting humanity into nameless terror. This time, the spaceship’s glow was brighter than ever before, perhaps because it was in a lower orbit than usual. The blue moon rose above the city, stretching the shadows of skyscrapers all the way to the landfill like the grasping arms of giants. As the spaceship continued its ascent, the shadows gradually shrank away.

The scavenger girl on the landfill was illuminated by the glow of the Elder Brothers’ spaceship. Smoothbore raised his binoculars again and confirmed his earlier observations. She indeed was his mark. She knelt with her bag in her lap, the slightest trace of alarm in her upturned gaze,but she mostly projected the same sort of serenity Smoothbore had seen in the photograph. Smoothbore’s heart stirred again, but it was as fleeting as before. He knew it was a ripple of emotion from somewhere deep within his soul, and he regretted having lost it again.

The spaceship streaked across the sky and sank below the western horizon, leaving an eerie blue afterglow in the heavens. The landfill settled back into darkness, and the lights of the city sparkled once more.Smoothbore’s thoughts returned to the puzzle at hand: the thirteen wealthiest people on Earth desired to kill the three poorest people. It was beyond absurd, and any possible explanation escaped his imagination.But his mind had not strayed far before he slammed the brakes on his thoughts. He slapped the steering wheel in self-reproach as he suddenly realized he had violated the cardinal rule of his own profession. His tutor’s words unfurled in his mind, laying out their profession’s maxim: the gun does not care at whom it is aimed.

*

To this day, Smoothbore did not even know in which country he had studied abroad, much less the exact position of the academy. He knew only that first leg of the trip was to Moscow. Upon arrival, he was met by several men who spoke English without a trace of a Russian accent. He was made to put on opaque sunglasses, and disguised as a blind person, he passed the remainder of the journey in darkness. After another three-hour flight and a day’s drive, he arrived at the academy, and Smoothbore could not say for certain that he was still in Russia at that point.

The academy was located deep in the mountains and ringed by high walls. Under no circumstances were students permitted to leave before graduation. After he was permitted to remove the sunglasses, Smoothbore discovered the buildings of the academy were divided into two distinct styles: the first type of building was gray and devoid of any distinguishing features, and the second type was very peculiar in both shape and form.He later found out buildings belonging to the latter style were actually assembled from giant building blocks, and could be reconfigured at will to simulate a myriad of combat environments. The entire institute was essentially one big state-of-the-art target range.

The convocation ceremony was the first and only time the student body would gather together, and their number just exceeded four hundred.The silver-haired principal, who had the commanding manner of a classical scholar, gave the following address:

‘Students, over the next four years, you will learn the theoretical knowledge and the practical skills required by our line of work – a line of work whose name we shall never speak aloud. It is one of humanity’s most ancient professions, and it is a profession assured of a bright future.On the small scale, our work, and only our work, can resolve difficult problems for desperate clients; but on the large scale, our work can change history.

‘In the past, different government organizations have offered us great sums of money to train guerilla fighters. We refused them all,because we only train independent professionals. Yes, independent, from everything but money. After today, you must think of yourself as a gun.Your duty is to perform the function of a gun, and to demonstrate its beauty in the process. A gun does not care at whom it is aimed. A raises his gun and shoots B, B wrests the gun away and shoots A – the gun makes no distinction between the two, and completes both assignments with the same level of excellence. This is the most basic principle of our profession.’

During the ceremony, Smoothbore also learned a few of the most common terms in his new profession: their fundamental business was called ‘processing’, their targets were ‘units’ or ‘work’, and death was‘cooling’.

The academy was divided into L, M and S disciplines, or long,mid, and short-range. L discipline was the most mysterious and most expensive course of study. The few students who elected this specialty kept to themselves and rarely mixed with M and S students. Likewise,Smoothbore’s instructors advised them to keep their distance from L students: ‘They are the nobility of this profession, as they are the most likely to change the course of history.’

The knowledge taught to L students was broad and profound, and the sniper rifles reserved for their use cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were nearly two meters long when fully assembled. L specialists processed work at an average distance of one thousand meters, although it was said that some could hit their marks from three thousand meters away.Processing at distances over fifteen hundred meters was a complicated operation, and part of the preparatory work included placing a series of‘wind chimes’ at set distances along the firing range. The ingeniously crafted micro-anemometers could wirelessly transmit data to goggles worn by the shooter, sharpening his (or her) understanding of wind speed and direction along the entire range of the shot.

M specialists processed work at a distance of ten to three hundred meters. It was the most traditional discipline, and it boasted the largest number of students, who generally used standard-issue rifles. While there was rarely a shortage of work for M specialists, this discipline was considered pedestrian and rather lacking in mystique.

Smoothbore belonged to S discipline, learning to process work at a range of less than ten meters. This discipline lacked stringent weapons requirements, and S specialists typically used pistols or even blades and other melee weapons. Of the three specialties, S discipline was undoubtedly the most dangerous, but it was also the most romantic.

The principal was a master of this discipline, and he personally instructed S courses. But to everyone’s surprise, the first course he taught was English literature.

‘You must first understand the value of S discipline,’ the principal said gravely, gazing at the baffled students before him. ‘In the L and M disciplines, the unit and the processor never meet, and the unit is processed and cooled without ever realizing its plight. A blessing for the unit, perhaps, but not necessarily for the client. Some clients need their targets to know who has marked them for processing and why, and it falls to us to inform them. In that moment, we are not ourselves, but an incarnation of the client. We must solemnly and perfectly communicate his or her final message to the unit, and thus inflict the maximum psychic shock and torment possible prior to cooling. This is the romance and beauty of S discipline – the look of terror and despair in the unit’s eyes just before cooling. We can find no greater pleasure than this in our work, but to this end, we must cultivate our verbal dexterity and literary acumen.’

So for one year, Smoothbore studied literature. He read Homer’s epics, memorized Shakespeare, and studied works by many other classical and contemporary authors. Smoothbore felt this was the most rewarding year of his overseas education. He was more or less familiar with the subjects that followed, and if he did not master them at the institute,he could learn them elsewhere. But this was his only chance to deeply engage with literature. Through literature, he rediscovered humanity, and he marveled at the subtleties of human nature.

His next course of study was human anatomy. Compared to the other two disciplines, S discipline’s other major advantage was that it was possible to control the time needed to cool units during processing. The technical terms were ‘fast cooling’ and ‘delayed cooling’. Many clients requested delayed cooling and a recording of the entire process – a treasured keepsake they could appreciate ever after.Of course, this required precise technical skills and extensive experience,and knowledge of human anatomy was indispensable.

Then, his real courses began.

*

The junkmen on the landfill gradually dispersed, until only his mark and a few others remained. Smoothbore decided then and there to process this unit by the end of the night. It went against standard practice to act during the initial observation period, but there were exceptions, should a suitable opportunity for processing present itself.

Smoothbore maneuvered his car out from under the overpass and jolted along the pot-holed road next to the landfill. He observed that any junkman leaving the landfill had to pass this way. The darkness revealed only the shadows of the wild grass swaying in the night breeze. It was an excellent location for processing, and he decided to wait here for the unit.

Smoothbore drew out his gun and placed it gently on the dashboard.It was an inelegant, 7.6mm revolver that was chambered for large Black Star cartridges. He called it Snubnose because of its shape. He had purchased the privately-fabricated, untraceable gun for three thousand yuan on the black market. Although it looked crude, it was made well,and each component part had been machined with precision. Its biggest flaw was that the manufacturer had not bothered with rifling: the barrel walls were smooth metal. It was not as if Smoothbore was unable to procure better, name-brand firearms. Brother Teeth had equipped him with a 32-round Uzi when he had started his bodyguard career and had later gifted him a Type 77 as a birthday present. But Smoothbore had stuffed both guns in the bottom of his trunk, and never carried them on his person. He simply preferred Snubnose. Now, it glinted icily in the halo of the metropolis, drawing Smoothbore’s thoughts back to his years at the academy.

On the first day of their real training, the principal made each student present his or her weapon. As he placed Snubnose in that line of finely-crafted pistols, he had felt deeply embarrassed. The principal,however, picked up Snubnose, hefted it in his hand, and said with sincere admiration: ‘This is a fine gun.’

‘It doesn’t have rifling, and you can’t even attach a silencer.’ sneered another student.

‘Precision and range are of little importance to S specialists, and rifling even less so. And silencers? A small pillow will do the trick. Boy,do not allow yourself to be limited by stale convention. In the hands of a master, this gun can yield artistry that all your expensive toys cannot.’

‘From now on, we will call you Smoothbore!’ said the headmaster,handing the gun back to him. ‘Hold on to this, boy. It looks like you will have to study knife-throwing.’

Smoothbore immediately grasped the principal’s meaning: an expert knife thrower held his knife by the blade as he threw it in order to build momentum through rotation, but this required that the knife arrive point-first as it reached its target. The principal hoped Smoothbore would learn to wield Snubnose as a knife thrower mastered his blades! Such artistry would give Smoothbore unprecedented control over the wounds Snubnose’s tumbling bullets inflicted. After two years of bitter practice and nearly thirty thousand bullets, Smoothbore acquired a level of skill that was beyond even the academy’s best firearms instructors.

During his studies abroad, Smoothbore became completely inseparable from snubnose. In his fourth year, he became familiar with another student in his own discipline who went by the name of Fire,perhaps because of her mane of red hair. It was impossible to know her nationality, but Smoothbore guessed she came from Western Europe.There were few female students at the academy, and almost all of them were natural sharpshooters. Fire, however, had terrible aim, and her dagger skills were downright embarrassing. Smoothbore had no idea how she made a living before the academy. But in their first garroting class,she plucked a filament so fine as to be nearly invisible from the delicate ring on her finger. With a deftness that spoke of practice,she wrapped the razor wire around the neck of the goat being used as a teaching aid. Fire had called it a nanowire, a super-strong material that might be used to build space elevators in the future.

Flame felt no real affection for Smoothbore – that sort of thing was impossible at the academy. She also hung around Frost Wolf, a Nordic student from another discipline. She hopped back and forth between them like a fighting cricket, trying to instigate a bit of bloodshed to disrupt the monotony of student life. She soon succeeded, and the two men agreed to settle their feud with a game of Russian roulette. In the dead of night, their classmates reconfigured the enormous building blocks of the shooting range into the shape of the Coliseum. The duel was to commence in the center of the arena, and the weapon of choice was Snubnose.

Fire presided over the entire scene. With a graceful flourish, she inserted a single cartridge into Snubnose’s empty cylinder. Then, holding the barrel, she rolled the cylinder across her pale, slender forearm a dozen times. After the two men politely declined their chance to go first, she smiled and handed the gun to Smoothbore. Smoothbore slowly raised the gun to his head. As the cool muzzle touched his temple, a wave of emptiness and isolation, stronger than anything he had ever felt, washed over him. He felt a formless, frigid wind sweep through the world, until his heart was the last speck of heat in a pitch-dark universe. He steeled his heart and pulled the trigger five times. The hammer fell five times. The cylinder turned five times. The gun did not fire.

Smoothbore graduated not long after. Wearing the same dark glasses he wore when he arrived, he departed the nameless academy and returned to the place he grew up. He never heard another word about the academy,and it was as if it had never really existed at all.