Shi Qiang activated a window on the coffee table and began looking for a medical consult. With Luo Ji’s help, they found one, a white-clothed consulting physician who examined the box, then looked from the box to Shi Qiang with a peculiar expression.

“Where did this come from?” the doctor asked warily.

“I bought it. Right here.”

“Impossible. This is a prescription drug. It’s only for use in the hibernation center.”

“What’s it got to do with hibernation?”

“It’s short-term hibernation medicine. It can make someone hibernate for ten days to a year.”

“You just swallow it?”

“No. It requires a whole set of external systems to sustain internal bodily circulatory functions before short-term hibernation can be achieved.”

“And if you take it without them?”

“Then you’d die for sure. But you’d die comfortably. So it’s often used for suicide.”

Shi Qiang closed the window and tossed the box onto the table. He looked straight at Luo Ji for a while, then said, “Damn it.”

“Damn it,” Luo Ji said, pitching back onto the sofa. Then he was subjected to the final attempt on his life that day.

When his head touched back against the sofa, the hard headrest quickly adapted to the back of his head and began to form an impression of its shape. But the process didn’t stop there. His head and neck continued to sink, until the headrest on either side formed a pair of tentacles that squeezed tight around his neck. He had no time to cry out, but could only open his mouth and eyes and scramble with his hands.

Shi Qiang bounded into the kitchen and returned with a knife, which he used to hack at the tentacles a few times, then resorted to his own hands to pry them from Luo Ji’s neck. When Luo Ji left the sofa and pitched forward onto the floor, the sofa’s surface lit up and displayed a large string of error messages.

“How many times have I saved your life today, my boy?” Shi Qiang asked, rubbing his hands.

“This is … the … sixth,” Luo Ji said, through gasps. He vomited onto the floor. When he finished, he leaned back weakly against the sofa, but then pulled back immediately, as if shocked. He didn’t know where to put his hands. “How long will it be before I can be as agile as you and save my own life?”

“Probably never,” Shi Qiang said. A vacuum cleaner–like machine glided over to clean up the vomit on the floor.

“Then I’m dead meat. This is a twisted world.”

“It’s not that bad. I’ve got an idea about the whole situation, at least. The first attempt on your life failed, and then there were five more attempts. This is stupidity, not professional behavior. Something somewhere must have gone wrong.… Let’s contact the police immediately. We can’t wait for them to crack the case.”

“Who made a mistake, and where? Da Shi, it’s been two centuries. Don’t just apply your mind-set from our time.”