The car stopped. “Get out,” the child’s father said coldly, as mother and child watched him with expressions as chilly as the autumn rain outside.

Luo Ji didn’t move. He wanted to listen to the song.

“Please get out,” the man said, and Luo Ji could read the words in their eyes: Not being able to save the world isn’t your fault, but giving the world hope only to shatter it again is an unforgiveable sin.

So he had to get out of the car. His travel bag was tossed out after him. As the car drove off, he ran after it for a few steps in the hopes of being able to listen to a little more of “Tonkaya Ryabina,” but the song disappeared into the cold, rainy night.

By now he was at the edge of the old city. The old high-rises of the past were visible in the distance, standing black in the rainy night, each building’s few scattered lights looking like lonely eyes. He came across a bus stop and sat shielded from the rain for nearly an hour before a driverless public bus finally arrived that was headed in the direction he wanted to go. It was mostly empty, and the six or seven people who were seated there looked like hibernators from the old city. No one on the bus spoke, just sat silently in the gloom of this autumn night. The journey passed smoothly until a little over an hour later, when someone else recognized him, and then everyone on the bus unanimously asked him to leave. He argued that he had paid the credits to buy a ticket, so surely he had the right to a seat, but a gray-haired old man took out two cash coins—rarely seen these days—and tossed them at him. So in the end he was forced off the bus.

As the bus started up, someone stuck their head out the window to ask, “Wallfacer, what are you doing with that shovel?”

“I’m digging my own grave,” Luo Ji said, to a burst of laughter from the bus.

No one knew that he was telling the truth.