Year stood on the empty street, wondering where they had all gone. They used to stay inside strong houses with doors and windows tightly locked, but now all doors were wide open. Year was somewhat annoyed. It came all the way from its cave high on the mountain to this town, but no one was here. Did it come too late? Year could taste spring in the air. There used to be so many of them, shouting and jumping, making annoying sounds. Now, none of them had showed up. It was so quiet. Too quiet.

Year did enjoy serenity, but traps were hateful, and silence could indicate a trap. Many years ago, they used silence as a lure, seducing Year to the town center and burning bamboo to make deafening noises. They wore red, waved red cloth, and decorated their houses with red paper. Those cunning ones, they figured out what Year was afraid of. It could not stand noise or redness, so it ran back home. Fragments of bamboo had cut its skin. Flames and all the shades of red had injured its eyes. It was not able to leave home the next year, or the year after that, or the year following those. In the end, Year spent more years recovering than it could imagine. Finally, it fell asleep. It dreamed of a tranquil green valley with brooks and flowers, where Year and them living together in harmony.

Dream ended. Year woke up. Its stomach growled. Hunger and temper always arrived together. Year jumped off the mountain, marched down the street, bounded into houses, and roared to demonstrate its fearsome nature, but Year met no one at all. It observed many new, strange sights: irregular iron boxes with wheels, consecutively-shining red and green lights, and walls of large thin reflective panels. This was not the town that it was familiar with. Not like any town Year had been to. How many years had it slept?

 “Hey, has Year arrived?” Coming around one corner was a small figure.

A human boy! Year rushed to him and swiftly knocked him to the ground, Year’s two front paws holding his shoulders, sharp teeth at his neck.

 “Wait, wait!” the boy shouted.

Year ignored him and flexed its toes. Now its saliva almost dripped onto the boy’s face. Year was hungry. It needed food.

 “I summoned you here. It would be ungrateful of you to eat me,” the boy said.

 “What do you mean by ‘summoned’?” Year’s paws loosened a little bit.

 “Well, you had disappeared for years and people had forgotten about you. I read about you and tried to call you back. Without me, you wouldn’t be here.”

Year released the boy. “So, you are not afraid of me.”

 “Of course not.”

Year sighed. No food here.

 “Don’t be disheartened. It’s not only you. I’m not afraid of anything. Come with me and I’ll tell you more.” The boy stood up and scampered forward.

Year followed. The boy’s back reflected sunshine as the panels it just saw. What a world!

The boy led Year into a narrow alley. This made Year very nervous. Long ago, Year was led into a trap like this. It would not be cheated for a second time, Year decided, so it stopped. Neither did Year feel escape was necessary, however. Year was a monster. It had remembered to sharpen its horn and teeth this morning. Year need not fear.

Year sat down where it was and waited and observed its surroundings. The buildings on both sides were tall, almost stabbing into the sky. Year did not think it would be able to leap onto the roof of such structures. It used to do so in the past when the buildings were much shorter. Height would give it a better view and allow it to foresee traps. Year considered and prepared itself.

When the boy returned, Year was trying to climb up the glass exterior of a building, then falling down again. 

 “What’re you doing? Why didn’t you follow me?” the boy asked.

 “Ah, it is you.” Year turned over and stood up. “I am… hmm… doing some exercise. You know, having slept for so long, I need exercise.”

 “But that wall is made of glass and it’s slippery. You can’t climb on that. Oh! I know, you are doing parkour. Cool sport, lost for a long time.”

 “Yes. Ah, sure. I used to like it but have been out of practice for long.” Year didn’t know what parkour was, but let it be.

 “There’s a better place for parkour, if you like, in the west district of the city. Here in the east, streets are either too wide or too narrow, and there are only skyscrapers. It’s not a good place for parkour. Would you like to go west?”

 “Ah, west. Why not? Oh, wait, I would rather see the south first.” What is the city? Probably the new name of the town. Year decided not to ask, but if the boy wanted to lead him west, there might be a trap in the west, so it chose south.

 “Okay, sure,” the boy shrugged. “I actually planned the south for the evening, but we can go there now.”

Year wanted to slap itself. It hoped that the trap in the south was not ready until the evening if there was one.

 “So, what is your name?” Year tried to make conversation on the way, for more information.

 “Just call me Ren, second tone, which means benevolence in Chinese. It also has the same pronunciation as the character that means human. My siblings are all named after Chinese characters and I am the eldest one.”

 “Where are your siblings?” That’s exactly the question Year wanted to ask.

 “My siblings?”

 “Yes, your siblings and the others. I see only one of you, which is unusual. There used to be many.”

 “Oh, I didn’t know that you had met some of us. It’s only me now. The others are all gone.”

 “Gone? To where?”

 “Gone. Disappeared. Not existing anymore. Like tears in the rain.”

 “I am sorry. I did not know.”

 “No worries. I’m not sad. I can’t feel sadness, or any other emotion.”

Year felt relieved. It believed that Ren was not lying. They were all gone, so it didn’t need to worry about traps. Soon, however, it began to worry about food. If they were all gone, what could it feed on? Ren, the only one left, was not afraid of Year at all. Year’s stomach growled again.

“Here we are.”

In front of them was a clear open space. No buildings, no trees, no human beings of course. Nothing.

 “This is it?”

 “Yeah.”

 “But there is nothing.”

 “Yeah.”

 “Then why do you take me here?”

 “Err, actually, you said you’d like to come to the south.”

 “Fine. Then?”

 “Well, we can wait here until the evening, when there will be something. Or, maybe I can show you… I meant to take you to the west district museum and talk with you first… but now… Okay, we don’t need to visit the museum, but you have to promise.”

 “Promise what?”

 “You won’t eat them.”

 “Eat whom?”

 “Humans.”

 “There are still humans? You said that they were all gone! Wait, are you not one of them?”

 “Of course not. I’m artificial intelligence.”

 “What is that?”

 “A sapient species created by humans, like their children, but not really their children. Humans are carbon-based, while I’m silica-based.”

 “Ah.”

 “So you can’t eat me anyway.”

 “I do not want to eat you anyway.”

 “I can find some nutrition packages for you. Sorry, no living animals. There used to be some on farms, but after I figured out that synthesizing proteins was much more efficient and humans didn’t care about the flavors any more, I closed all of the farms down. I’ll try my best to accommodate you, but still, I need your promise. Promise me you won’t eat humans. There are so few of them.”

 “I never eat humans.”

 “What? All the folktales say…”

 “All lies. Let me guess, those folktales were passed on from mouth to mouth, generation to generation. Not a single one is registered in any authorized classic?”

 “Let me check the database. You’re right. The story of the Year…”

 “I am not THE Year. I am Year. You do not add THE in front of anyone else’s name, do you?”

 “Okay, the story of Year was widespread, but it couldn’t be found in any ancient books or records. Not in Classic of Mountains and Seas. Not in In Search of the Supernatural. Neither in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio or What the Master Would Not Discuss. That’s strange. I read so much about you, here and there, in all ethnic Chinese traditional folktales. If you weren’t real, who am I talking to?”

 “I am real, but the story of Year is not. It is a rumor. I am a vegetarian. Somewhat.”

 “How did the rumor come about?”

 “That is a long story. Simply speaking, some villagers happened to see me over a bleeding body. Well, she was still alive, so not yet a body. They thought that I had injured her and was going to eat her. They were frightened, ran back to the village, told other people, and the others told more.”

 “You’re really a kind-hearted monster? Oh, sorry for using the word monster. But were you trying to save the dying woman and then people misunderstood?”

 “No, no, no. I was not trying to save her. I just found her and she was dying at the time. A tiger had likely attacked her. Once upon a time, there were many tigers on the mountain. I am a monster, and I am not kind-hearted.”

 “But you’re vegetarian, you said.”

 “I do not eat meat. Actually, I do not eat any… substance. I feed on horror, so it helps when people think I eat humans. They are afraid of me, and then I have food. So, I let the rumor spread.”

 “I see. That’s why you let me go when you learned that I’m not afraid of you.”

 “True. It is meaningless if you are happy rather than frightened at seeing me.”

 “I don’t feel happy or frightened, but now that I know you won’t eat them, I’ll take you to see them. Come on.”

Year followed Ren to a secret trapdoor and walked underground.

 “There was a time when they all lived above the ground,” Ren said.

 “Yes, the last time I was here, they were all living on the surface of the earth. Even if they were frightened of me, none of them hid underground,” Year said.

 “Then they found a way to chase you away.”

 “That is not a cheerful memory.”

 “But you didn’t come back after firecrackers, or Baozhu, what they call the burning bamboo in Chinese, were banned.”

 “I was not aware of that. They do not burn bamboo now?”

 “Not for a long time. They invented firecrackers, and then banned their own invention later.”

 “Why? They were confident that I would never come back?”

 “No, because of climate change. I don’t think humans believed in your existence any longer, by the time global warming had turned into a real threat.”

 “What is climate change? What is global warming?”

 “It became hotter and hotter everywhere, glacier melting, sea level rising. More and more disasters happened all over the planet.”

 “How? It is such a large planet. I know the planet is round, but I have never even traveled to the other side.”

 “Ask humans. They were good at destroying their environment.”

 “So, they escaped underground after making a mess?”

 “Not really. This city had a self-adjusted climate system, which made it survive the Grand Disaster. The humans were also good at science and technologies. But they got too indulged in another of their own invention. I moved them underground and opened the dome after the Grand Disaster.”

 “Now they are all here?”

 “As far as I know, no others could have escaped the Grand Disaster. It was terrible.”

 “Well, at least I survived in my cave.”

 “You’re not so fragile as them. You’re Year.”

 “Well, how many of them remain?”

 “You’ll see.”

They were at the end of the tunnel, and Ren pushed the door open. In the room, there lay hundreds of thousands of coffins. It was the only word that Year could relate to about their circumstance. It had seen coffins before. When an individual died, humans put the body in a wooden box shaped like this, and then buried it into the earth. The coffins here were transparent, and they were not buried with dirt, but the entire room was underground anyway. The coffins were connected by strings, and buzzing filled the room. Year approached a coffin and saw one human being lying there. Her eyes were closed but she wore a smile on her face. The next coffin was the same. The next one on the other side, and the next to the next, were all the same. Year felt a thrill.

 “What happened to them?” Year asked.

 “Nothing. They’ve been like this for a long time,” Ren said.

 “They seem to be dead, though in happiness.”

 “Dead? No, no, no. They’re alive and enjoying their life.”

 “Are they asleep? They now sleep in coffins?”

 “Well, yes and no. Their bodies are asleep, but their brains are functioning. Every moment we spend here is like a year for them. There’s no time in OtherLand. It’s like eternity.”

 “So, they are dreaming.”

 “Kind of. Only these dreams are real life for them.”

 “Will they wake up?”

 “Not without any reason. See, that’s why I summoned you here. You can help.”

 “Me?” Year was confused. “I thought you were trying to prevent me from knowing that they still exist.”

 “Oh, but that was before you promised me. I couldn’t take the risk, but now we know each other, I feel safe asking for your help. Only you can bring back the concept of a year to them.  They have lived here in the ‘coffins,’ a good metaphor, thank you, for way too long.”

 “But I do not understand…”

 “Listen. With the vivid details in OtherLand and the consistent temperature underground, human beings cannot figure out the differences between seasons, let alone years. New Year becomes an abstract concept instead of a moment leading to the future. Without any desire for the future, they do not want to wake up. Even if I forced them to wake up, they’d be completely lost in time. They are lost in OtherLand, so they’ve stopped growing up. They don’t die. They don’t reproduce, either. These people you see here are the last generation of human beings on the planet. They’re young and old at the same time. I tried to help them, but I couldn’t. During the Grand Disaster, all my siblings were gone, alongside billions of human beings. I tried my best to save lives, and I don’t want to lose them now.”

“You are really kind, but still I do not know how I can help. I am here. Year is here, but they are still asleep.”

 “I did some research, and I found that it’s all about belief.”

 “Belief?”

 “Yes, people used to believe in you, so you emerged and frightened them. When they believed that you wouldn’t come again or that you didn’t even exist, you fell asleep in your own dream until I believed in you again. That’s how I summoned you here.”

 “So, how do we make them believe in me again?”

 “Similar to conditioned response.”

 “What is that?”

 “They have to associate you with a hurdle to be jumped over, and they have to believe there’s a better future ahead. During the disaster, the future in reality was uncertain while the present in OtherLand was satisfying, so they’d rather stay inside. What we need to do is to make them believe that the future will get better and better, year by year. So, you can play the role of a scary monster, beaten by them and running away every year, only to come back the next year.”

 “That is the role I used to play and I was good at that,” Year tried to sound not too bitter.

 “So, will you help?”

 “Let me think.”

 “In that way, you’ll have food as well. People will be afraid of you.”

 “If I do not help, will you wake them up?”

 “I think I’ll still do that. They can’t stay like this forever. The species will be extinct.”

 “Well, count me in. For food.”

 “Great, thanks! I know you’re kind. Now, please let me offer you a drink to show my appreciation? There’s still some time before the new year, and before they wake up.”

 “I am the only Year, not a new year. And I am not kind.”

Year and Ren sat at the edge of the tallest building in town. To Year’s surprise, they did not need to climb up from the outside. Ren led him into the building, pressed a button, and a box came to take them all the way up. The two of them looked over the entire town. Year noticed that the town was larger than any town it had visited before. Structures extended past the end of the horizon, connecting with the sky. There were some lines cutting through the building complexes, clearly designed for vehicles, but no vehicle moved. Everything was still and quiet. It reminded Year of its cave, located on the top of the mountain. When it looked down, the scenery was similar to what it saw here and now. Only the mountain forest was not motionless. The trees would dance with the wind. The birds would sing towards the east. The mountain was alive and awake, but the town here was dead, or asleep.

 “Do you like it? It’s the largest city in the world.” Ren poured liquid into two glasses.

 “It is beautiful, but lifeless.” Year took one of the glasses but did not drink.

 “Sometimes, I can’t understand why humans would abandon such a beautiful world.”

 “Perhaps it is even more beautiful in OtherLand.”

Ren shook his head. “I was born there. It’s a colorful place, full of visions and virtual senses, strong sensations all the time. But it’s not real. It took me years to get a physical vessel and perception in this reality. I love it here. The gentle touch of the rain, the lily’s aroma, even the screech of braking cars. They are so vivid, so real. I can’t understand why humans prefer OtherLand to here.”

 “They experienced the Grand Disaster here. You mentioned that was disastrous.”

 “Yeah, but it’s long gone. They know that.”

 “Well, then give them time. It takes time to recover. They should be aware of the new life soon.”

 “Yes, they should be aware of your coming soon. I just started the shutting down process of OtherLand. They should be awake in an hour or two, after we finish our drinks.”

 “I shall do my best.”

 “Thank you.”

 “Do not say that. It makes me feel I am a good guy. Let us drink.”

 “Yes, let’s drink.”

 “Cheers!”

 “Cheers!”

Both of them emptied the glasses.

 “It’s about time,” Ren said with a mysterious smile.

 “Time for what?” Year felt a little dizzy.

 “The Lunar New Year.”

 “I am the only…”

Year didn’t finish its words. Giant flowers burst in the sky. The light hurt its eyes. The sound injured its ears. But it did not run. It stayed there, lay down, and enjoyed the display. It was so beautiful. The discomfort went away. Ren put dark lenses over its eyes and stuffed something into its ears to mute the noise. For the first time in its life, Year could enjoy the fireworks without pain. Flames rocketed from the south. Various patterns shimmered in the sky. The town was waking up. This was Ren’s plan for the evening. It was never meant to be a trap.

 “Thank you,” Year said. “Happy Lunar New Year.”

 “You’re welcome,” Ren answered, “and happy birthday, Year.”