Invitation to the World

Lu Shen discovered something. One plus one equals two point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one. There is an extra one in the ninth decimal place. It wasn't that he calculated wrong, it wasn't that the calculator was broken, it was the mathematics itself that had a crack. He changed three devices and wrote the vertical version five times, but the result was the same. At two o'clock in the morning, he was the only one left in the graduate student studio of the Department of Mathematics. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead. The city of Jinling outside the window was submerged in the thick December fog. He called his father: "Dad, what is one plus one?" Father said: "It's equal to two. Did you stay up too late?" People all over the world say it is equal to two. Only he saw that extra one. Then, he smiled in the mirror. And he didn't laugh. There were four missing person notices posted on the stairwell, each in the same location. The paper has the same degree of yellowing and the corners are curled in the same arc, as if it had been copied. There is a line of extremely small words at the bottom. The strokes are thin and the color is dim, almost blending into the paper: "Don't trust the moon." Don't trust the moon. He had a dream. In the dream, he stood in a gray space, with no sky, no ground, no distance, no up and down. A geometric structure of luminous lines rotates, evolves, and grows on itself in the distance. It had no eyes, but Lu Shen knew it was looking at him. It had no mouth, but Lu Shen knew it was talking: "You see the cracks in the rules." "Please come to your appointment within seven days." A text message was sent to his phone with a blank sender. He tried to delete it but couldn't.