By 2077, humanity was used to waking up to bad news.
But that morning, the bad news was that a rift had opened in the sky.
Lin Wan woke to the sound of the breakfast stall downstairs frying food. She rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. The pillowcase hadn't been changed in three days, and it smelled faintly of greasy hair. Her phone vibrated on the bedside table seventeen times. She ignored it, reaching for it only on the eighteenth vibration. It was the landlord. She declined the call and went back to sleep.
When she opened her eyes again, the light was wrong.
Lin Wan squinted toward the window. She lived on the top floor of a seven-story, self-built apartment block in an urban village. Her window faced the clotheslines on the neighboring building. At this time of day, sunlight was usually filtered through rows of underwear and bedsheets opposite, turning a dingy, yellowish beige. But today, the light coming in was purple.
She took about three seconds to decide it had nothing to do with her, rolled over, and closed her eyes again. Five seconds later, the whole building began to shake. The alarms of the electric scooters downstairs blared one after another, like a bunch of cats with their tails stepped on.
Lin Wan got up and walked barefoot to the window.
There was a hole hanging in the sky. She said "hanging" because it really looked as if someone had suspended it from the sky screen with a hook. Its edges were irregular, ringed in white, purple, and black, like spilled paint slowly bleeding across rice paper. At its center was pure black, so black that you felt you would be sucked in if you stared for two seconds too long.
Then a claw reached out of the hole.
Lin Wan's mouth fell slightly open. She never mentioned this to anyone afterward, but at the time she really did let out a faint "Ah." The claw was as big as her entire apartment building.
