AnNing

Lan had the perfect family.

When she was a child, strangers would hover their heads over her stroller and rave about how she had her dad’s beautifully carved double eyelids and her mom’s rosebud lips. Then they would then lift up their heads and tell her parents what a beautiful couple they were.

They were indeed beautiful, and quite extraordinary. Lan’s parents took their new-born baby home from the hospital as a cashier and a cook, both making minimum wage. They raced against time to provide Lan with the life she deserved. They won, as Lan only remembered her mom as a bread-winning marketing director and her dad as her stay-at-home personal chef.

Lan’s family lived in a spacious apartment in the center of AnNing. AnNing meant “peaceful and quiet” in Chinese. No better name could be given to this coastal city sitting in the southeast corner of China. The weather in AnNing stayed warm throughout the year as the cicadas sang and the breeze whispered. Lan’s parents took her to every corner of the city. They waved cargo ships goodbye at the port; They frequented the art, history, and science museums; They made monthly trips to the zoo as well as the botanical garden. They told her to explore, get messy, and learn while having fun.

The city of AnNing was filled with adventures, but Lan enjoyed spending time with her parents in their apartment even more. Growing up, Lan’s favorite game was hide-and-seek. There were plenty of options in the apartment for Lan to choose from: the crack between the couch and wall, inside the washing machine, behind the laundry rack… There was only one uncharted territory for Lan in their apartment: the closet in her parents’ bedroom. A mystery was locked behind that door. Lan never went to her parents for an answer, because the unknown allowed her imagination to roam freely. She suspected a Narnia situation, where a lion, a witch, and four British kids were stored away in the closet. Her parents gifted her The Chronicles of Narnia for her seventh birthday, and she had been obsessed with that parallel world ever since.

School was a breeze for Lan. From elementary school to high school, from three subjects to eight subjects, Lan received high scores effortlessly. Every first day of school, Lan would read through all of her textbooks, easily grasp and memorize every math equation, physics concept, Chinese poem, and English grammar rule. Lan felt like she had seen those numbers, letters, and characters before. Lan’s parents insisted on not letting Lan skip grades even though every single teacher Lan had ever had strongly recommended it. They told Lan that they didn’t want to suffocate her. They told her that she needed to breathe, relax, play, and have time for herself and her family. Lan happily obliged.

The decision to apply to universities abroad came abruptly and whimsically. Lan wanted to have adventures outside of AnNing, in a foreign land. The application process happened clandestinely during the first semester of 12th grade. The desk lamp remained on in Lan’s room well into the wee hours of the night, and the SAT prep books were shoved under the bed before the sun rose.

Lan noticed the worrisome looks her parents gave her when she hurriedly shoved two spoonfuls of rice into her mouth and declared that she had to get back to studying. She unintentionally eavesdropped on their distressed discourse regarding her odd behaviors. However, the excitement of studying abroad took up all the room in her head with her parents sat quietly in the corner of her mind, hidden in the shade.

January, February, and March rolled around. Lan’s email inbox was filled with eNewsletters, bank statements, and promotion emails. No offer letters in sight. She applied to three prestigious universities with a stellar report card and a nearly perfect SAT score, yet she was not wanted. Lan's sulking lasted for weeks. She slept so much that she almost missed school some days.

One night, after dinner, she rushed into her room after two bites of food as usual. She turned off the light and buried herself under her blanket. Drifting in and out of sleep, she heard her door creak. Lan's mom tiptoed into her room and sat on the edge of her bed. The fogginess cleared up instantly for Lan as she heard her mom weep, repressed yet tempestuous. Lan stayed still until her door opened and closed again. Her mom’s sobbing and her dad’s words of comfort squeezed through the gap under her door into her ears. That’s the moment she stopped caring about those offers. She decided to stay right here with her parents.

Lan’s total score for her college entrance exam ranked seventh in the city, and she chose to attend AnNing University, which was only a 20-minute drive from the apartment in which she grew up.

Lan seemed to be the only college student who liked showing off her parents on campus. Lan and her mom always walked arm-in-arm from the dormitory to the cafeteria. Lan and dad would sit on a bench under a sycamore tree, talking about current events and politics for hours. It was also during her parents’ visits Lan noticed the new strands of silver hair on her mom, her dad’s incessant coughing, and the creases at the corners of their eyes. She vowed to secure a high-paying job before graduation, so she’d be able to support not just herself, but also give her parents the life they deserved.

The news came unexpectedly as Lan was taking her last final of her senior year. She was excused immediately with a passing score. Yet when she made it to the hospital, she was taken directly to the basement.

According to the doctors, Lan’s dad had a heart attack in the kitchen when he was making lunch. Pain accompanied by numbness spread across the left side of his body. Lan’s mom happened to take work off that day, yet she was in such panic, she couldn’t find either her or her husband’s cell phone. When rushing down the stairs for help, she slipped and her scalp landed precisely on the sharp edge of a stair. While Lan’s mother laid still at the bottom of the stairs, hemorrhaging, her husband lost consciousness in the kitchen. Their bodies weren’t found until the neighbors started returning from work. By then, they were ice-cold.

Lan laid in her parents bed, her diploma sitting on their nightstand. The sheets smelled like clean laundry with their scents absent. Lan was out of tears. She slowly sat up and scanned the room. She needed more of her parents. She needed to surround herself with every vestige of the once lively couple. They were only 52. Lan eyes eventually landed on that door. The door that had been locked since the beginning of time. She was no longer looking for Narnia, but a parallel world where her parents were well and alive.

Lan rummaged through every drawer and forced every key into the keyhole, yet none worked. She went into the kitchen and grabbed her dad’s cleaver. As she returned to the door, she blasted metal rock from her phone, and hammered the cleaver on the door to the rhythm of the music.

It took Lan over an hour to create a hole big enough for her to squeeze through. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw an old desktop computer accompanied by the humming sound of the CPU sitting in the center of the vacuum darkness.

Curiosity had always trumped fear for Lan. She gingerly tapped on the space bar on the keyboard. Dim green light shone through the screen with the instruction, “Enter the Password.” She took a pause to search for her mom and dad’s birthdays in her brain. To her surprise and dismay, she couldn’t remember their birthdays. She tried to recall their wedding anniversary. Nothing. Finally escaping the maze that’s her mind, Lan suddenly noticed the distorted reflection in the green convex screen: that’s not me! Lan saw a girl with monolids, chubby cheeks, and thin lips, staring back at her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember her own birthday. Blankness. Through the mist in her eyes, she saw the button on the bottom right corner of the screen.

“Reset the Password.”

Her right hand quivered as she reached for the mouse.

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Lan’s mouth was dry and her back was sore. As her eyes adjusted to the bright fluorescent light, she saw two people sitting opposite of her. They looked familiar. The man had monolids and slanted eyes. The woman was chubby with thin lips that almost disappeared into her face.

A middle-aged man walked into the room, wearing a white scrubs and carrying a glass of water. He approached Lan, handed her the water and gently removed the nanobots attached to her forehead and scalp.

The man turned towards the couple sitting across from Lan and shook their hands firmly. He thanked them for volunteering as a family to undergo the new correction treatment for rebellious teens.

That’s when memories of the real world came rushing back to Lan. She was Lan, yet she was not beautiful. However, she was extremely intelligent.

In the real world, Lan’s mother was a cashier, and her father a cook. Lan’s parents invested the little money they had all into her, because they knew the return on investment would be grand, and their daughter's brilliant brain would change the fate of their family.

Lan’s real family lived in a studio apartment in the outskirts of AnNing, which she simply referred to as her “prison.” Lan was not allowed out of the apartment aside from school. All hours outside of school were dedicated to more studying at the dining room table. Lan studied through her parents’ daily fights, the smashing of plates, and the slamming of the door. Every time Lan’s father stormed out, her mother would unleash her anger on Lan.

“You better pay us back in a hundredfold.” Lan’s mom would say to her. “I could’ve aborted you, then I wouldn’t be stuck with that son of a bitch.”

Lan was on track for early admission to AnNing University, one of the top universities in China that's also only a 20-minute bus ride away from her prison. While her parents were ecstatic, as a high-paying job was guaranteed for any AnNing graduate, Lan mourned her caged life.

Lan faked a doctor’s note to get several days off during the first semester of 12th grade. While her parents were at work, Lan used the family laptop to apply to three universities in the United States. After the applications were sent, Lan checked her email regularly until early spring. By March, there were zero offers in her inbox. Not even the songs of the cicadas could cheer her up.

A random April afternoon, Lan suddenly realized that she oddly didn’t receive any rejection emails either. That’s when she checked the trash folder. And there they were, sitting at the bottom of the fifth page, her offers for admissions and full-ride scholarships.

Lan had an outburst at dinner that same night. She threw her chopsticks at her parents. She cried and screamed as she broke free from 17 years of reticence. Lan’s father smashed his can of beer on the floor, grabbed Lan by the wrist, and slammed her head against the wall. After a few thumps, her father seemed to notice the scarlet on the brick wall and remembered the value of Lan’s brain. He swiftly undid his belt and whipped Lan across her back. When the neighbors came knocking on the door, Lan was tamed, and dinner was untouched.

Ever since that night, Lan refused to study or go to school. The bruises on her face and body multiplied exponentially, yet she adamantly confined herself to her twin bed.

The vice principal called Lan’s parents on the last day of May. She expressed her concerns for Lan’s mental health as well as the accumulating bad press for the high school: many locals speculated that bullying was the cause the disappearance of the AnNing University candidate. She informed Lan’s parents of a new treatment for rebellious teens at the AnNing Juvenile Correction Center, and shared her contact at the center with them.

Upon arrival, the middle-aged man in white scrubs welcomed Lan’s family. His gaze did not flinch when he saw the blue and purple on Lan’s face. He extended his hand and gave firm shakes.

On the stroll to the office, the man gave a brief introduction on the treatment: this new correction treatment for rebellious teens was a government-funded project. This project hit the ground running last year due to the severe case of population aging in China. The elderly currently make up 21% of China’s total population, but the government projected the percentage to increase to over 40% in the foreseeable future due to longer life expectancy and fewer children per family.

“Even if only half of the elders rely on the government welfare, they’d still bankrupt our country’s treasury.” The man flattened the creases on his sleeves. “Our job is not only to alleviate the financial burden for our country, but also teach every Chinese child to repay the gift of life through supporting their parents financially. Not just after your retirement, but before as well.”

“However, this is the first time we are testing simulated reality for behavioral correction for teenagers. This treatment involves creating an immersive virtual world for Lan whereas a new life was orchestrated from scratch. She would live through around 20 years of a fictional life and learn the importance of family through a traumatic loss.” The man rummaged through his drawer in his office, and handed Lan’s parents a stack of forms. “Since Lan is still underage, you as her guardians will be able to volunteer her for the test trial. However, I want to ensure you are aware of all the potential risks and side effects.

Lan’s parents nodded their heads mechanically and signed the forms without reading.

As Lan lifted her leadened eyelids after the treatment, she did feel a sense of gratefulness towards her parents. Lan was thankful that her parents put her through this treatment, and felt at peace going back to her real life after experiencing what unconditional love was like. Lan was content that she would always have memories to hold on to, and happy, fictional days to relive upon her return to her prison.

Yet how Lan wished she never reset the password.