ter Five

  It was already eleven at night, and Susan still wasn't home.

  No, more accurately, she hadn't been "sent" back yet.

  Twenty minutes ago, she'd sent a message saying she'd just finished the old man's nighttime care routine and was ready to "come back."

  That meant Lin needed to open "13Seconds," place the order, and pay ten dollars.

  Thirteen seconds later, Susan would materialize in the living room.

  Lin opened the app.

  He typed "Deliver Susan to living room at home" into the search bar, confirmed, and paid.

  The vibration of a successful fingerprint scan buzzed from his phone.

  Almost simultaneously, a soft thump came from the living room.

  Lin walked out of the study.

  Susan was already standing in the middle of the living room, shrugging off her light blue caregiver's uniform jacket.

  She didn't look tired; if anything, she seemed a bit energized?

  Lin noticed a scarf tied around her neck. A subtle, elegant beige.

  "How was today?" Lin asked, walking back to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.

  "Not bad." Susan hung her jacket on the back of a chair, reaching up to touch the scarf at her neck. "The old guy was in a good mood today. A few of his old friends came to visit this afternoon. I helped set out some tea and snacks. He gave me a tip when they left."

  She pulled an envelope from her small bag, extracted five one-hundred-dollar bills, and placed them on the dining table.

  "Five hundred bucks. Said it was a little something for the hard work."

  Lin glanced at the stack of cash. Susan's hourly wage as a caregiver was a hundred and twenty bucks. An eight-hour shift only added up to nine-sixty. This five-hundred-dollar tip was like getting over half a day's extra pay.

  "Does he do that often?" Lin asked.

  "More frequently lately." Susan walked into the bedroom to change, her voice muffled through the door. "Gave me three hundred last Wednesday, two hundred on Friday. Today was the most."

  Lin took a sip of water.

  Susan emerged in her pajamas and sat down across from him at the table.

  She wasn't in a hurry to wash up. Instead, she picked up her phone, her finger gliding across the screen.

  "Look at this." She slid the phone over to him.

  The screen displayed a shopping site page, showing a scarf identical to the one around her neck.

  The price tag read: $980.

  "He gave you that?" Lin asked.

  "Mm-hmm. Gave it to me this afternoon." Susan twisted the end of the scarf around her finger. "He said he could see how attentively I'd been taking care of him the past few days, and that the color of the scarf really suited me."

  Lin handed the phone back.

  "A thousand-dollar scarf."

  "Nine hundred and eighty, to be precise." Susan corrected him, a hint of pride in her voice. "I checked. It's authentic. Retail price."

  She paused, then added, "You know, the old guy isn't as difficult to deal with as we thought. He's just physically limited, so his temper gets a little short sometimes. Most of the time, he's pretty quiet. Just reads, listens to the news. And he's incredibly generous."

  Lin didn't say anything.

  "We used the summon feature thirty times this month," Lin said, his voice clear in the quiet living room.

  Susan's finger stopped scrolling for a second. "Thirty times? That many?"

  "I kept track." Lin turned towards her. "Averaging twice a day. More than double last month. Yeah, maybe it's getting to be a lot."

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  "Saves time, though." Susan put her phone down and looked up at him. "Didn't you calculate it yourself? The commuting time we've saved adds up to almost a hundred hours now. I've been sleeping so much better. No more rushing for the last train, no more squeezing onto the subway first thing in the morning."

  "I know." Lin walked back and sat down at the table. "But I've been thinking... this app... is it really just a delivery service?"

  "What else would it be?" Susan laughed. "Alien technology?"

  "What it can do is way beyond anything we can comprehend," Lin said. "Teleportation, the pricing formula, that creepy delivery guy... none of it fits any existing scientific theory."

  Susan was silent for a few seconds.

  "Who cares what it is," she said. "It works, it's useful, isn't that enough? Aren't we both benefiting? You finished that freelance gig early, made some extra cash. I get more rest time, and I can earn more in tips."

  She stood up, walked behind Lin, and placed her hands on his shoulders. "Don't overthink it. There are tons of unexplainable things in the world. You don't have to dig to the bottom of every single one."

  Lin said, "I'm just a little..." He searched for the right word. "Uneasy."

  "Uneasy about what?"

  "It's too easy," Lin said. "Everything is too easy. Want something? Search for it, pay ten bucks, thirteen seconds later, it's in your hands. Even people. Before, we had to coordinate schedules, we had to wait, we had to endure the exhaustion of commuting. Now, none of that is necessary. Press a few buttons, and a person goes from point A to point B. This feeling... it's not like living."

  "Like a game?" Susan asked.

  "Like cheating," Lin said.

  Susan's hands lifted from his shoulders.

  She walked around and sat down opposite him again, looking at him.

  "Lin," she said, her voice calm. "How old are we? You're thirty-nine, I'm thirty-two. We've been married five years. In those five years, what have we had? Your work gets more unstable, I couldn't even stay a full-time homemaker, I had to go out and be a caregiver for someone else. We have to calculate the timing just to see a movie, wait for sales just to have a decent meal."

  She picked up the five hundred dollars on the table, then put them down again.

  "Now, with this app, our life has finally gotten a little easier. Tell me, what's wrong with that? Just because you don't understand how it works? Just because it's 'too easy'?"

  "I'm not saying it's wrong," Lin said. "It's just..."

  "It's just that you're used to hard mode, and suddenly switching to easy mode doesn't feel right," Susan finished his sentence. "But Lin, life isn't a game. There's no difficulty setting. If we can make things a little easier, why do we have to suffer?"

  She stood up, grabbed her phone and the five hundred dollars. "I'm going to take a shower. The old guy has rehab training tomorrow morning. I need to get there early. Around seven, make sure you send me."

  She walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Soon, the sound of running water started.

  Lin sat alone in the living room. He looked at the dining table, at the chair Susan had just occupied, at her caregiver's uniform hanging on the chair back. The light blue fabric glowed softly under the lamp.

  He picked up his phone and opened "13Seconds" again. The order history scrolled down page by page, a dense list of alternating "Deliver Susan" and "Deliver Lin" entries.

  Timestamps ranged from six in the morning to eleven at night.

  Locations were all over the place: home, downstairs from his office, alleys near the hospital, even a mall restroom once—the day Susan spontaneously wanted to go shopping and just "sent" him from his office to meet her there.

  Lin exited the app and opened the calculator. Ten dollars times thirty. Three hundred bucks. That was their fee to "13Seconds."

  And the time saved?

  Calculating based on an average of one hour per summon, that was time.

  And the tips Susan had received?

  Just the ones she'd mentioned this month added up to: five hundred, three hundred, two hundred, and today's five hundred. At least fifteen hundred dollars. Plus that thousand-dollar scarf.

  The financials were a net gain.

  Clearly a gain.

  But then Lin thought about last Saturday.

  They'd originally planned to go hiking. That morning, Susan said she was a bit tired and didn't want to go. Lin suggested they just relax at home.

  But at two in the afternoon, Susan mentioned wanting to see a new art exhibition that had just opened. Lin said it might be crowded, and tickets might be hard to get. Susan said it was fine, he could just send her over first, and he could come later.

  So Lin placed the order, and thirteen seconds later, Susan was at the exhibition hall entrance.

  She browsed alone for two hours, while Lin used the excuse of working from home.

  Around four, Susan messaged saying she was done and wanted to come home.

  Lin placed another order and "sent" her back.

  Throughout the entire process, they hadn't left the house together, hadn't ridden in a car together, hadn't exchanged a single word during any commute.

  That night at dinner, when Lin tried to ask about the exhibition, Susan only said, "It was okay. More people taking photos than actually looking at the art," before looking down at her phone again.

  On her screen was a selfie of her with that scarf, the background showing the豪华 retirement home where the old man lived.

  The sound of water stopped. The bathroom door opened, and Susan walked out, towel-drying her hair. She paused, seeing Lin still sitting there.

  "Still not asleep?"

  "Going now." Lin stood up.

  He walked into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.

  Susan sat at the vanity, applying skincare products, the soft clinking of bottles and jars filling the silence.

  After a while, she lay down too, her back to him.

  In the darkness, Lin opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling.

  He wanted to say something, but didn't know what. Say, "I feel like we've been talking less lately"?

  Susan would probably reply, "But we see each other more." Say, "I miss the days when we used to squeeze onto the subway together"? That would sound too sentimental, too forced, he didn't even believe it himself.

  He turned over, facing Susan's back.

  Her breathing had already evened out; she seemed to have fallen asleep quickly.

  Lin thought back to five years ago, when they were first married.

  His job was fairly stable then. Susan had just quit hers to become a full-time homemaker.

  Every weekend, they'd plan somewhere to go. Even if it was just a walk in the park, or grocery shopping, they'd hold hands and chatter the whole way. Susan would complain about rising vegetable prices, point out pretty flowers on the roadside, suddenly crave ice cream from a particular shop and drag him on a detour to get it.

  And now? Now she talked about the old man's tips, the old man's scarf, the old man's luxurious residence.

  Now, the way they went somewhere "together" involved one person getting teleported first, the other coming later, or sometimes not coming at all.

  Now, all that time they saved wasn't used for anything special—Lin used it for work, Susan used it for rest, or scrolling on her phone, or shopping alone.

  Convenient. But too convenient.