Fault Utopia

Deep in the pitch-black darkness, heavy footsteps echoed. As they slowly faded, a sudden beam of light pierced the gloom, emanating from a smartphone.

The phone’s glow illuminated a somewhat handsome face. He looked exhausted, haggard, and clearly in a terrible mood.

“Recording four. Time: 3:51 PM.” Sun Jack started the screen recording.

“I still haven’t found an exit. Everything here is surrounded by metal—even the floor and ceiling.” Sun Jack reached out to touch the wall beside him, his fingers feeling its cold, smooth, unyielding surface.

He then turned on the phone’s flashlight toward the metal wall, capturing as much of its cold, silver-gray expanse as possible.

“These metal corridors are square and connect to form a massive metal maze. There are metal doors everywhere, most of which won’t open. I crawled out of a freezer in one of the rooms.”

“I don’t recognize this place. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even online. I can’t find any information about it here.”

“I don’t know how I got here either. My memory is gone. The last thing I remember is the summer after the college entrance exam.”

“I remember everything before that—my dog Da Huang, my parents, every game I played. But after that… it’s all blank.”

“Something must have happened to get me stuffed into a freezer and sent here. But I can’t remember a thing!” Sun Jack’s voice grew anxious. He took a breath and continued.

“The time on my phone says 2030. If that’s real, I’ve lost five whole years of my life.”

“What happened in those five years? Where am I?”

Just then, a beep sounded. A notification appeared on the screen: “Low battery. Flashlight disabled.”

Sun Jack knew he couldn’t waste any more time. Whatever had happened before, he had to escape first. If he died here, none of it would matter.

He pressed his lips together, steeled himself, and spoke to the phone again. “I… I mentioned the metal doors earlier. The strange thing is, they aren’t only on the walls—there are also doors on the ceiling and floor. And behind one of them, I heard something. Something unusual. I’m going to check it out.”

With that, he felt along the cold metal wall and moved left. A minute later, he stopped, looked up, and held his phone toward a pitch-black door directly above him.

“Can you hear it? There’s a sound coming from the door in the ceiling—very faint beeping, like it’s far away.”

“My phone is dying. I’m going in.” Sun Jack stopped recording.

Estimating the height, he stepped back, jumped, and hooked four fingers tightly over the edge of the doorframe.

With every ounce of strength, he scrambled upward and finally pulled himself through the door.

Standing on the frame, he craned his neck and shone the phone’s light inside. The room was filled with incomprehensible high-precision machinery, much of it with broken casings.

Grotesque mechanical arms jutted from the walls like branches, forming a metallic forest. At the end of the upper arms, another new door loomed directly above him. The beeping came from deep within.

“What kind of weird place is this? Where the hell am I?” Sun Jack climbed carefully upward along the mechanical arms.

When he crawled through that door, he finally found the source of the faint beeping: a small red dot, flickering on and off like a standby computer signal.

Shining his phone’s flashlight around the dot, he saw that the room was curved and arched, empty except for a few chairs.

Sun Jack started recording again, aiming at the red dot. “Look, there seems to be a screen above this red light. I’m recording everything. If I lose my memory again for some unknown reason, these recordings will be my—”

Before he could finish, his overheating phone suddenly went black, displaying its brand logo. “It died at the worst time! Dammit! What a piece of junk!”

Furious, Sun Jack stuffed the phone into his left pocket, took a deep breath, and stared at the red dot. He knew he had no choice.

He feared touching the red dot might bring something terrible, but he also feared nothing would happen at all.

It was his only option. He’d searched everywhere else. If the red dot did nothing, he would be trapped forever in this metal maze.

Closing his eyes to calm down, Sun Jack held his breath and poked the red dot.

When the light vanished, blending into the surrounding darkness, his heart nearly stopped.

But soon, the entire room began to tremble. A resonant hum rose from beneath his feet.

The sudden changes terrified Sun Jack. He stared into the blackness, watching for any movement.

Yet nothing around him shifted. The first change was to himself. As the red button was pressed, his feet slowly lifted off the ground—until he was floating in midair!

Sun Jack was stunned. What kind of world was this? “I can fly? I can fly? Magic? Superpowers?”

His joy was short-lived. A deep rumble sounded, and a crack split open the front wall of the arched room. Blinding light poured through, illuminating everything inside.

Squinting, Sun Jack adjusted to the brightness and watched as the arched walls slid open to either side, centered on the crack.

At the moment the walls fully retracted, a colossal planet filled his entire vision.

Sun Jack’s heart pounded violently. His throat felt tight, and every breath was suffocating.

A planet—a simple word. But seeing it in person made him feel its immense weight.

Stellar light lit one side of the planet, while the other sank into utter darkness, like an abyss. Sun Jack felt a primal terror, as if being watched by a cosmic beast.

Suddenly, he looked down at his floating feet, then up at the massive planet beyond the glass.

“Holy shit! I’ve been in outer space this entire time?!”