THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
The Phone Knows Where the Remote Is
Shen Yun’s old handset can withstand heavenly lightning. Its more interesting talent is remembering three years in his company from the other side of the screen.
THE SHORT TAKE
The opening is at its funniest when a phone, two officials and a nervous householder have different explanations for the same ordinary gesture. Its portrait of the phone as a witness gives the joke some feeling.
A familiar house suddenly goes cheap
The great loss facing Shen Yun in the opening pages is the resale value of his villa. Wild animals are attacking people a few miles away, and a house that would have set him up for life has become an excellent reason to get out of town. He sorts through what to take to a refugee camp. The computer can stay. The phone goes with him. It has outlasted several screen protectors, and he still wants to film a strange light in the sky with it. An ordinary habit puts exactly the right object in his hand at the extraordinary moment.
The title promises the power to awaken anything. The opening gains an advantage by limiting the experiment to a possession with some wear on it. When the storm claims his phone, people elsewhere can post theories about what they see. The man sitting beneath it has lost his access to the conversation. He spends the night with bread, sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones. I would happily have traded a few of the declarations about destiny for another minute of that peculiar vigil.
Read chapter 2 · Sit out the lightning with Shen Yun’s improvised kit ↗A file with all the wrong answers
Little Nine knows where the potato chips and the television remote belong. It would be difficult to invent a more convincing reference for someone claiming to have lived here. Unfortunately, the investigators at the door have a file which says that the owner lives alone. She works out how the two of them can use the discrepancy. Shen Yun has three adequately documented years at home. If the visitors conclude that he spent them cultivating in private, his very uneventful biography will stand up to inspection.
I especially like the official who decides that a lack of spiritual power around his host is evidence of supreme control. The inference is perfectly consistent with the premise he brought into the room. Even the guest who notices a video game in progress can supply a plausible reason to keep waiting for its conclusion. Shen Yun, busy finishing Super Mario on a single life, is using the visitors’ willingness to wait to estimate how frightened they are of him. Everybody in the room is doing some detective work. The comedy comes from being allowed to inspect each person’s findings.
Read chapter 4 · Wait on the guest sofa while Shen Yun finishes his game ↗What is printed on the invitation
The visiting director produces a card. The sign of distinction is on the front, and the real test is on the back. Shen Yun turns it over and has no idea what expression to put on his face. Little Nine can analyze the pattern and speak to him privately. His one imprudent sound of surprise gives the investigators a very good reason to think he has uncovered a state secret. It is a neat use for an ability the author has already made intuitive. A calculator with a life of its own might reasonably be the quickest thinker in the room.
The conversation even gets around to the loss of water and electricity. The director looks back at the television, still showing the video game. The story allows that sidelong look to hang there a moment. Its frequent explanations of what an expert ought to think are much less effective than giving someone a perfectly reasonable question he feels too intimidated to ask.
Read chapter 5 · Turn over the card Director Lu leaves on the tea table ↗The cotton swab
Little Nine’s least spectacular memory is my favorite. Shen Yun is removing dust from a crevice in his aging phone with a cotton swab. We have already heard that he takes care of his belongings. Now he sees his own concentration from the position of the thing being cleaned. He even gets to see what patience with an increasingly slow chip looked like to the device that had to keep up. The pictures give her attachment a history specific to these two characters.
The writing pays a great deal of attention to how attractive Shen Yun finds her. Her choice of appearance supplies a decent early joke about what he saved on his phone, though repeating his response soon yields diminishing returns. That borrowed memory points toward a more unusual relationship. Here is someone who knows him intimately and has scarcely ever seen his house from anywhere except his hand or the surface of a table.
Read chapter 6 · See the old phone being cleaned from Little Nine’s perspective ↗Answering for somebody asleep
After he finally gets some sleep, messages arrive from his father. Little Nine can receive them herself. She composes an answer in Shen Yun’s voice, hesitates, then includes a question about his half sister. The little decision about what to send interested me more than the lightning. It asks what years of observing somebody entitle an observer to do in his name. The family emergency gives the hesitation weight, and her subsequent decision to let him rest for three hours gives her an opinion of her own.
The investigation is unresolved at the end of chapter eight. We have seen enough to know what kind of partners the emergency will require. He can question the picture assembled from headlines. She can find the headlines, receive the reply and place the call he momentarily forgets he has to ask her to make. I hope the story gives them more such disagreements over timing and judgment. They have much better company to offer each other than the formal titles they keep exchanging.
Read chapter 7 · Read the reply Little Nine sends in Shen Yun’s voice ↗Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. The first eight catalogue entries each contain one complete story chapter. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND
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