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The Reunion: a new science-fiction story about surveillance in China

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The Reunion: a new science-fiction story about surveillance in China

Although solely 23 minutes on the high-speed rail from Shenzhen North to West Kowloon, the journey from the mainland to Hong Kong appears to move me again half a century. The concrete jungle of my childhood recollections hasn’t modified one bit. Time appears trapped in the amber of this metropolis of seven million, whereas the Shenzhen Bay space that I departed has already arrived on the future forward of schedule.

This story is a part of our January/February 2019 difficulty

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My classmate from a decade earlier, Dr. Ng Lok Tin of the Hong Kong College of Science and Expertise, waits for me on the station exit. As if to focus on the discombobulation of contemporary China, he greets me in Cantonese although he’s a native of Shanghai; I, Hong Kong born, then again, converse to him in Fashionable Normal Mandarin.

“Leung Wah Kiu, what’s this actually about?” he asks me.

“A number of days in the past, two plainclothes officers approached me to ask if Professor Lau had been in contact and for the contact information of his kin and buddies in Hong Kong.”

“I assumed he had been positioned in obligatory therapy a while in the past?”

“Proper, in a particular care middle in Shenzhen. However he broke out and escaped to Hong Kong, and so they’ve misplaced his path. We have now to seek out him earlier than the police do.”

“Why?” Ng Lok Tin examines my face fastidiously, as if evaluating my sanity. Then realization dawns. “You don’t consider he’s gone mad in any respect, do you?”

“I received’t know till I see him in individual.” I can’t preserve the uncertainty out of my voice. “Assist me, please.”

Professor Lau Gim Wai, a main professional in neurobehavioral imaging, had mentored us each in college. Nonetheless, to me, he’s far more than simply a instructor.

Greater than a decade in the past, once I was breaking below the stress of my PhD thesis and despondent from estrangement with my household, Professor Lau despatched me e-mails every day, quoting strains from his favourite motion pictures in his signature. Though he by no means mentioned so explicitly, I knew that these strains—heat, encouraging, and uplifting—have been meant for me.

I’ve by no means even seen a few of these motion pictures, however I keep in mind each single quote he despatched.

“If you happen to get up at a completely different time, in a completely different place, may you get up as a completely different individual?” —Struggle Membership (1999)

After I turned a completely different individual on that wet evening, he was the one who saved me.

I need to discover out what has gone incorrect with Professor Lau and his DISCO algorithm.


Lau developed DISCO (“distributed inter-subject correlation observer”) on the idea of the inter-subject correlation (ISC) mannequin from neurobehavioral imaging.

In conventional fMRI, the researcher should strictly restrict the variables in order to check the correspondence between cognitive processes and mind areas. However outcomes from such synthetic lab settings are troublesome to generalize to the complexities of real-life eventualities. Attending a live performance, listening to a bedtime story, watching a film … the mind is subjected to the affect of a host of uncontrolled components such because the setting, temper fluctuations, and spontaneous social interactions.

The ISC technique is predicated on the next conjecture: in the identical pure setting, assuming everybody’s mind has the identical organic processes, equivalent encephalic areas ought to activate when completely different people encounter the identical stimulus. As an example, if two individuals watching the identical horror movie collectively present related heightened amygdala exercise, then we might conclude that the amygdala is concerned in the expertise of worry. If the reactions of quite a few people in the identical pure setting are measured concurrently and in contrast, one can safely ignore interference from most uncontrollable components.

Lau’s DISCO takes the ISC technique to a different degree.

After the Spring Metropolis Railway Station assault greater than a decade in the past, related random mass killing incidents proliferated, like a contagious illness with no obvious transmission route. Completely odd people, their lives unremarkable till that second, would all of the sudden rework into vortices of violence, lashing into crowds with butcher knives, poisoned needles, even damaged bottles, and deal as a lot harm as attainable earlier than the police may intervene.

As in the epidemic of suicides amongst migrant staff years earlier, there was at first no consensus about the underlying trigger. Was it the stress of technology-dominated, “ultra-unreal” life in trendy China, the place centuries of progress elsewhere had been compressed into a handful of a long time? Was it the manifestation of a conflicted society that had misplaced its previous, failed beliefs with nothing new to take their place? Or was it one thing darker?

In the long run, the authorities introduced that the perpetrators in each single case have been decided to have suffered from a type of psychological sickness not like some other, resulting in outbreaks of maximum violence. Although there was an official Latinate identify for the prognosis, most individuals known as it “ATGism,” for “in opposition to the grain.” Stress mounted among the many public to preemptively confine people deemed to endure from this situation.

Nonetheless, conventional strategies of psychiatric prognosis left an excessive amount of room for subjective interpretation, and the authorized course of for involuntary dedication was unwieldy and topic to abuse. The authorities turned embroiled in controversy after controversy.

Because the assaults continued, many started to query whether or not the federal government’s involuntary dedication system was enough in stopping violence. On the identical time, many sufferers who had been recognized utilizing unreliable conventional strategies—a few of them exhibiting no propensity to violence by any means—have been disadvantaged of private liberty unjustly, ensuing in a lot public anger. But the federal government couldn’t merely abolish the previous involuntary dedication system with nothing new to take its place, as a result of many psychological sufferers could be despatched again to their households. Lingering prejudice in opposition to psychological sicknesses meant that many households, terrified, would forged these sufferers out into the streets, resulting in much more social mayhem.

Simply when the Ministry of Psychological Well being was at its wits’ finish, DISCO arrived on the scene like a deus ex machina.

Drawing on the big and complete knowledge financial institution of surveillance digicam footage from mainland China and affected person knowledge from Huilongguan Psychological Hospital, the biggest psychiatric establishment in Asia, Lau was capable of prepare and iterate the DISCO algorithm a whole bunch of billions of instances. Not like conventional neuroimaging strategies like MRI, PET, and DTI, which depend upon specialised {hardware}, DISCO can diagnose, surveil, and warn of imminent violent outbursts from ATGism solely although voiceprints, nonverbal expressions, and adjustments in behavioral patterns.

Lau solely meant for DISCO to turn into a dependable software for prognosis, in order that the in poor health could possibly be helped and the effectively may stay in safety. However the authorities had greater concepts in thoughts.

DISCO turned out to be simply adaptable for the T2000 Deep Gaze sensible surveillance cameras, operating as a distributed computing community. The algorithm was educated to acknowledge the new sickness, however what different types of deviance may catch its gaze?

I don’t know whether or not the complexity of a human being will be decreased to a set of numbers, numbers that may then infallibly predict the propensity for violence. I do know that Professor Lau was recognized by his personal algorithm as a harmful particular person, and dedicated to obligatory therapy.

Do I feel he’s mad? I need to discover him first.


We start with probably the most rudimentary type of investigation: speaking to Professor Lau’s household and buddies one after the other. As a fugitive, Professor Lau wouldn’t dare expose his biometric knowledge to the system, so there’s no level in looking resort visitor lists.

We wander by means of public housing tenements as densely packed as ant nests; underground eateries redolent of mould; lengthy, darkish, twisting corridors. We’re scrutinized by suspicious eyes peering from behind rusty gates. Financial decline and stagnation are much more seen than once I left, the consequence of Hong Kong’s lack of standing as a particular tariff territory in the West throughout the commerce wars.

We discover nothing.

“What ought to we do now?” Ng Lok Tin asks as we sit down in Café de Coral.

“Let me assume,” I muse. “He took nice dangers to return to Hong Kong after escaping from the therapy middle. Why? What’s he hoping to perform right here?”

He shrugs. Then his eyes brighten. “Oh, I invited him to return to our movie pageant a few months in the past—I assume he should have already got been dedicated by then—however all I acquired was an automatic e-mail response.”

“What movie pageant?”

“Didn’t I inform you? I’m the neuroscience advisor for the Thoughts Wanderer Movie Pageant.” Ng Lok Tin factors out the window at an digital billboard over the streets of East Tsim Sha Tsui, which is flashing by means of varied movie posters. “Tomorrow is our final day.”

“Why would a movie pageant want a neuroscience advisor? I don’t keep in mind you being a lot of a movie buff, both.”

“Hey, that was years in the past,” he says sheepishly. “Anyway, now we use ISC expertise in filmmaking too. I assumed Professor Lau would get pleasure from seeing this alternate utility of the expertise.”

“Is that why he got here again?” I mutter to myself. “Movies …”

As a younger man, Professor Lau as soon as dreamed of changing into a director, however his dad and mom pressured him into medical college as an alternative. Every time he acquired a break in his busy schedule, he rushed to the cinema to catch a new exhibiting. In our lab, he typically carried out ISC research utilizing movies because the stimuli. I suppose that was the easiest way he discovered of mixing work and interest.

“Do you actually assume Professor Lau escaped from the hospital and the police simply to see motion pictures in Hong Kong?” Ng Lok Tin’s eyes widened with incredulity.

“Nothing so absurd.” My thoughts churns, pondering this new angle. “However if you happen to’re telling me ISC is used in movies, it’s attainable he desires to make use of his favourite analysis materials to show one thing. Like … his sanity. Do you continue to have that automated e-mail reply from him?”

Ng Lok Tin pulls up Professor Lau’s e-mail on his telephone. My eyes are drawn to the quote in the signature:

“The psychological faulty league, in formation.” —One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

I deal with the date of the e-mail: the very day he was involuntarily dedicated.

As he realized that his algorithm had begun to activate him, did Professor Lau attempt to ship a message by means of his e-mail signature in the identical approach he as soon as tried to consolation me?


We slender the chances all the way down to 9 showings, the one ones utilizing ISC projection. Six of them are scheduled between tonight and tomorrow morning, and the final three will happen concurrently tomorrow afternoon.

From nightfall to daybreak—from Yuen Lengthy in the northeast to Sai Kung in the far west—we rush to attend six ISC showings in six completely different theaters like a pair of fanatic cinephiles.

Alongside the best way, Ng Lok Tin explains to me how the neuroimaging approach that led to DISCO discovered utility in interactive leisure.

In brief, in ISC projection, miniaturized fMRI gear is used to measure the neuroactivity of every viewers member throughout key scenes. An ISC profile consultant of the viewers’s general neural response is then generated. But when any particular person’s measured response is 2 or extra normal deviations from the common profile—primarily, if that individual’s neurological response to the important thing scene is sufficiently completely different from that of most individuals—the person will likely be proven a specifically designed hidden subplot. ISC-enhanced movies have turn into very fashionable in Hong Kong as a result of everybody desires to see if their mind is so distinctive, so above the vulgar crowd like a chic crane towering above a flock of chickens, as to be given the prize of the particular hidden subplot.

Possibly Professor Lau desires to make use of an ISC-enhanced movie, powered by the identical expertise because the surveillance cameras, to show that his neurological response doesn’t deviate from the common profile.

“However how do you present a completely different plot to just some individuals in the identical theater?” I ask, puzzled.

“You’ll see for your self quickly.” Ng Lok Tin grins mysteriously.

Ng Lok Tin’s particular advisor standing features us entry even after the beginning of a exhibiting. As we tiptoe by means of every darkish theater, we attempt to establish the person we search among the many a whole bunch of faces half hidden below helmets and eyepieces. We dare not convey up Lau’s identify, id, or {photograph} to the employees or any viewers member, lest we betray our intentions to particular authorities brokers after the identical prey and maybe lose our likelihood ceaselessly to seek out Professor Lau.

Everybody in the viewers has their neck and shoulders secured in place by rubber gear over the seat again in order to make sure clear neuroimaging scans. The silver helmets all of them put on are connected to cables and processors behind the seats.

These helmets aren’t for VR immersion; as an alternative, the eyepieces are energetic shutter glasses synchronized with the projection display’s stroboflash, and the transmittance degree of the liquid crystal lens will be altered many instances per second. By fastidiously modulating the shuttering of eyepieces on two helmets, it’s attainable to point out two viewers completely different frames from the identical sequence. The refresh charge of the eyepieces should exceed 60Hz to forestall the mind from perceiving jitters. To ensure that the identical display to current two completely different dynamic footage concurrently throughout the ISC-enhanced segments—one for the primary movie, the opposite for the hidden subplot—the refresh charge of the display should subsequently exceed 120Hz.

A really intelligent design—it preserves the communal expertise of watching a movie in a theater whereas leaving room for the choose few to expertise hidden subplots.

Earlier than key scenes, a inexperienced mild flashes from the film display, indicating that the viewers ought to maintain nonetheless. When the sunshine turns purple, the scan begins, every lasting 6 to 15 seconds whereas the film performs on. The real-time scanning knowledge is transmitted to the processors behind the seats, corrected for linear drift and standardized. Then every individual’s scan result’s uploaded to calculate the group correlation coefficient on the identical time collection. Lastly, every particular person’s result’s in contrast with different outcomes to find out the model of the movie that the individual will see subsequent.

As we canvass one theater after one other, we expertise the downfall of a newspaper tycoon, a stunning dance in the rain, a monster hatching from its cocoon, a roaring tide of blood gushing from a gate. Within the darkness, it’s simple to inform which eyepieces are out of sync with the others by means of a telephone digicam app—just like the completely different glows of sea glass and seashell in moonlight.

We by no means discover Professor Lau in the viewers.

We stoop down onto the bench in entrance of the final theater at daybreak. Even the golden solar can’t forged away our clouds of frustration and weariness. The ultimate three ISC showings are all in the afternoon, taking on the identical time slot. Even when we cut up up and take one theater every, we’ll miss the third exhibiting, which suggests a one-third likelihood that we’ll miss Professor Lau.

In addition to, our complete plan is based on the unproven assumption that the signature in that auto-reply was a significant trace, not our personal wishful pondering.


“ISC projection is simply a gimmick to get extra individuals to return to the theaters, proper?” I tilt my head towards Ng Lok Tin.
As an alternative of straight answering, he poses a query of his personal. “Do you keep in mind the argument we had proper earlier than commencement?”

“Certain. Professor Lau invited us each to hitch his improvement staff. You not solely declined the supply immediately however have been additionally, frankly, fairly impolite.”

“I used to be too immature again then …” He bows his head, smiling awkwardly.

I keep in mind how Ng Lok Tin contradicted Professor Lau. There may by no means be an goal, unchanging definition of psychological sickness, he mentioned; the Diagnostic and Statistical Handbook always developed and was up to date as science and ethics superior. The use of neuroimaging expertise in the prognosis of psychological sicknesses needed to be fastidiously thought of. Society outlined insanity as the results of a mixture of medication and politics. Finally, a complete and compassionate prognosis required accounting for neuroimaging, behavioral knowledge, social mores, and a multiplicity of different components. To offer undue weight to sure components just because they have been simply measurable would result in far larger issues.

Professor Lau appeared exasperated, however as an alternative of refuting Ng Lok Tin, he had coldly waved him away.

“Has your stance on this matter modified?” I ask.

Ng Lok Tin appears to keep away from my query. “Although ISC movies are actually all the craze in Hong Kong, do you know that the expertise was invented first in Dongguan, the Chinese language metropolis striving to be the world’s leisure expertise chief? They beta-tested the expertise in a few main theater chains, however the preliminary consequence was utter failure.”

“What occurred? Due to censorship?” In mainland China, cultural creativity is much much less acceptable than technological creativity.

“As a result of nobody ever noticed the hidden subplots throughout the beta assessments!” Ng Lok Tin bursts into laughter. “Don’t you discover that hilarious?”

I roll my eyes at this try at cynicism; he turns somber.

“You assume letting a supposedly neutral algorithm outline who’s mad or deviant will assist individuals stay with extra dignity and safety,” Ng Lok Tin says. “However I consider the one factor the algorithm is nice for is leisure.”

When Professor Lau invited his two favourite college students to hitch his mission, Ng Lok Tin and I made reverse selections. I adopted my mentor up north to the mainland to develop his embryonic expertise below authorities help. I noticed no future for myself in Hong Kong, the place nostalgia for a previous that by no means was made individuals petrified of embracing the new. An algorithm that may pinpoint sources of violence couldn’t be perfected with out evolution in the true world, with actual knowledge, with actual sufferers, with actual penalties.

Ng Lok Tin, then again, stayed behind in the ivory tower, desiring to assemble a delicate palace of concept woven from jargon and numbers and search a excellent answer that may in some way account for all of the components.

Now, a decade later, the plots of each our lives appear to have taken surprising turns.

Two years in the past, on the verge of mass deployment of DISCO surveillance, Professor Lau transferred me out of the core analysis group with the official excuse that I might be “appointed with different duties.” I used to be arrange with a sinecure in a mental-health administration company in Shenzhen. Professor Lau by no means gave me a clear clarification of the abrupt change, however deep down, I knew that it was due to what occurred that wet evening.

Had he already misplaced religion in his algorithm then? Did he ship me away from the creating algorithm, hungry for all remark, to guard me? I’ll by no means know until I discover him.

In the meantime, again in Hong Kong, the place residents took to the streets in protest and blocked the set up of DISCO-enhanced surveillance cameras, Ng Lok Tin ended up making use of the identical approach to look into the deep recesses of each moviegoer’s consciousness, manipulating them to indulge in the fantasy that they have been in some way particular sufficient to see a completely different story.

Time makes us all traitors to the beliefs of our youth. People are just too difficult to be decreased to computable paths.

“Have been we incorrect to imagine that we knew Professor Lau effectively sufficient to foretell what he would do?” I set free a pissed off sigh.

Ng Lok Tin tries to consolation me. “So long as he’s not truly mad, he should nonetheless comply with patterns of conduct which might be cheap.”

“However even when we’re proper that he desires to return to the ISC showings, there’s no approach the 2 of us will be at three completely different theaters on the identical time.”

All three showings are of the identical movie: Wong Kar-Wai’s Within the Temper for Love. Preoccupied, Ng Lok Tin stares on the qipao-clad lady on the poster. Lights blink across the poster, like robotic stars.

He yelps and jumps to his ft.

“I’m going to take you the place you may see three film showings directly.”


We arrive on the central management room on the Broadway Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei. Right here, we will see the real-time knowledge from all three ISC showings visualized in arrays of lights. The different two showings are taking place on the Grand Windsor Cinema at Causeway Bay and the Film City at Sha Tin New City Plaza.

The employees checks and double-checks all of the gear. A countdown begins on the massive command display as if the place is about to launch a rocket as an alternative of exhibiting an previous movie about an extramarital affair. The director, identified for his protectiveness, received’t enable theaters to switch frames from the unique movie by including flashing ISC indicators for key scenes. Subsequently, the theater has erected digital call-boards subsequent to the display to remind the viewers when they need to be ready for scanning.

This provides us a likelihood.

I’ve by no means appreciated this film, not due to the story itself, however as a result of the inventive pictures—streets stuffed with buildings imitating a previous that by no means existed, Tong Lau tenements, and drenching storms that one by no means learns to count on—name forth recollections that pour down on me like heavy rain, till I really feel I’m drowning.

Ng Lok Tin notices my discomfort. He wraps an arm round my shoulder and reassures me that we’ll discover Professor Lau it doesn’t matter what.

He is aware of nothing of the tumult in my mind proper now.

Lastly, the film arrives at that well-known scene in the Goldfinch Restaurant. The dim glow of the sunshine, the inexperienced tablecloth, and the wallpaper improve romantic stress. Maggie Cheung, in a qipao, stirs her espresso with a small spoon. Tony Leung, sitting throughout from her, frowns, a look of melancholy in his eyes. Within the subsequent scene, these neighbors will come to phrases with the ugly reality: their spouses are having an affair with each other.

The ISC countdown begins, reminding the viewers to sit down nonetheless and put together for scanning.

A line of textual content seems on the call-board.

Professor Lau, thanks for locating me. —Kiu

For many in the viewers, this non sequitur, a little sappy, appears totally incongruous with the tense, oppressive temper of the scene on the display, a little bit of random irrelevance to be ignored. It isn’t meant for them.

However for Professor Lau, if he’s among the many viewers, his mind ought to routinely seize upon the stimulus, set off the retrieval of a sure long-ago reminiscence from the hippocampus, and immediate the amygdala to provide an intense emotional response.

A wet evening 10 years in the past.

I keep in mind nothing of the start of the episode. After it was throughout, my classmates knowledgeable me that after struggling a sudden breakdown, I had run out of my room and disappeared into the surprising storm, by means of the faux-antique streets, previous the buildings blurred by rain. My buddies appeared for me in every single place with out success.

As I regained consciousness, I spotted that I used to be standing exterior the library’s 24-hour school room with a jagged piece of damaged glass in my hand. The college students inside, their heads nonetheless buried in books, had no thought how near loss of life that they had come. In truth, they have been unaware of even my presence.

Professor Lau crouched earlier than me, a wan smile on his face. Blood gushed from the deep wound in his palm, dribbled down his fingertips, pooled in a deep crimson patch at his ft.

“Every thing is okay now, Ah-Kiu. I discovered you.”

He and I are the one ones to know what occurred that evening.

I may have been dedicated. I may have misplaced all the things. However he had discovered me and saved my secret. Why did he belief that there could be no additional episodes from me? Why did he consider I had stepped again from the brink of insanity?

There aren’t any solutions for some questions. Human beings are too difficult.

The arrays of glowing dots representing the ISC coefficients of the audiences in any respect three theaters mild up concurrently; like a whole bunch of twinkling blue stars, they brighten and dim in synchrony, as if respiratory. Abruptly, one dot flashes orange as an alternative of blue, however after a cut up second, it blends again into the anonymity of the arrays.

“Causeway Bay!” I sprint for the door.


It solely takes 13 minutes to get to Causeway Bay through the Cross Harbor Tunnel, so long as visitors doesn’t get in the best way, however the automobile journey appears like an eternity. On the best way, Ng Lok Tin and I make plans for each contingency. However the hardest issue of all to regulate is how Professor Lau will react upon seeing us.

“See? It’s unattainable to foretell particular person conduct as a result of even the smallest disturbance can result in main deviations.” I don’t know how Ng Lok Tin can nonetheless be in the temper for a lecture. “But once we change the size and study humanity as a collective, we will simply discern predictable patterns.”

“I hope that Professor Lau and you may proceed your debate from 10 years in the past. You might have new arguments, and little question he does too.”

Ng Lok Tin shrugs, as if to say that he’ll most undoubtedly win.

By the point we enter the theater, the credit are already rolling. Slowly, Ng Lok Tin and I search by means of the darkness, squinting on the faces in every row. All of them, half-hidden beneath helmets and bathed in a silver mild, look the identical to me. I transfer as slowly and softly as attainable; I don’t need to miss or startle the person.

Ng Lok Tin and I cease on the identical row.

Professor Lau has already eliminated his helmet; the huge display’s silver glow glistens on his naked face. He provides me a look and factors on the display.

I flip. A quote from Tête-Bêche, the novel on which In The Temper for Love is predicated, floats on the display. In French, tête-bêche refers to a pair of adjoining stamps printed upside-down relative to one another.

“He remembers these vanished years. As if wanting by means of a dusty windowpane, the previous is one thing he may see, however not contact. And all the things he sees is blurred and vague. If he may break by means of that dusty windowpane, he would return to these vanished years.”

My eyes dart again to the person, fearful that he’ll disappear into the group at any second.

As an alternative, he walks as much as us. Ng Lok Tin staggers over to hitch our reunion.

“Professor Lau, we discovered you,” I blurt out.

Within the darkness, everyone seems to be ready for the top of the movie.

Professor Lau Gim Wai smiles, as if to say, It’s not you who discovered me, however I who discovered you.

Some issues, like that orange glow deviating from a sea of blue, will be measured and ascertained. However what can’t be measured is the which means behind that glow, the wet evening, the damaged glass, the religion that insanity and sanity, deviance and conformity, can’t be so simply pinned down.

“I would like your assist,” he whispers. “DISCO is fatally flawed. Nuances of life uncared for by the algorithm are crucial in figuring out the destiny of a person—or moderately, the destiny of multitudes.”

Smiling, Ng Lok Tin and I have a look at one another. This isn’t the ending, however the starting of a new subplot.

Chen Qiufan (a.okay.a. Stanley Chan) is a science fiction author dwelling in Beijing; his novel Waste Tide will likely be revealed in English by Tor Books in 2019. Emily Jin and Ken Liu have translated many works of Chinese language science fiction, and Liu’s personal story “Byzantine Empathy” is inMIT Expertise Evaluation’s newest Twelve Tomorrows anthology.

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