The device was the size of a deck of cards and made of brushed aluminum. Frank bought it at a flea market on the edge of Duluth for fifty dollars from a guy who looked like he had found it in his mother's garage and didn't know what to do with it. The guy said it could reveal the truth about anything. Frank thought it was a joke. He bought it anyway.

He sat at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago and turned the device on.

The screen was small and green and showed three numbers: temperature, humidity, and compass direction. Frank stared at it for a minute. That was it. Temperature, humidity, and a compass. He had paid fifty dollars for a weather station and a compass.

He set the device down and picked up his coffee and drank it and it was cold and bitter and he set it down again and picked up the device and looked at it again.

The compass needle was pointing north. The temperature was forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The humidity was sixty-eight percent. Frank put the device down on the table and went to the window and looked out at the parking lot of the apartment complex and the snow that had fallen overnight and the gray sky that had fallen with it and he thought about his life and how it had gotten to this point and he thought about how he had been laid off from the factory three months ago and how his wife had stopped talking to him two months ago and how his daughter had stopped visiting one month ago and how he was sitting in a cold apartment in Duluth on a Tuesday morning drinking cold coffee and looking at a fifty-dollar weather station.

He picked up the device again.

The numbers had changed. The temperature was still forty-two. The humidity was still sixty-eight. But the compass was no longer pointing north. It was pointing at the wall behind him. Frank turned around. The wall was plain beige with a crack running diagonally from the ceiling to the floor. He looked back at the device. The compass was still pointing at the wall.

He walked over to the wall and pressed his hand against it. It was cold. He pressed harder. Nothing. He looked at the device. The compass was still pointing at the wall. Frank stood there for a long time, his hand on the cold wall, the device in his other hand, and then he went back to the table and sat down and picked up his cold coffee and drank it.

The device changed that afternoon.

Frank was sitting in his apartment, watching a baseball game on a television that had static in the upper left corner, when the device on the coffee table beeped. It was a small sound, barely audible over the static, but Frank heard it. He looked at the device. The screen was no longer showing temperature and humidity and compass. It was showing text.

Your wife does not love you anymore.

Frank stared at the screen. He read the words three times. Your wife does not love you anymore. He set the device down on the coffee table and picked up his beer and drank it and set it down and picked up the device again and read the words again.

Your wife does not love you anymore.

He thought about Karen. He thought about the way she had stopped talking to him two months ago, not with an argument or a fight or a slamming door, but with a slow and steady withdrawal that had been more terrifying than any argument. She had stopped asking him where he was at night. She had stopped cooking his favorite meals. She had stopped touching him. She had moved from the bedroom to the couch and had not come back.

He thought about the device. He thought about the fifty dollars he had paid for it. He thought about the guy at the flea market who had said it could reveal the truth about anything.

He picked up the device and looked at the screen. The text had changed.

Your boss was afraid of you.

Frank frowned. He had been laid off three months ago. Mr. Henderson had come to his desk on a Friday afternoon and told him that the position was being eliminated and that he should fill out the paperwork and that he was sorry and that he had enjoyed working with him and that Frank would find something else and that Frank had just nodded and filled out the paperwork and gone home and sat in his car in the parking lot for an hour and then gone home and sat at his kitchen table and picked up a device at a flea market and paid fifty dollars for a weather station and a compass and a thing that told him his wife did not love him and his boss had been afraid of him.

He picked up the device again. The text had changed.

Your daughter is ashamed of you.

Frank set the device down. He stood up. He walked to the window. He looked out at the parking lot and the snow and the gray sky. His daughter lived in Minneapolis now. She visited maybe once a month, and when she visited, she stayed for an hour and then she left and she always left early and she always had an excuse—work, traffic, something—something that was not really an excuse but was close enough.

He stood at the window for a long time. When he turned around, the device was on the coffee table, its green screen glowing in the dim light of the apartment. He walked over to it and picked it up and looked at the screen.

The screen was blank.

Frank stared at the blank screen for a long time. Then he set the device down and went to the kitchen and made a new cup of coffee and watched the water boil and poured it over the grounds and waited for it to drip and poured himself a cup and carried it back to the living room and sat down and picked up the device and looked at the screen.

The screen was still blank.

He turned the device off. He set it on the coffee table. He drank his coffee. He watched the baseball game on the static television. He sat in his apartment in Duluth on a Tuesday afternoon and drank cold coffee and watched a baseball game with static in the upper left corner and the device sat on the coffee table, its screen blank, and Frank thought about the words it had shown him and he thought about whether they were true and he thought about whether it mattered if they were true and he thought about how he did not know anymore and how that was the worst thing he had ever thought.

The device showed him more truths over the next week.

Your neighbors moved away because they pity you. Your apartment is colder than it should be because you stopped paying the heating bill. Your shoes have a hole in the left one and you have not noticed. The coffee you drink every morning is the cheapest brand and it tastes like burnt dirt. You have not called your sister in two years. You eat alone every night. You watch television because you are afraid of silence.

Frank read each truth and set the device down and sat in his chair and stared at the wall and read the next truth when the device showed it. He did not argue with the device. He did not throw it. He did not try to return it. He just read the truths and sat in his chair and stared at the wall and read the next truth.

The truths got worse.

You are afraid of being alone. You have been alone for two months. You do not know how to be with people. You do not know how to be by yourself. You are afraid of the truth. You are reading the truth right now. The truth is not making you stronger. The truth is making you weaker. You knew all of this already. You knew it before you bought the device. You knew it before you got laid off. You knew it before Karen stopped talking to you. You knew it before your daughter stopped visiting. You knew it before you came to this apartment. You knew it before you were born.

Frank set the device down. He stood up. He walked to the window. He looked out at the parking lot and the snow and the gray sky. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes and stood there for a long time.

When he opened his eyes, the device was on the coffee table, its green screen glowing in the dim light. He walked over to it and picked it up and looked at the screen.

The screen was blank.

Frank turned the device off. He walked to the door. He opened it. He stepped into the hallway. He walked down the hallway to the elevator. He took the elevator down to the lobby. He walked out of the building into the cold air. He walked across the parking lot to his car. He got in the car. He sat in the car for a minute with the engine off and the heater off and the windows fogged with his breath.

He drove.

He drove north on Highway 53, past the edge of Duluth, past the iron range, past towns he had never heard of, past forests and lakes and snow-covered fields and sky that was the same gray as it had been all week. He drove until the gas light came on and he pulled into a gas station in a town called Grand Marais and bought a tank of gas and a coffee from the convenience store and got back in the car and drove until he found a motel with a sign that said VACANCY in flickering neon letters and he paid for a room for one night and went inside and sat on the bed and took off his shoes and noticed the hole in the left one and put the shoes back on and picked up the device from his pocket and looked at the screen.

The screen was blank.

Frank set the device on the nightstand. He lay down on the bed. He stared at the ceiling. The ceiling was white and cracked and had a water stain in the shape of Florida. He stared at it for a long time.

He fell asleep.

He woke up in the middle of the night. The motel room was dark except for the neon VACANCY sign outside the window, casting a red glow across the ceiling. Frank lay on his back and stared at the red ceiling and listened to the silence.

The silence was loud.

It was the loudest thing he had ever heard. It filled the room like water fills a bathtub, and it pressed against his ears and his chest and his skull, and it was so loud that he could not think, could not move, could not breathe, and he reached for the device on the nightstand and turned it on and looked at the screen.

The screen was blank.

Frank turned the device off. He lay on the bed in the red darkness and listened to the silence and he realized that the device had not been showing him truths. The device had been showing him things he already knew. The device had not been revealing anything. The device had been reflecting. It had been a mirror. And the truths it had shown him were not truths that the device knew. They were truths that Frank already knew and had been afraid to look at.

The device was not a truth machine. It was a mirror.

And mirrors do not lie.

Frank turned the device on again. He looked at the screen. The screen was blank. He pressed the button. The screen showed text.

What is the purpose of the universe?

Frank stared at the screen. He read the words once. He read them again. He read them a third time.

What is the purpose of the universe?

He thought about it. He thought about it the way he thought about everything—slowly and carefully and without hurry, because he did not have any hurry left in him. He thought about the factory and the layoffs and Karen and the cold apartment and the cold coffee and the hole in his shoe and the static on the television and the gray sky and the snow and the red neon sign and the silence and the device and the mirror and the truths and the things he already knew.

He thought about the purpose of the universe.

And he thought: I don't know. How should I know?

The screen changed.

I don't know. How should I know?

Frank stared at the screen. The words were his words, reflected back at him, exactly as he had thought them. The device was a mirror. It was showing him his own thoughts. It had been showing him his own thoughts the whole time. Your wife does not love you anymore. Your boss was afraid of you. Your daughter is ashamed of you. You are afraid of being alone. You do not know how to be with people. You do not know how to be by yourself. You are afraid of the truth.

His own thoughts, reflected back at him, and he had believed them because they came from a machine and not from himself.

Frank set the device down on the nightstand. He turned it off. He lay back on the bed. He stared at the red ceiling. He listened to the silence.

And for the first time in two months, the silence was not loud.

It was just silence.

In the morning, Frank checked out of the motel. He drove back to Duluth. He drove through the parking lot of his apartment complex and found a spot and got out of the car and walked into his building and took the elevator up to his floor and opened the door to his apartment and went inside and sat at his kitchen table and picked up the device and looked at the screen.

The screen was blank.

Frank turned the device off. He picked up a garbage bag from under the sink. He walked to the bedroom and picked up his shoes and looked at the hole in the left one and put them in the bag. He walked to the kitchen and picked up the cold coffee pot and poured it down the sink and put it in the bag. He walked to the living room and picked up the device and looked at it for a minute and put it in the bag. He walked to the bathroom and picked up the cheap beer and the burnt-dirt coffee and the television remote and the magazines he had been meaning to read and the socks with holes in the toes and put them all in the bag.

He tied the bag and carried it to the door and walked out of the apartment and took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out of the building and walked across the parking lot to the dumpster behind the building and opened the lid and dropped the bag inside and closed the lid.

He walked back to his car and got in and started the engine and turned on the heater and watched the defroster work on the windshield and waited for the snow to melt.

When the windshield was clear, Frank drove south on Highway 53, past the edge of Duluth, past the iron range, past towns he had never heard of, past forests and lakes and snow-covered fields and sky that was still gray but was starting to lighten at the horizon, a thin line of pale blue where the sun would rise if it felt like rising.

Frank did not know if the sun felt like rising.

He did not know what was going to happen next. He did not know if he would find another job. He did not know if Karen would come back. He did not know if his daughter would visit again. He did not know how to be with people or how to be by himself or whether the truth was making him stronger or weaker or whether it mattered.

He did not know.

And for the first time in two months, not knowing did not feel like a weight.

It felt like space.

It felt like room to breathe.

Frank drove south and the sky got lighter and the snow got thinner and the trees got fewer and the fields got bigger and he did not know what was ahead of him and he did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing and he decided that he did not care.

He did not know.

And that was enough.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- OTMES v2 Objective Tensor Codes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Work: Cold Truth (V-05 Dirty Realism) Code: OTMES-v2-CTH-05-E4A1C7-E0658-M1-T0270-B3F6 TI: 65.80 (T3 殉情级) Dominant Mode: M1 (Tragedy=7.0) Direction Angle: 270 (存在虚无型) Tensor Profile: (M1_悲剧=7.0, M4_诗意=1.0, K1_感性=0.90, R_救赎=0.05, M8_科幻=2.0, N1_主动=0.30) ----------------------------------------------------------------------