Their Wedding Anniversary.

  It was already eight in the evening by the time Lin plated the last dish and set it on the table.

  A small, slightly wilted bouquet of roses sat in the center of the table, bought from a flower stand on his way home from work.

  He checked his phone for the third time.

  No new messages.

  The last exchange with Susan was at five that afternoon. She'd said, "That rich old guy is throwing a private dinner party. He specifically asked me to stay and help. Gonna be late coming back."

  He'd replied, "It's our anniversary today." She'd only sent back a single word: "I know."

  Lin sat down, his fingers drumming absently on the tabletop.

  He thought back to that morning before she left. Susan had been in front of the mirror, trying on that beige scarf, testing out three different ways to tie it. He'd said, "Come home early tonight." She'd just hummed "Mm-hmm," her eyes never leaving the mirror.

  The door finally opened just after nine.

  Lin looked up and saw Susan materialize in the center of the living room.

  She was wearing a black dress he'd never seen before. The cut was sharp and elegant. The scarf was still around her neck.

  She was holding a small paper bag.

  "I'm back," she said.

  Lin didn't get up. "The party's over?"

  "Just finished." Susan placed the bag on the shoe cabinet and bent down to take off her heels. "The old guy insisted I stay for dessert. Said he'd flown in a pastry chef from Paris to make it fresh. Sorry it took so long."

  She walked barefoot to the dining table and glanced at the food. "You made all this? You didn't have to wait for me. You should have eaten."

  "Anniversary," Lin said, his voice a little dry.

  Susan paused, then pulled out a chair and sat down. "I know. That's why I rushed back."

  "Three hours," Lin said. "From five to eight, I sent you six messages. You didn't reply to a single one."

  "I was busy," Susan said. "Over a dozen guests came to visit. My phone was in the staff room the whole time. I didn't have a second to look at it."

  She casually picked up a piece of bread and took a bite.

  Lin watched her.

  Her makeup was more complete than it had been when she left that morning.

  "That dress," Lin said. "New?"

  Susan's chopsticks paused for a second. "Yeah. Bought it last week. Wearing it for the first time today. Like it?"

  "Expensive?"

  "Not really." Susan looked down at her rice, eating. "Got it on sale."

  "How expensive?"

  Susan looked up. "Lin, what are you getting at?"

  "Just asking. How expensive."

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Susan put her chopsticks down with a soft clink.

  "Twenty-eight hundred," she said. "Happy now?"

  Lin didn't speak. He picked up his water glass and took a sip.

  "I bought it with my own money." Susan's voice rose a little. "My own money I earned. What's wrong with buying a dress? The tips I've made these past few months could buy several of these. Am I supposed to wear those old clothes forever while I take care of some billionaire old man?"

  "I didn't say there's anything wrong with it," Lin said. "I just notice that all you talk about now is money. Tips. Gifts. How much the dress cost. How much the scarf cost."

  "What else should I talk about?" Susan laughed, but the smile was cold. "If not money, what? Ideals? The meaning of life? Lin, how old are we? You're thirty-nine, I'm thirty-two. Did your ideals pan out? Did mine?"

  She stood up, walked to the window, and turned her back to him.

  "I was a full-time homemaker for five years. Thought we'd have a stable life. And what happened? Your projects get canceled left and right. Your income shrinks. I had to go out and work, become a caregiver, wipe some old man's ass. You know how long I threw up for after the first time I had to change his diaper?"

  "I know it's been hard on you," Lin said.

  "You don't know crap!" Susan spun around, her eyes reddening. "All you know is sitting in front of your computer writing code, writing programs nobody wants! All you know is calculating how many times we used the app this month, how much it cost! Did you ever calculate how I feel? How it feels to smile and nod every day while some old man brags about how great his life used to be?"

  Lin stood up too. "So you started enjoying it? Enjoying the scarves he gives you, the tips, the fancy dinners, the twenty-eight-hundred-dollar dress?"

  "YES!" Susan was almost shouting. "I do enjoy it! So what? At least he sees what I do for him. At least he acknowledges my hard work!"

  She walked back to the table, jabbing her finger on the surface. "And you? Seven years of marriage, what's the most expensive thing you ever bought me? That eight-hundred-dollar necklace? Or the discounted flowers on my birthday? Lin, I'm tired of it. Tired of this penny-pinching life, tired of a life where you even calculate the delivery fee for teleporting me!"

  Lin felt the blood rush to his head. "So it's my fault? My fault I'm not good enough, not rich enough, my fault you've had such a hard life?"

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  "Isn't it?" Susan stared at him. "When you were chasing me back then, what did you say? You said you'd give me a good life. Said you'd never let me suffer. And now? Seven years, and we don't even have a decent place to live. We can't even afford to have a kid! I'm thirty-two now. In a few more years, I won't even be able to work as a caregiver. What then?"

  "I'll figure something out." Lin's voice trembled.

  "You've been 'figuring' for seven years!" Tears spilled from Susan's eyes, but her expression was pure anger. "In seven years, besides getting older and more stubborn, what's changed? You even get paranoid about a delivery app, thinking it's bad, something's wrong. But this app is the one thing that made our lives a little easier! Are you that threatened by me having a slightly easier time?"

  Lin took a deep breath. "It's not that I don't want you to have an easier time. It's that... do you think this is normal? Us just teleporting back and forth? You constantly talking about what the old man gave you? We don't even have time for a real conversation anymore!"

  "That's because we don't have time!" Susan wiped her tears. "You work, I work. The app is the only way we get to see each other more! What's wrong with that? You'd rather go back to how it was? Me coming home late, you already asleep? Us barely exchanging three sentences a day? That was normal?"

  "At least that was REAL!" Lin shouted. "At least back then we'd squeeze onto the subway together, eat at street stalls together, plan our weekends together! Now? Now you're planning how to get bigger tips from that old man, how to get him to buy you more expensive things!"

  "You bastard!" Susan grabbed her water glass and hurled it to the floor.

  They stood there, breathing heavily, glaring at each other.

  The candle flames on the table flickered wildly in the agitated air.

  Several seconds of dead silence.

  Then, almost simultaneously, they both pulled out their phones.

  Lin's fingers flew across the screen. He opened "13Seconds" and typed into the search bar: "Deliver Susan back to retirement home." If she loved being at that old man's place so much, fine. Go back. Don't come back tonight.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Susan doing the same, lips pressed tight, jabbing at her screen. "Deliver Lin back to office."

  Lin hit "Confirm." The payment screen popped up.

  Susan confirmed hers too.

  Both their phone screens flickered simultaneously, then displayed the same pop-up message:

  [Two conflicting commands detected. Resolving conflict…]

  The payment screen didn't show the fingerprint scan. Instead, it started flickering wildly. Numbers and icons warped and distorted. The screen brightness fluctuated crazily. Lin tried to hit the back button, but his phone was unresponsive.

  Susan stared at her phone too, her expression shifting from anger to confusion, and then to a flicker of fear.

  "What's happening?" she said.

  Lin didn't have time to answer.

  Both phone screens went black simultaneously.

  Not the black of a shutdown. It was as if all light had been drained from them, leaving two pieces of pure, bottomless black glass.

  Then, the phones vibrated in unison and rebooted.

  The familiar startup screen appeared. The progress bar loaded. Everything seemed normal.

  But when Lin looked up, he realized their surroundings had changed.

  The dining table was gone. The candles were gone. The broken glass on the floor was gone.

  They weren't home anymore.

  They were trapped in a room with gray decor.

  It was a study. There was a bed in the middle, a sofa, a computer. The space was maybe a hundred square meters. Four doors lined the walls, but there were no windows.

  The floor was gray, like some kind of matte-finished metal, but it made no sound when you stepped on it.

  The ceiling was very high, too high to see the top, lost in the same gray void.

  The light source was unknown. It was uniform, cold, and cast no shadows.

  "Where... where is this?" Her voice trembled.

  Lin didn't answer. He walked to one of the doors and reached for the handle. Cold metal. He turned it, pushed, and stepped through.

  He was back in the study.

  He backed out, closed the door, and tried the next one. Same thing.

  "All the doors are the same," Lin said.

  "We're... trapped?" Susan turned to Lin, the anger in her eyes completely replaced by fear.

  Lin took out his phone. The signal bar was empty, but the "13Seconds" app still opened.

  The interface was normal. Search bar, order history, everything as usual.

  He tried typing: "Deliver Susan to living room at home."

  [Error: Current coordinates cannot be located.]

  He tried searching for something else: "Deliver a bottle of water to current location."

  This time it worked. The search results showed several common brands of bottled water, normal prices, delivery fee still ten dollars. He randomly selected one, clicked confirm, and paid.

  Fingerprint scan successful.

  Thirteen seconds later, a knock came from behind one of the doors. He opened it. It was the familiar girl, a bottle of mineral water appearing on the gray floor at his feet. No packaging. Just materialized out of thin air.

  She was still wearing that signature red uniform, her hat pulled low, face obscured. She just recited a single line, coldly.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting, your order has arrived."

  "Wait," Lin said before she could turn away.

  "We're trapped here," Lin said, trying to keep his voice steady. "This space, these doors. We can't get out. Can you help us contact the outside? Or tell us what we should do?"

  Susan crowded in, her voice urgent: "Yes, can you get us out of here? We can pay. Any amount."

  The delivery girl didn't respond. She stood there and repeated the line, "Sorry to keep you waiting, your order has arrived."

  Lin noticed how shallow her breathing was.

  "Can you understand us?" Lin asked again.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting, your order has arrived."

  This time, after speaking, she simply turned and walked away.

  "She's gone," Susan said, disappointment heavy in her voice. "She won't even talk to us."

  Susan looked at the water bottle, then at her own phone. She tried it too, ordering a pack of tissues. Same thing. Thirteen seconds later, tissues appeared in her hand.

  "We can order things..." she murmured. "But we can't leave."

  Lin looked around. Endless doors, endless numbers. He thought back to all the app's anomalies. That delivery person. The deliveries that defied logic. He'd always felt something was off, but he'd never imagined this.

  "It's the app," he said. "We summoned each other at the exact same time. There was a bug."

  "What do we do?" Susan's voice cracked with fear. "How do we get out? Call the police? And say what? That we got locked up by a food delivery app?"

  Lin tried dialing.

  The phone actually worked. Normal service.

  Susan stood there, hugging herself, trembling slightly.

  "Are we going to die here?" she asked.

  Lin walked back to her side. "No. The app still works. We can get food and water. We can survive."

  "For how long?" Susan looked up at him, tears finally falling. "In this place with nothing but these stupid doors? How long? A day? A year? Forever?"

  Lin had no answer.

  He opened the app again. This time he typed into the search bar: "Way to leave this place."

  The search result was empty.

  He thought for a moment, then typed: "Deliver Lin and Susan to original world."

  [Error]

  He tried just himself. Same error. Just Susan. Same thing.

  Susan was trying too. She typed "Help." The search results showed a few "Psychological Counseling Services." High prices. She gave a bitter laugh and closed the screen.

  They fell silent, only the glow of their phone screens illuminating their faces.

  After a long time, Susan whispered, "I'm sorry."

  Lin looked at her.

  "I shouldn't have said those things." Susan kept her head down, twisting her fingers together. "You're not incompetent. It's me... I was too impatient. I wanted those things too badly."

  Lin sighed. "I was wrong too. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

  Another long silence.

  "What good is apologizing now?" Susan laughed bitterly. "We can't get out."

  Lin stared at the "13Seconds" icon on his phone screen. He was silent for a few seconds, then tapped it.

  The interface was the same as always. Austerely simple.

  He scrolled. The product categories had indeed been reduced to just one: "Daily Necessities."

  He tapped it. Inside were the most basic items: drinking water, crackers, multivitamins, common medications.

  He selected two 1.5-liter bottles of water and a pack of crackers. Checked out. Total: ten dollars.

  Fingerprint confirmed.

  Thirteen seconds.

  The same robotic delivery girl.

  He closed the door and turned around. Susan was curled up on the only bed in the center of the room.

  She was crying, but trying to stifle the sound.

  Lin placed a bottle of water and the crackers on the gray nightstand beside the bed.

  "Water," he said, his voice rough.

  Susan didn't move.

  He set down the other bottle, pulled out a chair, and sat down. He took out his phone. In this space, the battery percentage didn't seem to change at all.

  Was this the legendary fourth dimension?