novelnext Chapter 90 I am a piece of paper
Chapter 90 I am a piece of paper
Chapter 90 I am a piece of paper
I am a piece of paper.
The standard 80-gram A4 copy paper is produced by a paper mill in Pennsylvania.
I have fair skin and sharp edges.
My early life was uneventful. Along with thousands of my brothers and sisters, we were squeezed into a blue wrapper and lay on a dark warehouse shelf.
Until yesterday, an order from the Pittsburgh City Government's administrative procurement office changed my life.
A truck took us to Grant Street.
We were moved into that magnificent stone building and walked through those marble-paved corridors.
Finally, I was taken to an office.
It's very busy here.
A pair of hands tore open the wrapping paper.
As the light pierced through, I saw the light of day again.
These hands are slender, but their movements are quick and powerful.
His fingers had thin calluses from years of typing on the keyboard.
I learned from other people that her name was Sarah Jenkins.
She grabbed me and my brothers and neatly stuffed us into the paper tray of a huge, high-speed laser printer.
The machine started roaring, the rollers were spinning, and I was sucked in by a force.
A heat wave is coming.
The laser swept across my body, and the carbon powder melted under the high temperature, penetrating into my fibers.
I felt the weight.
That is the weight of words.
When I slipped out of the paper dispenser and was stacked back together, I was no longer a blank sheet of paper.
Above my head was a bold, black title: "Pittsburgh City Public Infrastructure Hazard Notification".
Below is a densely packed table: Location, Damage Description, Eyewitnesses, Photo Attachments —
Sarah stood beside the printer, looking at the mountain of us.
"Five thousand copies," she said to those around her. "This is just the first batch."
The door was pushed open.
A burly man walked in.
Sarah told me that this man's name is Frank.
"Is it all here?" Frank asked.
"They're all here." Sarah pointed to the stack I was in. "Tell the brothers in the union that this is our bullets. Fill every single one, have a photo on every single one, and make sure every single one is real."
Frank reached out his rough, large hands and grabbed me.
He had a strong grip, and his hand pinched my edges until they wrinkled.
"Don't worry," Frank said. "We'll turn this city upside down."
I was stuffed into a cardboard box and thrown into the back seat of a pickup truck.
Bumpy.
Severe jolts.
The car drove out of the flat city center and headed towards the hilly area.
After an unknown amount of time, the car stopped.
The cardboard box was opened.
I was assigned to a young Black man.
He was wearing a vest with the union logo printed on it, and his eyes gleamed with a cleverness.
He led me through those narrow, dilapidated streets, past those walls covered in graffiti.
He stopped in front of an old red-brick apartment building and knocked on a peeling wooden door.
The door opened.
The person who opened the door was a man who looked to be in his thirties, wearing a faded T-shirt and holding a fork, clearly eating.
"Hello, I'm a community volunteer." The young man handed me the piece of paper with words printed on it. "6"
We're collecting information on potholes and broken streetlights in the community that haven't been repaired. If you find any, please fill out this form.
The man took me with a puzzled look.
A little oil was on his fingers, and he rubbed it onto the corner of my hand.
"Will this even work?" the man asked. "I've called the mayor's hotline eight hundred times already."
"This time is different," the young man said. "This is a task personally assigned by Mayor Rio."
The man glanced at me, said nothing, and turned back into the house.
He casually placed me on the dining table, next to a half-eaten plate of spaghetti and a bottle of beer.
The air inside was stuffy and hot, and a rugby match was playing on the television.
Who is it?
A woman's voice came from the kitchen.
"That new mayor's man." The man sat down again, forked a wad of noodles and stuffed it into his mouth. "He handed out a piece of tattered paper, saying to fill out some kind of repair application."
The woman wiped her hands and came out, picked me up, glanced at me, and then casually tossed me back onto the table.
"Hmph, Leo Wallace," the woman sneered. "He's been in power for a month now, has anything changed here? The trash on the corner is still uncollected, the streetlights are still out of order. I think he's no different from that old Cartwright, both liars."
"You can't say that," the man said, chewing his noodles, his voice slightly muffled. "He's only just started out; we need to give him some time."
"Give me time?" the woman's voice rose. "How much time have we given you? Your workers' compensation claim has been dragging on for two years! What did that clerk say to you when you went to city hall last time? He told you to go home and wait!"
"Say less," the man said, sounding annoyed.
"I'm going to say it!" The woman slammed the rag down on the table. "You even voted for him back then, and volunteered for him. And now? He's sitting in a big office, enjoying the air conditioning, and has completely forgotten about you. You're just thinking about these pointless things all day, hoping those bureaucrats will have a change of heart? That's a pipe dream!"
"Shut up!"
The man slammed his fork down on the plate with a loud bang.
He stood up, his chest heaving violently.
He looked at his incessantly nagging wife, at his cramped and dilapidated home, and at the piece of paper on the table with the black form printed on it.
An unnamed rage burned in his chest.
It was anger at his wife, anger at life, and anger at that sense of powerlessness.
He grabbed me.
He was very strong and squeezed my body into a ball.
"I'm going out for a smoke!"
He yelled and stormed out the door.
He stuffed me, all crumpled up, into his pocket.
The man stood by the streetlight below the apartment building, took out a lighter, and lit a cigarette.
Amidst the swirling smoke, his emotions gradually calmed down.
He reached into his pocket and felt the crumpled paper.
He took me out and flattened me out little by little.
He re-examined every word I had written.
"Dangerous conditions of urban public infrastructure"
Please describe in detail the security risks you have discovered.
"Every report you submit is the beginning of our efforts to improve the living environment in Pittsburgh and rebuild our homes."
The last line of smaller text was printed in handwriting; it was Leo Wallace's handwriting.
home.
The man stared at the word.
He threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out.
He pulled a ballpoint pen out of his pocket.
He looked around and his gaze settled on the sidewalk not far from him.
There was a missing manhole cover, hastily covered with just a few rotten planks.
Last week, the neighbor's child almost fell in.
The man walked to the manhole cover and squatted down.
He placed the crumpled piece of paper on his knee and uncapped the pen.
The pen tip pierced my body hard.
Location: In front of 452 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Hillside.
"Hazard: The manhole cover is missing, at a depth of approximately 2 meters."
"Danger level: Extremely high, has caused multiple near-misses."
He wrote with such force that the strokes almost tore through my skin.
These are not just words; they are his anger, his accusation, his cry to that distant city hall.
After he finished writing, he stood up.
The young union member who was handing out flyers hadn't gone far; he was talking to someone else on the street corner.
The man strode over.
He handed me to the young man.
"Here you go," the man said. "Hopefully this isn't some kind of performance art."
The young man took it from me, glanced at the contents, and nodded solemnly.
"Don't worry, boss, we're serious this time."
The young man opened his folder and stuffed me inside.
Darkness enveloped me in an instant.
I pressed myself against the cold inner wall of the folder, which began to sway violently with the young man's steps.
But this is not the end; it is only the beginning of my long journey.
The young man didn't stop to rest. He led me through the intricate and dilapidated alleyways of the hilly area. I felt every violent jolt as he climbed those cracked and uneven cement steps.
Boom, boom, boom.
That was the sound of him tirelessly knocking on one old wooden door after another.
The conversation could be heard vaguely through the black plastic cover.
There were hesitant inquiries from the elderly, angry complaints from housewives, and impatient skepticism from young people.
"The streetlights have been broken for six months, what's the point of filling out a form?"
"Those guys at the city hall have long forgotten about us!"
"Can it really be fixed? If it can't be fixed, I'll hold you accountable!"
The young man explained again and again, his voice gradually becoming hoarse and full of fatigue, but still firm.
The smell of sweat seeped through his work vest.
I followed him for most of the block, from afternoon until dusk, feeling his body temperature rise and his breathing become rapid.
In that dark mezzanine, I accompanied him as he explored every corner of this forgotten community.
The hurried footsteps finally stopped when it was completely dark.
With a "sizzle" sound.
The zipper was unzipped, and a cool breeze blew in.
I saw a dim, yellowish interior light on the car.
The young man tidied up the folder I was in and put it in a cardboard box.
There, I met countless people like me.
Some of them were stained with oil, some had traces of rain, some had messy handwriting, and some had neat and elegant handwriting.
They record the broken guardrails, the exposed wires, the rickety "GG" sign, and the roads riddled with potholes.
We came together, no longer just pieces of paper.
We are the prelude to a tsunami.
Frank stood next to a bread truck, directing everything.
"Quick! Sort these orders!"
"Send the third team to take photos of the missing manhole cover! We need high-resolution photos, and we need to include the surrounding environment!"
"Have an electrician check the exposed wire and write down the details!"
I was taken out again.
A pair of gloved hands took me and led me to the manhole cover.
"Click."
The flash went off.
A photograph was printed out.
In the photo, the dark well opening looks particularly menacing.
"Smack."
The crisp sound of the stapler.
That photo is stuck to me like glue.
Metal staples pierced my body, forever binding me to that dangerous truth.
I was repacked.
This time, it was a regular van.
The train carriage was filled with neatly stacked cardboard boxes, each labeled: Central Avenue—Severe road surface collapse; Pioneer Avenue—Streetlight malfunction; Willie Avenue—Missing manhole cover —
The car started.
We crossed the bridge, went through the tunnel, and finally stopped in front of a gray building.
Municipal Public Works Department.
Sarah was already waiting there.
She and several young employees carried our boxes down one by one.
They stamped a red seal on the upper right corner of each form.
"Supervised by the Mayor's Office"
The red ink seeped into my fibers, like a medal awarded to a soldier before he goes to war.
"Listen," Sarah said to the people around her, "we need to go through the formal process, register at the window, and get a receipt for each document. If they don't accept it, we'll take a video."
They carried us into the service hall.
The clerk inside was stunned.
They were used to processing a few or a dozen slow applications every day.
But now, they are faced with four thousand copies.
"What is this?!" the fat woman in the window stammered.
"This is the voice of the citizens." Sarah slammed the top stack—including mine—onto the counter. "You have now received the danger notification forms. Please sign for them."
The fat woman mechanically stamped and signed, her hands trembling.
I have been officially included in the system.
But it's not over yet.
I thought I would be thrown into some unknown warehouse to rot, like any other file.
But I was wrong.
A large, thick hand roughly grabbed me.
He was a middle-aged man wearing a gray suit, balding, and with a fleshy face.
Steve Wagner.
Director of the Street Maintenance Bureau, Ministry of Public Works.
At this moment, he was in a state of extreme rage.
"This is insane! Absolutely insane!"
Wagner roared.
His desk was piled high with papers like mine, and they were scattered all over the floor.
He was cornered.
"Are you trying to kill me? Fine, then I'll come settle the score with you!"
Wagner grabbed me and dozens of other unfortunate brothers in his hand and crumpled them into a ball.
He rushed out of the office.
He stormed down the corridor, ignoring his secretary's attempts to stop him, and rushed into the elevator.
Third floor.
Mayor's Office.
The door was suddenly kicked open.
Leo was sitting behind his desk, talking to Ethan.
Wagner rushed in.
He rushed to the desk, raised the crumpled piece of paper in his hand—that is, me—and slammed it hard onto Leo's shiny, tidy desk.
"Snapped!"
I was so dizzy from the fall that I lay sprawled on the table.
The dark, gaping photo of the manhole cover was right in Leo's eyes.
The handwriting on it is still clear: Danger level: extremely high.
"Wallace!"
Wagner spat out his saliva.
"What exactly do you want?!"
"Are you trying to cripple my department by sending over four thousand pieces of junk?!"
"Do you know that we simply don't have enough manpower to verify this? And we simply don't have enough money to repair it?!"
"You're causing trouble! You're disrupting administrative order!"
Leo didn't move.
He looked at the furious bureau chief, then glanced down at me on the table.
He reached out his fingers and gently smoothed out the creases on my edges.
"Rubbish?"
Leo looked up.
His eyes were cold.
"Director Wagner."
Leo pointed to the photo not far from me.
"This was written by a father in the hilly area, braving the cold wind on his way home from get off work."
"This is a trap that could take a child's life at any moment."
"You call this garbage?"
Leo stood up.
He was taller than Wagner and completely overwhelmed the obese bureaucrat in terms of presence.
"No, Director."
"This is not garbage."
"That's an order."
"This is an order from the 300,000 citizens of Pittsburgh."
Leo picked me up, stuck the paper to Wagner's chest, and tapped it with his finger.
"Now, you have two choices."
"First, take these forms and get back to your office. Figure out how to fix them."
"Secondly, you should resign now, and I'll find someone else who can fix it."
Wagner looked into Leo's eyes, which showed no sign of backing down.
He suddenly felt a wave of fear.
This was originally just a test.
In Wagner's eyes, this young man, aged between 30 and 30, although he won the election by luck and incitement, was ultimately an outsider without any foundation.
Almost a month into his tenure, apart from his two close aides, Leo has not had the opportunity to hire any department heads or place any cronies.
In Wagner's view, this was a sign of weakness, and proof of a lack of confidence.
So Wagner wanted to test the waters.
He wanted to use this outburst to establish his position and give the new mayor a hard time.
He wanted to tell Leo: Don't think that just because Leo is the mayor he can boss me around. In this little corner of the Department of Public Works, I'm still the one in charge.
He wanted to test this young man, to let him know who the real expert was in this bureaucratic system and in the area of street maintenance.
But now he realizes he was wrong.
Big mistakes.
There was no panic in Leo's eyes, but rather a condescending indifference.
Wagner suddenly realized that this was, after all, his boss.
This is the mayor of Pittsburgh who has the power to appoint and dismiss people; he can be fired immediately with just a signature.
Although in officialdom, one cannot blindly obey superiors, occasionally showing "personality" and "difficulties" is a necessary means of bargaining.
But now is clearly not a good time.
Wagner broke out in a cold sweat.
He realized that times had changed.
These scraps of paper, once considered waste paper, were transformed into bullets.
And he stood on the muzzle of a gun.
And I, quietly pressed against his chest, felt his heartbeat pause for a moment.
I am paper.
But I am heavier than steel.