Liu Chen felt peculiar.
Here he stood, with just the clothes on his back. A crowd of strangers stared back at him, with expressions ranging from curiosity to calculation.
"New arrival!" someone had called out. Within moments, he'd been surrounded by people, trying to sell him things at "special first-day rates."
"Genuine jade figurines! Perfect heirloom quality!" "Gold ingots at half market value!" "This is premium real estate—trade you a palace for your shirt!"
Chen backed away, overwhelmed. "I—I don't have any money."
The crowd burst into laughter, of a mean-spirited sort. Chen thought he heard some jeers.
"That’s enough, everyone!” a kind-faced elderly woman yelled. As the crowd began to disburse, she turned to him. “Check your pockets."
Confused, Chen reached into his jacket. There, he found a thick stack of colorful notes. The denominations were astronomical—hundred-million-dollar bills, and billion-yuan notes.
"Where did these come from?" he asked.
"You must be very loved," the elderly woman said. "I'm Jun. Let me show you around, before you make any bad investments."
As they walked down a street paved with gold, lined with palaces and luxury vehicles, Chen's confusion deepened. Everything gleamed, and yet, something felt profoundly wrong.
"What is this place?" he finally asked.
Jun smiled. "What do you think it is?"
"Some kind of... exclusive community? A high-end resort?"
"It's more permanent than that," Jun replied. "Don't you remember anything about getting here?"
Chen tried to recall, but his memories felt clouded, just out of reach. There had been pain, then bright lights, and then voices that he couldn't quite make out.
"The important thing," Jun continued, "is understanding how things work here. For instance, that money in your pocket—it's nearly worthless."
"Worthless? But these are billion-yuan notes!"
"Everyone has those. What we don't have are the basics." She gestured toward a plaza ahead, where a crowd had gathered. "That's where the real economy happens."
Wei Lin had been tracking The Market for decades. Her small apartment overlooked the main trading floor—an advantage she'd secured through careful investment and timely acquisitions. She recorded each day's rates meticulously on a ream of silk, seeking patterns that others missed.
"It's happening again," she muttered, circling a figure in gold dust. "The Huang Convergence."
She had named this pattern herself. Every seven years or so, the same economic anomaly appeared: certain goods plummeting while others skyrocketed. Lin had predicted it three times now, each prediction more accurate than the last.
A knock at her door. Her assistant, Bao, carried the day's acquisitions—a small wooden comb and half a bar of simple soap, wrapped carefully in silk.
"Did anyone see you?" Lin asked.
"No, Teacher. I used the service corridors as instructed."
Lin nodded and placed the items in her safe—a simple metal box that would have been worthless elsewhere but was, here, worth more than the building that contained it.
"The Convergence is accelerating," she said. "We should move up our timeline."
Jun waited calmly, as Chen got his bearings. The Market could be bewildering, for new arrivals.
Chen watched in bewilderment. A man exchanged what looked like a solid gold statue for a package of rice. A woman frantically offered a gleaming sports car for bed linens.
"I don't understand," Chen said. "Why would anyone make these trades?"
Jun guided him to a quieter corner. "What do you remember about paper offerings?"
"Paper offerings? You mean like at funerals, when people burn paper money and paper houses for the dead to use in—" Chen stopped, the implication suddenly clear. His hand went to his chest, searching for a heartbeat he realized was no longer there.
"This can't be... I'm not..."
"You arrived today," Jun said gently. "Your family was very generous. But they did what all the living do—sent wealth and luxury, not understanding that our economy works differently."
Chen looked around with new eyes. "So all these mansions and cars..."
"Burned as offerings. Just like your money."
"But why are simple things so valuable?"
Jun smiled sadly. "When was the last time you saw someone ceremoniously burn a paper toothbrush for their ancestors?"
Chen had adapted quickly. He’d traded his billions, and most importantly, his jacket, for a modest room and basic necessities. He had learned to navigate this peculiar inverted economy, and, over the last six months, had found modest success in making trades himself.
One day, Jun showed up at his door. "Come with me. I want to introduce you to Lin Wei."
"Lin Wei? Isn’t she one of the conspiracy theorists?" Chen asked. People will be people, Chen thought, dead or alive.
Jun nodded. "Don’t sell her short. Lin Wei has been studying the Market longer than anyone. Most think she's eccentric, but her predictions have been uncannily accurate."
They entered a building overlooking the Market. Unlike the ostentatious structures that dominated the landscape, this one was deliberately understated.
Lin Wei was older than Chen had expected, with sharp, steely eyes that scanned him head-to-toe.
"You worked in finance," she said. Not a question.
"How did you know?"
"The way you've been trading. Strategic. Most newcomers panic and sell. They don’t take the time to understand the Market." She gestured to her charts. "What do you see?"
Chen studied the complex graphs covering her walls. Despite their otherworldly context, he recognized economic patterns.
"Market manipulation," he said finally. "These aren't natural fluctuations."
Lin smiled for the first time. "Exactly. Now let me show you what I've discovered about who's behind it, and how the barrier between worlds is thinner than anyone realizes."
She opened her safe and removed the wooden comb. "Read the engravings."
As Chen peered at the microscopic text, the final pieces fell into place—his memories of his last living day, the economic research he'd been conducting, and the powerful people who had wanted that research suppressed.
"I know these names," he whispered. "I was investigating them when I..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
"When you died," Lin completed. "Yes. And now you're going to help us disrupt their operation. Because it turns out, the dead can influence the living too—in ways they never anticipated when they created this artificial scarcity."
Outside, the Market loudspeakers announced new exchange rates. Gold bricks were now trading at an all-time low: one brick for a single sheet of paper.
The revolution was about to begin.
Yesterday was 清明节, or “grave-sweeping festival.” It’s Chinese tradition in which families visit ancestral tombs, sweep the graves, and burn offerings so their ancestors might enjoy stacks of cash in heaven. I thought this would be an interesting premise for my first dip into creative writing!
hahahah eagerly awaiting a sequel