The Plating Master's Bride

Andy dismantled the workbench his father had left behind. That bench had been used for over thirty years, its surface etched with patches of white spots from acid. Andy had always been reluctant to replace it, until the day he crouched down to look for a wrench that had fallen into a crack and felt a loose wooden strip under the tabletop. The secret compartment was small, containing a notebook wrapped in oil paper and a brass key. Attached to the key was a wooden tag that read "No. 2 Plant · Chrome Tank". The handwriting in the notebook was his father's. The earlier pages were filled with formulas, temperatures, and currents, no different from those Andy was familiar with. As he turned to the latter half, the writing became more scribbled. "Memory plating, third test. Tank No. 3 can remember people, not because I adjusted it well, but because there is a piece of gold in Lin Xiu's ring that hasn't completely melted. The gold remembered her, and the tank remembered the gold." "Fourth test, No. 2 Plant chrome tank. Old Zhou insisted on using waste chrome solution, saying it was low cost. I disagreed. We had an argument. That night, something happened at the No. 2 Plant." Andy's fingers stopped. The next page held a black-and-white photograph. In the photo, his father and a young woman stood by Tank No. 3. The woman wore a blue qipao and a thin ring on her hand. She smiled faintly, but her eyes were bright. On the back of the photo was a line of small writing: Lin Xiu, autumn 1994. Lily came upstairs from below, saw the photo, and froze in the doorway. "I've seen her," she said. "Not outside. In the tank. She stood at the bottom of the water, staring at me all the time." Andy held the brass key in his hand. The key was ice-cold. "That chrome tank at the No. 2 Plant," he said, "might not be dead yet."