Don't go to the moon, there are gods on the far side of the moon.

Number zero appears on all night shift schedules in the space city.

It's not a single error, nor is it a batch error from the same system.

In the delayed maintenance records of hospitals, exhibition halls, the western suburban ground station, Tianheng headquarters, and even the moon's far side lighthouse, there is an extra gray name column.

[Temporary Duty Officer: Zero.]

[Start time: 03:17.]

There were no photos, no identification, and no training records. The personnel number was only one digit, the emergency contact person was blank, and the department was listed as "on-site." Yet, every form bore the official seal of the organization, and the dates, seams, and processing formats were all different.

The hospital's handover logbook, pressed against the nurses' station, had its blue stamp smudged by the lingering disinfectant from the previous page; the exhibition hall used an old version of the clock that had been discontinued three years ago; the clock in the western suburbs had oil stains on its edge, and half a cup bottom mark remained in the lower right corner. The records of the moon's far side lighthouse were even earlier; based on the time delay, number zero had already been uploaded before it was discovered on the ground.

The technician first disconnected from the external network, dragged the four files into a read-only environment, and compared the creation time, modification logs, and electronic signatures layer by layer. After the progress bar finished, he stared at the results for a long time without saying a word.

"The seal is genuine, and the documents haven't been altered."

Qin Lan asked, "What about adding a new line?"

"It's not a new addition." The technician zoomed in on the version tree. "The system shows that this duty officer has existed since the form was created. It was in the initial version, it was in the archived version, and last night's automatic verification also recognized it. It's like everyone has seen it over the past few months, but only remembered it today."

Xu Wangshu told him to stop using the word "existence".

"It only records what we found. Just because the file acknowledges its existence doesn't mean someone was there."

She pulled up the paper backup.

It's also on paper.

The ink aging in the "Zero" column was consistent with the other characters, the paper fibers showed no signs of secondary scratching, and no covering was visible under ultraviolet light. The one from the western suburbs was the most troublesome; next to the name column, there was even Zhou Jianguo's fingerprint from machine oil, with the lines of his fingertip clearly pressing over the bottom edge of the character "Zero".

After looking at the photos in his repair truck, Old Zhou immediately cursed, "I didn't put my fingerprints on this thing."

Chen Rui subconsciously glanced at his master's hands. Zhou Jianguo's hands had just finished repairing a kettle socket, and indeed, his fingernails were covered in the same color of black paint. Noticing Chen Rui's gaze, he grabbed a tissue and wiped them a couple of times, but the more he wiped, the blacker they became.

"What are you looking at? The fingerprints are real, and so am I."

"It didn't forge your fingerprints," Xu Wangshu said. "It inserted itself into the past that the fingerprints prove. Your hand pressed on this paper, that hasn't changed; what has changed is what the paper now claims you pressed on back then."

The car fell silent.

Chen Rui tucked his employee ID card into his collar, as if afraid that someone else's photo would suddenly appear on it.

The outside world is completing its personnel procedures.

Moreover, it doesn't create a fake set of documents out of thin air. It borrows real official seals, real processing records, and real shift handovers to fill in those "assumed-to-be-handed" blanks. The more inconspicuous the position, the fewer people will recall it word by word.

Wen Zhaolin's face was grim: "The duty officers don't have high privileges, but all doors acknowledge that they can be inspected. Hospital duty officers can make rounds, exhibition hall duty officers can open equipment cabinets, and ground station duty officers can enter maintenance areas. The most dangerous thing about the old system wasn't the highest level of privileges, but the default privileges that nobody paid attention to."

The highest level of access requires approval for each call. This varies depending on the duty officer.

He could say he just wanted to take a look, that he could arrive at the scene before the police are called, or that he could carry the key to check the lock. The procedure didn't give him an order to open the door, but rather a string of reasons sufficient to approach it.

"Delete them first," Qin Lan said. "Only delete the identity records, don't touch the other staff on duty."

The technician created an offline copy and manually confirmed each node. The first table was successfully deleted, and the name field was returned to blank. Less than two seconds later, the second table automatically extended down one row.

The original duty officer was absent, and a temporary substitute was assigned to fill in.

The technician deleted it again.

The hospital's handover log then added a note: "The original staff member is unwell." The exhibition hall's log stated: "Temporary emergency equipment alarm triggered." The western suburbs log noted: "Road closed, official personnel unable to arrive."

Each deletion completed a layer of the reason for the substitute shift. By the fourth time, the system had even generated a handover process and risk statement, only lacking the signature of the person involved.

Qin Lan raised her hand to stop it: "Don't complete the document for it."

"We can't leave it an empty space," Xu Wangshu said.

Number zero doesn't need to prove who it is. It only needs to prove that the original person is not there. As long as the position is recognized as vacant, "temporary replacements" will gain legitimacy according to human management rules.

Xu Wangshu requested that each node reconfirm the actual person on duty at 03:17, but not just write down their name and position. Everyone must specify where they are, what they are doing, the boundaries of their work, and when they will leave; write down what can be verified at present, not what they remember should have happened.

The hospital nurse wrote: I was checking the IV drip at bed number three, wearing two gloves on my left hand, and did not need to go to the end of the corridor; after this round of dressing changes, I handed over the shift to Liu Min face-to-face.

A security guard at the exhibition hall wrote: "I was eating instant noodles at the west gate guard post, and a tooth on my fork broke off. I did not check the model display cases. The cleaning truck left the area after arriving at the east gate."

The security guard at Tianheng headquarters took a picture of the table for his record. The photo showed half a bucket of lumpy noodles, a glove that couldn't be matched, and a voice message from his daughter asking if he could buy soy milk tomorrow morning.

Zhou Jianguo wrote: I'm in the repair truck, sitting in the driver's seat, the door locked. The manhole cover is the manhole cover, the shift is the shift, I won't get out of the truck until the next shift comes.

Chen Rui leaned over and added: "Master, there's no ham in your instant noodles, that's definitely him."

"Are you very free?" Zhou Jianguo asked him sideways.

"Add details to daily life."

"Then add one more thing: you ate the ham this afternoon."

Chen Rui really wrote it. Someone in the channel chuckled, but quickly suppressed it.

This content is unlike any archive. It lacks a standardized format and cannot be directly imported into the attendance system, yet it is the most difficult thing to forge, despite its unique number. It can occupy a position, but it cannot simultaneously occupy the two layers of gloves that cause a nurse's pain, the fork with broken teeth that a security guard uses, or the sausage that Zhou Jianguo has been memorizing for half a day.

Jobs are blank spaces, but life isn't.

Qin Lan then had two people cross-verify each point, but the verifiers only confirmed the current situation and did not verify the past for the other party. When the nurses at the nurses' station saw the IV drip rate of bed number three, they simply wrote "person by the bedside"; when the observer outside the maintenance vehicle saw the door closed, he only reported that there were two figures behind the glass and did not comment on the old watch stained with engine oil.

The name numbered zero did not disappear, but the gray color faded slightly.

Inside the toolbox, after listening to the entire report, Lin Jibai said in a low voice, "Check if it's off duty yet."

The technician was taken aback; his hand had already stopped on the delete key.

"There should be a record of leaving any temporary position." Qin Lan understood. "Check the departure, handover, and working hours."

The search results quickly filled the screen. Number zero only had on-duty status, not off-duty status; only shift handover, not shift handover status. It remained "on duty" after the hospital's shift cycle ended, maintained inspection authority after the exhibition hall closed, and its status remained unchanged even after the lunar far side lighthouse crossed two terrestrial dates.

Like a line without a right boundary.

Lin Jibai knocked on the side of the box: "Only going to work and never leaving get off work, can that be human?"

Lu Chenggong said, "They could also be employees of Tianheng."

There was a half-second of silence in the main control room.

Wen Qingyue looked at him coldly: "Tianheng has already adjusted its overtime system."

"That's good." Lu Chengong moved the broken bow closer to the chair. "At least the strangeness is more obvious now."

Xiaoman squatted beside the toolbox, wiping away the water that had condensed on the connector. She wrote down the time Lin Jibai had just spoken in the nursing record, and added: "He was conscious and would make sarcastic remarks."

"I can see it," Lin Jibai said.

"This is also my current state."

Based on this, Xu Wangshu added the following rules: any on-duty personnel who cannot explain their status, work boundaries, and exit time will not be granted on-site access; an entry record alone does not constitute proof of being on duty; positions without handover personnel will remain suspended and will not be automatically transferred to temporary staff.

The technician broke the rules down into independent instructions, deliberately omitting the number zero when issuing them to prevent the system from treating the new restrictions as part of its job description. Each node first froze the "default inspection," then gradually opened them to the people who could be identified at the moment.

On the screen, the electronic seal numbered zero showed a thin crack from its edge.

The paper form also made a very soft, crisp sound. The corner of the hospital's blue stamp, which had blurred, peeled off on its own, revealing the unstamped white paper underneath; in the photo from the western suburbs, the oily fingerprints on the word "zero" were still there, but the words began to bleed as if they had become damp.

Chen Rui stared at the screen: "Is it afraid of getting off work?"

"It fears boundaries," Xu Wangshu said. "Being on duty is temporarily guarding someone for a period of time. If there is no person before it begins and no person after it ends, then it is not a duty officer, but just something that borrows the position to get close to the door."

At 03:12, footsteps were heard outside the main control room door.

First two steps, then a pause, then three more. The soles of his shoes seemed wet, each step bringing him closer than the last. The corridor surveillance camera was blank, the overhead lights were unobstructed, yet the sensor-activated floor tiles lit up sequentially, and the access control screen simultaneously displayed a notification.

[Temporary duty officer Ling has swiped his card and entered the outer corridor.]

The technician retrieved the card swipe records. The card number, issuer, and expiration date were all blank, yet the pass result was green. There was no shadow outside the door, nor any breathing sound; only footsteps walked to the door and stopped abruptly.

Lu Chengong reached out and pressed down on the broken bow, not picking it up. Wen Qingyue flipped the newly unlocked control access card back onto the table. Xiaoman stood up, her body blocking the toolbox and the door, but Xu Wangshu gently pulled her half a step away.

"Don't stand in the position it assigned."

The doorknob was pressed down gently once.

It wasn't a sudden slam; it was more like a night patrolman checking the door lock to make sure it was working properly. The metal spring made a short click, and then the handle slowly returned to its original position.

Qin Lan raised her hand: "Report what happened on site. Everyone reports their own account, don't speak for others."

"I'm at the control panel, hands off the door open button."

Xu Wangshu said, "I'm on the right side of the medical chair, taking notes. I don't receive inspections."

Xiaoman glanced down at the indicator light on the box: "I was next to the toolbox, I finished wiping with water, and I didn't touch the door."

Lu Chengong said, "I'm three meters inside the door, and the bow is on the ground."

Lin Jibai's voice came from inside the toolbox: "I'm in the toolbox. Work injury. I'm not responsible for the entire universe's night shift for the time being."

The footsteps outside the door stopped.

No one asked "Who's outside?" or demanded the other person's name through the door. Inquiries would acknowledge the presence of a qualified person standing outside. The technician only recorded that the doorknob had shifted seven degrees, the door lock hadn't disengaged, and no one was visible on the hallway security camera.

After about ten seconds, the green light on the access control went out.

At 03:14, all gray duty rosters were refreshed simultaneously.

The cracked seal was not restored, but a new note appeared below it.

[All scheduled staff members are absent from their posts.]

[Zero will complete the door-to-door confirmation at 03:17.]

Everyone was in the main control room, the hospital nurses were still tending to the IV drips, and two figures were clearly sitting behind the window of the repair truck in the western suburbs. But in the table's description, they were all absent.

Xu Wangshu enlarged the four characters "confirmed inside the door".

It's not there to keep watch for anyone.

It first writes that all the real people didn't come, and then, as the only one on duty, proves what's inside the door.

Xiaoman looked up: "It's trying to prove that none of us came."