The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  The morning sun was peeking over the ridge, painting the valley in gold.

  “Let’s call it Sunland!” Huahua said, and after unanimous approval, added, “We need to paint a flag.”

  So the children found a piece of white canvas among the supplies, and Huahua took a thick marker from his schoolbag and drew a circle with it. “That’s a sun. Who’s got a red one, so we can fill it in.”

  “Won’t that be the Japanese flag?” a child asked.

  Xiaomeng took the marker and drew a pair of large eyes and a laughing mouth on the sun, and added radiating lines for rays of light. The children approved of this flag. In the Supernova Era, this clumsily artful flag was preserved in the National History Museum as a priceless historic artifact.

  “And a national anthem?”

  “Let’s use the song of the Young Pioneers.”

  When the sun had fully cleared the mountains, the children held a flag-raising ceremony in the center of their land.

  After the ceremony, Zhang Lin asked Huahua, “Why did you first think of setting out a flag and anthem?”

  “A country needs them as . . . ​a symbol. The students have to be able to see the country in order for us to cohere.”

  Zhang Lin made a few notes in his notebook.

  “Did we do something wrong?” a child asked.

  “Like I said before, you will be making all the decisions. You do things as you see fit. My duty is to observe, but never to interfere.” Then to Zheng Chen, he said, “That goes for you, too, Ms. Zheng.”

  *

  Next, the children elected national leaders, choosing Huahua, Specs, and Xiaomeng in a painless process. Huahua had Lü Gang form a military, for which twenty-five children volunteered. Twenty of them received submachine guns, and Lü Gang consoled the five who were furious at not getting any that the guns would be rotated over the next few days. Xiaomeng appointed Lin Sha as health minister and put her in charge of all medication in their provisions, and of treating any patients. The children decided that other state institutions would be set up as needed.

  Then they started to settle into their new territory. They cleared some space and went to work on the tents, but when a few kids entered the first one they set up, it collapsed on top of them and they had a tough time digging their way out of the canvas. But they were enjoying it. By noontime, they had managed to erect a few tents and move the cots inside, basically settling the lodging issue.

  Before they started making lunch, Xiaomeng suggested that they ought to take an inventory of all food and water and come up with a detailed plan for its daily use: conserve on food the first two days, since once land clearing began, their workload would increase and they would need to eat more. And they had to keep in mind that if agriculture ran into problems, there would be delays in getting food from the directorate. The children had worked up a considerable appetite over the course of the morning and were quite upset that they couldn’t dig in immediately, but Xiaomeng patiently explained the situation to them as best she could.

  Zhang Lin stood quietly off to the side watching all of this, making more notes in his notebook.

  After lunch, the children visited their neighbors to barter a few excess tents and tools to bolster their limited food supply, and took stock of their surroundings. Upstream from them was the Galactic Republic, downstream was Giant Country. Opposite them was Emailand, bordered upstream by Caterpillaria, and downstream by Blue Flower Land, both taking their names from local flora and fauna. There were eighteen other microcountries in the valley, but they were far enough away that the children weren’t much interested in them.

  The next day and two nights were the golden age for this valley world. The children overflowed with enthusiasm for the new life. On day two, all countries began clearing land on the hillside with simple tools—shovels and hoes—and carried water from the river in plastic buckets to irrigate the land. At night, campfires sprang up all along the riverbank, and the valley echoed with the children’s songs and laughter. It was a veritable pastoral wonderland out of a fairy tale.

  But the fairy tale soon evaporated as gray reality returned to the valley.

  As the novelty wore off, the pace of land-clearing declined. Children returned from work utterly exhausted and collapsed into their cots as soon as they were back in their tents. No longer were there nighttime fires and singing in the valley. Silence reigned.

  The resource gap between the countries was becoming apparent. Though they weren’t far apart, some countries had rich, soft land that was easy to cultivate, while in others, the rocky ground refused to give up much usable land even after strenuous effort. Sunland was among the most barren, but even worse than the extremely poor quality of the hillside soil was the fact that their riverbank was incredibly broad. The directorate had stipulated that the level floodplain could only be used as residential land, and all cultivation had to be done on the hillside. Any cultivation on the floodplain would be excluded from the count. In some countries, the hillside was so close to the river that a chain of children could pass water buckets up for irrigation, a great labor-saving strategy. But Sunland’s wide floodplain meant a huge distance between the river and the hillside, so individuals had to tire themselves out carrying buckets up on their own.

  Then Specs made a proposal: Dam the river with large stones. The water could still flow over or between the stones, but the water level would be raised. Then a pit could be dug at the base of the hillside, and a small channel cut to bring in river water. So Sunland transferred ten hard workers to undertake the project. No sooner had it started, however, than it met with fierce protests from Giantland and Blue Flower Land downstream, and despite Specs’s repeated explanations that the dam would raise the river level without blocking its flow, thus posing no threat to the downstream flow rate or water level, the two countries were staunch in their opposition. Huahua maintained that they should ignore the protests and proceed with the project. But Xiaomeng, after careful consideration, decided that they ought to work on improving relations with their neighbors, taking the long view so as not to lose out on bigger things for short-term gains. The river was a shared resource for all countries in the valley, so anything involving it was a sensitive matter. Sunland ought to work on establishing a favorable reputation.

  Specs approached the issue from a strength standpoint, and although Lü Gang insisted that the army could guarantee national security in the case of a conflict with their downstream neighbors, he noted that it was irrational to recklessly provoke conflict with two countries at once. And so Sunland abandoned its original plan. Without building a dam, a channel twice as deep was dug, bringing far less water to the pit at the foot of the hill than originally intended. But it substantially increased the efficiency of cultivation nonetheless.

  Sunland seemed to have caught the directorate’s eye; another observer was now stationed next to Zhang Lin.

  All manner of conflicts and disputes increased dramatically in the valley on the fourth day, mostly sparked by resource allocation and bartering. The children had little facility or patience for conflict resolution, and so shots began to ring out. Still, the conflicts remained limited in scale and had not spread to the entire valley. The situation remained relatively stable in Sunland’s vicinity, but a conflict sparked by drinking water on the seventh day would completely upset this stability.

  River water was stale and undrinkable, and although a quantity of drinking water had been included among the provisions, it was unevenly distributed, leaving some countries with ten or more times as much water as others, a difference far greater than any of the other provisions and clearly done by design. Cultivation figures could only be redeemed for food, not water, so by the fifth day, water had become a critical question for national survival, and hence a focal point for conflict.

  Among the five countries in Sunland’s region, the Galactic Republic had the largest share of water, nearly ten times the others. Caterpillaria, across the river, was the first to run ou
t. Its children were wasteful and shortsighted, and even used drinking water to wash up when they were too lazy to fetch water from the river, eventually landing themselves in this predicament. Their only option was to hold talks with their opposite neighbor and propose bartering for water, but the Galactic Republic countered with an unacceptable solution: Caterpillaria had to trade its land for water.

  That night, Sunland was informed by a child from Emailand that Caterpillaria had demanded a loan of guns, ten of them, as well as ammunition, threatening to attack if the loan was denied. Caterpillaria reckoned that with thirty-seven soldiers, its military was strong enough to take on Emailand, which had few military-minded children and wouldn’t put up much of a fight. Not wanting trouble, Emailand reached a favorable agreement with Caterpillaria and lent them the weapons. Shots rang out at midday in Caterpillaria as its soldiers practiced shooting.

  Sunland called an emergency State Council meeting where Huahua laid out the situation: “Caterpillaria is certain to start a war against the Galactic Republic. Looking at military power alone, the Galactic Republic is bound to lose, and will be taken over by Caterpillaria. Caterpillaria has a large expanse of fertile hillside, and it will be especially powerful with the Galactic Republic’s drinking water and weapons. That means trouble for us, sooner or later. We should prepare for sooner.”

  Xiaomeng said, “We should form an alliance with Emailand, Giant Country, and Blue Flower Land.”

  Huahua said, “If that’s our approach, then we should include the Galactic Republic in the alliance before war breaks out. That way Caterpillaria won’t risk starting a war.”

  Specs shook his head. “Balance of power is a basic principle of the world order. You’re violating that principle.”

  “Would you mind explaining that, professor?”

  “An alliance is only stable when facing a threat comparable in strength. It will dissolve when faced with a threat that’s too big or too small. The countries farther upstream are too far away, so the six of us form a relatively independent system. If the Galactic Republic joins the alliance, Caterpillaria has no one to ally with and is the absolute weakest power, posing no threat to the alliance. So the alliance will dissolve. Besides, the Galactic Republic has so much drinking water of its own it will arrogantly believe we’re after its water, and won’t join an alliance in earnest.”

  Everyone agreed with this assessment. Xiaomeng asked, “So will the other three countries be willing to ally with us?”

  Huahua said, “Emailand’s not a problem. They’ve already felt Caterpillaria’s threat. As for the other two, let me persuade them. An alliance is to their benefit, and we left a good impression after the dam conflict, so I think it won’t be a problem.”

  That afternoon, Huahua visited three neighboring countries where, with superlative eloquence, he quickly convinced the leadership. On the riverside at their common border, they held a meeting formally establishing the Four Country Alliance.

  Another member joined the observers stationed in Sunland.

  *

  The directorate established itself inside a TV repeater station at the top of the hill, where it had a bird’s-eye view of the entire valley. That evening, after the founding of the Four Country Alliance, Zheng Chen arrived at the repeater compound and looked out at the nighttime valley for a long while, as she had done on previous evenings. The children were asleep after an exhausting day of work, so a few scattered lanterns were all that was visible.

  By this point she had thrown herself fully into the project and no longer asked what it all was for. Not a single one of the countless answers she had dreamed up made sense, and the previous day she had heard a few kids in Sunland discussing the issue, too.

  “It’s a science experiment,” Specs said to a few other children. “Our twenty-four little countries are a model of the world, and the adults want to see how this model develops. Then they’ll know what our country should do in the future.”

  “Then why don’t they run the experiment with adults?” someone asked.

  “If the adults know it’s a game, they won’t play it seriously. We’re the only ones who’ll play a game seriously, and that’s what makes the outcome real.”

  It was the most reasonable explanation Zheng Chen had heard. But the premier’s words still echoed in her brain: “The world isn’t what it used to be.”

  Now Zhang Lin walked out of the door to the cabin that once had served as the lodgings for repeater station workers and came over next to Zheng Chen to survey the valley. He said, “Ms. Zheng, your class has been the most successful of all of them. Those children are made of good stuff.”

  “What do you mean by success? As I hear it, at the western end of the valley there’s a country that has absorbed its five neighbors and now has six times its original land area and population, and it’s still expanding.”

  “No, Ms. Zheng. That’s not important to us. What we’re looking at is a country’s success in building itself, in cohesion, and in its judgment of the makeup of the world it inhabits, as well as the long-term decisions those lead to.”

  The game in the valley allowed free exit, and over the past couple of days children from practically every country had come to the directorate to say they were finished playing, that the game was getting boring, that the work was too tiring, and that the gun fighting was too scary. The directors said the same thing to each of them: “That’s okay. Go home.” And they were returned home at once. When they later found out what they had missed, some of them stayed angry the rest of their lives, while others were secretly glad. Sunland was the only country that didn’t lose any children, a key data point for the directors.

  Zhang Lin said, “Ms. Zheng, I’d like to learn more about those three young leaders.”

  Zheng Chen said, “They’re from ordinary families. But if you look more closely, their families really are a little different.”

  “Start with Huahua.”

  “His father is an engineer with an architecture institute, and his mother’s a dance instructor. He takes after his father, who also comes across as open-minded, taking the long view toward things with little regard for the details of his own life. When I went to their home, he held forth on global affairs and the strategy China ought to adopt in the future, but didn’t ask any questions about his son’s performance at school.”

  “He’s aloof.”

  “No, not aloof. He wasn’t discussing those things for disinterested amusement. He talked about national and world affairs with a powerful sense of participation. He had a strong initiative, and that excessive broad-mindedness and disregard for his immediate surroundings might be why he’s been unsuccessful in his career. Huahua does take after him, but one major difference is that the kid has charisma and an inclination to action, enough to bring together other children to accomplish unbelievable things. For example, he’s gotten the class to set up a street stall, to build and fly a hot-air balloon, and to take a boating trip on a river in the distant suburbs. He’s got motivation and resourcefulness far beyond his years. His weakness is a tendency toward fantasy and impulsiveness.”

  “You know your students very well.”

  “They think of me as a friend. Yan Jing—that’s Specs—comes from a typical family of intellectuals. His parents are college professors, his father in the humanities and his mother in science.”

  “He seems to me to be very knowledgeable.”

  “That’s right. But his greatest strength is how thoroughly he considers a problem, far more carefully than other children. He can pick up things from all angles that no one else notices. You might not believe it, but when I’m preparing my lessons I’ll often seek his feedback. His weakness is obvious: He’s introverted and isn’t good at social interaction.”

  “The other students in your class don’t seem to mind that.”

  “True. His erudition appeals to them and wins him their respect. Specs is always involved in discussions of major problems, and in any decision-making
. That’s why they elected him.”

  “And Xiaomeng?”

  “Her background is unusual. Her family was a good one: her father was a reporter, and her mother a professional writer. When she was in the second grade, her father died in a car accident pursuing a story, and then her mother had kidney failure and needed dialysis. And she had a grandparent in bed at home. Both of them died last year, but for the past three years Xiaomeng basically has had to run the household. Still, she managed to get the best marks in class. She was right in the worst of it when I came on as homeroom teacher, and each morning when I came into class I’d look for signs of fatigue on her face, but there never were. Just . . .”

  “Maturity.”

  “Right. Maturity. You’ve seen her expression, mature beyond her years. One thing I remember most clearly was when I took the class on a tour of the Aerospace Command and Control Center in western Beijing last semester. The other kids immersed themselves in all the high-tech marvels, and during a forum with the center’s engineers, they all said that we should put an astronaut in space, and then build a huge space station, and land on the moon, all at once. Xiaomeng was the only one who asked how much a space station would cost, and when she was given a rough estimate, said that the money could fund the education of every poor child in the country through middle school. Then she rattled off statistics for unschooled children, and how much it would cost to educate them through middle school, taking into account regional differences and price increases. All of the adults in the forum were stunned.”

  “Is there anything about her that makes her popular with the others?”

  “Trustworthiness. She is the most trusted kid in class. She can sort out tons of problems the kids have, even complicated ones that have me stumped. She’s got management talent. She’s very methodical in carrying out her duties as the class’s studies monitor.”

  “There’s one more student I’d like to know a little more about: Lü Gang.”

  “I don’t know him very well. He’s a transfer from the second half of last semester. He comes from an unusual family, too. His father’s a general. And under his father’s influence, he likes weapons and the military. The one thing that impressed me most about him is that when he joined the sports committee after transferring to our class, in just one week he took our soccer squad from second-to-last to first. School rules prohibit adding extracurricular practices, but he didn’t run any practices at all, he just made some adjustments to our strategy. The surprising thing is that his previous school lacked the facilities for him to have much exposure to soccer at all, and he doesn’t really play. His indomitable spirit is another impressive characteristic. During a cross-country race, he twisted his ankle and his foot swelled up so big he couldn’t put his shoe on, but he finished the race anyway, even though there was no one left at the finish line when he came in. You don’t see that kind of resolve in many children.”