The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  Yao Rui stuck out his tongue. He said, “That’s scary, Ms. Zheng. I never used to think that Dad’s job could be so awesome.”

  Chief Yao let out a long sigh. “Kiddo, this is all a dream for your dad, too.”

  They followed the long coal belt for a while until they reached a huge machine dominated by a large, rotating drum whose thunderous rumble set Yao Rui’s and Zheng Chen’s skin crawling. Chief Yao shouted, close beside their ears, “That’s the pulverizer. The belt brings coal here where it’s milled to a powder as fine as flour.”

  Then they came to the base of another tall steel building. There were four of them, all visible from a distance, just like the cooling towers and smokestacks. Chief Yao said, “This is the furnace. The coal dust milled by the pulverizer is sprayed by four nozzles into its belly where it burns in a fireball. The coal gets almost completely burned up; only a tiny amount is left behind. Look, here’s what’s left.” He extended a palm and showed his son a smattering of objects that looked like translucent glass beads, which he had scooped up from a square pond along their path. Then they came to a small window through which they could see the blazing furnace fire. “The wall of this giant boiler is lined with an enormous number of long pipes. Water flowing through the pipes absorbs the fire’s heat and turns to high-pressure steam.”

  Then they entered a cavernous building holding four huge machines, half cylinders lying on the ground. “These are the turbine generator assemblies. Steam from the boiler is piped here to turn the turbines, which drive the generators to produce electricity.”

  Finally they reached the main control room. It was clean and well-lit, with signal lights twinkling like stars on a tall instrument panel and a row of computer screens displaying complex images. In addition to the duty operator, a number of other parent-child pairs were in the room. Chief Yao said to his son, “We had only a drive-by look just now. A power plant is actually a highly sophisticated system that involves a host of separate disciplines, and requires the work of lots of people to operate. Dad’s field is electrics. Electrics is divided into high and low voltage; I work in high voltage.” He paused and looked quietly at his son for several seconds. “It’s a dangerous field, involving currents that can fry a person in a tenth of a second. To keep that from happening, you’ve got to fully understand the structure and principles of the entire system. That begins now.”

  Chief Yao took out a roll of charts and peeled off one. “Let’s start with the main wiring diagram. It’s fairly simple.”

  “I don’t think it’s simple at all,” Yao Rui said, staring in obvious disbelief at all of the lines and symbols crisscrossing on the chart.

  “Those are generators,” his father said, pointing at a diagram made up of four circles. “Do you know the principles of an electric generator?” Yao Rui shook his head. “Well, this is the bus bar. The generated electricity is sent out here. It’s three-phase, you see. Do you know what three-phase is?” Yao Rui shook his head again, and his father pointed to four pairs of concentric circles. “Okay. These are the four MTs.”

  “MTs?” Yao Rui asked.

  “Er, the main transformers. And these two are the auxes.”

  “Auxes?”

  “Auxiliary transformers. . . . ​You know the principles of transformers?”

  Yao Rui shook his head.

  “What about the basics? The principle of electromagnetic induction?”

  Another head shake.

  “You’ve got to know Ohm’s law, at least?”

  Another head shake. Chief Yao let the charts drop. “Then what the hell do you know? Did you eat your lessons?”

  His son started to cry. “I’ve never studied any of this.”

  Chief Yao turned to Zheng Chen. “Then what have you been teaching him for six years?”

  “Your son’s just out of middle school, remember. He’s not going to learn anything with teaching methods like yours!”

  “I’ve got ten months to take this kid through a complete course of study in electrics, and to hand over my own twenty years’ work experience.” He sighed and tossed the charts aside. “It seems like an impossible task, Ms. Zheng.”

  “But you’ve got to do it, Chief Yao.”

  He stared at her for a long while, and at last sighed, picked up the charts, and turned to his son. “Okay, okay. So you know about electric current and electric potential, right?” Yao Rui nodded. “Then what are the units for current?”

  “It’s a certain number of volts.”

  “Oh for the love of—”

  “No! Right, that’s the unit for potential. For current, it’s . . . ​it’s . . .”

  “Amps! Very well, we’ll start from there, my boy.”

  Just then Zheng Chen’s mobile rang. It was the mother of another student, Lin Sha. The two families were neighbors, so she knew them quite well. Lin Sha’s mother told her that she was having trouble teaching her daughter, and asked Zheng Chen to give her a hand. And so after bidding a hasty farewell to Yao Rui and his father, she hurried back into the city.

  At the major hospital where Lin Sha’s mother worked, the two of them were heatedly discussing something outside a room with a large red sign over the door reading autopsy.

  “I can’t stand that smell,” Lin Sha said, screwing up her eyebrows.

  “It’s formalin, a kind of preservative. For soaking the bodies used in dissection.”

  “I’m not going to watch a body get dissected, Mom. I’ve seen so many livers and lungs and stuff already.”

  “But you’ve got to learn where the organs are situated in the body.”

  “When I’m a doctor, can’t I just give the patients whatever medicine they’re supposed to get for whatever illness they have?”

  “You’re a surgeon, Shasha. You’ve got to perform surgery.”

  “Let the boys be surgeons.”

  “Cut that out. Your mom’s a surgeon. There are lots of excellent women surgeons.”

  Now clear about the situation, Zheng Chen said she would go into the room with Lin Sha, who then grudgingly agreed to the autopsy lesson. The girl’s hand, tightly clasping hers, trembled noticeably as they walked through the door, and Zheng Chen wasn’t doing much better herself, although she fought to keep her fear from showing. She felt a chill wind across her face. The walls and floors were white, and the fluorescent lights overhead cast a pale glow on the autopsy table ringed by a group of children and two adults all dressed in white lab coats; the only bit of color in this world of gloomy white was the dark red object on the table.

  Lin Sha’s mother led her daughter by the hand to the autopsy table, and pointing at the object, said, “For the convenience of our autopsy, the body needs to be pretreated by removing a layer of skin.”

  Lin Sha tore out of the autopsy room and began to retch, Zheng Chen close on her heels. She clapped her on the back, keeping a lid on her own nausea, but grateful for the excuse to leave the room and for the sunlight outside.

  Lin Sha’s mother followed them, and bent down to tell her daughter, “Stop it, Shasha. Observing an autopsy is a valuable opportunity for an intern. You’ll get used to it over time. Think of the body as a stopped machine, where you can look at its parts. You’ll feel better that way.”

  “You’re a machine too, Mom! A machine I hate!” she shouted, and turned to run off. But Zheng Chen held her back.

  “Listen to me, Lin Sha. All jobs, not just being a doctor, require bravery. Some might be even tougher. You’ve got to grow up.”

  It took some doing but eventually they convinced Lin Sha to return to the autopsy. Zheng Chen stood with her and they watched the sharp lancet separate soft tissue with a low scratching sound, and white ribs pushed aside to expose mulberry organs. . . . ​Afterward, she wondered what it was that had supported her through it, not to mention what had supported the girl who used to be afraid of bugs.

  *

  Zheng Chen spent all of the next day with Li Zhiping, a boy whose father was a letter carrier.
Over and over, father and son traced the route he had walked for more than a decade, and then as evening fell, the boy walked it by himself for the first time. Before setting out, Li Zhiping tried to attach the huge mailbag onto his beloved mountain bike, but it didn’t fit, and so he had to return it to his father’s trusty old Flying Pigeon and drop the saddle to its lowest position before riding it out into the lanes and alleys of the city. Though the boy had committed all the roads and delivery points to memory, his father was still uneasy, and so he and Zheng Chen biked after him at a distance. When the boy reached the final stop on the road, the gate to a government building, his father caught up with him and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “That’s good, son. It’s not that tough. I’ve done it for more than ten years, and I was set to do it my entire life. Now it’s in your hands. Dad’s got just one thing to tell you: I’ve never misdelivered a single letter the whole time. It might not be a big deal for other people, but it’s something I’m secretly proud of. Remember, son, no matter how ordinary the job, you’ll do well if you put your heart into it.”

  *

  The third day Zheng Chen visited three students, Chang Huidong, Zhang Xiaole, and Wang Ran. Like Li Zhiping, the first two were from ordinary families, but Wang Ran’s father was a well-known go player.

  Chang Huidong’s parents ran their own barbershop. When Zheng Chen arrived, he was giving his third haircut of the day. It was even worse than the first two, but the customer merely laughed at the patchy result he saw in the mirror and said it was fine. Chang Huidong’s father apologized and refused payment, but the customer insisted. The fourth customer demanded a haircut from the boy, too, and when Chang Huidong draped a sheet over him, he said, “Practice your heart out on me, kiddo. I only have a few haircuts left, but you young people need barbers. They can’t all turn into long-haired wild children.”

  Zheng Chen let him cut her hair, too, turning it into a tangled mess that his mother had to trim into a short cut that ended up looking not bad at all. When she left the shop, she felt much younger. It was a feeling she’d had since the supernova. On the brink of a strange new world, people reacted in two opposite ways: they grew younger or got older, and she fortunately fell into the former camp.

  *

  Zhang Xiaole’s father was a cook at a work unit cafeteria. When Zheng Chen saw her student, he and his companions were, under the adults’ direction, almost finished preparing rice and a large cauldron of food. For a few nervous minutes, several children stood shaking in front of the canteen window watching their efforts sell out bit by bit to a main dining hall packed with people, but it looked like nothing was amiss. Then Zhang Xiaole’s father rapped a ladle against the window frame and announced, “Listen up. Today’s meal was prepared by our children.”

  After a few seconds of silence, the hall erupted into applause.

  *

  But it was Wang Ran and his father who most impressed Zheng Chen. The boy was about to head off to driving class when she got to their house, and his father walked with him a fair distance to see him off. He said to Zheng Chen with a sigh, “I’m useless. At my age, I can’t even teach my son any actual skill.”

  Wang Ran reassured his father that he would learn how to drive and then become a good chauffeur.

  His father handed him a small bag. “Carry this with you. Read and practice when you’ve got spare time. Just don’t throw it away, since it’ll come in useful some day.”

  He didn’t open the bag until he and Zheng Chen had walked for a while. It held a container of go pieces and a few manuals. He looked back at his father, the ninth-dan go master, still there watching after him.

  As it did for many children, a dramatic change lay in the future for Wang Ran. When Zheng Chen visited him again a month later, his plan to become a chauffeur had somehow landed him in a bulldozer, where he proved a quick study. She found him at a large building site in the inner suburbs, where he was working on his own in the huge machine. He was visibly pleased to see his teacher, and invited her into the cabin to watch him work. As he piloted the bulldozer back and forth to flatten the ground, she noticed two men watching them closely from not far off. To her surprise, they were soldiers. Three bulldozers were at work, all driven by children, but the two soldiers paid particular attention to Wang Ran’s, and occasionally pointed in his direction. At last they waved for him to stop, and a lieutenant colonel looked up at the cabin and called to him, “You’re not a bad driver, kid. Want to come with us and drive something even more fun?”

  “A bigger bulldozer?” he asked, poking his head out of the cabin.

  “No. A tank.”

  Wang Ran was silent for a few seconds before throwing open the door and bounding to the ground.

  “Here’s the thing,” the lieutenant colonel said. “Our branch has, for various reasons, only just now considered bringing children in to take over. Time is tight, and we’re looking for people with some driving fundamentals so we can get started quicker.”

  “Is driving a tank like driving a bulldozer?”

  “In some ways. They’re both caterpillar-track vehicles.”

  “But a tank is harder to drive, right?”

  “Not necessarily. For one thing, a tank doesn’t have that big blade, so you don’t have to worry about frontward force when you’re driving.”

  And just like that, Wang Ran the son of a ninth-dan go master became a tank driver in an armored division.

  *

  On the fourth day, Zheng Chen visited Feng Jing and Yao Pingping, who had been assigned to work in a nursery. In the upcoming children’s world, the family unit would vanish and the nursery would be a key institution for a fairly long period. Lots of children would spend their remaining childhood years there bringing up infants even younger than themselves.

  When Zheng Chen found her students, their mothers were instructing them in baby care, but like all the rest of the older children in the nursery, they were helpless in the face of wailing babies.

  “I can’t stand it!” Yao Pingping said as she stared at the baby crying incessantly on the bed.

  “You need to be patient,” her mother said. “Babies can’t use words. Crying is how they talk, so you have to figure out what they mean.”

  “Then what’s he saying now? I’ve given him milk, but he won’t eat.”

  “He wants to sleep.”

  “He should just go to sleep, then! What’s he crying for? He’s so annoying.”

  “Most children are like that. You’ve got to pick him up and walk with him, and he’ll stop crying.”

  And that’s all it took.

  Pingping asked her mom, “Was I like that when I was little?”

  Her mother laughed. “You were hardly that compliant. You’d usually fuss for an hour before you fell asleep.”

  “What a chore it must have been, bringing me up.”

  “You’ll have it even harder,” her mother said sadly. “Babies in day care all have parents, but in the future it’ll be up to you all to raise them.”

  Zheng Chen kept silent during her time at the nursery, to the point that Feng Jing and Yao Pingping asked her if she was feeling well. Her thoughts were on her own unborn child.

  The nations of the world had all banned further procreation in what for many of them was their final legislation of the Common Era. But laws and ordinances were ineffective; half of pregnant women, Zheng Chen among them, chose to carry their babies to term.

  *

  On the fifth day she returned to school, where lower grades were still attending classes taught by upperclassmen training to become teachers. She entered her classroom and found Su Lin and her mother, also a teacher at the school, working on teacher training.

  “These kids are idiots. I’ve told them over and over but they still don’t get how to add and subtract two-digit numbers!” Su Lin angrily pushed aside a stack of workbooks.

  Her mother said, “Every student understands things at a different pace.” She flipped through
the papers. “See, this one doesn’t know how to carry. And this one, no concept of places. You’ve got to address them independently. Take a look at this one. . . .” She handed Su Lin a workbook.

  “Idiots! Plain idiots. They don’t even know simple arithmetic.” She glanced at the workbook but tossed it aside. Shakily scrawled numbers formed lines of two-digit addition and subtraction problems, all of them making the same stupid mistakes she had grown tired of over the past two days.

  “It’s your own workbook from five years ago. I saved it for you.”

  Surprised, Su Lin picked up the workbook, but could hardly recognize the clumsy script as her own handwriting.

  Her mother said, “A teacher has to have patience for hard work.” She sighed. “But your students are the fortunate ones. What about you? Who’s going to teach you?”

  “I’ll teach myself. Mom, didn’t you tell me that the first college teacher had never been to college?”

  “But you’ve never even been to middle school!” Her mother sighed again.

  *

  On the sixth day, Zheng Chen sent off three of her students at the West Railway Station. Wei Ming, whose father was a lieutenant colonel, and Jin Yunhui, whose father was an air force pilot, were headed to the military. Zhao Yuzhong’s parents were migrant workers, and they were taking their son back home to a village in Hebei. Zheng Chen promised to visit Jin Yunhui and Zhao Yuzhong, but Wei Ming would be stationed in Tibet on the Indian border, and she knew that she would never make it there in the ten months she had remaining.

  “Ms. Zheng, when your baby is born you’ve got to write to tell us where he ends up, so we can take care of him,” Wei Ming said, and then shook her hand forcefully before boarding the train without looking back, resolute in his final farewell.

  As she watched the train depart, she again broke down and had to cover her face to hide her tears. She had now become a child, but her students had grown into adults overnight.