The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  The helicopter flew for around forty minutes. Beneath them the vast expanse of ground was dotted with hillocks, and a desertified stretch and the remains of ground cover, from which a few columns of sand and dust rose.

  “Class starts now, kid,” the chief announced. “The area beneath us was, back in the early eighties, the site of the largest land war games in military history.* Now we’ve turned it into a battlefield simulation. We’ve assembled five field armies to conduct exercises here.”

  Lü Gang looked down. “Five armies? Where?”

  The helicopter dropped swiftly, and Lü Gang saw that the dust columns were rising from roadways bearing tanks and other military vehicles that crawled off like beetles toward somewhere indistinct on the horizon. Some of them, he noticed, weren’t following the roads, nor were they trailing dust. They were moving far faster: he realized they were low-flying helicopters.

  The chief said, “The Blue Army is assembling below us. Very soon it will launch an attack on the Red Army.” He pointed southward and drew an invisible line across the rolling hills. “See, that’s the Red Army’s defensive line.”

  The helicopter headed toward that line and landed at the foot of a hill. Here, the ground was crisscrossed with tire ruts slicing through the red soil. They disembarked and got into green coms vehicles that took them into a cave in the hillside. Lü Gang noticed that the soldiers busy at work outside the vehicles, as well as the guards that saluted them at the cave entrance, included both children and adults.

  A heavy iron door opened and they entered a spacious chamber with situation maps of the battlefield displayed on three large screens on the opposite wall, red and blue arrows tangled up like some grotesque creeping animal. In the center of the chamber was a large sand table surrounded by bright computer screens attended by camouflaged officers. Half of them, Lü Gang noticed, were children. They all stood at attention and saluted when the chief entered.

  “This is the Red Army battle display system?” the chief asked, pointing at the large screens.

  “Yes, sir,” replied a colonel.

  “Do the children know how to use them?”

  The colonel shook his head. “They’re learning. But they still need adults’ assistance.”

  “Hang up the combat map. It’s the most reliable, at any rate.”

  As several officers unrolled a large combat map, the chief said to Lü Gang, “This is Red Army Command. In this simulation, several hundred thousand children are learning warfare. Their course of study ranges from how to be a private to how to be a field army general. You, my boy, have the hardest course of any of them. We don’t expect you to learn much in such a short time, but we’ve got to instill in you a correct, precise appreciation and instinct for warfare at a high level. And that’s not an easy thing, either. In the past, progressing from a military academy cadet to your present position would take at least thirty years, and without those thirty years of bottom-to-top experience, you’ll find it hard to understand some of the things I’m going to tell you. We’ll just do our best. Fortunately, your future opponents aren’t much better off than you are. Starting now, forget everything you’ve learned about war from the movies, as completely as you can. You’ll find out very soon that movie warfare is totally different from the real thing. It’s vastly different even from the battle you commanded in the valley. The battles you’ll command might be ten thousand times that size.”

  The chief turned to a senior colonel: “Go ahead.”

  The senior colonel saluted and went out. He returned not long afterward. “Sir, the Blue Army has launched an all-out offensive on the Red Army’s defensive line.”

  Lü Gang looked around him but didn’t see any obvious changes. The tangle of arrows on the situation map were not moving. The sole difference was that the adults around the sand table and at the combat map had stopped their urgent explanations; the children had put in earpieces and microphones and were standing in wait.

  The chief said to him, “We’ll get started, too. Kid, you’ve received a report on the enemy’s movements. What’s the first thing you need to do?”

  “Order the defensive line to block the enemy!”

  “That’s not an order.”

  Lü Gang looked blankly at the chief. Another three generals came over from the exercise directorate. Then they felt muted tremors from outside.

  The chief prompted him: “What does your order consist of? What are you basing your order on?”

  He thought a moment. “Oh, right. Determine the main direction of the enemy’s attack.”

  The chief nodded. “Correct. But how do you make that determination?”

  “The place where the enemy has put the most troops and is attacking the fiercest is its main direction.”

  “Basically correct. But how do you know where it’s putting most of its troops, and where it’s attacking the fiercest?”

  “I’ll go observe from the highest hill on the front lines!”

  The chief’s expression did not change, but the other three generals sighed softly. One seemed about to say something to Lü Gang but was stopped by the chief, who said, “Very well. Let’s go have a look.”

  A captain handed helmets to Lü Gang and the chief, and handed binoculars to Lü Gang, and then opened the iron door for them. Explosions rolled in along with gusts of wind that smelled faintly of smoke, and the sound grew more deafening as they crossed the long passage to the outside. The ground vibrated under their feet, and the smoke grew thicker in the air. Squinting against the bright sunlight, Lü Gang looked about him, but the scene before him was little different from when he had arrived: the green coms vehicles, the rut-crossed ground, and a few placid-looking nearby hills. He couldn’t locate the shells’ impact points; the explosions sounded like they were coming from a different world, but somehow seemed right beside him. A few armored helicopters flew low over the opposite hilltop.

  The waiting Jeep sped them along a winding mountain road, and in just a few minutes they reached the top of the hill, which held the command post and a radar station, an enormous, silently spinning antenna. A kid stuck his head out the half-open door of a radar control vehicle, his too-large helmet wobbling, and quickly drew back and shut the door.

  They exited the car, and the chief swept a hand about him. “This high ground is an excellent vantage point. Make your observations.”

  Lü Gang looked around. Visibility of the uneven, rolling terrain spread out before him was indeed excellent. He located the blast points, all of them far off, the newer ones still smoking. Some hills were shrouded in a thicker smoke and dust and seemed to have been under assault for quite some time, and all he could see were sporadic flashes of explosions.

  The targets were visible in all directions, sparsely but evenly distributed throughout his field of vision rather than in a line like he had imagined. Picking up the binoculars, he scanned the scene with no particular target in mind. His viewfinder raced across the meager ground cover, exposed rock, and sand, but he saw nothing else.

  When he trained the binoculars on a far-off hill currently under attack, all he could see was a haze of smoke blurring out the scene itself, which nevertheless remained ground cover, rock, and sand. He held his breath and looked more carefully, and at last in a dry streambed at the foot of the hill he found two armored vehicles, but in the blink of an eye they vanished into a valley. On another roadway between two hills he found a tank, but before long it turned and headed back the way it came. He set down the binoculars and watched the battlefield in a stupor.

  Where was the defensive line, and where was the Blue Army’s attack? The Red Army’s position? He couldn’t even be certain of the existence of two huge armies, since all he could see was distant bomb targets and a few smoky mountains, which looked less like a pitched battle than a few lonely signal fires. Was this really a fierce engagement of five field armies?

  Next to him, the chief laughed. “I know the kind of war you’re thinking of: a broad, flat plain, t
he attacking enemy force lined up in an orderly formation, charging over like they’re on an inspection parade, and your defensive line is like a Great Wall crossing the entire battlefield; as supreme commander, you stand on high ground beside the front lines, taking in the whole battlefield like it’s on a sand table, mobilizing units like pushing pieces on a chessboard. . . . ​Perhaps such a war existed in the age of cold weapons, but even then, it would have been limited to small conflicts. Genghis Khan or Napoleon would only have personally witnessed a small part of the battles they fought. In modern warfare, battlefield terrain is far more complicated, and highly mobile, long-rage heavy firepower further separates the opposing fighting forces, who conceal their movements. That means the modern battlefield is practically invisible to a distant observer. The approach you’ve taken may be suitable for a captain commanding a company. But like I said before, forget war movies. Let’s go back, back to the high commander’s spot.”

  When they rejoined the command center, things had substantially changed. Its former calm had disappeared, and groups of adult and child officers were shouting into phones and radios; beside the sand table and maps, children, aided by adult officers, were urgently positioning markers according to the information transmitted through their earpieces; the situation maps on the big screens were in constant flux.

  Motioning to all the activity, the chief said to Lü Gang, “Do you see it now? This is your battlefield. As high commander, you have a more limited range of motion than a lowly private, but from here, your eyes and ears can encompass the whole battlefield. You’ve got to adapt to your new senses and learn how to use them. To be a good commander, you’ve got to be able to create a realistic combat map in your mind, with every detail true to life. That’s not easy.”

  Lü Gang scratched his head. “It’s still weird, thinking about issuing directives from here in this cave, based on intelligence from these computers and radios.”

  “If you understand the nature of the intelligence reports, you won’t find it weird,” the chief said as he led him to one of the big screens. He picked up a laser pointer and, drawing a small circle, said to the child captain operating the computer next to them, “Blow up this section, fella.”

  The little captain dragged a box around the designated area and enlarged it to the size of the screen. “This is a situation chart for hills 305, 322, and 374,” the chief said. Pointing to the two neighboring screens, he said to the captain, “Display charts for the same region but from two different intelligence reports.” The kid struggled for a while, and eventually an adult major took the mouse from him and flipped two situation charts up onto the screens. Lü Gang noticed that the three images showed identical geography, contour lines around three elevated points in an equilateral triangle, but there were significant differences in the number, direction, and thickness of the moving red and blue arrows.

  The major described the charts to the chief. “Chart one is based on intelligence from D Army, Division 115, Third Regiment, which is defending hill 305. The report says two Blue Army platoons are attacking that region, focusing on hill 322. Chart two is based on aerial surveillance from D Army’s aviation regiment, and says the Blue Army has dispatched one platoon to this region in an assault focusing on hill 374. Chart three comes from F Army, Division 21, Second Regiment, which is defending hill 322. They say the Blue Army has put an entire division to attack the three hills, with a focus on hill 305, and is attempting to flank hills 322 and 374.”

  Lü Gang asked, “These reports were sent at the same time?”

  The major nodded. “Yes, half an hour ago, from the same region.”

  Lü Gang looked at the three screens in confusion. “How can they be so different?”

  The chief said to the major, “Bring out all of the reports on those three hills from that same time.” The major took out a stack of paper as thick as a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

  “Wow. That’s a lot!” Lu Gang exclaimed.

  “There is an overabundance of intelligence from the battlefield in modern warfare. From a comprehensive analysis of all of the information, you need to find some direction that will allow you to judge correctly. What you’ve seen in the movies, where a hero infiltrates the enemy and then the commander uses the one intelligence report he sends back to decide strategy for the entire battle, is frankly ridiculous. Of course, it’s not like you have to read every single report. That’s a task for your advisors, and for taking advantage of the C3I system to process the enormous amount of information generated during battle. But the ultimate decision is still in your hands.”

  “It’s really complicated. . . .”

  “It’s even more complicated than that. The trend you identify in that ocean of information might not even be real. It might be strategic deception on the part of the enemy.”

  “Like when they had Patton command the Bodyguard deception during Normandy?”

  “That’s right. Next, let’s see you determine the primary direction of the Blue Army’s attack from these reports.”

  MSG AND SALT

  A small motorcade heading northward from Beijing arrived at a quiet spot ringed by low hills. The cars stopped, and the president and premier got out, along with three children: Huahua, Specs, and Xiaomeng.

  “Look, children,” the president said, pointing ahead to a railway, where a long freight train was stopped on a single track, a line of cars stretching off in an enormous arc that bent round the foot of a hill with no end in sight.

  “Wow, that’s a long train!” Huahua exclaimed.

  The premier said, “Eleven trains in all, each with twenty cars.”

  The president said, “This is a test-loop track. It’s a big circle where new locomotives were sent from the factory to test their functions.” Turning to a staffer, he said, “It’s out of use now, isn’t it?”

  The staffer nodded. “That’s right. For quite some time. It was built in the seventies, and isn’t suited to high-speed-rail cars.”

  “So you’ll have to build another one,” the premier said to the children.

  “We might not need to test high-speed-rail cars,” Huahua said. When the president asked why, he pointed up at the sky, and said, “I’m envisioning a sky train, with a powerful nuclear airplane for a locomotive, pulling a chain of unpowered gliders. Much faster than a regular train.”

  The premier said, “Fascinating. But how will your sky train take off and land?”

  “It’ll be able to,” Specs said. “Precisely how, I don’t know. But there’s a historical precedent for it. In World War Two the Allies used a transport plane to tow a chain of gliders carrying paratroopers.”

  The president said, “I remember that. It was to seize a Rhine bridge behind enemy lines. Operation Varsity. The largest airborne operation in history.”

  The premier said, “If conventional-powered transport planes can be towed too, the thing might have real-world significance. It has the potential to cut air transport costs by ninety percent.”

  The president asked, “Has anyone in the country suggested an idea like this before?”

  The premier shook his head. “Never. Children clearly aren’t at a disadvantage on every front.”

  The president looked up at the sky and said with feeling, “Yes. Sky trains, and maybe gardens in the sky as well. What a wonderful future. Still, first we’ve got to help the children overcome their disadvantages. After all, we didn’t come here to discuss trains.” He pointed at the train. “Children, go have a look at what’s on board.”

  The three children ran off to the train. Huahua clambered up the ladder of one car, followed by Specs and Xiaomeng. They stood atop the big white plastic sacks that filled the car; from this vantage point, similar sacks were visible in cars farther down the train, gleaming in the sunlight. Squatting down, Specs poked a small hole in one, and translucent white needle-shaped grains spilled out. Huahua picked one up and licked it.

  “Careful. It may be poisonous,” Specs said.
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br />   “It looks like MSG,” Xiaomeng said, and then licked a grain for herself. “Yep, it’s MSG.”

  “You can pick out the taste of MSG?” Huahua asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “It’s MSG, all right. Look!” Specs pointed to the row of sacks ahead of them, on which, written in large letters, was a logo familiar to them from TV ads. But they found it hard to reconcile the chef on TV in his large white hat tossing a sprinkle of white powder into a pot with this huge dragonload. They walked across the bags to the other end of the car and gingerly stepped over the coupling into the next, which was filled with the same white sacks of MSG. They went another three cars farther, all of them chock-full of MSG sacks; clearly the rest of the train would be the same. Even one train car seemed enormous to children used to passenger cars; they counted, and like the premier had said, there were twenty cars in this train, all of them full of MSG.

  “Geez that’s a lot. All the MSG in the country must be here.”

  As they descended the ladder they saw the president and premier approaching on the trackside path, and as they were about to run over and ask questions, the premier stopped them with a wave of his hand, and called, “Take a look at what’s in the other trains.”

  And so the three of them ran along the path past a dozen cars, and then the locomotive, and then after a gap of ten meters they reached the tail of the second train and climbed up to the top of the car. This one was also brimming with white bags, but they were woven, not slick plastic, and they were labeled Edible Salt. These bags were hard to puncture, but a small amount of dust had leaked and they dabbed their fingers and had a taste: indeed it was salt. Another huge white dragon stretched out ahead of them; all twenty cars in this train were carrying salt.

  They returned to the trackside path, ran the length of the train, and climbed up onto the top of a car in the third train. Like the second, it was full of salt. They climbed down and ran to the fourth train. Also salt. Then Xiaomeng said she couldn’t run anymore, so they walked. It took quite a while to go past twenty cars to the fifth train. Salt again.