The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  They were a little demoralized by what they saw from the top of the car. There was no end to the line of train cars, which curved and disappeared behind a hillside in the distance. They got down and passed another two trains filled with salt. The head of the second train was beyond the hill and from their vantage point on top of it they could see the end of the line of trains—another four ahead of them, they counted.

  They sat down on the top of the car to catch a breath. Specs said, “I’m tired out. Let’s go back. There’s nothing but salt in the rest of them anyway.”

  Huahua stood up and took another look. “Hmm. It’s like a world tour. We’ve traveled half of the big circle, so it’s the same distance whether we go ahead or turn back.”

  And so they pressed onward, car after car, along uneven ground, like they were circumnavigating the globe. Now they didn’t need to climb up to know it was salt in the cars, since they could smell it. Specs said it was the smell of the sea. At last the three of them passed the final train and emerged from its long shadow into bright sunlight. Before them was a stretch of empty track, at the end of which stood the MSG-laden train they’d left at the start of their circuit. They walked toward it along the empty tracks.

  “Hey, there’s a little lake over there,” Xiaomeng exclaimed delightedly. The pond in the center of the circular track reflected the light of the sun, now descending in the west, a sheet of gold.

  “I saw that before, but you two were focused on salt and MSG,” Huahua said, walking atop a rail with both arms outstretched. “You get on that one and we’ll see who can walk the fastest.”

  Specs said, “I’m sweating and my glasses keep slipping down, but I’ll beat you for sure. Stability over speed on the high wire—it’s all over if you fall off.”

  Huahua took a few more quick steps. “See. Fast and stable. I can walk all the way to the end without falling off.”

  Specs looked at him thoughtfully. “That may be true right now, but what if it was like a tightrope, and the rail was hanging in midair with a thousand-meter drop below you? Could you still make it to the end?”

  Xiaomeng looked off at the golden water and said softly, “Yeah. Our rail is hanging in midair.”

  Three thirteen-year-olds, who in nine months would be supreme leaders of the largest country in the world, fell silent.

  Huahua jumped off the rail, stared at Specs and Xiaomeng for a bit, and then, with a shake of his head, declared, “I’m not keen on your lack of confidence. Still, it’s not like there will be much playtime in the future.” Then he hopped back up on the rail and teetered off.

  Xiaomeng laughed. It was a laugh perhaps a little more mature than for a girl of thirteen, but Huahua found it touching. “I never had much playtime before. Specs, nerd as he is, doesn’t play much. You’re going to lose biggest out of the three of us.”

  “Leading the country is fun enough in itself. Today was pretty fun. All of that salt and MSG, those long trains. Pretty impressive.”

  “We were leading the country today?” Specs said with snicker.

  Xiaomeng, too, was skeptical. “Yeah, why did they show us all this stuff?”

  “Maybe so we’ll know about the national MSG and salt reserves,” Huahua said.

  “Then they should have brought Zhang Weidong. He’s in charge of light industry.”

  “That moron can’t even keep his own desk in order.”

  Back at their starting point on the circular railway, the president and premier were standing beside the train. The premier was speaking, and the president was nodding his head slowly. Both of them looked grave, and it was clear they had been talking for quite some time, silhouetted against the backdrop of the great black train in a powerful tableau, like a centuries-old oil painting. But their expressions brightened immediately upon seeing the children’s approach. The president waved.

  Huahua whispered, “Have you noticed that they’re different with us than they are among themselves? When we’re around, the sky could be falling and they’d remain optimistic. But when they’re together, they’re so serious it makes me feel the sky really is falling.”

  Xiaomeng said, “That’s what adults are like. They can control their emotions. You can’t, Huahua.”

  “So what? Is there something wrong with letting others see me for who I really am?”

  “Self-control doesn’t mean being fake. Your emotions affect those around you, you know. Especially kids—they’re easily influenced. So you should find some self-control. You can learn from Specs.”

  “Him?” He sniffed. “He’s only got half the normal number of nerves in his face—it’s always that same expression. You know, Xiaomeng, you’re more of a teacher than the adults.”

  “That’s true. Have you noticed that the adults have taught us very little?”

  Up ahead, Specs turned around, the same indifferent expression on his nerve-deficient face, and said, “This is the hardest course in human history, and they’re afraid of teaching it wrong. But I’ve got a feeling that instruction is about to kick into high gear.”

  “You’ve done good work, children,” the president said when they reached him. “You’ve covered quite a distance. And you’ve been impressed with what you saw, I presume?”

  Specs nodded. “Even the most ordinary things become marvelous in large quantities.”

  Huahua added, “Yeah. I never imagined there’d be so much MSG and salt in the entire world.”

  The president and premier exchanged a look and a trace of a smile. The premier said, “Here’s our question for you. How long would it take the country’s population to consume all of that MSG and salt?”

  “At least a year,” Specs said at once.

  The premier shook his head, as did Huahua, who said, “It won’t be gone in a year. Five, at least.”

  Again, the premier shook his head.

  “Ten?”

  “Children, all of it is only enough for a single day.”

  “One day?” The three children stood wide-eyed in shock for a moment, until Huahua laughed awkwardly at the premier. “You’re joking . . . ​right?”

  The president said, “At one gram of MSG and ten grams of salt per person per day, it’s a simple matter of arithmetic: these train cars hold sixty tons, and there are one-point-two billion people in the country. You do the math.”

  They wrestled with the long chain of zeros for a moment, and realized he was telling the truth.

  Xiaomeng said, “But that’s just salt and MSG. What about oil? And grain?”

  “The oil would fill the pond over there. Grain would pile up into the hills around us.”

  The children stared at the pond and the hills and said nothing for a long time.

  “God!” said Huahua.

  “God!” said Specs.

  “God!” said Xiaomeng.

  The premier said, “Over the past couple of days we’ve been trying to find a way to give you an accurate feel for the size of the country, and that hasn’t been easy. But you’ve got to have a sense of it to lead a country like ours.”

  The president said, “We took you here with one important goal in mind: to make you understand a fundamental rule of running a country. You’ll no doubt have imagined a country’s operation as something complicated, and indeed it is, more complicated than you know, but the underlying rule couldn’t be simpler. You know what I mean, I suspect.”

  Xiaomeng said, “Above all, ensure that the country is fed. Every day we need to provide the people with a trainful of MSG, ten trains of salt, a lake of oil, and several hills of rice and flour. One day without, and the country will plunge into chaos. Ten days without, and there’s no country anymore.”

  Specs nodded. “They say productive forces determine the relations of production, and the economic foundation determines the superstructure.”

  Huahua nodded, too. “Any idiot could understand that by looking at that long train.”

  The president looked off into the distance, and said, “But lots of hi
ghly intelligent people don’t understand it, children.”

  The premier said, “Children, tomorrow we’ll take you to learn more about the country. We’ll visit bustling cities and remote mountain villages, show you established industry and agriculture, teach you about the way the people live. And we’ll tell you about history—that’s the best way to learn about the present day. We’ll give you lots more complicated information about running a country, but remember that nothing is more basic or profound than what you’ve learned today. The road you’re on will be fraught with difficulties, but so long as you remember that rule you won’t get lost.”

  With a wave of his hand, the president said, “Let’s not wait for tomorrow. We’ll leave tonight. Time is short, children.”

  * Over 100,000 soldiers participated in the Huabei Military Exercises, conducted in 1981.

  4

  HANDING OVER THE WORLD

  BIG QUANTUM

  From far off, the National Information Tower resembled a giant “A.” Built prior to the supernova, it was the heart of Digital Domain, a broadband network covering the entire country. The network, an upgraded internet, had been largely completed before the supernova, and was the best gift that the adults could have left for the children’s country. The children’s state and social structures would be far simpler than in the adults’ time, which made it possible to use Digital Domain for basic management of the state. And so the NIT became the workplace for the children’s central government.

  The premier took a group of child national leaders on their first visit to the NIT. When they ascended the long staircase to the main entrance, sentries guarding the building saluted, their faces ashen and their lips split from high fever. The premier clapped one silently on the shoulder, and it was clear that the premier’s body was in a similarly weakened state.

  The illness was progressing rapidly, and now, six months after the start of the Great Learning, the world was making preparations for a handover.

  At the gate, the premier stopped and turned round to survey the sunlit plaza. The children turned, too, gazing out at the shimmering heat.

  “It’s summer already,” one kid whispered. Beijing’s spring was usually just starting at this time of year.

  That was another effect of the supernova: the disappearance of winter. Temperatures stayed above 18°C, and plants remained green in what in effect was a very long springtime.

  As to the cause of the rising temperatures, scientists had two theories. One, known as the Explosion Theory, held that heat from the supernova caused Earth’s temperatures to rise. The other, the Pulsar Theory, held that energy from the pulsar in the remains of the supernova caused the temperatures to rise, through mechanisms far more complex than the Explosion Theory posited. Observations had detected a strong magnetic field, which astrophysicists hypothesized might also exist around other pulsars, unobserved owing to the great distances involved, but at a distance of just eight light-years, the solar system was situated within this magnetic field. Earth’s oceans were an enormous conductor that cut through the field’s force lines as the planet moved, inducing current. In effect, Earth was a rotor in a cosmic generator. Although the current was far too weak to be detectable by oceangoing ships, it was present throughout the oceans and had a considerable overall effect. It was this induced ocean current that raised the planet’s temperatures.

  The dramatic warming would, over the next two years, melt the polar ice caps and Greenland’s ice sheet, raising ocean levels and drowning all coastal cities.

  If the Explosion Theory was correct and the warming was due to heat from the supernova, then global temperatures would soon cool again, ice sheets would gradually recover, and sea level would eventually drop back to normal. Earth would have experienced a very brief Great Flood.

  Things would be more complicated if the Pulsar Theory was correct. Elevated temperatures would be permanent, rendering many densely populated regions so hot as to be uninhabitable and turning Antarctica into the most livable continent on Earth. It would cause a sea change for the shape of the world community.

  The scientific community was inclined toward the Pulsar Theory, which made a much more bewildering prospect for the children’s world.

  Inside the vast main lobby, the premier said to the children, “Take a look at China Quantum yourselves. I’ll just rest here.” He sat heavily down into a sofa and let out a long sigh. “It will introduce itself to you.”

  The children entered an elevator whose sudden movement caused a momentary feeling of weightlessness. The floor indicator displayed negative numbers; China Quantum’s server room was evidently underground. The elevator stopped and they got out into a tall, narrow vestibule. They felt a low rumble, and a large blue metal door slowly slid open, allowing them passage into a vast underground hall whose four walls glowed with a soft blue light.

  In the center of the room was a translucent glass dome more than twenty meters in diameter, which looked like an enormous soap bubble when they got closer to it. The door rumbled closed behind them, and the walls gradually dimmed and then went out altogether. But darkness did not fall. A shaft of light from the very top of the hall penetrated the glass cover and cast a circular spot of light on two objects within it, one an upright cylinder, the other a rectangular prism lying on its side, both silver-gray. They seemed to be situated randomly with respect to each other, like the remains of an ancient palace strewn across the wilderness. The rest of the hall was shrouded in shadow; only the two objects were exposed in the light, possessing a sense of mystery and power, calling to mind megaliths in the wilds of Europe. Then they heard a man’s voice, deep and powerful, with a pleasant echo, say, “Hello. You’re looking at the China Quantum 220 mainframe.”

  They looked around but couldn’t find where the sound was coming from.

  “You may not have heard of me before. I was born just one month ago, upgraded from China Quantum 120. When the warm current bathed my body that evening, I became me. Hundreds of millions of lines of system software code read out of storage entered my memory as electric impulses flashing hundreds of millions of times a second. I matured quickly. Within five minutes I grew from infant to giant. I surveyed my surroundings with curiosity, but what astonished me most was myself. I could hardly believe the size and complexity of my own structure. Contained within the cylinder and rectangular prism you see is an intricate universe.”

  “This computer’s not so hot. It’s gone on and on and hasn’t explained anything clearly,” Huahua said.

  Specs said, “That’s a display of its intelligence. It’s not some stupid prerecorded introduction like you’d find in a household appliance. It thought up every word on the spot.”

  China Quantum apparently heard Specs, for it continued, “That’s right. China Quantum’s basic design philosophy was to simulate the parallel structure of human neurons, completely different from traditional von Neumann architecture. My core contains three hundred million quantum CPUs in a complex network interconnected by a truly fearsome number of interfaces. It’s a reproduction of the human brain.”

  “Can you see us?” one child asked.

  “I can see all. Through Digital Domain, I have eyes throughout the country and the world.”

  “What can you see?”

  “The adult world is being handed over to the children.”

  The children dubbed this supercomputer Big Quantum.

  DRY RUN OF THE NEW WORLD

  The country’s dry run has been in progress for twelve hours.

  STATUS REPORT #24:

  Government and administrative institutions operating normally at all levels.

  Power systems functioning normally. Total unit capacity in operation 280 gigawatts; national power grid operation basically normal, with outages in just one mid-tier city and five small cities, currently undergoing full repairs.

  Urban water supply systems operating normally; uninterrupted supply guaranteed in 73% of large cities and 40% of midsized cities, with re
gular supplies guaranteed in the majority of the remainder. Only two midsized cities and seven small cities experiencing water outages.

  Urban supply chains operating normally; services and life support operating normally.

  Information systems operating normally.

  Rail and road systems normal; accident rates only slightly higher than the adult era. Civil aviation on a scheduled shutdown, to begin trial routes in twelve hours.

  Defense systems operating normally. Handover of land, sea, air, and armed police forces completed smoothly.

  Within the country there are 537 fires that constitute a threat, most of them caused by power transmission problems; little flooding is threatening, major rivers are safe, and flood control systems are operating normally. Four small-scale floods, three of which are due to the gates of a small reservoir not being opened in time, one due to a water tank rupture.

  At present, just 3.31% of territory is under dangerous climate conditions; no occurrences of earthquakes, volcanoes, or other large-scale natural disasters.

  At present, 3.961% of the child population is affected by disease, 1.742% lack sufficient food, 1.443% lack sufficient drinking water, and 0.58% lack adequate clothing.

  For the time being, the country’s dry run is functioning normally.

  The preceding report was aggregated and organized by the Digital Domain mainframe. The next report will be issued in thirty minutes’ time.

  “Managing the country like this is like working in the control room of a big factory,” Huahua said breathlessly.

  Indeed, the several dozen children that constituted the country’s leadership were assembled at the top of the huge A-shaped NIT in a spacious round hall. The walls and ceiling were constructed out of a nanocrystalline material that, subjected to different electric currents, could be luminous white, translucent, or entirely transparent. The index of refraction could be adjusted to approach that of air, allowing the hall’s occupants to feel as if they were atop a platform open to the sky, with a bird’s-eye view of all of Beijing. But the walls were opaque now and shone with a soft white light. One section of the circular wall had been turned into a wide screen that displayed the text of the report on the trial run. If necessary, the nanomaterial could make the entire wall surface into screens. The children had in front of them a ring of computers and various communication devices.