The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  *

  Data from across the vast territory converged on Big Quantum in a reverse of the massive series of explosions that had just rocked Digital Domain. More than 200 million snippets of conversation poured into Big Quantum’s memory at light speed, where they were abstracted into long waveforms, silhouettes of mountains whose peaks receded into the distance. These waveforms floated cloud-like over the pattern database, while higher up, the eyes of the pattern-recognition routine were fixed on their mighty procession, searching the ground of the database for analogues to each snippet, abstracting every syllable and word to pour down in a torrential rain into the buffer canyon, and join up into language code segments that were then chopped and kneaded by the teeth of the semantic analyzer to extract their real meaning.

  When Big Quantum digested all of the information it had collected, another process started, this one more complicated than can be described in words: An inference engine hurricane swept across the sea of the knowledge database, churning results up from the depths and covering the surface with wave foam. The bits of foam then underwent an inversion of the process, modulated into waveforms that surged out of Big Quantum’s memory and flooded into Digital Domain, at last resolving into the boy’s voice that issued from countless telephones and computer speakers.

  In the server room two hundred meters underground, lights on the cylindrical mainframe blinked madly, while the cooling unit in the separate cooled server room ran at maximum, pumping huge amounts of liquid helium into the interior of the enormous computer, to keep the operating temperature of the superconducting quantum circuits as close as possible to absolute zero. Inside the computer, a typhoon of high-frequency electric pulses roared through superconducting chips, tides of zeros and ones flowing, ebbing, and flowing again.

  If someone were shrunk several hundred million times and inserted into this world, his first sight would be a scene of astonishing chaos: on the chip, a raging torrent of a hundred million pieces of data flowing at the speed of light forced through a channel just a few electrons wide, converging, diverging, and crisscrossing into more torrents that turned the chip into a vast, intricate spiderweb. Data fragments flew everywhere, and addresses traversed like arrows. A drifting master control program waving a myriad of thin transparent tentacles threw thousands upon thousands of cycling program blocks into the roar of data. In a dead-calm desert of a memory unit, a tiny point suddenly exploded, sending an electrical pulse skyward in an enormous mushroom cloud; a solitary line of code passed through the data storm like lightning in search of a slightly darker-colored raindrop.

  But it was also a world of astonishing order: The muddy flood of data, after passing through a fine index filter, turned at once into a lake so clear you could see the bottom; the sorting module flitted through the data blizzard like a ghost, arranging the snowflakes by shape into an endlessly long string a thousandth of a second. In this typhoon of zeros and ones, should a single water molecule be incorrect, should a zero be mistaken for a one, or a one for a zero, the entire world could collapse. A gigantic empire, but one for which the blink of an eye meant a hundred dynasties. But from the outside, it appeared as nothing more than a cylindrical object underneath a transparent cover.

  The following are accounts of conversations between two ordinary children and Big Quantum:

  I was at home, in an apartment tower on the top floor, the twentieth floor. I remember that when the phone rang I was sitting on the sofa staring at the blank TV screen. I ran over and grabbed the phone, and heard a child’s voice: “Hello. This is the central government. I’m here to help you. Listen: The building you’re in is on fire. The fire has reached the fifth floor.”

  I put down the phone and craned my neck out the window. It was already getting light in the east, and the Rose Nebula was half below the horizon in the west, and the blend of its blue light and the sunlight cast an eerie glow over the city. I looked down and saw empty streets. There was no sign of a fire at the base of my building. I pulled back and picked up the phone again, and said there wasn’t any fire.

  “No, there’s definitely a fire.”

  “How do you know? Where are you?”

  “In Beijing. The infrared fire sensor in your building has detected a fire and sent a signal to the central computer of the municipal Public Security Bureau. I’ve already spoken to that computer.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You can go out and feel the elevator door, but don’t open it. It’s dangerous.”

  I did as he said. There were no signs of fire out the front door, but as soon as I touched the elevator door I staggered, because it was burning hot! I remember that the fire safety booklet they issued to each household said that when there’s a fire in a tall building, the elevator shaft acts like a chimney to suck the fire upward. I ran back into the room and looked out the window again, and saw yellow smoke just beginning to come out of the bottom floor, and right afterward more smoke from windows on the second and third floors. I rushed back and grabbed the telephone.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “The elevator and stairwells are impassable. You’ve got to slide down an escape chute.”

  “An escape chute?”

  “It’s a long flexible fabric tube strung along a standpipe from the roof of the building to the ground. When a fire breaks out, people in the building can slide down the tube to safety. If you start sliding too fast when you’re inside, you can slow down by grabbing the fabric walls.”

  “And our building has one of those installed?”

  “Yes. On every floor at the entrance to the stairwell, there’s a small red iron door that looks like it goes to a garbage chute. That’s the entrance to the escape chute.”

  “But . . . ​are you sure there’s a chute there? If it’s a garbage chute, I’ll end up falling to death if I crawl in there to escape being burnt to death! How do you know all of this? From the PSB computer?”

  “No. The information ought to be on fire and security computers, but I couldn’t find it anywhere I looked in their databases, so I linked up with the computer at the municipal architectural design institute responsible for the building, and determined from their blueprints that a chute was indeed installed.”

  “What about downstairs? And the other kids?”

  “I’m calling them as we speak.”

  “By the time you get in touch with each of them the building will be burnt to cinders! I’ll take the stairs and go tell them.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous. The other children have already been notified. You stay here and don’t move, but keep on the phone and I’ll tell you when to get into the chute. The kids downstairs are sliding down right now, and for safety’s sake, you shouldn’t crowd the chute. Don’t be afraid. The toxic smoke won’t reach your floor for another ten minutes.”

  I was notified three minutes later, and I popped into the escape chute through the red door and slid smoothly to the ground and exited safely through the fire exit. Outside, I found twenty-odd children who had already escaped, all of them on the instructions of the voice from Beijing. They told me that the fire had started just ten minutes earlier.

  I was shocked, since this was something I never imagined would happen. The kid in Beijing had searched for information on two separate computers (combing through all of the data on one of them), and had given phone calls to more than twenty children, all in the space of ten minutes.

  I was in more pain than I’d ever been in in my life. A stomach ache, a headache, my vision was all green-tinted, I was vomiting constantly, and I could barely breathe. I had no strength left to stand up, and even if I could, there were no doctors. I struggled to the desk to reach for the phone, but before my fingers touched it, it started ringing. Then a boy’s voice said, “Hello. This is the central government. I’m here to help you.”

  I wanted to tell him my predicament, but before I could speak I groaned and vomited again, just a little bit of water this time.

  “You�
�ve got stomach trouble, right?”

  “Yes . . . ​yes . . . ​it hurts. How do you know?” I croaked out with difficulty.

  “Five minutes ago I linked up with the central computer at the municipal water plant and discovered that a monitoring program in the purification system malfunctioned from being unattended, and despite a reduction in water volume, chlorine was added according to the volume of ten hours ago, meaning that tap water for the eastern half of the city contains chlorine levels nine-point-seven times the safe maximum. As a result, many children have been poisoned. You are one of them.”

  I remembered that I’d started feeling ill after my thermos ran out and I began using tap water.

  “A kid will visit you in a little while. Don’t drink any water in your house before then.”

  Just as he finished speaking, the door opened and a girl I’d never seen before came in holding a medicine bottle and a thermos filled with boiled water. The medicine and water had me feeling better in no time. I asked how she knew I was sick, and how she knew what medicine to bring. Was her dad a doctor? She told me the central government had telephoned to tell her to come, and the medicine was given to her by some boys. Their fathers weren’t doctors either; the central government had instructed them to get the medicine from the hospital pharmacy. They’d been called at their home, which was next to the hospital. When they got to the pharmacy, the central government called them there, and the pharmacy computer displayed the drug name. When they still couldn’t find it, the terminal showed them the color and shape of the bottle. The central government had them take all the medicine they could find and put it on a cart and then distribute it to a long list of addresses the computer printed out for them. On the way, the boys met two other groups of kids coming from different hospitals bringing large quantities of the same medicine. When they couldn’t find an address, public phones at the roadside would ring, and when they picked up, it was the central government with more instructions. . . .

  From Lü Wen, Children and AI: An Unconscious Attempt

  at a Fully Informatized Society. Science Press, SE 16.

  SUPERNOVA ERA, HOUR 4

  To the delight of the children in the hall at the top floor of the NIT, the red patches on the onscreen national map began to contract, slowly at first and then faster, as if a heavy rain were putting out a forest fire.

  SUPERNOVA ERA, HOUR 5

  The map’s red patches had turned to red points that were rapidly winking out.

  SUPERNOVA ERA, HOUR 6

  Although a large number of red points remained on the map, the report from Digital Domain announced that the country as a whole was no longer in danger.

  At the start of the Supernova Era, human society underwent shocks and changes more drastic than any in history; periods were reckoned not in the decades or centuries of the previous era, but in days or even hours. To later historians, the first six hours of the new era were treated as a single period, known as the Suspension.

  Exhausted child leaders emerged onto the balcony outside the hall, where they shivered under a crisp breeze. Fresh air entered their lungs and flowed throughout their bodies, and in the space of a few seconds it was as if their veins had been injected with new blood in place of the old. Their heartbeat and breathing grew more vigorous. It was still a while till sunrise, but the sky was already light and the city was visible in every detail. Fires and smoke had vanished; the streetlights glowed, proving that power had been restored, but few lights were on in the buildings, and the streets were empty. The city was at peace, like it had just dropped off to sleep. A bird of some kind passed swiftly through the clear sky overhead, uttering a brief call.

  The eastern horizon brightened. The new world waited to welcome its first sunrise.

  6

  INERTIA

  INSPECTION

  Suspension shattered all of the dry run’s fantasies of smooth operations, and destroyed the confidence the children had built up during that time. At last they understood that life was far more difficult than they imagined. Regardless, the children’s country still managed to struggle to its feet.

  During the first two months of the new era, the country focused on recovering from the wounds Suspension had inflicted, and strove to keep on the rails. Work was hard going. To gain a sense of the state of the country, the three child leaders carried out two weeks of inspections throughout the country.

  Children say what they mean. Wherever they went, children in all sectors spoke their minds, and the leaders were privately shocked by what they learned about social conditions. The public’s state of mind was summed up in three words: tired, bored, and disappointed.

  *

  On the first day of the inspection, a kid in Tianjin showed Huahua a copy of his daily schedule: Rise at 0600, eat a quick breakfast, humanities class at 0630, grade 5, primarily by self-study. At 0830 start work. Get off work at 1700. After dinner, at 1900, begin specialty classes in job-related knowledge and skills. Finish at 2200, add another hour of humanities. The day didn’t end until 2300.

  The kid said, “I’m tired. Just tired. My greatest wish these days is to sleep all the way till doomsday.”

  *

  In Shanghai, the child leaders inspected a nursery. In the children’s world, caring for infants was work for society, so nurseries were quite large. Right as the three leaders came in the door, they were stopped by a group of nurses who insisted they spend an hour taking care of babies for themselves. Despite strong protests from their aides and bodyguards, they were essentially held hostage by the growing crowd, who soon numbered more than a thousand, and ultimately had to submit. In a large room they were each put in charge of two babies. Xiaomeng managed the best, keeping her two babies happy and content, but when the hour was up her back ached and her legs were shaky. Huahua and Specs were a wreck. Their four babies kept crying but refused milk and wouldn’t go to sleep. They just wailed like train whistles, loud enough to wake up the babies in the surrounding beds, and soon all twenty-odd babies in the room were fussing and crying. By the end of it, Huahua and Specs felt on the verge of a mental breakdown.

  “Now I see how hard a time my mom had with me,” Huahua said to an accompanying reporter.

  A nurse sniffed. “Your mom only had the one of you. Each of us has two or three babies to look after! And at night we have class. It’s a huge drag!”

  “That’s right. We can’t do this work. Get someone else to do it,” other nurses added.

  *

  Their visit to a coal mine in Shanxi, where they watched the whole workflow of a team of child miners, left the deepest impression on the child leaders. The coal cutter broke down as soon as the shift started, and in the dank, claustrophobic darkness of the mine hundreds of meters underground, repairing the huge machine stuck in a seam of waste rock was a nightmarish task that required strength, finesse, and patience.

  When they finally got it fixed, a length of conveyor belt snapped off. The miners were blackened head to toe after shoveling coal off the belt, apart from the white of their teeth whenever they opened their mouths. Replacing the belt was an exhausting ordeal, and when it was finished they were pretty much tired out. It was close to the end of the shift, so they only managed to fill one cartload, but then the cart derailed only a little ways down the tracks.

  The children struggled for a while with crowbars and jacks but the cart didn’t budge, and in the end they had to remove the coal to rerail the cart, more backbreaking work in air thick with choking dust. Once the cart was righted, they reloaded the coal, which took more energy than unloading it. When they finally came off shift, they lay down on the floor of the changing room, covered in coal dust, too tired even to shower.

  “That went well!” said one of the miners. “At least no one got hurt. There are six kinds of things in the mines: coal, rocks, iron, wood, bones, and flesh. Bones and flesh are the softest, and children’s most of all!”

  *

  Maintaining normal society in the children�
�s country required working with the strength and endurance of adults, which was impossibly hard for the vast majority of them. That wasn’t the half of it: children had to be at least eight years old to do typical work, and ten for more complicated tasks, so the working-age population was far smaller, proportionally, than it had previously been, making work far more intense for the children than the adults. Add to that their classes, and you can imagine how tired out they got. Practically all of them had experience of headaches and fatigue, and the overall health of the child population plummeted.

  But the young leaders were most worried about the children’s mental state: their fascination with the novelty of their work had long since evaporated, and they had realized that the vast majority of the work was mindlessly dull. Their immature minds had a hard time conceptualizing their lives in a planned, systematic way, and they lacked the motivating presence of a family, which meant they had a hard time grasping their work’s significance.

  Without a spiritual support, heavy, tedious work naturally turned into a form of torture. When the leaders inspected a power plant, a child vividly described that emotional state: “See how we have to sit at this control station all day staring at the dials and screens, and making occasional adjustments when the numbers have gone off. I feel nothing about the work anymore. It’s like I’m just a part in a huge machine. What’s the point?”

  *

  On the plane back to Beijing, the three leaders looked down at the undulating mountains, lost in thought.

  Huahua said, “I don’t know how much longer this will hold up.”

  Xiaomeng said, “Life is never easy. Kids are still stuck in an elementary-school mind-set. But they’ll come around eventually.”

  Huahua shook his head. “I’m skeptical. The lifestyle the adults set out for us may not be workable. They were thinking about children from their adult perspective, but they didn’t understand what makes kids different.”