The Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  One time somewhat later when Zhang Xiaole went out to get food, he happened across a box of baijiu, and so the three boys began to drink. They’d started on beer during Dreamtime, but now drinking to excess was widespread, as children discovered that the fluid’s bite brought a tremendous thrill to their numb bodies and psyches. No wonder adults used to love it so! They finished drinking at noon and came to after dark, but to them it was as if only four or five minutes had passed, so soundly had the booze knocked them into a dreamless sleep.

  They could all sense that the world was somehow unusual upon waking, but they gave it no more thought, since they’d drunk so much. After a sip of cold water, they considered what was out of the ordinary, and quickly hit upon the answer: The walls of the room weren’t spinning. They had to restore the world to normal, and so began searching for more alcohol.

  Li Zhiping found a bottle and they passed it around, letting the blistering fire pour down the throat and set the whole body afire. The four walls gradually started to move again, and their bodies turned into clouds that moved with the walls, up and down and side to side, as if Earth had become a raft bobbing about in the ocean of the universe, liable to capsize at any time. Letter carrier Li Zhiping, barber Chang Huidong, and chef Zhang Xiaole lay there wallowing in the cradle-like rocking and turning, thinking of the wind blowing over them out toward the endless cosmic ocean.

  *

  By dint of enormous effort, the children’s national government managed to ensure that key systems maintained essentially normal operations during Slumbertime. Water supply, transport links, telecommunications, and Digital Domain all remained operational, and it was due to these efforts that the Candytown period did not experience the accidents and disasters that swept the country during the Suspension. Some historians described the forty-odd days of Slumbertime as “an ordinary night extended a hundredfold,” which is an accurate comparison. Even though most people are asleep at night, society continues to operate. Other people felt the country was in a coma, retaining essential life functions even while unconscious.

  The child leaders used every method at their disposal to wake the country’s children from their deep sleep, but none was successful. They repeatedly resorted to the remedy used during the Suspension, having Big Quantum call up all the phones in the country, but there was no significant reaction. Big Quantum summarized the responses using the New World Assembly method into one statement: “Go away. I’m sleeping.”

  The leaders visited the New World community online, which was largely empty and abandoned. The New World Assembly was a vast plain devoid of human life. Since the start of this period, Huahua and Xiaomeng visited Digital Domain practically every day, each time hailing the country’s children with the greeting, “Hey, kids, how’s it going?”

  The response was always the same: “We’re alive. Bug off.”

  So they said, but the children didn’t actually hate Huahua or Xiaomeng, and they were unsettled if the two of them failed to show up on a particular day, asking each other, “Why aren’t those two good kids online today?”

  “Good kids” was something of a sarcastic jab, but it was a friendly one, and it was a name people called them from then on. And hearing the response “We’re alive” every day did give some comfort to the leaders, for so long as it was there, the country hadn’t experienced the worst.

  One night when Huahua and Xiaomeng visited the New World Assembly, they found more children than usual, around ten million, most of them pretty wasted. Most of the cartoon avatars were carrying liquor bottles bigger even than the avatars themselves. They wove and stumbled in the assembly or tumbled into piles, conversing drunkenly. Like their counterparts at the computer in the outside world, from time to time the avatars took a swig of digital booze. The liquid, which probably used the same element in the image database for all of the bottles, shone like molten iron and lit up the cartoon bodies when they drank.

  “Kids, how’s it going?” Xiaomeng asked from the platform in the center of the assembly, like she did every day, like she was visiting a bedridden patient.

  Ten million children answered, and Big Quantum summarized their responses into a stammering “We’re . . . ​fine. Alive . . .”

  “But what sort of life is it?”

  “It’s . . . ​what? How are you living?”

  “Why have you totally abandoned work and study?”

  “Work . . . ​what’s the . . . ​point? You’re good kids. You . . . ​you can work.”

  “Hey! Hey!” Huahua shouted.

  “What’re you yelling for? Can’t you see we’re drunk and sleeping?”

  Huahua got angry. “You drink and sleep and drink some more. Do you know what you are? You’re little pigs!”

  “Watch . . . ​watch your mouth. You’re up there cursing at us all day. What kind of class . . . ​class monitor are you?” “Class Monitor” was the children’s nickname for Huahua; they called Specs “Studies Rep” and Xiaomeng “Life Rep.” “If you want us to listen to you, fine . . . ​fine. Now it’s time for you to down . . . ​this bottle!”

  Then a huge liquor bottle descended from the blue sky and hovered in front of Huahua, dancing mockingly. He smashed it with a wave of his hand, and its molten iron contents showered down in glittering fountains around the platform.

  “Hah, piggies,” Huahua said.

  “Still at it?” Bottles came flying from all parts of the assembly, but were caught by a software screen and disappeared into thin air at the edge of the platform. More bottles magically appeared in the empty hands of the children who had thrown them.

  Huahua said, “Wait and see. You’ll starve if you don’t work.”

  “That includes you.”

  “You little piggies really deserve a spanking!”

  “Hahaha. You think you can . . . ​spank us? You’re talking to three hundred million kids. We’ll see who ends up . . . ​spanking who.”

  *

  Huahua and Xiaomeng took off their VR helmets and looked through the NIT’s transparent walls at the city outside. This was Slumbertime’s deepest sleep. Few lights were on in the city, and its forest of buildings shone icy blue in the unearthly light of the Rose Nebula, like sleeping snowcapped mountains.

  Xiaomeng said, “I dreamed of my mom again last night.”

  Huahua asked, “Did she say anything to you?”

  Xiaomeng said, “I’ll tell you about something that happened to me when I was younger. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was pretty young. Ever since I first saw a rainbow, I imagined it was a multicolored bridge in the sky, and imagined it was made of crystal and lit with multicolored lights. Once, after a heavy rain, I ran off in the direction of the rainbow as hard as I could. I wanted to reach the end, and to climb up to its scary heights and see what was beyond the mountains on the horizon, and find out how big the world really was. But as I ran, it seemed to move away from me, and then the sun set behind the mountains, and it vanished from bottom to top. I stood alone in an empty field covered head to toe in mud, bawling, and my mom promised me that the next time it rained she would go with me to chase the rainbow. And so I looked forward to the next big rain, and the next time it rained and there was a rainbow, my mom was just coming to fetch me from kindergarten. She put me on the seat on the back of her bike and rode off toward the rainbow. She rode fast. But the sun still set and the rainbow disappeared. Mom said to wait for the next heavy rain. But I waited and waited through lots of rainstorms but there wasn’t another rainbow. Then it started to snow . . .”

  Huahua said, “You liked to fantasize when you were little. But you don’t anymore.”

  Xiaomeng gently shook her head. “Sometimes, you’ve got to grow up quick. . . . ​But last night I dreamed my mom took me to chase the rainbow again! We caught it, and then climbed up. I climbed to the top of that multicolored bridge and saw the stars twinkling just next to me. I grabbed one. It was cold as ice, and chimed like a music box.”

  Huahua said
with feeling, “The time before the supernova really does seem like a dream.”

  “Yes,” Xiaomeng said. “I just want to dream myself back to the time of the adults, and to be a kid again. I’m having more and more dreams like that.”

  “Dreaming about the past and not the future is where you’re making a mistake,” Specs said, coming over with a big cup of coffee. The past few days he had rarely spoken, and hadn’t taken part in the conversations with the country’s children in Digital Domain. Most of his time he had spent alone, deep in thought.

  Xiaomeng sighed. “Are there any dreams for the future?”

  Specs said, “This is the biggest difference between me and you. You see the supernova as a catastrophe, and so you’re doing everything you can to get through it, hoping the children will grow up as fast as possible. But I think this is a huge opportunity for humanity. It could mean huge breakthroughs, and advancement for civilization.”

  Huahua pointed out at the city slumbering in the blue glow of the Rose Nebula. “Look at the children’s world. Is there any hope of that?”

  Specs took a sip of coffee, and said, “We missed an opportunity.”

  Xiaomeng and Huahua looked at each other, and then Xiaomeng said, “You’ve thought of something again. Out with it!”

  “I thought of it at the New World Assembly. Do you remember what I said about the basic motivator of the children’s world? When we went back to the assembly platform after visiting the children’s virtual country, and faced those two hundred million faces, I suddenly realized what that motivation is.”

  “What?”

  “Play.”

  Xiaomeng and Huahua thought about this in silence.

  “First we have to figure out the definition of play. It’s an activity unique to children, distinct from the entertainment of adults. Entertainment was only a supplement to the main body of life in the adults’ society, but play can be the entirety of life for children. It’s quite possible that a children’s world might be a play-based world.”

  Xiaomeng said, “But how’s that related to the breakthroughs and advancement for civilization? Will play be able to produce those?”

  “How do you imagine human civilization advances?” Specs shot back. “Through hard work?”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Ants and bees are industrious, but how advanced is their civilization? Humanity’s dim-witted ancestors cleared the earth with crude stone shovels, and then when they found that tiring, learned how to refine bronze and iron. When they found that tiring, they wondered whether they could find anything to do the work in their stead, and so they invented steam engines, electricity, and nuclear energy. Then even thinking became tiresome, so they looked for something to do it for them, and thus computers were invented. . . . ​Civilization progresses not due to humans’ hard work, but because of their laziness. One look at the natural world will show you that humans are the laziest of all creatures.”

  Huahua nodded. “That’s an extreme characterization, but there’s truth in it. The course of history is a complicated thing, and we shouldn’t simplify it too much.”

  Xiaomeng said, “I still don’t agree that civilization can advance without hard work. Do you really believe that it’s the right thing for the children to sleep all day?”

  “Haven’t they worked?” Specs asked. “You probably still remember that virtual reality movie that the US put out just before the supernova, a huge Warner Brothers production with a budget of over a hundred million dollars. Everyone said it was the biggest computer-generated virtual model ever. But you all saw the virtual country the kids made. I asked Big Quantum to run the calculations, and it comes out to three thousand times the size of that movie.”

  Huahua nodded again. “That’s right! The virtual world was humongous, and every grain of sand and blade of grass was rendered to perfection. Back in computer class it took me a whole day to model an egg. Imagine the work it took to make that virtual country!”

  Specs said, “You all think that kids are lazy, that they don’t work hard, but have you ever thought about how after a day of tough work, they’re still at the computer close to midnight working just as hard on building their virtual country? I’ve heard that lots of them even died right in front of their computers.”

  Xiaomeng said, “So have we found the cause of our troubles?”

  “It’s simple, really. The adults’ society was an economic one. People labored to obtain economic compensation. The child society is a play society. People labor to receive play compensation. But right now, that compensation is practically zero.”

  Huahua and Xiaomeng started nodding. Xiaomeng said, “I don’t entirely agree with your theory; for instance, economic compensation is essential in the child society as well, but I see a bit of light shining through the murk that’s clogged my mind for days.”

  Specs continued, “For society as a whole, when the principles of play replace the principles of economics in determining the operation of society, it might produce tremendous innovation, releasing the human potential that was constrained under the former economic principles. For example, in the adults’ time, the majority of people couldn’t rationalize paying two-thirds of their life savings for a trip to space, but in the children’s world, most people would, under play principles. This would propel space travel to a pace of development equal to that of information technology in the adults’ time. Play principles are more innovative and pioneering than economic principles; play means traveling far, it means constantly finding out new mysteries of the world. Play will develop toward a high level, just as economics in the adults’ time promoted scientific development, but this will be a far greater driving force, and will ultimately lead human civilization to an explosive leap, meeting or exceeding the critical velocity for survival in this cold universe.”

  Huahua said thoughtfully, “This means that even after the children’s world becomes an adult world, play principles must continue on.”

  “It’s not an impossibility. The children’s world will create a brand-new culture, and when our world grows into an adults’ world, it will not be a facsimile of the Common Era.”

  “Wonderful! Totally brilliant. Now, you just said that you had this idea at the New World Assembly?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  “Is there any point to telling you now?”

  Huahua pointed a finger at Specs and said in exasperation, “You really are a giant of thought and a dwarf of action! You’ve always been that way! What’s the point of an idea if you don’t act on it?”

  Specs shook his head without any change of expression. “How should I act? We can’t simply accept their crazy five-year plan, can we?”

  “Why not?”

  Specs and Xiaomeng looked at Huahua as if he were a total stranger.

  “Is that five-year plan nothing more than an unreal dream to you?”

  “It’s less real than a dream. If humanity ever had a plan entirely divorced from reality, this is it,” Specs said.

  “But it’s the highest expression of your idea: a play-driven world.”

  Specs said, “You’re right about the plan as an expression of an idea, but it has no practical significance whatsoever.”

  “None at all?”

  Specs and Xiaomeng exchanged a glance.

  “Are you sure you aren’t sleepwalking?” Specs asked Huahua, and then remembered that at the critical moment in the Suspension a few months back, Huahua had asked him the same question.

  Huahua said, “Remember the adventure zone that took up the entire northwest? Isn’t that a possibility? Our total population is just a fifth of what it was in the adults’ time, so we can vacate half of our territory—not necessarily the northwest—shut down all of the cities and industries in that entire area, and move the population, so as to leave it uninhabited. Let it gradually return to a natural state, into a national park. The other half of the country still wouldn’t b
e as crowded as it was for the adults.”

  On the heels of their initial shock at Huahua’s suggestion, Specs and Xiaomeng found sudden inspiration.

  Xiaomeng said, “That’s right! And one outcome would be that the population in the inhabited half would double, and every child’s average workload would be cut in half. It would solve the problem of overwork and would give them more time to study or play.”

  “More importantly,” Specs said, getting into it, “play would be compensation for labor, just like I described. After a stretch of work, children could spend their free time out in the national park. It’s half the country—nearly five million square kilometers—so it ought to be lots of fun.”

  Huahua nodded. “And in the long term, it might be possible for the megasized amusement rides to actually be built in that huge park.”

  Xiaomeng said, “I think the plan is workable, and it’ll pull the country back from the brink. Migration is the critical thing. It would have been unimaginable in the adults’ time, but children’s social structures are far, far simpler. We’re basically structured like a big school, so for us the large-scale population displacement won’t be too difficult. What do you think, Specs?”

  Specs thought a moment, and then said, “That’s a creative idea. It’s just that it’s a huge action so unprecedented that it might bring—”

  “We can’t predict what it’ll bring!” Huahua cut in. “There you go again, a dwarf of action. Of course we’re going to give it careful study. I propose an immediate meeting. I’m convinced that implementing this plan will wake the country right up out of its slumber.”

  *

  Historians later called that conversation the “Late Night Talk” of the early Supernova Era, and its significance cannot be overstated. During their talk, Specs proposed two important ideas: first, that play is the primary driving force of the children’s world, an idea that later became the foundation for sociology and economics in the early Supernova Era; and second, that the play principles of the children’s world would in some way affect the later adult world, changing the nature of human society. This idea was even bolder, and its influence more profound.