Broken Stars

by Ken Liu

  “Still, four abilities is a lot!”

  “The universe obeys the laws of conservation. To get something, you have to give in return.”

  The Agency of Mysteries delivered A’s ability first.

  That night, Ah Chen felt as if his brain had been ripped out and forced through a red-hot wire mesh. His head seemed to split open. He howled and howled with pain.

  Ci, whom he’d kept in the dark, quaked at his screams hard enough to nearly tumble off the bed. That entire night, wrapped in a thin sleeping robe, she kept Ah Chen’s forehead and hands covered with hot towels. Watching him clench his hands into the bedsheets and refuse to go to the hospital, she could only stand helplessly at his bedside. Every time Ah Chen screamed, Ci shivered too. She gripped his hands as hard as she could, terrified that he’d hurt himself as he thrashed and struggled.

  By the time the sky began to brighten, Ah Chen’s face was as pale as paper, and Ci had wept herself empty of tears. Her mind held only one thought: if this man did not survive, she feared that she would not either.

  When Ah Chen awoke in the morning, he found that the world in front of his eyes had taken on a sudden, perfect clarity.

  Every piece of furniture, every drawer, every item of clothing, every pair of socks in the bedroom—abruptly, he knew where they were, how big, what color, for what purpose. He looked out the window. A group of neighbors were taking a walk in the commons. Behind every face was an identity, an age, and a list of relationships. Yesterday, Ah Chen couldn’t even remember their names.

  Her husband had awoken, but Ci saw on his face an eerie expression. Half delighted and half worried, she hurriedly put a hand to his forehead to check his temperature. Ah Chen impatiently brushed her hand away and herded her out of the room without a word.

  He snatched up a book at random and started reading at the table of contents. His reading speed had increased five or six times. When he was done, he only needed to glance at the table of contents again, and the events of the book seemed to arrange themselves neatly into twigs and branches growing out of a few main trunks. Every knot, every joint was so clear. When Ah Chen closed his eyes, a few inharmonious branches stood out in sharp relief on the tree, and it seemed to only take him a second to realize how to fix these branches, how to fix this book—this book, which had been so praised and so successful in its sales.

  Every edit Ah Chen noticed left him a little more breathless, a little more dizzy. Suspicion, amazement, and overpowering joy drove into him like waves in a tempest. He couldn’t even wait long enough to boot up his computer. He grabbed a sheaf of paper and started to write.

  With his front door locked tightly, he wrote more than a hundred beautiful plot outlines within the week. The beginnings were stunning, the middles fluid, the climaxes brilliantly fitting, the plot arcs graceful. Every one of them could be called a classic. He shook as he stroked his drafts. Now and then he broke into hysterical laughter.

  However, in the course of this week, Ah Chen seemed to have caught some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He rearranged all the furniture in his room, measuring each item’s location to the millimeter; he sorted his clothes by color and thickness; he stuck a label onto every drawer. Everything had to be perfectly ordered. A single stain or misplaced scrap of paper was enough to scrape his nerves raw.

  That week, Ci was forced to sleep in the living room. She would make three meals a day and bring them to the bedroom. One day, as she tiptoed in, she decided she would clean the room. The moment she opened the wardrobe, Ah Chen flew into a rage and slapped her.

  A month later, the Agency of Mysteries brought B’s ability. Ah Chen’s ears became peculiarly sensitive to sounds; they left indelible marks in his mind. When he heard wind, music, thunder, or even the barking of dogs, every syllable seemed imbued with new significance. Poems, essays, haikus, and colorful slang rose from the pages as if given life, linking their hands and dancing, endlessly dancing, passing before his eyes one after the other like little fairies.

  He wrote one beautiful poem after the next, but the sublime melody of his verses gave him no peace, not when A’s powers of organization and structure howled at him from the darkness, “Order! Order!” while B’s power insisted that the beauty of language came from ineffable spontaneity and inspiration. The two masters’ mental states fought like storm and tempest, neither willing to bow to the other. Ah Chen felt as if his body had become a gladiatorial arena for his mind. He couldn’t sleep; he shivered despite himself.

  C’s ability followed. What an abyss that was: a million faces, a million personalities, a million stories, a million different kinds of despair. Ah Chen finally understood the price C had paid to be able to write about those twisted souls and those unimaginable plots, the hell he had made of his own spirit. Ah Chen trembled, navigating through the blood, the tears, the white bones and black graves, as if he walked on thin ice; he very nearly fell. Without C’s psychological tenacity, Ah Chen approached the precipice of suicide multiple times. Only through hard liquor, which temporarily numbed his brain, could he seek the smallest scrap of solace.

  Day after day, tears washed Ci’s face, and she soon fell ill. She couldn’t understand how the handsome, scholarly, gentle man she loved could turn into a different person in the space of a night. Truth be told, Ci understood from history that the majority of authors’ spouses led unhappy lives, enduring both material poverty and their partners’ sensitivity, moodiness, and even unfaithfulness. She had understood it even before she married him.

  Unfortunately, for many like her, knowledge and reason had never stood a chance before love.

  This was all irrelevant. Ci lay in bed, weakly gasping for air. Remembering the slap, she closed her eyes. A tear slowly wended its way into her hair.

  One day at dusk, Ah Chen was awoken by a strange voice.

  “You thief.”

  Ah Chen’s eyes snapped open. A man’s face appeared in his mind, thin and long, its expression not quite a smile.

  The face hadn’t materialized in front of his eyes, and it wasn’t projected onto anything. It had simply floated to the surface of his mind, clear and blurry at the same time. That’s hard to explain. It was as if he had one good eye and one injured eye, and was trying to look at the world with both at the same time.

  “Steal my imagination? Who do they think they are?” The man laughed.

  Ah Chen grabbed wildly in front of his eyes, but caught only air.

  “All laws are one; all things are eternal.” The man looked at Ah Chen pityingly, slowly blurring into nothingness.

  Ah Chen at last woke from his drunken stupor, and found that his vomit had already been cleared away by Ci, and that his blankets were aired and sweet-smelling. The setting sun shone into the room, and clarity seemed to flow into Ah Chen’s heart. That was E’s ability.

  Humanity always reenacts the same bildungsroman. All the principles you learn through your struggles today had been written down by the ancients thousands of years ago.

  There is nothing new under the sun.

  “You went to such lengths to steal these things, and all for what?”

  What have I done? Ah Chen watched countless motes of dust dance in the setting sun’s light.

  He seemed to see the history of literature slowly distorting in those four parallel universes as the butterfly effect rippled through space-time. Countless chains of causality broke apart, then joined again; countless people’s fates altered with them.

  He felt as if he was looking into each world: publishers’ contempt as A seemed to run out of talent; readers mocking B for his clumsy language; E’s wife yelling at him for his uselessness. C flogged himself in the dark of night, sobbing in agony.

  He’d stolen each of their most precious possessions, and drowned in alcohol, he’d trampled them into the dirt.

  At this point, Ah Chen noticed something strange. E’s wise, reasonable voice asked him, “Why do you feel no guilt? Why does your heart hold only regret, and not
the pain brought on by your sense of responsibility? Why have you lost the ability to love another?”

  Love? Ah Chen thought dazedly. What’s love?

  Oh. He’d traded love away at the Agency of Mysteries.

  “Love was the most important thing of them all,” E said tranquilly. “Technique and intelligence will let you see through the world, explain it, look down upon it, but they’ll never make you a true master of literature. You have to let go of yourself, join yourself to the world without resistance or hate; use love, admiration, and respect to observe all living things, including humanity. This is the true secret of literature.”

  Ah Chen stood up and opened the door to the dining room. Ci sat at the table, watching over a pot of steaming Laba porridge.

  Ah Chen sat down stiffly across from her, like a puppet.

  “You should eat a little.” For the first time in many days, her eyes held the light and peace of knowledge.

  Ah Chen took a mouthful. It was salty, not sweet. He raised his head, looking at Ci’s pale face.

  “Ah Chen, I don’t know where you went the evening of Laba Festival. I don’t know why you changed so much. But you must have a good reason for what you did.

  “I waited for you the entire night. The porridge from that day, like today’s, was salty.” Ci forced a smile.

  I should say something, Ah Chen thought. In the end, he didn’t say anything.

  “Ah Chen, I read your manuscripts yesterday, when you weren’t looking. They’re wonderful. I’m so happy.” Ci finally looked as if she were about to cry. Slowly, she took Ah Chen’s hand in hers.

  “Promise me, you’ll keep writing.”

  Ah Chen was silent for a long time. “For you, I’ll keep writing.”

  Ci slowly smiled. Her eyes shone with the same sweetness as they’d held just after the wedding, but it couldn’t hide the grief at the corners of her eyes. The setting sun shone on her pale face, coloring it with a flush for the last time.

  Her hand is so cold, Ah Chen thought.

  “Ci … did she …” Mo’s heart sank.

  Her father continued to operate the cooking box slowly.

  “Yes, Ci died the next day. Perhaps she saw that the last spark of light in her life—Ah Chen’s love for her—was gone.

  “Ah Chen lived alone after that, in the constant clash and torment of the powers in his head. You can’t go back on a bargain, no matter how much you regret it. He sporadically wrote many bestsellers, won many awards, but he never remarried, never moved out of the house, and never read his own works. The books piled up in the corner of his study and gathered dust.”

  So her father was a science fiction author. Mo looked at him, her brow furrowed. How do you know all this? How do you know a version of yourself from another universe? How many things are you hiding from me?

  The cooking box dinged. It was a bowl of Laba porridge.

  Maybe it was just the chill from a snowy night, but when her father carried the porridge past her, it seemed to tinge the air with the cool, faint smell of salt.

  At the other end of the restaurant, Ah Chen lifted his head. He saw the owner’s long, thin face, and his eyes widened.

  They conversed.

  Mo hurried over to eavesdrop, but heard only their last words: “All laws are one; all things are eternal.” She couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

  Her father turned and made his way back to the kitchen, leaving Ah Chen sitting stunned at the table. His gaze followed her father’s retreating back for a while, then slowly shifted back.

  Gradually, a small smile surfaced on his face. There was a hint of desolation in it, as if he were reliving some memory.

  In front of him was the bowl of deep reddish-violet Laba porridge, in which black glutinous rice, kidney beans, adzuki beans, peanuts, longan, jujubes, lotus seeds, and walnuts had been cooked until they’d turned slippery and soft, squeezed together like a family. The cool, faint smell of salt wafted from the bowl.

  Ah Chen sat like that until the other guests had left one by one. The porridge had finally cooled.

  He got up slowly. Mo hurried to open the door for him.

  The smile was like the transient flash of a sparkler in the night sky. His eyes were empty again.

  Without a glance for Mo, Ah Chen disappeared into the wind and snow.

  The clock struck midnight; a gust of cold wind blew in, carrying powdery snow with it.

  “Don’t you want to know what we talked about?” her father asked slowly as he wiped a plate dry.

  “Yeah!” Mo thought of the look in Ah Chen’s eyes and shivered despite herself.

  “I told him that, a few days later, a certain book will win an award on Earth. It tells the story of a woman’s undying love for a man, and the author’s name is Zhang Ci. Ah Chen wrote the book based on Ci’s diary. I fear it’s the last and only work he can write in this lifetime that will give him satisfaction.”

  MA BOYONG

  Ma Boyong is a prolific and popular fiction writer, essayist, lecturer, Internet commentator, and blogger. His work crosses the boundaries of alternative history, historical fiction, wuxia (martial arts fantasy), fabulism, and more “core” elements of science fiction and fantasy.

  Incisive, funny, and erudite, Ma’s works are deeply allusive, featuring surprising and entertaining juxtapositions of traditional elements from Chinese culture and history against contemporary references. The ease with which Ma marshals his encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese history and traditions also makes it a challenge to translate his most interesting works. For example, he has written a thriller set in Tang Dynasty Chang’an that employs the pacing and tropes of a modern American TV show like 24, as well as two wuxia novellas featuring Joan of Arc, in which the tropes and expectations of wuxia are mapped to Medieval Europe. These stories are extremely entertaining for the reader with the right cultural context and shed new light on the genres and sources Ma plays with, but would be nigh-impenetrable for a reader in translation without extensive footnotes.

  “The First Emperor’s Games” starts off with the absurd premise that Qin Shihuang, China’s First Emperor, was an avid computer gamer. Once that premise is swallowed, the mapping of Classical Chinese philosophy onto modern video games is wondrous. However, much of the humor of the story depends on knowledge of Chinese Internet culture and ancient Chinese history, so liberal use of Wikipedia may be necessary for some readers.

  More of Ma Boyong’s work may be found in Invisible Planets.

  THE FIRST

  EMPEROR’S GAMES

  From his magnificent throne in the capital, the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang, issued a new edict: “Now that China has been united, I want to play some games!”

  The emperor deserved a break. After conquering the other six states, the Qin Empire had successfully carried out multiple complicated reforms: getting everyone to write in the same script, regrading all roads to be the same width, standardizing units of measurement, and promulgating an all-encompassing encoding for all computer text that subsumed the incompatible encodings used by the former warring states. With this Uni-Code in place, citizens of the Qin Empire could confidently launch any program without worrying about conversion plug-ins or screens filled with random glyphs. Moreover, he had constructed a Great Firewall up north, which shielded the empire from all barbarian attacks as well as pop-up ads.

  These tasks had taken up decades of the emperor’s youth. With the world at peace, he needed to take a long, relaxing vacation and play some games, just like any ordinary citizen.

  The news that the emperor was in search of quality games soon spread throughout the land and became the talk of every teahouse and tavern. Most greeted the news with joy because a good gamer made a good administrator. It was said that Zhang Yi, the great Qin strategist who had furthered the emperor’s ambition by sowing discord and suspicion among the other six states, thereby dissolving their anti-Qin “vertical alliance,” had adapted his line-breaking strategy from Candy Crush—sw
ipe, match, gone! Back when Zhang had been a student, he had devoted all his free time to playing games instead of studying. Yet, look how far he had risen! Obviously, playing games taught important management skills.

  However, a few nobles expressed reservations. They thought of games as addictive, cheap entertainment suitable only for plebeians. A great leader like the emperor should stay as far away from them as possible. Their suggestion for curing the emperor of this “electronic opium addiction” was electroshock therapy. The emperor soon declared the nobles guilty of attempted treason and sentenced them to capital punishment.

  But the news generated the most excitement among the contending philosophers and scholars of the Hundred Schools of Thought. These wonks, obsessed with putting their ideas for better government into practice, understood the weighty implications right away. As the head of such an extensive empire, the emperor’s choice of games would inevitably affect his governing philosophy, and that meant a great opportunity for the scholars to persuade the policymaker under the guise of entertainment. Should the emperor become enamored by a philosopher’s game, it was likely that the emperor would push for policies evolving society in the direction of the philosopher’s sagacious ideas.

  Soon, the capital was filled with representatives from philosophy start-ups and development think tanks. They lined up before the palace with demos of their best games, hoping to impress the emperor.

  The first to make a presentation was the Legalist school of thought. To be sure, the Legalists had an unfair advantage because their leader, Li Si, was also Chancellor of the Qin Empire. The day after the emperor issued his edict, Chancellor Li approached the throne, a DVD in hand.

  (This is, after all, a story from the ancient days, before solid state drives and fast broadband. Appreciate your good fortune as you marvel at how much trouble the ancients had to go through for a game.)

  “My dear minister! What have you brought me?” The emperor was dressed in a loose-fitting, colorful shirt, already looking like a relaxed vacationer.