Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  Unlike the chilly loneliness on the other side of the world, here several hundred American kids watched the ceremony, and a military band played the two national anthems. Once the Chinese children had raised their flag, representatives of the two sides came to sign the agreement. The Chinese representative signed, and then it was time for George Steven, governor of South Dakota. As several hundred kids watched intently, he ambled over to the signing table, slung a backpack off his shoulder, and took from it a stack of pens, fountain pens and ballpoints both, over a hundred in all. Then he began signing, using each pen for only a dot or two before setting it aside and picking up another. He signed for fifteen minutes, and it was only when the crowd’s protests grew too loud that he straightened up from the table. He had signed with nearly one hundred pens, and apparently was somewhat annoyed that his parents hadn’t seen fit to give him a longer name. Then he launched into a loud auction of the pens, with an opening bid of $500 each. As I watched the price skyrocket, I was seized with anxiety, and in a flash I thought of the signing table! But I was too slow; a few other kids had already rushed over to dismember it, and in the blink of an eye the poor table had been reduced to splinters of wood in the hands of dozens of kids. I glanced down at the flag in my own hands, but it did not belong to me. Looking about me for something else, I had an idea. I turned and raced into Carvers Café, and as luck would have it in a side room I found the tool I wanted: a saw. By the time I came back out, the bidding had climbed above $5,000 on George Steven’s last few pens! Two flagpoles towered before me; on one fluttered the brilliant red Chinese flag, which clearly was untouchable. But the other, which once held the Stars and Stripes, was empty. I hurried over and started sawing, and in a matter of seconds I had cut it through. As it fell, a crowd of kids ran over hoping to take it for themselves, and then fought to break it into pieces, no matter that the wood was too thick to snap. My saw managed to get me two segments, each about a meter long, but I was too tired to fight for any more. But two was enough! I sold the saw for a couple thousand to another boy, who immediately joined the pack tussling over the flagpole like they were in some ferocious football game. I auctioned off one of my pieces for $45,000 but kept the other to sell later for a higher price. Then the army band members starting selling off their instruments, and it was havoc for a while as things got out of control. Some kids who hadn’t claimed anything, and who had no money for the auctions, began crowding around the Chinese flagpole, and it was only when soldiers with machine guns from the Chinese Navy vowed to defend the flag and the territory it stood on with their lives that the kids finally left in dejection. Later, everyone regretted auctioning things off on-site, since memorabilia from the first territorial handover quickly rose in value tenfold. Luckily I held on to one piece of flagpole; I used it later for seed capital to open a transport company in Xinjiang.

  From A Chronicle of the Great Migration, China Edition, vol. 6. Sino-American Territory Exchange Commission, New New York, SE 7.

  Now the three leaders had reached the end of the exhibit, the prehistoric gallery of the origins of Chinese civilization. In the previous galleries they had felt in awe of the finely crafted objects from earlier ages, but also perplexed, since it seemed as if an invisible wall kept them separated. The estrangement had been most acute when they had entered the premodern gallery, and it had almost sapped their courage to go on. If even the not-so-distant Qing Dynasty was an entirely unknown world to them, had they any hope of understanding any earlier age?

  But contrary to their expectations, the farther back in civilization they went, the less of a separation they felt, and now that they had reached its remote origins, they had the sudden feeling of being in a familiar, inviting world. As if, after a long voyage through strange, incomprehensible lands, all of them peopled solely by incomprehensible adults speaking incomprehensible languages and living a different kind of life, almost as if they came from a different planet, now they had reached the end of the earth, and had found a children’s world just like their own.

  Those splendid, exquisite premodern artifacts did not belong to children; the humanity that created them had already grown up. Humanity’s childhood may have been more remote, but it spoke to children all the same. The three children stared intently at the Yangshao culture* artifact: a clay pot. The crude object reminded them of a rainstorm from their young childhood, and of forming a similar object out of mud under a rainbow after the storm had passed. The age before them was the age of Pangu separating heaven and earth, of Nüwa mending heaven, of Jingwei filling up the sea, of Kuafu chasing the sun. Humanity grew up, but its courage slackened, and no more did it create such earth-shattering myths.

  Huahua slid back the glass of the display case and carefully lifted the pot out. It felt warm, and almost seemed to vibrate in his hands. It was a being of extraordinary energy. He bent an ear to the opening. “I hear something!” he exclaimed. Xiaomeng pressed her ear to it and listened intently. “It’s the sound of wind!” The wind blowing over the primeval wilderness. Huahua lifted the jar up to the Rose Nebula, and the clay had a faint red luster in the blue light. He stared at the fish design, and that combination of the simplest of lines wriggled slightly, and a sudden spirit came into the black circle representing the eye. Shadows flitted across the pot’s rough surface; they were too vague to make out, but they had the feeling of naked figures wrestling against something far larger than themselves.

  The ancient sun and moon dwelt within the pot and cast gold and silver light over the figures. Its patterns, fish and beasts, were like pairs of eyes looking out over the long millennia, and that first ancestor’s gaze met their own and passed to them a rugged energy that made them want to cry out, to weep, to laugh, to tear off their clothes and race through the howling wind in the wilderness. At long last they could feel their ancestors’ blood flowing in their veins.

  The three of them crossed the age-old palace beneath the light of the Rose Nebula holding the ancient pot, the oldest artifact in the city, left to them from the infancy of Chinese civilization. Walking slowly and carefully, they held it as gingerly as if it were their own eyes, or life itself. When they reached the Golden River Bridge, the last gate of the palace closed behind them with a clang. They knew that no matter where they went, their lives would be forever connected to that clay pot they held. It was their origin and their destination, and the source of their strength.

  GENESIS

  A two-day gale had finally died down, but the waves were still high and the night sky remained overcast. The only things visible on the water in the dead of night were endless churning whitecaps.

  The first of the migration fleets had left port sixty days ago, and this was the first storm it had encountered. The wind had been strongest on the previous night, and two of the smallest-displacement transport ships, sailing at the rear, had been swallowed up by the gigantic waves. Another twenty-thousand-ton freighter had gone to their aid, but when the captain gave an ill-considered order to turn, putting the ship parallel to the waves, it was capsized by a few huge hits. When two helicopters that took off from another military vessel disappeared without a trace into the ocean, fleet command had to abandon the rescue effort, consigning more than twelve thousand children to the inky depths of the Pacific.

  The remaining thirty-eight ships continued their arduous passage through the wind and waves. But the children were already used to the harshness of the voyage. First the wretched cabin conditions and the torment of seasickness, then food shortages, with daily rations only enough for one full meal, no vegetables. Even vitamin tablets were limited. Half the children came down with night blindness, and a growing number were septic, but they maintained discipline under adverse conditions. Organization was sustained in small, medium, and large groups, and leaders at all levels remained in their posts, carrying out their duty with fearless dedication. Once they reached the Americas, sustaining that discipline and organization would be for the Chinese children a trial far more difficult than
any storm or hunger.

  Two days ago they had crossed paths with the American migration fleet. The two fleets followed their own path in silence, neither acknowledging the other’s presence. The American children did not appear to be much better off.

  At last the waves receded. They had diverted from their route for two days in order to follow the safest line through the storm, and now the entire fleet was attempting an arduous change of heading. Waves thundered off the bow and port side, and the side-to-side rocking intensified.

  The dark clouds overhead had scattered, and the light of the Rose Nebula hit the waves and scattered into a thousand directions, turning the Pacific into a marvelous ocean of blue fire. The children ran out onto the deck, their footsteps shaky from seasickness and hunger, and flocked to the sides of the ship as if sleepwalking. But there was no stopping the cheers when they saw the majestic sight before them.

  It was the last day of the second year of the Supernova Era.

  Midnight.

  A few destroyers fired ship guns into the air, and strings of flares and fireworks rose from other ships. The explosions and the waves and the children’s excited shouts blended into one, resounding through the air and across the sea.

  The first rays of dawn peeked out from the eastern horizon and mingled with the Rose Nebula into the most magnificent riot of color in the entire universe.

  Now it was January 1, the third year of the Supernova Era.

  EPILOGUE

  BLUE PLANET

  Finished at last! Time to take a deep breath, like a diver breaking the surface. For the half a year I spent underwater, this book has occupied my entire life. Now I can truly say that I am finished “writing,” since the power’s out again—the government says it’s another problem with the solar batteries—and I’ve had to take up that ancient pen. Yesterday it was clogged from the cold and I couldn’t write; today it isn’t, and I’m sitting here sweating in the heat and dripping onto the pages. The climate varies day to day, sometimes hour to hour, and without the AC it’s intolerable.

  Out the window is a swath of verdant grass adorned with the pale yellow cottages of the immigrant village. Beyond them—god, don’t look out there—is nothing but desert, a red desolation frequented by raging dust storms that blot out the dim red sky and the sun that provides little heat in the first place.

  Such a god-awful place. Such a god-awful place!

  “You said that when you finished the book, you’d watch the kid,” Verené says.

  I say I’m writing the afterword. I’ll be done soon.

  “It’s all a waste of energy. Too fringe to be proper history, and too realistic to be fiction.”

  She’s right. That’s what the book agents said, too. But what can I do? It’s the current state of historiography that’s landed me in this dilemma!

  It’s my misfortune to be a superhistorian in this era. A little over three decades into the Supernova Era, the period has been the focus of a mountain of research, putting it well beyond the scope of historiography and into a sort of sensationalized commercialism. Book after book, most just playing to the crowd. A few of the duller so-called historians even parcel out the three decades into smaller periods, measured by the day and more numerous than the dynasties of the Presupernova period, and publish studies for each to rake in the cash.

  * * *

  Most historians of the Supernova Era currently follow one of two major schools of thought, alternate history and psychology.

  The alternate history approach is currently in vogue. This school poses historical hypotheses. What if, for example, the supernova rays were a bit stronger and killed off everyone over the age of eight? Or a bit weaker and allowed anyone under twenty to survive? What would that have done to the history of the Supernova Era? If the Supernova War had been fought not as games but as conventional battles in the Common Era meaning of the term? So on and so forth.

  The school had its reasons for being: the outbreak of the Supernova War brought humanity to the understanding that from a cosmic perspective there is an element of randomness to the march of history. In the words of noted alternate historian Dr. Liu Jing, “History is a little tree branch carried along a stream. It might whirl in an eddy for a while, or get caught on a rock poking above the surface, or any number of other possibilities. For history as a discipline to study just one of those possibilities is as ridiculous as playing cards with a deck consisting entirely of aces.”

  The development of this school is tied to the proof in recent years of the parallel universe theory, whose far-reaching implications for all disciplines, history included, are only beginning to be felt.

  I won’t deny that there are a few serious alternate historians, such as Alexander Levenson (The Direction of the Section) and Matsumoto Taro (Unlimited Branching), whose research uses a unique perspective on another potential pathway as a way to expound an innate law of actual history. These scholars have my respect; that their work has been ignored is historiography’s tragedy. On the other hand, the school has provided a wonderful stage for showy crowd-pleasers who are far more interested in alternate history than in the real thing, and for whom the name “historian” is less appropriate than “alternate history novelist.”

  The aforementioned Liu Jing is their chief exponent. She pops up in the media these days flogging her fifth book, for which she was reportedly paid an advance of 3.5 million Martian dollars. From its title, The Big If, you can pretty much guess at the contents. Liu Jing’s father from back in the Common Era must be mentioned in any discussion of her scholarship, not, I assure you, because I’m trying to make a bloodline argument, but simply due to the fact that Dr. Liu has repeatedly acknowledged her great father’s influence on her academic approach. I feel I ought to understand him a little. This has been no easy task. I scanned through materials from the Common Era and searched through all the ancient databases I could find, but came up with nothing.

  Fortunately, Liu Jing was Verené’s graduate advisor, and so I had her ask Dr. Liu directly. I learned as a result that Liu Jing’s nobody of a father, Liu Cixin, had written a few science fiction stories back in the Common Era, most of them published in a magazine called SFW (I checked this out; Science Fiction World was a previous incarnation of the Precision Dream Group that has a monopoly on hypermedia arts on two worlds). Verené even brought back three of his stories. I got halfway through the first one and had to throw it away; what utter trash! The whales in that story even grew teeth! Under the influence of a father like that, it’s no wonder Liu Jing has the attitude toward scholarship and the methods she does.

  The psychological school of superhistory is a far more serious pursuit. Its adherents believe that the great divergence in the Supernova Era from the track of prior human history was due to child psychology in SE society. In Germ Cell Society, Von Svensker systematically expounds on the unique implications of the family-free society at the start of the era; Zhang Fengyun goes further in the somewhat controversial Asexual World, providing a sober yet brilliant analysis of a society in which sex is basically absent. But to my mind, the psychological school is built atop a shaky foundation, for in actual fact, the psychological state of SE children was entirely different from that of CE children. In some ways they were far more naïve, but in other ways they were more mature than even CE adults. Whether SE history created this psychology or vice versa is a true chicken-and-egg question.

  A few serious scholars who do not adhere to any school have made valuable contributions to superhistory. In Classroom Society, A. G. Hopkins provides a comprehensive study of the forms of government in the children’s world. This monumental work was attacked from many sides, mostly on ideological grounds rather than for any questions of scholarship, which, given the scope of the book, is hardly surprising. Yamanaka Keiko’s Raising Oneself and Lin Mingzhu’s A Candle in the Cold Night are two books on the history of SE education that, despite being a bit heavy on sentimentality, nevertheless have value as comprehensive, objective
historical documents. Zeng Yulin’s magnum opus To Sing Again is a rigorous yet poetic systematic study of the art of the children’s world, and one of the few works of superhistory with both critical and popular appeal. The results of these scholars’ research must still stand the test of time, but their research itself is serious, at least compared to the stuff in The Big If.…

  “You lose your cool whenever you mention my advisor,” Verené says, looking over my shoulder.

  Can I keep cool? Can Liu Jing? My book’s not even published, and already she’s mocking it in the media as “unfictionlike fiction, reportage that doesn’t report, ahistorical history. It’s unclassifiable.” An attempt to bolster oneself by belittling others will in no way have a positive effect on the academic climate of superhistory that’s polluted already.

  I wrote this way out of desperation. A prerequisite for historical research is to let history cool down first, but has the Supernova Era cooled down in thirty-odd years? Not one whit. We are the witnesses to that history, and the terror of the supernova, the loneliness of the Epoch Clock running out, the torpor of Candytown, the great tragedy of the Supernova War, all of it is deeply imprinted in our minds.

  Before migrating here, I lived beside the railroad tracks, and every night I was tormented by nightmares in which I was running through the wilderness in the dark surrounded by terrifying noises—floods, earthquakes, the howls of hordes of giant beasts, the thunder of nuclear bombs. And then one night, I awoke with a start from that nightmare and dashed to the window. No stars, no moon, only the Rose Nebula shining over the land, and a night train making its slow passage. Can one do research at a theoretic level in such a state? No, we lack the dispassionate detachment that theoretic research requires. It will need to wait until there’s enough distance between the early Supernova Era and the researchers, which may leave it in the hands of the next generation. All our generation can do is descriptive writing, giving our descendants records of the period from the perspective of eyewitnesses and of historians. That is all that superhistory can do for the time being, in my opinion.