by Neil Clarke
“And then?”
“The second sign of the civilization’s senescence was the Age of the Machine Cradle.”
“What?”
“By then our machines no longer relied on their creators. They operated independently, maintained themselves, and developed on their own. The smart machines gave us everything we needed: not just material needs, but also psychological ones. We didn’t need to put any effort into survival. Taken care of by machines, we lived as though we were lying in comfortable cradles.
“Think about it; if the jungles of primitive Earth had been filled with inexhaustible supplies of fruits and tame creatures that desired to become food, how could apes evolve into humans? The Machine Cradle was just such a comfort-filled jungle. Gradually we forgot about our technology and science. Our civilization became lazy and empty, devoid of creativity and ambition, and that only sped up the aging process. What you see now is the God Civilization in her final dying gasps.”
“Then . . . can you now tell us the goal for the God Civilization in coming to Earth?”
“We have no home now.”
“But . . .” The Secretary-General pointed upward.
“The spaceships are old. It’s true that the artificial environment on the ships is more stable than any natural environment, including Earth’s. But the ships are so old, old beyond your imagination. Old components have broken down. Accumulated quantum effects over the eons have led to more and more software errors. The system’s self-repair and self-maintenance functions have encountered more and more insurmountable obstacles. The living environment on the ships is deteriorating. The amount of life necessities that can be distributed to individuals is decreasing by the day. We can just about survive. In the twenty thousand cities on the various ships, the air is filled with pollution and despair.”
“Are there no solutions? Perhaps new components for the ships? A software upgrade?”
God shook his head. “The God Civilization is in her final years. We are two billion dying men and women each more than three thousand years old. But before us, hundreds of generations had already lived in the comfort of the Machine Cradle. Long ago, we forgot all our technology. Now we have no way to repair these ships that have been operating for tens of millions of years on their own. Indeed, in terms of the ability to study and understand technology, we are even worse than you. We can’t even connect a circuit for a lightbulb or solve a quadratic equation . . .
“One day, the ships told us that they were close to complete breakdown. The propulsion systems could no longer push the ships near the speed of light. The God Civilization could only drift along at a speed not even one-tenth the speed of light, and the ecological support systems were nearing collapse. The machines could no longer keep two billion of us alive. We had to find another way out.”
“Did you ever think that this would happen?”
“Of course. Two thousand years ago, the ships already warned us. That was when we began the process of seeding life on Earth so that in our old age we would have support.”
“Two thousand years ago?”
“Yes. Of course I’m talking about time on the ships. From your frame of reference, that was three-point-five billion years ago, when Earth first cooled down.”
“We have a question: you say that you’ve lost your technology. But doesn’t seeding life require technology?”
“Oh. To start the process of evolving life on a planet is a minor operation. Just scatter some seeds, and life will multiply and evolve on its own. We had this kind of software even before the Age of the Machine Cradle. Just start the program, and the machines can finish everything. To create a planet full of life, capable of developing civilization, the most basic requirement is time, a few billion years of time.
“By traveling close to the speed of light, we possess almost limitless time. But now, the God Civilization’s ships can no longer approach the speed of light. Otherwise we’d still have the chance to create new civilizations and more life, and we would have more choices. We’re trapped by slowness. Those dreams cannot be realized.”
“So you want to spend your golden years on Earth.”
“Yes, yes. We hope that you will feel a sense of filial duty toward your creators and take us in.” God leaned on his walking stick and trembled as he tried to bow to the leaders of all the nations, and he almost fell on his face.
“But how do you plan to live here?”
“If we just gathered in one place by ourselves, then we might as well stay in space and die there. We’d like to be absorbed into your societies, your families. When the God Civilization was still in her childhood, we also had families. You know that childhood is the most precious time. Since your civilization is still in her childhood, if we can return to this era and spend the rest of our lives in the warmth of families, then that would be our greatest happiness.”
“There are two billion of you. That means every family on Earth would have to take in one or two of you.” After the Secretary-General spoke, the meeting hall sank into silence.
“Yes, yes, sorry to give you so much trouble . . .” God continued to bow while stealing glances at the Secretary-General and the leaders of all the nations. “Of course, we’re willing to compensate you.”
He waved his cane, and two more white-bearded Gods walked into the meeting hall, struggling under the weight of a silvery, metallic trunk they carried between them. “Look, these are high-density information storage devices. They systematically store the knowledge the God Civilization had acquired in every field of science and technology. With this, your civilization will advance by leaps and bounds. I think you will like this.”
The Secretary-General, like the leaders of all the nations, looked at the metal trunk and tried to hide his elation. “Taking care of God is the responsibility of humankind. Of course this will require some consultation between the various nations, but I think in principle . . .”
“Sorry to be so much trouble. Sorry to be so much trouble . . .” God’s eyes filled with tears, and he continued to bow.
After the Secretary-General and the leaders of all the nations left the meeting hall, they saw that tens of thousands of Gods had gathered outside the United Nations building. A white sea of bobbing heads filled the air with murmuring words. The Secretary-General listened carefully and realized that they were all speaking, in the various tongues of Earth, the same sentence:
“Sorry to be so much trouble. Sorry to be so much trouble . . .”
4.
Two billion Gods arrived on Earth. Enclosed in suits made of their special film, they fell through the atmosphere. During that time, one could see the bright, colorful streaks in the sky even during the day. After the Gods landed, they spread out into 1.5 billion families.
Having received the Gods’ knowledge about science and technology, everyone was filled with hopes and dreams for the future, as though humankind was about to step into paradise overnight. Under the influence of such joy, every family welcomed the coming of God.
That morning, Qiusheng and his family and all the other villagers stood at the village entrance to receive the Gods allocated to Xicen.
“What a beautiful day,” Yulian said.
Her comment wasn’t motivated solely by her feelings. The spaceships had disappeared overnight, restoring the sky’s wide open and limitless appearance. Humans had never been allowed to step onto any of the ships. The Gods did not really object to that particular request from the humans, but the ships themselves refused to grant permission. They did not acknowledge the various primitive probes which Earth sent and sealed their doors tightly. After the final group of Gods leaped into the atmosphere, all the spaceships, numbering more than twenty thousand, departed their orbit simultaneously. But they didn’t go far, only drifting in the asteroid belt.
Although these ships were ancient, the old routines continued to function. Their on
ly mission was to serve the Gods. Thus, they would not move too far. When the Gods needed them again, they would come.
Two buses arrived from the county seat, bringing the one hundred and six Gods allocated to Xicen. Qiusheng and Yulian met the God assigned to their family. The couple stood on each side of God, affectionately supported him by the arms, and walked home in the bright afternoon sun. Bingbing and Qiusheng’s father followed behind, smiling.
“Gramps, um, Gramps God.” Yulian leaned her face against God’s shoulder, her smile as bright as the sun. “I hear that the technology you gave us will soon allow us to experience true Communism! When that happens, we’ll all have things according to our needs. Things won’t cost any money. You just go to the store and pick them up.”
God smiled and nodded at her, his white hair bobbing. He spoke in heavily accented Chinese. “Yes. Actually, ‘to each according to need’ fulfills only the most basic needs of a civilization. The technology we gave you will bring you a life of prosperity and comfort surpassing your imagination.”
Yulian’s laughed so much her face opened up like a flower. “No, no! ‘To each according to need’ is more than enough for me!”
“Uh-huh,” Qiusheng’s father agreed emphatically.
“Can we live forever without aging like you?” Qiusheng asked.
“We can’t live forever without aging. It’s just that we can live longer than you. Look at how old I am! In my view, if a man lives longer than three thousand years, he might as well be dead. For a civilization, extreme longevity for the individual can be fatal.”
“Oh, I don’t need three thousand years. Just three hundred.” Qiusheng’s father was now laughing as much as Yulian. “In that case, I’d still be considered a young man right now. Maybe I can . . . hahahaha.”
The village treated the day like it was Chinese New Year. Every family held a big banquet to welcome its God, and Qiusheng’s family was no exception.
Qiusheng’s father quickly became a little drunk with cups of vintage huangjiu. He gave God a thumbs-up. “You’re really something! To be able to create so many living things—you’re truly supernatural.”
God drank a lot, too, but his head was still clear. He waved his hand. “No, not supernatural. It was just science. When biology has developed to a certain level, creating life is akin to building machines.”
“You say that. But in our eyes, you’re no different from immortals who have deigned to live among us.”
God shook his head. “Supernatural beings would never make mistakes. But for us, we made mistake after mistake during your creation.”
“You made mistakes when you created us?” Yulian’s eyes were wide open. In her imagination, creating all those lives was a process similar to her giving birth to Bingbing eight years ago. No mistake was possible.
“There were many. I’ll give a relatively recent example. The world-creation software made errors in the analysis of the environment on Earth, which resulted in the appearance of creatures like dinosaurs: huge bodies and low adaptability. Eventually, in order to facilitate your evolution, they had to be eliminated.
“Speaking of events that are even more recent, after the disappearance of the ancient Aegean civilizations, the world-creation software believed that civilization on Earth was successfully established. It ceased to perform further monitoring and microadjustments, like leaving a wound-up clock to run on its own. This resulted in further errors. For example, it should have allowed the civilization of ancient Greece to develop on her own and stopped the Macedonian conquest and the subsequent Roman conquest. Although both of these ended up as the inheritors of Greek civilization, the direction of Greek development was altered . . .”
No one in Qiusheng’s family could understand this lecture, but all respectfully listened.
“And then two great powers appeared on Earth: Han China and the Roman Empire. In contrast to the earlier situation with ancient Greece, the two shouldn’t have been kept apart and left to develop in isolation. They ought to have been allowed to come into full contact . . .”
“This ‘Han China’ you’re talking about? Is that the Han Dynasty of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu?” Finally Qiusheng’s father heard something he knew. “And what is this ‘Roman Empire’?”
“I think that was a foreigners’ country at the time,” Qiusheng said, trying to explain. “It was pretty big.”
Qiusheng’s father was confused. “Why? When the foreigners finally showed up during the Qing Dynasty, look how badly they beat us up. You want them to show up even earlier? During the Han Dynasty?”
God laughed at this. “No, no. Back then, Han China was just as powerful as the Roman Empire.”
“That’s still bad. If those two great powers had met, it would have been a great war. Blood would have flowed like a river.”
God nodded. He reached out with his chopsticks for a piece of beef braised in soy sauce. “Could have been. But if those two great civilizations, the Occident and the Orient, had met, the encounter would have generated glorious sparks and greatly advanced human progress . . . Eh, if those errors could have been avoided, Earth would now probably be colonizing Mars, and your interstellar probes would have flown past Sirius.”
Qiusheng’s father raised his bowl of huangjiu and spoke admiringly. “Everyone says that the Gods have forgotten science in their cradle, but you are still so learned.”
“To be comfortable in the cradle, it’s important to know a bit about philosophy, art, history, etc.—just some common facts, not real learning. Many scholars on Earth right now have much deeper thoughts than our own.”
For the Gods, the first few months after they entered human society were a golden age, when they lived very harmoniously with human families. It was as though they had returned to the childhood of the God Civilization, fully immersed in the long-forgotten warmth of family life. This seemed the best way to spend the final years of their extremely long lives.
Qiusheng’s family’s God enjoyed the peaceful life in this beautiful southern Chinese village. Every day he went to the pond surrounded by bamboo groves to fish, chat with other old folks from the village, play chess, and generally enjoy himself. But his greatest hobby was attending folk operas. Whenever a theatre troupe came to the village or the town, he made sure to go to every performance.
His favorite opera was The Butterfly Lovers. One performance was not enough. He followed one troupe around for more than fifty kilometers and attended several shows in a row. Finally Qiusheng went to town and bought him a VCD of the opera. God played it over and over until he could hum a few lines of Huangmei opera and sounded pretty good.
One day Yulian discovered a secret. She whispered to Qiusheng and her father-in-law, “Did you know that every time Gramps God finishes his opera, he always takes a little card out from his pocket? And while looking at the card, he hums lines from the opera. Just now I stole a glance. The card is a photo. There’s a really pretty young woman on it.”
That evening, God played The Butterfly Lovers again. He took out the photograph of the pretty young woman and started to hum. Qiusheng’s father quietly moved in. “Gramps God, is that your . . . girlfriend from a long time ago?”
God was startled. He hid the photograph quickly and smiled like a kid at Qiusheng’s father. “Haha. Yeah, yeah. I loved her two thousand years ago.”
Yulian, who was eavesdropping, grimaced. Two thousand years ago! Considering his advanced age, this was a bit gag-inducing.
Qiusheng’s father wanted to look at the photograph. But God was so protective of it that it would have been embarrassing to ask. So Qiusheng’s father settled for listening to God reminisce.
“Back then we were all so young. She was one of the very few who wasn’t completely absorbed by life in the Machine Cradle. She initiated a great voyage of exploration to sail to the end of the universe. Oh, you don’t need to think too hard about that. It�
��s very difficult to understand. Anyway, she hoped to use this voyage as an opportunity to awaken the God Civilization, sleeping so soundly in the Machine Cradle. Of course, that was nothing more than a beautiful dream. She wanted me to go with her, but I didn’t have the courage. The endless desert of the universe frightened me. It would have been a journey of more than twenty billion light-years. So she went by herself. But in the two thousand years after that, I never stopped longing for her.”
“Twenty billion light-years? So like you explained to me before, that’s the distance that light would travel in twenty billion years? Oh my! That’s way too far. That’s basically good-bye for life. Gramps God, you have to forget about her. You’ll never see her again.”
God nodded and sighed.
“Well, isn’t she now about your age, too?”
God was startled out of his reverie. He shook his head. “Oh, no. For such a long voyage, her explorer ship would have to fly at close to the speed of light. That means she would still be very young. The only one that has grown old is me. You don’t understand how large the universe is. What you think of as ‘eternity’ is nothing but a grain of sand in space-time.
“Well, the fact that you can’t understand and feel this is sometimes a blessing.”
5.
The honeymoon between the Gods and humans quickly ended.
People were initially ecstatic over the scientific material received from the Gods, thinking that it would allow mankind to realize its dreams overnight. Thanks to the interface equipment provided by the Gods, an enormous quantity of information was retrieved successfully from the storage devices. The information was translated into English, and in order to avoid disputes, a copy was distributed to every nation in the world.