To Hold Up the Sky

by Cixin Liu

  In times of good weather, Yi Yi lived alone in the crude grass hut he’d built himself by the riverside, tilling the land and amusing himself. A normal human wouldn’t have been allowed, but as Yi Yi’s feedlot lectures on ancient literature had edifying properties, imparting a unique flavor to the flesh of his students, the dinosaur breeder didn’t stop him.

  It was dusk, two months after Yi Yi had first met Li Bai, the sun just tipping over the perfectly straight horizon line of the Devouring Empire. The two rivers reflected the sunset, meeting at the edge of the sky. In the riverside hut, a breeze carried faint, distant sounds of song and celebration over the prairie. Yi Yi was alone, playing weiqi with himself.

  He looked up and saw Li Bai and Bigtooth walking along the riverbank toward him. Li Bai was much changed from before: his hair was unkempt, his beard even longer, his face sun-browned. He had a rough cloth pack slung over his left shoulder and a large bottle-gourd in his right hand. His robes had been reduced to rags; his woven-straw shoes were mangled with wear. But Yi Yi thought that he now seemed more like a human being.

  Li Bai walked over to the weiqi table. Like the last few times, he slammed the gourd down without looking at Yi Yi and said, “Bowl!” When Yi Yi had brought over the two wooden bowls, Li Bai uncorked the gourd and filled them with wine, then took a paper package from his pack. Yi Yi opened it to discover cooked meat, already sliced, its aroma greeting his nose enthusiastically. He couldn’t help but grab a piece and start chewing.

  Bigtooth only stood, a few meters away, watching them silently. He knew from before that the two of them were going to discuss poetry again, a topic in which he had no interest and no ability.

  “Delicious,” Yi Yi said, nodding approvingly. “Is the beef made directly from energy too?”

  “No, I’ve gone natural for a long while now. You might not know, but there’s a pasture a long distance away from here where they raise Earth cows. I cooked the beef myself in the Shanxi Pingyao style. There’s a trick to it. When you stew the meat, you have to add…” Li Bai whispered mysteriously into Yi Yi’s ear, “Urea.”

  Yi Yi looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Oh, that’s what you get when you take human urine, let it evaporate, and extract the white stuff. It makes the cooked meat red and juicy with a tender texture, while keeping the fatty parts from being cloying and the lean parts from being leathery.”

  “The urea … it’s made from pure energy, right?” Yi Yi asked, horrified.

  “I told you, I’ve gone natural! It took me a lot of work to collect the urea from several human feedlots. This is a very traditional folk cuisine technique, faded from use long before the destruction of Earth.”

  Yi Yi had already swallowed his bite of beef. He picked up the wine bowl to prevent himself from vomiting.

  Li Bai pointed at the gourd. “Under my direction, the Devouring Empire has built a number of distilleries, already capable of producing many of the wines famous on Earth. This is bona-fide zhuyeqing, made by steeping bamboo leaves in sorghum liquor.”

  Yi Yi only now discovered that the wine in his bowl was different from what Li Bai had brought previously. It was emerald green, with a sweet aftertaste of herbs.

  “Looks like you’ve really mastered human culture,” Yi Yi said feelingly to Li Bai.

  “That’s not all. I’ve also spent a lot of time on personal enrichment. As you know, the scenery of many parts of the Devouring Empire is near identical to what Li Bai saw on Earth. In these two months, I’ve wandered the mountains and waters, feasting my eyes on picturesque landscapes, drinking wine under moonlight, declaiming poetry on mountain summits, even having a few romantic encounters in the human feedlots everywhere…”

  “Then, you should be ready to show me your works of poetry.”

  Li Bai exhaled and set down his wine bowl. He stood and paced uneasily. “I’ve composed some poems, yes, and I’m certain you’d be astonished at them. You’d find that I’m already a remarkable poet, even more remarkable than you and your great-grandfather. But I don’t want you to see the poems, because I’m equally certain you’d think they fail to surpass Li Bai’s. And I…” He looked up and far away, at the residual radiance of the setting sun, his gaze dazed and pained. “I think so too.”

  On the distant prairie, the dances had ended. People were happily turning to their abundant dinner. A group of girls ran to the riverbank to splash in the shallows near shore. Circlets of flowers adorned their heads, and light gauze like mist draped over their bodies, forming an intoxicating scene in the lighting of dusk. Yi Yi pointed at one girl near the hut. “Is she beautiful?”

  “Of course,” Li Bai said, looking uncomprehendingly at Yi Yi.

  “Imagine cutting her open with a sharp knife, removing her every organ, plucking out her eyes, scooping out her brain, picking out all her bones, slicing apart her muscles and fat according to position and function, gathering her blood vessels and nerves into two bundles. Finally, imagine laying out a big white cloth and arranging all those pieces, classified according to anatomical principles. Would you still think her beautiful?”

  “How do you think of such a thing while drinking? Disgusting,” Li Bai said, wrinkling his brow.

  “How is it disgusting? Is this not the technology you worship?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Li Bai saw nature like you see the girls down by the riverside. But in technology’s eyes, nature is its components, perfectly arrayed and dripping blood on a white cloth. Therefore, technology is antithetical to poetry.”

  “Then you have a suggestion for me?” Li Bai said thoughtfully, stroking his beard.

  “I still don’t think you stand a chance at surpassing Li Bai, but I can point your energies in the correct direction. Technology has clouded your eyes, blinding you to the beauty of nature. Therefore, you must first forget all your ultra-advanced technological knowledge. If you can transplant all your memories into your current brain, you can certainly delete some of them.”

  Li Bai exchanged looks with Bigtooth. Both burst into laughter. “Esteemed god, I told you from the start, these are tricky bug-bugs,” said Bigtooth. “A moment of carelessness and you’ll fall into one of their traps.”

  “Hahahaha, tricky indeed, but entertaining as well,” Li Bai said to Bigtooth, before turning toward Yi Yi with cold amusement. “Did you really think I came here to admit defeat?”

  “You could not surpass the pinnacle of human poetry. That’s a fact.”

  Abruptly, Li Bai raised a finger and pointed to the river. “How many ways are there to walk to the riverbank?”

  Yi Yi looked uncomprehendingly at Li Bai for a few seconds. “It seems … there’s only one.”

  “No, there’s two. I can also walk in this direction,” Li Bai indicated the direction opposite from the river, “and keep going, all the way around the Devouring Empire, crossing the river from the other side to reach this bank. I can even make a full circuit around the Milky Way and return here. With our technology, it’s just as easy. Technology can surpass anything! I am now forced to take the second path!”

  Yi Yi pondered this for a long time before shaking his head in bewilderment. “Even if you have the technology of a god, I can’t think of a second path to surpassing Li Bai.”

  Li Bai stood. “It’s simple. There are two ways to surpass Li Bai. The first is to write poems that surpass his. The other is to write every poem!”

  Yi Yi looked even more confused, but Bigtooth beside him seemed to have had an epiphany.

  “I will write every five-character-line and seven-character-line poem possible. They were Li Bai’s specialty. In addition, I’m going to write down every possible lyrical poem for the common line formats! How do you not understand? I’m going to try every possible permutation of Chinese characters that fits the format rules!”

  “Ah, magnificent! What a magnificent undertaking!” Bigtooth crowed, forgetting all dignity.

  “Is this hard?” Yi Yi a
sked ignorantly.

  “Of course, incredibly so! The largest computer in the Devouring Empire might not be able to finish the calculations before the death of the universe!”

  “Surely not,” Yi Yi said, skeptical.

  “Of course yes!” Li Bai nodded with satisfaction. “But by using quantum computing, which you’re still a long way from mastering, we can complete the calculations in an acceptable length of time. Then I’ll have written every single poem, including everything that’s been written in the past, and, much more importantly, everything that may be written someday in the future! This will naturally include poems that surpass Li Bai’s best works. In fact, I’ve ended the art of poetry. Every poet from now on to the destruction of the universe, no matter how great, will be no more than a plagiarist. Their works will turn up in a search of my enormous storage device.”

  Bigtooth suddenly gave a guttural cry, his gaze on Li Bai changing from excitement to shock. “An enormous … storage device? Esteemed god, do you mean to say, you’re going to … save all the poems the quantum computer writes?”

  “What’s the fun in deleting everything right after I write it? Of course I’m going to save them! It will be a monument to the artistic contributions my race has made to this universe!”

  Bigtooth’s expression changed from shock to horror. He extended his bulky claws and bent his legs, as if trying to kneel to Li Bai. “You mustn’t, esteemed god,” he cried. “You mustn’t!”

  “What’s got you so scared?” Yi Yi regarded Bigtooth with astonishment.

  “You idiot! Don’t you know that atomic bombs are made of atoms? The storage device will be made of atoms too, and its storage precision can’t possibly exceed the atomic level! Do you know what atomic-level storage is? It means that all of humanity’s books can be stored in an area the size of the point of a needle! Not the couple of books you have left, but all the books that existed before we ate Earth!”

  “Ah, that sounds plausible. I’ve heard that a glass of water contains more atoms than the Earth’s oceans contained cups of water. Then, he can just write down those poems and take the needle with him,” Yi Yi said, pointing at Li Bai.

  Bigtooth nearly burst with outrage. He had to rapidly pace a few steps to summon a little more patience. “Okay, okay, tell me, if the god writes all those five-character- and seven-character-line poems, and the common lyrical poetry formats, one time each, how many characters would that be?”

  “Not many, no more than two or three thousand, right? Classical poetry is the most concise art form there is.”

  “Fine, you idiot bug-bug, let me show you how concise it really is!” Bigtooth strode to the table and pointed at the game board with one claw. “What is it you call this stupid game … ah yes, weiqi. How many grid intersections are on the board?”

  “There are nineteen lines in both the vertical and horizontal directions, for a total of three hundred and sixty-one points.”

  “Very good, each intersection can be occupied by a black piece, a white piece, or no piece, a total of three states in all. So you can think of each game state as using three characters to write a poem of nineteen lines and three hundred and sixty-one characters.”

  “That’s a clever comparison.”

  “Now, if we exhaust all the possible permutations of these three characters in this poem format, how many poems can we write? Let me tell you: 3361, or, let me think, 10172!”

  “Is … is that a lot?”

  “Idiot!” Bigtooth spat the word at him for the third time. “In all the universe, there are only … grargh!” He was too infuriated to speak.

  “How many?” Yi Yi still wore a befuddled expression.

  “1080 atoms! You idiot bug-bug—”

  Only now did Yi Yi show any sign of astonishment. “You mean to say, if we could save one poem in every atom, we might use up every atom in the universe and still not be able to fit all of his quantum computer’s poems?”

  “Far from it! Off by a factor of 1092! Besides, how can one atom store a whole poem? The memory devices of human bug-bugs would have needed more atoms to store one poem than your population. As for us, ai, technology to store one bit per atom is still in the laboratory stage.…”

  “Here you display your shortsightedness and lack of imagination, Emissary, one of the reasons behind the laggardly advancement of Devouring Empire technology,” Li Bai said, laughing. “Using quantum storage devices based on the quantum superposition principle, the poems can be stored in very little matter. Of course, quantum storage is none too stable. To preserve the poems forever, it needs to be used in tandem with more traditional storage techniques. Nonetheless, the amount of matter required is minuscule.”

  “How much?” Bigtooth asked, looking as if his heart were in his throat.

  “Approximately 1057 atoms, a pittance really.”

  “That’s … that’s exactly the amount of matter in the solar system!”

  “Correct, including all the planets orbiting the sun, and of course including the Devouring Empire.”

  Li Bai said this last sentence easily and naturally, but it struck Yi Yi like a bolt out of the blue. Bigtooth, on the other hand, seemed to have calmed down. After the long torment of sensing disaster on the horizon, the actual onslaught only left a sense of relief.

  “Can’t you convert pure energy into matter?” asked Bigtooth.

  “You should know how much energy it would take to create such an enormous amount of matter. The prospect is unimaginable even to us. We’ll go with ready-made.”

  “His Majesty’s concerns weren’t unjustified,” Bigtooth murmured to himself.

  “Yes, yes,” Li Bai said happily. “I informed the Emperor of the Devourers the day before yesterday. This great ring-world empire shall be used for an even greater goal. The dinosaurs should feel honored.”

  “Esteemed god, you’ll see how the Devouring Empire feels,” Bigtooth said darkly. “I also have one more concern. Compared to the sun, the amount of matter in the Devouring Empire is insignificantly minuscule. Is it really necessary to destroy a civilization millions of years of evolution in the making, just to obtain a few scraps?”

  “I fully understand your reservations. But you must know, extinguishing, cooling, and disassembling the sun will take a long time. The quantum calculations should begin before then, and we need to save the resulting poems elsewhere so that the computer can clear its internal storage and continue work. Therefore the planets and the Devouring Empire, which can immediately provide matter for manufacturing storage devices, are crucial.”

  “I understand, esteemed god. I have one last question: Is it necessary to store all the results? Why can’t you add an analytical program at the end, to delete all the poems that don’t warrant saving? From what I know, Classical Chinese poetry has to follow a strict structure. If we delete all the poems that violate the formal rules, we’ll greatly decrease the volume of the results.”

  “Formal rules? Ha.” Li Bai shook his head contemptuously. “Shackles upon inspiration, and nothing more. Classical Chinese poetry wasn’t bound by these rules before the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Even after the Tang Dynasty, which popularized the strict jintishi form, many master poets ignored the rules to write some extraordinary biantishi works. That’s why, for this ultimate poetry composition, I won’t take formal rules into consideration.”

  “But, you should still consider the poem’s content, right? Ninety-nine percent of the results are obviously going to be rubbish. What’s the point of storing a bunch of randomly generated character arrays?”

  “Rubbish?” Li Bai shrugged. “Emissary, you are not the one who decides whether a poem is meaningful. Neither am I, nor any other person. Time decides. Many poems once considered worthless at the time of their writing were later lauded as masterpieces. Many of the masterpieces of today and tomorrow would have been considered worthless in the distant past. I’m going to write all the poems there are. Trillions of years from now, who knows which of them
mighty Time will choose as the finest?”

  “That’s absurd!” Bigtooth bellowed, startling several birds hidden in the distant grass into flight. “If we go by the human bug-bugs’ preexisting Chinese character database, the first poem your quantum computer writes should be:

  “a a a a a

  a a a a a

  a a a a a

  a a a a ai

  “Might I ask, would mighty Time choose this as a masterpiece?!”

  Yi Yi broke his silence to cheer. “Wow! Who needs mighty Time to choose? It’s a masterpiece right now! The first three lines and the first four characters of the fourth are the exclamations—ah!—of living beings witnessing the majestic grandeur of the universe. The last character is the clincher, where the poet, having witnessed the vastness of the universe, expresses the insignificance of life in the infinity of time and space with a single sigh of inevitability.”

  “Hahahaha…” Li Bai stroked his whiskers, unable to stop smiling. “A fine poem, my bug-bug Yi Yi, a fine poem indeed, hahaha…” He took up the gourd and poured Yi Yi wine.

  Bigtooth raised his massive claws and flung Yi Yi into the distance with one swat. “Nasty bug-bug, I know you’re happy now. But don’t forget, once the Devouring Empire is destroyed, your kind won’t survive either!”

  Yi Yi rolled all the way to the riverbank. It took a long time before he could crawl back up. A grin cracked across his dirt-covered face; he was laughing despite his pain, truly happy. “This is great! This universe is motherfucking incredible!” he yelled with no thought to dignity.

  “Any other questions, Emissary?” asked Li Bai. Bigtooth shook his head. “Then I’ll leave tomorrow. The day after the next, the quantum computer will execute its poetry-writing software, commencing the ultimate poetry composition. At the same time, the work to extinguish the sun and dismantle the planets and the Devouring Empire shall commence.”