by Neil Clarke
The bunker underneath Weihan’s home had two bedrooms connected by a main room. Aside from the stairway that led up to the living room of the house, there was also a blast door that led to the air raid shelter under the street.
When the meteor shower finally began at three-thirty in the morning, its arrival was announced with a violent shaking. Great fragments of rock broke and splintered through the air like artillery shells, and buildings collapsed with a deafening roar. Weihan tossed and turned in the pale light of the emergency shelter, unable to sleep.
“Can’t sleep too, huh?” he asked when he saw Han Dan enter the room.
Weihan sat up and switched on the TV. The signal was cruddy, but through the static they could just make out the meteor’s great swath of destruction—it was an up-to-the-minute report. Countless meteors were falling into the atmosphere, leaving long tails of material in their wake which fell to ground like great torrents of rain, smashing the city under a hail of debris. The extreme temperatures had set everything that could burn aflame, leaving the night sky illuminated by the blaze of New San Francisco.
Despite the powerful air conditioners and oxygen recyclers that had been installed in the bunker, they could already feel the heat of the conflagration above radiating through the ceiling. A minor meteor shower might make for a good school-girl romance, but a major meteor shower like this had the potential to carpet bomb a city back to the Stone Age.
“I heard that way back when we were still in the Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn helped block the Earth from all sorts of dangerous flying objects,” Han Dan said.
“We sure ain’t in the Solar System anymore . . . ” Weihan muttered, taking out an old photograph of a group of men in military uniforms.
“I had two uncles,” he said after a long pause. “The older one was an officer in the Seventeenth Fleet, he died back in ’fifteen. Second uncle was in the closest rescue ship. They’d gotten their engines knocked out by a meteor, though, so all second uncle could do was watch his brother’s ship go down in flames. Afterwards second uncle was a total wreck. He started drinking and pretty soon that was it for him, too . . . ”
The TV crackled with a final burst of static before going silent. A great rumble echoed from above their heads and dust rained down from the ceiling.
“Yep! This has got to be just about the worst meteor shower I’ve ever seen,” Weihan mused with obvious detachment. Meteors showers were, after all, a fact of life for the residents of New San Francisco, coming once every couple of years.
A sudden explosion shook the bunker, with a roar that seemed to crack the heavens and split the earth. Moments later, urgent knocking could be heard outside the blast doors. Weihan opened the doors, coming face to face with Police Chief Zhao. His two hairy legs sticking out from under his nightshirt, he waved a still-holstered pistol in Zheng’s face, shouting, “You have to get to the emergency escape pods! The meteor shower broke the sun!”
Every planetship had its own massive, fusion-powered artificial sun that orbited in a fixed path, providing a never-ending stream of light and heat. Without its sun, a planetship would freeze solid.
“T-that’s impossible!” Weihan sputtered. But from Zhao’s expression he knew that the old geezer wasn’t kidding around.
Zhao left them to notify others of the evacuation order. Weihan and Han Dan, meanwhile, rushed to the nearest emergency pods. From the thick layer of dust, it was obvious that no one had been here in a long, long time. They were just like the life rafts on a boat—you couldn’t do without them, but nobody thought that you’d ever actually need them. The ancient LCD screens flickered with the latest news: Chow Street’s bunker had suffered a direct hit, bringing the lake of fire from above directly into the oxygen-rich shelter below. More likely than not, all lives in the sector had been lost—at any rate no one was willing to open the blast doors to check for survivors. Experience had taught them that if they opened it even a crack, smoke and flames would pour out into the next sector, killing even more people.
The ground shook like a massive beast shaking from the pain of some great wound.
The escape pods were in the process of refueling. In accordance with the ancient protocols detailed in the “Emergency Escape Plan for Planetships,” infants, children, and teenagers were boarding ahead of older residents. Of course, renowned scholars, professors, and other ‘mission critical’ personnel could board the first wave of pods along with the children. Although the police in charge of maintaining public order kept stressing that there was more than enough space for everyone, they all knew that the later you left your chances for survival were that much lower.
One man tried to push his way onto a pod, shouting, “I’ll give half of all my money—all hundred million dollars of it—to the man who gives me his spot on this escape pod!”
The only response was the dull thud of a policeman’s bullet.
The oldest among them volunteered to stay behind to help the police, telling their children and grandchildren to hurry onto an escape pod. Saying goodbye, they promised that they would catch one of the later pods.
Of course, there was a good chance that the last wave of escape pods might very well never take flight.
When it was Weihan’s turn to board an escape pod, he discovered a young woman weeping behind him. Her two children had already boarded the previous wave, but she’d been separated from them. By now, the flames had nearly reached the launch bay.
“Can I let her board in my place?” Zheng shouted at a nearby police officer. Unspeaking, the man simply pointed the gaping black hole of his gun directly at Weihan’s chest. Zheng hurriedly averted his gaze and boarded the escape pod.
Han Dan had boarded just before him, and was now sitting by his side. He was surprised to see her fasten the thin metal restraints with practiced efficiency.
“Put on your seatbelt! An old spacecraft like this won’t have artificial gravity or any of the other comforts of those passenger barges you’re probably used to!”
The escape pod suddenly lurched into motion, the painful acceleration pinning them into their seats and the hull creaking like it was going to fall apart. The mouths of the launch silos were located directly under the streets and public squares of New San Francisco—rather than build blast doors they had opted to blow up the surface structures if it ever became necessary for the escape pods to be put into use.
While the city gave into the inferno, the rain of meteors continued to fall across the face of the great planetship. From the escape pod window they watched the flow of spacecraft issuing forth from the silos that pocked the landscape like volcanos. Along the bustling thoroughfares of New San Francisco grand old buildings stood like sentinels over the looping greenbelts . . . and then one by one they fell in upon themselves, turning to ash under the searing blaze.
IV. Planetships
More than a ship, Phaeton had been a planet unto itself, equivalent in size and mass to the Earth of old, with an atmosphere, azure seas, and vast continents—a complete biosphere. Of course, befitting a planetship, it was also outfitted with a massive engine, capable of pushing the artificial world through the galaxy. Unlike a real planet, Phaeton had therefore never been bound to orbit a single star—earning it the title of “planetship.”
Planetship Phaeton was by no means alone in the universe: after Planetship Europa had been completed, mankind had built two more ships, with Planetship Asia and Planetship America gradually taking shape. Since the original Earth only had seven continents, by the eighth planetship they had run out of names, and so they began to borrow the names of mythical figures from the various nations of Earth—Gaea, Phaeton, Perseus, Kronos.
Enormous, with wispy white clouds under the thin atmosphere hanging over great oceans and wide continents, the planetships were vessels of not only incomparable beauty, but also great fragility—in the boundless expanse of the universe, thin planetary atmospheres are as fleeting as soap bubbles. Viewed in this light, it was unsurprising that th
e Planetship Alliance had established a great military, with ring upon ring of defensive lines designed to protect the ships of the alliance.
Sadly, this massive military and its many lines of defense had been unable to prevent the onslaught of the meteor shower on Planetship Phaeton. The losses were too great this time—according to news reports, when the massive asteroid had entered the airspace of the Planetship Alliance the government had sent out a strike team to change the trajectory of the great rock. Its velocity proved too great, however, and so they tried instead to break it apart into smaller pieces. According to the data provided by the news channels, the asteroid struck with a level of force that would have pushed Earth out of its orbit.
And so the military had done their best to pulverize the object, and as Han Dan gazed down upon fragments floating outside the window of the escape pod, she caught sight of the wreckage of military ships, even the remains of some unknown war heroes . . . The planetship of course had its own anti-meteor system—but if the damage became too great, then the only remaining option was to fall back on the military.
After losing its artificial sun, the temperature of Planetship Phaeton had plummeted abruptly. The sudden shift in temperature had created tremendous windstorms, while torrential rains froze in midair, falling to the ground as hail. The inclement weather had slowed the passage of the escape pods, leaving a great number of people behind on the planetship. Not long after the torrential floods covering the surface of the great ship froze, trapping men and ships alike in solid ice.
As the temperature continued to drop, the temperature on the surface of the ice quickly became lower than below the ice, the hundred-meter-thick sheet of frozen water began to rupture with great thundering cracks. Long fissures in the ice stretched from one end of the planetship to the other, the stress forming great valleys and high mountains from the once level ice sheet, utterly destroying the cities, fields, forests, and even the oceans. Finally, great flakes of snow began to fall—frozen C02. After a few days, blue snow would begin to fall—oxygen and nitrogen. Without the artificial sun, the entire atmosphere would freeze solid.
In the escape pods, some of the refugees were crying while images of old Earth played on the screens, as if to remind them that this was not the first time humanity had lost its home. In a strange way, it did seem to lessen the blow of losing Planetship Phaeton a little.
Han Dan turned on her notebook and wrote a few lines:
As refugees, we seem to have completely forgotten our former lives of leisure . . . We’ve gone back to the way our ancestors lived—running from disaster to disaster. The moment we boarded this escape pod we were making a gamble with our lives. We were putting our lives in the hands of this ship, giving up our control over our ability to escape. Just behind us, two escape pods just collided with a meteor fragment and exploded. So many parents who will never see their children again, so many children who have lost their parents forever . . .
V. Chang’an, “Europe”
Older folks were used to calling Planetship Europa by its old Earth name “Europe.” The oldest of all the planetships, Europa was home to Chang’an, the largest city in the universe, and capital of the Planetship Alliance.
Downtown Chang’an was thronged with rescue workers and medical personnel gazing up at the towering minaret of the Sky Tower—Europa’s primary space elevator. To keep the crowds and journalists out, the police had cordoned off the public square with bright yellow tape. Meanwhile, wave after wave of refugees were brought down from space via the Sky Tower.
After Weihan left the escape pod, a doctor examined him to see if he had been injured during his escape from the Phaeton. A nearby clerk pulled up his record from the Ministry of Civil Affairs database and printed his temporary ID card, which could be used as both a credit card and driver’s license.
“According to our records, your parent’s house is on Planetship Europa, right? Looks like you won’t be needing a bed in the refugee camp, then. Sorry to say so, but our space is limited.”
When the clerk pulled up Han Dan’s records, however, his jaw dropped, leaving his mouth open wide enough to stuff an ostrich egg inside.
After emerging from the Sky Tower into Chang’an’s main square, the refugees ignored the calls of the rescue workers and began a crazed search for their relatives.
Weihan saw Police Chief Zhao’s wife standing with her two children by the Sky Tower exit. Policemen had left the Phaeton last of all, so it was unlikely that Zhao’s family would ever see him again.
VI. Countryside
There was a certain lane in the outskirts of Chang’an, beside which was a certain village. Opposite the village was a watermelon patch, the melons still far from ripe. Most of the young people had left to find work in the big city, leaving fewer and fewer behind in countryside. To earn a few bucks in his retirement, an old man had opened a small restaurant in the front part of his house. Gaunt and malnourished, the old man seemed to be suffering from a case of rickets.
This was Weihan’s grandfather. After arriving at the Zheng family house, Weihan and Han Dan had volunteered to help out in the restaurant. Although the old man loved his grandson dearly, Han Dan knew better than bring up Zheng Dong, his unfilial son. Twenty years ago, Grandpa Zheng had fiercely opposed his son’s decision to enter military school. It was a dangerous career to embark on—one could never say for sure whether or not you’d end up taking a bullet on the front line. Better to have a living son farming a few barren acres, quietly making do.
There were hundreds of thousands of acres of good land in the countryside, their crops nurtured by the artificial sun and irrigated by the (nearly) natural rains and snows. They were far more expensive than the synthetic foodstuffs from the factories, but the taste wasn’t much better.
“I’ve never taken one cent of his money, you know. I do well enough to take care of myself,” Zheng’s grandfather said out of nowhere one day. “I have nothing but respect for those who serve. I just didn’t want to see my flesh and blood taking those kinds of risks.”
An all-terrain SUV modeled on the automobiles of the Earth Age had just parked in front of the little shop. The license plate indicated that it was a military vehicle. Having seen it coming from a long way away, the old man had pulled a “Closed” sign from under the counter and hung it on the door before going back into the house.
A soldier stepped out of the SUV. He was perhaps fifty, with grey hair around his temples. Han Dan recognized him right away as Weihan’s father.
Zheng Dong walked to the front gate of the house and stood there, stiffly. He made no move to enter, however, and Han Dan wasn’t about to invite him in. She’d heard Weihan say that fifteen years ago his grandfather had gotten so mad that he told dad to leave and never come back. Even though all of that was in the distant past now, and Grandpa Zheng had long since forgiven him, the old man had never been willing to swallow his pride and say it out loud.
It was obvious that they were two stubborn old bulls. It was even said that every New Year’s eve Zheng Dong would leave his wife and son to celebrate alone while he stood out in the wind and snow, waiting for his father to finally say what he already felt.
“How many years has it been then?” Zheng Dong asked Han Dan, who quietly set aside her work.
“Too many. Weihan wasn’t even a year old when I left.”
They left the restaurant one after the other, walking along a quiet country lane.
“So in all these years you never settled down?” Zheng Dong asked finally.
“It wasn’t so bad. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Run into old acquaintances much?”
“Now and again. Ten years ago, or maybe it was twenty, or even fifty . . . An old man grabbed me by the arm claiming that I was his childhood sweetheart from eighty years ago. His great-grandson apologized for him, saying that his great granddad was always getting confused.”
“You’re not planning to have my son to play the same role as that old
man, are you?” Zheng Dong asked anxiously.
Han Dan stooped to pick a wild chrysanthemum from the edge of the field, placing it in her long hair.
“Your son reminds me of my brother.”
“I’m afraid I can’t see how,” Zheng Dong said. Her brother had been assassinated many years ago for political reasons.
“My little brother was one of a kind,” Han Dan said with a smile. She’d always been proud of him. “How about you? Thinking about becoming a general?”
“If fate wills it. That’s not the sort of thing you go asking for. These days, there aren’t many people who hang up their stars, even after they retire.”
Insiders all knew the two hardest ranks to get promoted to in the military were from high-level officer to brigadier general, and from major general to lieutenant general. As far as the highest ranks, like marshal, it wasn’t even worth dreaming about it. Most people only got promoted that high posthumously.
“I always thought that soldiers who didn’t want to become generals weren’t worth their salt as soldiers,” Han Dan said. “Anyways, we have other things to talk about, don’t we?”
“Did you know that I was responsible for coordinating the rescue mission on Planetship Phaeton? I sent my best troops to evacuate the government first,” Zheng Dong said, clenching his fists. “When the head of the local administration saw them all he did was light a goddamn cigarette. He turned to the window to watch the frozen C02 fall in great big flakes from the sky, and you know what he said to them? He said, ‘Go rescue the people first. I’m not leaving until each and every one of my people has been evacuated.’ He froze to death on Phaeton.”
“Even if he had survived the disaster, he would have just been counting the days until they sent him to prison,” Han Dan scoffed. “Planetships are supposed to have anti-meteor systems, aren’t they? Something went wrong and stopped the intercept system from kicking in. Nobody thought things were going to get as bad as they did—your son was sitting in the underground bunker watching the meteor shower like it was a TV show.”