Entanglements

by Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families

  The faithful took down the memorial tablets for the deceased and brought them outside the ritual hall. The temple had a spirit wall, yellow in wash, topped by black tiles, with a sign declaring, “Western Pureland Is but a Foot Away.” A giant boat made of paper sat on the plaza in front of the spirit wall, and all the memorial tablets were placed on the boat. The venerable monks began to chant, bidding farewell to the various bodhisattvas as they ascended the cloud paths and to the sentient beings of the six destinies as they began the journey to the Pureland. Amid chants of Amituofo, firecrackers were set off, and the paper boat was set aflame. As the fire roared, everything mundane turned to swirling ashes heading for the horizon.

  That evening, the aged monk and Xiao Wang walked side by side to the western gate of the temple.

  Xiao Wang pressed her hands together and bowed. “You’ve walked me far enough. Thank you.”

  “Take care on your journey.”

  “The weather is turning cold, be careful that you don’t catch a chill.”

  “You as well.”

  Two birds hopped on a bough overhead, chirping one after the other as though engaged in some singing contest. Under the tree, the two humans remained standing.

  “The sin-steeped enmity has been resolved,” said Xiao Wang. “You’ve accomplished what you set out to do.”

  “It’s only a start.”

  Xiao Wang sighed. “To construct a system that would allow all to share one another’s pain . . . that is a task infinitely more complex and harder than the 业 system. Since you’ll be retiring at the end of the year, perhaps it’s best to pass the task onto your successor.”

  The old monk nodded. “You’re right.”

  “I noticed,” said Xiao Wang, “that earlier you had placed the nameless memorial tablet on the boat to the Western Pureland.”

  “Every year the nameless tablet is burned,” said the old monk. “I’ll make a new one and keep it till next year.”

  “Then . . . the nameless tablet wasn’t for that pair?”

  The old monk was silent for a while. “The tablets are for the souls of those who have not yet died, but are destined to die.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “Years ago, I pressed ahead with the LINGcart project. To satisfy the transportation needs of the tens of millions in a city with a network of hundreds of thousands of spherical carts traveling in tubes required the development of an extremely complicated set of algorithms. During simulations, I realized that a most difficult problem was how the system would respond to disasters such as earthquakes, fires, terrorist attacks. However, no matter how I piled safeguards on redundancies, added improvements upon optimizations, I couldn’t eliminate situations in which the system had to make a choice: a choice to save the many by sacrificing the few.”

  He held out a hand, and a projection appeared above his palm: a spiderweb of intersecting rails, with countless green beads streaming along. Abruptly, an expanding red section appeared in the middle. The green beads changed their trajectories to flee the danger. After ten seconds, the vast majority of the green beads managed to escape, but a few that couldn’t get out in time turned red.

  “At one time, proponents of driverless cars argued that the more self-driving cars were in the streets, the fewer accidents caused by human frailty. Although driverless cars were not accident-free, it was an inevitable cost of technological progress, the sacrifice of one to save the lives of a thousand thousand. At one time I agreed with their logic, but I failed to understand that for the few who died as sacrifices, they were not mere data, but beings of flesh and blood, who could cry and suffer pain, who had loved ones waiting in vain for their return.”

  The projection above his palm turned into blurred footage from a surveillance camera: in the dark, a driverless car swerved to the right to avoid a school bus that had run through a red light; the driverless car was headed for a pedestrian standing at the side of the road. The video froze. It was impossible to make out the face of the lone pedestrian, overexposed in the headlights.

  He extended his other hand, as though trying to shield the tiny figure from the oncoming, unstoppable vehicle. The dharma cloud projection trembled between his fingers.

  “Should the one die, or the hundred? To even ask such a question was to already have set in motion the chains of karma. I once believed that in order to escape from this dilemma, the only solution was LINGcart. Only too late did I realize that the same ethical trap waited for me there. I tried to convince myself: the system was extremely safe, with vanishingly small probabilities for accidents. Even if the unexpected occurred, the system would make the most rational choice to save the most lives by sacrificing the smallest possible number. But I couldn’t tolerate treating those who would be killed as mere data. The Buddha said that in the endless cycles of samsara, everyone would have a chance to be the parent of everyone else. They were no different from those related to me by blood, bound by links of love and pain.”

  The projection above his palm turned into a family portrait: father, mother, son, daughter. They sat around a dinner table, looking joyous.

  “This nameless tablet is for all those destined to die in my simulations. To date, LINGcart has never had such an accident, and so they remain alive. But they are fated to be sacrificed one day. They are lost souls wandering the desolation of my algorithms, waiting for a chance to leap out to consume the living. Every day, I chant and pray, hoping that they would reach the Western Pureland of Ultimate Bliss instead of disturbing the living. I try to remind myself: the seeds of sin and evil are planted in a single thought. I can only make amends by bending my heart toward good through faith.”

  Xiao Wang let out a held breath and waved her hand to enlarge the projection. Her fingers slowly brushed across the four faces: father, mother, big brother, little sister. There was a red mole at the center of little sister’s forehead, pure vermilion.

  Tears glinted in her eyes. Then she laughed. “This morning, I dreamed of Mom.”

  The old monk said nothing.

  “I’ve never believed that the dead could visit the living in dreams,” said Xiao Wang. “But there is something special about this dream. She was sitting by my bed, her hand on my head, telling me that she was so glad to see me grown up, looking so different, except for the mole on my forehead. She also said that the Liberation Rite of Water and Land accumulated so much merit that she also benefited. I suppose she must have known that I came to visit you, and so she came to join our reunion.”

  The old monk waved away the dharma cloud projection. “It has been many years since I dreamed of her.”

  After a beat, Xiao Wang said, “I brought you a present.”

  She opened her palm. The projection of a little girl took form. She was dressed in a flowery dress, with two braids. A pair of dark, shiny eyes sparkled in a sun-darkened face. A wisp of LINGcloud turned into a hovering piano keyboard, and the girl began to play. “Ode to Joy” filled the air.

  “Her name is Qianqian,” said Xiao Wang. “She was in the class I taught in Baizhu Village in Yunnan. I asked her to play this for you.”

  The girl finished. She looked into the camera and smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

  Xian Wang’s voice came from beyond the frame. “Who are you thanking?”

  “I want to say thank you to Grandpa Monk.”

  A smile relaxed the aged monk’s wrinkled face. He pressed his hands together. “Amituofo. What a wonder.”

  Xiao Wang smiled in response. She also pressed her hands together. “I’m leaving.”

  She stepped over the threshold and walked away along Tianzhu Path.

  The sun, filtered by the tree branches, dappled the road. Birds hidden in the bamboo groves lining the path sang and chirped, as though wishing her a pleasant journey.

  [Translator’s note: I’m grateful to Dr. Kate Lingley for her advice in the translation of Buddhist concepts and terms. Any errors are entirely mine.]

  Artwork: Tatiana Plakhov
a

  As a little girl, Tatiana Plakhova used to play a game. Her room was a spaceship, with the window as the screen of the cockpit or bridge. She traveled around the universe visiting new and fascinating worlds. Tatiana graduated from Moscow State University with a master’s in social psychology, and then studied at the Higher Academic School of Graphic Design. She now works as an art director, graphic designer, and illustrator. Today she likes to dream about living, breathing “big data” networks and imagine how they might grow and evolve.

  In her data visualization work for an international roster of clients, Tatiana tries to make the data more engaging and beautiful, to speak a more immediate language to the viewer. In her own work, she wants to show a new way of producing and seeing “infographic” drawings. “We should change the way we see this form of art. It could be much more inspiring, a way for us to connect,” Tatiana says. “Everything we see is biological, mathematical, or geological information. It can also be cultural patterns or any other thing. Complexity Graphics works are based on mathematical simplicity and harmony. I would describe them as infographic abstracts. This mathematical style helps me to illustrate everything from biological cells to deep space and meditative worlds. That’s why I admire math, because it’s everywhere and nowhere.”

  Tatiana’s work, which is produced with mixed media software, bridges the often invisible worlds of music, scientific information and data, and the visual beauty of art. Her images allude to the invisible webs and relationships between people, landscapes, and worlds beyond this one. “Everything is connection, everything is information.”

  Tatiana lives in Moscow, and her work can be found at complexity graphics.com.

  Contributors

  James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. His most recent books are “King of the Dogs, Queen of the Cats” (2020), a novella; The Promise of Space and Other Stories (2018), a short story collection; and Mother Go (2017), a novel. 2016 saw the publication of a career retrospective Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly. His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel, he has co-edited five anthologies. Jim writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. Find him at www.jimkelly.net.

  Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut duology and historical fantasy novels: The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers. She’s a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Nebula, and Locus awards. Stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Strange Horizons, several Year’s Best anthologies, and her collections Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories. Her novel Calculating Stars won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. As a professional puppeteer and voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), Mary Robinette has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, and Jim Henson Pictures, and she founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. She records fiction for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. Mary Robinette lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit her at maryrobinettekowal.com.

  Nancy Kress (nancykress.com) is the author of thirty-four books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent work is Terran Tomorrow (2018), the final book in her Yesterday’s Kin trilogy. Nancy’s fiction has been translated into Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read. In addition to writing, Nancy often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig, a 2017 writing class in Beijing, and the annual intensive workshop TaosToolbox. Nancy lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead.

  Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, and has lived in Canada, the United States, and Spain. He is now based in Prague, Czech Republic. Rich is the author of Annex and Cypher, as well as over a hundred short stories—some of the best of which can be found in his collection Tomorrow Factory. His work has been translated into Polish, Czech, French, Italian, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Find him at patreon.com/richlarson.

  Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), and the short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also authored the novel Star Wars: The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, the mathematics of origami, and other subjects of his expertise. Ken is also the translator for Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing,” and Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide, and he is the editor of Invisible Planets and Broken Stars, anthologies of contemporary Chinese science fiction. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Sam J. Miller is the Nebula Award–winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (a best book of the year for Vulture, The Washington Post, Barnes & Noble, and more—and a “Must Read” in Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine). A recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Sam’s short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus awards and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. He lives in New York City and at samjmiller.com.

  Annalee Newitz (techsploitation.com) writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the novel Autonomous, nominated for the Nebula and Locus awards, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and have a monthly column in New Scientist. Annalee has published in the Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic, among others. They are also the co-host of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. They were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo. Their new novel, The Future of Another Timeline, was published in September 2019.

  Suzanne Palmer (zanzjan.net) is a Linux and database system administrator for the sciences at Smith College by day, and an author of science fiction and fantasy by night. Her work appears regularly in the pages of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine and Clarkesworld, and her story “The Secret Life of Bots” won the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Her first novel, Finder (2018), was the first book in the Finder Chronicles series. The second book in the series, Driving the Deep, will be out in May 2020.

  Tatiana Plakhova is an art director, graphic designer, and illustrator living in Moscow, Russia. Outlets that have featured her work include the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, New Scientist, Nature, WIRED magazine, and HarperCollins Publishers. Among her present and past clients are Paramount Pictures, Sony Music, the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, L’Oréal Paris, Breakthrough Initiatives, and HP.

  Cadwell Turnbull (cadwellturnbull.com) is the author of The Lesson. He received an MFA in creative writing and an MA in linguistics at North Carolina State University, where he was the winner of the 2014 NCSU Prize for Short Fiction for his short story “Ears.” Cadwell also attended Clarion West 2016. His short stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and The Verge. His short story “Lone-liness Is in Your Blood” was selected for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018. His novelette “Other Worlds and This One” wa
s also selected as a notable story in the anthology. His short story “Jump” was selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. Cadwell lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

  Nick Wolven’s short science fiction has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The New England Review, and WIRED magazine. Nick’s stories often focus on the unintended social conse-quences of rapid technological advance. He lives in the Bronx and is an inveterate recluse; he is not active online, but can be reached at nick.wolven@gmail.com.

  Xia Jia is the pen name of Wang Yao, an associate professor of Chinese Literature at Xi’an Jiaotong University and a visiting scholar at University of California, Riverside, from 2018 to 2019. Her academic collection on contemporary Chinese science fiction Coordinates of the Future was published in 2019. She has been publishing speculative fiction since college. Seven of her stories have won the Galaxy Award, China’s most prestigious science fiction award. So far she has published a fantasy novel Odyssey of China Fantasy: On the Road (2010), as well as three science fiction collections: The Demon Enslaving Flask (2012), A Time Beyond Your Reach (2017), and Xi’an City Is Falling Down (2018). In English translation, she has been published in Clarkesworld and other venues. Her first story written in English, “Let’s Have a Talk,” was published in Nature in 2015. Her first English collection, A Summer Beyond Your Reach: Stories, will be published in 2020. She is also engaged in other science fiction related works, including academic research, translation, screenwriting, editing, and teaching creative writing.

  Lisa Yaszek is a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where she explores science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Lisa’s books include Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction (2008); Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016); and The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women (2018). Her ideas have been featured in the Washington Post, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today, and she has been an expert commentator for the BBC4’s Stranger Than Sci Fi, WIRED.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the AMC miniseries James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, Lisa currently serves as a juror for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.