by Chen Qiufan
“We have something much better than a car.” Li Wen grinned as his fingers danced through the air. This was Mimi’s gift to him, a completely open interface for controlling the mecha, more operator-friendly even than the OEM version. The hulk of the exoskeleton clanged and clattered. The top of the robot folded forward while the legs retracted to reveal caterpillar tracks. Soon, the robot had transformed into something that resembled an armored personnel carrier. With a dexterous leap, he got into the cockpit, and then extended one of the robot arms to lift Kaizong onto the shoulder.
“Hold on tight. This thing moves faster than it looks.” Li Wen stuck his head out of the cockpit and shouted, “Try to get through to Mimi. We’re going to need her help.”
Kaizong glared at him. It was possible that he might never be able to forgive Li Wen. However, right now, Mimi’s life was in danger and his heart had little room left for anger. He needed all the help he could get.
The black armored vehicle roared, and with a clanging, grinding clamor, shot through the darkness toward the brightening eastern sky, as pale as the belly of a fish.
* * *
Scott held on to the rudder tensely. The windshield wiper wasn’t working too well, and it looked like someone was pouring buckets of water directly onto the glass. Everything was a blur. The eye of Typhoon Wutip had just passed Silicon Isle and was now over this part of the sea. It would eventually make landfall at Shantou and degenerate into a tropical storm. This was the main reason why Scott couldn’t switch to automatic navigation.
He twisted around to glance at Mimi. She was secured to the chair by the seat belt. Her face was bloodless and she showed no signs of waking up any time soon. The light fiberglass speedboat was being violently jolted by the wind and the waves, and anyone who was still conscious would be experiencing dizziness, vomiting, and even sympathetic nervous disorders. In this sense at least, Mimi was a lucky passenger.
Everything is going to be resolved, Scott thought. He had simulated and run through every scenario in his head, coming up with the perfect response for every development. Yet the situation had ultimately deteriorated to the point where he could not retreat in perfect safety. How could a perfect sequence of deductions have led to the wrong answer? He couldn’t understand it. Maybe this was what the Silicon Isle natives meant by fate.
Luo Jincheng was no longer his untrustworthy ally, and Chen Kaizong was no longer his faithful subordinate. TerraGreen Recycling, SBT, and even the Arashio Foundation were no longer safe harbors. He needed a greater stage to properly make use of the amazing discovery hidden in this tiny boat. Human history is about to end: he had already drafted the public statement in his mind. The Coltsfoot Blossom ship waiting in international waters would be the first springboard on the path to a brand-new chapter.
Nancy. The face of his dead daughter refused to leave him. Scott felt depressed, as though everything he had done was but a futile attempt at evading guilt that would ultimately end in emptiness. He shook his head forcefully, knowing that this was but an excuse his conscience had concocted to maintain a consistent personality.
This is also the best choice for Mimi, he emphasized to himself repeatedly. We have the best doctors, the best equipment, and the best environment. I haven’t lied. We once had committed atrocities, but that was history, the impossible choices forced upon us by war. This is the twenty-first century, a golden age. There’s no more need to apply barbaric, cruel, bloody methods to experimental subjects. Moreover, in her body, in her brain, is concealed the future for the entire human race. We’ll give her a happy life, very happy.
But what if she’s not an error? Scott’s heart skipped a beat. His pathological imagination began to run wild.
What if she’s a new creation? God had created humankind in His own image. Humankind explored the mysteries of the world, invented theories, devised science and technology. Humans wanted to create something even closer to their creator, to make science imitate life, evolving endlessly to approach the apex of the pyramid. Humans would then entrust their future to technology and become its parasites, no longer progressing forward.
Some undetectable force, endowed with intentions not yet known to humankind, had disguised all the seamless links as an impossible accident. Perhaps similar accidents were occurring every day in every remote corner of this planet, giving birth to thousands of prototypes like Mimi. Life was a giant black box, and just when you thought it had reached a dead end, it would always find a new way out and continue its upward winding progression.
A new kind of life that crossed the boundary between biology and machinery. Human history was about to end.
But who is her creator? Scott shuddered as though a pair of eyes were staring at his back. He turned around at once, but all he saw was Mimi, still asleep.
The boat bounced violently in the gale. Scott had to slow down lest it capsize. The smartest thing to do right now would be to wait for the typhoon to pass and then speed across the calm sea. But he was afraid to see what further surprises he would encounter if he waited around. He had to leave.
A thin, silvery arc appeared in the dim sky, spanning the ocean. While the boat bounced up and down, it remained rock steady. As the distance closed, Scott recognized it as an artificial structure. Giant supporting piers, like the legs of elephants, loomed out of the rain and mist.
* * *
The cold wind scraped Kaizong’s face like knives. Objects at the edge of his vision blurred and swept quickly by to be left behind. Silicon Isle in the wake of the typhoon resembled an apocalyptic scene, as if a toddler in the throes of a tantrum had destroyed a collection of carefully sculpted sandcastles, leaving behind nothing but meaningless chaos.
Immense, translucent creatures appeared on his right. They swooped over the ruins, howling with sorrow. Kaizong couldn’t identify the creatures, chimera-like guardians of this dark forest full of pain.
Kaizong couldn’t understand the meaning of their appearance, the result of some virtual animal programming. He didn’t even know how to turn off this function. His eye seemed transformed, brand-new, a gift from Mimi. He became even more worried.
Tirelessly, he called for Mimi through the waste-people network. But it was as though he was tossing pebbles into a bottomless chasm, and he heard no responding splash.
The robot in its APC form navigated the uneven terrain nimbly, avoiding fallen trees and powering through deep puddles. It bounced and jolted, but never slowed down. The eastern sky became more translucent, as though the cloud cover was dissipating. A light pink fire burned behind a curtain the color of condensed milk, as though it might extinguish at any moment, or burst out of its shell.
The silver-gray bridge appeared in the distance.
Kaizong was certain that Mimi was there, just ahead of them. He repeated her name passionately, as though pounding his fist against a tightly shut door, but no one answered.
The robot roared onto the empty bridge and accelerated. Their end of the bridge was now clear, but the other end was still shrouded in gray mist and rain.
“She’s coming!” Li Wen shouted from the cockpit.
Kaizong gazed over at the hazy sea, trying to discern what he was looking for. A white curve slowly extended across the dark surface of the sea and was about to cross under the bridge several hundred meters ahead of where they were.
“We’re not going to make it!” Li Wen said.
Kaizong set his right eye to maximum zoom and tried to find Mimi in the cabin of the tumbling boat, as though seeing her might help him connect with her consciousness. He saw that familiar figure flicker in and out of existence, dissolving into millions of chaotic particles one minute and coalescing into order the next like some illustration of Schrödinger’s cat.
He recalled the secret history of palirromancy told by the Chen clan head: living beings struggling in the sea, straddling the border between life and death. Those who observe the tides may know the world. All he wanted was to see Mimi’s face.
&nb
sp; Mimi! Bridge! Kaizong made a last, desperate attempt. He knew that if they didn’t stop Scott at this spot, there was no more hope of rescuing Mimi, because the speedboat was about to reach international waters.
Mimi! Stop the boat!
He seemed to sense something. He turned to look at the other end of the bridge, where the thick cloud cover revealed an opening. The rising golden sun spread its light over the ocean like a sparkling carpet full of exquisite wrinkles. He saw a bottlenose dolphin, long thought extinct, leap out of the water in a perfect curve, its back glistening with mysterious golden light. The beauty of the sight was breathtaking.
He knew it wasn’t real. The dolphin disappeared, as did the golden light. He didn’t know what the hallucination meant.
Kaizong finally turned back at Li Wen’s insistent cries. He saw the white curve of the speedboat’s trail slicing across the sea, about to enter the giant white arch formed by the piers of the bridge.
20
The wheel in Scott’s hand suddenly turned as stiff and heavy as barnacle-encrusted reef. Shocked, he watched lights flash over the instrument panel as the autopilot cut in. The boat nimbly changed direction and headed straight for one of the piers without reducing speed.
The immense, rigid structure expanded and loomed before the boat, pressing down upon Scott. He muttered a few meaningless words and subconsciously crossed his arms before his head. The speedboat struck the pier head-on in a soul-shattering metallic collision. The twisted bow, deflected by the pier, rose into the air. The boat’s ascent slowed, stopped; it rolled over in the air and then tumbled back into the water, making a giant splash. The capsized boat bobbed in the water like a dead pufferfish.
Scott recovered as the roaring around him subsided. The instinctive protective posture at the last minute had saved his life, but he paid a price with two arms lacerated by glass shards and a dislocated right shoulder. The boat was still afloat but taking on water. His dazed eyes discovered that the girl, the treasure of the human race, was still secured to her seat with the safety belt. Her head was now pointing down and submerged in water.
Despite the pain, he swam over, lifted Mimi’s head out of the water, and released the safety belt. The still-unconscious girl slid into the sea and her weight dragged Scott down.
“No! You can’t die! You can’t die here!” Scott screamed as Nancy’s floating, pale face flashed before his eyes. He placed Mimi over his knees and pressed her back to squeeze out the water in her trachea. Then he flipped her over, and, pinching her nose shut, began to give her mouth-to-mouth.
“Don’t die! Don’t…” he begged, his voice cracking. He dragged over a broken table, placed Mimi over the rigid surface, and, crossing the fingers of his hands, began to compress her chest. Her chest slowly rose after each compression, but there was no heartbeat.
“Don’t do this to me, goddamn it…” Scott was now sobbing uncontrollably. He slammed a fist against the back of the other hand, and the dull thuds transferred the force into Mimi’s chest. “I’m begging you…”
He stopped abruptly. He seemed to hear the rumbling of underground currents.
Mimi convulsed and vomited a torrent of seawater. Then she hacked and coughed violently. Her chest began to rise and fall gently, and a bit of color returned to her pallid face.
Scott’s expression was a complex mixture of joy and fear. He knew that it was time to bring out his last trick.
* * *
“Fuck! Fuck!” Li Wen swore nonstop as the robot braked to a hard stop and crashed into the metal guardrails of the bridge, leaving a deep depression.
“She heard me. She heard me!” Kaizong jumped off the robot and, together with Li Wen, poked his head over the edge of the bridge. The giant pier went straight down to the sea, a terror-inducing sight. The white belly of the speedboat bobbed not too far away, and there were no signs of survivors in the surrounding waters.
“We have to go down and save her.” Kaizong turned to Li Wen, who looked frightened.
“I have acrophobia. Every time I look down from a high place, it feels like ants are chewing my balls. I … I can’t do this.”
“Useless!” Kaizong spat, and once again gazed at the sea, his heart clenching. His right eye went to work, calculating the distance, the wind speed, and the terminal velocity as a human body struck the water. A red warning light blinked. “It’s too high to jump. The impact would kill me. But if we can be lower by about ten, no, eight meters, that might work.”
Li Wen frowned as he pondered the problem; then his eyes lit up. “Buddy, I can’t dive with you, but I do have an idea.”
Kaizong held on to the iron fist of the robot as he dangled over the water in the cold wind. He forced himself to not look down. The moist, chilly air felt like a layer of ice against his skin, inducing goose bumps. The metal fist detached from the arm and descended slowly at the end of a steel cable, until Kaizong was a bit closer to the surface of the sea.
“More!” Kaizong shouted, enduring the vertigo.
The cable clanged against the gears and came to a stop abruptly.
“That’s as far as the cable will go!” Li Wen shouted down.
“It’s not far enough! We need just a bit more.” Kaizong tightened his grip on the robot fist. Spinning and swaying with the wind, he swallowed hard, trying to reduce the tension somehow.
“Hold on really tight!”
The iron fist jolted hard and dropped. Kaizong instinctively squeezed his eyes shut and locked his arms about the fist. Li Wen had made the robot lie down flat on the bridge, poking over the edge, adding the length of the robot arm to the cable.
“Just a tiny bit more!” Kaizong’s right eye showed that he was still thirty centimeters from the safe zone.
“Fucking hell…” Li Wen’s swears came faintly on the wind.
The iron fist dropped again. Li Wen made the robot lean over the side as much as possible, and its two legs were now raised off the ground, balancing it precariously on the edge. Another inch and the entire steel hulk would tumble over. There was no airbag in the cockpit—not that it would have done much good.
The red indicator in Kaizong’s eye finally turned green. He took a deep breath, and looked down at the sea, waiting for the right moment. He didn’t want to strike the pier or land on top of some reef. His right eye busily estimated the water depth and the angle at which he would enter the water, and divided the sea into a grid of squares marked in different colors to help him decide.
Now! He let go and jumped down. Like a real diver, he adjusted his posture and put his hands together over his head, straightening his body as he fell. The robot, having been freed of his weight, dropped its legs back onto the bridge in a loud clang.
Kaizong plunged into the water like an arrow and disappeared beneath a cloud of spray. A few seconds later, he emerged at the surface like a big fish, hungrily gulping the precious air. After a brief rest, he divided the water with powerful strokes and headed for the capsized speedboat.
He could almost hear the faint cheers of Li Wen from high above.
* * *
“Don’t come any closer!” Scott held a strangely shaped gun to the back of Mimi’s skull. “I want a boat. Right now.”
“Let her go.” Kaizong tried to find his footing in the half-submerged cabin. “Don’t harm her. I’ll get you a boat, all right? Just don’t harm her.”
“Don’t you understand that I’m the only one in the world who can save her? No one else! It’s too bad that you don’t believe me, and no one else does either. I think this gun is going to be used no matter what; that is its purpose, after all.” Scott gave him an eerie smile. “This is a miniaturized EMP gun. Though it’s not extremely powerful, it’s more than enough to fry the circuits in your girlfriend’s brain. If I can’t get her, no one else will either. So, don’t you dare to play any games with me.”
“I don’t think you will.” Kaizong stared at him. “Listen to me, you’re not an evil man.”
Scott’s
body swayed as if Kaizong’s words touched a nerve. But he had no choice left.
Mimi looked terrified. Her body was held up by Scott’s dislocated right arm, and she swayed unsteadily. She gazed at the empty-handed Kaizong and silently warned him to not do anything stupid. Another voice spoke in her mind.
His heart, whispered Mimi 1. I’ll take over his heart.
Mimi closed her eyes, eyeballs roaming rapidly under the lids. Her consciousness penetrated the chest of the man behind her and entered that tiny box. The protocol for synchronizing the data was easily cracked, and she possessed the lifesaving pacemaker as though she held Scott’s damaged heart in her hand.
She sped up Scott’s heart. The frail organ accelerated like a powered water pump: contract, relax, contract, relax … Blood surged through his arteries, disturbing the functions of his body like a flood.
Scott’s face changed, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He tried to wait it out, expecting the pacemaker to do its job—not knowing that it was the source of the problem. A sharp stab of pain struck deep in his body like a steel needle. His limbs lost all strength and he couldn’t help letting go of Mimi. The hand holding the gun was now at his chest as he leaned against the cabin wall, gasping. His breaths became uneven, and despair crept into his eyes.
“Nancy,” he said. “Nancy.”
Kaizong pulled Mimi over and interposed himself between her and Scott. Tentatively, he approached Scott, and pulled the EMP gun from between his powerless fingers as though taking away a poisoned apple.
Mimi stopped Scott’s heart. The blood stopped circulating. Oxygen consumption turned the blood acidic. The smell of death.
Scott felt a chill at his back, as though some supernatural power had entered the cabin behind him. He twisted around and saw it was the steel cabin wall. His body convulsed uncontrollably and croaking noises emerged from his throat as though he were drowning. He looked down, searching for something, his lips muttering silently. Finally, he lost his balance and fell into the water. His pale face floated above the surface, staring up into the emptiness like a marble statue.