by Cixin Liu
Haitian, too, heaved a sniveling sigh, thinking of his beginnings so far away; his colorful, gorgeous creations, like poems, like dreams. Once they had enchanted many girls and he had been their idol. But now, those teenage girls, daring to pass him without so much as a glance, it was just too much to bear! Tossing away an empty bottle, he mumbled, “If men are bhashtarts, shen wat dose sthat make wimmen?” Having spoken his part, he changed the targeting parameter for sex from “male” to “female”.
Cixin would not have it; women had done nothing to him. After all, his little short stories had never sought to attract a female audience. So he changed the sex parameter back to “male”, just to have Haitian change it back to “female”. The two began to argue over how to punish their ungrateful readers, vacillating between the idea of turning Taiyuan into a city of widows or of bachelors.
In the end, Cixin began wildly swinging a bottle and a passing policeman intervened, separating the two fighting bums. Having cooled off, both scratched their heads and soon came to an equitable compromise: They changed the sex parameter to “*”, completing the wildcarding of the Curse 3.0.
Perhaps it was because of the interference or because they were dead drunk, but they left the “Taiyuan City”, “Shanxi Province, China” parameters unaltered.
The Curse 4.0 had been born.
And Taiyuan had become cursed.
No sooner had the Curse 4.0 been completed than the realization of such a grand scale mission entrusted to it weighed heavily. Due to the extreme ambition of the new work at hand, the Curse 4.0 did not immediately begin with its execution. Instead, it lay low, giving itself enough time to sufficiently propagate across the internet. Once it had achieved the necessary degree of penetration and interconnectivity, it ever so slowly, step by careful step, readied its master plan: It would begin the operation with targets susceptible to soft control and then shift to hardware control, escalating the coming calamity from there.
Ten hours after the first rays of sunlight touched the city, the Curse 4.0 commenced its operation.
The soft target operation was primarily directed against targets with sensitive, neurotic or volatile dispositions; in particular, the Curse 4.0 selected depressed and bipolar individuals for this stage of its plan. In an age of epidemic mental illness and omnipresent psychological counseling, finding such people was singularly simple. For this first batch of its operation, the Curse 4.0 selected 30,000 individuals who had just returned from a hospital examination. These targets were notified that they had developed a liver, gastric, lung, cerebral, or colorectal cancer, a lymphoma, leukemia or, most often, esophageal cancer (it was the cancer with the highest rate of incidence in the area). Another 20,000 who had just had a blood test were told that they were HIV positive. These false notifications were not achieved by a simple forgery of diagnostic results. Instead, the Curse 4.0 took direct control of ultrasounds, CTs, MRIs, blood labs, and other medical equipment to produce truly “authenticated” diagnostic results. Even if the affected chose to get a second opinion from a different hospital, the results would remain the same.
Of the 50,000 so tormented, the overwhelming majority chose to begin treatment, but more than 400 with pre-existing suicidal tendencies immediately saw death as the path to escape from these new troubles. Soon afterwards, the now slightly less than 50,000 sensitive, neurotic, volatile, depressed, and bipolar men and women each received a phone call from their spouse or lover. The men all heard their woman say, “Look at yourself, you stupid dumb-fuck. Are you even a man? I am now seeing [*] and we are very happy together. You can just crawl into some corner and die.” The women heard their men say, “You're really looking your age, and to be honest, you were fugly from the get-go. I have no idea what I ever saw in you. Well, I am with [*] now and we are very happy together. You can just crawl into some corner and die.”
For the most part, the Curse 4.0 contrived that the target had been left for someone he or she truly despised. Of the 50,000 affected, almost all immediately attempted to call their partner to clear the air of what had to be a simple misunderstanding or mistake, but about one percent opted to instead kill their partner or themselves; some did both.
There were still other parts to the soft target operation: For instance, it provoked bloody fights between gangs that were already at each other’s throats. It also targeted criminals imprisoned for life or with long prison sentences, changing their sentences to the death penalty and immediately executing them. The list went on and on. Overall, however, it appeared as if the soft target operation was not very effective. All in all, it only managed to eliminate only a few thousand targets. However, the Curse 4.0 had the idea of it, well aware that big things needed to be approached step by careful step and eschewing no evil, no matter how small. It would leave no means of murder untried.
In its soft target operation, the Curse 4.0 managed to eliminate some of its original creators. In the years after the creation of the Curse 1.0, the Curse Progenitor had been very mistrustful of men. In the last two decades she had been careful to always use the most sophisticated means available to monitor her husband. She had in fact, for most intentions and purposes, become an expert surveillance technician. But when she suddenly received that call from her ever-faithful husband, she suffered a heart attack. Once in the hospital, she received drugs that further aggravated her myocardial infarction. She died, a victim of her own curse.
The Curse Weaponizer, too, died in this phase of the operation. She received an HIV positive test result. At first she had no intention whatsoever of killing herself, but she overdosed on pills meant to calm her nerves. In her delirium she saw her window as the gate to a wondrous garden. The Curse Weaponizer fell to her death from the 15th floor.
Five days later, the hardware operation began. The preceding soft target operation had thrown the city into a state of anxiety. The sudden spike in suicides and murders had left their mark on Taiyuan's inhabitants. The Curse 4.0, however, was still on track, successfully avoiding government detection as it had planned. The first steps of the hardware operation could thus proceed under a shroud of secrecy.
First, the number of patients receiving incorrect medicine increased sharply. The packaging of these manipulated medicines appeared to be perfectly ordinary, but for most patients even a single dose proved fatal. Simultaneously, the incidence of death by chocking also skyrocketed. The cause was On-the-Go-Pills that had been compacted far beyond their usual compression ratios. When customers felt the weight of these pills at the dispensaries, they mistakenly believed that they were getting a great value for their money.
The first large scale elimination operation targeted the city's water infrastructure. Even in a city completely controlled by AIs, it proved impossible to simply add cyanide or mustard gas into the water supplied to homes. So instead, the Curse 4.0 decided to introduce two genetically modified bacteria into the water supply. While absolutely harmless individually, when combined they were able to produce a lethal poison. The bacterial cultures never met in the city's water supply. Instead the Curse 4.0 first added only one; then it waited for that culture to clear out of the water system, and only then did it introduce the second bacterial culture. The actual mixing of the two types of bacteria happened in the human body. Meeting in the stomach or bloodstream of a target, they would produce a potentially lethal toxin. Even if this poison did not prove to be fatal, the target would be taken to a hospital where he or she would receive medication that further reacted with the bacteria, ensuring the target's demise.
By now, the Provincial and National Public Security Departments had discovered the source of the unfolding catastrophe and had begun developing specialized kill-tools to deal with the Curse 4.0. In response, the Curse 4.0 accelerated and escalated its operations. The virus' hidden undercurrent became a towering wave, crashing down on the city and drowning it in a waking nightmare.
That morning, during rush hour, a series of powerful yet muffled explosions emanated from below the
city. It was the sound of subway trains crashing. Taiyuan had only rather recently built its subway network, having planned and constructed it just as the city's boom began. Because of this, the entire system was highly advanced, using maglev trains in vacuum tunnels. This allowed its subway trains to travel at absolutely astonishing speeds. Colloquially it had become known as the Prompt Portal and it was said that everything that entered would exit at its destination almost instantaneously. The trains’ unbelievable speed meant unfathomably violent collisions. In an instant, smoke-belching bulges were explosively raised from the ground. Seen from above, it almost appeared as if long lines of black pustules suddenly erupted across the face of the city.
Simultaneously, a significant part of the city's cars came under the control of the Curse 4.0. It was these virus-enslaved vehicles that became the most powerful weapon of the Curse 4.0. All at once, millions of cars began careening and colliding in all directions, like particles in Brownian motion. But the crashing of the cars was by no means a disorganized chaos; entirely to the contrary, it strictly adhered to a carefully calculated pattern and sequence. Every car first maximized the pedestrian casualties it could inflict on its crazed run. The gaps between individual vehicles were precisely coordinated, making escape almost impossible for the citizens walking on the city's streets. In open spaces and public squares, the cars even assumed circular formations to herd Taiyuan's inhabitants to their doom. The largest of these encirclements formed on the May Day Plaza. Several thousand cars surrounded the plaza, only to crash toward its center in unison, eliminating 10,000 targets in one fell swoop.
Outside, the city was soon almost entirely cleared of targets; they had either been eliminated or had taken shelter in some building or another. As soon as this had been accomplished, the cars began crashing into the nearest structures, killing all passengers the vehicles were carrying. These collisions, too, were precisely timed and organized, targeting high-occupancy buildings. The cars assembled and concentrated their attack. One vehicle followed the next as they struck a building, piling layer upon layer of shattered car remains and maximizing the destruction. At the foot of the tallest building in the city, the 300-story Coal Exchange Building, the cars crashed until they had formed a pile-up that reached about a dozen stories all of its own. The mountain of twisted metal burned brightly, reminiscent of a bizarre, flickering funeral pyre.
The night before the Great Crash, the citizens had beheld a peculiar spectacle: The city's taxis had all gathered in long lines to refuel. The virus had guaranteed that their tanks would be full when the time to crash came. Now they smashed into buildings like an endless rain of firebombs.
The government broadcasted an emergency announcement, declaring a state of emergency for the city and calling upon the populace to stay at home. At first this decision seemed well-advised as the residential buildings had suffered very little in ways of attack when compared to the larger structures of the city. The sole reason for this mercy was that the roads of residential areas were much narrower than the main thoroughfares through the heart of the city. When the Great Crash began, these streets were almost instantly blocked-up by wrecked cars and so made impassible.
This was no problem for the Curse 4.0, however. With the greatest of ease it all too soon turned every home into a death trap. All domestic gas valves were turned wide open. As soon as the explosive limit had been reached inside a home, the virus set off a spark. All across Taiyuan, blocks upon endless blocks of residential buildings were swallowed by the explosive fires. Some were ripped apart in their entirety, detonating like giant bombs.
The government's next step was to cut all power to the city. There was no need. Taiyuan was already without electricity and Curse 4.0 had accomplished its mission. Now without purpose, it would take no further action.
All the while, the entire city had become engulfed in a sea of fire. The flames' ferocity produced an effect eerily similar to those created by the firebombing of Dresden in World War 2. The city's oxygen was almost completely consumed by fire. Even those who escaped the burning inferno could not escape death.
The Curse Upgrader was incinerated as he drowned in the ocean of flames. Now, the first three key figures of the virus' history had become victims of their own curse.
Because of their minimal contact to the web, Cixin and Haitian, much like their homeless brethren, had escaped the Curse's initial operation. As the later stages of the operation began, they relied on skills and experience honed by years of living on the streets, and on agility that belied their age to dodge crashing car after crashing car. They could also depend on their extensive knowledge of the city’s roads, nooks and crannies. Armed with these assets and a good deal of luck, they amazingly managed to survive, even as the first fires began to rage.
But no sooner were they out of the fire than they landed in the frying pan. As the entire city was swallowed by a sea of flames, they found themselves in the middle of a massive intersection. The suffocating heat began to shroud everything in its haze and around them the flames lashed like tongues from countless immolated buildings.
Cixin had described countless cosmic catastrophes, but the scene before him emptied his mind of every thought but panic. Haitian, on the other hand, whose stories brimmed with humanism and sentimentality, remained perfectly calm and collected.
Stroking his beard, Haitian looked at the inferno raging red all around. In the most drawn-out of tones, he asked himself, “Had I known…that destruction…such a magnificent…sight... Why did I … never write it?”
His legs weak from fear, Cixin sat himself on the ground. “Had I known that destruction is so horrible, my writing would not have been so terribly chocked-full of it! Oh, me and my doom-saying, this really is just perfect…”
Eventually, they found a point of consensus: Their very own destruction was most certainly the most rousing form of destruction imaginable.
Just then, they heard a silvery voice, like a splash of crystal clear water in this burning sea. “Cixin and Haitian, come quick!!”
Following the voice, the two saw a pair of horses piercing the flames like equine spirits. On these strange apparitions rode two most wonderfully beautiful women. They had come from the SFK editorial board. The riders pulled Cixin and Haitian onto the backs of their horses and off they dashed. Like lightning they shot through flickering gaps in the ocean of flames and over the burning wreckage of cars. Suddenly and soon, they found themselves in the clear and open. Already, the horses were galloping over the bridge out of town.
Cixin and Haitian both heaved deep sighs of relief, taking in the cool, clear air. Holding onto the waists of the girls and feeling the soft touch of their long hair, the two authors could not help but feel that their mad dash to safety had been entirely too brief.
On the other side of the bridge they reached safety. They were shortly united with the rest of the editorial staff of the Science Fiction King. All of them were riding beautiful horses. This magnificent cavalry set out toward the southwest, leaving Taiyuan behind. Their passing clearly surprised the foot-bound survivors they came across on their way. Almost everyone ogled them with great interest.
A bit further down the road, Cixin, Haitian, and the Science Fiction King team saw one person among the survivors who was riding a bicycle. Now it was their turn to ogle: They could hardly believe their eyes – modern bicycles were connected to the web. Back in the city, the virus had locked all of them down as soon as the Great Crash began.
But it got even stranger. Riding the bicycle was a middle-aged man, a man once named Sa Bi.
Due to the severe harassment the Curse virus had brought upon him all those years ago, Sa Bi had developed an instinctive fear and loathing of all that the web had wrought. He had done much to minimize his exposure to it, including riding this 20-year-old antiquity of a bicycle. Also, he lived close to the river on the outskirts of the city. When the Great Crash happened, he had jumped on this completely offline bicycle and made his short dash to s
afety. In fact, Sa Bi was one of the very few people these days who was truly content, with a long line of affairs bringing him fulfillment. Had he died that day, he would have done so without resentment or regrets.
Together with Sa Bi, their mounted troop finally reached the mountains. Standing on a summit, they stared at the city below, watching it burn. A powerful gale was blowing up there, sweeping around the mountaintops, billowing from all directions and down into the Taiyuan basin. There it replenished the air lost to the hungry flames.
Not too far from them, the principal members of the city and provincial government were just disembarking from a helicopter that had carried them away from the inferno. As he looked upon his burning city, Taiyuan's Mayor clutched the pages of a speech in his pocket. It was a statement for the occasion of Taiyuan's immanent anniversary. Taiyuan's path to this birthday had certainly been full of twists and turns: Founded in 497 BC, it had endured China's tumultuous road toward becoming an empire, occupying a strategic position in the north of China. Razed in 979, the city had again begun to flourish during China's middle ages, not only by virtue of its military significance, but also becoming a renowned center of ancient culture and an important market city. The motto of the city's celebration should have been: “Celebrate 2500 Years of Taiyuan!”
Now, this city of 25 centuries had been reduced to ashes by a sea of flames.
At that time, contact with the city's authorities was finally re-established. They were advised that an army of relief troops was en route from all corners of the country. Communication, however, was soon cut off again. All that remained was the harsh rasping of static. One hour later, they received their next report: All rescue teams had called off their advance and the aerial rescue forces had turned about face as well.