The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection by Liu Cixin

by Cixin Liu

  “We’ll all be on the spaceships. I have no more need for this.” The god said, laughing.

  “Gramps god,” Qiusheng’s father said, his face sorrowful. “Your ships are all ancient. They won’t last much longer. Where can you go then?”

  The god stroked his beard and said calmly, “It doesn’t matter. Space is limitless. It’s the same wherever you die.”

  Yulian suddenly began to cry. “Gramps god, I… I’m not a very nice person. I shouldn’t have made you the target of all the bitterness I’d saved up my whole life. It’s just as Qiusheng said, I’ve behaved as if I don’t have a conscience…” She pushed a bamboo basket into the god’s hands. “I boiled some eggs this morning. Please take them for your trip.”

  The god picked up the basket. “Thank you.” Then he took out an egg, peeled it, and began to eat, savoring the taste. Yellow flakes of egg yolk soon covered his white beard. He continued to talk as he ate. “Actually, we came to Earth not only because we wanted to survive. Having already lived for two, three thousand years, what did we have to fear from death? We just wanted to be with you. We like and cherish your passion for life, your creativity, your imagination. These things have long disappeared from the God Civilization. We saw in you the childhood of our civilization. But we didn’t realize we’d bring you so much trouble. We’re really sorry.”

  “Please stay, Gramps,” Bingbing said, crying. “I’ll be better in the future.”

  The god shook his head slowly. “We’re leaving not because of how you treated us. The fact that you took us in and allowed us to stay was enough. But one thing made us unable to stay any longer: in your eyes, the gods are pathetic. You pity us. Oh, you pity us.”

  The god threw away the pieces of eggshell. He lifted his face, trailing a full head of white hair, and stared at the sky, as though through the blue sky he could see the bright sea of stars. “How can the God Civilization be pitied by Man? You have no idea what a great civilization she was. You do not know what many majestic epics she created, or how many imposing deeds she accomplished.

  “It was 1857, during the Milky Way Era, when astronomers discovered that a large number of stars were accelerating towards the center of the Milky Way. Once this flood of stars was consumed by the super black hole found there, the resulting radiation would kill all life found in the galaxy.

  “In response, our great ancestors built a nebula shield around the center of the galaxy with a diameter of ten thousand light years so that life and civilization in the galaxy would continue. What a magnificent engineering project that was! It took us more than 1,400 years to complete…

  “Immediately afterwards, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud united in an invasion of our galaxy. The interstellar fleet of the God Civilization leapt across hundreds of thousands of light years and intercepted the invaders at the gravitational balance point between Andromeda and the Milky Way. When the battle entered into its climax, vast numbers of ships from both sides mixed together, forming a spiraling nebula the size of the Solar System.

  “During the final stages of the battle, the God Civilization made the bold decision to send all remaining war ships and even the civilian fleet into the spiraling nebula. The great increase in mass caused gravity to exceed the centrifugal force, and this nebula, made of ships and men, collapsed under gravity and formed a star! Because the proportion of heavy elements in this star was so high, the star went supernova immediately after its birth, and illuminated the deep darkness between Andromeda and the Milky Way! Our ancestors thus destroyed the invaders with their courage and self-sacrifice, and left the Milky Way as a place where life could develop peacefully…

  “Yes, now our civilization is old. But it is not our fault. No matter how hard one strives, a civilization must grow old one day. Everyone must grow old, even you.

  “We really do not need your pity.”

  “Compared to you,” Qiusheng said, full of awe, “the human race is really nothing.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” th god said. “Earth’s civilization is still in its infancy. We hope you will grow up fast. We hope that you will inherit and continue the glory of your creator.” The god threw down his cane. He put his hands on the shoulders of Bingbing and Qiusheng. “I have some final words for you.”

  “We may not understand everything you have to say,” Qiusheng said. “But please speak. We will listen.”

  “First, you must get off this rock!” The god spread out his arms towards space. His white robe danced in the fall wind like a sail.

  “Where will we go?” Qiusheng’s father asked in confusion.

  “Begin by flying to the other planets in the Solar System, then to other stars. Don’t ask why, but use all your energy towards the goal of flying away, the further the better. In that process you will spend a lot of money and many people will die, but you must get away from here. Any civilization that stays in her birth world is committing suicide! You must go into the universe and find new worlds, new homes, and spread your descendants across the galaxy like drops of spring rain.”

  “We’ll remember,” Qiusheng said and nodded, even though neither he, nor his wife or father or son, really understood the god’s words.

  “Good,” the god sighed, satisfied. “Now, I will tell you a secret, a great secret.” He stared at everyone in the family with his blue eyes. His gaze was like a cold wind, and caused everyone’s heart to shudder. “You have brothers.”

  Qiusheng’s family looked at the god, utterly confused. But Qiusheng finally figured out what the god meant. “You’re saying that you created other Earths?”

  The god nodded slowly. “Yes, other Earths, other human civilizations. There were three others besides you. All are close to you, within two hundred light years. You are Earth Number Four, the youngest.”

  “Have you been to the other Earths?” Bingbing asked.

  The god nodded again. “Before we came to you, we went first to the other three Earths and asked them to take us in. Earth Number One was the best among the bunch. After they obtained our scientific materials, they simply chased us away.

  “Earth Number Two, on the other hand, kept one million of us as hostages, and forced us to give them the spaceships as ransom. After we gave them one thousand ships, they realized that they could not operate the ships. They then forced the hostages to teach them how, but the hostages didn’t know how either since the ships were automatic. So they killed all the hostages.

  “Earth Number Three took three million of us as hostages, and demanded that we ram Earth Number One and Earth Number Two with several spaceships each because they were in a prolonged state of war with them. Of course, even a single collision with one of our antimatter-powered ships would destroy all life on a planet. We refused, and so they killed all the hostages.”

  “Unfilial children!” Qiusheng’s father shouted in anger. “You should punish them!”

  The god shook his head. “We will never attack civilizations we created. You are the best of the four brothers. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Your three brothers are drawn to invasion. They do not know what is love or what is morality. Their capacity for cruelty and bloodlust are impossible for you to imagine.

  “Indeed, in the beginning we created six Earths. The other two were in the same solar systems as Earth Number One and Earth Number Three, respectively. Both were destroyed by their brothers. The fact that the other three Earths haven’t yet destroyed each other is only due to the great distances separating their solar systems. By now, all three know of the existence of Earth Number Four and possess your precise coordinates. Thus, you must go and destroy them first before they destroy you.”

  “This is too frightening!” Yulian said.

  “For now, it’s not yet too frightening. Your three brothers are indeed more advanced than you, but they still cannot travel faster than one-tenth the speed of light, and cannot cruise more than thirty light years from home. This is a race of life and death to see which one among you
can achieve near-light-speed space travel first. It is the only way to break through the prison of time and space. Whoever can achieve this technology first will survive. Anyone slower will die a sure death. This is the struggle for survival in the universe. Children, you don’t have much time. Work hard!”

  “Do the most learned and most powerful people in our world know these things?” Qiusheng’s father asked, trembling.

  “Yes. But don’t rely on them. A civilization’s survival depends on the effort of every individual. Even the common people like you have a role to play.”

  “You hear that, Bingbing?” Qiusheng said to his son. “You must study hard.”

  “When you fly into the universe at close to the speed of light to resolve the threat of your brothers, you must perform another urgent task: find a few planets suitable for life, and seed them with some simple, primitive life from here, like bacteria and algae. Let them evolve on their own.”

  Qiusheng wanted to ask more questions, but the god picked up his cane and began to walk. The family accompanied him towards the bus. The other gods were already aboard.

  “Oh, Qiusheng,” the god stopped, remembering. “I took a few of your books with me. I hope you don’t mind.” He opened his bundle to show Qiusheng. “These are your high school textbooks on math, physics, and chemistry.”

  “No problem. Take them. But why do you want these?”

  The god tied up the bundle again. “To study. I’ll start with quadratic equations. In the long years ahead, I need some way to occupy myself. Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll try to repair our ships’ antimatter engines, and allow us to fly close to the speed of light again!”

  “Right,” Qiusheng said, excited. “That way, you’ll be able to skip across time again. You can find another planet, create another civilization to support you in your old age!”

  the god shook his head. “No, no, no. We’re no longer interested in being supported in our old age. If it’s time for us to die, we die. I want to study because I have a final wish.” He took out the small TV from his pocket. On the screen, his beloved from two thousand years ago was still slowly speaking the final word of that three-word sentence. “I want to see her again.”

  “It’s a good wish, but it’s only a fantasy,” Qiusheng’s father said. “Think about it. She left two thousand years ago at the speed of light. Who knows where she is now? Even if you repair your ship, how will you ever catch her? You told us that nothing can go faster than light.”

  The god pointed at the sky with his cane. “In this universe, as long as you’re patient, you can make any wish come true. The possibility may be miniscule, but it is not nonexistent. I told you once that the universe was born out of a great explosion. Now, gravity has gradually slowed down its expansion. Eventually the expansion will stop and turn into contraction. If our spaceship can really fly again at close to the speed of light, then we will endlessly accelerate and endlessly approach the speed of light. This way, we will skip over endless time until we near the final moments of the universe.

  “By then, the universe will have shrunken to a very small size, smaller even than Bingbing’s toy ball, as small as a point. Then everything in the entire universe will come together, and she and I will also be together.”

  A tear fell from the god’s eye and rolled onto his beard, glistening brightly in the morning sun. “The universe will then become the tomb at the end of The Butterfly Lovers. She and I will be the two butterflies emerging from the tomb…”

  CHAPTER

  8

  A week later, the last spaceship left Earth. The gods left.

  Xicen Village resumed its quiet life.

  That evening, Qiusheng’s family sat in the yard, looking at a sky full of stars. It was deep fall, and insects had stopped making noises in the fields. A light breeze stirred the fallen leaves at their feet. The air was slightly chilly.

  “They’re flying so high. The wind must be so severe, so cold…” Yulian murmured to herself.

  “There isn’t any wind up there,” Qiusheng said. “They’re in space, where there isn’t even air. But it is really cold. So cold that in the books they call it absolute zero. It’s so dark out there, with no end in sight. It’s a place that you can’t even visit in your nightmares.”

  Yulian began to cry. but she tried to hide it by saying, “Remember the last two things the hod told us? I understand the part about our three brothers. But then he told us that we had to spread bacteria onto other planets and so on. I still can’t make sense of that.”

  “I figured it out,” Qiusheng’s father said. Under the brilliant, starry sky, his head, full of a lifetime of foolishness, finally opened up to insight. He looked up at the stars. He had lived with them above his head all his life, but only today did he truly see them. A feeling he had never had before suffused his blood, making him feel as if he had been touched by something greater. Even though it did not become part of him, the feeling shook him to his core. He sighed at the sea of stars, and said:

  “The human race needs to start thinking about who is going to support us in our old age.”

  With Her Eyes

  PREFACE

  I had been working for two months straight, and I was tired. I needed to get out, relax and clear my mind, if just for a few days.

  So, I asked the Director for two days of leave. He approved it, but only on the condition that I take a pair of eyes along. I agreed and so he took me to pick them up from the Control Center. The eyes were kept in a small room at the end of a long corridor. There were about a dozen pairs left when we got there. The Director pointed to a large screen as he handed me one of the pairs. I was greeted on the screen by the owner of the eyes I now held, staring at me. She appeared to be very young, probably fresh out of the university, her petite frame only accentuated by the massive spacesuit encasing her. The fact that her face looked like a mask of misery did nothing to help the situation. Just a few months ago, she had probably dreamt of the romance of space in the safety of her university library; now she faced the hellish reality of the infinite void.

  “I am very sorry for imposing upon you,” she opened, bowing to me. Her soft words sounded as if they were floating to me, a gentle breeze out of the deeps of space.

  “Not at all. I’m happy to have a companion,” I replied sincerely. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Really?” She could barely contain her excitement and joy. “You haven't decided where you'll go?”

  As she spoke, I felt my attention drawn to two peculiarities. On the one hand, there was the fact that space-to-surface communications always suffered some degree of lag. Just calling the Moon meant a delay of about two seconds and communications with the Asteroid Belt had to deal with considerably longer lag-times. Her answers, however, seemed to arrive without any perceptible delay at all. That meant that she had to be in low Earth orbit, but there was no reason to link-up from there. Returning to the surface from there was cheap and quick, so why ever would she want me to carry her eyes on vacation?

  On the other hand, she was outfitted as an aerospace engineer, but her spacesuit seemed rather odd; it lacked any visible anti-radiation system and the helmet hanging at her side apparently lacked glare guards. The suit's insulation and cooling systems were of a strange design as well.

  “What station is she on?” I asked, turning to the Director.

  “Just don't ask,” he answered glumly.

  “Leave it, okay?” the young woman on the screen echoed abjectly enough to tug at my heartstrings.

  “You aren't in lock-up, are you?” I asked, more in jest than earnest. It was not entirely without basis, however; her station appeared terribly cramped. It looked like some sort of cockpit. An almost endless array of complex navigation equipment and displays flickered and glowed behind her, yet I could see no window, not even an observation screen. In fact, the only proof that she was actually in outer space was a pencil that was slowly floating around her head.

  Both she and the Direct
or responded to my question with stunned silence, so I hurriedly continued. “Very well, I will not ask about things that shouldn't concern me, but you still need to decide where we should go.”

  To her, making the decision seemed to be a genuine struggle. Clutching her gloved hands to her chest, she almost closed her eyes as she focused. If I had not known the circumstances, I could easily have been fooled into believing that she had been faced with a decision of life and death, or perhaps that she was convinced that the Earth would explode after our short vacation. I could not help but snicker at the thought.

  “Oh, this isn't easy for me. If you know Helen Keller's Three Days to See, then you can understand how hard this is for me!” Her soft voice momentarily mustered surprising force.

  “We don't have three days; just two,” I replied. “We are all beggars for time these days. Then again, we’re lucky when compared to Helen: In three hours, I can take your eyes anywhere on Earth.”

  “Then let's go somewhere that we've been before!”

  After she told me the location, I left with her eyes.

  CHAPTER

  1

  The Taklamakan

  It was a place where towering mountains and flat plains, grasslands, and forest met and embraced – a mighty grassland located a good thousand miles from the Aerospace Center where I worked. Flying via the ionosphere, our journey took a mere 15 minutes. Many generations of perseverance and hard work had transformed the Taklamakan from a sandy desert to verdant grassland. Now, after decades of vigorous population control, it was once again left deserted, if only of human habitation. Before me, the grasslands stretched straight to the horizons. Behind me, the Tian Shan Mountains were covered in the luscious green of a thick forest, punctuated only by the occasional silvery white snowcaps of the highest peaks.

  I took out her eyes and put them on.