by Hao Jingfang
Luoying walked in the middle of the group, allowing the others to steer her where they wanted. She strode lightly, in sharp contrast to the bouncing gait of the vivacious redheaded girl next to her.
Eko approached them but kept his distance. Since this was a public space, he began to film with a telephoto lens.
Of the three girls and two boys, Eko recognized one: Ruao Beverley, Peter’s son. He was something like a princeling, Eko supposed, the only one in the Terran delegation. He was playing tour guide to the other kids, showing off as he pointed to this and that and held forth. The other boy was a bit chubby and half a head taller than Ruao. He didn’t look as sophisticated as Ruao, but there was a stubbornness on his face as he argued with Ruao.
Ruao appeared to be losing the argument. A look of displeasure took over his face as he strode away, his lips pursed. The other boy, dressed in a white shirt, chased after him.
“Toutou, be nice to our guest!” the redheaded girl called after him.
Eko was amused. He liked filming ordinary people going through their daily lives. He enjoyed capturing scenes that showed their pride, disdain, competitiveness, surprise. Every day at the world’s fair, he got to see different types of Martians. They reacted to the wonders of Earth in their own ways, all of which were different from the kinds of reactions he was used to on Earth.
Eko sped up to get closer to the kids.
The kids stopped at the showcase for health products. The boy named Toutou pointed to a gizmo. “What’s this?”
Now that he was being consulted for his expertise, Ruao perked up. “That’s an ion pot. It analyzes your body to produce the ideal drink for you, guaranteeing perfect nutrition. There’s also a probe that comes with it that measures your blood pH and concentrations of trace elements so that you are always at your healthiest.”
Toutou laughed. “That sounds like the ramblings of a fool.”
The redheaded girl hit him gently on the back. “Don’t talk like that!”
Toutou refused to back down. “Of course it’s nonsense. Your body maintains its own homeostasis. What’s the point of a gadget like that?”
Ruao answered, “You’re being pretty ignorant. Experts tell us that, left alone, the human body always fluctuates around the optimal point without ever quite reaching the ideal.”
“What’s wrong with fluctuations?” asked Toutou. “That’s how the body works!”
Ruao shook his head. “You are too full of yourself. My family owns the latest model of the pot. There was one time when I didn’t use it for a month, and I felt exhausted all the time. When I caught a cold, it lingered.”
Toutou laughed. “That’s not hard to explain. Once you become dependent on something like that, your body loses its ability to maintain itself.” His eyes turned into two slits as he grinned. “My teacher told us that Terrans love to manufacture nonexistent desires and needs.”
Eko was startled. Toutou was right. The heart of commerce was desire, and when desires were satisfied, new needs must be manufactured. Whoever managed to create a new desire would own that market. The principle was familiar to everyone, but hearing it from the mouth of a child was something else. It meant that Martian education focused on the faults of a market economy from an early age. He wasn’t sure how much Toutou really understood, or if he was merely parroting what he had heard.
Ruao twisted his face away awkwardly. He wanted to be like his father, who always managed to look composed regardless of the situation. But Ruao was too young to know the art of crafting himself like a chameleon for every audience, and so he managed only to look petulant. All his features were bunched up on his narrow face. He was the ideal product of a society that worshipped the sale, and he believed in advertisements like articles of truth. He honestly thought those who had something to sell wanted the best for the buyer.
“What about you, then, eh?” he said. “You suppress desires. You suppress human nature itself.”
“Shut up!” Toutou was getting angry, too. “It’s obvious that you make up desires.”
“You suppress desires.”
“You—”
“All right. All right!” the redheaded girl broke in. “Look at the two of you, resorting to playground tactics. Why don’t you … let Luoying here be the judge of who’s right?” She pulled on Luoying’s arm, hoping she would find a way to de-escalate.
Luoying seemed to emerge from her own world. She looked at the girl and then at the two boys. Calmly she said, “I suppose desires are specific to places.”
The redheaded girl seemed to feel this answer was much too ambivalent to prevent the argument from flaring up again. She tried to get Luoying to elaborate. “When you were on Earth, did you go shopping like crazy?”
“I wasn’t obsessive about it. But, yes, I shopped.”
“Did you buy a new pair of shoes every month?”
“I suppose.”
“Even if the shoes you owned were perfectly fine?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. If you lived on Earth, you’d do the same.”
“But why?”
Luoying thought for a moment. “When I was part of the dance troupe on Earth, shopping was … a kind of entertainment. It’s like our dance parties.”
“Really?” The redheaded girl was now completely absorbed by this new line of inquiry and had forgotten the boys. “I don’t understand. Are you saying it’s different buying things on Earth versus here?”
“It is different.”
“But how is it different? You’ve never told me the details of your life on Earth. What was it like in the dance troupe? Didn’t you have dance parties?”
“I did go to dance parties, but they weren’t like what we have here,” said Luoying. “Over there … it’s just a lot of strangers. You met up; you danced. You didn’t even need to bring anyone. And they weren’t held every week at a set time. Sometimes we’d dance and party for several days in a row, and sometimes we’d skip a few weeks. Everyone in my troupe liked to shop. It wasn’t like a planned activity or anything. The other girls liked to shop when they were free, and I sometimes went along. Once you get used to something, you no longer need a reason for it.
“And as for how shopping is different there … when we buy something, we know what we want and ask for it directly from the maker. It’s not like that on Earth. Over there, they like to put everything on display, arranged in a pleasing manner. The mall was also a park. It was shaped like a mountain pierced throughout with tunnels for little trains. You got on one of these trains, and it took you past all kinds of stores. The displays showed off the clothes and shoes and gadgets like some scene in a fairy tale, and you couldn’t help but stop to buy something. When couples went on dates, they also shopped. The first two years I was on Earth, I lived in a giant building, which was also a mall—no, a city in itself. It was also pyramid-shaped, like the Expo Center, except that building was two hundred floors tall. I lived on the one-hundred-and-eightieth floor, trained on the fiftieth, ate on the twentieth, and danced on the one-hundred-and-twenty-third. But you could shop on every floor. If you went there, I bet you’d shop more than I did.”
“Two hundred floors!?” The redheaded girl’s mouth gaped. “That’s incredible.”
Ruao looked full of pride, as though he had personally built the wonder Luoying was describing with his own two hands.
“But you didn’t live there the whole time?”
Luoying shook her head. “Just two years.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I left the dance troupe.”
The girl wanted to ask more questions, but Luoying once again looked preoccupied. The two boys had walked ahead, and so the girls hurried to catch up. Eko was now even more curious about Luoying and determined to strike up a conversation. He prepared the questions in his head.
Not too long after, Eko heard the two boys arguing again.
“Now, this is a really impressive invent
ion,” said Ruao, once again lecturing the rest of the group. “IP fingerprinting was useful only as a way to prevent unauthorized transmission but couldn’t do anything about transactions off the web. That was how the black market in e-books boomed. But this device here writes a bit of executable code into every book. As soon as you start to read, regardless of how you acquired the book, the code generates a signal to pay the author’s web account. So now we have a complete solution to guarantee the integrity of the IP economy and to protect copyrights.”
Toutou frowned. “What in the world is the IP economy?”
Ruao smirked. In a superior tone, he said, “I’m talking about the great leap from traditional industries to the creative industries.”
Toutou remained confused. “Why do you need to pay to read a book?”
Ruao gawked at him as though the question were too foolish to deserve an answer.
To cover his discomfort, Ruao picked up a scroll and unrolled it. “Look at this! It’s the newest personal-information processing device. It’s light, small, user-friendly, and completely waterproof. You can even use it in a swimming pool.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Toutou. “Who wants to look at a computer in a swimming pool?”
Ruao ignored him. “You can take it with you anywhere. The battery lasts practically forever. It can connect to the web via infrared, microwave, optical fiber, and so forth. And it’s hardened against hacking. You can be on the web even in the subway.”
Toutou was even more confused. “What’s the point? Don’t your subway trains have terminals?”
“What’s a terminal?”
“A terminal! We have them at stations, museums, shops, everywhere!”
“Oh, you mean a shared computer. This is totally different. A shared computer has no space for your own stuff; you can’t do anything.”
“Why not? You just need to log in to your own space.”
Ruao and Toutou were both growing frustrated. They couldn’t understand each other at all.
Luoying broke in. “Toutou, Earth is different. They don’t rely on central servers. It’s just too big, and there are too many people. They link all the personal computers into a web.”
Her simple explanation glossed over the vast difference between the two societies.
Eko knew she was technically correct. The difference between Mars and Earth was indeed one between central servers and personal devices, between the archive and the web. She had explained away the difference by reference to geography and population, making it no longer necessary for the two boys to argue.
But in reality the difference was far more complicated. For instance, there was the matter of the profit of hardware manufacturers. On Earth, a personal computer typically lasted no more than three years before having to be replaced. On Mars, computers were part of the infrastructure of the buildings and could not be easily replaced. Terran manufacturers would have no way to grow if people on Earth adopted the Martian approach. As another example, consider capability and responsibility. On Earth, who had the capacity to run centralized systems that served everyone? Governments or megacorps? And even more critical was the matter of ideology. The mainstream media on Earth had always been proud of a long tradition of atomistic individualism. The very idea of uniting everyone with a centralized server would be subject to vociferous criticism.
Eko didn’t know if Luoying was unaware of these complexities or if she was deliberately papering them over. If she was ignorant of them, then she was lucky to have stumbled upon an easy explanation. But if she did know, then she was trying to avoid getting into a substantive discussion with the boys. He tried to guess what her unembellished face was hiding. He thought it was finally time to go greet her.
The youths began to make their way toward the food court.
Eko caught up to them. He stood next to Luoying along the counter. Luoying glanced at him and nodded.
“Hi,” said Eko.
“Hello,” said Luoying.
Luoying didn’t seem to be particularly interested in striking up a conversation, but she was just a touch slower than the other kids and fell behind, giving Eko a chance.
“Are they your friends?” he asked, pointing to the girls ahead of her.
“Neighbors, actually.”
“Do Martians move and change addresses often?”
“Almost never.”
“Then you must have been neighbors for a long time.”
“If I hadn’t left, it would be eighteen years.”
“You must know each other very well.”
“If I hadn’t left, yes.”
“But you did leave, so … ?”
Luoying didn’t answer him directly. She pointed to the redheaded girl. “Gielle’s dream is to be a designer. She wants to design the most beautiful wedding dress in the world.” Then she pointed at the girl dressed in blue, who hadn’t spoken so far. “Brenda’s dream is to be a poet. She wants to be remembered like Lord Byron, to become part of the classics.”
“What about you?”
“I wanted to be a botanist. A great one. Someone who discovers the secret behind petals and colors.”
“Really?”
Eko chuckled without knowing why. Maybe it was because Luoying looked so serious, or maybe because these dreams sounded so weighty. He wanted to talk more with her about her childhood instead of filling his camera with silly gossip. He hoped that he sounded like a regular person trying to have a conversation, not a reporter who came at her with an agenda.
For a while Luoying didn’t say anything. She picked up an apple and held on to it. Eko picked a chocolate drink from a shelf. They went to the checkout station, allowed the machine to scan their hands to pay, and walked over to a small standing table by the wall. The other kids weren’t far. Luoying waved at them.
“What’s your grand dream now?” asked Eko, keeping his tone light.
“I don’t have grand dreams.”
“Don’t you want to be a great dancer? A star?”
“No.”
“Why not? You have the perfect environment here.”
“Perfect?”
“You have a stable life. You don’t need to worry about finding a market or patrons. You have the space to practice. You have your atelier.”
Luoying fell silent. Eko waited, but she didn’t speak. He looked at her and thought she looked disconsolate. It was more than just perplexity or absent-mindedness. Her silence involved suppression, as though she was feeling awful but trying hard not to make a sound. He didn’t know when her mood had turned. She had looked fine but a minute ago.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’m sorry if I said something to offend.”
“No, you didn’t say anything wrong.” Her face was expressionless. “It’s perfect here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything.”
“Do you … feel it’s not so good here?”
She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. “The problem isn’t whether things are good here but that you can’t think it’s not good here. Do you understand?”
Startled, Eko didn’t know how to respond. Her eyes looked so sad, but he couldn’t understand why. After gazing at him for a while, Luoying apologized and left. She didn’t even say goodbye to the other kids. They called after her, and when she didn’t respond, they turned to glare at Eko.
Eko knew that she didn’t want the others to see her anguish, but he was as befuddled as the rest of them.
He had no interest in staying at the Expo Center any longer. After taking a perfunctory turn around the Grand Hall to get some panoramic shots, he left.
The world’s fair here was very different from the one on Earth. Instead of eye-catching booths, colorful banners, and flashing lights, the products of Earth were arranged neatly in display cases, accompanied by short descriptions and explanations. The overall feeling was closer to a museum’s. The Terran delegation had brought a roller coaster and an extreme sports simulator
, but there wasn’t enough space to set them up. They had brought all sorts of flashy advertising equipment and were prepared to respond to every imaginable scenario of Martian propaganda bombardment. The fact that there was no propaganda at all confused them.
A tall, magnificent stage was only partially assembled; there wasn’t enough room, so it resembled a squatting giant. The high-def display carpet was only half-unrolled, which gave off an air of frustration. Advertising posters filled a whole wall, but because they were too large, the wall appeared to be full of monstrous faces. Everything seemed off-kilter, mismatched. And so it pleased neither side.
THE REGISTRY OF FILES
By the time Luoying and Chania sat down together atop the watchtower, stars had filled the sky. They were so bright that it was painful to look at them directly, to see the Milky Way cross from left to right like a belt in the empyrean dome. The view from the watchtower included most of Mars City, now brightly lit, and the two friends seemed suspended between two starry seas, one above, one below, with the lone metallic ladder of the watchtower at their feet. They experienced the illusion of being far away from home.
“At first, I seized on the simplest explanation. Perhaps Grandfather thought the trip to Earth would be such a wonderful learning opportunity that he had to use his authority to give me the chance.”
“A wonderful learning opportunity?” Chania looked at her with a smirk. “If I had been the consul, my top priority would have been to make sure my granddaughter stayed as far from the Mercury Group as possible.”
Chania was a gymnast. The two were the only female athletes in the group. She understood the pain that Luoying had gone through on Earth.
Luoying shook her head. “It’s possible, isn’t it? Surely the committee didn’t know how hard it would be, and maybe they really hoped we’d learn something useful.”
“I hope so,” said Chania softly.
Chania was never afraid of following logic to a cold, heartless conclusion, but Luoying was different. It wasn’t that she couldn’t think of terrifying possibilities, but that she didn’t want to. She didn’t know why; it was just the way she was. She saw it as a weakness in herself, the way she subconsciously avoided certain facts. She hated the idea that she was just a living experiment, a specimen. She lacked Chania’s strength to face the truth.