by Hao Jingfang
Anita turned to the new Mira, dressed in worn but clean clothes. He held a piece of white bread and bit into it hungrily as though he hadn’t eaten in days. Anita patted him on the shoulder, full of compassion.
—Did you say that you improved your predecessors’ technologies?
—Yes. I optimized their production methods.
—Did the previous patent holders agree to have you improve their processes?
—Of course. Why wouldn’t they? Only with constant improvement can an idea continue to live.
—Ah, such wise words! What a philosopher you are. You’ve just given me the solution to the problem that’s been bothering me. I’m going to invent the concept of copyright by the dead. If the living can have copyrights, why not the dead? I’m going to write down his ideas, and anyone who wishes to analyze, quote, or even mention my dead husband’s work is going to have to pay me. My husband would surely agree with this. To have profit even after death! That means he will continue to live!
The white-robed chorus sang.
—Ohhh, that’s wonderful, WONDERFUL!
At that point a large number of characters made their entrances all at once. They rushed about the stage as Anita cradled the mannequin-corpse while negotiating deals, signing contracts, and counting money. Some protested that they would stop analyzing his works if she charged for the privilege, but Anita beckoned them closer to explain that, after paying her, they could turn around and resell the license to someone else for profit. The more deals made, the more profit for everyone. She was going to divide her dead husband’s representation rights into a thousand strands and auction them all off until there was a vibrant market of IP derivatives. It was an idea that would make everyone rich.
The white-robed chorus sang with even more joy.
—Oh, oh, oh! That’s wonderful, wonderful, WONDERFUL!
Mira, looking like a beggar, clawed his way out of the chaotic crowd on the stage. His hands were empty, having been entirely forgotten. He picked up his small bundle and looked lost. His eyes caught the small boat, as lonesome as he was. He climbed in and quietly rowed his way back to the left side of the stage, the continent where he had started from. Anita and the others disappeared in the darkness.
Despondent, Mira made his way to a small bar and complained to a woman he met there. The woman was extremely interested in his story.
—Wait, tell me what you said again?
—I said that no one cared about my inventions and improvements.
—No, not that. What did you say before that?
—I was saying that they took a single piece of music and divided it into movements and chapters. By selling the rights to each piece separately, they managed to make a lot of money. They also advertised heavily on the campuses of music schools. Any student who wanted to graduate had to buy the rights owned by many dead composers.
—What a brilliant idea! I can do the same myself. I can divide a single article into several chapters and cite my own works. Not only will I have a much larger number of publications, but I’ll also be boosting my citation rate. The director of the lab will be so pleased. And it’s also a good idea to advertise among the students. If all the students I advise end up citing my papers, I’ll look so smart and gain so much prestige. I wish I had thought of this earlier! Now I can gain all kinds of honor and glory, and soon I’ll be the youngest, most talented researcher in the whole lab!
The black-robed chorus, long dormant, finally sang again.
—Ah, so great, so, so great!
Since the woman was completely absorbed by her ever-growing dreams of glory, Mira was once again ignored. He sighed and got back on the wheeled boat and paddled his way back and forth between the two continents, alone, aimless, directionless. For a long interval he slowly paddled from the left side to the right side, and silence enveloped everything.
When he arrived on the right side of the stage once more, there was a crowd gathered around a man, interrogating him all at once. The man was having trouble fielding the questions, and when he saw Mira standing by himself, he ran up and grabbed his hand.
—Young man, you must be from the other continent. Wonderful! That therefore makes you completely impartial. These people think our company’s mineral health product contains harmful substances, and they won’t believe my explanations. Why don’t you come and offer a testimony? All you have to do is to read from this.
Then he whispered.
—Whatever you say, they’ll believe! I’ll pay you a hundred when you are done.
The white-robed chorus began to sing in a mysterious manner.
—Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful.
Mira shook his head, baffled by what was being asked of him.
—You should simply publicize your ingredients and the trials you did to ensure safety. Why do you need me to read your paper?
—No way! This is a trade secret.
—But such information is always publicized on my continent.
—Absolutely not. Publishing the secret will make it impossible to sell.
As the crowd onstage listened to Mira, they shouted: Investigate! Publish! They pushed Mira to the front and rushed toward a cardboard skyscraper in the back, raising their fists and shouting, Transparency! Revolution! Pamphlets fell from the sky like snowflakes, and the frenzied crowd shouted, Accounting irregularities! Tax dodgers!
Mira, pushed and jostled by the crowd, stumbled around. His clothes became torn, as though he were a wild child raised in the jungle, and two pieces of cardboard somehow became attached to his back like wings. Soon the agitated crowd raised a banner with REVOLUTION on it and lifted Mira onto their shoulders as they ran into the middle of the stage in a chaotic mob. There was no direction or aim, and their voices merged into a loud cacophony in which no individual sentence could be distinguished.
Then a pointless fight broke out in the thronging mob. Mira was captured by one faction from another and then captured back again. After this happened a few times he was once again forgotten.
But he began to fly. Wires pulled him up into the air, and his cardboard wings flapped, giving him the appearance of a fairy from neverland. A spotlight stayed with him—a lonely light.
After drifting about for a while, he fell. The audience exclaimed in shock. But Mira didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, he landed in a net and bounced up and down. Confused, he looked about himself, and two columns of people with serious expressions stared at him from each side.
As the lights came up, the audience realized that the net had been present throughout the show. It was behind the boat that had carried Mira between the two continents and hidden by the darkness. He had never managed to escape the net at all.
Mira sat in the net as though he were waking up in a hammock. His face was blank and innocent. While his eyes roamed from one column of serious people to the other, none of them paid any attention to him. The leaders of both sides seemed to be engaged in some heated negotiation. As they craned their necks and flapped their lips, no sound emerged. Between them was a gigantic balance scale, swaying unsteadily. A lot of weights had already been placed on both pans, but the negotiation had stalled.
One side angrily placed another large weight on the pan before them. The lever pivoted toward them. But the other side nonchalantly tipped the weight that had just been added off the pan, and the balance tilted back toward them. The two sides looked so angry that they seemed about to come to blows.
Just then, one of the leaders stepped forward and urged everyone to calm down. He looked at the other leader and then pointed at Mira, who was still entangled in the net. The other leader nodded, and both walked up to Mira, grabbed him, and tossed him toward the scale. Pulled into the air by wires, Mira tumbled a few times until he landed right on the balance. The beam tilted and then returned to horizontal and held steady. Both sides laughed in satisfaction and shook hands. As they slapped each other on the shoulders, they exchanged two huge bags of goods.
For the first time, both the bl
ack-robed and white-robed choruses sang together.
—Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful! Ah, so great, so, so great!
The whole stadium was silent. Members of the Mercury Group and invited extras rushed onto the stage all of a sudden and began to dance and run about in circles. After a few turns, they picked up Mira and rushed off, leaving behind an empty stage and an audience with mouths gaping.
The play had come to an end, although there was no ending. Sparse applause rang out here and there, but the actors didn’t mind. They didn’t even come back onstage to take a bow. The next act and the award ceremony to follow soon caught everyone’s attention, and the play was forgotten.
Backstage, the Mercury Group pushed their way through the throng of other performers still waiting for their turns and stadium workers, took off their costumes and makeup, and left in a coordinated fashion. Noiselessly they went through back passages and down little-known back paths until they congregated in the ore yard where Runge was waiting for them.
As soon as Luoying walked into the ore yard, she saw an old mining ship lying in the middle of it like a hungry fish whose maw yawned open.
* * *
For the whole day Juan had been feeling unsettled.
In the morning he inspected the new transforming fighters and was satisfied with the results. The fighter model had been under development for many years, and the project had overcome multiple setbacks. At this point it was finally ready to be produced in larger numbers and put into service. Juan felt that a great burden had been lifted from his heart and replaced by a rising sense of ambition. He had been preparing for this day for a long time, and only he knew the price he had had to pay.
As the metal doors of the aerospace center slowly slid open before him, he saw rows of brand-new fighters arranged like loyal and brave warriors in gleaming armor standing at attention in a phalanx. The silvery wingtips shone in the bright sunlight, bringing to him a wave of unspeakable joy and a sense of hope. He seemed to see the curtains being pulled open on a new act in the drama that was history, silently but full of grand significance. He knew that there was no fleet in history that could surpass this one. He was already writing history.
After the inspection, he went to the surveillance center. Theoretically, the city’s security was not part of the Flight System’s responsibilities. But he had been insistent that an atelier under the administration of the Flight System devote its resources to researching a real-time surveillance system that was even more comprehensive and capable than the one in use. The goal was clear: to lay the foundation for the future fleet’s needs and to develop the technologies necessary for espionage and counterespionage.
There was a room in this surveillance center from where it was possible to see every corner of the city on screens, just like in the control room of the official surveillance center. This was not exactly in accordance with the laws and regulations of the republic, but Juan had always protected its existence with his own power.
He had a premonition that something was wrong. Although the inspection of the new fighters had revealed nothing, he decided to come to the surveillance center to see for himself.
The newly developed “Swarm”-style electronic eye system was in operation, which transmitted to the surveillance center live footage from every part of the city. At first, as he glanced through the screens, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Citizens were busy at work or enjoying their leisure time, each in their expected place. Silently, Juan flipped through the images. East, south, west, north. Three cargo transporters were taking off from the eastern edge of the city, and a mining ship was passing through Gate Twelve, on the southern edge of the city.
A strange hunch guided Juan’s attention to Gate Twelve. He called for the feed from that area to be magnified. Every day, mining and prospecting vehicles left the city, but there was something about this ship that bothered him; maybe it was the appearance of the ship, or the youths talking silently in the video feed.
The camera zoomed in until it was possible to see the faces of the conversing youths clearly. Juan was pleased with the capabilities of the electronic eyes. As he was trying to identify the boy in the scene, who looked familiar, Luoying’s face appeared. She climbed out of the mining ship and stood next to the boy, smiling sweetly as she spoke to the gatekeeper.
“Turn on the audio,” Juan whispered.
The operator nodded and turned on the audio feed.
“Thank you. We’ll keep that in mind.”
That was all he heard. While Luoying’s voice still echoed in the surveillance room, he watched as the two youths climbed back into the ship. Like a clumsy, aged dinosaur, the mining ship slowly crawled forward, passing under the raised gate.
Juan called Hans and reported what he had seen.
“You are certain she mentioned nothing of this to you?”
“I really have no idea,” said Hans.
“Then should I start an investigation? Or perhaps send a team after them?”
Hans hesitated. Then, calmly, he said, “Don’t do anything yet. Let me do some checking and call you back.”
Hans’s image vanished from the screen. Juan was surprised that the consul didn’t look shocked or anxious. Sitting before the control panel, Juan frowned and felt rage rising in his heart. He didn’t care why the youths had left the city; the reasons weren’t important. But he did care that the security regulations had been bypassed so easily. If the youths had managed to leave the city without official approval, then it was a sign that the city’s security measures were much too lax. The city leaked like a sieve, without discipline or a mind-set for security. He slammed his fist onto the panel.
He had no choice but to wait for Hans. Staring at the buttons before him, he was baffled by his friend’s seeming lack of concern.
* * *
For most adult citizens of Mars, the day was just an ordinary day, no different from the hundreds of other days in the year. Although young people were immersed in the excitement of the Creativity Fair, most adults, busy with work, weren’t infected by the mood.
Radio antenna arrays neatly arranged around the perimeter of the city worked tirelessly, like spinning silkworms, to send data into the storage buffers. From there, the strands of data flowed into the processing center, where they were woven into dense pictures displayed on the screens of the researchers. The researchers worked hard to stay ahead of the data, telling themselves to hurry, hurry. Important discoveries were hidden in the trove of data, and they had to rush to dig out the jewels. New equipment, new instruments, new methods, had returned them to a bygone, prescientific age when documents and information overwhelmed the ability of humankind to process them. The researchers wished they had been blessed with the gift of intuition and buried themselves deeper in their work.
Molecular assembly lines all over the city carried out their operations meticulously and precisely. One after another, electrons flowed through the microchannels that had been carefully crafted to guide them. Molecules danced like millions of waltzing couples, changing partners constantly. Engineers sitting before the screens, however, weren’t in the mood to share in their joy. Their electronic folders were full of papers on control theory, engineering management, molecular assembly theory, and so on. To become an expert in any subject required years of dedication. They sighed inside, lamenting that they had been born in the wrong age, when it was almost impossible to improve upon what was known. Their ambitions frustrated, they decided to pay more attention to gourmet cooking and other hobbies.
The city policy makers were also busy and overworked. The leaders of the nine systems met frequently to discuss the contemplated uses of the water from Ceres, potentially the biggest policy change in postwar Martian history. Grave expressions on their faces, brimming with confidence and sense of responsibility, they debated in the shadow of history and with the aid of computer simulations of the future. The new mega-engineering project was about to start, and the key technologies were on the verge of
breakthroughs. The final decision was about to emerge.
On the farms, the cows were unconcerned with anything except grazing. From time to time they looked up, contemplated the sun outside the glass dome, and shook their heads sadly. Carp in the aquaculture tanks had become used to the new plants in the tanks and no longer reacted with agitation when people passed by. Adapting to change was the key to life; this was a truth even they understood.
Such an ordinary day, when engineers were busy, when youths were absorbed by the Creativity Fair, when teachers were with their students, was perfect for escaping.
Warren Sangis was a low-ranking researcher with the Land System who had been assigned for the day to watch over the gate mainly used by mining vehicles entering and leaving the city. He was neither talented nor ambitious, and sought to do the bare minimum needed to maintain his position. No curiosity for the bigger picture lurked in his mind.
For Warren, however, today would be no ordinary day. For the first time, Martha, the woman he pined after, had agreed to go out with him on a date, and he had no idea he would be punished for the first time in his life for negligence as well. When he pressed the button to open the layers of airlocks, he had no idea of the implications of this tiny action. He was simply thinking about Martha, who was in the control room with him, and paid no attention to anything outside.
* * *
The old mining ship slowly drifted over the yellow sand. Inside, the aromas of delicious cooking permeated the air.
The ship, several generations out of date, was near retirement. The dirt-yellow hull was like a moving dune. During the first years after the war, it and its companions had been instrumental in the effort to rebuild, and a large portion of the heavy metals in the city had come out of its digging claws. Back then, a mining ship had to plan to stay out in the wild for days on each trip, and the hull was thus thick like the walls of a castle. Inside, there were cooking facilities and sleeping quarters. Though the equipment was old and outdated, everything necessary was present.