by Hao Jingfang
A burst of music broke the silence among the stacks. Someone was visiting.
“Oh, it’s time,” said Luoying, closing the book.
“What is it?”
Luoying looked around for a clock. “Time passes so quickly!”
Reini was still confused. Luoying beckoned him to follow her.
They walked down the curving corridor on the second floor, turned at the corner with the statues of angels, descended the broad, fanning stairs until they were in the lobby of the Registry. Luoying took a deep breath and smiled enigmatically at Reini. Then she pressed the button on the wall and watched as the heavy, curved bronze doors slowly slid open. She gestured outside.
Reini looked where she was pointing and stood still in surprise. A group of youths was smiling at him, beckoning him closer. Before them were arrayed the statues he had crafted over the years, as solemn as an army ready for inspection. In the middle was the lion that he had worked on for more than a year without finishing. Someone had roughed out the tail so that, though not perfect, at least the overall structure was complete. The crouching lion, stately and powerful, its earthy exterior as rough and worn as the skin of a battle-worn chief, wore a sash like a decorated soldier. Surrounded by the smaller statues around it, the lion resembled the leader of a caravan from afar bearing wondrous gifts, even its large, bell-like eyes emitting a lifelike light. Reini had never imagined his own sculptures would look so alive. The statues supported a banner: HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
Even though there was no wind, the banner seemed to be flapping.
Luoying had returned to her friends and joined their loud cheers for his birthday. Someone explained that, since they didn’t think Reini alone could move so many things, they had moved all his sculptures and tools here so that he would be able to continue his hobby. Two of the youths in headbands danced with modeling tools, while another waved at the lion and other sculptures like a general directing a march. There was much laughter and cheer under the bright sun.
Reini didn’t know what to say. There were no words to express his emotions; it had been years since he could recall such a warm memory.
A life force that he had not felt in a long time moved him.
* * *
Reini had been born in year 7 of the Martian calendar, a year of divisions. He was now thirty-three, and whenever he looked back at the break that happened thirty-three years ago, he felt regret and sorrow. He knew that of all the choices that Hans Sloan had to make in his decades-long career, the division in year 7 was his most reluctant one.
Mars had not always been a crystallized world. The founders had chosen the central archive without settling on any specific social arrangement. In their idealistic fervor, they imagined a completely free world in which everyone was free to explore and discover, free to share their creations in the central archive, free to use the creations of others, supported by a stipend. But in the seventh year after the founding of the republic, the set patterns by which the world functioned pushed them to another extreme, leading to a structure that prioritized stability, regularity, and efficiency.
Usually, as a machine’s design was optimized and its construction refined, thermal motion within the system became a greater source of noise and wasted energy. It was the same with a society. A world in which everyone was free to do as they liked sounded wonderful in theory, but in practice would result in the waste of a great deal of resources. Thus, in that year, the system crystallized in the city, and the random movements caused by freedom were reduced to a minimum. Layers stacked upon layers of supervision; departments and administrative organs interconnected into chains; the system reintegrated and re-formed. In other words, the system was bureaucratized.
The decision wasn’t made by a plebiscite but in the Boule. Which matters would be submitted to a plebiscite was always a subtle decision, and the first consul of Mars, Richard Sloan, had decided on the Boule vote alone. Hans and his friends, all legislators, debated the issue heatedly. Several of his friends opposed the idea of sacrificing freedom in the name of efficiency, with Ronen and Garcia the loudest voices. Hans and Galiman, on the other hand, argued that ideals had to make compromises with reality.
Since the Boule was composed of the individuals from each system who were most dedicated to building and policy making, natural supporters of system consolidation, it was believed that support for the reforms would be overwhelming. But the result of the vote turned out to be extremely close. The bureaucratization faction won by only a very slim margin. A system inspired by circuit design in which the individual units were ateliers offered great conveniences for management and overall planning. No one could tell just what role Hans and his friends played in that vote.
In the face of such a momentous choice, everyone’s character was starkly revealed. Different individuals chose different worlds, and some entered the system, while others left.
Hans disliked the systemization. He preferred the pre-consolidation arrangement in which individuals freely joined small groups to conduct cross-discipline research. But he also understood that a combination of specialization, departmentalization, and process management was the most reliable way to improve efficiency in any era. In the end, he voted for the system. He remained a part of the system, specializing in flight, and won the trust of his peers with his wartime experience and exploration of remote sectors. A decade later he was promoted to Archon of the Flight System.
Galiman, the designer of Martian housing, had already achieved much as an inventor and researcher during the war and was well known by the public. After the reform, he didn’t leave the system. Instead he became part of the glass research atelier under the Land System. He focused on scientific research as well as politics and was responsible for turning his atelier into the top research institute on the planet. Eventually he became Archon of the Land System.
Ronen and Garcia, on the other hand, refused to accept the change quietly. Ronen had a deep distaste for the new schools, which tried to specialize pupils based on their talents. Forever a generalist, there was no ready-made position for him. He turned down all management and political responsibilities and spent his time traveling between Mars and the dwarf planets, building a deep bond with Ceres.
For two years Garcia tried to work within the system, thinking that he could learn to collaborate with bureaucrats, but the effort came to naught. He couldn’t live with the system, and the system rejected him. Thus, he asked to be given the mission of developing diplomatic relations with Earth, a task that nobody else at the time wanted.
These events ultimately led to results that no one could have predicted. Hans became consul of Mars, but the system’s allocation of power led to opposition from his son, forcing Hans to punish him. Ronen’s wanderings turned into permanent exile, with no corner of his home planet able to hold his proud figure. Galiman’s system needed Ceres, and so he had to allow Ronen to take his stories with him to a grave among the stars. Garcia lived on Maearth, never setting foot on a planetary surface. He opened a window for Mars but also brought to Hans’s son the spirit of rebellion from another land and, ultimately, death. He also set Hans’s granddaughter on a spiritual journey as a perpetual vagabond.
The decision changed Reini’s life as well. After Garcia finally knocked open the door to Earth and established diplomatic relations, the first demand from Earth was the release of war prisoners. Reini’s mother thus left. She was so overjoyed at the news that she put down Reini, only three years old at the time, and returned to her home without looking back.
When Reini worked on the old files, he would from time to time read snippets from that momentous era. He would then look out the window, sighing over how a single moment could change the course of all the other moments in the river of time so irrevocably. The crystal city spread before him, at once fragile and glowing. Human forms, trapped in time, turned into silhouettes with open arms and frozen expressions, tracing out the paths of unpredictable fate step by step.
* * *
From the train, he looked back at the Registry, wondering whether staying here was the right choice. He decided it was. Sometimes Reini felt that he was more comfortable with the people and events of the past; they were the constant presences in his life. The cobblestone streets of old Earth, lit by dim streetlamps and strewn with trash, and the ancient bridges and plazas of London, filled with bronze statues, though the memories of another planet, felt to him as real as the small red circular tables in the corners of the Registry, more familiar than the sights and sounds of his life. The wisdom of the past was always with him, giving him faith that the silent and lasting sentiments weren’t wrong.
He hadn’t been to the Tarkovsky Archive in a long time. Earlier in his life he had gone there twice a year, but more recently he had stopped doing that. Those worthy of memorializing weren’t remembered as often. Still, the way to the archive was etched in his mind, and even with a different origin station, he knew how to get there quickly by train. He called ahead so that Janet would be expecting him at her atelier.
He didn’t know how to start the conversation with her; each year, when they saw each other, he didn’t know what to say at first. Janet was twelve years older than he was, but a group of people bound them together. They never spoke of the source of their friendship. There was no need when the bond was as solid as the ground itself.
Reini never told Luoying that he had once studied under Adele, her mother. For three and a half years she taught him the art of sculpting at a community studio. Those were the most important three and a half years of his life.
When Reini saw Janet, he felt sorry for her. When the young man from Earth brought the news that Arthur had died, she had seemingly aged ten years overnight. Faith provided support to the spirit, and spirit provided support to the body. For a decade Janet had lived on a belief, a hope, but now she was without its sustaining strength.
Nonetheless, she strove to be friendly, even with the sadness that couldn’t be hidden. She led him to her atelier and poured him a cup of tea. He got to the point right away, informing her of Luoying’s description of their plan for a revolution.
As Reini had anticipated, Janet fell into a thoughtful silence as she stared out the window, her eyes unfocused.
“It’s been ten years,” said Reini with a sigh.
“Yes, it has.”
“Sometimes I think history is repeating itself.”
Janet said nothing.
“Their passion and sense of justice … so familiar.”
Janet turned back to the room and drained her teacup in one gulp. She gazed at Reini. “If you think you’re seeing history replay itself, how do you think I feel?”
LUOYING
As death fell to the ground before their eyes, Luoying and Chania were thinking of the same memory. It was a terrifying moment on Earth, a moment that persisted for a long time in their still-childish hearts.
It was a public holiday, when many people had gone to the beach. Few were left in the city, and a dozen or so members of the Mercury Group gathered in Bangkok from around the world, where they rented a cheap cargo airship and cruised over the city for fun. The cargo airship was very slow and not terribly stable, but there was plenty of space in the gondola for the group to sit around in a circle and play cards. Luoying was at the back while the other kids laughed and joked, creating a joyous mood. Outside the gondola, the steel-girded skyscrapers passed one by one. They were flying fairly low, so that many of the skyscrapers towered over them.
That lazy afternoon was torn apart in a moment. Luoying happened to be glancing outside the gondola when the man fell. A few others saw him as well, and everyone stopped the game. The man, his limbs flailing, swept past the gondola in a flash. His clothes billowed in the wind, and his face, twisted features frozen into a grimace like a deformed portrait, seared itself into their minds. Luoying rushed to the porthole, but all she could see was a seemingly bottomless chasm. On Earth, it was impossible to see the ground from the top floors of buildings, and impossible to see the sky from the ground. She was so terrified that Sorin had to hold her and gently cover her eyes.
A few minutes later they saw from the network bulletins that the suicide had been a medicinal chemist who had discovered the cure for the KW32 virus. Investors, hoping to make a killing, bid his stock up to stratospheric levels. However, he kept on missing deadlines, and though much of the funds raised by investors had been spent, there was no result. Two days earlier his stock had collapsed, trapping many investors. Besieged by angry shareholders, he finally couldn’t take the strain anymore. With the news of his death, the bulletins automatically showed contextually relevant warnings that investors should be cautious with cutting-edge research. It was possible to lose everything.
Luoying and her friends stayed out all night. They sat in a small bar until it was midnight, and then they wandered around the deserted and dark streets. Runge took off his jacket and draped it around Luoying to keep her warm. Near dawn, hungry and tired, they found a twenty-four-hour restaurant and wolfed down some breakfast. The other patrons of the restaurant, clearly denizens of the city’s seamier side, looked at them oddly. None of them brought up what they had witnessed, but a cloud of depression hung over the group. They understood how scientific research worked: it was a matter of luck. There was no way to guarantee return on investment, and they couldn’t imagine how anyone survived if research had to produce results according to a fixed schedule.
They missed home so much in that moment. At home, research and exploration were not subject to such inhumane pressures. They had believed that nothing of the sort would ever happen at home. But they were wrong.
That memory had returned to Luoying in such an unexpected manner. Before she had had time to sort out her past, her reality had collided with her memories, forcefully extracting a moment she had witnessed and endowing it with new meaning.
What did Luoying believe about her home? She never expected it to be as lush or rich as Eden, full of fruits and honey and milk. She knew it was a poor planet, limited in livable space, beset by danger, where everyone lived on the edge of death every day and had to carefully conserve the resources they had, all of them precious. She knew all that, but she had held on to a fantasy of her home as a pool of tranquility, a place where you felt at peace, not overwhelmed by stress. She recalled that at home no one needed to worry about food, clothing, or shelter. Everyone was free to pursue their interests and dreams. There was no employer who exploited your every productive moment, and you were free to spend your time as you wished. What a free and carefree place home was in her recollection!
But now her surroundings had intruded on her memories. Home was not simple or tranquil. It was full of competition, invisible restraints, oppression that had to be submitted to. It locked everyone in place like components on a circuit board. Inside, there were deaths, power struggles, the just who were deprived of happiness due to false accusations. What kind of world was this? Why was it as hard to survive here as in the other world?
Dr. Reini said that he wants to be a human being who can face another human being, thought Luoying. What about me?
Dr. Reini was not an activist, not a doer. Luoying wasn’t sure if she should be one. She hesitated over whether to join the movement. It was a momentous choice. At first she had not wanted to join, and then she changed her mind. She had even prepared her props. But after the conversation with Reini, she was leaning toward staying out of it again.
Sitting at the window, Luoying gazed up at the sky, vacillating between her choices. The death she had seen was like a knife that sliced open the curtain over her life, that unsealed the storage sack of her memories. Moments spilled out like a flood, and she watched her own hesitation like a consciousness detached from the world.
She recalled the last time she had participated in a collective movement. That was back on Earth, with h
er Terran friends. She had joined a group of Reversionists, fanatical environmentalists who yearned for the world to revert to ancient ways of living and tried to dismantle the modern metropolis. In the twenty-second century, when all the authentic, so-called primitive ways of life had disappeared and died out, their passion was clearly tinged with an exoticizing gaze. Because what they yearned for was so unattainable, they craved and believed in it all the more. All of them were very young, and they launched resistance movements across the globe, trying to halt the irresistible tide of sprawling urbanization. At the time, cities on Earth were still growing as remaining pockets of rural population were being absorbed. Concentrating the human presence on Earth was a response to the growing cost of energy and a way to reduce humanity’s impact on the environment. But the Reversionists disagreed.
“It’s nothing more than bottomless greed!” they shouted. “We don’t need cities!”
They sat before tents pitched in the highlands, surrounding a bonfire. Luoying listened to the speeches.
“Can you imagine how much energy it takes to construct a mega-metropolis?” asked one of the older boys. He was lecturing Luoying. “Can you imagine how much energy it costs to maintain the abandoned land? In the old days, people lived in small towns scattered around the country, and that was the best! Some claim that small-town life was unsatisfying, and that was why everyone tried to go to the big cities the first chance they got. Lies! All lies! It’s all motivated by greed. Desire is the fall of humankind. Earth was at first a paradise, but we fell because of unchecked desire. Look at what a hell we’ve made of our planet!”
Luoying nodded, not sure she really was following.
“We must fight against all extravagant desires and destroy dreams of luxury while the blood of purity still flows through our veins!”