by Sam Abraham
“You can think of it as a dam,” Zoe interjected, “using the nanoscopic pressure of electrons. The more electrons a molecule has, the more energy it can donate. Natural mitochondria reduce sugars, which are carbon-based molecules, to capture energy. Dr. Yang has synthesized a next-generation electron transport chain that reduces elements heavier than carbon, as well as many types of carbon compounds beyond sugars, unleashing more energy.”
“Chemolithotropic bacteria are a thriving group of organisms that have been metabolizing non-carbon-based molecules for eons,” Yang said with a wry smile, “they’re quite inspiring.” With a flip of his hands the holoview transformed. Where there had been five proteinaceous globs in the original electron transport chain, there were now more than twenty across a network of membrane sacs. Interlaced and pulsating, morphing back and forth, the proteins flailed intricately as they consumed and ejected long strings of macromolecules.
“The energy we ingest from sugar comes mainly from covalent bonds between carbon and hydrogen,” Yang said, tracing with his finger as an animated video revealed the dance of the enhanced transport chain. “Longshui, however, can break many types of bonds. Because carbon-hydrogen bonds are energy-rich, longshui metabolizes a panoply of polysaccharides and other organic compounds so that cells don’t need to rely only on molecules we naturally transform into sugar. And longshui can also work on phosphoric, sulfuric and nitrogenous bonds found, among other places, in the industrial waste that is, shall we say, rather plentiful in our environment.”
Yang paused to view his achievement, and from the look in his eyes, Li knew he saw it as equal to the Great Wall, or the first moon landing, an unparalleled creation. As if reading her mind, the Professor smiled at her and explained his pride. “It took evolution billions of years to assemble the machinery for turning oxygen and carbon into the wellspring of life. Yet nature’s design is brittle, needy. The environment must dance upon the head of a pin for us to thrive. If it changes, well, nature is not sentimental. Mass environmental change has yielded mass extinction in eons past. But now,” Yang said with a gleam in his eyes, “in mere decades we have crafted an energy capture engine that nature never even began to dream of. With longshui we are resilient.”
Entranced, Li drew close to the holo, scrutinizing the way the protein complexes bridged together, forming a lattice that snaked across the membrane. Light splayed across her face as the holo simulated ions crossing the protein gates, ebbing and flowing in a choreography of molecular cofactors, whirling in a ballet squeezing every last quantum of available energy from each electron.
“For example,” Zoe continued, “longshui enables us to mine river pollutants. You’ll see tomorrow, it’s jet fuel for this stuff.”
Li nodded. “And generate enough power to light Hong Kong.”
Eli forced a laugh. “Aizhu, you are quick,” he said.
“Eli is writing a story too,” Zoe said, failing to hide her pride. “For the international press. Tough to get the paperwork, but the professor pulled some strings with the River Syndicate.”
Now, why would he do that? Li wondered. “It is a remarkable achievement,” she said instead. “You have turned that which we take for granted into a power source that is likely to get you noticed.”
Yang’s wife took their boy from the table and readied him for bed. The Professor turned to Eli and Zoe and said, “Why don’t you two get some rest. Tomorrow is a big day.”
Eli sent Li a strange look as he and Zoe rose from the table, saying their goodbyes.
When they had gone, Li said, “Professor, may I ask you a question? I have been assigned to help you, but I have not been told how. What is to be my role?”
At this Yang let out a sharp guffaw. “It is good to see you well, Xiao Li. I have been hoping for many years that you would resurface,” he said, taking another sip of beer. “I knew the Complex would send someone to keep an eye on me, but I never guessed it would be you. Allow me to show you something.” He went to the door of his son’s room and opened it, watching his only child sleep peacefully in moonlight. “You can tell your superiors that they have nothing to worry about. My work will be completed on schedule. I have too much to lose to cause trouble, don’t you think?”
Li itched with inquiries. But she forced herself to be patient, for Shen had taught her that revelation was a strong spirit, best sipped slowly. “Of course,” was all she said, “you have a lovely family.”
Chapter 13 - Tong Ren (同人)
Weapons In The Thicket
They set out just after dawn. As the journey took them north, Eli passed the time with banter. Li tried to ignore him. It reflects poorly on Yang, she mused, to associate so freely with foreigners. When Eli asked her about her family, she fell silent, not caring how rude it was.
Instead, Li looked out onto the land. Thin rays of sunlight pierced the August clouds. Slowly the psuedocity gave way to paddy fields, agribots poking the muck with rows of genetically modified rice bulbs in a desperate attempt to grow food. The polluted rivers were metallic brown, clogged by bamboo rafts with outboard motors as garbage swirled in the current. Soon the rivers disappeared as they drove into golden hills, approaching the mountain of Huangshan with its stark cliff rising into mists. Once a tourist destination, few people braved the Ghost Lands these days to view Huangshan’s granite face and weeping pines.
A short distance from the peak, Eli pulled the jeep pulled off the road into a clearing. A dozen River Syndicate soldiers stood around a paramilitary truck, carrying pulse rifles and smoking.
Yang saw Li staring at them. “These men are security,” the professor said, as if it explained everything. “Come, it’s on foot from here.”
The group walked up an escarpment to a waterfall, where Li was amazed to find a palate of light. Prismatic curtains rose from the water like soap bubbles, crawling up the sheer rock face so that the whole ravine was painted in iridescent petals. Li held her hand up to block the glare, squinting at the kaleidoscopic play of red and orange and leaping indigo.
“What is this?” Li shouted over the roar of the water, amazed at the variegated light dancing up the cliff face.
Yang smiled at her. “Side product of harvesting sulfur dioxide, nitrites, and phosphorus-based pollutants with longshui.” He looked at Zoe and said, “How are we reading?”
“The output is fantastic,” Zoe said, reading the data. “This could charge thousands of industrial batteries.”
Eli nodded. “How long until you’re at production scale?”
“With infrastructure setup,” Yang said, working through the calculations, “No more than four months. But we must find more source locations to supply our longshui arrays.” The professor turned to Li. “Aizhu,” he said, “how would you like to come with me to scout for new supply sources while Eli and Zoe return to camp to let our sponsors know that we plan to go live on schedule?”
Li nodded demurely, unsure of what to expect. They descended from the waterfall, and soldiers drove them into the valley behind the mountain, through a fenced-off checkpoint.
“You’ll have to mind what you tell Zoe,” Dr. Yang said as the truck passed armored battledrones lumbering around the perimeter. “For her own protection, she is not aware of the full scope of the longshui experiments. It is a platform technology, with three known applications. One application is energy farming, as you have just seen.” He leaned in toward Li and said, “You are another, and we have much to discuss on that point. This is the third. I should warn you, what you are about to see may be disturbing. But I assure you, it is for the good of society.”
“Of course,” Li said, unsure of what to expect.
The truck parked and Li followed Yang to where plastic tents billowed in the grass. Rows of them stretched back into the valley, their walls rippling in the wind with the hum of air pumps.
Yang lifted the flap of one of the tents and Li’s eyes went wide. Inside, techs in cleansuits treated people who were an inch from death. To say th
ey were starving, Li thought, would be to dishonor their emaciated chests and matchstick legs. They were all unbearably skinny. Children held distended pot bellies. Many were too weak to move. Several of the gaunt creatures watched her with glazed eyes as the techs checked IV lines in their arms.
“What is this?” Li asked in shock as she watched a tech etch small tattoos into a woman’s shoulders.
Yang went to a shirtless man with exposed ribs. The man’s pants hung too loosely as the professor took his pulse. “Evolution,” Yang said. “The countryside is ravaged by famine. Across the west, millions of farmers are starving. Entire villages have run out of food. Grain from Africa is too expensive to ship into the vast hinterland, and the Centrists have no answer, not at the highest circles. But exposing people to longshui enables them to survive by drinking sulfur dioxide and other common water pollutants. By altering the essence of their metabolism, their need for food is sharply diminished. Only science can save their lives, by making men who can withstand the poison land we have created.”
Li was overwhelmed by the sight of such starvation. She remembered that the girl Zhu was from Anqing, near this very spot, her family sold into slavery because they could no longer grow food. A man in a corner began to howl, crying out that a light was consuming him. Yang ordered a tech to hold the patient down and sedate him.
As Li watched, sudden images of the recycling quarry carved her mind like knives. Garbage dunes swallowed broken women with torn babies in rivers of vomit. Her world collapsed in flashes of broken nanosilicate, dying orphans and metal cages, brutes raping young girls as they screamed in forgotten places. She closed her eyes, but failed to drive the nightmares away.
A scientist approached Li to calm her, but in her flashback he was a quarry guard, his face hidden behind a metal visor. Mounds of trash surrounded her instead of hospital beds. Consumed by fear, she lashed out, grabbing him and throwing him across the tent, sending him crashing into a medcab. Screaming under waves of pain, Li barely heard Yang plead with her to stop when she leapt at another tech, tackling him to the ground.
Li raised her fist for a kill strike, but a metal claw caught her wrist. She looked back at what had grabbed her and saw a drone, its thrusters whirring, dragging her out of the tent into the open field. Six more drones swept in, hovering around her. Before Li could react, a sonic pulse reverberated between them, unbalancing her inner ear. The next pulse knocked her out cold.
Chapter 14 - Da You (大有)
Obey The Benevolent Will
Li woke in a temple with walls the color of fire. She recognized its rippling tiles, scurrying around the room in waves, morphing into hundreds of marble faces. Wicked spines curled from bony beams in the walls, as if seams of stitches, rising up to a dome of churning amber light far above. Behind her was a high door, and beyond it she could see the burnt husk of a city, hills of waste rolling to the horizon. Shadows walked out there, hunting tiny strips of life. Broken promises washed over her, and she had to look away.
In temple was a woman in white, kneeling with her back to Li before the curling smoke of incense. To either side of her, joss sticks poked from the eyes of stone demons with rictus grins. Before her was a stone altar, and behind it were two great clasping paws with interlocking talons.
The woman turned, and Li saw that it was her mother, her mirror image, a transparent ghost. Her pearl robes were glowing, her snowy hair flailed in the wind, her eyes were milky emptiness.
Daughter? The woman’s voice echoed, Is that you?
Yes Mama, Li’s voice echoed, though her lips did not move. I’ve come to take you home.
There is only one way to free me, or yourself, of any of our ancestors, Li’s mother said. Help me find the third eye of the dragon, for only it can light the path to true freedom. I have failed all these years to find it. Perhaps you will succeed where I could not.
You’re not making sense, Mama. Come back with me, to the city. It’s just through that door. Li looked for the door she had entered in, but it was gone. Fear pulsed through her. What is this place?
We are inside the dragon, came her mother’s voice. Li’s gaze followed as her mother pointed around the temple. The walls are its scales, the beams its spine. Its claws are the door, hiding its face from the unworthy. Suddenly she whirled on her daughter, reaching over the altar to take her hands. Are you worthy?
I don’t know. What must I do? How can I prove myself?
Breathe with the breath of God, Li’s mother said with a sad smile. Time slowed as they inhaled together, and exhaled, and inhaled again. At first, there were only the silent walls, waving behind resinous mists of sandalwood.
Then Li took a deep breath, and as one the scales rippled up from the floor, each flipping adjacent scales until a frenzied wave oscillated up the walls. And as the scaled walls flipped, they curled out, and the giant hands separated with a great rumbling growl.
Mother and daughter watched as the walls opened around them, revealing rows of jade statues stretching off into space. Only the altar remained unchanged. Then Li’s mother gave her daughter a knowing grin, and stepped upon the stone slab. A nimbus of light surrounded her and she began levitating up towards the amber dome above.
Frightened, Li followed in her mother’s footsteps, climbing up onto the slab. She gulped as her breath grew first ice cold and then molten hot, and a glow enveloped her body. Floating above the endless ranks of jade statues, she took another breath and the amber dome above unfolded like a flower. But her mother had floated too high to reach, and Li watched her fly into a cyclone of storm clouds. Then her mother’s robes burst into blinding light, and Li was forced to turn away.
Her mother’s voice hailed upon Li. Your ancestors and children wait for you to unlock their paths. Show them the breath of God, and you will see the dragon’s secret eye.
The storm clouds swirled out, revealing the full moon, expanding the vault of Heaven with arches of silver light, forming doors that stretched beyond the bounds of time. And, standing in each door, there was a woman.
Those closest floated on evening shallows, wearing modern suits and smart hairdos. Farther up, looming larger into Heaven, was a pantheon of women stretching back into history. Some wore the blue coveralls of the Cultural Revolution, next to those in flapper dresses from between the wars. More behind them smiled with love and cunning and wore painted faces, their silken cheongsam curling with the flowers of spring. And still farther back, into the ancient dreamtime, were women that rose into the firmament with teal robes holding yarrow flowers in geometric patterns. And these were the handmaidens of the Lady in the Moon.
At first the Lady was invisible with the bright moon behind her. But soon she floated down from her celestial palace in damask robes, and Li recognized the alien force that studied her with a crystalline visage. The Lady in the Moon was a protomother, a Holy Spirit reaching down to bless her youngest daughter. And Li closed her eyes and joined with the being of pure light for the second time.
Chapter 15 - Qian (謙)
No Boasting Of Wealth Before One’s Neighbor
Li was groggy when her eyes opened. She was encased in a metal suit, a cage welded to a slab that cuffed her up to the neck so that she was totally immobile. The rippling plastic tent around her looked like the inside of a shroud. Part of her wanted to cry out for her imaginary parents and their fake lullaby salvations. But all she could think about was the entity of light, the Lady in the Moon.
As the world came into focus, she realized that a guard was standing over her, his face hidden in shadow. He was staring at her.
“What are you looking at?” she said.
“I wanted to see a demon up close,” the guard said.
“I am no demon,” Li said, still infused by the light of her dreams.
The shadow shrugged. “Of course a demon would say that she was not a demon. But no one puts ordinary prisoners in a bodycell. I heard you killed five men in that labor camp.”
“Five murderers.
”
The soldier drew near, his face flooding with moonlight. He was handsome, she saw, his face wracked with loss. “I hope you are ready to do it again,” he said, and paused thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re not a demon? I could use a demon to watch my back out here.”
“How do you know I won’t kill you too?” Li said. “Why would you ask me to watch your back when we don’t even know each other?”
“I am Xie Baotian,” he said, “the last honest man in the West. And I’ll take my chances that you and I are on the same side.” Xie paused again to consider Li’s smooth moonlit face. “I suppose I don’t care if you’re a demon or not. It doesn’t matter who you are, as long as the stories are true.”
“Xie was caught trying to sabotage a River Syndicate outpost,” said a new voice, both familiar and unexpected. Shen appeared, savoring a drag from one of his Zhonghua cigarettes. “He was headed to a prison camp when I pulled some strings, had him transferred here. He shares our common interest.”
“Laoshi!” Li exclaimed, “Where the hell have you been? Get me out of here!”
Shen sighed and knelt by Li, unlocking the bodycell. “I came as soon as I heard about your episode. It’s my fault really. I knew there was a risk that your final exam would haunt you. Your nurture phenotype makes you susceptible to post traumatic stress, especially when you see suffering. It’s a habit you picked up from living among normal people. You’re trying too hard to be like them.”
Clasps snapped open and Li pushed off her cage, relieved to be free. She sensed that Shen was disappointed in her. Avoiding her teacher’s eyes, she turned to Xie and asked, “What do you have against the River Syndicate?”