by Sam Abraham
You on the bridge. You are disturbing the peace. Prepare for transport to the nearest detention center.
“You are little men with little toys!” Li spoke into her mouthpiece, letting her voice reverberate through the clouds. “How dare you deny the knowledge of God!” She raised her arms to the sky, as Shen had instructed. “For your insolence, you will be destroyed!”
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. But Li kept her hands raised, just as Shen had told her. Then something lurched and the bridge shuddered. River Syndicate militia rushed to the side of the road, pointing and shouting.
The river was rising.
It was unmistakable. The Yangzi, which never touched the docks near the dry pylons, now spilled over the seawall. Waves crept over the broad avenues, overrunning the doors of noodle shops and hospitals and schools, lapping against glass and metal and wood. Soon the streets were flooded, as sure as if monsoons had disgorged a hundred years of rain. But the skies were dry.
Rising water in the narrow boulevards lifted cars from the ground, crashing them into houses. Fishing junks swept into neighborhoods, splintering as they broke upon stone. Sewers overflowed, coating the streets with waste. Whole hutong, the narrow alleys winnowing through the pseudocity, were inundated. Tile roofs and tree trunks, chopped wood and porcelain and plastic bags all floated on the current churning between buildings. Within minutes even the hills were submerged, and anything not bolted down was swept away.
Some people on the bridge ran desperately between the jammed selfdrives and pushcarts, racing towards the city to save their families. Others fled into the dying paddy fields beyond the pseudocity. Chaos was everywhere. People were shoved into cars or pushed from the bridge as they fought to escape with their lives.
Puffs of smoke appeared as a missile shot up at the tower. Li saw it speeding towards her, and at the last moment dove out and caught one of the metal cables just as the rocket slammed into concrete with a boom, sending broken slabs crashing to the bridge and into the water. Li wrapped her legs around the cable, stealing a last look at the destruction as the tower wobbled.
The river had spilled up over four stories of Zhenfeng Pagoda. Most of the pseudocity had disappeared as the waters rose higher, swelling into a lake that engulfed everything as it spread.
“Save yourselves,” Li spoke into her transmitter, letting her voice echo over the drowning town. She saw dots on the horizon, mantiscraft that would be on her in minutes. “Survive the flood, my brothers and sisters! Find me, join my flock, and we will redeem ourselves when the Angel of Death brings vengeance upon the corrupt!”
And she jumped.
Those still on the bridge watched the golden orb plummet. Air stinging her eyes, water rushing up at her, Li found the notches on her belt and pulled. Tiny pellets spilled from her pockets, forming an airfoil that broke her speed as she plunged into the rushing river just slow enough not to kill her.
Dirty water invaded her ears and nose, smelling of oil and vomit and blood. She felt something brush her body underwater, and she turned and saw the blue face of a drowned boy. Suddenly she was trapped in a swamp of corpses. They pressed her from all sides, choking her with their putrescence. Panicking, she dove deeper to break free. But their ghastly limbs clung to her and their bloated tongues seemed to moan in the language of the dead.
Strong hands caught her. Her lungs in pain, she fought through unwashed fear to escape the imagined ghosts reaching for her, as they itched to pull her down into the dark and punish her for failing them.
Instead the hands slipped a mask over her face and a regulator in her mouth. She gulped air, bubbles erupting around her as she took ragged breaths and opened her eyes. There was Xie, just as they had planned. A wave of relief made her shudder in the cold water, and there was nobody she would rather have put her arms around. She hung onto his wetsuit, her hair and dress waving in the murky depths as he revved the dive propulsion vehicle. And she sobbed, thankful that she was still alive, sending off a trail of bubbles as they flew downriver as fast as the current could carry them.
***
The water continued to rise. By the end of three days, the tip of Zhenfeng Pagoda was barely visible. The tops of hotels hovered above the new lake like houseboats. Only one of the bridge towers still stood. The other had collapsed, damaged by rockets and the rushing current. And the Yangzi, for its part, was no longer a river. It had swelled into a lake above what used to be the pseudocity of Anqing.
Shen piggybacked on radio channels, picking up panicked dispatches to River Syndicate headquarters. The signals were not relayed on, and Shen deduced that the River Syndicate was saving face. Li had to admit, her teacher had been right. The stewards of the Ghost Lands were refusing to inform Centrists of the disaster for fear of losing their governing license.
It was evening on the third day when Li, Shen, Sun and two of Sun’s bandits cut through the lake on a stolen speedboat, toward the emerging tips of naked skyscrapers. Evening light hit the water as it rippled in their wake, turning it sunset pink. Li fought back a deep sadness for all the innocent lives that had been sacrificed. She looked behind her at the other boats following, the nearest one with Xie at the helm. She saw him staring at her, and she turned away.
The boats approached the tallest tower rising from the lake. Pulling up, they cut the engines as Xie shattered a window with a pulse blast. Water rushed into the suite, displacing plush chairs and soaking the carpet. They steered their boats into the room, lashed their watercraft, and waded through knee-high water until they found stairs leading up to the penthouse.
Shen found a glass cabinet with scotch and poured two glasses, taking them to his protégé. He found her alone in the cool night air, on a balcony curving beyond the high windows, staring out at the lake. He passed her a glass, but she did not take it.
Shen watched Li avoid his eyes. “We need to move before the Centrists learn the River Syndicate has been hiding information,” he said. “They will send reinforcements to secure the Ghost Lands.”
“What do you mean, ‘move’?” Li asked bitterly, wiping away tears. “The River Syndicate must have been discredited after this. We’ve done what Father needed.”
Shen shook his head. “We’ve just started, Xuesheng,” he said. “But it is a good start. This creates the opportunity to bring a longshui vaccine to millions of people trapped in famine.”
A breeze picked up, sending ripples across the silver water, and the murmurs of the dead haunted her. “How was this even possible?” Li whispered. “How was I able to change the flow of the river?”
“Actually, I do not know.” Shen admitted, “Only the professor knows the full scope of your powers. What I do know is that people see that you are capable of great deeds, and want you to save them. Your father’s plan is working.”
“Until the Centrists scramble fighter jets,” she said quietly, worrying about what was to come.
“So while we are a tiny snowball we will choose our battles carefully,” Shen said, and looked out over the lake. “But when we become an avalanche, legends will be written about us.”
“And if I refuse to kill more people? What if I just told you to take me to my mother right now?”
“This is about more than your mother,” Shen chided. “It’s about saving the land. History will judge your sacrifice of a few farmers to save an entire generation as a great kindness.”
Unable to deny what her eyes had beheld, Li prayed silently to her mother, and to the Lady in the Moon with her damask robes. “You have a poetic streak, Laoshi,” she said, “I’ll give you that. But if you want my help, from now on you follow my orders.” He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “If I terrorize the countryside, I’m no better than those monsters in that recycling quarry unless I am above all this,” she whispered, looking out over the lake. “You say religion is the way to save the Ghost Lands, that this was my idea? Very well. I will spread religion my way, as my Gospel. Chang’e came to me twice to show m
e the path. Maybe my vision of her was destiny, a taste of illumination. If so, before I bring down further sacrifice I must let people choose salvation so that only the guilty are judged.”
Shen bristled at his student’s willfulness, but gave her his widest tobacco-stained grin. “You are just telling a story, Xuesheng. Give your cult a catchy name, and yourself a catchy title, and they will come from afar to hear any myth you tell them. I know today was hard, but don’t forget that we are painting illusions for the masses. We are simply creating an enemy, and inviting it to play our game.”
She listened to his words fade into the wind. “You’re wrong, Laoshi. This is more than myth. I am more than myth. With this much power, I might as well be a god. And it is my will that the people know the spirit of the Lady in the Moon, just as I have, and open their eyes to the truth.”
And so, on a drab summer morning of the Year of the Ox, 2117, the man called Han walked down to the shores of the new lake, along with farmers and artisans who had fled the drowning city. Barely three thousand were there, while millions had fled the destruction. Han learned that rumors had permeated the hills, spread by people who had been left behind. Now they had witnessed something that Han, a child born of rich cities, felt he had hungered for all his life.
Many of these pilgrims, Han learned, were new Christians, the first to the faith in their families. The Gospel had long since spread across the Ghost Lands of Anhui like wildfire, its message fragmented into hundreds of house churches, splinter sects that spoke the language of the people. The Three Self Patriotic Movement, the main Christian sect blessed by the Centrists, had never carved out more than a small flock this deep in Anhui. Their polished altars seemed like puppets to the people of the Ghost Lands, Centrist collaborators who rejected the gods and the rituals of their ancestors. By contrast, the house churches were a churning cauldron of revelation, witnessing new schisms, new converts, new revelations, and new messiahs. So had it been for as long as Han could remember.
Now, any words Han had heard from past preachers were forgotten before a sign visible to millions. Some attempted to explain the spontaneous flood, while others claimed it was supernatural. But everyone Han met wanted to look on the face of the woman who had changed the very land around them. Then he saw her, the one who claimed to be the incarnation of Chang’e, on a hill looking over the crowd. She wore a simple white dress, her feet bare against the rocks. Her hair hung unadorned, framing the pale face around her dark eyes.
What neither Han nor any pilgrim could see was Li’s doubt. Yet even as she gathered her words, Li worried that she might be wrong, that, after seeing lightning leap from her hands and the very Yangzi respond to her summons, she was somehow a fraud. But she also knew that any shame she might feel if she failed would pale in comparison to the tragedy of inaction if she truly were the vessel of divinity.
Li held out her hands, and the murmuring around Han fell silent. “People of the Middle Kingdom,” she spoke in Mandarin, though the mediadrones caught her lilting Guangdong accent when they echoed her voice over the hills, “Today you have chosen to save yourselves.”
“The demon is slain, this wicked city speaking the lies of bankers and politicians and other puppets of the Devil. I, Chang’e, summoned the mighty Yangzi, and the river, angered by injustice, came to your rescue. Now you have the chance to become as pure as the moon, as if it were made of white jade. Yes, let us celebrate jade! For like that precious stone, hewn from worthless rock, are those who choose to find within themselves the power of Heaven.”
Han looked at the faces beside him, hanging on her every word. They were so lost, he thought. He saw his own emptiness in them, his need for someone to save him from fear. Perhaps, he thought, here was a prophet who could show him the way.
“This is not the first time that wickedness has been destroyed by water,” said the girl in white, as Han listened intently. “At the dawn of civilization, my Father drowned the wicked earth and of all people saved only Noah and his wife, his three children and their three wives upon their ark, and two of every animal. We know this is true, since the ideogram for ship contains those for eight and for mouths, just as the ideogram for flood also contains the ideogram for eight. And just as these characters remind us of the true story of Noah, the rainbow reminds us of our Father’s promise to spare the righteous. Now His promise has been kept again. The wicked have been punished. And you, my brothers and sisters, have been saved from the flood.”
At this, some voices around Han chanted “Hallelujah!” and “Praise be the reincarnation of Chang’e!” Others shouted curses, calling her a liar and asking how she could be a prophet when she was but a child, and a girl besides, and could not possibly be more righteous than teachers who had been studying the word of God for seventy years. But what twisted Han most were the farmers who rushed forward with outstretched hands, begging for rain and healthy crops, and the mothers who offered their starving children to her, begging her to heal them of hunger.
Han watched the prophet smile and place her palms together. “My children, if you have heard the story of Jesus before, now you will know His revelation when He met Chang’e.
“When Jesus met Chang’e in Heaven, She took Him to the moon and revealed this secret: anyone can become a messiah. For She said to the Son, ’Your breath is the breath of God.’ Now, my children, I have come to show you that you are God, that you can know Him just as Jesus did. For those who seek to know God, my disciples will meet you at the water’s edge. Be baptized in the lake of the flood that purified the land of sin. And know as you do that you need not give your soul to anyone, for you are already divine. Simply choose to enter Heaven, and my Younger Brother Jesus Christ will open its shining doors, so that you may find the messiah inside.”
Han watched the prophet hold up a porcelain bowl above her head for all to see. A pile of wafers had been prepared, each barely the size of her thumbnail and thinner than a piece of rice paper. They were streaked with red and lavender, and filled with tiny bubbles.
The bandit Sun had declared his faith upon seeing the flood, for he believed that he had beheld miracles, and interpreted them as signs from his readings of the I Ching. He appeared now, donned in white robes, and ordered his men to take handfuls of wafers with them to the lake, wading in until the waters came to their waists.
As the girl in white commanded, thousands who gathered went down to the lakeshore, and knelt in the water until it slipped over their faces. The Yangzi was grey, its filthy waters stinking of effluent. But not one pilgrim complained, for only after they had immersed themselves would Sun’s men place one of the prophet’s wafers on their tongues.
“This will be unlike any Communion you have received,” Han heard the prophet say as he bathed in the polluted river, and closed his eyes as a bandit in white placed a wafer in his mouth. “For it is truly the holy body of Chang’e, the Elixir of Life. Consume it, and you will cease to be hungry or tired. When others die, you will survive, held strong by the essence of God inside of you. Save yourself here, and you will be made of more than weak flesh. From this day forth, you will be carved from jade.”
Han felt the wafer melt on his tongue and warmth overtake him, and knew those around were similarly subsumed. It felt to the newly converted as if light percolated from their spines, through their arms and legs, breaking down the mask between them and God. And indeed, the pain of hunger melted away. Bellies felt full for the first time in months. Muscles felt stronger, satiated.
And no wonder they did, for dissolved within the wafers were titers of virus. As the saliva of the refugees dissolved the wafers, virus burst out and penetrated the esophagus and abdominal wall of each new convert, latching onto any cells they could find.
Once inside these cells, spindly proteins guided the virus to where mitochondria pulsed. Viral bodies docked on the surface of the bean-shaped mitochondria, where their octagonal capsules split apart like the peel from a geometric fruit. There, they released strings of viral
genetic material and spliced them into strands of mitochondrial DNA, corrupting the harvest of energy. In minutes, the molecular dance of the mitochondria changed, as the virus commandeered the cells’ proteins to follow its foreign blueprint, reshaping the microscopic factory to build sheets of longhsui membranes inside living cells.
Like all others who had tasted the wafers, the man called Han drifted to sleep, unable to fight the euphoria in his veins. Soon he forgot his blue suit and his leather shoes as the boundary between lake and shore dropped away, and the line between body and earth was swallowed in light. He felt as if he were floating on air, flying in bliss. As his mind drowned in revelation, he was convinced that at last, after long years of searching, a true prophet had rescued him with signs and with wonders.
Chapter 21 – Shi Ke (噬嗑)
Fastened In The Wooden Canque
Eli was on his way to say goodbye when he passed by the new longshui factory. Heavy rains had dispelled the smog, leaving only the verdant scent of jasmine. It had been months since the Anhui sky had been this blue. People were calling it an omen.
He stopped to watch robotic arms fix longshui bulbs to long metal staffs. Not three weeks earlier, this factory had been abandoned. Now Dr. Yang found any among the new converts with mechanical talents and had retooled the factory to store large cultures of longshui. Eli knew better than to ask where it was coming from.
He met up with Zoe near the lakeshore, where farmers and artisans had created a bazaar, trading herbs and tools and talismans. Anything but food. As Eli and Zoe walked through the market, they were followed by cheery converts who regaled them with the story of Chang’e. Eli listened as he looked out at hotels that were now aquariums, at the broken bridge protruding from the sparkling lake.
“I can’t believe people are shopping as if life were perfectly normal,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “As if an entire city full of people wasn’t just brutalized. I never thought I’d see our work used for such destruction. Li Aizhu gets an army, but what do they get?”