by Ken Liu
“Wait a …” The light went out of Wang Lu’s eyes. “No, are they burning Jinyang down anyway? At least they could wait a little, until this snow’s done…. Wait, wait—”
Thick, viscous fire-oil sprayed everywhere; flames roared heavenward. The fires spread with a speed beyond anyone’s imagination. Jinyang had been long under drought, and the precipitation called by the time traveler hadn’t the chance to soak into tinder-dry timbers.
The fire in West City began in Jinyang Palace, engulfing Xiqing Ward, Guande Ward, Fumin Ward, Faxiang Ward, and Lixin Ward in turn in a sea of flames. The fire in Central City set the great waterwheel alight first, then burned west toward Xuanguang Hall, Renshou Hall, Daming Hall, Feiyun House, Deyang Hall. The East City Institute soon transformed into a brilliant torch. The snowflakes whirling above vaporized without a trace before they had a chance to land. The green light on the time traveler’s chest faded. He howled his grief and agony, “Motherfucker, I was so close, so close!”
Bathed in fire, Jinyang lit dusk into daytime. The air boiled in the inferno; a scarlet dragon of flame wheeled upward, dispersing the clouds in an eyeblink. No one saw the fallen snow; they only saw flames that touched the heavens. The ancient city, first built in the Spring and Autumn Era, more than one thousand four hundred years before this moment, wailed distantly in the flames.
Jinyang’s fortunate survivors were being driven northeast by the Song army, looking back with every step, their weeping loud enough to shake heaven. The Song ruler Zhao Guangyi sat astride his warhorse, gazing at the flames of distant Jinyang and the figures kneeling before him.
He said, “When you’ve captured the pretend-emperor Liu Jiyuan, come and see me. Do not harm him. Guo Wanchao, I confer upon you the title of Militia Commander of Ci Prefecture. Ma Feng, I name you Supervisor of Imperial Construction. You two have done me service, and I hope you will turn all your ingenuity and wisdom to my Great Song from today onward. Liu Jiye, why do you refuse to surrender when all the others have? Do you not know the parable of the praying mantis who attempted to block the passage of a chariot?”
Liu Jiye, his hands bound, turned to kneel northward. “The ruler of Han has yet to surrender,” he said stubbornly. “How can I surrender first?”
Zhao Guangyi laughed. “I’ve long heard of Liu Jiye of the East Bank. You live up to your reputation. You can surrender once I capture the little emperor. You should revert to your original name of Yang. Why should a Han try to protect a Hu? If you want to fight, you should turn and fight the Khitan, don’t you think?”
Having finished talking to these men, Zhao Guangyi rode forward a few steps. He bent down. “What do you have to say?”
Zhu Dagun knelt on the ground, afraid to raise his head. From the corners of his eyes, he could see the raging flames on the horizon. “I claim no accomplishment,” he said, shaking. “I only ask that I be judged to have done no trespass.”
“Very well.” Zhao Guangyi waved his whip. “Posthumously grant him the title Duke of Tancheng, with a fiefdom of thirty miles square. Chop off his head.”
“Your Imperial Majesty! What wrong did I commit?” Zhu Dagun stood up in shock, flinging aside the two soldiers next to him. Four or five more tackled him. The executioner raised his sword.
“You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. No one did anything wrong. Who knows whose fault it is?” said the Song ruler indifferently.
The head rolled to a stop; the large frame thudded to the ground. The copy of Analects fell from Zhu Dagun’s sleeve pocket and into the puddle of blood, soaking through, until not a single character could be distinguished.
*
Everything the time traveler had created burned to ashes with Jinyang. After a new city was built nearby, people gradually came to think of those days of wonders as an old dream. Only Guo Wanchao would sometimes take out the “Ray-Ban” sunglasses while drinking with Zhao Da in the Ci Prefecture army camp. “If he’d been born in Song, the world would be a completely different place, huh.”
The Song conquest of Northern Han received only a brief description in the History of the Five Dynasties. One hundred sixty years later, the historian Li Tao at last wrote the great fire of Jinyang into the official histories, but naturally there were no mentions of a time traveler.
In [979 CE], the emperor visited Taiyuan from the north through Shahe Gate. He dispatched the residents in groups to the new governing city of Bingzhou, setting fire to their homes. Children and the elderly did not reach the city gates in time, and many burned to death.
—Extended Continuation of Zizhi Tongjian, Book 2020
11 The Imperial Academy (教坊) was an official school that trained musicians, dancers, and other entertainers to perform for the court.
12 This corresponds to early July in the Gregorian calendar.
13 The sixth year of Guangyun corresponds to 979 CE. Liu Jiyuan (the young emperor in Jinyang) had been ruler of Northern Han since 968 CE, but did not initially adopt a new era name.
14 Bi Sheng (毕昇) was an eleventh-century Chinese commoner printer who invented the world’s first known movable type using baked clay.
15 Alchemy in China revolved around minerals and metals, and the primary goal was transcending mortality. The three mentioned texts deal to varying extents with alchemy, Daoism, and the mythical sages who had attained immortality and enlightenment.
16 Hu (胡) is an ancient Chinese term for non-Han ethnic groups, used mostly for Central Asians in the era this story takes place in.
17 Chuanyue (穿越) is an enormously popular Chinese genre similar to time travel, but with its own distinct tropes. Typically, the protagonist is from the modern day and travels into the historical past (or a secondary-world version of the historical past), often but not always through reincarnating into the body of someone of that era. Their anachronistic knowledge and upbringing sets them apart from others and allows them to break the status quo.
18 The Sixteen Prefectures, comprising a region around Beijing and along the Great Wall, had been under Han Chinese or more Sinicized Hu control for centuries until they were ceded to Liao in 938 CE. The strategically and symbolically valuable territory would remain a major point of contention between Liao and Song for years to come.
19 Huang Chao (835–884 CE) led an agrarian rebellion against the Tang Dynasty, declaring himself the Emperor of Qi after capturing and brutally sacking the capital Chang’an. He was eventually defeated and killed by former subordinates who had defected to Tang, including Shang Rang, but his ten-year rebellion severely weakened the already declining Tang Dynasty.
20 The original Zizhi Tongjian (资治通鉴, meaning “Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government”) was compiled from prior sources by the Song Dynasty historian Sima Guang to cover Chinese history in chronological format from 403 BCE to 959 CE, the year before the founding of Song. The Extended Continuation was written by the later Song Dynasty historian Li Tao in the style of the original, covering the years between 960 and 1127 CE.
ANNA WU
Anna Wu is an author, screenwriter, and translator. She has a master’s degree in Chinese Literature, and her original screenplay, Mist, won a Xingyun Award. She has a short story collection, Double Life, and has been published in Science Fiction World, Galaxy’s Edge, and other places.
Anna lives in Shanghai and works as a screenwriter for a company specializing in science fiction films. She enjoys going to the movies, attending art shows, swimming, and yoga. An avid cook and foodie, she sometimes contributes to food columns. Her favorite writers are Arthur C. Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Robert Sawyer, and J. K. Rowling.
As a result of her graduate studies, she has a deep knowledge of Classical Chinese literature. Currently, she’s working on a science fiction novel set in ancient China. The world-building combines China’s legendary engineering marvels with modern science, with hints of fantasy and something darker.
“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge” is the first of a seri
es of stories all set in this science fictional eatery. Like the namesake dish, it’s a mix of many flavors.
THE RESTAURANT
AT THE END OF
THE UNIVERSE:
LABA PORRIDGE21
21 Translated by Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu.
At the end of the universe far away, there was a restaurant, and its name was The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. From a distance, it looked like a conch shell spinning silently in the void of space.
The restaurant was sometimes big, and sometimes small. The furnishings inside its walls changed often, as did the view outside its windows. It had a refrigerator that was always full of fresh ingredients; a cooking box that fried, baked, seared, steamed, and everything else; a clock that could regulate the flow of time within a modest area; and a melancholic android waiter named Marvin. A red lantern shone perpetually at the center of the restaurant.
Two people, father and daughter, ran the place. They came from a place called China on a planet called Earth. Going by the Traveler’s Guide to the Milky Way, the father was an exemplary specimen of the middle-aged Earthling male—perhaps even a few deciles handsomer than the median. He was black-haired and thin, and there was a scar on his left wrist. He didn’t talk much, but was well-versed in Earth cuisine. If a customer could name it, he could make it. The daughter, Mo, looked to be eleven or twelve years old. She had black hair too, and big, round eyes.
The nearest space-time hub was a small cargo station, a singularity primarily used for Earth shipping. Of course, as a singularity, only organisms with a civilization rating above 3A—capable of uploading their physical bodies into the network—could use it.
Few guests came. Most hailed from Earth, but there were the matchbox-sized three-body people of Alpha Centauri, too; Titanians with their vast balloon forms, adapted to the atmosphere of Saturn; even dazzling silver Suoyas from the center of the Milky Way, fifty thousand light-years from Earth. Intelligent beings of every shape and size might be seen in this restaurant’s blurred concept of time and space: waving their antennae, dribbling their mucus, crackling and sparking their energy fields.
Virtual reality may hold infinities, but wander long enough in it and your soul feels a little lost. Every once in a while, people still want to put on a real body, eat a real meal, and reminisce.
There was a rule for everyone who ate here. You could choose to tell the owner a story; as long as it was interesting enough, your meal was on the house, and the owner would personally cook you a special dish. And you could eat while you thought of the countless civilizations rising and falling, falling and rising, at every instant and in every corner of the universe outside this restaurant, like the births and deaths of the sextillion stars.
LABA PORRIDGE
He’s not a regular, Mo thought. This is probably his first time here.
Today, the restaurant was furnished for a Chinese winter’s night. There were four or five little tables made of rough-hewn wood and three guests sitting at them. The kitchen station was tucked into a corner. A man and a woman sat at the table under the red lantern. The woman looked to be from Earth, maybe a second-generation clone—her legs were unusually long and slim. The man was probably from Venus, with his bulky cranium and deep purple irises.
And there was an Earth man sitting by himself in a corner, mechanically turning the wine cup in his hand. His pale face was devoid of expression, and his temples were gray. The smell of alcohol poured off of him. Today was the Chinese Laba Festival, and the restaurant had accordingly prepared sweet Laba porridge, whose fragrance filled the room. Yet the man hadn’t ordered it.
Mo had never seen eyes like his before: empty and dark as a dry well, they reminded her of the eyes of a dead insect.
While the business was still slow, Mo stuffed the menu into Marvin’s hand. She waited.
Marvin took the menu and gazed at the falling snow outside the window, sighing. His eyes glimmered blue to indicate melancholy. “They’ve been dead for centuries. Why do they bother eating anyway?” he muttered, even as he ambled over to the Venusian’s table on his short legs.
“Dad, that Earth man should have a good story.” Mo slipped into the kitchen station, grinning. It might count as a gift of sorts—give her a group of people, and she could always pick out the one with the best stories at a glance.
Her father paused in his tasks. He stared at a pile of dishes, silent.
His expression was odd: interest, worry, disgust, perhaps even a little fear?
Time went by. The din of the restaurant floated around them as lightly as the snowflakes outside the window.
“Mo, I think you’ve heard of the Agency of Mysteries.”
“All laws are one; all things are eternal,” Mo said without thinking. The organization’s motto—one Earth language version of it, at least. It was renowned in many eras and many planets. It ignored all interstellar laws and regulations and could provide any service imaginable—but only if your request was entertaining enough to catch its interest. And you couldn’t buy its services with money; you had to … trade. What you needed to trade was a secret that no client had ever revealed. No one knew who the boss was, either—he was too clever to be caught by the space-time police.
“His name is Ah Chen. He was a client of the Agency of Mysteries.”
Slowly, the father began to tell Ah Chen’s story.
Ah Chen wrote novels, and he was twenty when his debut, a romance novel, shot him to overnight fame. At the celebratory banquet, his literary peers greeted him with ingratiating praise and admiration well-laced with envy. He was dazzled and drunk by it all the same.
But achieving fame at a young age is not always a good thing. That night, he met an admirer—his future wife, Ci.
Ci came from a renowned family of scholars. She was pretty and frail, but fiercely stubborn. Against her family’s protests, she married the penniless Ah Chen. By day, she worked as a maid, washing and scrubbing until her hands were red from the dishwater. By night, she proofread Ah Chen’s drafts and helped him with research.
Three years later, the luster of the awards had long since faded, but the muses had not visited Ah Chen again in the duration. Writing was long, hard work, like a marathon run alone in the night, stumbling by touch and three inches of vision. Moods swooped and plunged, joy clawing into sorrow, as if to torment him with rain and snow.
As editors rejected his manuscripts again and again, Ah Chen came to discover his many weaknesses: he lacked the endurance to carry out plots fully, he wanted sufficient delicacy of touch, he was unable to draw from the strengths of other works and unite them in his own. Some of these weaknesses were real; others were only the specters of Ah Chen’s insecurity.
He was young and idealistic. He couldn’t endure the publishers’ contempt; more than that, he couldn’t face his own inadequacy. He began to drink, and every bottle of cheap alcohol was bought with Ci’s long days and nights of labor.
One winter night, on Laba Festival, Ah Chen came home with the snow falling outside. He saw Ci smiling warmly at him. There was a pot of mixed grain porridge on the table, steaming.
“They say that Laba porridge originated when a rat stole many kinds of grain and hid them in its hole. Then poor people found the store and made it into porridge….”
Suddenly, Ah Chen’s ears were ringing as if a clap of thunder had gone off in his head. Ci went on talking, but he was no longer listening. He heard nothing of her gentle sympathy, her willingness to live in poverty, her resolute lack of regret.
He rushed into the night, toward the Agency of Mysteries.
For a long time, Ci sat in the lamplight, alone. Her tears fell into that pot of Laba porridge, slowly cooling.
Ah Chen wanted five abilities from five Earth authors. The agency told him that as the universe conserved energy, abilities couldn’t be “copied,” only “transferred.” Perhaps out of his last vestiges of conscience, or out of fear of disrupting his own universe’s timeline, Ah Chen
requested that his powers be taken from five other universes parallel to his own.
These five people were all the literary stars of their era.
A, a playwright. His output was great in both quality and quantity, and without equal for the next hundred years. Ah Chen wanted his mastery over plot structure.
B, a poet. The beauty and craftsmanship of his verses had won him acclaim as the greatest of poets. Ah Chen wanted his ear for language.
C, a suspense novelist and psychologist. At his peak, his works had triggered heart attacks in his readers. Ah Chen wanted his grasp of human psychology.
D, a science fiction author. His stories were strange, clever things, well-known throughout the galaxies. Ah Chen wanted his imagination.
E, a scholar of the classics and Buddhism. Weighty and thoughtful, his pen laid out the workings of history and the patterns of the world with the clarity of a black ink brush delineating white cloudscapes. Ah Chen wanted his powerful insight.
“Was Ah Chen a friend of yours?” Mo asked.
Her father smiled cryptically. “One of Ah Chen’s targets was an alternate universe version of me. But that version of me found out and stopped him.”
Mo wanted to ask further, but in the end, she didn’t say anything.
Unlike most people, her memories began from only five years ago. She had opened her eyes to find herself lying in a spaceship with a middle-aged man and a big-headed android, fleeing for the ends of the universe. Before that … her memories cut off in an explosion of light.
Afterward, she considered the man her father. But he never told Mo what happened before the start of her memories. He never said anything he didn’t want to say.
