Broken Stars

by Ken Liu

  Half a year passes. I meet Lao Xu at Guanji Chiba, a popular barbecue restaurant in Zhongguancun.

  Lao Xu hasn’t changed much. He’s still pathologically in love with barbecued lamb kidneys. Like a stereotypical Northeasterner, after a few bottles of beer, his face glowing with grease and jittering with emotion, Lao Xu begins to say what’s really on his mind.

  “Chongbo, why don’t you come and join me again? You know I’ll take care of you.”

  Animatedly, Lao Xu tells me what’s been going on with him, spewing flecks of spittle through the smoky haze. After he hid and rested for a while at home, another phone call drew him back into the IT world. This time, he didn’t start a marketing company with no future, but became an “angel investor.” With all the contacts he made among entrepreneurs, now he gets to spend other people’s money—the faster the better.

  He thinks I have potential.

  “What’s going on with Mr. Wan?” I change the subject. My wife has just found out that she’s pregnant. Although my current job is boring, it’s stable. Lao Xu, on the other hand, isn’t.

  “I haven’t heard from him for a while …” Lao Xu’s eyes dim, and he takes a long drag on his cigarette. “Fortune is so fickle. Back when Buddhagram was on fire, a whole bunch of companies wanted to invest. An American company even wanted to talk about purchasing the whole company. But at the last minute, an American man showed up claiming that Y’s core algorithm was stolen from one of his graduate school research labmates. The American sued, and he just wouldn’t let it go. So the patent rights had to be temporarily frozen. All the investors scattered to the wind, and Lao Wan had to sell everything he owned … but in the end, it still wasn’t enough.”

  I drain my cup.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lao Xu says. “Honestly, if you hadn’t come up with that idea, I bet Lao Wan would have failed even earlier.”

  “But if they hadn’t made Buddhagram, maybe the Americans wouldn’t have found out about the stolen algorithm.”

  “I’ve finally got it figured out. If what happened hadn’t happened, something else would have. That’s what fate means. Later, I heard that the labmate Y stole from was shot and killed in America. So now the patent case is in limbo.”

  Lao Xu’s voice seems to drone on while time stands frozen. My gaze penetrates the slight crack between his cigarette-holding fingers, and the background of noisy, smoky, shouting, drinking patrons of the restaurant fades into the distance. I remember something, something so important that I’ve managed to forget it completely until now.

  I thought everything was over, but it’s only starting.

  After saying goodbye to Lao Xu, I return home and begin to search, turning everything in the house upside down. My wife, her belly protruding, asks me if I’ve had too much to drink.

  “Have you seen a golden card with a picture of the Buddha on there?” I ask her. “There’s a toll-free number on the back.”

  She looks at me pitifully, as though gazing at an abandoned Siberian husky, a breed known for its stupidity and difficulty in being trained. She turns away to continue her pregnancy yoga exercises.

  In the end, I find it tucked away inside a fashion magazine in the bathroom. The page I open to happens to be the picture of a Vaseline-covered, nude starlet lounging among a pile of electronics. Each screen in the image reflects a part of her glistening body.

  I dial the number and enter the VIP account number and security code. A familiar voice, sounding slightly tired, answers.

  “Master Deta, it’s me! Chenwu!”

  “Who?”

  “Chenwu! Secular name Zhou Chongbo! Remember how you struck my shoulders three times and told me to go to your room at ten-oh-one to view the picture of the cosmic microwave background?”

  “Er … you make it sound so odd. Yes, I do remember you. How’ve you been?”

  “You were right! The problem is with the algorithm!” I take a deep breath and quickly recount the story as well as give him my guess. Someone is working really hard to prevent this algorithm from being put into wide application, even to the point of killing people.

  The earpiece of the phone is silent for a long while, and then I hear another long sigh.

  “You still don’t get it. Do you play games?”

  “A long time ago. Do you mean arcade, handheld, or consoles?”

  “Whatever. If your character attacks a big boss, the game’s algorithms usually summon all available forces to its defense, right?”

  “You mean the NPCs?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I didn’t do anything! All I did was to suggest a stupid fucking marketing plan!”

  “You misunderstand.” Master Deta’s voice becomes low and somber, as though he’s about to lose his patience. “You’re not the player who’s attacking the boss. You’re just an NPC.”

  “Wait a second! You are saying …” Suddenly my thoughts turn jumbled and slow, like a bowl of sticky rice porridge.

  “I know it’s hard to accept, but it’s the truth. Someone, or maybe some group, has done things that threaten the entire program—the stability of our universe. And so the system, following designated routines, has invoked the NPCs to carry out its order to eliminate the threat and maintain the consistency of the universe.”

  “But I did everything on my own! I just wanted to do my job and earn a living. I thought I was helping him.”

  “All NPCs think like that.”

  “So what should I do? Lao Xu wants me to go work for him. How do I know if this is … Are you there?”

  Strange noises are coming out of the earpiece, as though a thousand insect legs are scrabbling against the microphone.

  “When you are confused … hiss … the teacher helps … Enlightened … hiss … help yourself. All you have to do … hiss … and that’s it … hiss … Sorry, your VIP account balance is insufficient. Please refill your account and dial again. Sorry …”

  “Fuck!” I hang up angrily.

  “What’s wrong with you, screaming like that? If you frighten me and cause me to miscarry, are you going to assume the responsibility?” My wife’s voice drifts to me slowly from the bedroom.

  In three seconds, I sort through my thoughts and decide to tell her everything. Of course, I do have to limit it to the parts she can understand.

  “Tell Lao Xu that your wife is worried about earning good karma for the baby. She doesn’t want you to follow him and continue to do unethical work.”

  I’m just about to argue with her when the phone rings again. Lao Xu.

  “Have you made up your mind? USTC’s quantum lab is making rapid progress! Their machine is tackling the NP-completeness problem now. Once they’ve proved that P equals NP, do you realize what that means?”

  I look at my wife. She places the edge of her palm against her throat and makes a slicing motion, and then she sticks her tongue out.

  “Hello? You there? Do you know what that means—?” I hang up, and Lao Xu’s voice lingers in my ear.

  Every program has bugs. In this universe, I’m pretty sure that my wife is one of them. Possibly the most fatal one.

  111.

  I still remember the day when Lailai was born: rose-colored skin, his whole body smelling of milk. He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.

  My wife, still weak from labor, asked me to come up with a good name. I agreed. But really, I was thinking: It makes no difference what he’s named.

  I’m no hero. I’m just an NPC. To tell the truth, I’ve never believed that all this was my fault. I didn’t join Lao Xu; I didn’t come up with some outrageous idea that would have caused the whole project to fail; I didn’t prevent that stupid quantum computer from proving that P equals NP—even now I still don’t know what that fucking means.

  If this is the reason that the universe is collapsing, then all I can say is that the Programmer is incompetent. Why regret destroying such a shitty world?

  But I’m holding my baby son, his tiny
fist enclosed in my hand, and all I want is for time to stop forever, right now.

  I regret everything I’ve done, or maybe everything I haven’t done.

  In these last few minutes, a scene from long ago appears in my mind: that guy wearing the army coat on the pedestrian overpass.

  He’s staring at me and my wife, and like some stuck answering machine, he says, “The Quadrantid meteor shower will come on January 4. Don’t miss it….”

  No one is going to miss this grand ceremony for going offline.

  I play with my son, trying to make him laugh, or make any sort of expression. Suddenly, I see a reflection in his eyes, rapidly growing in size.

  It’s the light coming from behind me.

  22 The koan behind the verses is attributed to Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897 CE), a Chan (origin of the Japanese “Zen”) Buddhist master, sometimes considered the greatest master of the Tang Dynasty. In the koan, a monk repeatedly asks the meaning behind Master Zhaozhou’s visit, and each time Master Zhaozhou replies, “The cypress tree in the courtyard.” Thanks to Anatoly Belilovsky for the verse rendering used here.

  23 This is a quote from the Diamond Sutra.

  A HISTORY OF

  FUTURE ILLNESSES

  Call me Stanley. I come from your future.

  Let me begin with what’s already familiar to you, and by following the flow of the river of time, explore the diseases, both physical and mental, that have plagued the humanity of tomorrow, until the end of history.

  IPAD SYNDROME

  It began with the iPad 3, with its Retina Display whose subpixel rendering technology achieved a resolution in excess of 300 PPI, higher than conventional print. The display quality of electronic books could finally compete with paper. Pundits hailed it as another Gutenberg revolution and predicted the death of the traditional print industry. Humanity was about to enter a new era of reading.

  As usual, the pundits were as myopic as bats hanging in a dark cave.

  Apple first pushed for a revolution in education. They gave every child an iPad, and invested vast resources in making textbooks that were electronic, multimedia-enhanced, and integrated with social media. Schoolchildren, especially those in East Asia, said goodbye to their heavy backpacks. Their spines straightened; their shoulder and neck muscles relaxed; the deformation fatigue of the lenses in their eyes slowed due to broader viewing angles, sharper, more detailed images, and light sensors that automatically adjusted screen brightness.

  The future seemed bright, until parents began handing the magic tablets to even younger children.

  The youngest recorded iPad user was aged four months and thirteen days. The iPad’s direct manipulation interaction model allowed even babies to slip into fingertip adventures and become seamlessly immersed in them. Many uploaded YouTube clips of babies playing with iPads, and their pure, undisguised delight garnered millions of hits and likes. The amused audience did not quite realize the danger hidden behind the joyous scenes.

  The first confirmed case came out of South Korea. Six-year-old Park Sung-hwan was diagnosed with autism, though fMRI and PET scans revealed no unusual neural variations. His symptoms included flat affect, language impairment, and lack of muscular coordination. He did not respond to the emotional states of his parents in an age-appropriate manner and showed a lack of interest in the world. In fact, the only thing he was interested in was the iPad. But all he did was repeatedly open and close apps, unable to actually browse the web, play a game, or otherwise engage with the functionality of those apps.

  It seemed that the world, for him, consisted solely of the force feedback vibrations generated by fingers sliding across the screen.

  An astute clinical child psychologist observed Park and compared him against other similar cases before announcing the shocking concept of “iPad syndrome.” The discovery struck a chord around the world, and soon tens of thousands were diagnosed with it.

  The academic consensus was that this special type of perceptual dysfunction occurred because babies were exposed to the intense visual and tactile feedback of the iPad before their sensory neural connections were fully developed. Aimless hand movements led to an overabundance of concentrated visual and tactile sensory information, which had to be adequately integrated and coordinated with the rest of the body to form a solid foundation for the development of bodily self-image. This was precisely the key step missing in the development of those afflicted with iPad syndrome.

  To them, the regular world was dim, blurry, low-resolution, unresponsive to the sliding finger and utterly devoid of wonder. Trained by early and long exposure to the iPad, their vestibular systems developed a special sensory signal filter that only permitted the intense signals of the iPad to enter the cortex and stimulate the neurons. Other signal sources, on the other hand, were simply shut out.

  Parents of children with iPad syndrome filed a class-action lawsuit demanding tens of billions in compensation since Apple had not disclosed the serious side effects of iPad use on young children with prominent labeling. The case slowly wound through the courts until the two sides finally settled. Besides an undisclosed amount paid to the plaintiffs, Apple also agreed to invest significant resources into researching rehabilitation for the disorder.

  As the impacted children grew up, they learned, through therapy, a unique way of life. iPads became extensions of their bodies. Through the tablets, they spoke, expressed emotions, and exchanged thoughts. Besides text and voice, they also transmitted information via vibrations as though they were sharks in the abyss or worms deep underground, by holding fingers or palms against one another’s iPads, experiencing sensations that outsiders could never know.

  They were like extraterrestrials concealed in human society and, other than the minimal exchanges required to survive in a human economy, refused to interact with regular humans at all.

  They formed family-like structures. Following rules and rituals unknown to others, they found each other, copulated, had children. After offers of large sums of money failed to produce results, some journalists tried to surreptitiously film the family lives of those with iPad syndrome. The result? The offending journalists disappeared.

  Don’t worry; the worst was still to come.

  There was a one-in-eight chance that their children would also inherit this more-than-pathological love for the iPad.

  DISEASE-IMITATION AESTHETICS

  As changing beauty standards gradually decentered the straight male gaze, plastic surgery reached a peak of inventiveness in the mid-twenty-first century. But modification of the body’s external characteristics was no longer sufficient to satisfy the shifting tastes of a diverse population. A new—or more accurately, ancient—aesthetic trend came back into fashion spectacularly.

  It was possible to trace this trend all the way back to the Three Kingdoms and Jin Dynasty period (220 to 420 CE). He Yan, the founder of the Xuanxue school of Daoism, developed a new medicinal formula called “Five Minerals Powder,” which was based on the famed Eastern Han Dynasty doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s cure for typhoid fever and made from a mixture of stalactite, sulfur, quartz, fluorite, and red bole clay.

  He Yan himself had this to say of his invention: “Not only does it cure disease, but it also opens up and enlivens the mind.” Consuming Five Minerals Powder for its psychoactive properties became the fashion among scholar-officials. After ingesting the powder, the typical user became restless, anxious, flushed, and had to walk about in loose clothing to cool down as their mind wandered a different plane. Habitual use led to irritability, explosive temper, and a proclivity for trances—not unlike the man of legend who reacted to a nettlesome fly by chasing after the insect with an unsheathed sword.

  The fashion for taking Five Minerals Powder in China lasted for almost six centuries, until the Tang Dynasty. “Rambling Powder” became a poetic marker for those of an elevated social class—a metonymic process similar to the social signals attached to marijuana or LSD use later.

  Similarly, in ord
er to satisfy the pursuit of morbid beauty standards, Medieval European nobles contracted tuberculosis or even consumed arsenic to give their skins that unique, white glow. The elevation of the symptoms of illness to signs of beauty was certainly not limited to any one time or place.

  And now, technology could help.

  Ligament tightening agents temporarily reduced the joints’ range of motion; combined with trace amounts of tetrodotoxin injected into facial muscles, the result was a simulation of the stiff poses and expressions associated with classical East Asian beauty standards. In the Roppongi district of Tokyo, one might often encounter tall Caucasian women whose hair had been dyed pure black, shuffling along with rigid smiles that carefully concealed their teeth. In fact, they were the executive assistants of multinationals who had decided to undergo periodic cosmetic treatments to induce partial paralysis in the face and a constrained gait in order to satisfy the demands of “cultural integration,” the morbid fashion of the social elite, as well as the fetishistic needs of their Asian bosses.

  And then there were the Blinkers, whose name came from a neurological tic that caused them to blink irregularly as their orbicularis oculi and levator palpebrae superioris muscles twitched. People suffering from social anxiety disorder implanted under their eyes chips that could control muscle movement by stimulating the nerves. They formed a complicated, intricate read-decipher-feedback system, capable of communicating by blinking their eyes alone, without any need for spoken language or facial expressions. At Blinker gatherings, one could see a group of silent, blank-faced individuals gazing into one another’s eyes like lighthouses broadcasting Morse code at high frequency. Indeed, some could communicate with two interlocutors at the same time, blinking with each eye separately.

  Aesthetics has always been inseparable from politics. Against the fractured background of a multipolar world, humanity could not come to a consensus regarding the definition of “beauty.” In the seams and amid struggles, those who imitated sickness flourished.