Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

  The talks were originally intended to hammer out all the important details, but the biggest international effort in history concerned an endless ocean of details, so after three days of feverish debate, the children found that they could only sketch out the outlines of an exchange plan. All the remaining details would have to be addressed once the exchange was under way. After this reorientation, the talks entered a fourth day. The children had their own way of resolving international issues and were able to quickly and easily dispense with certain problems that diplomats and heads of state kept their distance from in the adults’ time, often so quickly that the most seasoned diplomats of that age would have been left speechless. The issues resolved and agreements reached during that week were the equal of a hundred Yalta or Potsdam conferences. At the end of it all, the children of the two countries signed a territorial-exchange agreement known as the “Supernova Agreement”:

  SUPERNOVA AGREEMENT

    1. China and the United States resolve to exchange all their respective territory.

    2. The children of the two countries will leave their own territory, and will relinquish sovereignty over that territory; the children of the two countries will resettle in their counterpart’s territory, and will obtain sovereignty over it.

    3. When the children of the two countries leave their own territory, they may only take with them the following:

  a. Basic necessities for migration, limited to 10 kilograms per child.

  b. All government documents.

    4. A China-US Territory Exchange Commission will be formed to exercise leadership over the exchange process.

    5. The two sides will conduct the exchange on a state and province basis. When the exchange takes place, all of the current residents of a state or province shall vacate that region at the appointed time. Anyone unable to vacate at the appointed time may temporarily migrate to a neighboring state or province that has not yet undergone the exchange, and then vacate with that region’s residents. All states and provinces shall establish state or provincial handover commissions, and shall conduct a handover ceremony when new residents arrive, after which the new residents’ country shall assume sovereignty over that state or province.

    6. Before the exchange, all state and provincial handover commissions shall deliver an asset inventory to their counterpart, and accept a review by a representative of their counterpart’s handover commission.

    7. Prior to the exchange, deliberate destruction of agriculture, industry, or national defense equipment within one’s own territory is prohibited. If one party discovers its counterpart has taken such acts, it may unilaterally terminate the game, and all consequences shall be the responsibility of the offending party.

    8. Transport for the migration shall be resolved jointly, and other countries are invited to lend assistance.

    9. Any problems arising during the exchange shall be handled by the China-US Joint Territory Exchange Commission.

  10. The China-US Territory Exchange Commission reserves the right of interpretation of this agreement.

  Signed by two national leaders 7 November SE 2

  THE GREAT MIGRATION

  Late at night, the Imperial Palace basked under the blue light of the Rose Nebula. The flock of nocturnal birds that circled Meridian Gate had long since returned to their nests. In the endless stillness, the ancient halls slept soundly and dreamt deep.

  Huahua, Specs, and Xiaomeng were the only ones in the palace. The three of them walked slowly down the long exhibition hall. Artifacts that no longer belonged to their country slipped by on either side, ancient bronze and clay made warm and soft by the nebula’s light, and they felt almost as if capillaries were showing on their surface, ancient lives and souls made concrete, and that their soundless breathing surrounded them as they moved. The countless bronze vessels and clay pots seemed laden with a liquid as full of vital energy as blood; the long scroll of Along the River During the Qingming Festival in a glass case was hazy under the blue light, but they could still hear snatches of the hubbub; a terra-cotta warrior up ahead fluoresced blue-white, and it seemed like they were not walking toward it but that it was floating in their direction.… Heading northward from the southernmost premodern section, they crossed the galleries one by one, and time and history flowed back past them under the blue light of the nebula, dynasty by dynasty into the distant past.…

  The great migration of the two continents had begun.

  The children were being swiftly moved off the first two areas to be exchanged, Shaanxi and South Dakota, transferring to various ports on the coast by land and air transport, or temporarily moving to neighboring states or provinces if they missed their chance to go. Each of the two handover commissions had arrived in its counterpart’s region to oversee the migration’s progress. Young migrants assembled at major ports as oceangoing ships arrived in increasing numbers, war vessels and oil tankers, Chinese and American, as well as from other countries, mainly Europe and Japan. The rest of the world’s children buzzed with enthusiasm over this new game between the world’s two biggest countries, and they did everything within their power to aid the biggest human intercontinental migration in history. What prompted them to dispatch ships to the two countries, they couldn’t properly say themselves. Huge ocean fleets were assembled on either side of the Pacific, but no handover ceremony had taken place in Shaanxi or South Dakota, and the migrants had yet to climb aboard their passage across the ocean.

  Up in the artifact exhibition, the three young leaders continued toward the northernmost gallery. Huahua let out a gentle sigh, and said to Specs and Xiaomeng, “I spoke with the American kids again at the airport this afternoon, but they still refused.”

  After the third round, the two sides had held a series of negotiations over details, during which the Chinese side had proposed on multiple occasions that the Chinese children should be allowed to take the most precious artifacts and ancient books with them during the exchange. This suggestion had been firmly rejected by the American children. Benes and her entourage were skilled negotiators who usually expressed their opposition using various evasive approaches rather than saying no directly, but they broke with precedent when it came to this question. No sooner did the Chinese children mention artifacts and books than they stood up from their chairs and repeated “No! No!” while shaking their heads.

  At first, the Chinese children thought this was just stinginess, since such artifacts were extremely valuable if not priceless, but they later discovered this was not the case. The American children would have the same right to carry off their own artifacts as the Chinese children, and if the United States did not have many truly ancient artifacts from its few centuries of history, apart from some Native American artworks, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art were chock-full of art and artifacts from around the world worth a king’s ransom. But when the Chinese children proposed allowing American children to take objects from their territory equal in value to the artifacts the Chinese children took, the Americans still flat-out refused.

  During preparations for the Shaanxi migration, American members of the Exchange Commission proposed starting with the Shaanxi Museum of History, built in the 1980s, and the location of the Terra-cotta Army, both of which were far more interesting to them than aircraft factories or space-launch centers. They had an astonishingly detailed awareness of the holdings of all of China’s metropolitan libraries and museums, and could easily produce a printed-out inventory of cultural relics.

  In a later incident, the Chinese side proposed allowing some American children fluent in both English and Chinese (mostly Chinese-Americans) to remain in the US temporarily to teach English to the Chinese children. Benes agreed, but on one condition: that American children be allowed to take with them many of the Chinese artifacts in the collections of major American museums, particularly scriptures and murals stolen from Dunhuang by nineteenth-century adventurers. This, they claimed, was due to th
eir enthusiasm for Chinese culture, but it was expressed so effusively that the Chinese children rejected it out of hand.

  But if the Chinese children were confused by these developments, what often transpired during the ongoing territorial handovers was even more baffling.

  Three of Huahua’s classmates, Li Zhiping the letter carrier, Chang Huidong the barber, and Zhang Xiaole the cook, were part of the first group of children to leave their homeland. The three of them had made their way together ever since Candytown. This particular group of kids from the capital were relatively fortunate, since they could ride one of the two Hercules cargo planes and avoid the bumpy torture of the seas. The young pilots had just earned their wings and flew almost drunkenly, making the air journey highly dangerous, but this mattered little to children impatient to arrive in a new world. As soon as they received notice, the three boys raced to pack their things as a wonderful, mysterious future blossomed like a flower in their imaginations.

  Li Zhiping stopped off at home on the way to the airport to retrieve a few articles of clothing. He was still in a good mood when he went in the door, but the moment he was about to leave he grew thoughtful. The feeling came so suddenly that he didn’t know what to do. Like those of countless other families living in Beijing’s courtyard homes, his was a sparsely furnished house. The air still held that familiar scent; a calendar from the Common Era was still hanging on the wall.

  In a rush the warmth of his childhood days flooded his mind, and the faded images of his mom and dad materialized lifelike before his eyes. It was as if the nightmare of the supernova had never existed, and he had returned to one of those countless afternoons in the Common Era where his mom and dad were about to come home from work. It was all so real that he could practically imagine that the present day was but a dream, that in no way was he about to leave home forever. Then, steeling himself, he brushed aside his tears, slammed the door closed, and dashed over to the bus headed to the airport.

  All along the way, he felt as if something was locked up at home, some invisible piece of clothing that he had an urge to go back and retrieve, but he knew that it had become one with the home and could not be carried off. Without the invisible clothing, he felt a sudden bone-chilling cold that disappeared as soon as he looked for something to dispel it, only to stealthily return as soon as his attention was distracted.

  The first generation of Chinese children in the Supernova Era were never able to banish that chill from their souls.

  The three boys remained in a poor mood all the way to the airport. As they got close, the other children’s jokes tapered off, replaced by silent contemplation. The bus stopped beneath the enormous black body of a Hercules; other huge planes were waiting farther out. The long range of the Hercules meant their next fueling stop would be in Hawaii.

  Picking up their few belongings, Li Zhiping, Chang Huidong, and Zhang Xiaole followed the long file of people that led toward the rear entrance of the aircraft and into its dark interior. A few American kids from the Exchange Commission were standing beside the door, white IDs around their necks, carefully inspecting everything the Chinese children carried for compliance with the scope permitted under the rules of the exchange agreement. When Li Zhiping was just a few steps away from the entrance, a spot of green caught his attention, a few blades of grass poking through a crack in the cement of the tarmac. Without a second thought he set down his bag, ran over, and plucked the clump and put it in his shirt pocket before returning to the line.

  All at once a few American kids were in his face, pointing at the pocket and shouting “No! No!” followed by a string of English words, which an interpreter translated: The Americans were telling him to leave the grass behind, since it didn’t fall into the category of travel necessities and thus was not covered in the carry-on items described in the exchange agreement. Li Zhiping and the kids around him erupted. Were these punks so petty that they’d stop you from taking a clump of grass as a memento from the land of your grandparents? That’s just being mean!

  Li Zhiping shouted out, “I’m gonna take this grass. You’re not gonna stop me! Acting like you’re in charge? This is still Chinese soil!” He held his pocket closed and refused to give up the grass, but the American kids didn’t budge. The stalemate was broken by Zhang Xiaole, who noticed a kid who had just boarded the plane and who was playing with a game system. He shouted to the American kids, “You don’t care that someone’s brought a game with them. What does a clump of grass matter?”

  The American kids took a look, and then bent their heads together and exchanged a few words before turning back to Li Zhiping and saying what the Chinese children thought for sure was a mistaken translation: “You can go back home, or someplace else, right now and get your own game system, but the grass has to stay here!” Li Zhiping couldn’t figure out their sense of values, but there was nothing else he could do but silently put the grass back where he had found it.

  As the children stepped through the entrance, they felt as if something inseparable had been left on the ground behind them, and when they turned around and saw the grass fluttering in a light breeze as if beckoning them back, at last their self-control gave way and their tears came. The interior of the military cargo plane was cavernous, equipped with long rows of seats and illuminated only by a dim fluorescent bulb high overhead. There were no windows; the children were now cut off from their land.

  Their tears flowed freely once they were in their seats, and some jumped up and flung themselves toward the entrance, which was now closed and had only a single small window to crowd round. It was some time before the American cabin crew could get them seated and buckled in. Half an hour later, the engines rumbled to life and the plane began taxiing. The ground beneath sent subtle tremors up through the wheels, like a mother’s hand gently patting her children on the back. Then with a slight bump the vibrations ceased, and the last thread connecting the children to their motherland was severed. Some cried out “Mama!” as others whimpered. Someone tugged at Li Zhiping’s sleeve. A little girl sitting next to him stealthily passed a few blades of grass into his hands that she must have plucked from the tarmac during the chaos just before. Their eyes locked for a moment, and he started to cry again.

  That was how Li Zhiping came to leave his ancestral land carrying a clump of grass with him. It remained with him throughout his peripatetic life in North America, and on innumerable nights he would wake up from dreaming about his homeland and look at it, its long-dried-out form plated with a layer of living green by the light of the Rose Nebula. On those occasions he would feel a rush of warmth surge through his numb body, and under the tender, watchful gaze of his mom and dad from the beyond, his weary heart would start to sing the songs of his childhood.…

  Such situations were commonplace throughout the first round of territory exchange. Whenever Chinese children sought to carry with them the most insignificant objects of their homeland—grasses, leaves, flowers, or even rocks and dirt—the American children reacted with horror, and submitted repeated requests to hold discussions aimed at preventing migrants from taking any mementos with them from the land. Their stated motivation was disease control, and most Chinese children believed them, apart from a few who understood the American children’s true reason.

  The first two areas up for exchange were vacated on June 7, and prior to the arrival of the new immigrants, the areas held handover ceremonies.

  The Shaanxi handover ceremony was not held in the provincial capital but outside a small village. All around us were loess hills and gullies edged with the terraced fields left by our ancestors’ tilling. The hills extended off into the distance as far as the horizon. This deep and benevolent soil had nurtured untold Chinese generations across the ages, but now the last group of children to be brought up here were bidding it farewell.

  Ten children from the handover commission, five Chinese and five Americans, took part in the ceremony. It was a simple affair. We took down our flag, and then the American children
raised theirs, and then both sides signed the agreement. The American kids were all dressed as cowboys, evidently taking this as their new Wild West.

  The ceremony lasted ten minutes. As my hands shook, I lowered our flag and clasped it to my chest. The five of us were foreigners now. We said nothing, numbed from the exhausting work during the migration. It would take time to fully understand it all. The vast yellow land was like my grandfather’s weathered face, and now that giant face that stretched to the horizon was staring silently up at the heavens. There was not a whisper of sound. All of the many things the earth may have wanted to tell us were buried beneath it forever, and in silence it watched us depart.

  Not far off a Chinese helicopter was waiting to carry us to Gansu, the second province scheduled for exchange, and away from this land that was no longer ours. I had a sudden impulse and asked the American children if we could be allowed to walk there. The little cowboys were shocked: “It’s over two hundred kilometers away!” But in the end they agreed, issued us special travel permits, and wished us good luck.

  Then a puppy came running over from the now-uninhabited village, nipping incessantly at our legs. I bent down and took him in my arms. The helicopter flew off with an empty cabin, its thunder receding into the distance. The five of us, plus a puppy born on this very land, began our arduous journey. We couldn’t say why. Was it longing? Or penance? We just felt that so long as our feet still were on this soil, no matter how hungry or thirsty or tired we got, our spirits still had sustenance.…

  From A Chronicle of the Great Migration, China Edition, vol. 6. China-US Territory Exchange Commission, New Shanghai, SE 7.

  The handover ceremony in South Dakota took place beneath Mount Rushmore. Giant faces of four of the greatest presidents in US history watched in silence as a red five-star flag was raised; later, people would remember a different set of expressions on those faces, but that wasn’t the focus of our attention at the time.