To Hold Up the Sky

by Cixin Liu

  “The coast of Troy in the time of the ancient Greeks,” said Bai Bing.

  “Then … can you move the time to the Trojan Horse and the Sack of Troy?” Lu Wenming asked excitedly.

  “The Trojan Horse never existed,” Bai Bing said coolly.

  Chen Xufeng nodded. “That sort of thing belongs in children’s stories. It would be impossible in a real war.”

  “The Trojan War never happened,” said Bai Bing.

  “If that’s the case, did Troy fall due to other reasons?” The Senior Official sounded surprised.

  “The city of Troy never existed.”

  The other three exchanged looks of astonishment.

  Bai Bing pointed at the screen. “The video window is now displaying the real coast of Troy at the time the war supposedly happened. We can look five hundred years forward and back.…” Bai Bing carefully shifted the mouse. The beach onscreen flashed rapidly as night and day alternated, and the shape of the trees changed quickly, too. A few shacks appeared at the far end of the beach, human silhouettes occasionally flickering past them. The shacks grew and fell in number, but even at their greatest they formed no more than a village. “See, the magnificent city of Troy only ever existed in the imaginations of the poet-storytellers.”

  “How is that possible?” Lu Wenming cried. “We have archaeological evidence from the beginning of the last century! They even dug up Agamemnon’s gold mask.”

  “Agamemnon’s gold mask? Fuck that!” Bai Bing laughed harshly. “Well, as the historical records improve in quality and quantity, later searches get increasingly easy. Let’s do it again.”

  Bai Bing returned their point of view to Earth’s orbit. This time, he didn’t use the mouse, but entered the time and geographical coordinates by hand. The view descended toward western Asia. Soon, the screen displayed a stretch of desert, and a few people lying under the shade of a cluster of red willows. They wore ragged robes of rough cloth, their skin baked dark, their hair long and matted into strands by sweat and dust. From a distance, they looked like heaps of discarded rubbish.

  “They aren’t far from a Muslim village, but the bubonic plague has been going around and they’re afraid to go there,” Bai Bing said.

  A tall, thin man sat up and looked around. After checking that the others were soundly asleep, he picked up a neighbor’s sheepskin canteen and took a swig. Then he reached into another neighbor’s battered pack and took out a piece of traveler’s bread, broke off a third, and put it in his own bag. Satisfied, he lay back down.

  “I’ve run this at normal speed for two days and seen him steal other people’s water five times and other people’s food three times,” Bai Bing said, gesturing with his mouse at the man who’d just lain down.

  “Who is he?”

  “Marco Polo. It wasn’t easy to search him up. The Genoan prison where he was imprisoned gave me fairly precise times and coordinates. I located him there, then backtraced to that naval battle he was in to extract some identifying traits. Then I jumped much earlier and followed him here. This is in what used to be Persia, near the city of Bam in modern Iran, but I could have saved myself the effort.”

  “That means he’s on his way to China. You should be able to follow him into Kublai Khan’s palace,” said Lu Wenming.

  “He never entered any palace.”

  “You mean, he spent his time in China as just a regular commoner?”

  “Marco Polo never went to China. The long and even more dangerous road ahead scared him off. He wandered around West Asia for a few years, and later told the rumors he heard along the way to his friend in prison, who wrote the famous travelogue.”

  His three listeners once again exchanged looks of astonishment.

  “It’s even easier to look up specific people and events later on. Let’s do it one more time with modern history.”

  The room was large and very dim. A map—a naval map?—had been spread out on the broad wooden table, surrounded by several men in Qing Dynasty military uniforms. The room was too dark to see their faces.

  “We’re in the headquarters of the Beiyang Fleet, quite a ways to go before the First Sino-Japanese War. We’re in the middle of a meeting.”

  Someone was talking, but the heavy southlands accent and the poor sound quality made the words unintelligible. Bai Bing explained, “They’re saying that for coastal defense purposes, given their limited funds, purchasing heavy-tonnage ironclads from the West is less worthwhile than buying a large number of fast, steam-powered torpedo boats. Each vessel could hold four to six gas torpedoes, forming a large, fast attack force, maneuverable enough to evade Japanese cannon fire and strike at close range. I asked a number of naval experts and military historians about this. They unanimously believe that if this idea had been implemented, the Beiyang Fleet would have won their battles in the First Sino-Japanese War. He’s brilliantly ahead of his time, the first in naval history to discover the weaknesses of the traditional big-cannons-and-big-ships policy with the new innovations in armaments.”

  “Who is it?” Chen Xufeng asked. “Deng Shichang?”

  Bai Bing shook his head. “Fang Boqian.”

  “What, that coward who ran away halfway through the Battle of the Yellow Sea?”

  “The very one.”

  “Instinct tells me that all this is what history was really like,” the Senior Official mused.

  Bai Bing nodded. “That’s right. I didn’t feel so aloof and ethereal after this stage. I started to despair. I had discovered that practically all the history we know is a lie. Of all the noble, vaunted heroes we hear about, at least half were contemptible liars and schemers who used their influence to claim achievements and write the histories, and managed to succeed. Of those who really did give everything for truth and justice, two-thirds choked to death horribly and quietly in the dust of history, forgotten by everyone, and the remaining one-third had their reputations smeared into eternal infamy, just like Song Cheng. Only a tiny percentage were remembered as they were by history, less than the exposed corner of the iceberg.”

  Only then did everyone notice Song Cheng, who’d remained silent throughout. They saw him quietly stir, his eyes alight. He looked like a felled warrior rising to stand once more, taking up his weapon astride a fresh warhorse.

  SEARCHING THE PRESENT

  “Then you came to Universe No. 1207’s present day, am I correct?” asked the Senior Official.

  “That’s right, I set the digital mirror to our time.” As he spoke, Bai Bing moved the time slider to the far end. The point of view once again returned to space. The blue Earth below didn’t look particularly different from how it had appeared in ancient times.

  “This is our present day shown through the mirror of Universe No. 1207: after decades of continuous exporting of natural resources and energy, our hinterland province still doesn’t have a presentable industry to its name aside from mining and power generation. All we have is pollution, most of the rural areas still below the poverty line, severe unemployment in the cities, deteriorating law and order … naturally, I wanted to see how our leaders and planners did their jobs. What I saw, well, I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “What were you after?” asked the Senior Official.

  Bai Bing smiled bitterly, shaking his head. “Don’t think I had some lofty goal like him,” he said, pointing at Song Cheng. “I was just an ordinary person, happy to mind my own business and live out my days in peace. What do your antics have to do with me? I wasn’t planning to mess with you, but … I put so much work into this supersimulation software, and naturally I wanted to get some material benefits out of it. So I called a couple of your people, hoping they’d give me a bit of cash for keeping quiet.…” He abruptly swelled with indignation.

  “Why did you have to overreact? Why did I have to be eliminated? If you’d just given me the money, we’d all be done here!… Anyway, I’ve finished explaining everything.”

  The five people sank into a long silence, all of them watchin
g the image of Earth on the screen. This was the digital mirror of the current Earth. They were in there, too.

  “Can you really use this computer to observe everything in the world that’s ever happened?” Chen Xufeng said, breaking the silence.

  “Yes, every detail of history and the present day is data in the computer, and that data can be freely analyzed. Anything, no matter how secret, can be observed by extracting the corresponding information from the database and processing it. The database holds an atomic-level digital replica of the entire world, and any part of it can be extracted at will.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “That’s easy. You leave the room, go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and come back.”

  Chen Xufeng looked at the Senior Official and Lu Wenming in turn, then left the room. He returned two minutes later and looked at Bai Bing wordlessly.

  Bai Bing moved the mouse so that the point of view rapidly descended from space to hover above the city, which seamlessly filled the screen. He panned around, searching carefully, and quickly found the No. 2 Detention Center at the city outskirts, then the three-story building they were in. The point of view entered the building, gliding along the empty hallway on the second floor. The two plainclothes detectives sitting on the bench outside appeared onscreen, Chenbing lighting a cigarette. At last, the screen displayed the door of the office they were in.

  “Right now, the simulation only lags behind reality as it happens by 0.1 seconds. Let’s go back a few minutes.” Bai Bing nudged the time slider left.

  Onscreen, the door swung open and Chen Xufeng walked out. The two police on the bench immediately stood; Chen waved them an all’s-well and walked in the opposite direction. The point of view followed closely, as if someone were filming from right behind him with a camera. In the digital mirror, Chen Xufeng entered the restroom, took a handgun from his trouser pocket, pulled the trigger, and returned it to his pocket. Bai Bing paused the simulation here and rotated the view around to different angles as if it were a 3-D cartoon. Chen Xufeng walked out of the restroom, and the point of view followed him back to the office, revealing the four people waiting for him.

  The Senior Official watched the screen expressionlessly. Lu Wenming raised his head warily and eyed Chen Xufeng. “That thing really is impressive,” Lu Wenming said with a dark expression.

  “Next I’ll demonstrate an even more impressive feature,” said Bai Bing, pausing the simulation. “Since the universe is stored in the digital mirror on the atomic level, we can search up any and every detail in the universe. Next, let’s see what’s in Chief Chen’s coat pocket.”

  On the paused screen, Bai Bing clicked and dragged a rectangle over the area of Chen Xufeng’s coat pocket, then opened an interface to process it. With a series of actions, he removed the cloth on the outside of the pocket, revealing a small piece of folded-up paper inside. Bai Bing pressed Ctrl+C to copy the piece of paper, then started up a 3-D model-processing program and pasted in the copied data. A few more actions unfolded the piece of paper. It was a foreign exchange check for 250,000 USD.

  “Next, we’ll track this check to its origin.” Bai Bing closed the model-processing software and returned to the paused video window. Bai Bing right-clicked the already-selected check in Chen Xufeng’s coat pocket, then chose Trace from the list of options. The check flashed, and the still screen jumped to life. Time was flowing backward, showing the Senior Official and his retinue backing out of the office, then out of the building, then into a car. Chen Xufeng and Lu Wenming put on earphones, clearly listening in on Bai Bing and Song Cheng’s conversation. The trace search continued, the surroundings continuing to change, but the flashing check remained at the center of the screen as the subject of the search, seeming to tug Chen Xufeng with it through scene after scene. Finally, the check jumped out of Chen’s coat pocket and slipped into a small basket, which then jumped from Chen’s hand into another person’s. At that moment, Bai Bing paused the simulation.

  “I’ll resume playing here,” said Bai Bing, selecting normal playback speed. They seemed to be looking at Chen Xufeng’s living room. Onscreen, a middle-aged woman in a black suit stood with the fruit basket in her hand, as if she’d just entered. Chen Xufeng was sitting on the sofa.

  “Chief Chen, Director Wen sent me to visit you, and to express his gratitude for last time. He wanted to come in person, but thought it was best not to show up here too often to prevent idle gossip.”

  Chen Xufeng said, “When you go back, tell Wen Xiong that he’d better stay on the straight and narrow, now that he’s in good shape. Going too far all the time doesn’t do anyone good. He’d better not blame me for losing patience!”

  “Yes, of course, how could Brother Wen forget your advice? Nowadays, he’s been actively contributing to society—he’s built four elementary schools in impoverished districts. He’s also dedicated to making progress in politics. The city has already elected him as its delegate to the National People’s Congress!” As she spoke, the visitor set the fruit basket onto the coffee table.

  “Take that with you,” Chen Xufeng said, waving a hand.

  “We would never bring anything too fancy, Chief Chen. We know how you’d hate it. This is just some fruit as a token of our gratitude. I suppose you haven’t seen the way Chief Wen tears up whenever he mentions you. He calls you our loving parents reborn, you know.”

  Once the visitor left, Chen Xufeng shut the door and returned to the coffee table. He tipped all the fruit out of the basket, picked up the check at the bottom, and slid it in his pocket.

  The Senior Official and Lu Wenming eyed Chen Xufeng coldly. Clearly they hadn’t known any of this. Wen Xiong was the director general of Licheng Group, an enormous corporation spanning dining, long-distance travel, and many other services. Its start-up money had come from drug profits from Wen Xiong’s crime syndicate, which had made this city into a crucial hub in the Yunnan-Russia drug-trafficking route. With Wen Xiong’s successful expansion into aboveboard commerce, his underground business, drawing nourishment from the former, grew even more rapidly. The result in the hinterland city was the proliferation of drugs and the decline of public safety. And Chen Xufeng, the backstage supporter, was a powerful safeguard for its continued survival.

  “You took payment in dollars? It must have gone to your son,” Bai Bing said cheerfully. “The money that’s paying for his American college education all came from Wen Xiong, after all.… Speaking of which, don’t you want to see what he’s doing right now, on the other side of the planet? That’s easy enough. It’s midnight in Boston right now, but the last two times I saw him, he wasn’t sleeping yet.” Bai Bing sent the point of view up into space, twirled the Earth 180 degrees, then zoomed in on North America. He found the city splendid with lights on the Atlantic coast, then located the apartment building so quickly it was clear he must have searched it before. The point of view entered an apartment bedroom, exposing an awkward scene: the boy in his room with two prostitutes, one white and one black.

  “See how your son’s spending your money, Chief Chen?”

  Furious, Chen Xufeng tipped the monitor screen-side down onto the briefcase.

  The deeply stunned group once again sank into a long silence. At last Lu Wenming asked, “Why did you spend all this time just running away? Didn’t you consider using more … conventional means to free yourself from this predicament?”

  “You mean, report to Discipline Inspection? Excellent idea, yes. I had the same idea at first, so I used the digital mirror to run a search on the Discipline Inspection leadership.” Bai Bing raised his head to look at Lu Wenming. “You can guess what I saw. I didn’t want to end up like your old college buddy here. In that case, could I go to the public prosecutors or the Anti-Corruption Bureau? I’m sure Director Guo and Chief Chang process the vast majority of serious accusations strictly by the law, and very carefully tiptoe around a small portion. For what I’d report, they’d join you in hunting me down the moment I told them
. Where else could I go? Could I get the press to run an exposé? I think you’re all familiar with those certain key figures in the provincial news media groups. After all, weren’t they the ones who came up with the Senior Official’s shining résumé? The only difference between those reporters and prostitutes is that they sell a different body part. It’s all tied together in one big web, not a strand safe to touch. I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “You could go to the Central Commission,” the Senior Official said neutrally, closely observing Bai Bing for a reaction.

  Bai Bing nodded. “It’s the only choice left. But I’m a nobody. I don’t know anyone. I came to see Song Cheng first to find reliable connections, pursuit or no.” Bai Bing paused, then continued, “But this decision wasn’t an easy one. You’re all smart people. You know the ultimate consequences of doing this.”

  “It means that this technology will be revealed to the world.”

  “That’s right. Every bit of the fog that covers history and reality will be swept away. Anything and everything, in light and darkness, past and present, will be stripped naked and paraded before the light of day. At that time, light and dark will be forced into a deciding battle for supremacy unlike anything in history. The world’s going to descend into chaos—”

  “But the end result will be the victory of the light,” said Song Cheng, who’d been silent until then. He walked in front of Bai Bing and looked straight at him. “Do you know how shadows derive their power? It comes from their very nature of secrecy. Once they’re exposed to the light, their power is gone. You see that with most cases of corruption. And your digital mirror is the burning brand that will tear the darkness open.”

  The Senior Official exchanged looks with Chen and Lu.

  Silence fell. On the superstring computer screen, the atomic-level digital mirror of Earth hovered placidly in space.

  The Senior Official put a hand on Bai Bing’s shoulder. “Why don’t you move the time slider in the simulation farther forward?”