Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  “Mapo dofu, yu xiang pork, two liang of rice, and Wu Xing beer.” His order tumbled out in a rush.

  “Little Wang has a big stomach! Where will you fit all that food, I wonder?” When Wang Jun glared at him he said, “Go, sit, you’ll have your feast.”

  Wang Jun went and sat at a low table and watched as the fire roared and the cook threw chilies into the wok to fry. He wiped at his mouth to keep from drooling as the smell of the food came to his nose. The cook’s wife opened a bottle of Five Star for him, and he watched as she poured the beer into a wet glass. The day’s heat was dissipating. Rain began to spatter the street restaurant’s burlap roof. Wang Jun drank from his beer and watched the other diners, taking in the food they ate and the company they kept. These were people he might have previously harassed for their money. But not tonight. Tonight he was a king. Rich, with money in his pocket.

  His thoughts were broken by the arrival of a foreigner. A broad man with long white hair pulled back in a horse’s tail. His skin was pale and he wore white gloves. He stepped under the sheltering burlap and cast alien blue eyes across the diners. The Chinese at their tables stared back. When his eyes settled on Wang Jun’s bent form, he smiled. He went to squat on a stool across from Wang Jun and said, in accented Mandarin, “You are Little Wang. You have something for me.”

  Wang Jun stared at the man and then, feeling cocky with the attention of the other Chinese said, “Ke neng.” Maybe.

  The foreigner frowned, then leaned across the table. The cook’s wife came, interrupting, and set down Wang Jun’s mapo dofu, followed quickly by the pork. She went and scooped out a steaming bowl of rice broader than Wang Jun’s hand, and set it before him. Wang Jun picked up chopsticks and began shoveling the food into his mouth, all the while watching the foreigner. His eyes watered at the spiciness of the dofu and his mouth tingled with the familiar numbing of ground peppercorns.

  The wife asked if the foreigner would eat with him, and Wang Jun eyed the foreigner. He felt the money in his pocket, while his mouth flamed on. He looked at the size of the foreigner and assented reluctantly, feeling his wealth now inadequate. They spoke in Chengdu hua, the dialect of the city, so that the foreigner did not understand what they said. The man watched as the wife scooped another bowl of rice and set it in front of him with a pair of chopsticks. He looked down at the white mountain of rice in his bowl and then looked up at Wang Jun. He shook his head, and said, “You have something for me. Give it to me now.”

  Wang Jun was stung by the foreigner’s disregard of the offered food. Because he was unhappy he said, “Why should I give it to you?”

  The pale white man frowned and his blue eyes were cold and angry. “Did not the Tibetan tell you to give me something?” He held out a white-gloved hand.

  Wang Jun shrugged. “You didn’t come to the bridge. Why should I give it to you now?”

  “Do you have it?”

  Wang Jun became guarded.

  “No.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I threw it away.”

  The man reached across the small table and grasped Wang Jun’s ragged collar. He pulled him close. “Give it to me now. You are very small, I can take it or you can give it to me. Little Wang, you cannot win tonight. Do not test me.”

  Wang Jun stared at the foreigner and saw silver flash in the man’s breast pocket. On impulse he reached for the glint of sliver and drew a thing up until it was between their two faces. Other people at nearby tables gasped at what Wang Jun held. Wang Jun’s hand began to shake, quivering uncontrollably, until the Tibetan’s severed finger, with its tarnished silver and turquoise ring still on it, slipped from his horrified grasp and landed in the yu xiang pork.

  The foreigner smiled, an indifferent, resigned smile. He said, “Give me the datacube before I collect a trophy from you as well.” Wang Jun nodded and slowly reached into his pocket. The foreigner’s eyes followed his reaching hand.

  Wang Jun’s free hand reached desperately out to the table and grabbed a handful of scalding dofu from its plate. Before the man could react, he drove the contents, full of hot chilies and peppercorns, into those cold blue eyes. As the foreigner howled, Wang Jun sank his sharp yellow teeth into the pale flesh of imprisoning hands. The foreigner dropped Wang Jun to rub frantically at his burning eye sockets, and blood flowed from his damaged hands.

  Wang Jun took his freedom and ran for the darkness and alleys he knew best, leaving the foreigner still roaring behind him.

  The rain was heavier, and the chill was coming back on Chengdu, harder and colder than before. The concrete and buildings radiated cold, and Wang Jun’s breath misted in the air. He hunched in his box, with its logo for Stone-Ailixin Computers on the side. He thought it had been used for satellite phones, from the pictures below the logo. He huddled inside it with the remains of his childhood.

  He could still remember the countryside he had come from and, vaguely, a mud-brick home. More clearly, he remembered terrace-sculpted hills and running along those terraces. Playing in warm summer mud with a Micro-Machine VTOL in his hands while his parents labored in brown water around their ankles and green rice shoots sprouted up out of the muck. Later, he had passed those same terraces, lush and unharvested, as he made his way out of his silent village.

  Under the cold instant-concrete shadows of the skyscrapers, he stroked his toy VTOL. The wings which folded up and down had broken off and were lost. He turned it over, looking at its die-cast steel frame. He pulled out the datacube and stared at it. Weighed the toy and the cube in his hands. He thought of the Tibetan’s finger, severed with its silver snake ring still on it, and shuddered. The white man with the blue eyes would be looking for him. He looked around at his box. He put the Micro-Machine in his pocket but left his ratted blanket. He took his yellow anchuan maozi, the traffic safety hat children wore to and from school, stolen from a child even smaller than he. He pulled the yellow wool cap down over his ears, repocketed the datacube, and left without looking back.

  Three-Fingers was crooning karaoke in a bar when Wang Jun found him. A pair of women with smooth skin and hard, empty eyes attended him. They wore red silk chipao, styled from Shanghai. The collars were high and formal, but the slits in the dresses went nearly to the women’s waists. Three-Fingers glared through the dim red smoky light when Wang Jun approached.

  “What?”

  “Do you have a computer that reads these?” He held up the datacube.

  Three-Fingers stared at the cube and reached out for it. “Where did you get that?”

  Wang Jun held it out but did not release it. “Off someone.”

  “Same place you got those glasses?”

  “Maybe.”

  Three-Fingers peered at the datacube. “It’s not a standard datacube. See the pins on the inside?”

  Wang Jun looked at the datasocket.

  “There’s only three pins. You need an adapter to read whatever’s on there. And you might not even be able to read it then. Depends what kind of OS it’s designed for.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Give it to me.”

  “No.” Wang Jun backed off a step.

  One of the women giggled at the interaction between the mini mob boss and street urchin. She stroked Three-Fingers’s chest. “Don’t worry about the taofanzhe. Pay attention to us.” She giggled again.

  Wang Jun glared. Three-Fingers pushed the hostess off him.

  “Go away.”

  She made an exaggerated pout, but left with her companion.

  Three-Fingers held out his hand. “Let me see it. I can’t help you if you don’t let me see the tamade thing.”

  Wang Jun frowned but passed the datacube over. Three-Fingers turned it over in his hands. He peered into the socket, then nodded. “It’s for HuangLong OS.” He tossed it back and said, “It’s a medical specialty OS. They use it for things like brain surgery, and DNA mapping. That’s pretty specialized. Where’d you get it?”

  Wang Jun shrugged. “Someo
ne gave it to me.”

  “Fang pi.” Bullshit.

  Wang Jun was silent and they regarded each other, then Three-Fingers said, “Xing, I’ll buy it off you. Just because I’m curious. I’ll give you five yuan. You want to sell it?”

  Wang Jun shook his head.

  “Fine. Ten yuan, but that’s all.”

  Wang Jun shook his head again.

  Three-Fingers Gao frowned. “Did you get rich, suddenly?”

  “I don’t want to sell it. I want to know what’s on it.”

  “Well, that makes two of us now.”

  They regarded each other for a time longer. Three-Fingers said, “All right. I’ll help you. But if there’s any value to what’s on that, I’m taking three-quarters on the profit.”

  “Yi ban.”

  Three-Fingers rolled his eyes. “Fine. Half, then.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Three-Fingers walked fast through chill mist. He led Wang Jun into smaller and smaller alleys. The buildings changed in character from shining modern glass and steel to mud-brick with thatched and tiled roofs. The streets became cobbled and jagged and old women stared out at them from dark wooden doorways. Wang Jun watched the old ladies with suspicion. Their eyes followed him impassively, recording his and Three-Fingers’s passage.

  Three-Fingers stopped to pull out a box of Red Pagodas. He put one in his mouth. “You smoke?”

  Wang Jun took the offered stick and leaned close as Three-Fingers struck a match. It flared high and yellow and then sank low under the pressure of the wet air. Wang Jun drew hard on the cigarette and blew smoke. Three-Fingers lit his own.

  “Where are we going?”

  Three-Fingers shrugged. “Here.”

  He jerked his head at the building behind them. He smoked for a minute longer, then dropped his cigarette on the damp cobbles and ground it out with a black boot. “Put out your smoke. It’s bad for the machines.”

  Wang Jun flicked the butt against a wall. It threw off red sparks where it bounced and then lay smoking on the ground. Three-Fingers pushed open a wooden door. Its paint was peeling and its frame warped so that he shoved hard and the door scraped loudly as they entered.

  In the dim light of the room, Wang Jun could see dozens of monitors. They glowed with screen savers and data. He saw columns of characters and numbers, scrolling, connected to distant networks of information. People sat at the monitors in a silence broken only by the sound of the keys being pressed at an incessant rate.

  Three-Fingers pulled Wang Jun up to one of the silent technicians and said, “He Dan, can you read this?”

  He nudged Wang Jun and Wang Jun held up the datacube. He Dan plucked it out of Wang Jun’s hand with spidery graceful fingers and brought it close to his eyes in the dimness. With a shrug he began to sort through a pile of adapters. He chose one and connected it to a stray cord, then inserted the adapter into the datacube. He typed on the computer and the borders and workspaces flickered and changed color. A box appeared and he hit a single key in response.

  “Where am I?” The voice was so loud that the speakers distorted and crackled. The technicians all jumped as their silence was shattered. He Dan adjusted a speaker control. The voice came again, softer. “Hello?” It held an edge of fear. “Is there anyone there?” it asked.

  “Yes,” said Wang Jun, impulsively.

  “Where am I?” the voice quavered.

  “In a computer,” said Wang Jun.

  Three-Fingers slapped him on the back of the head.

  “Be quiet.”

  “What?” said the voice.

  They listened silently.

  “Hello, did someone say I was in a computer?” it said.

  Wang Jun said, “Yes, you’re in a computer. What are you?”

  “I’m in a computer?” The voice was puzzled. “I was having surgery. How am I in a computer?”

  “Who are you?” Wang Jun ignored Three-Fingers’s glowering eyes.

  “I am Naed Delhi, the nineteenth Dalai Lama. Who are you?”

  The typing stopped. No one spoke. Wang Jun heard the faint whine of cooling fans and the high resonances of the monitors humming. Technicians turned to stare at the trio and the computer which spoke. Outside Wang Jun heard someone clear their throat of phlegm and spit. The computer spoke on, heedless of the effect of its words. “Hello?” it said. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “I’m Wang Jun.”

  “Hello. Why can’t I see?”

  “You’re in a computer. You don’t have any eyes.”

  “I can hear. Why can I hear and yet not see?”

  He Dan broke in, “Video input is not compatible with the software emulator which runs your program.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You are an artificial intelligence construct. Your consciousness is software. Your input comes from hardware. They are incompatible on the system we have installed you.”

  The voice quavered, “I am not software. I am the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect. The nineteenth to be reincarnated as such. It is not my fate to be reincarnated as software. You are probably mistaken.”

  “Are you really the Dalai Lama?” Wang Jun asked.

  “Yes,” the computer said.

  “How —” Wang Jun began, but Three-Fingers pulled him away from the system before he could phrase his question. He knelt in front of Wang Jun. His hands were shaking as he held Wang Jun by the collar of his shirt. Their faces nearly touched as he hissed out, “Where did you find this cube?”

  Wang Jun shrugged. “Someone gave it to me.”

  Three-Finger’s hand blurred and struck Wang Jun’s face. Wang Jun jerked at its impact. His face burned. The technicians watched as Three-Fingers hissed, “Don’t lie to me. Where did you find this thing?”

  Wang Jun touched his face. “From a Tibetan, I got it from a Tibetan who sold tiger bones, and a man from Hunan. And there was a body. A big foreigner. They were his glasses I sold you.”

  Three-Fingers tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Don’t lie to me. Do you know what it means if we’ve got the Dalai Lama on a datacube that you’ve been carrying around in your pocket?” He shook Wang Jun. “Do you know what it means?”

  Wang Jun whined, “I was supposed to give it to a man with white gloves, but he never came. And there was another man. A foreigner and he killed the Tibetan and took his finger, and he wanted mine too, and I ran and —” His voice rose in a babbling whine.

  Three-Fingers’s hands settled around Wang Jun’s neck and squeezed until Wang Jun’s ears rang and blackness scudded across his eyes. Distantly, he heard Three-Fingers say, “Don’t cry to me. I’m not your mother. I’ll take your tongue out if you make my life any more difficult than it already is. Do you understand?”

  Wang Jun nodded in his haze.

  Three-Fingers released him, saying, “Good. Go talk to the computer.”

  Wang Jun breathed deeply and stumbled back to the Dalai Lama. “How did you get inside the computer?” he asked.

  “How do you know I am in a computer?”

  “Because we plugged your datacube in and then you started talking.”

  The computer was silent.

  “What’s it like in there?” Wang Jun tried.

  “Terrible and still,” said the computer. Then it said, “I was going to have surgery, and now I am here.”

  “Did you dream?”

  “I don’t remember any dreams.”

  “Are you leading a rebellion against my homeland?”

  “You speak Chinese. Are you from China?”

  “Yes. Why are you making people fight in Tibet?”

  “Where is this computer?”

  “Chengdu.”

  “Oh, my. A long way from Bombay,” the computer whispered.

  “You came from Bombay?”

  “I was having surgery in Bombay.”

  “Is it lonely in there?”

  “I don’t remember anything until now. But it is very still here. Dea
thly still. I can hear you, but cannot feel anything. There is nothing here. I fear that I am not here. It is maddening. All of my senses are lost. I want out of this computer. Help me. Take me back to my body.” The computer’s voice, vibrating from the speakers, was begging.

  “We can sell him,” Three-Fingers said abruptly.

  Wang Jun stared at Three-Fingers. “You can’t sell him.”

  “Someone wants him if they’re chasing you. We can sell him.”