Lightspeed Magazine Issue 37

by L. Timmel Duchamp

  Mono no aware

  Ken Liu

  The world is shaped like the kanji for umbrella, only written so poorly, like my handwriting, that all the parts are out of proportion.

  My father would be greatly ashamed at the childish way I still form my characters. Indeed, I can barely write many of them anymore. My formal schooling back in Japan ceased when I was only eight.

  Yet for present purposes, this badly drawn character will do.

  The canopy up there is the solar sail. Even that distorted kanji can only give you a hint of its vast size. A hundred times thinner than rice paper, the spinning disc fans out a thousand kilometers into space like a giant kite intent on catching every passing photon. It literally blocks out the sky.

  Beneath it dangles a long cable of carbon nanotubes a hundred kilometers long: strong, light, and flexible. At the end of the cable hangs the heart of the Hopeful, the habitat module, a five-hundred-meter-tall cylinder into which all the 1,021 inhabitants of the world are packed.

  The light from the sun pushes against the sail, propelling us on an ever widening, ever accelerating, spiraling orbit away from it. The acceleration pins all of us against the decks, gives everything weight.

  Our trajectory takes us toward a star called 61 Virginis. You can’t see it now because it is behind the canopy of the solar sail. The Hopeful will get there in about three hundred years, more or less. With luck, my great-great-great—I calculated how many “greats” I needed once, but I don’t remember now—grandchildren will see it.

  There are no windows in the habitat module, no casual view of the stars streaming past. Most people don’t care, having grown bored of seeing the stars long ago. But I like looking through the cameras mounted on the bottom of the ship so that I can gaze at this view of the receding, reddish glow of our sun, our past.

  “Hiroto,” Dad said as he shook me awake. “Pack up your things. It’s time.”

  My small suitcase was ready. I just had to put my Go set into it. Dad gave this to me when I was five, and the times we played were my favorite hours of the day.

  The sun had not yet risen when Mom and Dad and I made our way outside. All the neighbors were standing outside their houses with their bags as well, and we greeted each other politely under the summer stars. As usual, I looked for the Hammer. It was easy. Ever since I could remember, the asteroid had been the brightest thing in the sky except for the moon, and every year it grew brighter.

  A truck with loudspeakers mounted on top drove slowly down the middle of the street.

  “Attention, citizens of Kurume! Please make your way in an orderly fashion to the bus stop. There will be plenty of buses to take you to the train station, where you can board the train for Kagoshima. Do not drive. You must leave the roads open for the evacuation buses and official vehicles!”

  Every family walked slowly down the sidewalk.

  “Mrs. Maeda,” Dad said to our neighbor. “Why don’t I carry your luggage for you?”

  “I’m very grateful,” the old woman said.

  After ten minutes of walking, Mrs. Maeda stopped and leaned against a lamppost.

  “It’s just a little longer, Granny,” I said. She nodded but was too out of breath to speak. I tried to cheer her. “Are you looking forward to seeing your grandson in Kagoshima? I miss Michi too. You will be able to sit with him and rest on the spaceships. They say there will be enough seats for everyone.”

  Mom smiled at me approvingly.

  “How fortunate we are to be here,” Dad said. He gestured at the orderly rows of people moving toward the bus stop, at the young men in clean shirts and shoes looking solemn, the middle-aged women helping their elderly parents, the clean, empty streets, and the quietness—despite the crowd, no one spoke above a whisper. The very air seemed to shimmer with the dense connections between all the people—families, neighbors, friends, colleagues—as invisible and strong as threads of silk.

  I had seen on TV what was happening in other places around the world: looters screaming, dancing through the streets, soldiers and policemen shooting into the air and sometimes into crowds, burning buildings, teetering piles of dead bodies, generals shouting before frenzied crowds, vowing vengeance for ancient grievances even as the world was ending.

  “Hiroto, I want you to remember this,” Dad said. He looked around, overcome by emotion. “It is in the face of disasters that we show our strength as a people. Understand that we are not defined by our individual loneliness, but by the web of relationships in which we’re enmeshed. A person must rise above his selfish needs so that all of us can live in harmony. The individual is small and powerless, but bound tightly together, as a whole, the Japanese nation is invincible.”

  “Mr. Shimizu,” eight-year-old Bobby says, “I don’t like this game.”

  The school is located in the very center of the cylindrical habitat module, where it can have the benefit of the most shielding from radiation. In front of the classroom hangs a large American flag to which the children say their pledge every morning. To the sides of the American flag are two rows of smaller flags belonging to other nations with survivors on the Hopeful. At the very end of the left side is a child’s rendition of the Hinomaru, the corners of the white paper now curled and the once bright red rising sun faded to the orange of sunset. I drew it the day I came aboard the Hopeful.

  I pull up a chair next to the table where Bobby and his friend Eric are sitting. “Why don’t you like it?”

  Between the two boys is a nineteen-by-nineteen grid of straight lines. A handful of black and white stones have been placed on the intersections.

  Once every two weeks, I have the day off from my regular duties monitoring the status of the solar sail and come here to teach the children a little bit about Japan. I feel silly doing it sometimes. How can I be their teacher when I have only a boy’s hazy memories of Japan?

  But there is no other choice. All the non-American technicians like me feel it is our duty to participate in the cultural-enrichment program at the school and pass on what we can.

  “All the stones look the same,” Bobby says, “and they don’t move. They’re boring.”

  “What game do you like?” I ask.

  “Asteroid Defender!” Eric says. “Now that is a good game. You get to save the world.”

  “I mean a game you do not play on the computer.”

  Bobby shrugs. “Chess, I guess. I like the queen. She’s powerful and different from everyone else. She’s a hero.”

  “Chess is a game of skirmishes,” I say. “The perspective of Go is bigger. It encompasses entire battles.”

  “There are no heroes in Go,” Bobby says, stubbornly.

  I don’t know how to answer him.

  There was no place to stay in Kagoshima, so everyone slept outside along the road to the spaceport. On the horizon we could see the great silver escape ships gleaming in the sun.

  Dad had explained to me that fragments that had broken off of the Hammer were headed for Mars and the Moon, so the ships would have to take us further, into deep space, to be safe.

  “I would like a window seat,” I said, imagining the stars streaming by.

  “You should yield the window seat to those younger than you,” Dad said. “Remember, we must all make sacrifices to live together.”

  We piled our suitcases into walls and draped sheets over them to form shelters from the wind and the sun. Every day inspectors from the government came by to distribute supplies and to make sure everything was all right.

  “Be patient!” the government inspectors said. “We know things are moving slowly, but we’re doing everything we can. There will be seats for everyone.”

  We were patient. Some of the mothers organized lessons for the children during the day, and the fathers set up a priority system so that families with aged parents and babies could board first when the ships were finally ready.

  After four days of waiting, the reassurances from the government inspectors did not sound quite as rea
ssuring. Rumors spread through the crowd.

  “It’s the ships. Something’s wrong with them.”

  “The builders lied to the government and said they were ready when they weren’t, and now the Prime Minister is too embarrassed to admit the truth.”

  “I hear that there’s only one ship, and only a few hundred of the most important people will have seats. The other ships are only hollow shells, for show.”

  “They’re hoping that the Americans will change their mind and build more ships for allies like us.”

  Mom came to Dad and whispered in his ear.

  Dad shook his head and stopped her. “Do not repeat such things.”

  “But for Hiroto’s sake—”

  “No!” I’d never heard Dad sound so angry. He paused, swallowed. “We must trust each other, trust the Prime Minister and the Self-Defense Forces.”

  Mom looked unhappy. I reached out and held her hand. “I’m not afraid,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Dad said, relief in his voice. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  He picked me up in his arms—I was slightly embarrassed for he had not done such a thing since I was very little—and pointed at the densely packed crowd of thousands and thousands spread around us as far as the eye could see.

  “Look at how many of us there are: grandmothers, young fathers, big sisters, little brothers. For anyone to panic and begin to spread rumors in such a crowd would be selfish and wrong, and many people could be hurt. We must keep to our places and always remember the bigger picture.”

  Mindy and I make love slowly. I like to breathe in the smell of her dark curly hair, lush, warm, tickling the nose like the sea, like fresh salt.

  Afterwards we lie next to each other, gazing up at my ceiling monitor.

  I keep looping on it a view of the receding star field. Mindy works in navigation, and she records the high-resolution cockpit video feed for me.

  I like to pretend that it’s a big skylight, and we’re lying under the stars. I know some others like to keep their monitors showing photographs and videos of old Earth, but that makes me too sad.

  “How do you say ‘star’ in Japanese?” Mindy asks.

  “Hoshi,” I tell her.

  “And how do you say ‘guest’?”

  “Okyakusan.”

  “So we are hoshi okyakusan? Star guests?”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” I say. Mindy is a singer, and she likes the sound of languages other than English. “It’s hard to hear the music behind the words when their meanings get in the way,” she told me once.

  Spanish is Mindy’s first language, but she remembers even less of it than I do of Japanese. Often, she asks me for Japanese words and weaves them into her songs.

  I try to phrase it poetically for her, but I’m not sure if I’m successful. “Wareware ha, hoshi no aida ni kyaku ni kite.” We have come to be guests among the stars.

  “There are a thousand ways of phrasing everything,” Dad used to say, “each appropriate to an occasion.” He taught me that our language is full of nuances and supple grace, each sentence a poem. The language folds in on itself, the unspoken words as meaningful as the spoken, context within context, layer upon layer, like the steel in samurai swords.

  I wish Dad were around so that I could ask him: How do you say “I miss you” in a way that is appropriate to the occasion of your twenty-fifth birthday, as the last survivor of your race?

  “My sister was really into Japanese picture books. Manga.”

  Like me, Mindy is an orphan. It’s part of what draws us together.

  “Do you remember much about her?”

  “Not really. I was only five or so when I came on board the ship. Before that, I only remember a lot of guns firing and all of us hiding in the dark and running and crying and stealing food. She was always there to keep me quiet by reading from the manga books. And then … ”

  I had watched the video only once. From our high orbit, the blue-and-white marble that was Earth seemed to wobble for a moment as the asteroid struck, and then, the silent, roiling waves of spreading destruction that slowly engulfed the globe.

  I pull her to me and kiss her forehead, lightly, a kiss of comfort. “Let us not speak of sad things.”

  She wraps her arms around me tightly, as though she will never let go.

  “The manga, do you remember anything about them?” I ask.

  “I remember they were full of giant robots. I thought: Japan is so powerful.”

  I try to imagine it: heroic giant robots all over Japan, working desperately to save the people.

  The Prime Minister’s apology was broadcast through the loudspeakers. Some also watched it on their phones.

  I remember very little of it except that his voice was thin and he looked very frail and old. He looked genuinely sorry. “I’ve let the people down.”

  The rumors turned out to be true. The shipbuilders had taken the money from the government but did not build ships that were strong enough or capable of what they promised. They kept up the charade until the very end. We found out the truth only when it was too late.

  Japan was not the only nation that failed her people. The other nations of the world had squabbled over who should contribute how much to a joint evacuation effort when the Hammer was first discovered on its collision course with Earth. And then, when that plan had collapsed, most decided that it was better to gamble that the Hammer would miss and spend the money and lives on fighting with each other instead.

  After the Prime Minister finished speaking, the crowd remained silent. A few angry voices shouted but soon quieted down as well. Gradually, in an orderly fashion, people began to pack up and leave the temporary campsites.

  “The people just went home?” Mindy asks, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “There was no looting, no panicked runs, no soldiers mutinying in the streets?”

  “This was Japan,” I tell her. And I can hear the pride in my voice, an echo of my father’s.

  “I guess the people were resigned,” Mindy says. “They had given up. Maybe it’s a culture thing.”

  “No!” I fight to keep the heat out of my voice. Her words irk me, like Bobby’s remark about Go being boring. “That is not how it was.”

  “Who is Dad speaking to?” I asked.

  “That is Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said. “We—he and your father and I—went to college together, in America.”

  I watched Dad speak English on the phone. He seemed like a completely different person: It wasn’t just the cadences and pitch of his voice; his face was more animated, his hand gestured more wildly. He looked like a foreigner.

  He shouted into the phone.

  “What is Dad saying?”

  Mom shushed me. She watched Dad intently, hanging on every word.

  “No,” Dad said into the phone. “No!” I did not need that translated.

  Afterwards Mom said, “He is trying to do the right thing, in his own way.”

  “He is as selfish as ever,” Dad snapped.

  “That’s not fair,” Mom said. “He did not call me in secret. He called you instead because he believed that if your positions were reversed, he would gladly give the woman he loved a chance to survive, even if it’s with another man.”

  Dad looked at her. I had never heard my parents say “I love you” to each other, but some words did not need to be said to be true.

  “I would never have said yes to him,” Mom said, smiling. Then she went to the kitchen to make our lunch. Dad’s gaze followed her.

  “It’s a fine day,” Dad said to me. “Let us go on a walk.”

  We passed other neighbors walking along the sidewalks. We greeted each other, inquired after each other’s health. Everything seemed normal. The Hammer glowed even brighter in the dusk overhead.

  “You must be very frightened, Hiroto,” he said.

  “They won’t try to build more escape ships?”

  Dad did not answer. The late summer wind carri
ed the sound of cicadas to us: chirr, chirr, chirrrrrr.

  “Nothing in the cry

  Of cicadas suggest they

  Are about to die.”

  “Dad?”

  “That is a poem by Basho. Do you understand it?”

  I shook my head. I did not like poems much.

  Dad sighed and smiled at me. He looked at the setting sun and spoke again:

  “The fading sunlight holds infinite beauty

  Though it is so close to the day’s end.”

  I recited the lines to myself. Something in them moved me. I tried to put the feeling into words: “It is like a gentle kitten is licking the inside of my heart.”

  Instead of laughing at me, Dad nodded solemnly.

  “That is a poem by the classical Tang poet Li Shangyin. Though he was Chinese, the sentiment is very much Japanese.”

  We walked on, and I stopped by the yellow flower of a dandelion. The angle at which the flower was tilted struck me as very beautiful. I got the kitten-tongue-tickling sensation in my heart again.

  “The flower … ” I hesitated. I could not find the right words.

  Dad spoke,

  “The drooping flower

  As yellow as the moon beam

  So slender tonight.”

  I nodded. The image seemed to me at once so fleeting and so permanent, like the way I had experienced time as a young child. It made me a little sad and glad at the same time.

  “Everything passes, Hiroto,” Dad said. “That feeling in your heart: It’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: We are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon.”

  I looked around at the clean streets, the slow-moving people, the grass, and the evening light, and I knew that everything had its place; everything was all right. Dad and I went on walking, our shadows touching.

  Even though the Hammer hung right overhead, I was not afraid.