The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection by Liu Cixin

by Cixin Liu

Ah Quan's reminiscence was broken by someone rapping against the window he was cleaning. It was an all too common annoyance. For the white collar high-rise workers, the appearance of a window cleaner on their office window was always an ineffable annoyance. It seemed that these people really saw them as their overseas nickname, as a strange clan of giant spiders crawling on their windows. Far more stood between the cleaners and the office dwellers than a mere pane of glass. When the spider-men worked, the people inside would, without any real enmity, loudly complain that they were blocking the Sun and about the other ways in which the cleaners were ruining their day.

  The glass of the Aerospace Tower was semi-reflective, making it hard for Ah Quan to make out what was going on inside. He finally discerned a man within the building. To his complete surprise it was Lu Hai!

  After they had parted ways, Ah Quan had long been worried about Lu Hai. In his mind, Lu Hai had become a vagrant in a Western suit, hobbling his way through a life of destitution in the big city. Then one late autumn night, just as Ah Quan was silently worrying whether Lu Hai had anything to wear for the winter, he suddenly saw him on the TV. It was just as he had said it would be.

  At the time, the China Sun project had just selected the material for its reflector. The choice had been the most critical technical decision of the entire project. Among the 12 available materials, it was Lu Hai's nano-mirror-membrane that was ultimately selected. Lu Hai was almost instantly transformed from a vagrant scientist into one of the chief scientists of the China Sun project. Overnight he had become world famous. After that, even though he occasionally saw Lu Hai in the media, Ah Quan almost forgot about him; he did not believe that there was any connection left between them now.

  When Ah Quan arrived in his spacious office later, Lu Hai did not look much different than he had two years ago. In fact, he still wore the Western suit. Ah Quan now saw that the suit he had previously considered so extravagantly expensive was, in truth, very much second-rate.

  Ah Quan was soon telling him about his life since they had parted. He finished with a smile. “It looks like we both have been doing rather well in Beijing.”

  “Rather well indeed!” Lu Hai nodded enthusiastically. “As a matter of fact, that morning when I told you about the times and opportunities, I was – in truth – at the verge of surrendering in despair. I told you what I wanted to hear, but these times really are full of opportunity.”

  Ah Quan nodded as well. “Birds of gold are everywhere.” As he spoke, he sized up the office around him. It was brimming with the most modern technology. Most striking was a piece of very unusual decoration. The entire ceiling of the office was enveloped by a hologram of the night sky. It made being in the room much like standing in a courtyard under a brilliant, starry night sky. Suspended in this night sky hung a curved, silver mirror. It looked much like Lu Hai's solar-cooker, but Ah Quan knew that it had to be dozens of times larger than all of Beijing. A round lamp hung in a corner of the ceiling, emitting dazzling yellow light. Like the mirror, this round lamp floated in the sky without any visible means of suspension. The curved mirror reflected this lamp's light onto a globe, creating a circle of illumination on its surface. The lamp slowly floated across the ceiling and as it moved, the mirror tracked its path, capturing and reflecting the lamp's light onto the globe, no matter where it went. The starlit sky, the mirror, the lamp, its light, the globe, and circle of illumination all formed an abstract and enigmatic whole.

  “Is that the China Sun?” Ah Quan asked in awe, pointing at the mirror.

  Lu Hai nodded. “It is an 11,500-square-mile mirror that can reflect sunlight. It will be in a geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Earth. From Earth it will look like a second Sun.”

  “I really do not understand; how will another sun in the sky bring more rain?” Ah Quan asked, confused.

  Lu Hai did his best to explain. “The artificial sun will influence the weather in a number of ways. For example, by changing the thermal equilibrium of the air it can influence the atmospheric circulation, increase ocean evaporation, or shift weather fronts. But that does not really explain it. In fact, the orbital reflector is just one part of the China Sun project. Another part is a complex atmospheric model. This model will be run on a large number of super computers and it will be able to accurately simulate changes in an area's atmosphere. It will then be able to find the precise point at which the heat from the artificial sun will be able to exert the most influence. We will thereby be able to produce quite dramatic effects, enough to completely change the weather of a target area …” He paused. “It is an amazingly complex project and somewhat outside of my area of expertise. In fact, I do not fully understand it myself.”

  Ah Quan decided to ask a question to which Lu Hai would certainly know the answer. He also knew that it was almost certainly a very silly question, but he drummed up all his courage and asked it nonetheless. “Something that large hanging in the sky, why doesn't it fall?”

  A long silence followed the question. Lu Hai just stood there as the seconds passed. Finally, he glanced at his watch and then slapped Ah Quan on the shoulder. “Let's go. I want to treat you to dinner, and while we eat, I will explain to you why the China Sun cannot fall.”

  But it did not turn out to be quite as simple as Lu Hai had expected. He soon realized that he would have to start with the very first basics. While Ah Quan did know that they lived on a spherical planet, his thinking was still heavily influenced by the traditional Chinese model of a dome sky above a square earth. It took Lu Hai a great deal of effort to make him truly understand and accept that our world is but a small rock, floating through an infinite void.

  Even though Ah Quan came not a step closer that evening to understanding the specifics of why the China Sun would not fall, his very universe had begun to change in the depths of his mind. His understanding of the cosmos had entered the geocentric era of the Ptolemaic system.

  On the second evening, Lu Hai took Ah Quan to a street vendor. Over dinner he was able to pull him into a Copernican world. The next two evenings Ah Quan learned of Newtonian physics and he came to gain a very basic comprehension of gravitational attraction. The next day, Lu Hai, with the help of the globe in his office, propelled Ah Quan into the Space Age. A public holiday followed and finally Ah Quan, in the face of that globe, came to understand the meaning of a geosynchronous orbit, and then he finally understood why the China Sun could not fall.

  On that day, Lu Hai took Ah Quan on a tour of the China Sun Control Center. The center was equipped with a massive monitor that revealed a panorama of the China Sun in mid-construction. As of now, it was still about a dozen separate, thin pieces of silver-like material, floating through the blackness of space in geosynchronous orbit. Spacecraft flitted among these plates like tiny mosquitoes, but what shook Ah Quan most was to be found on another monitor altogether. It was a picture of Earth, seen from 22,000 miles above. From that elevation continents looked like Kraft paper floating on the oceans. Mountain ranges seemed to be no more than the crinkles and creases in that paper, while the clouds looked to be no more than cotton candy spread over it.

  Lu Hai joined Ah Quan in front of the monitor. He showed him both the area of his home village and Beijing. Ah Quan stood dumbfounded for many long minutes, before finally musing aloud. “I am certain that people think about things very differently up there ...”

  Three months later, primary construction of the China Sun had been completed. On the eve of the Chinese National Holiday, the reflector was turned toward the night Earth, its gigantic light spot aimed straight at the capital region. That night Ah Quan gathered together with hundreds of thousands in Tiananmen Square to watch this magnificent sunrise: In the western night sky a gleaming star suddenly lit up and rapidly began to brighten. Around this star a ring of blue began to spread in the sky. As the China Sun bloomed to its full strength, half the sky was bathed in blue. At its edges the clear blue was gradually bleeding into yellow, reddish-orange and deep p
urple, just as if a circular rainbow was spanning into existence around that circle of blue. The people would come to call this phenomenon the “Sunglow Wreathe”.

  By the time Ah Quan finally returned home it was already four o'clock. As he lay down on his cramped bunk, the China Sun was still shining through his window, illuminating the real estate ads tacked to the wall above his pillow.

  Ah Quan tore them all down.

  In the celestial light of the China Sun, the ideal they represented, the ideal that had so incessantly excited him in the past years, just seemed suddenly inane and trivial.

  Two months later, the director of the cleaning company came to find Ah Quan. He told him that Director General Lu wanted to see him in the China Sun Control Center. Ah Quan had not seen Lu Hai since he had finished his work on the Aerospace Tower.

  “Your sun is truly magnificent!” he cheered when he met Lu Hai in his office at the Aerospace Tower. Ah Quan's praise came straight from the heart.

  “It is everyone’s sun! And in some ways, especially yours; at the moment it cannot be seen here because it is bringing snow to your parent's village!” Lu Hai told him, smiling broadly.

  Ah Quan nodded. “My parents sent me a letter and they told me that they really are having a lot of snow this winter!”

  “However, the China Sun has encountered a major problem,” Lu Hai said, pointing to a screen behind him. On it Ah Quan could see two images of the light spot. “These two pictures were taken at the same location, two months apart. Can you spot the difference?” he asked as Ah Quan began examining the images.

  “The left is somewhat brighter,” he said after short scrutiny.

  “You see, one can make out the reduction in reflectivity with the naked eye after just two months,” Lu Hai said, nodding.

  “How can that be? Is that large mirror collecting dust?” Ah Quan asked.

  “There is no dust in space, but there is the solar wind and that brings a stream of particles being blown from the Sun. With time, it will cause changes on the reflective surface of the China Sun. Already the mirror surface has been covered by a very fine film of solar mist and that has reduced the Sun's reflectivity. In a year, it will look as if the reflective surface has been covered in vapor. Then, the China Sun will become a China Moon, no longer capable of carrying out its mission,” Lu Hai explained.

  “Didn't you take that into consideration?” Ah Quan queried, somewhat incredulous.

  “Of course we thought of it,” Lu Hai paused, looking straight at him. “We still need to talk about you: Do you want to change jobs?” he finally asked.

  “Change jobs? What can I do?” Ah Quan returned the question with a good deal of confusion.

  “You can continue doing high altitude cleaning work, but you will work here,” Lu Hai answered enigmatically.

  Ah Quan looked about, completely unsure what to make of Lu Hai's offer. “Isn't your building freshly cleaned? Do you still want to hire a specialized high altitude cleaner for it?”

  “No; at least, not for cleaning buildings. It's about cleaning the China Sun,” Lu Hai finally said, unraveling the mystery of his request.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Fifth Goal in Life: Fly to the China Sun and clean it.

  It was the first meeting of the leaders of the China Sun Project Operations Department in regards to the cleaning of the reflector. Lu Hai introduced everyone to Ah Quan and explained his job to them. He had barely finished when someone asked about Ah Quan's academic vita. In response, Ah Quan honestly told them that he had attended primary school and that for only three years.

  “But I am literate and can read without problems,” Ah Quan told the gathered department leaders.

  A burst of laughter immediately erupted.

  “Director General Lu, is this some kind of joke?” someone shouted angrily.

  Lu Hai's response was calm and measured. “This is no joke. A team of thirty cleaners would take half a year to clear the entire China Sun; that is assuming that they were to work around the clock, without break. So in fact, we will need at least sixty to ninety cleaners working in shifts. If the Chinese Aerospace Labor Protection laws are passed, we will probably need even more people to comply with its shift regulations; maybe as many as a hundred-twenty or even a hundred-fifty. We can hardly hire a hundred-fifty astronauts with doctorates and three-thousand jet fighter flight hours for the job, can we?”

  “Isn't there a huge, excluded middle here? Higher education has become quite widespread in the city these days, so why send an illiterate into space?” a skeptic immediately protested.

  “I am not illiterate!” Ah Quan snapped back at the man, but his adversary paid him no heed and continued, pointedly focused only on Lu Hai.

  “This is utterly unworthy of this great project!” he claimed.

  The other attendees nodded in approval.

  Lu Hai also nodded. “I expected that you would react in this way. Other than this cleaner, everyone here has a doctorate. So fine; let us see the quality of your cleaning work! Please follow me.”

  More than a dozen baffled and uncomprehending attendees followed Lu Hai out of the meeting room. He led them to an elevator. Three types of elevator had been installed in this building, being fast, medium and slow. Lu Hai took them into a fast elevator. With breathtaking speed they shot up, straight to the top of the building.

  As they ascended, someone excitedly said, “This is my first time in this elevator. It feels just like riding a rocket!”

  As the elevator arrived, Lu Hai looked at all of them and intoned, “We have just entered geosynchronous orbit. We will all now experience what it is like to clean the China Sun.”

  Every single one of them looked at him in amazement.

  After disembarking, they nonetheless all followed Lu Hai up the tight metal stairs. Finally, they reached a small gate and went through it on to the open roof of the building. They walked straight into glaring sunlight and strong winds, but the blue sky above seemed a little clearer than usual. The group of highly qualified university graduates looked all around, absorbing the panorama of Beijing that stretched out around them. Only then did they notice that there was already a small group on the roof, waiting for them. Ah Quan gasped in surprise as he realized that it was his company's director and his spider-man colleagues!

  “Now, everyone will be given the chance to experience Ah Quan's work,” Lu Hai said, his voice loud and authoritative.

  As he finished, the spider-men walked up, one to every attendee, and fixed each one with a safety harness. Then they led them to the edge of the roof and carefully helped them onto the small seat boards, the same kind that the spider-men used to hang off the side of buildings. The boards were slowly lowered, and then left suspended, about 200 feet from the top of the building. As the attendees descended down the glass wall, loud screams of unadulterated terror began to rise from among their ranks.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, let us proceed with our meeting's agenda!” Lu Hai shouted down at the attendees, bending over the side of the building.

  “You bastard! Quick, pull us up!!” came the fear-tinged yells in response.

  “All you have to do is clean one pane of glass, then you can come back up!” Lu Hai declared.

  They could not do it.

  All that the people below managed to do was to hold on for their dear lives, clinging to their safety harnesses or the ropes holding their boards. They did not dare budge, not even willing to release a single hand to pick up one of the mops or to open a detergent bucket. Every day, these aerospace officials worked on blueprints and documents that dealt with objects thousands of miles off the ground; but here, experiencing a mere quarter-mile firsthand, they were all scared witless.

  Lu Hai, who had been crouching at the edge of the buildings, stood up and walked to a spot where an Air Force colonel was hanging below. Of the more than a dozen attendees of the meeting, he was the only one who had maintained his cool. In fact, he had started to clean t
he glass with steady and controlled movements. What surprised Ah Quan most, however, was that he was working with both his hands, leaving him without a hold on the harness, and even though his board was caught in strong winds, he did not allow it to sway. Only veteran spider-men could do what he was accomplishing on his first attempt. Ah Quan's surprise quickly turned to comprehension when he recognized the man; more than 10 years ago he had been an astronaut on one of the Shenzhou missions.

  “Colonel Zhang, frankly speaking, would you say that the work before you is easier than a space walk in orbit?” Lu Hai asked the man.

  “In terms of the requisite physical ability and skill, I would say it is very similar,” the former astronaut replied.

  “Well said!” Lu Hai expounded: “Studies at the Aerospace Training Center have shown that in the context of ergonomics, cleaning high-rises and cleaning a reflective surface in space are, for the most part, identical. Both are dangerous tasks that require the worker to constantly maintain his balance; the work on both is repetitive and monotonous, yet very physically demanding. Both also require the worker to be constantly alert, as even the slightest oversight can lead to an accident. For an astronaut such accidents can lead to him drifting off-course, losing an instrument or materials, or even to a malfunction of his life-support system. For spider-men, they can end with them colliding with the glass, dropping their tools or detergent, or even to them slipping out of a faulty safety harness. When we consider the required finesse, the physical requirements and, in particular, the psychological requirements, then we can say that spider-men are fully qualified to work as mirror cleaners.”

  The former astronaut lifted his head and with a nod said, “It reminds me of that old truism: For an oil merchant to pour oil into a can through the square hole of a coin requires the same degree of excellence as it takes for a general to hit a bulls-eye with an arrow. The only difference is the person doing it.”