Jade Prophet

by Sam Abraham

  And so, they sent out word that anyone who gathered eight times their weight in wood would gain automatic entry into Heaven. And when Anmei stood on the roof of the hotel, and preached that creating the floating city was akin to Moses splitting the Red Sea, the Jade volunteered by the thousands. Anmei had to admit that she liked the idea. The people here had come from nothing, and would return to dust, and the idea of land for them sounded righteous to her ears, for they were meek and perfectly suited to inherit the earth.

  She said as much to Xie as they went out with two of his men, boating from island to island, searching for any wood they could find. All the surfaces of the world seemed toxic to him as he listened to her, the rusty green camphor laurels, the silver trout swimming in the Floodzone, the red cheeks of the fishermen reeling in their lines. Only the silent water seemed pure.

  In some places the water was disturbed by little more than protruding roofs or rebar outcroppings or swaths of lotus flowers. But on one island, Xie and Anmei found a golden pagoda rising from the water, and around it preachers had gathered on a boardwalk of alabaster stones. It seemed that the Jade were not the only sect to seek sanctuary in the Floodzone.

  Xie moored their skiff and led the small band across the island. Close to the wharf, a cult known as the Word of Angels wandered among makeshift gravestones with their headdresses and red silk robes, kneeling and praying. They shouted exotic promises at Xie and Anmei, imploring them to accept their truths and be saved, warning them not to trust the word of those Neoshiah, or Green Earth sect madmen on the other side of the island, who were waiting to lead innocents astray.

  Anmei stopped to speak to them, as was her way, yearning to know what had drawn them to this place of zealots. Most of them, she found, had simply been foolish enough to want a better life in Shanghai, yet had been unable to get papers to live or work on the island. Several told Anmei that if she were a seeker of truth, she should travel to the Caihong Gardens at the seawall. For it was there that the greatest clerics in the Floodzone taught their wisdom to this New Jerusalem.

  Xie was uncomfortable as Anmei spoke to the evangelists. They were filthy to him, unworthy of Lady Li and her miracles. To him, their cawing faiths were as flimsy as their clothes, proselytizing Allah or Buddha or any number of old gods and goddesses, demons and sages. Their only common thread seemed to be that they all tried to shout louder than one another. He thought of a day, months earlier, when a girl stood on a soap box and started a riot not with her words, but with her deeds, with the miracle of broken bonds. He thought of the miracle of the flood, defying nature before his very eyes, and a wave of relief came into him that his prophet was made of more than flimsy stories.

  “I suppose this is what we look like to you,” he said to Anmei as they walked to the back of the island, where the sound of competing sermons faded, and planks of driftwood lay strewn about. He ordered his sergeants to collect the wood, and thought about the first time Anmei had seen a Jade ritual. “Obnoxious, aren’t we? Thinking we know the will of God. How do we know His will is not to drown the whole world, and be rid of our lunacy?”

  “If that were God’s will,” Anmei said, “he would not have saved Noah, or sent the rainbow.”

  “Perhaps,” Xie mused, gazing out to the watery horizon. “Lady Li would say otherwise.”

  “Xie, I want you to listen to me,” Anmei said, grabbing Xie’s arm and forcing him to turn to her. “Christ can hear your prayers directly. If longshui is made by human hands, then Li is nothing more than a demagogue. A false messiah. Can’t you see that you don’t need her?” The question slipped from her lips with more heart than she had meant.

  “You sound so sure,” Xie said defensively, “that there is nothing miraculous about Li. Yet through the wonders that she brought to the Jade, I have found the courage to know myself more deeply than I ever dreamed. Through her Communion and teaching, I have become godly, transformed. So which is more pure, true knowledge of a false God or false faith in a true God? Who decides truth? Are miracles that I see and feel not a stronger argument for truth than any old book or blind faith?”

  Anmei searched for the right words. “Knowledge at its core is just belief, as is faith. But unlike knowledge, faith is intentionally blind because nothing deceives us more than our eyes and ears. We see only what is on the surface, we hear only what we desire. When con artists tell us lies, only the spirit and the heart can tell us what is true. What do you feel in your heart?”

  Xie looked offshore at the tile tops of drowned hutong alleys. They pretended to wave in the cloudy water, though the shifting was but an illusion perpetrated by the current. “I feel purpose,” he said. “And you? What miracles does faith create, that your heart is pure enough to judge?”

  “I have faith not because of miracles,” she said in quiet honesty, “but in spite of them. In our world of excess, wonders can be bought and sold like cattle. The island of Shanghai is a wonder, I hear. A wonder in that engineers made its porous base impermeable, and built the seawall so that it might be saved even as the land around it was submerged. What is so special about this island that we are not worthy to live on it?” She saw Xie grow pensive. “Those living west of the flood don’t need wonders. We need ways to thrive together in harmony. Faith in Christ and His values – compassion and humility - offers a common salvation that will never abandon us, which is more than I can say for Li. Ask yourself: is she really the second coming, or simply preying on your desperation?”

  “Even if Li Aizhu betrays the Jade,” Xie replied, “I will not do the same. How can you preach about waiting patiently for judgment when an entire city of moneylenders is left to do evil?”

  “I didn’t come here to make sure the Jade get medicine,” Anmei admitted, suddenly unable to look anywhere but at his cold cybernetic eye, unable to stop her hand from touching his strong shoulder. “I keep thinking about you, printing rice for thousands. You save them, but who will save you? Even if Aizhu does return,” Anmei practically spat, “she will only manipulate you again. Don’t you want more than that? Don’t you want a home? A family?”

  Swept away by her need to save him, before she could stop herself Anmei lifted her chin and softly kissed Xie. Caught off-guard by her infatuation, Xie took her shoulders and gently pushed her away.

  “I had a family once,” he interrupted. “God took them from me, so that my heart might be an empty vessel to receive the body of Chang’e. Li helped me see that all religions are barren words and false idols. There is only the work, and the water to save us.” Without waiting for her reply, he followed his sergeants back to where their raft was moored, picking up every splinter of driftwood he could carry.

  Chapter 46 – Sheng (升)

  Upward Into An Empty City

  “After we rescued the professor,” Zoe said, sipping tapioca tea, “we took the first flight back to Shanghai Island.” She fell quiet, looking out on the golden roof of Jing’an Temple, catching the sun through the Shanghai clouds. “Then we landed, and I barely had time to say bye to Yang before that asshole Ginger shoved him into a car.”

  Zoe shook her head in disbelief. From a couch in the coffee bar in a posh hotel, she could see across to green Jing’an Park, with its lily pond and tea houses. It was a patch of calm in the Puxi metropolis, surrounded by selfdrives blurring by on neon roads. Holos floated over the elevated highway, guiding drivers west to industrial parks and Hongqiao Station, or east to the Bund and Pudong. Zoe looked out to Pudong, where the shadow of the Tiger’s Den rose into the sky. “I can’t believe they left me at the airport,” she said.

  Eli took her hand. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” he said.

  “It was unbelievable,” she said, slurping gelatinous tapioca to remind herself that she was back in 22nd-century civilization. “The Jade live in shacks around the longshui factory. They mobbed Li when she returned, dancing around her.”

  Eli nodded. “Did Ginger say when we could see Yang?”

  “They w
ere going to meet the mayor,” Zoe said. “I think Yang is going to work for him.”

  Now it was Eli’s turn to stare out the window. “So it’s over,” he said, watching ant-sized people around the temple far below, wondering if any of them had answers.

  “I like you, Eli,” Zoe said, laying a hand on his knee. “But you need to let me in. Let me help.”

  Her touch brought him back. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, remembering his confident smile. “It’s shaping up to be a nice day.”

  They took the elevator down below the hotel into the rendidao, the underground tunnels connecting towers in this part of Puxi. Eli took Zoe’s hand and led her through near field arcades, where holos of women in floral dresses and men in silk suits floated before them, calling them by name and selling them everything. Eli’s credit was linked to his holobeads, so of course the sales gods knew he had just bought this Texan girl boba, just as they knew he had two one-way tickets to Los Angeles for just after the Spring Festival. Are you ready for your trip, Mr. Warner? a grandmotherly holo asked him. You know you hate flying without levzolpidem and noise-canceling holobeads. Fortunately, I can recommend a fabulous boutique that the Mayor himself uses.

  “Fucking arcade,” Zoe said, forcing a laugh. It had overwhelmed her when she first arrived, but now she managed to ignore the ghostly salesholos and weave around the hundreds of rush hour scramblers through the rendidao: teenagers with rainbow hair and tourists gawking at jewelry and panhandlers with missing limbs and businessmen shouting at holos only they could see. She followed Eli into a megamall spanning several city blocks of the Xuhui District, in the former French Concession.

  But there was no corner of privacy in the mall either. Bright halogen light lit endless kiosks with brands made in Ethiopian sweatshops, sold by desperate nobodies on behalf of billionaires. Everywhere around them, normal, everyday people swarmed their way into food courts and dressing rooms. And these were just a tiny fraction of the millions willing to sell everything to move to Shanghai, to breathe as part of it and feel its unrelenting heartbeat. That it was an island only forced real estate prices higher and created more penthouse oceanfront views. After all, this town whispered promises of velvet empires and street urchins finding fame and astronauts striking gold and artists reinventing love. So they came from far and wide, ten thousand times the number of the Jade, with one common dream.

  They dreamt of money.

  For those who were poor, steaming alley dumplings could make them more than in a dying rice paddy or a desert solar field. Just enough money, they hoped, for their kids to learn math and work on the Spaceline. And as for the rich! Well, it was the rich who had made this town what it was in the first place.

  “Where are you going?” Zoe said, hurrying to catch up with Eli as he rushed through the crowd.

  Eli forced himself to focus. There were microdrones everywhere. Shadows, listening. Then an idea struck him. “Outside,” he said. Zoe shot him a skeptical look. “It’ll be fun,” he said, hardly believing his own words.

  They left the mall and strolled under the dome, walking down streets with artisanal boutiques. The former French Concession here was green, with parks sprawling under transparent canopies, pastry shops, purebred puppies and Bengali divas. More than ever, it all smelled to Eli of cheap plastic heartache. He felt relieved when the dome ended and they were forced to leave.

  At the street exit, red flashing ideograms warned them that pollution levels were carcinogenic. Eli and Zoe strapped on their polymer ventilating masks as they pushed their way out to the road. November chill hit them instantly, sneaking under their jackets and into their bones, and the noise was deafening as the roar of hydrocycles echoed off office towers.

  Eli shielded his eyes from the glare. “The last time I was outdoors here, I was eight years old,” he mused. “Come on, there’s a market not far from here.”

  They walked for ten blocks before they found a pocket of the city where the towers dropped away. An old housing complex was teeming with open air market stalls. There were no pollution warning systems here, and people wore only flimsy cloth masks if they wore them at all. Grocery stalls stretched along the ground floor, since the working poor could not afford the makers that built food for almost everyone else. Melons and cucumbers and bok choy sat in bins with paper price tags. Chickens and rabbits shivered in cages as fat patrons selected that evening’s dinner. Outside, men missing teeth smoked cigarettes and talked politics as they watched their children play.

  Eli led Zoe past the grocery into a dusty noodle hut. He sat at a small wooden table still sticky from the last customer. The walls were covered in paper with scrawling characters describing the menu in succulent terms that Eli was quite sure were not possible to cook in whatever sty of a kitchen sweltered in back. But he was just as sure that there was also no one here worth bugging with microdrones. Hesitantly, Zoe sat with him.

  “Fuyuan!” he shouted, raising his hand, and a dumpy woman with a skeptical look on her face approached. Eli looked at Zoe. “Want anything?” he said.

  “What are we doing here?” Zoe said, watching people in worn clothing shovel noodles into their mouths. Every so often one would stare back, daring to imagine what a white guy and such a pretty, high class Chinese girl wanted in the rustic part of town.

  “I’ll just get you what I’m having,” Eli said. “I ate Shanghai noodles like this all the time as a kid. Let’s see if these guys have good eats.” After he ordered for two he turned to her sharp eyes. He tried to hold his cool, but his voice shook a little as he said, “You should really leave.”

  “Didn’t you just order?” Zoe said. “You drag me a kilometer from the nearest metro stop and then you tell me to get lost?”

  She started to rise but Eli pulled her back down into her chair. He leaned in and whispered, “No, I mean you should leave China.”

  “What?” Then her scientific mind saw his omission. “Why wouldn’t you come with me?”

  Eli shook his head. “There’s nothing for me without this deal. I have to figure out a way to salvage things.” He saw a girl watching him with wide eyes. “Look around, Zoe. What do you see?”

  Zoe scanned the room and shrugged. “A restaurant? Stop fishing, Warner. It’s not polite.”

  He shrugged. “Without money – a lot of money – this is what life is. No more nice hotels with views of the Spaceline. No luxurious spa days with champagne. It’s scraping by, maybe eating at dirty restaurants for special occasions.”

  “I don’t feel like I’ve been scraping,” Zoe said with a huff. “And life isn’t just about money.” She took his hands in hers and glued her gaze to his baby blue eyes. “What about the thrill of discovery or making the world a better place? What about love?”

  Eli smiled and slipped his hands back. “You know, my father is a doctor. He came here with my mom to work with the poor. It was a mission for them. That’s why they were here when I was born. And my dad, for all his education and good intentions, was paid a local salary. He said he didn’t mind, that the good deed of helping people was its own reward. When we moved back to the States, we couldn’t afford a house. When my mom got sick, we couldn’t afford the cost of medicine. Can you imagine? A doctor not able to get medicine for his own wife? After I paid my own way through college, I swore I would do anything to avoid the same cages.”

  “We aren’t poor, Eli,” Zoe chided, trying to find words for what was in her heart. “I’m sorry your deal didn’t pan out, I really am. But you and I will never be desperate, like the Jade in Anqing. You can always find a career at another company. My research will wrap up, and I’ll land a good job. No matter how much we complain, we have no concept of what it means to be destitute. We might not be rich, but we could have everything that really matters.” Then she laughed. “I’m not trying to get ahead of things, but, um, hypothetically, if you came back to the States, do you think you could be happy? With me, I mean?”

  Eli smiled politely. “Our food is h
ere,” he said. The dumpy waitress had returned with two bowls of steaming Shanghai noodles with greens and whitish meat of indeterminate animal origin. He dumped chili flakes into the bowl and pinched a bunch of noodles with his chopsticks, slurping them with gusto. “Not bad!” he said, and skewered a piece of the strange meat, eyeing it carefully before chomping down. “The pork is pretty good too. How do you like it?”

  Zoe nodded, her mouth full of noodles. “Tasty,” she agreed. “Bit of a kick to it.”

  “Goes to show, these noodle shacks still have the best deals.”

  When Eli had cleaned his bowl and Zoe had eaten her fill, they sat in silence, looking at each other. “You never answered my question,” she finally said.

  “Go back to Texas, Zoe,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to stay here. Now that Yang has reneged on the deal, we know too much for his new employer’s taste. But I have an idea. Yang was my main contact, but he’s mentioned this other fellow, Mr. Lao. Maybe I can get in touch with him. Give me two weeks and if I can’t figure something out I’ll meet you back in the States after the Spring Festival. But I have to warn you, I might be crashing on your couch.”

  Zoe laughed. “I’m sure we could find you a comfier place to sleep. But if you’re staying, I’m staying too. We’ll get through this together.”

  Eli shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I know better than to argue with you.”

  “That’s one lesson that’s sure to make you very happy,” she said. Then she had a thought, raising an eyebrow. “Why don’t we get out of here? I have a very comfortable couch at my flat in Pudong.” Eli nodded and went for his wallet, but Zoe put a hand on his wrist. “It’s on me,” she said.

  As they left the restaurant, neither noticed the slim girl pretending to check melons at the grocery next door. With her porcelain skin, long black hair, polymer pants and tank top, she looked like any normal Shanghainese on the island. But she noticed them. His blond hair was hard to miss.