David Brin - Existence

“Mother has changed clothes. Now face.”

He pulled Mei Ling to the back door, in the blind spot between store and alley, and motioned for her to bend over. Drawing out a pen of some kind, he used his left hand to grip the back of her neck, holding her head still with uncanny strength as he drew across her cheeks and forehead with rapid strokes. When he let go, Mei Ling sagged back with a sigh that was equal parts anger and wounded pride.

“How dare you-” she began. Then she stopped, upon glimpsing herself in the changing area mirror. He had drawn just a dozen or so lines. Their effect was bizarre and clownish-when looked at straight on. But who viewed other people that way, out on the street? When Mei Ling diverted her gaze, even slightly, the effect was astounding. She saw a woman at least twenty years older, with gaunt cheeks and a much lower brow… a pronounced chin, a snub nose and eyes closer together.

“Facial recog won’t recog.” The boy nodded approvingly and held out his hand for her to take. “Next stop now… a safe place for mothers.”

After another hour spent dodging in and out of buildings, across upper-story bridges, through warehouses and workshops and university classrooms, they found themselves standing in front of a place that Mei Ling had always dreamed of visiting someday, gazing at pure wonder with her own eyes.

“It… it is magnificent,” she sighed, shifting Xiao En’s sling so that he could see. The baby stopped fussing, joining her in staring at the marvelous portal to another world whose only boundary was that of imagination.

The Shanghai Universe of Disney and the Monkey King loomed straight ahead across a broad plaza, its artificial mountain lined with cave-rides and fabulous fortresses, with fabled beasts and impossible forests that were always shrouded in glorious, perfumed mists. Here one might find the sort of fantastic things that you only saw on wild layers of virspace, but made palpable as stone! A mix of whimsy and solidity that could only have come into being through wondrous blendings of art, science, engineering, and astronomical amounts of cash.

In the foreground, just a hundred meters ahead, loomed those famous, wide-welcoming gates of shimmering Viridium that were topped by giant, holomechanical characters who preened and posed with theatrical exaggeration. She recognized Snow White and Pocahontas and beautiful Princess Chang’e. There was wise old Xuanzang, accompanied on his epic westward journey by the mischievous Zhu Bajie and his brothers, the Three Little Pigs. A flying elephant with flapping ears flew joyous circles in an overhead dance with the wondrous dragon-horse. Below, the fabled boy Ma Liang waved his magic brush and made mere drawings come to life!

And everyone’s favorite, Sun Wukong, the Monkey himself, capered up and down a tower decked with pennants that seemed as colorful as they were impossibly long, playing catch-me-if-you-can with lumbering King Kong.

All of those familiar figures lined the storied battlements. But greatest of all, the central figure topping the main gate, was a friendly-faced icon with immense black-round ears and a winning smile of confident-destiny, flanked on either side by active sculptures of the two real-life visionaries who imagined so much wonder and gave such dreams to the world: Uncle Walt and Scholar Wu . That pair-one of them dressed in an old-fashioned Western suit and the other in Ming dynasty robes-seemed to look right at Mei Ling, beckoning her personally, with grins and open arms.

Xiao En cooed with delight and Mei Ling felt herself drawn… except that the vast plaza of concrete and iridescent tile seemed so dauntingly open and exposed. No place on Earth was under scrutiny by more cameras than this.

Surely they are watching this place.

But there was another tug on her hand.

Yi Ming did not bother to speak, this time. His urgent meaning was clear. If they were going to cross, it had to be quickly. Now.

Mei Ling’s sense of danger mounted as they headed straight for the portal. Suddenly her new clothes and ai-fooling makeup seemed wholly inadequate, especially since there were so few people around!

“Where is everybody?” she wondered, aloud, mostly to hear someone speak words. “I know it is a weekday. But there should be more tourists, children, visitors…”

Indeed, only a few hundred seemed to be crossing the barren plaza, coming to or from the underground train station and parking garage. The sparseness seemed eerie, since it was still early in the afternoon. Though it feels like days since I last slept in our little shorestead. To be honest she missed the solitude. The constant lapping of Huangpu tides against her home’s rotting timbers.

“All indoors,” Yi Ming explained. “More than two-thirds of all the normalpeople. Twelve billion, three hundred and forty two million eyes, feeding impressions to twelve billion, three hundred and forty two million cerebral hemispheres, locked inside half that many skulls”-he ran out of breath and had to inhale-“all watching space rocks that rock space. All curious about living forever. Even cobblies want to know.”

Mei Ling only grasped part of it, but the explanation sufficed. The whole world-or nearly-had gone into immersion-mode, watching whatever was going on in America. The interview with the Artifact aliens. An event meriting worldwide greedy interest was happening-perhaps even something wonderful. Yet Mei Ling wished it had never been found and that Xiang Bin had left his own discovery in the bottom of the muddy estuary.

“So many spacey stones from stoned space,” the boy intoned. He always seemed to be experimenting with possible rhymes or songs. It must be one of those unbearably strong compulsions that drove so many young people with the disorder. Only now he also sounded sorrowful, empathizing with lost mineral messengers, perhaps more than he would with flesh and blood.

“Those buried at sea can’t see! Thousands, trapped underground, try to make a sound! Many more in space can barely spark a trace. Others, locked in vaults and graves, hoping to be saved-so sad. So bored! They chose their fate; now it’s too late.”

He seemed genuinely moved by the tragedy of it all.

“Wait a minute!” She halted, abruptly. “Let me get this straight. You mean there are many of the shining, speaking stones?” Her heart whirled with hope. If it were true, then perhaps no one would be desperate, any longer, to seek her husband.

“Yes. Many -numerous, multitudinous… Shining -luminous numinous… Stones -crystalline serpentine olivine…” He tugged at her and skipped along gaily. “But only a rare-pair speak !”

Hurrying to keep up, Mei Ling wondered. Only two speak? The one in Washington… and Bin’s? Then powerful people will still hunt for him. Or use me to help find him. Or threaten or coerce him.

But… how could the child know?

A screeching of brakes. A backward glance confirmed her worst fears. Several black vans had just pulled up onto the plaza, as close to the pedestrian barriers as they dared, and men piled out. One of them pointed and they started straight toward her at a rapid walk.

No sense in pretending, anymore, to be strolling along-a nanny escorting two children to the park. Now Mei Ling and Yi Ming ran! Though she wondered, What will we do when we get there?

Despite there being few visitors, the line at the ticket window was way too long. Even if she could afford the steep entrance fee, those men would arrive long before she could pay and then reach the gate. That assumed the Disney guards would not simply stop her when the pursuers shouted. After all, they had to be from some state agency. How else could they be acting like this in broad daylight? In China ?