Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

“If we wait until we’re dead, it’ll be too late,” the bureau chief said. “We ought to plan for the worst case. The time to think about this is now.”

The division head nodded. “This is humanity’s final work of art, and also its greatest work of art. For an artist, what can be more profound than to join in its creation?”

“Fucking, actually…. Much more,” the long-haired artist said, waving the bottle. “Tombstones are for your descendants to pay homage to. We’ll have no descendants, but we’ll still erect a fucking tomb?”

“Pay attention to the name. It’s a monument,” the division head corrected solemnly. Laughing, he said to Yan Dong, “However, the idea he put forth is very good: He proposed that everyone in the world donate a tooth. Those teeth can be used to create a gigantic tablet. Carving a word on each tooth is sufficient to engrave the most detailed history of human civilization on the tablet.” He pointed at a model that looked like a white pyramid.

“This is blasphemy against humanity,” a bald-headed artist shouted. “The worth of humanity lies in its brains, but he wants to commemorate us with our teeth!”

The long-haired artist took another swig from his bottle. “Teeth…. Teeth are easy to preserve.”

“The vast majority of people are still alive!” Yan Dong repeated solemnly.

“But for how long?” the long-haired artist said. As he asked this question, his enunciation suddenly became precise. “Water no longer falls from the sky. The rivers have dried. Our crops have utterly failed for three years now. Ninety percent of the factories have stopped production. The remaining food and water, how long can that sustain us?”

“You heap of waste.” The bald-headed artist pointed at the bureau chief. “Bustling around for five years and you still can’t bring even one block of ice back from space.”

The bureau chief laughed off the bald-headed artist’s criticism. “It’s not that simple. Given current technology, forcing down one block of ice from orbit isn’t hard. Forcing down one hundred, up to one thousand blocks of ice is doable. But forcing back all two hundred thousand blocks of ice orbiting the Earth, that’s another matter completely. If we use conventional techniques, a rocket engine could slow a block of ice enough that it would fall back into the atmosphere. That would mean building a large number of reusable high-power engines, then sending them into space. That’s a massive-scale engineering project. Given our current technology level and what resources we’ve stockpiled, there are many insurmountable obstacles. For example, in order to save the Earth’s ecosystem, if we start now, we’d need to force down half the blocks of ice within four years, an average of twenty-five thousand per year. The weight of rocket fuel required would be greater than the amount of gasoline humanity used in one year during the Oceaned Days! Except it isn’t gasoline. It’s liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, dinitrogen tetroxide, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, and so on. They need over a hundred times more energy and natural resources to produce than gasoline. Just this one thing makes the entire plan impossible.”

The long-haired artist nodded. “In other words, doomsday is not far away.”

The bureau chief said, “No, not necessarily. We can still adopt some nonconventional techniques. There is still hope. While we’re working on this, though, we must still plan for the worst.”

“This is exactly why I came,” Yan Dong said.

“To plan for the worst?” the long-haired artist asked.

“No, because there’s still hope.” She turned to the bureau chief. “It doesn’t matter why you brought me here. I came for my own purpose.” She pointed to her bulky travel bag. “Please take me to the Ocean Recovery Division.”

“What can you do in the Ocean Recovery Division? They’re all scientists and engineers there,” the bald-headed artist wondered.

“I’m a research fellow in applied optics.” Yan Dong’s gaze swept past the artists. “Besides daydreaming along with you, I can also do some practical things.”

After Yan Dong insisted, the bureau chief brought her to the Ocean Recovery Division. The mood here was completely different from the Monument Division. Everyone was tense, working on their computers. A drinking fountain stood in the middle of the office. They could take a drink whenever they wanted. This was treatment worthy of kings. But considering that the hope of the world rested on the people in this room, it wasn’t so surprising.

When Yan Dong saw the Ocean Recovery Division’s lead engineer, she told her, “I’ve brought a plan for reclaiming the ice blocks.”

As she spoke, she opened her travel bag. She took out a white tube about as thick as an arm, followed by a cylinder about a meter long. Yan Dong walked to a window that faced the sun. She stuck the cylinder out the window, then shook it back and forth. The cylinder opened like an umbrella. Its concave side was plated with a mirror coating. That turned it into something like a parabolic reflector for a solar stove. Next, Yan Dong pushed the tube through a small hole at the bottom of the paraboloid, then adjusted the reflector so that it focused sunlight at the end of the tube. Immediately, the other end of the tube cast an eye-stabbing point of light on the floor. Because the tube lay flat on the floor, the point was an exaggerated oval.

Yan Dong said, “This uses the latest optical fiber to create a waveguide. There’s very little attenuation. Naturally, an actual system would be much larger than this. In space, a parabolic reflector only about twenty meters in diameter can create a point of light at the other end of the waveguide with a temperature of over three thousand degrees.”

Yan Dong looked around. Her demonstration hadn’t produced the reaction she’d expected. The engineers took a look, then returned to their computer screens, paying her no mind. It wasn’t until a stream of dark smoke rose from the point of light on the antistatic floor that the nearest person came over and said, “What did you do? I doubt it’s hot.”

At the same time, the person nudged back the waveguide, moving the light coming through the window away from the focal length of the parabolic reflector. Although the point was still on the floor, it immediately darkened and lost heat. Yan Dong was surprised at how adept the person was at adjusting the thing.

The lead engineer pointed at the waveguide. “Pack up your gear and drink some water. I heard you took the train. The one to here from Changchun is still running? You must be extremely thirsty.”

Yan Dong desperately wanted to explain her invention, but she truly was thirsty. Her throat burned and it was painful to speak.

“Very good. This is a really practical plan.” The lead engineer handed Yan Dong a glass of water.

Yan Dong drained the glass of water in one gulp. She looked blankly at the lead engineer. “Are you saying that someone has already thought of this?”

The lead engineer laughed. “Spending time with aliens has made you underestimate human intellect. In fact, from the moment the low-temperature artist sent the first block of ice into space, many people have come up with this plan. Afterward, there were lots of variants. For example, some used solar panels instead of reflectors. Some used wires and electric heating elements instead of waveguides. The advantage is that the equipment is easy to manufacture and transport. The disadvantage is the efficiency is not as high as waveguides. We’ve been researching this for five years now. The technology is already mature. The equipment we need has mostly been manufactured.”

“Then why haven’t you carried the plan out?”