Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

Their experience of Suspension meant that the children were deeply impressed by Digital Domain and the quantum computer that had rescued them from their fear and loneliness, and their dependence on the network remained.

In the toil of the Inertia period, the network became a refuge for the children, a place to escape reality, and they spent their all-too-brief stretches of free time online. Since the country operated atop the foundation of Digital Domain, most of the children’s work and schooling also involved the network, and thus it gradually became a second reality for them, a virtual reality where they were far happier than in the real world.

A large number of virtual communities had been set up in Digital Domain, and practically every child old enough to go online was a member of one or more of them. Deep wounds left by the Epoch Clock running out and the Suspension gave the children an instinctive fear of being alone, and they relied on groups to shake off their loneliness at being so abruptly abandoned by the adults. It was the same online. The larger the group, the more easily it attracted new members, and this led to the massive expansion of a few of them through mergers and absorptions of other, smaller-scale communities. One community, “New World,” grew the fastest. By the time the three young leaders began their inspection tour, it claimed a membership of more than fifty million.

The child leaders had not paid much attention to the growth of online society. Huahua devoted his scant free time to online gaming, so he was most familiar with New World’s massively multiplayer games. One popular war game set in the Three Kingdoms period had more than ten million players on each of two opposing teams, and in the giant battles, cavalry buried the ground in a brown deluge. A naval war game had fleets of hundreds of thousands of ships, and in one air-combat game, every engagement involved millions of fighter planes that choked the air like a dust cloud.

Upon their return from the inspection tour, the shape of Digital Domain had fundamentally changed. New World, which had now grown to an astonishing size, around 200 million members, was the only community left. That is, practically every child in the country old enough to go online was a member.

Specs took this development very seriously. “This means we have a virtual country overlaid on top of the real one. It’s extraordinary. We should set up a committee specifically to track the online country and begin to engage it.”

But things developed far faster than they anticipated, and by the third day after their return, Big Quantum said to them, “New World’s membership want a dialogue with the country’s three top leaders.”

Huahua asked, “Which members?”

“All of them.”

“Aren’t there nearly two hundred million of them? What kind of dialogue? Chat room? BBS? Email?”

“Those primitive methods are unworkable when you’re talking about so many people, but an entirely new form of dialogue, the assembly, has been developed in Digital Domain.”

“An assembly? Sure, I can make a speech to two hundred million people, but how can they talk to me? Through representatives?”

“No. The assembly will allow all two hundred million people to speak to you.”

Huahua burst out laughing. “That’s going to be noisy.”

Specs said, “It’s probably not that straightforward.” Then he asked Big Quantum, “Is there one of these assembly conversations every day?”

“That’s right. Today, the members are discussing having a conversation with you. The assembly begins at twenty-three thirty.”

“Why so late?”

“Most children don’t get off work or school till then, so that’s when they have time to go online.”

“Let’s take a look first as ordinary guests,” Specs suggested to Huahua and Xiaomeng. They agreed, and called over the engineer in charge of Digital Domain, a boy named Pan Yu who had won gold at the Information Olympics back in the adult era and now was the leading domestic authority on computers. They explained their goal, and he sent someone to fetch four virtual reality helmets.

Specs lowered his eyebrows. “I’ll get dizzy as soon as I put it on.”

Pan Yu said, “New World has two modes: image and VR. It only looks real in VR mode.”

In the hall at the top of the NIT, the leadership was working late, some of them reviewing documents, some making phone calls, and some speaking with ministry heads who had come to make work reports, but they would all get off at 2300. By 2320, only the top three and Pan Yu were left. They put on their VR helmets, which were already plugged in.

At once the four children felt like they were suspended above a blue plaza, the Windows desktop, as it turned out, only three-dimensional, with its icons standing upright like statues. The mouse pointer flew across the plaza and clicked something, and then a window containing a crowd of animated little cartoon people arranged in orderly ranks rose up.

They heard Pan Yu’s voice: “You can design your own appearance in the community, but that’s a hassle so we’ll just use premade ones.”

And so they each selected a cartoon-character avatar, and were amused to see their three companions’ avatars floating beside them.

Pan Yu said, “The assembly is about to begin. We’ll go right there rather than try out anything else in the community.”

In the blink of an eye, they were in New World’s assembly space. Their first impression was that it was enormous and empty. Above them was a pure blue sky extending farther than they could see, and below them was flat, endless desert. The line NEW WORLD ASSEMBLYwas written in the sky in glowing letters that shone down on the vast desert like a row of suns. There was nothing else in the world.

“Where is everyone? Why is it empty?” Huahua asked. Indeed, apart from his three companions floating next to him, there was only sand and sky.

Pan Yu’s cartoon avatar opened its big eyes even wider in surprise. “What, you can’t see anyone?”

The three leaders looked about them, but could see no one.

Pan Yu seemed to realize something, and said, “Let’s go down.” He moved the mouse, and the four of them began descending toward the desert. Before long, the sand below them resolved into intricate structures, and then the three of them realized that every grain was a cartoon character. It impressed upon them the sheer scale of the number: the vast desert consisted of 200 million cartoon characters.

Most of the country’s children were here.

They continued to descend to the ocean of people and soon were in their midst, surrounded on all sides by cartoons. There seemed to be something in the air, black dots that had just appeared in the sky and were falling to earth. Two landed in their vicinity, two more cartoons, and they realized that children were still entering the area.

“Why are you still guests?” asked a cartoon next to them. He had no feet, but was supported by a flashing wheel. When he extended his long, thin arms, a head appeared on each palm, the same as the head on his neck. He juggled the three heads, replacing the one on his neck again and again. “Hurry up and log in as registered members. The national leaders are coming to talk to us, and as guests your words won’t be tabulated.” How he distinguished between guests and members they weren’t able to tell.

“That’s right,” said another nearby cartoon with a sniff. “Who’d have thought there would still be unregistered guests.”

“And too lazy to make a proper avatar. Selecting a ready-made—it’s indecent,” said another.

But they weren’t much more decent themselves. One of them may have been too lazy to make a proper body, and had connected two long legs directly to a head. It had no arms, and a pair of wings sprouted from its ears. The other was nothing but a head, a big egg floating half a meter above the ground, with a tiny, fast-spinning rotor poking out of its forehead.