Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

The event was vetoed.

“Antarctica has turned into a private club for major powers. What’s the point of us even being here?” Lê Sâm Lâm grumbled.

Yagüe ignored him and said to everyone else, “Our meeting has already achieved some stunning results. Do any other countries have suggestions for new games?” His gaze halted on Ōnishi, far off at the other end of the table, and he called over to him, “Prime Minister Ōnishi, you’ve been silent throughout the proceedings. I recall that at the first UN session, you conveyed Japan’s intense desire to gain the right to speak at the UN, but now that Japan is a permanent member state of the World Games, you’ve gone silent.”

Ōnishi made a slight bow, and then said slowly, “I’ll propose a game none of you have thought of yet.”

“Let’s hear it,” Davey said, and everyone looked expectantly at the Japanese prime minister.

“Cold weapons.”

The children all looked at each other. Someone asked, “Cold weapons? What are those?”

“Swords.” He said nothing beyond that terse reply, but sat there motionless as a statue.

“Swords? None of us have any,” Scott said, somewhat confused.

“I do,” the Japanese kid said, and then from beneath the table took out a long military sword and eased it out of its scabbard. The children gasped at its icy glint. The sword was so thin that its cutting edge seemed almost threadlike. Ōnishi stroked the surface gently with a finger. “It’s crafted from the finest carbon alloy, and is sharper than anything.” Then he blew across the blade, and the children heard a sustained buzz from the sword. “This is a two-layered blade; when one edge gets dull, the other is exposed, so it remains sharp forever without honing.” He placed the sword gently onto the table, where it dazzled the children with its cool light and sent chill wind down their spines. “We can provide ten thousand of these for the games.”

“That’s a little too… barbaric,” said Davey timidly, and the other children nodded along.

Ōnishi didn’t bat an eyelid. “Mr. President, and the rest of you, you all should be ashamed of your weak nerves,” he said, brandishing the weapon. “It’s the foundation of all of the games you all have already suggested, the soul of war. Humanity’s very first toy.”

“Very well. Include a cold-weapons event,” Ilyukhin said.

“Except this kind of military sword… isn’t really necessary, is it?” Davey asked, averting his gaze from the sword on the table, as if the glare hurt his eyes.

“Then rifle bayonets,” Marshal Zavyalova said.

The children’s enthusiasm had vanished. They all stared at the sword in silence, as if they had just awakened from sleepwalking and were trying to figure out what they were in the process of doing.

“Anyone else have a suggestion?” Yagüe asked.

No one answered. There was no sound in the hall, as if the sword had taken away their very souls.

“Okay then. We should get ready to start the games.”

One week later, the opening ceremony of the first Olympic Games of the Supernova Era was held on the broad plain of Marie Byrd Land.

More than three hundred thousand children took part in the opening ceremony, standing in a huge dense crowd. In the distance, the low-hanging sun of this half of the year was mostly below the horizon now, with only a tiny arc shedding a ruddy glow across the mottled monochrome landscape, glinting off the packed mass of helmets. In the dark blue of the sky a few silver stars had begun to twinkle.

The ceremony itself was simple. First there was a flag-raising, in which all of the participating countries dispatched representative soldiers to carry the five-ring Olympic flag around the venue, and then that symbol of peace was run up a tall flagpole over the Supernova Era battlefield. Child soldiers fired into the air in a salute that rippled across the crowd, gunfire trailing off in one area only to be picked up in another, like the rise and fall of ocean waves. On a platform beneath the flagpole, IOC president Yagüe stood waving for what seemed like ages until the shots finally quieted down and he could make his speech. As he opened up his notes, a kid next to him passed him a helmet. He did not immediately understand why, and shoved it aside in annoyance without noticing that the world leaders and other besuited VIPs on the platform were wearing helmets. He pressed on with his speech.

“Children of the new world, welcome to the first Olympic Games of the Supernova Era—”

Just then he heard a burst of rat-a-tat noises, like a shower of hailstones, and after a moment of confusion, he realized it was the sound of bullets hitting helmets and the ground, celebratory gunfire returning to earth. Now he grasped the helmet’s purpose, but before he had sense enough to reach for it, he received a sharp crack on the noggin. A bullet in free fall raised a welt on a scar from a previous head injury, one due to falling glass at the UN Secretariat a few months before. It probably was only a 5.56 × 45 mm NATO round, since if it had been a 7.62 × 39 mm round from one of the Chinese or Russian children’s older AK-47s, it might have knocked him out. Amid laughter, he put on his helmet, fighting back the pain, and reached a hand inside to massage his head. As bullets rained down, he said in a loud voice:

“Children of the new world, welcome to the first Olympic Games of the Supernova Era. This is a war games Olympics, a fun Olympics, a thrilling Olympics, and a real Olympics! Children, the boredom of the Common Era has come to a close, and human civilization has returned to its childhood, to a happy, uncivilized age. We have left the dreary ground and returned to the freedom of the trees, we have shrugged off the clothes of hypocrisy and grown luxurious downy coats. Children, the new motto of the Olympic Games is: ‘Take part! Sharper, Fiercer, Deadlier.’ Let the world go crazy, children! Next, I’ll describe the events.”

Yagüe unfolded that creased piece of notepaper and began reading: “After negotiations by all member states, the events of the first Olympic Games of the Supernova Era have been decided upon, and fall into three categories: land, sea, and air events.

“In the land-events category: Tank battles, tank versus infantry (heavy weapons), tank versus infantry (without heavy weapons), artillery battles (five-kilometer large-caliber guns, fifteen-kilometer rockets, self-propelled mobile rockets, and one-kilometer mortars), infantry battles (machine guns), infantry battles (grenades), infantry battles (cold weapons), guided-missile battles (short-range, midrange, cruise missile, ICBM), land mines.

“In the sea-events category: destroyer battles, submarine battles.

“In the air-events category: fighter-jet battles, attack-helicopter battles.

“Gold, silver, and bronze medals will be awarded in all events.

“Mixed categories, such as air versus land, or sea versus air, were discussed, but due to the complexity of organization and judging, they were not formally included.

“Now, will the representatives of the world’s children taking part in the games take the oath.”

The representatives, a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, a lieutenant in the Russian Navy, and a lieutenant in the Chinese Army, took the oath as follows:

“I swear first to abide by the rules that govern the games, and to accept all penalties if I break them; and second, to do my best to keep the games thrilling and fun, and to show my opponents no shred of mercy.”

Cheers and gunfire rang out on the plain.

“All armed forces to the battlefield!”

For more than two hours, infantry and armored divisions from every country swarmed past the flagpole, and at the tail end, tanks, armored vehicles, and mobile rocket launchers mixed with crowds of people into a chaotic flood of iron whose dust clouds blotted out the sky. On the sea in the distance, the countries’ ships fired en masse, their guns flashing brilliant white in the blue-black twilight, shaking the ground with their noise and light.