Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

Huahua said angrily, “You shameless pack of pissants. You’ve trampled over every rule of the games! You’ve wrecked their very foundation!”

Davey laughed. “What rules? Fun is the only rule!”

“Your adults were a bunch of scoundrels to leave you with strategic nuclear weapons.”

“Hey now, they only left a few behind carelessly. Our stockpiles were huge. You eat a big piece of bread and you’re bound to drop some crumbs. Besides, don’t you wonder if there might be any crumbs remaining from the Russians’ big hunk of bread?”

“That’s the crucial thing,” Lü Gang whispered into Huahua’s ear. “They won’t dare try a nuclear strike against Russia since they’re afraid of retaliation. With us, they don’t have that worry.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff if you don’t have to,” Davey said over the radio.

“We’re not sweating it,” Specs said coldly. “In this insane world, there’s no point to getting mad on moral grounds. It’s too tiring.”

“Right, right. Listen to him, Huahua. He has the right attitude. That’s how to keep it fun.” Then Davey cut off the connection.

The Chinese children immediately contacted other Antarctic Games participants to set up an alliance to punish the American children for breaking the rules, but the outcome was a disappointment.

Huahua and Specs called Russia first. Ilyukhin said perfunctorily, “We have learned of what has befallen your country and express our deepest sympathies.”

Huahua said, “This abominable violation deserves to be punished. If this vile precedent is allowed to stand, they will move on to drop atom bombs on other countries’ bases, or even on land outside of Antarctica! Your country ought to stage a nuclear counterattack on the violator’s base. You may be the only one left with that capability.”

“Of course such conduct deserves punishment,” Ilyukhin replied. “I expect that all countries are hoping you will stage a nuclear counterattack to preserve the integrity of the rules. My country also desires to punish the wrongdoer, but Russia has no nuclear weapons. Our venerable fathers and mothers fired all the nuclear bombs into the sun.”

The talk with the EU was even more depressing. The incumbent rotating president, Prime Minister Green of Britain, asked innocently, “Why would your country believe that we have retained nuclear weapons? This is shameless libel of a united Europe. Inform us of your current position and we will deliver a memo of protest.”

Huahua set down the phone. “Those little punks just want to play it safe on the mountaintop and watch the tigers fight it out.”

“Very wise,” Specs said, nodding.

Communications were provisionally restored between the command center and the Chinese base, and an unbroken stream of frightening news began coming over the radio. G Group Army, stationed at the base, suffered a devastating blow; total casualties were still unknown, but it had likely lost all combat effectiveness. The majority of base installations had been destroyed. Fortunately, as the geographic scale of the games had grown, the other two group armies formerly stationed on base had moved over a hundred kilometers away, preserving two-thirds of the Chinese children’s Antarctic forces. However, the port they had spent two months building had been seriously damaged in the nuclear strike, posing a major supply problem for these forces.

An emergency meeting of high command convened in a hastily raised tent at the foot of the hill. Just before it began, Huahua said he had to step out for a moment.

“This is urgent!” Lü Gang reminded him.

“I’ll only be five minutes,” Huahua said. Then he went outside.

About half a minute later, Specs left the tent, too, and seeing Huahua lying motionless on a patch of snow staring straight up at the heavens, he went over and sat down beside him. The dust had settled and a warm, gentle breeze blew through the air, bringing with it the moisture of melting snow and the scent of damp earth. In the sky over the ocean, the expanding mushroom cloud had lost its shape, but had grown even larger, and it was hard to tell where it ended and the clouds began. The other half of the sky was painted by the rays of dawn over the opposite horizon.

“I really can’t keep it up anymore,” Huahua said.

“No one’s doing any better,” Specs said lightly.

“It’s not the same. This is impossible!”

“Think of yourself as a computer. You’re just cold hardware, and reality is just data. Accept your input and perform your calculations. That’s how you keep it up.”

“Is that the strategy you’ve used since the supernova?”

“I did that before the supernova. It’s not a strategy. It’s my nature.”

“But I don’t have that nature.”

“Getting out is easy. Just run out in any direction without taking anything with you. Keep going and you’ll get lost pretty quick, and before long you’ll freeze or starve to death in the Antarctic wilderness.”

“Not a bad idea. I just don’t want to be a deserter, is all.”

“Then be a computer.”

Huahua propped himself up and looked at Specs. “Do you really think that everything can be accomplished purely through cold deduction and calculation?”

“Yes. Hiding behind what you imagine to be intuition is actually a complicated set of calculations and deductions. So complicated as to be imperceptible. We need only two things right now: calm, and more calm.”

Huahua got up and patted the snow off his back. “Let’s go back.”

Specs caught him. “Think carefully about what you’re going to say.”

Huahua gave Specs a thin smile under the morning light. “I’ve thought about it. For a computer, our current situation is really nothing more than a simple arithmetic problem.”

The children were silent for a long time at the start of the meeting, still dazed by the nosedive their already grim situation had taken.

The commander of D Group Army broke the silence by pounding on the table and shouting, “Were our adults really that honest? Why didn’t they leave us any?”

The other children echoed similar sentiments:

“That’s right. Why not even a few?”

“They left us empty-handed!”

“If we had just one, the situation would be completely different!”

“Right! Even one would be good.”

“That’s enough,” Lü Gang said. “Stop it with the useless talk.” Then he turned to Huahua. “What are we going to do?”

Huahua stood up and said, “The two group armies in the interior need to evacuate immediately to save their strength in the event of a further nuclear strike by the enemy.”

Lü Gang stood up and began to pace briskly. “You ought to know what that means. If all of our assembled and combat-ready land forces stand down and evacuate, it will take a long time to reassemble them. We’ll lose all combat capacity on Antarctica!”

Specs said, “It’s like reformatting our hard drive.”

Lü Gang nodded. “That’s exactly what it is.”

“But I agree with Huahua. Evacuate immediately,” Specs said firmly.

Bowing his head, Huahua said, “There’s no other way. If the group armies remain in a dense, combat-ready form, the enemy’s next large-scale nuclear strike could wipe out the entire army.”

Lü Gang said, “But if they divide up into a large number of small forces distributed across a wide area, it will be hard to guarantee supplies. They may not survive very long.”

B Group Army commander said, “We’ll take things as they come. Now is not the time for overthinking. The danger grows with every second we stay here. Give the order!”