Ken Liu - Broken Stars

“Who are you?” Despite his astonishment, he still noticed the caller’s odd phrasing. The caller said “after all these years,” but the wedding had only taken place this morning. And since Wen’s wedding date had been decided on only a week ago, it was impossible for anyone to know about it long before then.

The distant voice went on. “You have a habit. Whenever you’re upset, you curl your left big toe and dig the nail into the bottom of your shoe. When you got home earlier, you found that your toenail had snapped but you didn’t even notice the pain. Your toenails are getting long though. They’ve worn holes into your socks. You haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

“Who in the world is this?” He was now frightened.

“I’m you. I’m calling from the year 2123. It’s not easy connecting to your mobile network from this time. The signal degradation through the time-space interface is severe. If you can’t hear me, let me know and I’ll try again.”

He knew it wasn’t a joke. He had known from the first moment that the voice didn’t belong to this world. He clutched the phone tightly and stared at the buildings washed by the cold, pure moonlight, as though the whole city had frozen to listen to their conversation. Yet he could think of nothing to say as the caller waited patiently. Faint background noises filled his ear.

“How… could I live to be so old?” he asked, just to break the silence.

“Twenty years from your time, genetic therapies will be invented to extend human lifespan to around two centuries. I’m still technically middle-aged, though I feel ancient.”

“Can you explain the process in more detail?”

“No. I can’t even give you a simple overview. I have to ensure that you receive as little information about the future as possible, to prevent you from inappropriate behaviors that would change the course of history.”

“Then why did you get in touch with me in the first place?”

“For the mission that we have to accomplish together. Having lived for so long, I can tell you a secret about life: once you realize how insignificant the individual is in the vastness of space-time, you can face anything. I didn’t call you to talk about your personal life, so I need you to let go of the pain and face the mission. Listen! What do you hear?”

He strained to catch the background noises through the receiver. The faint sounds resolved into splashes and plops, and he tried to reconstruct an image from them. Strange flowers bloomed in the darkness; a giant glacier cracked in a desolate sea, and zigzagging seams extended into the depths of the crystalline mass like lightning bolts…

“You’re hearing waves crashing against buildings. I’m on the eighth floor of Jin Mao Tower. The surface of the sea is right under the window.”

“Shanghai has been flooded?”

“That’s right. She was the last of the coastal cities to fall. The dikes were high and durable, but the sea ultimately inundated the interior and flooded back in…. Can you imagine what I’m seeing? No, it’s nothing like Venice. The undulating water between the buildings is covered with garbage and flotsam, as if all the refuse accumulated in this city over two centuries had become afloat. The moon is full tonight, just like where and when you are. There are no lights in the city, but my moon is not nearly as bright as yours—the atmosphere is far too polluted. The sea mirrors the moonlight onto the skeletons of the skyscrapers. The great sphere at the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower flickers with silvery streaks reflected from the waves, as if everything is about to collapse.”

“How much has the sea risen?”

“The polar ice caps are gone. In the span of half a century, the sea rose by about twenty meters. Three hundred million coastal inhabitants had to move inland. Only desolation is left here, while the inland regions are gripped by political and social chaos. The economy is nearing total collapse…. Our mission is to prevent all of this.”

“Do you think we can play God?”

“Mere mortals doing what needed to be done a hundred years earlier would have the same effect as divine intervention now. If, in your time, the whole world had stopped using all fossil fuels—including coal, petroleum, and natural gas—global warming would have stopped, and this disaster could have been prevented.”

“That seems impossible.” After he said this, his self from more than a hundred years in the future remained silent for a long time. So he added, “To stop the use of fossil fuels, you need to contact people from even earlier.”

He sensed a smile through the phone. “Do you imagine I can stop the Industrial Revolution in its tracks?”

“But what you’re asking of us now is even more impossible. The world will fall apart if you eliminate all coal, gas, and oil for a single week.”

“Actually, our models show that it wouldn’t even take that long. But there are other ways. Remember that I’m speaking to you from the future. Think. We’re smart people.”

He thought of one possibility. “Give us an advanced energy technology. Something environmentally friendly that won’t contribute to climate change. The technology has to be able to satisfy existing energy needs while also being much cheaper than fossil fuels. If you give us that, it won’t be ten years before the market will force all fossil fuels out of contention.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Encouraged, he went on. “Then teach us how to achieve controlled nuclear fusion.”

“You vastly underestimate the difficulties. We still haven’t achieved any breakthroughs in that field. There are fusion reactor power plants, but they aren’t even as competitive in the market as fission plants in your time. Also, fusion reactors require the extraction of fuel from seawater, a process that may lead to more environmental damage. We can’t give you controlled fusion, but we can give you solar power.”

“Solar power? What do you mean exactly?”

“Collecting the sun’s power from the surface of the Earth.”

“With what?”

“Monocrystalline silicon, the same material you use in your time.”

“Oh, come on! You literally just made me facepalm. I thought you had something real for a minute there…. Actually, do you still say ‘facepalm’?”

“Sure we do. Old-timers like me have kept lots of expressions like that alive. Anyway, our monocrystalline silicon solar cells have far higher conversion efficiency.”

“Even if you achieved one hundred percent efficiency it would be irrelevant. How much solar power reaches each square meter on the Earth’s surface? There’s no way that a few solar panels can satisfy the energy needs of contemporary society. Have you been hallucinating that your youth was spent in some preindustrial farmers’ paradise?”

He heard his future self laugh. “Now that you mention it, the technology really does evoke shades of agrarian nostalgia.”

“‘Evoke shades of agrarian nostalgia’? When did I start to talk like a coffee shop writer?”

“Heh, the technology really is called the silicon plow.”

“What?”

“The silicon plow. Silicon is the most abundant element on Earth, and you can find it everywhere in sand or soil. A silicon plow cuts furrows in the earth just like a regular plow, but it extracts the silicon out of the soil and refines it into monocrystalline silicon. The land it processes turns into solar cells.”

“What… what does a silicon plow look like?”

“Like a combine harvester. To start it, you need an external energy source, but then it relies on the power provided by the solar cells it leaves behind. With this technology, you can turn the whole Taklamakan Desert into a solar power plant.”