Ken Liu - Broken Stars

“Radiation! What are you talking about?”

“The sun. Yes, you’ve succeeded. Geoelectric power grew even faster than the silicon plow, and by 2020, the geoelectricity extraction industry had outgrown the coal and oil industries combined. As it matured, the efficiency and cost of this technology couldn’t be matched even by the silicon plow, let alone fossil fuels. The world’s energy needs soon grew to be entirely dependent on geoelectricity. It was clean, cheap, and so perfect that many wondered how it had taken humanity thousands of years after the invention of the compass to finally think of drawing upon the giant dynamo beneath our feet. As the economy soared on the wings of this sustainable energy source, the environment also improved. Humanity believed that our civilization had finally achieved the dream of effortless growth, and the future would only get better.”

“And then?”

“At the beginning of this century, geoelectricity suddenly ran out. Compasses no longer pointed north. I’m sure you know that the Earth’s electric field is our planet’s shield. It deflects the solar wind and protects our atmosphere. But now, the Van Allen belts are gone, and the solar wind buffets the Earth like a petri dish placed under an ultraviolet light.”

He tried to speak, but only a croak emerged from his throat. He felt chills all over.

“This is only the start. Over the next three to five centuries, the solar wind will destroy the Earth’s atmosphere, boil away the ocean and all other surface water.”

Another inarticulate croak.

“We’ve finally achieved a breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, and together with the reconstructed oil and coal industries, humanity now possesses inexhaustible sources of energy. Most of the power we generate, however, is pumped into the Earth to restart the magnetic field. So far the results are not encouraging.”

“We have to fix it!”

“Yes, that’s right. You must delete both emails from the future.”

He turned to head back inside. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Just a minute. Once you delete them, history will change again, and our connection will break off.”

“Right. The world will return to its original timeline of fossil fuel dominance.”

“And you’ll go on with your life as before.”

“Please, tell me about our life after this moment.”

“I can’t. Telling you will change the future.”

“I understand that knowing the future will change it. But I still want to know a few things.”

“Sorry. I can’t.”

“How about just tell me if we’ll be living the life we wanted? Are we happy?”

“I can’t.”

“Will I get married? Kids? How many boys and girls?”

“I can’t.”

“After Wen, will I fall in love again?”

He thought his future self was going to refuse to answer again, but the voice remained silent. All he could hear was the hissing of the winds of time through the empty valley of more than a century dividing them. Finally, he heard the answer.

“Never again.”

“What? I won’t love again for more than a hundred years?”

“No. A life is not unlike the history of all of humanity. The choice presented to you the first time may also be the best, but there’s no way to know without traveling down other timelines.”

“So I’ll be alone all my life?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you…. Though loneliness is the human condition, still we must conduct our lives with grace and strive for joy. It’s time.”

Without another word, the call ended. His phone dinged, signaling a text. Attached to the message was a short video, which he copied to his computer to be able to see better.

A sea of flames dominated the screen. It took a while for him to understand that he was looking at the sky. The fiery lights weren’t from burning fire, but auroras that filled the firmament from horizon to horizon, generated by solar wind particles striking the atmosphere. Billowy red curtains convulsed across the vault of heaven like a mountain of snakes. The sky seemed to be made of some liquid, a terrifying sight.

There was a single building resembling a stack of spheres on the ground: the Oriental Pearl Tower. The mirrored surfaces reflected the fiery sea above, and the spheres themselves seemed to be made of flames. Closer to the camera stood a man dressed in a heavy protective suit whose surface was brightly reflective and smooth, like a man-shaped mirror. The heavenly fire was reflected in this man-mirror as well, and the flame snakes, distorted by the curved surfaces, appeared even more eerie. The entire scene flowed and shimmered as though the world had turned to molten lava. The man raised a hand toward the camera, saying hello and goodbye to the past at once.

The video ended.

Was that me?

Then he remembered that he had more important tasks. He deleted the emails and all attachments. Then, after a moment, he began to reformat the disk and zero out the sectors with multiple passes.

By the time the reformatting had completed, it was just another ordinary night. The man who had changed the course of human history three times in a single night but who in the end had changed nothing fell asleep in front of his computer.

Dawn brightened the eastern sky. The world began another ordinary day. Nothing had happened, at all.

Tang Fei (a pen name that should be treated as an indivisible unit) is a speculative fiction writer whose work has been featured in magazines in China such as Science Fiction World , Jiuzhou Fantasy , and Fantasy Old and New . She has written fantasy, science fiction, fairy tales, and wuxia (martial arts fantasy), but prefers to write in a way that straddles or stretches genre boundaries. She is also a genre critic, and her critical essays have been published in The Economic Observer .

A photographer and an avid traveler, Tang Fei enjoys wandering through new cities and connecting with people on unplanned adventures. If you ever meet her, ask her about the time she fell into a river in Japan.

In translation, her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld , Pathlight , Apex , and SQ Mag , among other places. More of her fiction can be found in Invisible Planets .

Like many of Tang Fei’s stories, “Broken Stars” isn’t easy to box into a genre. The world is uncanny and out-of-focus, and the characters inhabiting it have jagged edges and sharp spurs. At its heart is the darkness that is left after the stars have winked out.

If I really think about it, the stars did not arrange such a fate.

But the stars are broken, and so the definitive proof is gone. This moment is a vertex where time caves in: to the left is the past, to the right—

To the right should have been the future.

But the stars are broken.

Also, I met Zhang Xiaobo.

She didn’t bring an umbrella, though the weather forecast said it was going to rain. After dinner, as she passed by the shoe rack, she missed the umbrella that had been specifically set out for her.

A few other students were scattered along the sidewalk, gradually gathering into a trickle of school uniforms that crossed the road and entered the school. Tang Jiaming entered the lecture hall from the back, at the top of the tiered seats, just as the first bell for evening study hall rang.

Most of the seats under the fluorescent lamps were filled. It was the second semester of the year before graduation, and the high school had organized nightly cram sessions starting at seven for students who still had some potential of doing well on the college entrance examination. Out of the two hundred or so students in the class, only about thirty qualified for the cram sessions based on their mock exam scores. The rest went on with their regular classes during the day, and were packed into this lecture hall for self-directed study in the evenings.