Ken Liu - Broken Stars

I looked at her helplessly. “Are you telling me to leave?”

“Well…” She smiled. “You can stay if you promise that everything we say from this point on is off the record.”

“I promise.”

“Swear by the name of your father.” She raised a hand solemnly.

I almost laughed. But I held up my hand and copied her. “I swear by the name of my father.”

She laughed. “I know you’ll keep your word, Ed. But I needed you to say it.”

“Why?”

“Although the future cannot be changed, I’m still terrified… ,” she said, handing me a steaming cup.

I could make no sense of her non sequitur. Sitting down, I tried to make myself comfortable and took a sip. The chai was sweet and just the right temperature. “It’s delicious.”

She smiled with satisfaction. “I know.”

“Since you can see the future, you must already know what I want to ask you.”

“True. But you should still ask the questions so that we can have a conversation.” She sat down and looked into my eyes. “It’s better to follow the custom.”

“Fine. Can you tell me how you tell the future?”

She took a sip from her cup. Instead of answering me directly, she asked, “Is this the first time we’ve met?”

“Of course not.”

“But I don’t remember ever seeing you.”

“You don’t?” I felt oddly disappointed. “Mark brought me here.”

“I don’t remember him at all,” she said. “I guess that means I’ll never see him again.”

I couldn’t make sense of this. “What?”

“I don’t know how to explain this—” She picked up my notepad. “All right, let’s suppose that this notebook represents a lifetime.”

I waited patiently while she collected her thoughts.

She flipped to the page with my interview questions. “This is today, right now, this moment.” Then she turned to the first page of the notepad. “This is the moment of birth, the past.”

I could see where she was going. She turned to the last page. “This is death, the future. Most people fill the notepad from front to back. Every page after today is blank. It’s possible to recall the past, but impossible to know the future.” She flipped the notepad over so that the stiff backing was on top. “I’m different. I fill my notepad from the back to the front. My memories are filled with the future. For me, remembering what will happen tomorrow is like you recalling what happened yesterday.”

She paused and took another sip of chai.

I stared at the notepad, stunned. I couldn’t accept her explanation.

“Your predictions are… your memories?”

“That’s right. All the predictions are in my mind. The closer to the present, the clearer they become. Similarly, the past that you recall is the unknown future for me.”

“Are you saying”—I licked my lips—“that you’ve forgotten the past?”

“Yes.”

“Then…” I struggled to find a logical flaw in her words. “If you’ve forgotten what has happened, how can you possibly converse with me? How can you even remember what I asked you?”

“The immediate past and future are both deducible from the present,” she said. “Look, you can predict that my soup will be ready soon; you can foretell where you’ll sleep tonight; you know that I will answer your questions; indeed, sometimes you can even anticipate my answers. That is also how I can guess what you’ve just asked me.”

“But… but your answers are beyond my guesses.” I held up my hands and gestured wildly to show my confusion and amazement.

She continued in a patient tone. “You have to understand that as the only one living against the stream of time among you, I must dedicate myself to the art of how to converse with you. I have to deduce and guess what you said every moment of every conversation. You don’t need to learn a comparable skill.”

“So you really don’t remember the last time we met?”

“I don’t remember that we’ve seen each other, but I know we will meet again.”

Oddly, her answer calmed me. She didn’t ask me to stay for dinner, and so I missed the sweet, fragrant pumpkin soup. I wrote the profile at home. It was easy with her predrafted answers.

I closed my laptop and gave Mark a call.

He sounded pleased. “You saw her again?”

I told him about our meeting, including the source of her predictions. Mark grew excited. “She predicts the future from her memories? Fascinating!”

I didn’t share his enthusiasm. “Don’t you understand? If what she told me is true, then the future is unchangeable. Everything we do is wasted effort. How can you not despair at such a world?”

“So what are you going to do?” That was always Mark’s style: teaching by asking us to find the answers ourselves.

“I choose to not believe in such a world.”

After that, I visited her often, and grew more familiar with her home. She always greeted me like an old friend, which made me happy, as I knew that meant we would continue to see each other. I rarely asked her about the future, not even my own—so long as I got to see her, what did it matter?

Though she lived alone, she didn’t know how to take care of herself well. One weekend, I helped her rearrange things to be more comfortable, and she gladly accepted my help. To thank me, she cooked a meal of my favorite dishes: chicken curry, stir-fried broccoli and beans, and plenty of white rice. I wolfed down everything, sat down on the sofa, and picked up the cup of chai she specifically brewed to my taste. She sat next to me and leaned her head on my shoulder like a cat.

My mistake was taking this gesture as a hint.

Before my hands had even moved, she jerked away. Her gaze was slightly frightened. “Why?”

She never asked questions like “What are you trying to do?” She knew.

“I thought you wanted me,” I said.

“No!” My heart clenched at the certainty in her tone. “I meant… I want you, but not the way you’re thinking.”

“Why?” We seemed to be always asking each other this question.

“Because we won’t be together. It’s impossible. Because—” She stopped, her eyes wide open. Then she went on, emphasizing each syllable. “I. Can’t. We. Can’t.”

A surge of helpless anger. “You have to give me a reason.”

“Ed…” She looked at me and did not continue.

“Why not?” I wouldn’t let it go.

She sighed and sat back on the sofa. “Because… because I can’t remember the past. Don’t you understand? I’m seeing you for the first time in my life right now.”

A perpetual first meeting.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. There was a light in her eyes I had not seen before—unfamiliarity.

She frowned. “Why are you here?”

It was the same expression she had worn years ago when she asked the same question about Mark.

“I came to see you.” My voice faded, panic growing in the pit of my stomach.

“Why did you come to see me?” she asked, her voice guarded.

“To talk… To have tea.”

“You will never come again,” she said with absolute certainty.

I tried to contact her several times more, but she wouldn’t return emails or phone calls. Even her Weibo stopped being updated. I went to her apartment, but there was a FOR RENT sign. I realized that I had so many questions to ask her, though, as she had said, every question had a predictable answer. Sometimes I hallucinated conversing with her, only to realize that I was talking to myself.

My days were a chaotic, unmemorable mess. I asked the editor in chief whether he knew where she was, but he wouldn’t answer me, only looking at me with a pitying expression. Finally, I had to go back to the university to find Mark.