Ken Liu - Broken Stars

I drain my cup.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lao Xu says. “Honestly, if you hadn’t come up with that idea, I bet Lao Wan would have failed even earlier.”

“But if they hadn’t made Buddhagram, maybe the Americans wouldn’t have found out about the stolen algorithm.”

“I’ve finally got it figured out. If what happened hadn’t happened, something else would have. That’s what fate means. Later, I heard that the labmate Y stole from was shot and killed in America. So now the patent case is in limbo.”

Lao Xu’s voice seems to drone on while time stands frozen. My gaze penetrates the slight crack between his cigarette-holding fingers, and the background of noisy, smoky, shouting, drinking patrons of the restaurant fades into the distance. I remember something, something so important that I’ve managed to forget it completely until now.

I thought everything was over, but it’s only starting.

After saying goodbye to Lao Xu, I return home and begin to search, turning everything in the house upside down. My wife, her belly protruding, asks me if I’ve had too much to drink.

“Have you seen a golden card with a picture of the Buddha on there?” I ask her. “There’s a toll-free number on the back.”

She looks at me pitifully, as though gazing at an abandoned Siberian husky, a breed known for its stupidity and difficulty in being trained. She turns away to continue her pregnancy yoga exercises.

In the end, I find it tucked away inside a fashion magazine in the bathroom. The page I open to happens to be the picture of a Vaseline-covered, nude starlet lounging among a pile of electronics. Each screen in the image reflects a part of her glistening body.

I dial the number and enter the VIP account number and security code. A familiar voice, sounding slightly tired, answers.

“Master Deta, it’s me! Chenwu!”

“Who?”

“Chenwu! Secular name Zhou Chongbo! Remember how you struck my shoulders three times and told me to go to your room at ten-oh-one to view the picture of the cosmic microwave background?”

“Er… you make it sound so odd. Yes, I do remember you. How’ve you been?”

“You were right! The problem is with the algorithm!” I take a deep breath and quickly recount the story as well as give him my guess. Someone is working really hard to prevent this algorithm from being put into wide application, even to the point of killing people.

The earpiece of the phone is silent for a long while, and then I hear another long sigh.

“You still don’t get it. Do you play games?”

“A long time ago. Do you mean arcade, handheld, or consoles?”

“Whatever. If your character attacks a big boss, the game’s algorithms usually summon all available forces to its defense, right?”

“You mean the NPCs?”

“That’s right.”

“But I didn’t do anything! All I did was to suggest a stupid fucking marketing plan!”

“You misunderstand.” Master Deta’s voice becomes low and somber, as though he’s about to lose his patience. “You’re not the player who’s attacking the boss. You’re just an NPC.”

“Wait a second! You are saying…” Suddenly my thoughts turn jumbled and slow, like a bowl of sticky rice porridge.

“I know it’s hard to accept, but it’s the truth. Someone, or maybe some group, has done things that threaten the entire program—the stability of our universe. And so the system, following designated routines, has invoked the NPCs to carry out its order to eliminate the threat and maintain the consistency of the universe.”

“But I did everything on my own! I just wanted to do my job and earn a living. I thought I was helping him.”

“All NPCs think like that.”

“So what should I do? Lao Xu wants me to go work for him. How do I know if this is… Are you there?”

Strange noises are coming out of the earpiece, as though a thousand insect legs are scrabbling against the microphone.

“When you are confused… hiss … the teacher helps… Enlightened… hiss … help yourself. All you have to do… hiss … and that’s it… hiss … Sorry, your VIP account balance is insufficient. Please refill your account and dial again. Sorry…”

“Fuck!” I hang up angrily.

“What’s wrong with you, screaming like that? If you frighten me and cause me to miscarry, are you going to assume the responsibility?” My wife’s voice drifts to me slowly from the bedroom.

In three seconds, I sort through my thoughts and decide to tell her everything. Of course, I do have to limit it to the parts she can understand.

“Tell Lao Xu that your wife is worried about earning good karma for the baby. She doesn’t want you to follow him and continue to do unethical work.”

I’m just about to argue with her when the phone rings again. Lao Xu.

“Have you made up your mind? USTC’s quantum lab is making rapid progress! Their machine is tackling the NP-completeness problem now. Once they’ve proved that P equals NP, do you realize what that means?”

I look at my wife. She places the edge of her palm against her throat and makes a slicing motion, and then she sticks her tongue out.

“Hello? You there? Do you know what that means—?” I hang up, and Lao Xu’s voice lingers in my ear.

Every program has bugs. In this universe, I’m pretty sure that my wife is one of them. Possibly the most fatal one.

I still remember the day when Lailai was born: rose-colored skin, his whole body smelling of milk. He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.

My wife, still weak from labor, asked me to come up with a good name. I agreed. But really, I was thinking: It makes no difference what he’s named.

I’m no hero. I’m just an NPC. To tell the truth, I’ve never believed that all this was my fault. I didn’t join Lao Xu; I didn’t come up with some outrageous idea that would have caused the whole project to fail; I didn’t prevent that stupid quantum computer from proving that P equals NP—even now I still don’t know what that fucking means.

If this is the reason that the universe is collapsing, then all I can say is that the Programmer is incompetent. Why regret destroying such a shitty world?

But I’m holding my baby son, his tiny fist enclosed in my hand, and all I want is for time to stop forever, right now.

I regret everything I’ve done, or maybe everything I haven’t done.

In these last few minutes, a scene from long ago appears in my mind: that guy wearing the army coat on the pedestrian overpass.

He’s staring at me and my wife, and like some stuck answering machine, he says, “The Quadrantid meteor shower will come on January 4. Don’t miss it….”

No one is going to miss this grand ceremony for going offline.

I play with my son, trying to make him laugh, or make any sort of expression. Suddenly, I see a reflection in his eyes, rapidly growing in size.

It’s the light coming from behind me.

Call me Stanley. I come from your future.

Let me begin with what’s already familiar to you, and by following the flow of the river of time, explore the diseases, both physical and mental, that have plagued the humanity of tomorrow, until the end of history.

It began with the iPad 3, with its Retina Display whose subpixel rendering technology achieved a resolution in excess of 300 PPI, higher than conventional print. The display quality of electronic books could finally compete with paper. Pundits hailed it as another Gutenberg revolution and predicted the death of the traditional print industry. Humanity was about to enter a new era of reading.