Supernova Era

^{A NEW PRESIDENT}

Davey burst into the Oval Office in a panic, and then let out a long sigh. He picked at the frostbite patches on his face, the mark carried by most children who returned from Antarctica. The girl Benes was sitting in the high-backed presidential chair leisurely clipping her nails. When she saw Davey enter, she rolled her eyes and said, “Mr. Herman Davey, you’ve been impeached and have no authority to return to this office. And in fact, you don’t have any authority to be in the White House at all.”

Davey rubbed his temples and said, “I want to leave, but that pack of thugs out there want to kill me!”

“You deserve it. You screwed everything up. You’ve done a worse job than any president in US history.”

“You… you have no right to say that to me! Why are you sitting in the presidential chair? You think you can just ignore etiquette when I’m away?”

Benes looked up at the ceiling. “You’re the one who needs to pay attention to etiquette.”

Davey was about to explode when Vaughn came in and said, “What you probably don’t know is that Frances Benes was elected the second president of the United States of the Supernova Era.”

“What?” Davey exclaimed, staring at the blond-haired girl clipping her nails in that hallowed seat. He looked back at Vaughn, and then burst out laughing. “Don’t joke around. That idiot doesn’t even know how to count!” He chuckled.

Benes furiously smacked the table, but then held her hand to her mouth to soothe the pain. Then she pointed a finger at Davey and said sharply, “Shut your mouth or you’ll be charged with defaming the president!”

“You’ve got to be responsible to the republic!” Davey said, pointing at Vaughn.

“She’s the choice of all American children. The new president was selected in a fair election.”

Davey spat in Benes’s direction. “When we were off facing death in Antarctica, you were back here flirting with the media!”

“Slandering the president!” Benes shouted at Davey, opening her eyes wide, but then her face dissolved into a pleased smile. “Do you know why they voted for me? I look like Shirley Temple. That’s where I’ve got you beat. You may be handsome, but you don’t look like any movie star.”

“If those old black-and-white movies hadn’t been playing on TV all day, who would even remember Shirley Temple?”

“That was our campaign strategy!” Benes said with another sweet smile.

“The Democrats are blind.”

Vaughn said, “It’s actually fairly easy to understand. After the war games, the people needed someone more moderate to represent their will.”

Davey frowned in distaste. “And this Barbie doll can represent the will of America? Right now the whole country is consumed by the Antarctic failure. The country is going to slide back into violent games. The crisis facing the republic right now is far more frightening than the Antarctic war, since we could collapse at any moment. At this critical juncture, to put the American children in the hands of this—”

“Mr. Vaughn will find a solution for us,” Benes said with a nod in his direction.

Davey was stunned for a moment, but then nodded thoughtfully. “I get it. Mr. Vaughn is using us as tools to realize his ideas. The country and the world are his stage, and any individual is a puppet whose strings he can pull at will. Yes, that’s what he thinks….” Then he jumped to his feet in exasperation and pulled an object from his pocket: a full-lug snub-nosed revolver, which he leveled at Vaughn. He said, “You’re far too sinister and frightening. I should blast your brains open. I’ve been fed up with that head of yours for a long time.”

Benes yelped and reached for the alarm, but Vaughn stopped her with a gentle wave. “You’re not going to pull the trigger. If you do, you’re not walking out of this old house alive. You’re an exemplary American. In whatever you do, you act according to one iron law: Outputs always need to exceed inputs. That’s your fundamental weakness!”

Davey put away the gun. “Of course outputs should exceed inputs!”

“But that’s not the way to make history.”

“I’m not making history anymore. I’m tired of it!” Davey said, and bounded to the door, where he took one last look around the Oval Office, where so many of his dreams remained. Then he ran out alone.

Carrying a motorcycle helmet, Davey exited the White House by the back door. He found the Lincoln Town Car he had parked there and got inside. He put on the helmet, and then found a pair of sunglasses in the car and put those on. Then he started the engine and headed off. Just outside the White House a hundred children were gathered, looking to settle their score with him, but his car didn’t attract their attention and they let him pass.

He glanced out at the crowd as he did so and saw they had hung a banner:

Davey drove aimlessly around the capital. Very little of D.C.’s population was left, since the majority of children had moved in search of work to larger cities with denser concentrations of industry, so apart from the government it was practically a ghost town. It was past nine in the morning, but the city showed no signs of waking up. His surroundings were as silent as the dead of night, which only heightened the impression he had of the city: It was a tomb. He thought fondly of bustling New York. That’s where he came from, and that’s where he’d return.

The Lincoln was too flashy, he thought, and such a high-end thing no longer suited him. He parked it in a secluded spot by the Potomac River and from the trunk retrieved the FN Minimi light machine gun that Vaughn had given him. He checked the translucent plastic magazine; it was almost half full. He hefted the gun level and aimed it at the Lincoln a few meters away, and then ratatatat let fly a burst. The muzzle spurted flame three times, and the recoil dropped him back on his ass. He sat there staring at the car for a moment, and when nothing else happened, pulled himself up by the barrel, adjusted the gas valve to the fastest rate of fire, and again leveled the swaying gun. Again he fired at the car, the rapid reports echoing across the river, and again he fell back onto the ground. There was no reaction from the car. He stood up again, two round dirt stains on the butt of his jeans, and sprayed the car again, emptying the magazine. With a boom the Lincoln burst into flames and started smoking, and Davey crowed “Woohoo!” and bounded away, carrying the gun with him.

Benes finished clipping her nails and turned to plucking her eyebrows, using tweezers and a small mirror. Vaughn pointed to two buttons on the presidential desk, and said, “Lots of people are very curious about those buttons. The media has even speculated that they are tied to the fate of the nation, and if the president presses one, it will immediately contact all NATO countries. Press the other, and a nationwide war alert is issued, scrambling bombers and dispatching nuclear bombs from their silos… things like that.”

But in fact, one button called for coffee, and the other alerted housekeeping to clean the room. During the time she had spent with Vaughn, Benes had discovered that he was sometimes quite eager to talk to her. He proved a good conversationalist, although he held forth only on insignificant and nonessential topics, and deflected serious matters with practiced evasion.

She said to him, “I know my own strengths, and I don’t share the outside world’s misapprehensions about those two buttons. I’m not too clever, I know that, but I’m better than Davey’s reverse cleverness, at least.”

Vaughn nodded. “You’re certainly clever about that.”

“I’m riding on this horse of history but I’m not holding the reins. It can trot wherever it pleases. Not like Davey, clutching the reins and forcing it to the edge of a precipice.”

Vaughn nodded again. “That’s very wise.”

Benes set down her mirror and looked at Vaughn for a moment. “You’re clever. You can create history. But you need to give me most of the credit.”

“Not a problem,” Vaughn said. “I don’t have any interest in having my name in the history books.”

Benes gave him a playful smile. “I’ve noticed that. Otherwise you’d have been president already. But you still ought to say something to me when you want to make history, so I’m able to speak to Congress and the press.”

“That’s what I’m going to tell you now.”

“I’m listening,” Benes said with another smile, setting down her tweezers and mirror and commencing to paint her nails.

“The world will enter a period of brutal struggle for control. A redivision of land and resources. There’s no returning to the adults’ model of the world. The children’s world will operate on an entirely new concept, a new model that no one can foresee. But one thing is certain: If America wants to command the same position it did in the Common Era, or even if it wishes to survive at all, it must awaken its slumbering might!”

“That’s right. Strength is ours!” Benes said, shaking a fist.

“So, Madam President, do you know the source of America’s strength?”

“You mean it’s not aircraft carriers and spaceships?”

“No—” Here Vaughn shook his head meaningfully. “Those things are extraneous. Our strength took shape earlier, during the opening up of the West.”

“Oh, yeah! Those cowboys were so handsome!”

“They lived lives far less romantic than in the movies. In the Wild West they faced a constant threat of hunger and disease, and their lives were always in danger from attacking wildfires, wolf packs, and Native Americans. With just a horse and a revolver, they rode off smiling into a cruel world to forge the American miracle, pen the American epic, their strength drawn from a desire for hegemony over the new world.

“Those knights of the West were the true Americans; theirs was the true American spirit. That is where our strength derives. But where are those riders now? Before the supernova, our fathers and mothers hid themselves inside the hard shells of skyscrapers, under the impression that they had the world in their pocket. Ever since the purchase of Alaska and Hawaii, they no longer expanded into new territory, no longer dreamed of new conquests, but turned slow and lazy, and the fat on their bellies and necks grew thick. They turned numb, became fragile and sentimental, trembled uncontrollably at the slightest casualty in war, and wailed and agitated disgracefully outside the White House. Later, when a new generation saw the world as nothing more than a scrap of toilet paper, hippies and punks became the new symbols of America. Now in the new era, children have lost their way and anesthetize themselves through violent games in the streets.”

Benes asked soberly, “But how can America’s strength be awakened?”

“We need a new game.”

“What kind of game?”

Vaughn then uttered a sentence Benes had never heard him say before: “I don’t know.”

“No!” the girl president exclaimed. “You do know. You know everything! You’ve got to tell me!”

“I’ll think of it, but I need time. Right now I’m only certain of one thing: The new game will be, and can only be, the most imaginative and dangerous game in history, so I hope that you won’t be overly surprised when you hear what it is.”

“I won’t. Come on, think up something soon!”

“Leave me alone here for a while, and don’t let anyone come in. Including you,” Vaughn said, and waved her away.

The president made a silent exit. She headed straight for the basement, to the White House security control center crammed with monitors of all sizes, one of which had a direct view of the Oval Office. No president liked being under surveillance, so the system was only operable in special circumstances with the president’s express permission. The old equipment hadn’t been used in years, and it took the young special agents on duty in the basement quite a while to bring an image up on the screen. Vaughn was standing motionless in front of the huge world map in the office, lost in thought. In the cramped basement room, under the curious gaze of the other children, President Benes stared unblinking at the screen, like a child waiting long into the night on Christmas Eve for Santa to arrive with a sack of toys. One hour passed, then another… all through the afternoon, Vaughn stood there like a statue. Finally losing her patience, Benes turned to the kids on duty and ordered them to notify her immediately if Vaughn made any movements.

“Is he dangerous?” asked an agent with a big-bore revolver at his backside.

“Not to America.”

She had spent the previous day busy with various presidential duties and had not slept a wink the previous night. Now an acute drowsiness hit her, and without knowing it she slept the entire afternoon, waking up only after it was dark. She snatched up the phone and inquired about Vaughn’s status, but the kids on duty in the basement informed her that he had spent the entire day motionless in front of the map; during the entire time he had only murmured one thing to himself: “God, would that I had Wegener’s inspiration!”

Benes hurriedly called in a few advisors to study that statement. One advisor told her that Wegener was a geologist from the Common Era, a German. On one occasion, on his sickbed, bored out of his mind and staring at a map of the world, he suddenly realized that several continental borders matched, giving him an idea: Long ago the surface of the Earth might have had just one continent. It had subsequently been broken up by some unknown force, and the various pieces of the crust had drifted apart, forming the world of the present day. This was the beginning of Wegener’s epochal continental drift theory. There was, Benes realized, no mystery to Vaughn’s words; he was only aching to come up with a continental drift theory of international politics. And so she sent the advisors away and went back to sleep on the sofa.

When she next awoke it was after 1:00 A.M. She grabbed the phone and called the basement, and learned that the weird kid in the Oval Office was still standing motionless. “We wonder if maybe he died on his feet,” one of the special agents said. Benes had them transfer the feed to her room. A shaft of light from the Rose Nebula fell through the window and directly onto Vaughn, who appeared wraithlike with the indistinct map beyond him. She sighed, switched off the monitor, and went back to sleep.

She slept till it was light and she was awakened by the ringing of her phone.

“Madam President, the guy in the office wants to see you.”

Benes flew out the door, still in her pajamas, and raced to the door of the Oval Office, where Vaughn’s ghastly gaze was waiting for her.

“We have a new game, Madam President,” Vaughn said gravely.

“We do? Tell me!”

Vaughn held out his hands, each of which held an oddly shaped piece of paper. She snatched them eagerly to take a look, and then raised her head in confusion. They were two fragments that Vaughn had cut out of a world map: one was America, the other was China.

^{A VISIT}

In a small motorcade heading toward Capital Airport, Huahua sat in the lead vehicle with a bespectacled interpreter next to him. The minister of foreign affairs was in the car behind them, and the third held the US ambassador, an eleven-year-old boy named George Friedman who was the son of a former military attaché. A truck at the rear of the motorcade held an army band, and several of the band members were practicing on their instruments, squawking audibly even at this distance.

Two nights before, the Chinese children in the NIT had received an email from the US president. Its contents were simple:

When the motorcade reached the airport, a flashing silvery-white dot was already circling overhead. The children in the control tower signaled permission to land, and the dot rapidly increased in size. Ten minutes later, Air Force One touched down. Due to the young pilot’s limited technical abilities, the big metal object bounced back up again a few times before landing for good, and then traced a dangerous S curve right up to the end of the runway, where it finally stopped.

The hatch opened. A few small heads poked out and watched anxiously as the airstair was brought in from a few hundred meters away. Once it was in place, the first to exit was a pretty blond-haired girl whom Huahua recognized from TV news as the new president. Right behind her were a few senior officials he didn’t know. They crowded into each other, jostling into Benes so that she nearly tripped. She righted herself and turned back to them to shake a fist and shout a few words of warning, and they slowed down.

The president continued a graceful descent, keeping a clear picture in mind of the history she was making. At the two-thirds point, a gaggle of reporters with cameras strapped round their necks pushed their way out of the hatch and down the stairs, overtaking the officials. The fastest made it to the ground a step ahead of Benes and turned around to train his lens on her. She erupted into fury, bounded down the rest of the stairs to grab the photographer by the collar, and started shouting angrily at him.

The interpreter told Huahua, “The president says that she was supposed to descend first, so that she would be the first American to set foot in China in the Supernova Era. But the reporter stole it from her. The reporter is arguing that he only came down first so he could get a photo of her, but the president is calling him a jackass, and says that she made it very clear aboard the plane that no one was to go in front of her. They were already being privileged; when Nixon came to China he went down by himself, and when he was shaking hands with Zhou Enlai everyone else was still stuck on board. That reporter is the AP’s old pro in the White House and he’s furious. He’s saying, ‘Who the hell are you? You’ll be gone in four years, but we’ll still be in the White House!’ Now the president is saying, ‘Go to hell. I’ll still be there in four years. I’ll be there in eight. I’ll be there forever!’”

Now all the children had come down the stairs, and the argument had turned physical. The president extracted herself from the scrum and strode over to greet the Chinese children.

“I am overjoyed to meet you on the cusp of the rebirth of human history. Wow, your face is covered in frostbite scars. They’re medals of valor! Do you know that in America there are lots of special beauty salons now that give kids frostbite scars using dry ice? They do good business!” Benes said to Huahua through the translator.

“I wish I didn’t have these medals,” Huahua said. “They itch like crazy, and I think they’ll be that way every winter. I really don’t want to have to relive that time in Antarctica over and over. Our two countries suffered such immense trouble and loss due to the World Games.”

“That’s why we’re here. We have a new game!” Benes said with a smile and a bow. Then she looked into the distance. “Where’s the Great Wall?” And around her. “And the pandas?” Clearly she imagined that she would see the Great Wall as soon as she set foot in Chinese territory, and that pandas would be as common as dogs are in the US.

Then a thought struck her. Glancing about again, she asked, “Where’s Vaughn?”

It took a few kids shouting back at the plane for a while before Chester Vaughn emerged. He came down slowly, his arms cradling a thick book. “He’s always reading,” she said to Huahua. “He didn’t even realize we’d landed.”

Shaking his hand, Huahua glanced at the book. It was a volume of Mao Zedong’s commentary on the Twenty-Four Histories, a thread-bound Chinese edition.

Vaughn’s eyes were half closed, as if he were in a trance, and he took a deep breath. “It’s the air I’ve dreamed about,” he said.

“What?” Benes asked in wonder.

“The air of antiquity,” he said, practically inaudible to anyone but himself. Then he stood silently in place, detached, taking everything in.

^{NEW WORLD GAMES}

Warily, the children entered the solemn, mysterious hall. Deep red carpets, snow-white armchairs arranged into a large semicircle, and behind them elegant embroidered silk screens and a magnificent cloisonné vase the size of a person… all of it was spotless, and they passed through air so still it felt like swimming through the phantoms of history.

“Wow. This is China’s White House?” Benes asked softly. Behind her, two other American kids were carrying a roll of paper, a full two meters long, and they set it gingerly on the carpet as the Chinese children looked on curiously.

“That’s right,” Xiaomeng said. “The adults used to receive foreign heads of state here. You know, this is our first time in here, too.”

“Your first time? Why didn’t you come before? You’re the supreme leaders of the country, so surely it ought to be your workplace.”

“We work in the NIT. I was kind of scared to come here, since it seemed like as soon as I came in I’d have all those pairs of adult eyes watching us from some place, like they were saying, ‘Children, you’re being stupid!’”

“I felt the same way my first time in the White House, but I got over it eventually. I don’t like adults watching us. Still, I’m really grateful that you’ve brought us here, because a historic meeting should be held in an exceptional setting so that we won’t feel embarrassed when it is written into the history books.”

The children sat down in the armchairs.

“Now we’ll explain the new world games,” Benes said.

Huahua shook his head. “You can’t simply place world games however you please. We’ve done them once with your idea, so now it’s time to listen to someone else’s.”

“Naturally we won’t force anyone to play our game. You can come up with your own rules, and we’ll use whichever is more fun. Do you have anything new?”

Xiaomeng shook her head. “We’ve got too many other things to do right now. The end of the Antarctic Games obliterated the children’s dream for a new world on that continent, and now a dark mood of loss and disappointment has descended upon all of society. There are signs of a reemergence of Candytown.”

Benes nodded. “It’s the same in the US. The streets are ringing with gunfire again, since violent games are the only way for kids to find thrills. Or any meaning in life at all. We really need a new game to give them some kind of spiritual support, so they can escape the current danger.”

“Very well,” Huahua said. “Then let’s discuss your new game.”

When Xiaomeng and Specs nodded their agreement, Benes’s excitement bubbled over. “Thank you! Thank you! Now, before we get to the idea of the game, I’d first advise you to mentally prepare yourselves for the shock of the unimaginable. We may have a far better tolerance for that than the adults, and our tolerance has only been strengthened by the supernova, but the shock we’re preparing will still be a challenge for our Chinese friends.”

“You’re bluffing,” Huahua said dismissively.

“You’ll find that out soon enough.”

“Then out with it.”

Now the young president grew nervous. She quickly crossed herself, and with her eyes half closed, she said, “God bless America,” in a voice audible only to herself. Then she leapt up from the chair and began to pace energetically, before stopping short and clasping her hands to her chest. She said, “First I’d like to make a request. Would our Chinese friends share with us your impressions of our country?”

The Chinese children’s remarks came out in a jumble:

“America is skyscrapers covered in mirror glass glittering in the sun.”

“In America, a river of cars flows morning till night, unceasingly.”

“America has Disneyland and lots of other fun places.”

“Americans love football.”

“American farms use huge machines, so one family can till a huge area!”

“In American factories, it’s all robots and assembly lines, and a whole car can be assembled in a matter of seconds!”

“Americans have been to the moon, and they want to go to Mars. They fire tons of rockets off every year.”

“America has lots and lots of nuclear weapons, and huge aircraft carriers. No one messes with them.”

The impressions shared by the Chinese children sketched a rough outline of America that happened to match exactly with what Benes had been hoping for. All was going according to plan, so she determinedly took the next step.

“I have long been aware that China is a great and mysterious country, but as a newly arrived guest, I know far less about your country than you do of mine. So let me ask you: Does your country have anything that’s better than ours?”

It was a challenging question, to be sure.

“Our country is huge. It covers an area of nine-point-six million square kilometers,” Huahua exclaimed.

“Ours is pretty big too: nine-point-three-six million square kilometers. But we’ve got more arable land than you, and more forest cover. Those are important things for a country,” Benes said solemnly.

“We have lots and lots of oil underground, and lots and lots of coal. And lots and lots of iron,” Xiaomeng said.

“So do we. Oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and California. And we’ve got lots of places with coal. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio all have tons of it. And there’s lots of iron under the southwestern part of Lake Superior, and copper in Arizona, Utah, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico, and lead and zinc in Missouri. You haven’t got us beat in that area.”

“Well… we’ve got the Yangtze River. It’s the biggest, longest river in the world!”

“Not true in the slightest. The Mississippi is bigger. And one of its tributaries, the Ohio River, is over a thousand meters wide at its widest point. Have you ever seen a thousand-meter-wide river?”

“Does the Mississippi River have the Three Gorges?”

“No, but the Colorado does. We call it the Grand Canyon, and it’s magnificent!”

“You just memorized a geography textbook and came here to challenge us, is that it?” Huahua said angrily.

Now Benes squatted down beside the long roll of paper, untied the green ribbon holding it together, and gently unrolled it. It was a world map, one so big that when fully unrolled it occupied half of the floor space in the hall, but it was a peculiar one: the United States and China were the only two countries drawn, and the remainder of the map was water, giving them the look of two islands floating in a vast ocean. Benes jumped onto the map into the middle of the Pacific, and pointed a hand at each territory.

“Look at our two countries. We’re in opposition on either side of the globe, practically equal in area, more or less the same shape. It’s like we’re a pair of images reflected onto the Earth. And there really are so many things that are mirror images. For example, the two are the world’s oldest and the world’s youngest countries; one whose people have deep roots and ancient heritage, the other made up almost entirely of immigrants; one that stresses tradition, one that prizes innovation; one quiet and introverted, one outgoing and expansive. My Chinese friends, God put two such countries on the Earth. Don’t you think there’s a certain mystical connection between them?”

The words captivated her listeners, and they waited silently for her to show her final card.

The president walked across the map to the United States. From a pocket she pulled out a small, gleaming pair of scissors, and then, crawling on the map like a lizard on a wall, cut out first the United States, and then China. The map was so big that it took her quite a while to snip around the borders of the two countries under the astonished gaze of the Chinese children. Then she took the China cutout, crossed the map, and handed it to Huahua.

“This is your territory. Take care of it.”

Then she retrieved the cutout of the United States, and returned to the Chinese children. Holding it out in front of her, she said, “Look, this is our territory.”

Now the president passed the US cutout into one of Huahua’s hands, and with her other hand took hold of the China cutout. She said, “We exchange them.”

The Chinese interpreter stared at her in shock. “Sorry, I beg your pardon?”

Benes did not repeat her statement—words meant for the history books cannot be repeated. Besides, she knew that not only had the interpreter understood her, but that even Huahua, with only two semesters of English study, had also grasped that simple sentence. She simply nodded at the Chinese children, confirming the unbelievable proposition she had just made.

^{THE EXCHANGE}

“What? An exchange?” they asked.

“All Chinese children will move to our territory, and all American children will move to yours,” Benes said.

“So that means our territory would belong to you?”

“That’s right. And our territory would be yours.”

“But… what about all the stuff on the territory? You can’t ship whole cities across the Pacific!”

“We’ll exchange everything in the two countries.”

“You mean, you come empty-handed, and we leave empty-handed?”

“Exactly! It’s the territorial-exchange game!”

Wide-eyed, the Chinese children looked at each other in total disbelief.

“But… that means all of your—” Huahua said.

“All of our factories,” Benes said quickly, cutting him off. “And all of our farms. All of our delicacies and entertainments. Everything in America will be yours! Of course, that means everything in China will be ours.”

The Chinese children stared at the president like she was a madwoman. Then the foreign minister cracked up laughing, and soon all of the Chinese children were laughing along with him.

“You’ve taken the joke a little too far,” Xiaomeng said.

“Your interpretation is understandable, but I can solemnly declare in my role as national leader that this suggestion is the task I have flown across the Pacific to accomplish. I do realize that it may be hard to prove it isn’t a joke, but we are willing to do whatever it takes,” Benes said with sincerity.

“How do you plan to do that?” Huahua asked.

“That will fall to Mr. Vaughn,” she said, gesturing to invite him over from behind the crowd, where he had been admiring one of the hall’s huge hanging carpets. Upon hearing the president mention his name, he slowly turned and came over and stood in the empty space on the map the United States had once occupied. He said, “To prove this ambition would be like proving the international politics equivalent of quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity. You’d need a superhuman mind and intelligence. There’s only one person here I can talk to.”

Specs had remained silent throughout all of this, but now he stood up and went over to the space on the map formerly occupied by China. Now the two young thinkers stared at each other across the Pacific Ocean.

Vaughn said impassively, “The only heroes in the world are you and me. A tremendous peal of thunder.”[7]

“You’re very familiar with Chinese culture,” Specs replied, similarly impassively.

“More familiar than you know,” Vaughn said, to the astonishment of the children. Not the words themselves, but the fact that they came not through the translator device but from Vaughn himself, speaking Mandarin Chinese.

Vaughn was unfazed by their shock. “I always wanted to learn an Eastern language, but dithered for a long time among Japanese, Sanskrit, and Mandarin before deciding.”

Specs said, “We need to be candid.”

Vaughn nodded. “Frankness is essential for proving our intentions.”

“Then proceed with your proof.”

Vaughn paused for a few seconds, and then said, “First, the new world is an abandoned child. It will never grow up; or perhaps more accurately, it’s already grown, and this is its shape.”

Specs nodded.

“Second, you have your strength, and we have ours. Each of us needs to awaken our strength.” Then he paused to give Specs time to reflect on his words.

Specs nodded again.

“The next point is critical, and one that only a superior thinker can understand. The difference in our two strengths is…” Vaughn cast a look of challenge at Specs.

“Our strength draws from our ancient native land; yours from new frontiers,” Specs said.

The two children stared long and hard at each other from their respective continents.

Vaughn asked, “Do you need further proof?”

Specs shook his head gently. Then he walked off the map and said to his companions, “They’re for real.”

“Talking with you has truly been a refreshing experience,” Vaughn said to Specs, bowing slightly from his cut-out spot on the map.

Specs returned the bow. “I have the deepest respect for your idea. Such a profound and audacious idea deserves to be called great.”

“We believe that once the game is made public, a process will be set in motion that will be difficult to redirect. If anyone here disagrees with the exchange, you may find it impossible to withstand the pressure of a country of children.”

Huahua was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Perhaps that is the case. But what about your side? I have my doubts about whether you can realize your plan. Can you convince the American children?”

With confidence, Vaughn said, “We’ve got a solution. A new world has the same attraction for American kids as it does for Chinese kids. After all, their veins flow with the blood of the pioneers. They are the most curious children in the world, and the most possessive. A reshuffling of society and the nation will be a most welcome development for them.”

Xiaomeng asked, “How long do you expect this game to last?”

Vaughn smiled, more noticeably this time. “According to my predictions, in the space of three to five years, we will be facing an undefended country and will easily be able to retake everything that we bartered away.”

^{THE DECISION}

The meeting to discuss the territorial-exchange game was held that night, three hours after the first Sino-US talks. On the top floor of the NIT, under the light of the Rose Nebula, the Chinese children faced a choice far beyond anything they had dreamed.

Xiaomeng said, “Look at the state of the world. We do need strong industry and defense to protect ourselves.”

“But can we get all of that simply by going to America?” Specs asked.

Pacing back and forth, Huahua said, “Why should we let Vaughn scare us? Why not think of another possibility? Once we’ve crossed the Pacific, can’t we maintain our current organization and discipline? Can’t we devote our efforts to work and study? Can’t Chinese children get those huge factories operating to produce steel and cars and aircraft carriers and spaceships? Can’t we put those huge farms to work growing wheat and corn? We can make those cities boom even more than they did in the Common Era. So long as we work hard, we’ll become the most powerful country in the world in no time! Why do we look down on ourselves? We showed such bravery and resolve in the war we just fought. Now we’re facing a new battle. So long as we put all our energy into it, there’s no obstacle we can’t overcome!”

His statement drew general praise from the children.

Xiaomeng said, “But the souls of our mothers and fathers will ask us, ‘How could you lose the land of generations of your ancestors?’ What will we tell them?”

Huahua gave her a look of disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘lose’? If an enemy invaded and we surrendered without a fight and lost the country, well then damn us to hell! But we’re making an exchange with another party, and it’s a fair exchange. Whatever they can do, we can do too. If the adults were here, we could stand before them righteous and confident!”

“But it’s not only about the trade. We’re swapping not just our territory, but something else even more important,” Specs said.

“Is our strength really tied to our ancestral land?”

Specs nodded silently.

“Do you think there will be serious consequences?”

Again he nodded.

Xiaomeng asked, “What’s going to happen?”

Specs shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think Vaughn knows either, and he’s thought about the question on a much deeper level. America has many times our reserves of goods and resources, so children will be able to lead rich lives for an incredibly long time without needing to work. It’s a sweet-smelling, rainbow-hued quagmire. Just like in Candytown, we may see history moving in a particular direction but be powerless to stop it.”

The mention of Candytown sobered everyone up for a moment, and they looked in silence out the window at the night lights.

Huahua said, “We have no other choice. The American children are sure to disclose the nature of the games, and when that happens our own kids will want to play. We won’t be able to stop them.”

Xiaomeng said, “It’s a diabolical move.”

Specs nodded. “We really don’t have any choice. I’ve got to admit that Vaughn is an exceptional thinker and strategist.”

The next day, the American children were informed that they could return home and await word of the Chinese children’s decision. This outcome was not unexpected; such a weighty matter could not be decided overnight by a handful of people.

The first thing they did when they got back to America was to reveal the plan for the territorial-exchange game. This raised huge waves as rumors of the trade reached the Chinese children, their initial disbelief turning to elation and banishing from their minds the depression of Candytown and the dejection of the Antarctic Games. The marvelous world of their dreams beckoned. The vast majority of them were enthusiastic supporters of the exchange, and they passionately made their opinion known on Digital Domain. Just as Vaughn had predicted, the process would be difficult to redirect.

One month later, just as the American children were unable to wait any longer, Benes received a call from Huahua.

A pair of dark eyes from across the globe stared out of the screen into a pair of blue eyes for so excruciatingly long the air crystallized. At last, Huahua said, “We’ll do the exchange.”

An American delegation flew to China the following day. The main purpose of its visit was to discuss the details of the territory exchange, and to formally sign an exchange agreement. Talks took place once again in that ancient hall, and many young experts from both sides were in attendance.

The talks were originally intended to hammer out all the important details, but the biggest international effort in history concerned an endless ocean of details, so after three days of feverish debate, the children found that they could only sketch out the outlines of an exchange plan. All the remaining details would have to be addressed once the exchange was under way. After this reorientation, the talks entered a fourth day. The children had their own way of resolving international issues and were able to quickly and easily dispense with certain problems that diplomats and heads of state kept their distance from in the adults’ time, often so quickly that the most seasoned diplomats of that age would have been left speechless. The issues resolved and agreements reached during that week were the equal of a hundred Yalta or Potsdam conferences. At the end of it all, the children of the two countries signed a territorial-exchange agreement known as the “Supernova Agreement”:

^{THE GREAT MIGRATION}

Late at night, the Imperial Palace basked under the blue light of the Rose Nebula. The flock of nocturnal birds that circled Meridian Gate had long since returned to their nests. In the endless stillness, the ancient halls slept soundly and dreamt deep.

Huahua, Specs, and Xiaomeng were the only ones in the palace. The three of them walked slowly down the long exhibition hall. Artifacts that no longer belonged to their country slipped by on either side, ancient bronze and clay made warm and soft by the nebula’s light, and they felt almost as if capillaries were showing on their surface, ancient lives and souls made concrete, and that their soundless breathing surrounded them as they moved. The countless bronze vessels and clay pots seemed laden with a liquid as full of vital energy as blood; the long scroll of Along the River During the Qingming Festival in a glass case was hazy under the blue light, but they could still hear snatches of the hubbub; a terra-cotta warrior up ahead fluoresced blue-white, and it seemed like they were not walking toward it but that it was floating in their direction…. Heading northward from the southernmost premodern section, they crossed the galleries one by one, and time and history flowed back past them under the blue light of the nebula, dynasty by dynasty into the distant past….

The great migration of the two continents had begun.

The children were being swiftly moved off the first two areas to be exchanged, Shaanxi and South Dakota, transferring to various ports on the coast by land and air transport, or temporarily moving to neighboring states or provinces if they missed their chance to go. Each of the two handover commissions had arrived in its counterpart’s region to oversee the migration’s progress. Young migrants assembled at major ports as oceangoing ships arrived in increasing numbers, war vessels and oil tankers, Chinese and American, as well as from other countries, mainly Europe and Japan. The rest of the world’s children buzzed with enthusiasm over this new game between the world’s two biggest countries, and they did everything within their power to aid the biggest human intercontinental migration in history. What prompted them to dispatch ships to the two countries, they couldn’t properly say themselves. Huge ocean fleets were assembled on either side of the Pacific, but no handover ceremony had taken place in Shaanxi or South Dakota, and the migrants had yet to climb aboard their passage across the ocean.

Up in the artifact exhibition, the three young leaders continued toward the northernmost gallery. Huahua let out a gentle sigh, and said to Specs and Xiaomeng, “I spoke with the American kids again at the airport this afternoon, but they still refused.”

After the third round, the two sides had held a series of negotiations over details, during which the Chinese side had proposed on multiple occasions that the Chinese children should be allowed to take the most precious artifacts and ancient books with them during the exchange. This suggestion had been firmly rejected by the American children. Benes and her entourage were skilled negotiators who usually expressed their opposition using various evasive approaches rather than saying no directly, but they broke with precedent when it came to this question. No sooner did the Chinese children mention artifacts and books than they stood up from their chairs and repeated “No! No!” while shaking their heads.

At first, the Chinese children thought this was just stinginess, since such artifacts were extremely valuable if not priceless, but they later discovered this was not the case. The American children would have the same right to carry off their own artifacts as the Chinese children, and if the United States did not have many truly ancient artifacts from its few centuries of history, apart from some Native American artworks, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art were chock-full of art and artifacts from around the world worth a king’s ransom. But when the Chinese children proposed allowing American children to take objects from their territory equal in value to the artifacts the Chinese children took, the Americans still flat-out refused.

During preparations for the Shaanxi migration, American members of the Exchange Commission proposed starting with the Shaanxi Museum of History, built in the 1980s, and the location of the Terra-cotta Army, both of which were far more interesting to them than aircraft factories or space-launch centers. They had an astonishingly detailed awareness of the holdings of all of China’s metropolitan libraries and museums, and could easily produce a printed-out inventory of cultural relics.

In a later incident, the Chinese side proposed allowing some American children fluent in both English and Chinese (mostly Chinese-Americans) to remain in the US temporarily to teach English to the Chinese children. Benes agreed, but on one condition: that American children be allowed to take with them many of the Chinese artifacts in the collections of major American museums, particularly scriptures and murals stolen from Dunhuang by nineteenth-century adventurers. This, they claimed, was due to their enthusiasm for Chinese culture, but it was expressed so effusively that the Chinese children rejected it out of hand.

But if the Chinese children were confused by these developments, what often transpired during the ongoing territorial handovers was even more baffling.

Three of Huahua’s classmates, Li Zhiping the letter carrier, Chang Huidong the barber, and Zhang Xiaole the cook, were part of the first group of children to leave their homeland. The three of them had made their way together ever since Candytown. This particular group of kids from the capital were relatively fortunate, since they could ride one of the two Hercules cargo planes and avoid the bumpy torture of the seas. The young pilots had just earned their wings and flew almost drunkenly, making the air journey highly dangerous, but this mattered little to children impatient to arrive in a new world. As soon as they received notice, the three boys raced to pack their things as a wonderful, mysterious future blossomed like a flower in their imaginations.

Li Zhiping stopped off at home on the way to the airport to retrieve a few articles of clothing. He was still in a good mood when he went in the door, but the moment he was about to leave he grew thoughtful. The feeling came so suddenly that he didn’t know what to do. Like those of countless other families living in Beijing’s courtyard homes, his was a sparsely furnished house. The air still held that familiar scent; a calendar from the Common Era was still hanging on the wall.

In a rush the warmth of his childhood days flooded his mind, and the faded images of his mom and dad materialized lifelike before his eyes. It was as if the nightmare of the supernova had never existed, and he had returned to one of those countless afternoons in the Common Era where his mom and dad were about to come home from work. It was all so real that he could practically imagine that the present day was but a dream, that in no way was he about to leave home forever. Then, steeling himself, he brushed aside his tears, slammed the door closed, and dashed over to the bus headed to the airport.

All along the way, he felt as if something was locked up at home, some invisible piece of clothing that he had an urge to go back and retrieve, but he knew that it had become one with the home and could not be carried off. Without the invisible clothing, he felt a sudden bone-chilling cold that disappeared as soon as he looked for something to dispel it, only to stealthily return as soon as his attention was distracted.

The first generation of Chinese children in the Supernova Era were never able to banish that chill from their souls.

The three boys remained in a poor mood all the way to the airport. As they got close, the other children’s jokes tapered off, replaced by silent contemplation. The bus stopped beneath the enormous black body of a Hercules; other huge planes were waiting farther out. The long range of the Hercules meant their next fueling stop would be in Hawaii.

Picking up their few belongings, Li Zhiping, Chang Huidong, and Zhang Xiaole followed the long file of people that led toward the rear entrance of the aircraft and into its dark interior. A few American kids from the Exchange Commission were standing beside the door, white IDs around their necks, carefully inspecting everything the Chinese children carried for compliance with the scope permitted under the rules of the exchange agreement. When Li Zhiping was just a few steps away from the entrance, a spot of green caught his attention, a few blades of grass poking through a crack in the cement of the tarmac. Without a second thought he set down his bag, ran over, and plucked the clump and put it in his shirt pocket before returning to the line.

All at once a few American kids were in his face, pointing at the pocket and shouting “No! No!” followed by a string of English words, which an interpreter translated: The Americans were telling him to leave the grass behind, since it didn’t fall into the category of travel necessities and thus was not covered in the carry-on items described in the exchange agreement. Li Zhiping and the kids around him erupted. Were these punks so petty that they’d stop you from taking a clump of grass as a memento from the land of your grandparents? That’s just being mean!

Li Zhiping shouted out, “I’m gonna take this grass. You’re not gonna stop me! Acting like you’re in charge? This is still Chinese soil!” He held his pocket closed and refused to give up the grass, but the American kids didn’t budge. The stalemate was broken by Zhang Xiaole, who noticed a kid who had just boarded the plane and who was playing with a game system. He shouted to the American kids, “You don’t care that someone’s brought a game with them. What does a clump of grass matter?”

The American kids took a look, and then bent their heads together and exchanged a few words before turning back to Li Zhiping and saying what the Chinese children thought for sure was a mistaken translation: “You can go back home, or someplace else, right now and get your own game system, but the grass has to stay here!” Li Zhiping couldn’t figure out their sense of values, but there was nothing else he could do but silently put the grass back where he had found it.

As the children stepped through the entrance, they felt as if something inseparable had been left on the ground behind them, and when they turned around and saw the grass fluttering in a light breeze as if beckoning them back, at last their self-control gave way and their tears came. The interior of the military cargo plane was cavernous, equipped with long rows of seats and illuminated only by a dim fluorescent bulb high overhead. There were no windows; the children were now cut off from their land.

Their tears flowed freely once they were in their seats, and some jumped up and flung themselves toward the entrance, which was now closed and had only a single small window to crowd round. It was some time before the American cabin crew could get them seated and buckled in. Half an hour later, the engines rumbled to life and the plane began taxiing. The ground beneath sent subtle tremors up through the wheels, like a mother’s hand gently patting her children on the back. Then with a slight bump the vibrations ceased, and the last thread connecting the children to their motherland was severed. Some cried out “Mama!” as others whimpered. Someone tugged at Li Zhiping’s sleeve. A little girl sitting next to him stealthily passed a few blades of grass into his hands that she must have plucked from the tarmac during the chaos just before. Their eyes locked for a moment, and he started to cry again.

That was how Li Zhiping came to leave his ancestral land carrying a clump of grass with him. It remained with him throughout his peripatetic life in North America, and on innumerable nights he would wake up from dreaming about his homeland and look at it, its long-dried-out form plated with a layer of living green by the light of the Rose Nebula. On those occasions he would feel a rush of warmth surge through his numb body, and under the tender, watchful gaze of his mom and dad from the beyond, his weary heart would start to sing the songs of his childhood….

Such situations were commonplace throughout the first round of territory exchange. Whenever Chinese children sought to carry with them the most insignificant objects of their homeland—grasses, leaves, flowers, or even rocks and dirt—the American children reacted with horror, and submitted repeated requests to hold discussions aimed at preventing migrants from taking any mementos with them from the land. Their stated motivation was disease control, and most Chinese children believed them, apart from a few who understood the American children’s true reason.

The first two areas up for exchange were vacated on June 7, and prior to the arrival of the new immigrants, the areas held handover ceremonies.

Now the three leaders had reached the end of the exhibit, the prehistoric gallery of the origins of Chinese civilization. In the previous galleries they had felt in awe of the finely crafted objects from earlier ages, but also perplexed, since it seemed as if an invisible wall kept them separated. The estrangement had been most acute when they had entered the premodern gallery, and it had almost sapped their courage to go on. If even the not-so-distant Qing Dynasty was an entirely unknown world to them, had they any hope of understanding any earlier age?

But contrary to their expectations, the farther back in civilization they went, the less of a separation they felt, and now that they had reached its remote origins, they had the sudden feeling of being in a familiar, inviting world. As if, after a long voyage through strange, incomprehensible lands, all of them peopled solely by incomprehensible adults speaking incomprehensible languages and living a different kind of life, almost as if they came from a different planet, now they had reached the end of the earth, and had found a children’s world just like their own.

Those splendid, exquisite premodern artifacts did not belong to children; the humanity that created them had already grown up. Humanity’s childhood may have been more remote, but it spoke to children all the same. The three children stared intently at the Yangshao culture[8] artifact: a clay pot. The crude object reminded them of a rainstorm from their young childhood, and of forming a similar object out of mud under a rainbow after the storm had passed. The age before them was the age of Pangu separating heaven and earth, of Nüwa mending heaven, of Jingwei filling up the sea, of Kuafu chasing the sun. Humanity grew up, but its courage slackened, and no more did it create such earth-shattering myths.

Huahua slid back the glass of the display case and carefully lifted the pot out. It felt warm, and almost seemed to vibrate in his hands. It was a being of extraordinary energy. He bent an ear to the opening. “I hear something!” he exclaimed. Xiaomeng pressed her ear to it and listened intently. “It’s the sound of wind!” The wind blowing over the primeval wilderness. Huahua lifted the jar up to the Rose Nebula, and the clay had a faint red luster in the blue light. He stared at the fish design, and that combination of the simplest of lines wriggled slightly, and a sudden spirit came into the black circle representing the eye. Shadows flitted across the pot’s rough surface; they were too vague to make out, but they had the feeling of naked figures wrestling against something far larger than themselves.

The ancient sun and moon dwelt within the pot and cast gold and silver light over the figures. Its patterns, fish and beasts, were like pairs of eyes looking out over the long millennia, and that first ancestor’s gaze met their own and passed to them a rugged energy that made them want to cry out, to weep, to laugh, to tear off their clothes and race through the howling wind in the wilderness. At long last they could feel their ancestors’ blood flowing in their veins.

The three of them crossed the age-old palace beneath the light of the Rose Nebula holding the ancient pot, the oldest artifact in the city, left to them from the infancy of Chinese civilization. Walking slowly and carefully, they held it as gingerly as if it were their own eyes, or life itself. When they reached the Golden River Bridge, the last gate of the palace closed behind them with a clang. They knew that no matter where they went, their lives would be forever connected to that clay pot they held. It was their origin and their destination, and the source of their strength.

^GENESIS

A two-day gale had finally died down, but the waves were still high and the night sky remained overcast. The only things visible on the water in the dead of night were endless churning whitecaps.

The first of the migration fleets had left port sixty days ago, and this was the first storm it had encountered. The wind had been strongest on the previous night, and two of the smallest-displacement transport ships, sailing at the rear, had been swallowed up by the gigantic waves. Another twenty-thousand-ton freighter had gone to their aid, but when the captain gave an ill-considered order to turn, putting the ship parallel to the waves, it was capsized by a few huge hits. When two helicopters that took off from another military vessel disappeared without a trace into the ocean, fleet command had to abandon the rescue effort, consigning more than twelve thousand children to the inky depths of the Pacific.

The remaining thirty-eight ships continued their arduous passage through the wind and waves. But the children were already used to the harshness of the voyage. First the wretched cabin conditions and the torment of seasickness, then food shortages, with daily rations only enough for one full meal, no vegetables. Even vitamin tablets were limited. Half the children came down with night blindness, and a growing number were septic, but they maintained discipline under adverse conditions. Organization was sustained in small, medium, and large groups, and leaders at all levels remained in their posts, carrying out their duty with fearless dedication. Once they reached the Americas, sustaining that discipline and organization would be for the Chinese children a trial far more difficult than any storm or hunger.

Two days ago they had crossed paths with the American migration fleet. The two fleets followed their own path in silence, neither acknowledging the other’s presence. The American children did not appear to be much better off.

At last the waves receded. They had diverted from their route for two days in order to follow the safest line through the storm, and now the entire fleet was attempting an arduous change of heading. Waves thundered off the bow and port side, and the side-to-side rocking intensified.

The dark clouds overhead had scattered, and the light of the Rose Nebula hit the waves and scattered into a thousand directions, turning the Pacific into a marvelous ocean of blue fire. The children ran out onto the deck, their footsteps shaky from seasickness and hunger, and flocked to the sides of the ship as if sleepwalking. But there was no stopping the cheers when they saw the majestic sight before them.

It was the last day of the second year of the Supernova Era.

Midnight.

A few destroyers fired ship guns into the air, and strings of flares and fireworks rose from other ships. The explosions and the waves and the children’s excited shouts blended into one, resounding through the air and across the sea.

The first rays of dawn peeked out from the eastern horizon and mingled with the Rose Nebula into the most magnificent riot of color in the entire universe.

Now it was January 1, the third year of the Supernova Era.