Supernova Era

PROLOGUE

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.

In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.

In the sea of lights of this city was a school, and in a classroom in that school, a class was holding a middle-school graduation party where, as in all such events, the children were talking about their aspirations.

“I want to be a general!” said Lü Gang, a skinny kid who gave the impression of power disproportionate to his size.

“Boring!” someone said. “There won’t be any fighting, so all a general can do is lead troops in drills.”

“I want to be a doctor,” a girl named Lin Sha said in a quiet voice, to mocking laughter.

“Yeah, right. Last time we went to the countryside, even the sight of cocoons freaked you out. And you want to cut people open?”

“My mom’s a doctor,” she said, either as proof she wasn’t frightened, or to explain her reason for wanting to be one.

Zheng Chen, their young homeroom teacher, had been staring out the window at the city lights, lost in thought, but now turned her attention back to the class.

“What about you, Xiaomeng. What do you want to do when you grow up?” she asked the girl next to her, who had also been staring out the window. The girl was plainly dressed, and her large, spirited eyes revealed a melancholy and maturity beyond her years.

“My family’s not well-off. I’ll only be able to go to a vocational high school,” she said with a small sigh.

“What about you, Huahua?” Zheng Chen asked a good-looking boy whose large eyes were always lit up with delight, as if the world was perpetually a riot of newly exploded fireworks.

“The future’s so cool I can’t decide. But whatever I do, I want to be the best!”

Someone said they wanted to be an athlete, someone else a diplomat. When one girl said she wanted to be a teacher, Zheng Chen said gently, “It’s not easy,” and then turned back to stare out the window.

“Did you know Ms. Zheng’s pregnant?” a girl whispered.

“That’s right. And the school has cutback layoffs scheduled for right around the time she’ll be giving birth next year, so things don’t look good,” said a boy.

At this, Zheng Chen laughed. “I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m wondering, what will the world be like when my kid is your age?”

“This is boring,” said a small, scrawny kid. His name was Yan Jing, but everyone called him “Specs” because of the thick glasses he wore for nearsightedness. “No one knows what the future holds. It’s unpredictable. Anything could happen.”

“Science can make predictions,” said Huahua. “Futurologists can.”

Specs shook his head. “It’s science that tells us that the future’s unpredictable. Any predictions from those futurologists are imprecise, because the world is a chaotic system.”

“I’ve heard about that. When a butterfly flaps its wings, there’s a hurricane on the other side of the world.”

“That’s right,” Specs said, nodding. “A chaotic system.”

Huahua said, “My dream is to be that butterfly.”

Specs shook his head again. “You don’t understand at all. We’re all butterflies, just like every butterfly. Every grain of sand and every drop of rain is a butterfly. That’s why the world is unpredictable.”

“You once talked about an uncertainty principle…”

“That’s right. Microparticles can’t be predicted. They only exist as a probability. So the whole world is unpredictable. And there’s the theory of multiple worlds, where when you flip a coin the world splits in two, and the coin lands heads in one world and tails in the other…”

Zheng Chen laughed. “Specs, you yourself are proof enough. When I was your age, I’d never have imagined that one day a middle school student would know so much.”

“Specs has read lots of books!” said another child, and others nodded.

“Ms. Zheng’s baby is going to be even more amazing. Who knows—maybe genetic engineering will let him grow a real pair of wings!” Huahua said, and everyone laughed.

“Students,” their teacher said as she stood up, “take a last look at your campus.”

They left the classroom and strolled with their teacher through the grounds. Most of the lights were off, and the city lights that shone in the distance lent the campus an air of hazy calm. They passed two classroom buildings, administration, the library, and finally the row of Chinese parasol trees before reaching the athletic field. The forty-three children stood in the center surrounding their young teacher, who opened her arms to the sky, its stars dim under the lights of the city, and said, “Now, children, childhood is over.”

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.

In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.

It may seem like an insignificant story. Forty-three children leaving their peaceful school and continuing their respective life journeys.

It may seem like an ordinary night, a moment in the flow of time between the endless past and the limitless future. “One can’t step twice in the same river” is nothing more than the babbling of an ancient Greek, for the river of time is the river of life, and this river flows endlessly at the same unchanging speed, an eternal flow of life and history and time.

That’s what the people of this city thought. That’s what the people of the plains of northern China thought. That’s what the people of Asia thought. And that’s what the carbon-based life-forms called humans everywhere on the planet thought. On this hemisphere, they were being lulled to sleep by the flow of time, convinced that the sacred eternal was unbreakable by any force, and they would wake up to a dawn identical to that of countless previous mornings. That faith, lurking in the depths of their consciousness, granted them the same peaceful dreams woven for untold generations.

It was an ordinary school, in a peaceful corner of a brilliant night in the city.

Forty-three thirteen-year-olds and their homeroom teacher looked up at the stars.

The winter’s constellations, Taurus, Orion, and Canis Major, were already below the western horizon, and the summer’s, Lyra, Hercules, and Libra, had been up for a while. Each star was like a distant eye blinking at the human world from the depths of the universe. But on this night, the cosmic gaze was somewhat different.

On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.