The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection

PREFACE

Ah Quan took the small bundle from his mother’s trembling hands. It contained a pair of sturdy cloth shoes she had made for him, three steamed buns, two sets of heavily patched clothing, and 50 yuan. His father squatted by the side, slowly dragging puffs of smoke from his pipe.

“Quan is leaving us. Would it kill you to give him a smile for the road?” his mother chided

But his father would not be moved from his stoic, sullen silence.

“Don’t let him go. Won’t you just give him the money to build a house and marry?” Quan’s mother continued her admonishment.

“Just go! Here, there, everywhere; they’re all going out into the world. We could just as well have raised a litter of puppies!” It almost sounded as if his father was sobbing, but there were no tears. He did not even look up.

Ah Quan did. Before him he saw the village of his birth, the lanes, houses, and fields of his childhood. Everything here was parched. His home was a place of endless drought.

The dryness had made everyone in the village completely reliant on rainwater gathered in cisterns to meet their daily needs. Ah Quan’s family was too poor to afford one made of cement and so they had to manage their needs with a simple earthen cistern. This meant that on hot days their water would begin to reek. In past years, heating had made it potable, even if it always remained somewhat bitter and more than a little pungent. This summer, however, despite their best efforts the water from their cistern had given them diarrhea. They had heard from a local army doctor that poisonous minerals in the ground had dissolved into the water.

Ah Quan lowered his head again, glancing at his unmoving father. He began to walk away and never turned back. He knew that his father would not look up, even now. It was his father’s reaction to grief. Ah Quan had seen him squat in silence, as he did now, many times before. Sullenly smoking, his father would remain inert, just as if he himself had become nothing but a lump of earth, one with the yellow soil.

But Ah Quan could still see his father’s face; or, perhaps better put, walk on it.

Before him stretched the vastness of Northwest China and everywhere he looked he could see yellow-brown barrenness, broken by the cracks erosion had wrought. And what else was there to the face of an old farmer? It was no different from anything else here: Trees, the soil, houses, people◦— all were black, yellow, and wrinkled.

Ah Quan could not see the eyes of this giant face stretching to the horizon, but he did feel their presence. Those massive eyes were staring at the sky. When they were young, their gaze had been brimming with desperate longing for rain; now aged, only dull emptiness remained in their stare. In fact, this giant face must have been eternally empty and dull. He could not imagine that this lump of earth had ever been young.

A dry wind blew, covering the small road out of the village in yellow dust. Ah Quan walked this road, taking the first step into his new life.

It was a road that would lead him places he could never have even dreamed of.

CHAPTER 1 First Goal in Life: Drink some water that is not bitter; Make some money

“Oh, so many lights!” Ah Quan gasped in awe as he arrived. Night had already fallen over the large collection of unauthorized collieries and small kilns that made up the mining area.

“Those? Now in the city; that’s many lights,” Guoqiang countered. Guoqiang was from Ah Quan’s village. He had left many years prior and he had come to pick up Ah Quan when he arrived at the mines.

Ah Quan followed Guoqiang to a worker’s shed for the night. As they ate their supper, he realized with surprise and shocked delight that the water was pleasantly sweet! Somewhat bemused at Ah Quan’s reaction, Guoqiang told him that a deep well had been dug in the mining area; of course they had access to potable water.

But he also said something else: “Now in the city; that’s sweet water!”

When the time came to sleep, Guoqiang handed him a firmly wrapped package to use as a pillow. Opening it to have a look, he saw black plastic tubes. Exploring further he found yellow sticks inside. They looked like soap.

“Explosives,” Guoqiang drowsily explained before rolling on his side and snoring off to sleep.

Ah Quan saw that Guoqiang was using a “pillow” just like the one he had given him. He also noticed a large pile of them under the bed. A bundle of detonating caps hung above.

Later, Ah Quan learned that there were enough explosives in that shack to wipe out his village lock, stock and barrel! Guoqiang was the explosives technician of the mine.

Working in the mine was very hard and extremely exhausting. Ah Quan mined coal, pushed carts, and mounted pit props. At the end of every day he was dead tired, but grueling labor did not scare him; growing up he had learned to bear many hardships. What did frighten him were the conditions in the pit. It reminded him of digging in a dark anthill. At first it was a waking nightmare, but he soon got used to this, too. They were paid per kilo of coal and he could earn 250 yuan every month. When the going was good, he could even make 300. Ah Quan was very satisfied.

But what satisfied Ah Quan most of all was the water here. At the end of the first day, his body had been completely blackened by the coal and he had gone to the washroom together with the other miners. As he entered he saw people using bowls to scoop water out of a large pool. They then dumped the water over their heads, letting it stream down their bodies. At their feet the off-wash flowed away in black streams.

Ah Quan stared at them, utterly dumbfounded. Oh, mother! he shouted in his head, how can they use water, this sweet water, like that? It was the sweet, abundant water that made this world of black a place of beauty without equal in Ah Quan’s eyes.

Guoqiang, however, badgered him to move on, on to the city. He himself had previously gone there to find work, but charges of stealing from a construction site had led to him being sent back to his registered home as an unsanctioned migrant. Even so, Guoqiang guaranteed, Ah Quan would be able to earn much more in the city, and furthermore, he would not have to work himself to death, as in the mine.

Ah Quan hesitated, but just as he was weighing what he had been told, Guoqiang had an accident in the pit. That day, Guoqiang was checking on a misfire when it exploded. As he was brought out of the pit, Ah Quan saw that Guoqiang was riddled with rock fragments embedded deep in his body.

As Guoqiang drew his last breath, he turned to his friend. “Ah Qua…” he rasped, “go to the city… there are more lights…”

CHAPTER 2 Second Goal in Life: Go to the city with more lights and sweeter water; Make more money

“Here the night is as bright as day!” Ah Quan exclaimed in admiration. What Guoqiang had told him had turned out to be true. There really were many, many more lights in the city.

He was following Erbao, carrying a shoe-shiner’s box on his back. They were on their way to the railway station on the main street of the provincial capital city. Erbao had come to the big city from a neighboring village and he had once worked together with Guoqiang. When Ah Quan first arrived, he had hoped to find him at an address Guoqiang had given him, but with no success. In the end he had had to go to great lengths to meet up with Erbao. When he finally found him, he learned that he no longer worked on construction sites, but instead now shined shoes.

Erbao had just been on his way back home on some business when Ah Quan found him and had been happy to let him accompany him. Erbao was sharing a small apartment with a few colleagues and shortly after they arrived there, Erbao showed Ah Quan the ropes. After that they were off again, with Ah Quan following Erbao, the box on his back.

Ah Quan could not have had less faith in his new employment. He had thought about it on the way. Sure, repairing shoes made sense, but shining shoes? Who would spend two yuan to have their shoes shined? Or even five yuan if they used better shine? People would have to be wrong in the head to even consider it.

Once at the station, however, business arrived before they even had the time to properly set up. When they finished at eleven in the evening, Ah Quan had made 28 yuan! Erbao, on the other hand, looked very unhappy as they made their way home. Grumpily he noted that business had been bad. Ah Quan could only take these words to imply that he had stolen Erbao’s customers from him.

“What’s the metal box under that window?” he asked as they walked home, pointing at a building across from them.

“Air-conditioning,” Erbao replied. “It’s nice and cool like early spring in there.”

“The city really is great!” Ah Quan exclaimed, wiping the sweat from his face.

“Life is hard here. Making enough for a bowl of rice may be easy enough, but you can forget about marrying and settling down,” Erbao said, pointing at the building with his chin. “An apartment in there easily costs a thousand per square foot!”

Stupefied, Ah Quan had to ask: “What’s a square foot?”

Shaking his head, Erbao silently eyed him with disdain.

Ah Quan shared the rent for a simple apartment with about a dozen others. All but one of them had come from the countryside to find work or to ply their petty trades. One of them, however, the one squeezed onto a crammed bunk next to Ah Quan, was different; he was a real city person, even though he did not come from this city. In there, he really was no different from any of them; he ate the same as everyone else, and like the others, he would cool off in the evening wearing nothing but shorts. But every morning he would deck himself out in Western-style clothes and, as he walked out the door, seemed to become a different person. He reminded Ah Quan of a golden phoenix, flying out of a chicken coop. His name was Lu Hai.

The others did not dislike him. The reason for the tolerance they showed him was something he had brought with him. That something looked like a large umbrella to Ah Quan, although this umbrella was used to reflect light and its interior was intensely reflective. The device could be inverted and placed in the Sun. Set like this, it sported a bracket that could hold a pot of water above its parabola. The bottom of the pot would be heated by the reflected light and the water was quickly brought to a boil. Ah Quan later learned that it was a “solar cooker”. They all used this thing to boil water when preparing their meals and in doing so ended up saving a significant chunk of change. When there was no Sun, however, it was useless.

The so-called solar-cooker’s “umbrella” had no ribs. It was just one thin, smooth surface. Ah Quan had stood enrapt in complete confusion when he had first seen Lu Hai close the umbrella. It was plugged into a wall socket by a thin electrical wire. To fold it, Lu Hai pulled this plug, causing it to immediately flop to the ground, sprawling open. In an instant the umbrella transformed into what looked like a silvery width of cloth. Ah Quan carefully picked up the strange material to examine it more closely. It was very supple and glossy and so light that it did not seem to weigh anything at all. On it, his reflection looked downright bizarre, iridescently twisting and turning on a surface that reminded him of the colorful shell of a soap bubble. As he eased his grip, Ah Quan immediately felt it silently slipping through his fingers back to the ground. It looked as if pliant quicksilver was dripping from his hands. When Lu Hai plugged it back into the wall socket, the silvery spread began to languidly unfurl, like some strange metallic lotus bloom. Soon it had returned to its round, inverted umbrella shape. When Ah Quan touched its surface now, it was thin and firm. Giving it a light tap he was able to produce a pleasant, metallic ring. This surface was now very strong indeed, easily supporting a pot or kettle full of water.

Lu Hai explained it to Ah Quan. “It is a kind of nano-material. The surface is very smooth and clear and therefore highly reflective. It is also very robust and, most importantly, soft and malleable under normal conditions, but rigid when exposed to a weak electrical current.”

Later, Ah Quan learned that the material used in this so-called “nano-mirror-membrane” had been the result of Lu Hai’s research. He had applied for a patent and invested all he had to fund it, hoping to bring products made with the nano-mirror-membrane to market. Unfortunately, no one was really interested in his wares, including the portable solar-cooker, and he ended up losing almost everything. Now, he was down to borrowing money from Ah Quan just to pay the rent. But even having fallen so far, he still remained relentlessly upbeat. Every day he would run circles around the city, seeking opportunities for his new material. He told Ah Quan this was the thirteenth city he had passed through on his mission.

Other than his solar-cooker, Lu Hai also carried a small sheet of his nano-mirror-membrane. Normally, he kept it on a nightstand, where it lay like a silver handkerchief. Every morning before heading out for the day, he would switch on a small power unit and the membrane would immediately harden to a thin, highly reflective plate. Lu Hai then proceeded to use it as a mirror as he tidied himself up for the outside world.

One morning, as he was using it to help him comb his hair, he gave Ah Quan a sidelong glance. “You should really pay more attention to your appearance,” he noted. “Just give your face a regular scrubbing and tidy-up your hair once in a while. And then there are your clothes; can’t you spend a little on some new outfits?”

Ah Quan took the mirror and gave himself a once over. Having had a look, he smilingly shook his head. As a shoe-shiner, there really was no point in going to all that trouble.

Leaning toward him, Lu Hai would not be dissuaded. “Modern society is full of opportunities and the sky is flocking with birds of gold. Someday you might reach up and seize one of them. But for that to happen, you must first learn to take yourself seriously.”

Ah Quan turned his head, looking all about, but he could not spot one bird of gold. Shaking his head, he glumly admitted, “That goes right over my head. I don’t have much of an education.”

“Do not get me wrong; that is very regrettable, but who knows? In the end, it might turn out to your advantage. This age is great precisely because nothing is certain and miracles can happen to anyone,” Lu Hai mused.

“You,” Ah Quan said, still unable to completely wrap his head around the concept, “went to college, am I right?”

“I have a doctor in solid state physics, but I resigned my professorship,” Lu Hai replied.

Even long after Lu Hai had left, Ah Quan remained in a blank-eyed stupor. Finally, he shook his head. If a person like Lu Hai could run through 13 cities without catching a bird of gold, what chances did he have? He figured the guy was probably being self-deprecating; but he, Ah Quan from the farm country, was pitiable and ridiculous enough all by himself.

That night, while some had already gone to sleep and others were playing a game of poker, Ah Quan and Lu Hai went out. They were off to a small, nearby tearoom to watch some TV. At midnight, the news came on. The screen showed only the anchor speaking; there where no other graphics or footage.

“This afternoon the State Council convened a press conference to formally launch the China Sun project that has been attracting so much worldwide attention,” the newscaster said. “Following the Great Green Wall that is being planted to arrest the expansion of the Gobi Desert, this will be the next major project that will fundamentally change our country’s ecology…”

Ah Quan had previously heard of the project and he knew that it involved constructing another sun in the sky above China. This sun would be able to bring more rain to the arid areas of the Northwest. It all sounded very fantastical to Ah Quan. He had taken to asking Lu Hai about such things as he heard about them. This time, however, as he turned with his mouth already poised for the question, he saw that it would fall on deaf ears. Lu Hai was staring at the TV, his mouth hanging agape. It looked like the TV had sucked the wits right out of him. Perplexed, Ah Quan waved his hand in front of his friend’s face, but he garnered no reaction. Only a long time after the news had finished did Lu Hai recover his composure.

He mumbled, more to himself than Ah Quan: “Why ever did I not think of the China Sun?”

Ah Quan now stared as blankly as Lu Hai had a moment ago; he could not believe that Lu Hai had been unaware of something that even he had known about. Who in China could not have heard of it?

Of course he must have known; perhaps it was something he had not thought of until now. How could the China Sun mean anything to Lu Hai, a vagrant living in a stuffy, rundown apartment?

Lu Hai did nothing to unravel the mystery. “Remember what I told you this morning? Right now a bird of gold came flying right in front of my eyes, and it’s a big one. In fact, it has been circling over my head for a while. Dammit, why didn’t I see it?”

Ah Quan just stared at him. There was no trace of comprehension in his eyes.

As Lu Hai stood, he declared, “I will go to Beijing! I’ll catch the two o’clock train. You should come with me, Quan, my boy!”

“Go to Beijing? And do what?” Ah Quan asked, even more baffled than he had been a second ago.

“Beijing is so big, what is there that can’t be done? Even if you shine shoes there, you’ll make much more than you do here!” Lu Hai shouted enthusiastically.

So, that same night, Ah Quan and Lu Hai boarded the almost empty train. All night they sped through the vastness of the Western grasslands, rushing toward the rising sun.

CHAPTER 3 Third Goal in Life: Go to a bigger city; See the bigger world; Earn more money

When he first saw the capital, Ah Quan realized one thing: Some things one had to see to understand. Imagination sometimes just would not do, and Beijing’s nights definitely exceeded anything he could have imagined.

It was so much brighter than his village or the mine had ever been. It was even brighter than the lights of the provincial capital. As the bus he and Lu Hai had taken from the Beijing West Railway Station drove down Chang’An Avenue, he realized that if he had combined those past lights a thousand times over, still they could not rival Beijing’s night. Of course, the lights of Beijing were not really a thousand times brighter than those of the provincial capital, but there was something about them, something that none of the cities out West had, could have, even if he had seen all their lights at once.

Ah Quan and Lu Hai checked into a cheap basement guest room for the night. On the morning of the second day they parted ways. Before taking his leave, Lu Hai wished Ah Quan all the best. He also told him that if he should ever run into trouble, all he had to do was find him; he would be happy to help. Lu Hai, however, gave Ah Quan neither telephone number nor address. Of course, he currently had neither.

“How will I find you?” Ah Quan asked.

“Just wait a while. You will soon just have to watch TV or read the paper, then you’ll know where I am,” Lu Hai enigmatically answered.

Watching Lu Hai as he disappeared into the distance, Ah Quan shook his head in confusion. He could not make heads or tails of what he had just heard: The man was now penniless. Today he had not even been able to afford the guest room and Ah Quan had paid for breakfast. It had been so bad that he had had to give the landlord his solar-cooker. It had been one of the few things that remained from Lu Hai’s life before poverty. Now he was a beggar with nothing but a dream.

After parting ways with Lu Hai, Ah Quan immediately went about looking for a work. At least, that had been his plan, but the shock of the big city soon let him forget all about it. He spent the entire day wandering aimlessly about its streets. It was as if he had walked straight into a fairytale. Getting tired never even occurred to him.

When night fell, he found himself standing in front of a new symbol of the capital. Before him loomed the 1,650-foot tall Unity Building. It had just been completed last year. He let his eyes wander up that cloud-scraping glass cliff. As the rosy evening clouds slowly darkened, the city’s ocean of lights came to life. It was a breathtaking play of light and shadow that left Ah Quan’s neck sore from craning. Just as he was about to leave, the lights of the building began to light up. The incredible force of this spectacular display took complete hold of Ah Quan and he remained, rooted to the spot, staring upward in wonder.

“You’ve been staring for a long time now; are you interested in that kind of work?”

Ah Quan turned, looking to see who had addressed him. It was a young man, dressed like anyone in the city. In his hand, however, he held a yellow hard hat. “What work?” Ah Quan asked in return, confused.

“What were you just looking at then?” the man asked as he pointed up, the hardhat dangling from his hand.

Ah Quan lifted his head again, following the man’s finger. To his surprise, he spotted a few people, all the way up that glass cliff. From where he stood they looked like little more than tiny black dots.

“What are they doing up there?” Ah Quan asked, continuing to carefully observe them. “Are they cleaning the windows?”

The man nodded. “I am the personnel supervisor of the Blue Sky Building Cleaning Company. For the most part, our company is hired out to clean high-rises. Are you interested in that kind of work?”

Ah Quan looked back up. Just watching those little, ant-like, black dots made his head spin with vertigo. “That,” he said, gulping, “is too scary.”

The man would not be dissuaded and started into his pitch. “If you are concerned about your safety, rest assured. Sure, the work looks dangerous and that does make it hard for us to recruit workers. In fact, we are currently rather short-staffed, but our security measures are very thorough and in strict accordance with the regulations. There is absolutely no danger to it. And the work earns higher pay than any similar jobs in this line of work. You could make two-thousand a month and the company will provide for your lunch and will buy accident insurance for you.”

Ah Quan was completely caught off-guard by the wage he had just been offered. Dumbstruck, he stared at the supervisor.

The man completely misunderstood his point. “Fine, I’ll cancel your probation period and I’ll add another three-hundred. It will be a monthly salary of two-thousand three-hundred then, but I really can’t go any higher. The basic wage for this kind of work used to be five-hundred, six-hundred yuan, plus a daily bonus for every extra window. Now it’s a fixed salary and a good one by comparison.”

So, Ah Quan became a high-rise cleaner. He heard that overseas they were known as “Spider-Men”.

CHAPTER 4 Fourth Goal in Life: Become a Beijinger

Together with four co-workers, Ah Quan carefully rappelled from the top of the Aerospace Tower. It took them 40 minutes to reach the83rd floor up to where they had cleaned to yesterday. In the spider-men’s line of work, the biggest headache was cleaning slanting walls that met the ground at an angle of less than 90 degrees. The architect responsible for the Aerospace Tower had, in a display of his bizarre creativity, designed the entire building with slanting outer walls. The broad top of the building was supported on the ground by a slender column. That famous architect had said that this upward sloping design reflected the feeling of rising upward. It certainly seemed reasonable and the building had become famous around the world and a symbol for Beijing. That being what it was, the architect and all his ancestors still found their way into rounds of cursing by of all the spider-men of Beijing. For them, cleaning this building was a nightmare. From the ground up to 1,300 feet, the angle was as little as 65 degrees.

Hanging at his work spot, Ah Quan looked up. Above him he could see the enormous, overhanging glass cliff. It looked like it would collapse down on him at any minute. With one hand he unscrewed the cap of his detergent container. With the other hand he held tightly to the handle of his sucker disk. These sucker disks had been specially designed for window cleaners working on slanting walls. Even so, they were not easy to operate and would often lose their suction, leaving the spider-man swaying next to the wall, held swinging only by their safety rope. These accidents happened often while working on the Aerospace Tower, and every time it did happen, it would frighten the cleaner straight out of his senses. Just yesterday, Ah Quan had seen a fellow lose his suction and swing a good distance out. When he came back in, a strong wind had pushed him right into the wall, shattering a large window. The worker had been left with large gashes on both his forehead and arms. The cost for the expensive, coated, high-quality structural glass plate had set him back an entire year’s wages.

Even though Ah Quan had now worked as a spider-man for more than two years by this time, the job remained a very real challenge. Wind speeds of around five miles per hour at ground level meant winds of 20 miles per hour at 300 feet and at above 1,000 feet, where he was now, it was even stronger still. The danger was obvious and since the beginning of the century a number of spider-men had plummeted to the streets below. In winter these winds would cut like a knife. Winds were by far not the only problem they faced. The hydrofluoric acid solution they usually employed when washing was strong enough to blacken their fingernails and cause them to peel off altogether. To protect themselves from the corrosive power of the solution they had to wear layers of water-proof clothing, head to foot. In the summer this was particularly troublesome. As they wiped the coated windows, the Sun would burn on their backs while its glare on the glass would blind them from the front. It made Ah Quan feel like he had been hung above Lu Hai’s solar-cooker.

Nonetheless, Ah Quan loved the work. In fact, these years had been the happiest time in his entire life. This certainly had to do with the fact that the spider-men were very highly paid when compared to the other low-skilled migrant worker jobs available in the capital. More importantly, however, the work gave him a wonderful sense of fulfillment. He particularly enjoyed a part of the work that his colleagues did their best to avoid: Cleaning newly constructed skyscrapers. All of these buildings were at least 650 feet and the tallest reached 1,650 feet. Hanging off the top of these skyscrapers, all of Beijing stretched out below him.

The so-called high-rises of the last century looked almost tiny from up there, even if they stood close by; a bit farther away and they became nothing more than bundles of matchsticks jammed into the ground. Even the Forbidden City at the heart of Beijing looked like something made from golden toy blocks. Up here he could not hear the din of Beijing, yet he could survey the entire city with a single glance. It lay below, silently breathing, the web of roads like veins pumping the vital blood of its colossal life.

At times the skyscraper he was working on would pierce the clouds; the city below could then be dark and drowning in rain while his world would be aglow with splendid sunlight. As the endless ocean of clouds broiled below, Ah Quan would feel as if the powerful winds above passed right through him.

Experience had taught Ah Quan a maxim: Seen from above, things became much clearer. When the big city swallowed him, everything around him seemed frustratingly complex and Beijing turned into an endless maze. But from high up, the entire city was no more than a large anthill full of more than 10 million people, and the world no longer appeared so vast.

When he had been paid for the first time, Ah Quan went to one of the big shopping malls. He rode the elevator up to the third level. There he discovered a strange, baffling world. It was nothing like the bustling, crowded floors below. Instead he found a spacious hall. All that he could see in it was a few amazingly large low-standing tables. These massive tabletops were one and all covered by groups of tiny buildings standing no taller than a book. The space between the buildings was as green as grass and interspersed with tiny white pavilions and winding walkways. These tiny buildings seemed to be made of ivory and cheese. In fact, they looked quite lovely and together with their green grass they created an exquisite world. In Ah Quan’s eyes this truly was a model of heaven on earth.

At first he assumed that they were some kind of toys, but he could see no children on the entire floor. On the contrary, all the people looking at the tables did so with stern gravity. Ah Quan stood by the side of a table for a long while. Spellbound, he studied this heaven. His trance was only broken when a beautiful young lady greeted him with a friendly smile. Finally he began to understand what was being sold here.

Without plan or clear intention, he pointed at one of the buildings and asked how much an apartment on the top floor would cost. The lady told him that it was a three-bedroom apartment and that it cost 1750 yuan per square foot, for a total of 2,650,000 yuan.

The number elicited an audible gasp from Ah Quan, but the lady softened the cold, hard figure with gentle warmth. “You can pay in monthly installments of 8,000 to 10,000 yuan.”

He gingerly dared to ask a pertinent question. “I,” he said, swallowing hard before continuing, “I am not a resident of Beijing. Could I still buy it?”

The young lady smiled softly as she replied. “You’re quite the joker. The hukou system of binding you to your registered home was abolished two years ago. And who is to say who is a Beijinger? Doesn’t where you live make you a Beijinger?”

After Ah Quan had left the mall, he wandered the streets aimlessly for many hours. As night fell, the multi-colored lights of Beijing sparkled to life around him. In his hand he held the colorful flier the lady at the mall had given him. Occasionally he would stop to look around; only a few months before he had lived in that simple room in the now so distant West. Back in the provincial capital, even the idea of owning an apartment would have seemed like a fairytale to him. Now, he was still a good means away from owning an apartment in Beijing, but it was no longer a fairytale; it had become a dream, and this dream was just like those exquisite little models. It was something he could actually see, something he could reach out and touch.

Ah Quan’s reminiscence was broken by someone rapping against the window he was cleaning. It was an all too common annoyance. For the white collar high-rise workers, the appearance of a window cleaner on their office window was always an ineffable annoyance. It seemed that these people really saw them as their overseas nickname, as a strange clan of giant spiders crawling on their windows. Far more stood between the cleaners and the office dwellers than a mere pane of glass. When the spider-men worked, the people inside would, without any real enmity, loudly complain that they were blocking the Sun and about the other ways in which the cleaners were ruining their day.

The glass of the Aerospace Tower was semi-reflective, making it hard for Ah Quan to make out what was going on inside. He finally discerned a man within the building. To his complete surprise it was Lu Hai!

After they had parted ways, Ah Quan had long been worried about Lu Hai. In his mind, Lu Hai had become a vagrant in a Western suit, hobbling his way through a life of destitution in the big city. Then one late autumn night, just as Ah Quan was silently worrying whether Lu Hai had anything to wear for the winter, he suddenly saw him on the TV. It was just as he had said it would be.

At the time, the China Sun project had just selected the material for its reflector. The choice had been the most critical technical decision of the entire project. Among the 12 available materials, it was Lu Hai’s nano-mirror-membrane that was ultimately selected. Lu Hai was almost instantly transformed from a vagrant scientist into one of the chief scientists of the China Sun project. Overnight he had become world famous. After that, even though he occasionally saw Lu Hai in the media, Ah Quan almost forgot about him; he did not believe that there was any connection left between them now.

When Ah Quan arrived in his spacious office later, Lu Hai did not look much different than he had two years ago. In fact, he still wore the Western suit. Ah Quan now saw that the suit he had previously considered so extravagantly expensive was, in truth, very much second-rate.

Ah Quan was soon telling him about his life since they had parted. He finished with a smile. “It looks like we both have been doing rather well in Beijing.”

“Rather well indeed!” Lu Hai nodded enthusiastically. “As a matter of fact, that morning when I told you about the times and opportunities, I was◦— in truth◦— at the verge of surrendering in despair. I told you what I wanted to hear, but these times really are full of opportunity.”

Ah Quan nodded as well. “Birds of gold are everywhere.” As he spoke, he sized up the office around him. It was brimming with the most modern technology. Most striking was a piece of very unusual decoration. The entire ceiling of the office was enveloped by a hologram of the night sky. It made being in the room much like standing in a courtyard under a brilliant, starry night sky. Suspended in this night sky hung a curved, silver mirror. It looked much like Lu Hai’s solar-cooker, but Ah Quan knew that it had to be dozens of times larger than all of Beijing. A round lamp hung in a corner of the ceiling, emitting dazzling yellow light. Like the mirror, this round lamp floated in the sky without any visible means of suspension. The curved mirror reflected this lamp’s light onto a globe, creating a circle of illumination on its surface. The lamp slowly floated across the ceiling and as it moved, the mirror tracked its path, capturing and reflecting the lamp’s light onto the globe, no matter where it went. The starlit sky, the mirror, the lamp, its light, the globe, and circle of illumination all formed an abstract and enigmatic whole.

“Is that the China Sun?” Ah Quan asked in awe, pointing at the mirror.

Lu Hai nodded. “It is an 11,500-square-mile mirror that can reflect sunlight. It will be in a geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Earth. From Earth it will look like a second Sun.”

“I really do not understand; how will another sun in the sky bring more rain?” Ah Quan asked, confused.

Lu Hai did his best to explain. “The artificial sun will influence the weather in a number of ways. For example, by changing the thermal equilibrium of the air it can influence the atmospheric circulation, increase ocean evaporation, or shift weather fronts. But that does not really explain it. In fact, the orbital reflector is just one part of the China Sun project. Another part is a complex atmospheric model. This model will be run on a large number of super computers and it will be able to accurately simulate changes in an area’s atmosphere. It will then be able to find the precise point at which the heat from the artificial sun will be able to exert the most influence. We will thereby be able to produce quite dramatic effects, enough to completely change the weather of a target area…” He paused. “It is an amazingly complex project and somewhat outside of my area of expertise. In fact, I do not fully understand it myself.”

Ah Quan decided to ask a question to which Lu Hai would certainly know the answer. He also knew that it was almost certainly a very silly question, but he drummed up all his courage and asked it nonetheless. “Something that large hanging in the sky, why doesn’t it fall?”

A long silence followed the question. Lu Hai just stood there as the seconds passed. Finally, he glanced at his watch and then slapped Ah Quan on the shoulder. “Let’s go. I want to treat you to dinner, and while we eat, I will explain to you why the China Sun cannot fall.”

But it did not turn out to be quite as simple as Lu Hai had expected. He soon realized that he would have to start with the very first basics. While Ah Quan did know that they lived on a spherical planet, his thinking was still heavily influenced by the traditional Chinese model of a dome sky above a square earth. It took Lu Hai a great deal of effort to make him truly understand and accept that our world is but a small rock, floating through an infinite void.

Even though Ah Quan came not a step closer that evening to understanding the specifics of why the China Sun would not fall, his very universe had begun to change in the depths of his mind. His understanding of the cosmos had entered the geocentric era of the Ptolemaic system.

On the second evening, Lu Hai took Ah Quan to a street vendor. Over dinner he was able to pull him into a Copernican world. The next two evenings Ah Quan learned of Newtonian physics and he came to gain a very basic comprehension of gravitational attraction. The next day, Lu Hai, with the help of the globe in his office, propelled Ah Quan into the Space Age. A public holiday followed and finally Ah Quan, in the face of that globe, came to understand the meaning of a geosynchronous orbit, and then he finally understood why the China Sun could not fall.

On that day, Lu Hai took Ah Quan on a tour of the China Sun Control Center. The center was equipped with a massive monitor that revealed a panorama of the China Sun in mid-construction. As of now, it was still about a dozen separate, thin pieces of silver-like material, floating through the blackness of space in geosynchronous orbit. Spacecraft flitted among these plates like tiny mosquitoes, but what shook Ah Quan most was to be found on another monitor altogether. It was a picture of Earth, seen from 22,000 miles above. From that elevation continents looked like Kraft paper floating on the oceans. Mountain ranges seemed to be no more than the crinkles and creases in that paper, while the clouds looked to be no more than cotton candy spread over it.

Lu Hai joined Ah Quan in front of the monitor. He showed him both the area of his home village and Beijing. Ah Quan stood dumbfounded for many long minutes, before finally musing aloud. “I am certain that people think about things very differently up there…”

Three months later, primary construction of the China Sun had been completed. On the eve of the Chinese National Holiday, the reflector was turned toward the night Earth, its gigantic light spot aimed straight at the capital region. That night Ah Quan gathered together with hundreds of thousands in Tiananmen Square to watch this magnificent sunrise: In the western night sky a gleaming star suddenly lit up and rapidly began to brighten. Around this star a ring of blue began to spread in the sky. As the China Sun bloomed to its full strength, half the sky was bathed in blue. At its edges the clear blue was gradually bleeding into yellow, reddish-orange and deep purple, just as if a circular rainbow was spanning into existence around that circle of blue. The people would come to call this phenomenon the “Sunglow Wreathe”.

By the time Ah Quan finally returned home it was already four o’clock. As he lay down on his cramped bunk, the China Sun was still shining through his window, illuminating the real estate ads tacked to the wall above his pillow.

Ah Quan tore them all down.

In the celestial light of the China Sun, the ideal they represented, the ideal that had so incessantly excited him in the past years, just seemed suddenly inane and trivial.

Two months later, the director of the cleaning company came to find Ah Quan. He told him that Director General Lu wanted to see him in the China Sun Control Center. Ah Quan had not seen Lu Hai since he had finished his work on the Aerospace Tower.

“Your sun is truly magnificent!” he cheered when he met Lu Hai in his office at the Aerospace Tower. Ah Quan’s praise came straight from the heart.

“It is everyone’s sun! And in some ways, especially yours; at the moment it cannot be seen here because it is bringing snow to your parent’s village!” Lu Hai told him, smiling broadly.

Ah Quan nodded. “My parents sent me a letter and they told me that they really are having a lot of snow this winter!”

“However, the China Sun has encountered a major problem,” Lu Hai said, pointing to a screen behind him. On it Ah Quan could see two images of the light spot. “These two pictures were taken at the same location, two months apart. Can you spot the difference?” he asked as Ah Quan began examining the images.

“The left is somewhat brighter,” he said after short scrutiny.

“You see, one can make out the reduction in reflectivity with the naked eye after just two months,” Lu Hai said, nodding.

“How can that be? Is that large mirror collecting dust?” Ah Quan asked.

“There is no dust in space, but there is the solar wind and that brings a stream of particles being blown from the Sun. With time, it will cause changes on the reflective surface of the China Sun. Already the mirror surface has been covered by a very fine film of solar mist and that has reduced the Sun’s reflectivity. In a year, it will look as if the reflective surface has been covered in vapor. Then, the China Sun will become a China Moon, no longer capable of carrying out its mission,” Lu Hai explained.

“Didn’t you take that into consideration?” Ah Quan queried, somewhat incredulous.

“Of course we thought of it,” Lu Hai paused, looking straight at him. “We still need to talk about you: Do you want to change jobs?” he finally asked.

“Change jobs? What can I do?” Ah Quan returned the question with a good deal of confusion.

“You can continue doing high altitude cleaning work, but you will work here,” Lu Hai answered enigmatically.

Ah Quan looked about, completely unsure what to make of Lu Hai’s offer. “Isn’t your building freshly cleaned? Do you still want to hire a specialized high altitude cleaner for it?”

“No; at least, not for cleaning buildings. It’s about cleaning the China Sun,” Lu Hai finally said, unraveling the mystery of his request.

CHAPTER 5 Fifth Goal in Life: Fly to the China Sun and clean it

It was the first meeting of the leaders of the China Sun Project Operations Department in regards to the cleaning of the reflector. Lu Hai introduced everyone to Ah Quan and explained his job to them. He had barely finished when someone asked about Ah Quan’s academic vita. In response, Ah Quan honestly told them that he had attended primary school and that for only three years.

“But I am literate and can read without problems,” Ah Quan told the gathered department leaders.

A burst of laughter immediately erupted.

“Director General Lu, is this some kind of joke?” someone shouted angrily.

Lu Hai’s response was calm and measured. “This is no joke. A team of thirty cleaners would take half a year to clear the entire China Sun; that is assuming that they were to work around the clock, without break. So in fact, we will need at least sixty to ninety cleaners working in shifts. If the Chinese Aerospace Labor Protection laws are passed, we will probably need even more people to comply with its shift regulations; maybe as many as a hundred-twenty or even a hundred-fifty. We can hardly hire a hundred-fifty astronauts with doctorates and three-thousand jet fighter flight hours for the job, can we?”

“Isn’t there a huge, excluded middle here? Higher education has become quite widespread in the city these days, so why send an illiterate into space?” a skeptic immediately protested.

“I am not illiterate!” Ah Quan snapped back at the man, but his adversary paid him no heed and continued, pointedly focused only on Lu Hai.

“This is utterly unworthy of this great project!” he claimed.

The other attendees nodded in approval.

Lu Hai also nodded. “I expected that you would react in this way. Other than this cleaner, everyone here has a doctorate. So fine; let us see the quality of your cleaning work! Please follow me.”

More than a dozen baffled and uncomprehending attendees followed Lu Hai out of the meeting room. He led them to an elevator. Three types of elevator had been installed in this building, being fast, medium and slow. Lu Hai took them into a fast elevator. With breathtaking speed they shot up, straight to the top of the building.

As they ascended, someone excitedly said, “This is my first time in this elevator. It feels just like riding a rocket!”

As the elevator arrived, Lu Hai looked at all of them and intoned, “We have just entered geosynchronous orbit. We will all now experience what it is like to clean the China Sun.”

Every single one of them looked at him in amazement.

After disembarking, they nonetheless all followed Lu Hai up the tight metal stairs. Finally, they reached a small gate and went through it on to the open roof of the building. They walked straight into glaring sunlight and strong winds, but the blue sky above seemed a little clearer than usual. The group of highly qualified university graduates looked all around, absorbing the panorama of Beijing that stretched out around them. Only then did they notice that there was already a small group on the roof, waiting for them. Ah Quan gasped in surprise as he realized that it was his company’s director and his spider-man colleagues!

“Now, everyone will be given the chance to experience Ah Quan’s work,” Lu Hai said, his voice loud and authoritative.

As he finished, the spider-men walked up, one to every attendee, and fixed each one with a safety harness. Then they led them to the edge of the roof and carefully helped them onto the small seat boards, the same kind that the spider-men used to hang off the side of buildings. The boards were slowly lowered, and then left suspended, about 200 feet from the top of the building. As the attendees descended down the glass wall, loud screams of unadulterated terror began to rise from among their ranks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let us proceed with our meeting’s agenda!” Lu Hai shouted down at the attendees, bending over the side of the building.

“You bastard! Quick, pull us up!!” came the fear-tinged yells in response.

“All you have to do is clean one pane of glass, then you can come back up!” Lu Hai declared.

They could not do it.

All that the people below managed to do was to hold on for their dear lives, clinging to their safety harnesses or the ropes holding their boards. They did not dare budge, not even willing to release a single hand to pick up one of the mops or to open a detergent bucket. Every day, these aerospace officials worked on blueprints and documents that dealt with objects thousands of miles off the ground; but here, experiencing a mere quarter-mile firsthand, they were all scared witless.

Lu Hai, who had been crouching at the edge of the buildings, stood up and walked to a spot where an Air Force colonel was hanging below. Of the more than a dozen attendees of the meeting, he was the only one who had maintained his cool. In fact, he had started to clean the glass with steady and controlled movements. What surprised Ah Quan most, however, was that he was working with both his hands, leaving him without a hold on the harness, and even though his board was caught in strong winds, he did not allow it to sway. Only veteran spider-men could do what he was accomplishing on his first attempt. Ah Quan’s surprise quickly turned to comprehension when he recognized the man; more than 10 years ago he had been an astronaut on one of the Shenzhou missions.

“Colonel Zhang, frankly speaking, would you say that the work before you is easier than a space walk in orbit?” Lu Hai asked the man.

“In terms of the requisite physical ability and skill, I would say it is very similar,” the former astronaut replied.

“Well said!” Lu Hai expounded: “Studies at the Aerospace Training Center have shown that in the context of ergonomics, cleaning high-rises and cleaning a reflective surface in space are, for the most part, identical. Both are dangerous tasks that require the worker to constantly maintain his balance; the work on both is repetitive and monotonous, yet very physically demanding. Both also require the worker to be constantly alert, as even the slightest oversight can lead to an accident. For an astronaut such accidents can lead to him drifting off-course, losing an instrument or materials, or even to a malfunction of his life-support system. For spider-men, they can end with them colliding with the glass, dropping their tools or detergent, or even to them slipping out of a faulty safety harness. When we consider the required finesse, the physical requirements and, in particular, the psychological requirements, then we can say that spider-men are fully qualified to work as mirror cleaners.”

The former astronaut lifted his head and with a nod said, “It reminds me of that old truism: For an oil merchant to pour oil into a can through the square hole of a coin requires the same degree of excellence as it takes for a general to hit a bulls-eye with an arrow. The only difference is the person doing it.”

Lu Hai continued in agreement. “Columbus discovered America and Cook discovered Australia, but the opportunities these new worlds offered were seized by ordinary people. Those pioneers came from the lowest rungs of European society. The opportunities space offers are no different. In our nation’s five-year plan, near-Earth space has been designated a second West; a new frontier now that the industrial development of China’s Western regions has been completed. For the aerospace industry, this means that the age of exploration has already come to an end. The time when space travel was an adventure for a few elites is over. Sending common people into orbit will be our first step in the industrial development of space.”

“Good! Fine! You have the right to it! Now quickly, pull us up!” The other people below shouted themselves hoarse.

Back at the elevator, the director of the cleaning company leaned in close and whispered to Lu Hai. “Director General Lu, you really got into it back there, but isn’t your argument a bit too highbrow? But of course you didn’t want to address the crux of the matter in front of Ah Quan and the guys.”

“Huh?” Lu Hai uttered in curiosity, turning to the director.

“Everyone knows that the China Sun project is run as a quasi-commercial operation. We all know that a gap in the funding almost led to its cancellation halfway into the project, and also that your reserves to cover the operating costs are now running low. In the commercial aerospace industry, the annual salary of a regular astronaut is more than a few million. My lads can save you a hundred million or more every year,” the director noted.

Lu Hai was now smiling enigmatically. “Do you really think that a paltry hundred million would be worth the risk? As of today, I have lowered the standards of education required of our mirror cleaners to a bare minimum. I did so very purposefully◦— to set a precedent. I will now be able to hire ordinary university graduates for other jobs in orbit required for the operation of the China Sun. In this way we will be able to save much more than a few tens of millions. It is like you said, we really do not have large reserves and this allows us to solve that intractable problem.”

“When I was young, going to space was such a romantic endeavor. I can clearly remember when Kennedy invited Deng Xiaoping to the Johnson Space Center I called an American astronaut a god. Now,” the director said with a bitter smile, shaking his head as he slapped Lu Hai’s shoulder, “well, now I think of things in your terms.”

Lu Hai turned to look at that group of young spider-men and with a loud voice told the director, “But, sir, the salary I can offer them is eight to ten times what you pay!”

The next day, 60 spider-men, including Ah Quan, were transferred to the National Aerospace Training Center in Shijingshan. One and all they were young men who had migrated to the capital, looking for work. They had come from the farthest corners of China’s vast rural hinterland. Now new lands awaited them.

CHAPTER 6 Mirror Farmers

Xichang Base: With a loud rumble, great clouds of white smoke billowed from the engines of the space shuttle Horizon as it ascended into the blue sky. Aboard the shuttle were Ah Quan and 14 other mirror cleaners. After three months of training on the ground, they had been selected from among the 60 spider-men to be the first group to be sent into space. There they would take the lead in putting what they had learned into practice.

To Ah Quan, the strain of the G-forces seemed far less terrible than people always made them out to be. In fact, he even felt somewhat comforted by them. They reminded him of his childhood and being held tightly in the loving embrace of his mother.

The sky in the porthole to his upper right slowly began to turn from blue to black. Just then the faint pop of exploding bolts reverberated from outside the ship. It was the sound of the boosters detaching. Immediately the deafening roar of the engine became a soft drone. By now, the sky had turned a deep shade of purple and a short while later it finally blackened altogether. Ah Quan could now see stars through the porthole. They did not twinkle, but shined in perfect clarity.

The drone of the engine ceased and absolute silence fell inside the spaceship. The seats stopped vibrating as all force pushing them into their backrests vanished. The spider-men had entered micro-gravity. Ah Quan immediately recalled the weightlessness training they had undergone in a huge tank of water; it really did feel like floating in water.

But Ah Quan could not yet release his seatbelt. The engine had droned back to life and the force of its acceleration pushed them all back into their chairs. What followed was a very long series of course alterations. The starry sky and the oceans rose across the tiny porthole in turns. One moment the cabin was flooded with the golden light of the Sun, while the next it was filled with the blue reflection of Earth. Seen through the small window, the curvature of the planet was growing ever more pronounced and even more of Earth’s oceans and continents came into view.

In total, it took six hours to establish a full geosynchronous orbit. The rolling of stars and Earth slowly began to blend into one continuous vista, lulling Ah Quan into an unexpected sleep. But he was soon ripped back into wakefulness by their commander’s voice blaring over the intercom. He told them that their flight had reached its destination.

One by one his companions floated from their seats, pressing themselves to the portholes to catch a glimpse of what lay outside. Ah Quan, too, released his seatbelt. Using a swimming movement he awkwardly floated to the porthole closest to him. It was the first time he saw the entirety of Earth with his own eyes. The majority of his fellow workers, however, were pressed to portholes on the other side of the cabin. Ah Quan quickly pushed himself off the bulkhead to join them, but he was too fast. Shooting to the other side of the cabin, he arrived head-first. A good knock against the bulkhead later, he too made it to a porthole. He discovered that the Horizon was already right under the China Sun. Its huge reflector had come to dominate most of the starlit sky and their space shuttle seemed like nothing more than a tiny gnat flying below a huge silver dome.

As the Horizon continued its approach, Ah Quan was slowly able to take in the sheer magnitude of the reflector; already its huge surface filled the entire view of the window, any trace of its curvature having all but vanished. It almost seemed as if they were flying toward a silver plain, stretching forever beyond the horizon.

As they came ever closer, the reflection of the Horizon began to appear on the silvery surface. They could now also see long seams stretching across this world of silver. They reminded Ah Quan of the graticule of latitude and longitude lines found on a map. These seams were the only things that gave them any sense of the speed at which they were traveling.

Gradually, the lines below them lost their parallelity, now visibly converging toward a center. Suddenly this convergence began to exponentially accelerate; it was just as if the Horizon was flying straight toward a “pole” of this giant “map”. And soon that pole came into view. It was a small black dot at which the lines below met. As the space shuttle began its descent toward this dot, Ah Quan realized with amazement that this small black dot was in fact a gigantic tower standing on the silver land below. He recognized it as the control center of the China Sun, a hermetically sealed cylinder standing at its very center.

For the next three months it would be their only home in the vast cold of space.

Their life as space-spider-men had begun. Every day◦— it took the China Sun 24 hours to complete one orbit around the Earth◦— they would ride machines onto the mirror surface to clean it. These machines reminded them of the two-wheeled, walk-behind tractors they had used on the field. They drove them up and down the vast expanse of the reflector, just as if they were tilling this silver land. The Western media caught on to this and ended up coining a rather more poetic name for them: “Mirror Farmers”.

The world these “farmers” inhabited was a very strange one. Below them stretched a silver plain, and even though the reflector’s curvature meant that this plain slowly rose in all directions, it was so large that it appeared as flat as a pancake. Above, the Earth and the Sun always remained; the Sun appeared to be much smaller than the Earth, giving the impression that it was Earth’s brightly glowing satellite. They could also see a bright circle of light move across the Earth. Shining on Earth’s night side, it was an incredibly striking sight. This was the area illuminated by the light they reflected. The reflector could adjust its shape to change the size of this circle. When the distant slope of this silver land was relatively steep, the circle of light would be small and bright. When the slope was gentler, the light would be dimmer and its area larger.

No matter what the slant of the slope, the work of the mirror cleaners was always extremely arduous, and soon they realized that cleaning the reflector was far more tedious and exhausting than scrubbing skyscraper windows on Earth had ever been. Every day they would return to the control center utterly spent. Often they were too exhausted to even take off their spacesuits. On top of this, as the next part of the cleaning crew arrived, the control center grew rather crowded; they soon were living like sailors on a submarine. Nonetheless, they always counted their blessings when they made it back to the central tower.

The farthest one could get from the station on the reflector was about 60 miles. Often, those working at the outer rim of the mirror could not make it back “home” and instead were forced to “camp out” for the “night”. This meant liquid food from their spacesuits, followed by sleeping while suspended in space.

Along with the many discomforts, the work was also fraught with danger. Never before in the history of human space flight had spacewalks been attempted by so many. When “camping out”, the slightest fault with one’s spacesuit could lead to death. Added to this were the dangers of micro-meteorites, space junk, and sun storms. Among the control center engineers the living and working conditions had lead to massive undercurrents of resentment; the Mirror Farmers, on the other hand, long accustomed to hardships, simply and silently adapted to their new circumstances.

On their fifth day in outer space, Ah Quan called his family back home. At the time he was working more than 30 miles from the control center. From there he could see his home, directly under the China Sun’s circle of light.

Ah Quan’s father sounded somewhat incredulous as he spoke. “Quan, my boy, are you really on that sun over our heads? It is shining above us right now. The night is bright as day!”

Ah Quan happily replied, “I am, Father, I am right above you.”

Ah Quan’s mother took the phone. “Quan, is it hot up there?”

“The heat is hot and the cold, cold. When we cast a shadow up here, everything outside it is hotter than ten summer days and everything inside the shadow is colder than ten winter nights,” came Ah Quan’s reply.

His mother turned to his father and noted, “I can see our Quan! There, a small black dot on the sun!”

Ah Quan knew that it was impossible, but he could not hold back his tears. Sobbing ever so slightly, he said, “Father, Mother, I can see you. Where you are I can see two black spots on Asia! Bundle up tomorrow; I can see a cold front moving in toward you from the north.”

Three months after that call, the second shift arrived and Ah Quan’s team was allowed back to Earth for a three-month vacation. They had barely landed before each and every one of them went out and bought a high-powered telescope.

The three months had soon passed and they returned to the China Sun. Back on the giant reflector, they now used their breaks to watch the Earth through their telescopes. Of course they mostly turned their objectives toward their homelands, but at more than 20,000 miles, not even their telescopes allowed them to make out the villages from which they had set out. One of them used a thick marker to write a crude and simple poem on the reflector:

The Mirror Farmers did remarkable work and they were gradually given more and more responsibilities far beyond the scope of their cleaning work. First they took on the task of repairing damage done by meteorite impacts. After a while they were given even more complicated work: monitoring and reinforcing over-stressed areas.

As the China Sun orbited, it constantly changed its angle. These changes were accomplished by 3,000 engines spread across the back of the mirror. The extremely thin surface of the reflector itself was connected to the whole structure by means of large, slender beams. As the reflector changed its angle or shape, areas of the reflector could be stressed beyond their capacity. When this occurred, they would have to promptly correct the engines’ output or reinforce the location. Left unchecked, the excess stress could tear the mirror surface. Finding and reinforcing the stressed areas required a high degree of proficiency and a great deal of experience, making this part of their work highly technical.

Other than during re-angulation and shape adjustments, these stress points most frequently developed during so-called “orbital haircuts”. The official name of this operation was: Light pressure and solar wind-induced error compensation maneuver. In fact, light pressure and solar wind exerted a significant force on the massive surface of the reflector. Roughly six pounds of pressure pushed against every square mile of the mirror surface, constantly shifting the trajectory of the reflector. Their earthbound control center constantly monitored these changes, at all times comparing the altered tract to its intended orbit on a large screen. On this screen it looked as if long, wavy hairs were ever growing from the intended orbit, hence the odd name for the operation.

During orbital haircuts, the reflector accelerated much more rapidly than it ever did to adjust its angle or change its shape. For the Mirror Farmers this meant critical work. They would fly above the mirror, carefully observing the surface for any unusual changes. Whenever they spotted any, they would urgently take action with the necessary emergency reinforcements. Each and every time it happened they accomplished the task with flying colors. As a result their salary was increased considerably; but who benefited most from this development was the person directly in charge of the China Sun project, Lu Hai. He did not even have to hire ordinary university graduates.

Nonetheless, the Mirror Farmers all understood that they would be the first and last group of workers in space◦— those who had never even made it past primary education. All who followed them were at the very least university graduates. Still, they managed to complete the mission Lu Hai had quietly given them: They had conclusively proven that the ability to adapt to harsh environments was more critical to labor in space than intelligence and creativity, and that was something ordinary people were perfectly capable of doing.

Space did, however, change the Mirror Farmers’ mindset and mentality. They were without peers, each and every day standing on ground 22,000 miles above the Earth. They could take in the entire world in a glance. For them the “global village” was not a metaphor; it was a tangible reality.

As the first laborers in space, the Mirror Farmers became a global sensation. Soon, however, the industrial development of low-Earth orbit began in earnest. A series of large projects were completed, including large solar power stations that beamed microwave energy down to Earth, micro-gravity processing plants, and many others. Construction even began on an orbital city housing 100,000. With these projects, vast amounts of workers surged into space. All of these workers were ordinary folk and so the world soon forgot about the Mirror Farmers.

Several years passed. Ah Quan had bought an apartment in Beijing, married, and become a father. He spent half of every year with his family and the other half in space. Ah Quan loved his work. Making his rounds on that silver land thousands of miles above the Earth filled his heart with a sense of transcendent tranquility. He felt as if he had found the perfect life. He saw his future stretch out before him, just like the calm and smooth silver plane under his feet.

It was not to be. Something happened that shattered his serenity and forever changed his mind’s course. That something was his encounter with Stephen Hawking.

No one would have expected that Professor Hawking would live past a hundred. It really was a medical miracle, but it was also a testament to the strength of his mind and spirit. After the first low-Earth orbit micro-gravity rehabilitation facility had been completed, he became its first patient. However, the G-forces of the launch had nearly killed him and so a return to Earth became unthinkable; after all, he would have been subjected to similar forces on his descent. Unless a functioning space elevator or anti-gravity capsules were to be invented he would have to stay in space. In fact, his doctor had recommended that he spend the rest of his life in orbit, as the micro-gravity environment would suit his body perfectly.

At first Professor Hawking had not been very interested in the China Sun project, and perhaps more importantly, he had no interest in enduring the acceleration forces that traveling from low-Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit would inflict on his body, even though they were of course much less severe than what he had had to endure on his way into space. Professor Hawking did, however, become interested in a survey of micro anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation that was to be conducted on the China Sun. The observation station for this probe was to be set up on the rear side of the China Sun. The large reflector would block all sources of interference from both Earth and Sun.

After the probe had been completed, the observation station and the small group of researchers that worked on it were disbanded. Professor Hawking decided not to leave, indicating that he quite liked it there and that he intended to stay for a while longer. Something about the China Sun had caught his attention. On Earth the media produced all kinds of wild speculations, but only Ah Quan knew the real reason.

What the Professor enjoyed most about daily life on the China Sun was his strolls across the mirror surface. To the great confusion of most, he would simply float along the underside of the reflector for several hours every day. Ah Quan, who by now had become an extremely experienced space walker, was assigned to accompany the Professor on his excursions. Hawking had at this point already become as renowned as Einstein and so Ah Quan had of course heard of him. That said, his first meeting with Professor Hawking in the control center had been quite the shock; Ah Quan had never imagined that a person paralyzed to such an extent could have gone on to such great achievements; even though he did not exactly understand what this great scientist had accomplished. On their walks, however, he never even noticed Professor Hawking’s paralysis. It was probably his experience operating an electric wheelchair that allowed him to control the miniature engine of his spacesuit as well as anyone.

The communication between Professor Hawking and Ah Quan proved a bit more difficult. On the one hand, the Professor did have an implant that allowed him to control a speech box via his brain waves, making communication significantly easier for him than it had been. On the other hand, his words still had to be translated into Chinese in real time so that Ah Quan could understand them. To avoid disturbing the Professor’s thought processes, and as per the instructions of his superiors, Ah Quan never initiated a conversation.

Professor Hawking, however, very much liked talking to him. He first asked Ah Quan about his background and life; then he reminisced on his own younger years. He told Ah Quan about the cold and gloomy great halls of his childhood years in St. Albans High School for Girls; about Wagner’s music ringing through the icy and lofty rooms of his family home in the winter; about the caravan left on the Osmington Mills pasture, and the trips to the beach with his sister Mary. He also recalled walking with his father along the Ivinghoe Beacon in the Chiltern Hills.

Ah Quan marveled at the centenarian’s memory, but even more amazing was that they had found a common language. The Professor greatly enjoyed listening to Ah Quan’s accounts of life in his home village and one time, when they reached the edge of the reflector, he asked Ah Quan to point out his homeland to him.

After a long while, their conversations inevitably turned to science. At first Ah Quan was convinced that this would end these unique exchanges, but nothing could have been further from the truth. The Professor was able to convey the most profound aspects of physics and cosmology in a language that anyone could easily follow. For the Professor these new conversations seemed very relaxing. He told Ah Quan about the Big Bang, black holes, and quantum gravity. As soon as he returned to the station, Ah Quan began chewing through those thin books the Professor had written, asking the station’s engineers and scientists whenever something was not clear to him. To his surprise he came to understand a good deal of it.

“Do you know why I like it here?” Professor Hawking asked during one of their excursions to the very edge of the reflector. They were floating close enough to the end of the mirror surface to see the Earth below. “This large mirror separates us from the Earth below. It allows me to forget the banalities of life. Here I can focus my entire being on the universe,” he explained.

In reply, Ah Quan noted, “The world below is very complicated, but seen at this distance, the universe is so simple; just a few stars scattered across space.”

“You are right, my boy, it truly does seem that way,” the Professor agreed.

The reflector’s underside was much like its top. It, too, was a mirror surface. The only real difference was the many small black towers of the engines that adjusted the reflector’s angle and shape. On their daily walks, the Professor and Ah Quan slowly floated across this surface. Staying close to the ground, they often flew all the way from the control center to the reflector’s edge. Without moonlight, the mirror’s underside was pitch black, its silver surface only reflecting the faint starlight. Compared to the topside, the horizon was always close here and they could make out the curvature of the reflector. As the grid of black support beams passed below their feet, illuminated only by the stars, it seemed to Ah Quan as if they were floating over the surface of some tiny, tranquil planet.

Whenever a re-angulation or change of shape was initiated, the engines on the rear of the reflector fired and this small planet’s surface was aglow with the flames of countless pillars of fire; it only made this wondrous place more beautiful. Always, the Milky Way shone splendidly above this small world.

It was in this realm that Ah Quan first made contact with the universe’s deepest mysteries. Here he understood that all of the starry sky that he could see was but a speck of the dust in the unimaginable vastness of the universe, and that this entire universe was no more than the embers of a magnificent, more than 10-billion-year-old, explosion.

Many years ago, when he had climbed to the top of a high-rise as a spider-man for the first time, Ah Quan had seen all of Beijing, and when he arrived on the China Sun, he had seen all of Earth. Now, for the third time in his life, Ah Quan was facing a moment of such majesty: He was standing on the roof of the universe and from there he could see things he had never even dreamed about; even though he as yet knew little of them, these far away worlds exerted an irresistible attraction upon him.

One day back at the station, Ah Quan asked an engineer about something that was troubling him. “In the sixties of the last century, humanity arrived on the moon. Why ever did we withdraw then? We still have not made it to Mars; we have not even returned to the Moon.”

The engineer was happy to explain. “Humans are practical animals; what was driven by idealism and faith in the middle of the last century could never last long.”

Ah Quan remained perplexed. “But are idealism and faith not good things?”

The engineer continued his elaboration. “I am not saying they are bad things, just that economic interests are better. If, starting in the sixties, humanity had spared no expense and fully engaged in the uneconomical venture of space travel, Earth would probably be much poorer now. You, I, and other ordinary people like us would never have made it into space, even if we have made it no further than low-Earth orbit. Friend, don’t take Hawking’s poison; he deals in things that we ordinary people should not toy with!”

The conversation changed Ah Quan. He continued to work as hard as he always worked and on the surface his life remained as tranquil as ever, but it was also clear that he had begun to think about deeper things.

Time flew by and soon 20 years had passed. Looking on with the clarity of their 22,000 mile perch, Ah Quan and his colleagues had seen the world change in these two decades. They had seen the Great Green Wall take shape and become a verdant belt traversing the entirety of Northwestern China; they had watched the yellow desert slowly be covered in green as rain and snow fell on their once-arid homelands and the dry riverbeds again flowed with clear waters.

The China Sun deserved credit for all of this, taking a critical role in the massive project of changing the climate in Northwestern China. In those years the China Sun was also occasionally called upon to perform unusual duties. Once it was used to melt the snows of the Kilimanjaro to ease a drought in Africa; another time it turned the site of the Olympics into a city that truly never sleeps.

But new technology had come along, and by comparison it had made the China Sun’s methods of weather manipulation seem very clumsy and fraught with side-effects. The China Sun had completed its mission.

The National Ministry of Space Industry held a grand ceremony to honor the first group of laborers in space. Not only were they to be honored for their 20 years of arduous and outstanding work, but even more so for the extraordinary accomplishment of 60 young men going to work in space with nothing beyond primary education. Their work in space had signaled to the world that the doors of space development had been thrown wide open to everyone. In fact, economists unanimously agreed that the start of their work had been the true beginning of the industrial development of space.

The ceremony received widespread attention from the news media, not only for the reasons described, but also because the Mirror Farmers’ story had taken on a legendary quality in the hearts of the masses; also, it was a great opportunity to engage the masses’ nostalgia.

When the ceremony was convened, those simple, hardworking, and honest young men had all already aged past the better half of their thirties. Nonetheless, they were all still clearly recognizable when they appeared on the holographic television sets of the world. Over the years most of them had achieved some form of higher education, a few even becoming full-fledged space engineers. In the eyes of the public, however, they remained that same bunch of migrant workers from the countryside.

Ah Quan was selected to speak as their representative before the camera. “With the completion of the electromagnetic delivery system, we have made the cost of entering orbit the equivalent of a flight across the Pacific,” he said. “Space travel has become commonplace, even ordinary. Few in the younger generations will understand what going to space meant for an ordinary person twenty years ago; the excitement and passion it evoked in those who were given the opportunity. We were those lucky ones.

“We were the most ordinary of people and it goes without saying that the only reason we were blessed with this remarkable experience is the China Sun. In the last twenty years, it has become our second home. In our hearts, it is very much like a small Earth. At first, we saw the joints of the reflector’s surface as the graticule lines of the northern hemisphere. We would mark our position by expressing it in cartographic coordinates. As we became familiar with the mirror surface, we gradually came to map the oceans and continents to it. We would say, ‘I am in Beijing’ or ‘Now I am over Moscow’; and each of us knew the analogous position of our home village. We always scrubbed that area the hardest.”

Ah Quan paused, letting his gaze drift into reminiscence. It was a brief moment and soon he again focused on the camera. “We worked hard on that small, silver Earth, doing our duty as best as we ever could. In those years, five mirror cleaners gave their life to the China Sun. Some could not make it to shelter when a solar magnetic storm erupted; others were hit by meteorites and space-junk.

Now, this silver land on which we lived and worked is about to disappear and we lack the words to describe what that feels like.” He let silence fall.

The voice of the Minister for Space Industry, Lu Hai, picked up the thread. “We all understand what you must feel, but I am gratified to be able to tell everyone: The China Sun will not disappear! I think you all understand that there is no way that the last century’s solutions will do for such a large object. We cannot let it burn-up in the atmosphere, but there is another way to find it a final resting place and it will be a very elegant solution: We will cease the orbital-haircuts and stop re-adjusting its angle. The solar wind and light pressure will allow China Sun to achieve escape velocity and in the end it will, fittingly, become a satellite of the Sun. Many years from now, interstellar ships will be able to visit the China Sun’s distant resting place. Then we will likely make it into a museum and we will be able to return to that plane of silver and there we will recall those unforgettable years.”

A sudden excitement took hold of Ah Quan and he loudly addressed Lu Hai. “Minister, do you really believe that day will come? Will there really be interstellar ships?”

Lu Hai was dumbstruck. For a long while he simply stared at Ah Quan, at a loss for words.

Ah Quan was very differently afflicted. “In the middle of the last century, when Armstrong left the first footprint on the Moon, almost all of humanity believed that we would land on Mars in the next decade or two. Now, eighty-six years later, we have not returned to the Moon, let alone Mars, and the reason for this is very simple: It would lose our money.

“Last century, since the end of the Cold War, economic criteria have come to rule our day-to-day life, and humanity, ruled by these criteria, has reached great heights. Now we have ended wars and poverty and we have restored our planet’s ecology. The Earth has truly become a paradise,” he said earnestly. “This has led us to put ever more trust in the efficiency of the economic principle. It has become paramount, permeating our very DNA. In every aspect and element, human society has become an economic society. Nothing that yields less than what is invested in it will ever even be considered. Developing the Moon makes no economic sense and large-scale manned exploration of space would be considered an economic crime. And as for interstellar flight, that would be seen as outright psychotic. Now humanity knows only investment, production, and reaping their fruits!”

Lu Hai nodded in agreement. “In this century, the development of space is still limited to near-Earth space; that is true. It is that way for many profound reasons that range far beyond the scope of today’s event.”

Ah Quan spoke up again. “No, they are firmly within its scope. Right here we have an opportunity. All we need to do is invest a little money and we will be able to travel from near-Earth space into remote reaches of the cosmos. Just as the Sun’s light pressure can push the China Sun out of Earth’s orbit, so can it also push it to far more distant places.”

Lu Hai shook his head with a smile. “Oh, you mean to turn the China Sun into a solar sail-ship. That would certainly work in theory; the main body of the reflector is very thin and light and its surface area is considerable. If light pressure would accelerate it for long enough, it could, in theory, become the fastest spaceship humanity has ever launched. However, that is pure theory. The reality is that a ship with only a sail can only make it only so far; it would need sailors. An unmanned sailing vessel will do nothing but spin around on the ocean without ever reaching a harbor. Remember how well Stevenson described this very thing in Treasure Island? You must consider that returning from a journey powered by light pressure requires the precise and highly complex control of the reflector’s angle. That is the reason why the China Sun was designed and operated from Earth’s orbit. Without human control, it will follow an aimless course, blindly flying along, and that flight will not take it far.”

“Yes, but sailors can fly it. I will be its pilot,” Ah Quan calmly responded.

At this time, the ratings showed that viewership of the program had risen sharply. The eyes of the entire world were fixed on these proceedings.

Lu Hai again shook his head. “But you alone cannot control the China Sun. Its angular controls require at least—”

“At least eleven others,” Ah Quan interrupted him. “Taking into account the other factors of interstellar travel, at least fifteen to twenty in total. I believe I will be able to find that many volunteers.”

Lu Hai smiled, clearly at a loss. “I really could not have imagined that our conversation today would take this turn.”

“Minister Lu, twenty years ago, you helped turn my life in new directions more than once,” Ah Quan replied.

“But I would never, ever have imagined that your directions would take you so far, much further than I have even considered,” Lu Hai sighed, emotions running deep in him. “Well, your idea is very interesting. Let us continue the discussion! Ah,” he said as realization dawned across his face, “what a pity! Your idea is not feasible: The most sensible destination for the China Sun is Mars, but you have not considered something very important; the China Sun cannot land on Mars. If you want to land, it will be a huge expenditure, making this plan lose its economic viability. If you do not want to land, nothing would distinguish your mission from that of an unmanned probe, and what would be the sense in it?”

Ah Quan’s calm was unbroken. “The China Sun will not go to Mars.”

Lu Hai gave him a baffled look. “Then where will it go? Jupiter?”

“It will not go to Jupiter. It will go to places much farther,” Ah Quan declared.

“Much farther? To Neptune? To Pluto…?” Lu Hai’s trail of thought abruptly stopped. Dumbstruck, he stared at Ah Quan a long while. “Heavens, you do not mean to say…”

“You are right. The China Sun will leave the solar system and become an interstellar vessel!” Ah Quan stated, nodding firmly.

Now the entire world joined Lu Hai in his stunned stupor.

He nodded mechanically as he stared straight ahead. “Well, if you are not joking, then give me a moment to make a quick estimate…” he said, closing his eyes as he began to calculate in his head. “Right, as far as I reckon, using the Sun’s light pressure, the China Sun will be able to accelerate to about one-tenth of light-speed. Taking into account the time this acceleration will require, it could arrive at Proxima Centauri in about forty-five years.

“You could then use the light pressure of Proxima Centauri to decelerate,” he continued, thinking it through in more detail, “and after completing a survey of the Alpha Centauri system, you could accelerate in the opposite direction, arriving back in the solar system after a hundred years or so. It all sounds like a magnificent plan, but in practical terms it will be an unrealizable dream,” he concluded.

Ah Quan shook his head ever so slightly. “You are again mistaken; the China Sun will not decelerate after reaching Proxima Centauri. We will fly past at a speed of almost twenty-thousand miles per second, using its light pressure for further acceleration. From the Alpha Centauri system we will fly on to Sirius; and if the opportunity presents itself, we will continue to leap-frog on from there, on to a third star and then a fourth and so on.”

“And what is the purpose for all this?” Lu Hai shouted, breaking all protocol as his annoyance started to show.

“All we ask of Earth is to install a highly reliable but small-scale self-sustaining eco-system and—”

“You will use this system to keep twenty people alive for more than a century?” Lu Hai again interrupted, an edge of irritation growing in his voice.

“Let me finish,” Ah Quan noted calmly before continuing from where he had been cut-off. “And a cryogenics life-support system. We will remain in stasis for most of our journey, only activating the ecosystem as we approach Proxima Centauri. Using present day technology, we will be able to travel through the cosmos for a thousand years. Obviously, the cost for these two systems will not be negligible, but it will cost less than one-thousandth of a manned interstellar mission started from the drawing board.”

“A dime would be too much; the world cannot assist twenty people in committing suicide,” Lu Hai countered firmly.

“It is not suicide, but exploration. Perhaps we will not even make it past the asteroid belt right before us; perhaps we will make it to Sirius and beyond. But if we do not try, how will we know?”

“But unlike exploration, you will most certainly never return,” Lu Hai reiterated.

Ah Quan nodded. “That is true; we will not return. Some may be satisfied with a wife, kids, and a picket fence, never so much as glancing beyond their small world; others will give their very lives for even a glimpse of something no human has ever seen. I have been both; and it falls to me to choose the manner of my life, and that includes a life on a mirror, drifting through space many light years away.”

“But there is one final issue: A thousand or more years in the future, as you fly past stars at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per second, will it really mean anything at all when you send out weak signals to Earth that will only be received dozens of years, if not centuries, later?” Lu Hai asked in a cautionary manner.

Ah Quan smiled at all the world and said, “As the China Sun leaves the solar system, humanity will look up from its current state of numbing bliss and it will again see the stars; it will make us recall the dream of traveling the cosmos and rekindle our passion for interstellar exploration.”

CHAPTER 7 Sixth Goal in Life: Sail the sea of stars; Draw humanity’s gaze back toward the deeps of space

Lu Hai stood on top of the Aerospace Tower, gazing toward the rapidly moving China Sun in the heavens. Its light cast countless racing shadows from the capital’s skyscrapers, making the entire city look as if it were spinning in the wake of the China Sun’s passage.

This was the China Sun’s last orbit.

It had already achieved escape velocity. It was now leaving Earth’s gravitational field, heading toward an orbit around the Sun. Humanity’s first manned interstellar flight had begun its journey. Twenty were aboard this flight. Along with Ah Quan, the other 19 had been selected from among more than a million volunteers. They included three other Mirror Farmers that had worked together with Ah Quan for many years. Before even setting out, the China Sun had reached its goal: Humanity’s enthusiasm for interstellar exploration had been renewed.

Lu Hai felt himself transported back to that sweltering summer night in that Western city 23 years ago, when he and that boy from the arid countryside had boarded the night train to Beijing.

As a farewell, the China Sun directed its beam toward the big cities of the world, giving the people of Earth a last chance to see its light. As a final gesture, the China Sun shone its light upon the West of China, directly illuminating Ah Quan’s tiny home hamlet.

On that small road out of town, Ah Quan’s parents stood together with the village folk, looking toward the China Sun in the east.

“Ah Quan, so you want to travel to distant places?” Ah Quan’s father shouted into the communications link that had been set up just for the occasion, courtesy of the Aerospace Tower administrators.

Ah Quan answered him from the sky. “Yes, Father. I fear that I will not return home.”

“Are you going very far away?” his mother asked.

“Very far, Mother,” Ah Quan answered.

“Farther than the Moon?” his father asked.

For a few seconds Ah Quan’s only reply was his silence. Then he said, with a voice much lower than before, “Yes, Father, farther than the Moon.”

Ah Quan’s parents felt no particular pain at their son’s departure; after all Quan would do great things at these places that lay beyond the Moon! What was more, in these times of wonder, they would always be able to speak to him, even when they would be worlds apart. And as they would be able to see him in their small TV, what difference did it make that they would not be able to speak to him face-to-face? It did not occur to them that there would be an ever longer delay; that his answers to their concerned questions would take ever longer to arrive. At first they would only be a few seconds, but that time would grow longer and longer. In a year’s time, every question would have to wait hours for a response.

Finally, their son would disappear altogether. They would be told that he had gone to sleep and that this sleep would last more than four decades.

Later still, Ah Quan’s parents, having completed their hard, but ultimately very satisfying life of tilling that once poor and barren but now fertile land, would have one last wish: That some distant day in the future, when their son finally returned, he would see an even more beautiful home.

As the China Sun left Earth’s orbit, it gradually dimmed in the eastern sky and with its light, the halo of blue sky diminished. Finally, it was just another star, dissolving into the night sky. As dawn arrived, the glow of the morning Sun had already completely swallowed its light.

The morning light also shone on that road next to the village. Now white poplars flanked its sides and a small river, the road’s equal in size, flowed nearby. Twenty-four years ago to the day, in the glow of dawn, the son of a Northwestern peasant, full of hazy hopes, had slowly disappeared in the distance on this very road.

The bright light of day had long reached Beijing, but Lu Hai was still standing on top the Aerospace Tower, looking to where the China Sun had disappeared. It had embarked on its long journey of no return. The China Sun would first pass the orbit of Venus, getting as close as possible to the Sun. This would maximize both the push of the light pressure and stretch of the China Sun’s acceleration. It would engage in a series of complicated changes of trajectory to accomplish this, much like an ocean-going vessel tacking into the wind.

In 70 days it would pass the orbit of Mars. In 160 days it would sweep past Jupiter. Two years later, it would leave the orbit of Pluto and become a true interstellar ship, with all of its crew already deep in cryo-sleep. Then, after 45 years, it would pass Alpha Centauri, its astronauts awakening for a brief while. A century after the China Sun first had set out, the Earth would receive news of its exploration of Alpha Centauri.

The China Sun would already be flying toward Sirius, having accelerated around Alpha Centauri’s three suns, its speed having reached 15 percent of light-speed. Another 60 years later, a century after setting out from Earth, it would reach Sirius. After sweeping past the binary system of Sirius A and B the China Sun would reach one-fifth of the speed of light, heading ever deeper into the starry sky.

Given the limits of the cryogenic suspension system, the China Sun would be able to reach Epsilon Eridani, and perhaps◦— although the chances were very slim◦— even 79 Ceti; both of these star systems very likely harbored planets.

No one could know how far the China Sun would fly and what strange and wonderful worlds Ah Quan and his crew would behold. Perhaps one day they would send a message to Earth, calling them to new worlds. Even if they did, any response would take thousands of years to arrive.

But no matter what would happen, Ah Quan would always hold to his parents living in a country called China. He would hold to that small village in the dry West of that country.

And he would hold to the small road of that village, the road on which his journey began.