“And the mutual destruction rates are obtained how?”
“From the World Weapons Test Organization. Like in your time there was a… World Trade Organization.”
“War is as regular and ordered as economics?”
“War is economics.”
The ambassador looked through the car window at the black world. “But the world doesn’t look like war is only a calculation.”
The head of state looked at the ambassador with heavy eyes. “We did the calculations but didn’t believe the results.”
“So we started one of your wars. With bloodshed. A ‘real’ war,” the general said.
The head changed the subject again. “We’re going to the capital now to study the issues involved with immigrant unfreezing.”
“Take us back,” the ambassador said.
“What?”
“Go back. You can’t take on any additional burdens, and this isn’t a suitable age for immigrants. We’ll go on a little further.”
The hovercar returned to Freezer No. 1. Before leaving, the head handed the ambassador a hardbound book. “A chronicle of the past hundred and twenty years,” he said.
Then an official led over a 123-year-old man, the only known individual who had lived alongside the immigrants, and who had insisted on seeing the ambassador. “So many things happened after you left. So many things!” The old man brought out two bowls from the ambassador’s time and filled them to the brim with alcohol. “My parents were migrants. They left me this when I was three to drink with them when they were thawed out. But now I won’t see them. And I’m the last person from your time you’ll see.”
After they had drunk, the ambassador looked into the man’s dry eyes, and just as she was wondering why the people of this era seemed not to cry, the old man began to shed tears. He knelt down and clasped the ambassador’s hands.
“Take care, ma’am. ‘West of Yang Pass, there are no more old friends!’”2
Before the ambassador felt the supercooled freezing of the liquid helium, her husband suddenly appeared in her fragmented consciousness. Hua stood on a fallen leaf in autumn, and then the leaf turned black, and then a tombstone appeared. Was it his?
THE TREK
Outside of perception, the sun swept through the sky like a shooting star, and time slipped past in the outside world.
… 120 years… 130 years… 150 years… 180 years… 200 years… 250 years… 300 years… 350 years… 400 years… 500 years… 620 years.
STOP 2: THE LOBBY AGE
“Why did you wait so long to wake me up?” the ambassador asked, looking in surprise at the atomic clock.
“The advance team has mobilized five times at century intervals and even spent a decade awake in one age, but we didn’t wake you because immigration was never possible. You yourself set that rule,” the advance-team captain said. He was noticeably older than at their last meeting, the ambassador realized.
“More war?”
“No. War is over forever. And although the environment continued to deteriorate over the first three centuries, it began to rebound two hundred years ago. The last two ages refused immigrants, but this one has agreed to accept them. The ultimate decision is up to you and the commission.”
There was no one in the freezer lobby. When the giant door rumbled open, the captain whispered to the ambassador, “The changes are far greater than you imagine. Prepare yourself.”
When the ambassador took her first step into the new age, a note sounded, haunting, like some ancient wind chime. Deep within the crystalline ground beneath her feet she saw the play of light and shadows. The crystal looked rigid, but it was as soft as carpet underfoot, and every step produced that wind-chime tone and sent concentric halos of color expanding from the point of contact, like ripples on still water. The ground was a crystalline plane as far as the eye could see.
“All the land on Earth is covered in this material. The whole world looks artificial,” the captain said, and laughed at the ambassador’s flabbergasted expression, as if to say, This surprise is only the beginning! The ambassador also saw her own shadow in the crystal—or rather, shadows—spreading out from her in all directions. She looked up…
Six suns.
“It’s the middle of the night, but night was gotten rid of two hundred years ago. What you see are six mirrors, each several hundred square kilometers in area, in synchronous orbit to reflect sunlight onto the dark side of the Earth.”
“And the mountains?” The ambassador realized that the line of mountains on the horizon was nowhere to be seen. The separation between ground and sky was ruler-straight.
“There aren’t any. They’ve been leveled. All the continents are flat plains now.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
To the ambassador, the six suns were like six welcoming lamps in a bright hotel lobby. A lobby! The idea glimmered in her mind. This was, she realized, a peculiarly clean age. No dust anywhere, not even a speck. It beggared belief. The ground was as bare as an enormous table. And the sky was similarly clean, shining with a pure blue, although the presence of the six suns detracted from its former breadth and depth, so that it more resembled the dome of a lobby. A lobby! Her vague idea crystallized: The entire world had been turned into a lobby. One carpeted in tinkling crystal and lit by six hanging lamps. This was an immaculate, exquisite age, contrasting starkly with the previous darkness. In the time immigrants’ chronicles, it would be known as the Lobby Age.
“They didn’t come to greet us?” the ambassador asked, gazing upon the broad plain.
“We have to visit them in person in the capital. Despite its refined appearance, this is an inconsiderate age, lacking even in basic curiosity.”
“What’s their stance on immigration?”
“They agree to accept migrants, but they can only live in reservations separated from society. Whether these reservations are to be located on Earth or on other planets, or if we should build a space city, is up to us.”
“This is absolutely unacceptable!” the ambassador said angrily. “All migrants must be integrated into society and into modern life. Migrants cannot be second-class citizens. This is the fundamental tenet of time migration!”
“Impossible,” the captain said.
“That’s their position?”
“Mine as well. But let me finish. You’ve just been thawed out, but I’ve been living in this age for more than half a year. Please believe me, life is far stranger than you think. Even in your wildest imagination you’d never dream up even a tenth of life in this age. Primitive Stone Age humans would have an easier time understanding the era we are from!”
“This issue was taken into consideration before immigration began, which is why migrants were capped at age twenty-five. We’ll do our best to study and to adapt to everything!”
“Study?” The captain shook his head with a smile. “Got a book?” He pointed at the ambassador’s luggage. “Any will do.” Baffled, the ambassador took out a copy of Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s Frigate Pallada, which she had gotten halfway through before migration. The captain glanced at the title and said, “Open at random and tell me the page number.” The ambassador complied, and opened to page 239. Without looking, the captain rattled off what the navigator saw in Africa, accurate to the letter.
“Do you see? There’s no need for learning whatsoever. They import knowledge directly into the brain, like how we used to copy data onto hard drives. Human memory has been brought to its apex. And if that’s not enough, take a look at this—” He took an object the size of a hearing aid from behind his ear. “This quantum memory unit can store all of the books in human history—down to every last scrap of notepaper, if you’d like. The brain can retrieve information like a computer, and it’s far faster than the brain’s own memory. Don’t you see? I’m a vessel for all human knowledge. If you so desire, in under an hour you can have it too. To them, learning is a mysterious, incomprehensible ancient ritual.”