“Mine floods have many causes. Whether it’s groundwater, or if the mine has dug into a surface water source, it’s far more life-threatening than a flood above ground,” the teacher said over the sound of the water.
The holographic water vanished and our surroundings returned to normal. Then I noticed an odd-looking object, like a big metal toad puffing out its stomach. It was huge and heavy. I pointed it out to the teacher.
“That’s an anti-explosion switch. Since methane is a highly flammable gas, the switch suppresses the electric sparks that ordinary switches create. That’s related to what we’ll see next, the most terrifying mining danger of all…”
There was another loud crash, but unlike the previous two times, it seemed to come from within us, bursting through our eardrums to the outside, as huge waves contracted our every cell, and in the searing waves of heat, we were plunged into a red glow emitted from the air around us that filled every inch of space in the mine. Then the glow disappeared, and everything plunged into darkness.
“Few people have actually seen a methane explosion, since it’s hard to survive one in the mines.” The teacher’s disembodied voice echoed in the darkness.
“Why did people used to come to such a terrible place?” a student asked.
“For this,” the teacher said, holding a chunk of black rock into the light from our headlamps, where its innumerable facets sparkled. That was the first time I saw solid coal.
“Children, what we just saw was a mid-twentieth-century coal mine. There were a few new machines and technologies after that, such as hydraulic struts and huge shearers, which went into use in the last two decades of the century and improved conditions somewhat for the workers, but coal mines remained an incredibly dangerous, awful working environment. Until…”
It turned dull after that. The teacher lectured us on the history of gasified coal, which was put to use eighty years ago, when oil was nearly exhausted and major powers mobilized troops to seize the remaining oil fields. The Earth was on the brink of war, but it was gasified coal that saved the world…. We all knew this, so it was boring.
Then we toured a modern mine. Nothing special, just all those pipes we see every day, leading out from underground into the distance, although it was the first time I went inside a central control building and saw a hologram of the burn. It was huge. And we saw the neutrino sensors and gravity-wave radar monitoring the underground fire, and laser drills… all pretty boring, too.
The teacher recounted the history of the mine, and said that over a century ago, it had been destroyed in an uncontrolled fire that burned for eighteen years before going out. In those days our beautiful city was a wasteland where smoke blotted out the sky, and all the people had left. There were many stories of the cause of the fire; some people said it had been started by an underground weapons test, and others said it was connected to Greenpeace.
We don’t have to be nostalgic for the so-called good old days. Life in those days was dangerous and confusing. But we shouldn’t be depressed about today, either. Because today will one day be referred to as the good old days.
People really were stupid in the past, and they really had a tough time.
1 The Ministry of Coal Industries was abolished in 1998, some of its functions replaced by the State Administration for Coal Industries.
2 The highest of eight working-class wage levels adopted nationwide in the 1950s.
CONTRACTION
The contraction will start one hour, twenty-four minutes, seventeen seconds before sunrise.
It will be observed in the auditorium of the country’s largest astronomical observatory. The auditorium will receive images sent back from a space telescope in geosynchronous orbit, then project them onto a gigantic screen about the size of a basketball court. Right now, the screen is still blank. There aren’t many people here, but they are all authorities in theoretical physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, the few people in the world who can truly understand the implications of the moment to come. Waiting for that moment, they sit still, like Adam and Eve, having just been created from mud, waiting for the breath of life from God. The exception is the observatory head, impatiently pacing back and forth.
The gigantic screen isn’t working and the engineer responsible for maintaining it hasn’t shown up yet. If she doesn’t show up in time, the image coming from the space telescope can be projected only on the small screen. The historic sense of the moment will be ruined.
Professor Ding Yi walks into the hall.
The scientists all come to life. They stand in unison. Aside from the universe itself, only he can hold them all in awe.
As usual, Ding Yi holds everyone beneath his notice. He doesn’t greet anyone and he doesn’t sit in the large, comfortable chair prepared for him. Instead, he strolls aimlessly until he reaches a corner of the auditorium, where there’s a large glass cabinet. He admires the large clay plate, one of the observatory head’s local treasures, propped up inside. It’s a priceless relic of the Western Zhou era. Carved onto its surface is a star atlas as seen by the naked eye on a summer night several thousand years ago. Having suffered the ravages of time, the star atlas is now faint and blurred. The starry sky outside the hall, though, is still bright and clear.
Ding Yi digs out a pipe and tobacco from his jacket pocket. Self-assured, he lights the pipe, then takes a puff. This surprises everyone, because he has severe tracheitis. He’s never smoked before and no one has ever dared to smoke around him. Furthermore, smoking is strictly prohibited in the auditorium, and that pipe produces more smoke than ten cigarettes.
However, Professor Ding is entitled to do anything he wants. He founded the unified field theory, realizing Albert Einstein’s dream. The series of predictions his theory has made about space over a vast scale have all been confirmed by actual observations. For three years, as many as a hundred supercomputers ran a mathematical model of the unified field theory nonstop and obtained a result that was hard to believe: The universe that had been expanding for about fourteen billion years would, in two years, start collapsing. Now, out of those two years, there’s only one hour left.
White smoke lingers around his head. It forms a dreamlike pattern, as if his incredible ideas are floating out of his mind….
Cautiously, the observatory head approaches Ding Yi. “Professor Ding, the governor will be here. Persuading her to accept the invitation wasn’t easy. Please, I beg you, use the influence you have so that she’ll increase our funding. Originally, we weren’t going to bother you with this, but the observatory is out of funds. The national government can’t give us any more money this year. We can only ask the province. We are the main observatory for the country. You can see what we’ve been reduced to. We can’t even afford the electric bill for our radio telescope. We’re already trying now to figure out what to do about this.” The observatory head points to the ancient star atlas plate Ding Yi has been admiring. “If selling antiquities weren’t illegal, we would have sold it long ago.”
At that moment, the governor and her entourage of two enter the auditorium. The exhaustion on their faces drags a thread of the mundane into this otherworldly place.
“My apologies. Oh. Hello, Professor Ding. Everyone. So sorry for being late. This is the first time it hasn’t been pouring outside in days. We’re still worried about flooding. The Yangtze River is close to its 1998 record high.”
Excitedly, the observatory head welcomes the governor and brings her to Ding Yi. “Why don’t we have Professor Ding introduce you to the idea of universal contraction….” He winks at Ding Yi.