“You’re a fast learner!” Yi Yi exclaimed.
The god ignored him, silent.
Bigtooth explained, “It means, the star has set behind the orbiting planet’s mountains. A liquid river called the Yellow River is flowing in the direction of the ocean. Oh, the river and the ocean are both made of the chemical compound consisting of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. If you want to see further, you must climb further up the edifice.”
The god remained silent.
“Esteemed god, you visited the Devouring Empire not long ago. The scenery there is almost identical to that of the world known to this poem’s author bug-bug, with mountains, rivers, and seas, so…”
“So I understand the meaning of the poem,” said the god. The sphere suddenly moved so it was right above Bigtooth’s head. Yi Yi thought it looked like a giant pupilless eye staring at Bigtooth. “But, didn’t you feel something?”
Bigtooth shook his head, confused.
“That is to say, something hidden behind the outward meaning of that simple, elegant array of square symbols?”
Bigtooth looked even more confused, so the god recited another Classical poem:
Bigtooth hurried eagerly to explain. “This poem means, looking in front of you, you can’t see all the bug-bugs who lived on the planet in the distant past. Looking behind you, you can’t see all the bug-bugs who will live on the planet in the future. So you feel how time and space are just too big and end up crying.”
The god brooded.
“Ha, crying is one way for Earth bug-bugs to express their grief. So at that point their visual organs—”
“Do you still feel nothing?” the god interrupted Bigtooth. The sphere descended further, nearly touching Bigtooth’s snout.
Bigtooth shook his head firmly this time. “Esteemed god, I don’t think there’s anything inside. It’s just a simple little poem.”
Next, the god recited several more poems, one after the other. They were all short and simple, yet imbued with a spirit that transcended their topics. They included Li Bai’s “Downriver to Jiangling,” “Still Night Thoughts,” and “Bidding Meng Haoran Farewell at Yellow Crane Tower”; Liu Zongyuan’s “River Snow”; Cui Hao’s “Yellow Crane Tower”; Meng Haoran’s “Spring Dawn”; and so forth.
Bigtooth said, “The Devouring Empire has many historical epic poems with millions of lines. We would happily present them all to you, esteemed god! In comparison, the poems of human bug-bugs are so puny and simple, like their technology—”
The sphere suddenly departed its position above Bigtooth’s head, drifting in unthinking arcs in midair. “Emissary, I know your people’s greatest hope is that I’ll answer the question ‘The Devouring Empire has existed for eight million years, so why is its technology still stalled in the Atomic Age?’ Now I know the answer.”
Bigtooth gazed at the sphere passionately. “Esteemed god, the answer is crucial to us! Please—”
“Esteemed god,” Yi Yi called out, raising a hand. “I have a question too. May I speak?”
Bigtooth glared resentfully at Yi Yi, as if he wanted to swallow him in one bite. But the god said, “Though I continue to despise Earth insects, those little arrays have won you the right.”
“Is art common throughout the universe?”
The sphere vibrated faintly in midair, as if nodding. “Yes—I’m an intergalactic art collector and researcher myself, in fact. In my travels, I’ve encountered the various arts of numerous civilizations. Most are ponderous, unintelligible setups. But using so few symbols, in so small and clever an array, to encompass such rich sensory layers and subtle meaning, all the while operating under such sadistically exacting formal rules and rhyme schemes? I have to say, I’ve never seen anything like it…. Emissary, you may now throw away this insect.”
Once again, Bigtooth seized Yi Yi with his claw. “That’s right, we ought to throw it away. Esteemed god, we have fairly abundant resources on human civilization stored in the Devouring Empire’s central networks. All those resources are now in your memory, while this bug-bug probably doesn’t know any more than a couple of the little poems.” He carried Yi Yi toward the incinerator as he spoke.
“Throw away those pieces of paper too,” the god said. Bigtooth hurriedly returned and used his other claw to collect the papers. At this point, Yi Yi hollered from between the massive claws.
“O god, save these papers with the ancient poems of humanity, as a memento! You’ve discovered an unsurpassable art. You can spread it throughout the universe!”
“Wait.” The god once again stopped Bigtooth. Yi Yi was already hanging above the incinerator aperture, feeling the heat of the blue flames below him. The sphere floated over, coming to a stop a few centimeters from Yi Yi’s forehead. Yi Yi, like Bigtooth earlier, felt the force of the enormous pupilless eye’s gaze.
“Unsurpassable?”
Bigtooth laughed, holding up Yi Yi. “Can you believe the pitiable bug-bug, saying these things in front of a magnificent god? Hilarious! What remains to humanity? You’ve lost everything on Earth. Even the scientific knowledge you’ve managed to bring with you has been largely forgotten. One time at dinner, I asked the human I was about to eat, what were the atomic bombs used by the humans in the Earth Defense War made of? He told me they were made of atoms!”
“Hahahaha…” The god joined Bigtooth in laughter, the sphere vibrating so hard it became an ellipsoid. “It’s certainly the most accurate answer of them all, hahaha…”
“Esteemed god, all these dirty bug-bugs have left are a couple of those little poems! Hahaha—”
“But they cannot be surpassed!” Yi Yi said solemnly in the middle of the claw, puffing out his chest.
The sphere stopped vibrating. It said, in an almost intimate whisper, “Technology can surpass anything.”
“It has nothing to do with technology. They are the quintessence of the human spiritual realm. They cannot be surpassed!”
“Only because you haven’t witnessed the power of technology in its ultimate stage, little insect. Little, little insect. You haven’t seen.” The god’s tone of voice became as gentle as a father’s, but Yi Yi shivered at the icy killing edge hidden deep within. The god said, “Look at the sun.”
Yi Yi obeyed. They were in the vacuum between the orbits of Earth and Mars. The sun’s radiance made him squint.
“What’s your favorite color?” asked the god.
“Green.”
The word had barely left his lips before the sun turned green. It was a bewitching shade; the sun resembled a cat’s eye floating in the void of space. Under its gaze, the whole universe looked strange and sinister.
Bigtooth’s claw trembled, dropping Yi Yi onto the plane. When their reason returned, they realized a fact even more unnerving than the sun turning green: the light should have taken more than ten minutes to travel here from the sun, but the change had occurred instantaneously!
Half a minute later, the sun returned to its previous condition, emitting brilliant white light once more.
“See? This is technology. This is the force that allowed my race to ascend from slugs in ocean mud to gods. Technology itself is the true God, in fact. We all worship it devotedly.”
Yi Yi blinked his dazzled eyes. “But that god can’t surpass this art. We have gods too, in our minds. We worship them, but we don’t believe they can write poems like Li Bai and Du Fu.”
The god laughed coldly. “What an extraordinarily stubborn insect,” it said to Yi Yi. “It makes you even more loathsome. But, for the sake of killing time, let me surpass your array-art.”