And so all the lights in the hall went on. But the children’s shadows cast on the floor by the Rose Nebula were sharp as ever.
SUPERNOVA ERA, MINUTE 6
“Close the walls. I can’t stand it in the open,” the girl said.
And so the walls and ceiling of the hall were set to opaque, shutting the newborn Supernova Era outside.
“And that big black thing. It’s really scary!”
And so the Epoch Clock disappeared from the screen.
SUPERNOVA ERA, MINUTE 7
An enormous map of the country replaced the Epoch Clock on the screen, so detailed that even though it was four meters high and ten meters wide, the smallest symbols and text were no larger than you would find on an ordinary printed map. Even standing right beneath it you could only make out the bottom bit, but any portion could be circled and magnified for a closer look. An intricate mesh of glowing lines and colored areas covered that wall of the hall, turning it into a spectacle of vibrant images.
The children waited quietly, not moving a muscle as the small star representing Beijing flashed red.
SUPERNOVA ERA, MINUTE 8
A short buzzing sound was followed by a line of text appearing at the bottom of the map:
On the map, a long red line linking Beijing and Shanghai appeared, with a label at its midpoint displaying the channel number: 79633. At the same time, a boy’s voice said, “Hello? Beijing! Beijing! Beijing? Is anyone there?”
Huahua answered, “We’re here. This is Beijing!”
“You’re a kid. Are there any adults?”
“There aren’t any adults here. Or anywhere. Didn’t you see the Epoch Clock run out?”
“There aren’t any anywhere?”
“That’s right. Where are you?”
“I’m in Shanghai. I’m alone in the building.”
“How are things over there?”
“How are things? Do you mean outside? I don’t know. I can’t see anyone on the street out the window, and there’s no noise. It’s all cloudy here, and it’s raining. There’s blue light coming through the clouds. It’s scary!”
“Hey, it’s just us left now.”
“What should I do?”
“How should I know?”
“Why don’t you know?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re Beijing!”
Another buzz. The screen displayed:
Another red line extended from Beijing and terminated at a city beside the Yellow River: Jinan. Huahua pressed the R key a second time and another boy’s voice sounded from a thousand kilometers away: “Beijing! Beijing! I need Beijing!”
Xiaomeng said, “This is Beijing.”
“Oh, it’s connected,” the boy said, apparently to the children who were with him. Huahua and Xiaomeng heard a rustling, no doubt from the other children crowding round the telephone.
“Beijing, what should we do now?”
“What’s the matter?”
“We… the adults gathered us all here before they left, but now there’s no one to look after us.”
“Where are you? How many of you are there?”
“At school. I’m calling from the office. There are more than five hundred kids out there. What should we do?”
“I don’t know….”
“You don’t know?!” Then the kid said, apparently to someone nearby, “Beijing says they don’t know. They don’t know what we should do!”
Other, softer voices chimed in:
“Beijing’s clueless too?”
“How should they know? They’re just like us, only kids left.”
“Are we really on our own?”
“Yeah. Who else is there?”
“Didn’t the adults tell you what to do?” said another voice, different from the others, as if another kid had grabbed the phone.
“What happened to your local leaders?”
“Who knows? They’re unreachable!”
More buzzing. Three new lines appeared on the map, connecting Beijing to Xi’an, Taiyuan, and Shenyang. There were five now, each labeled at the midpoint with a corresponding port number. The screen showed PORTS CURRENTLY AT CALL STATE: 5. Huahua clicked on the line to Shenyang, and they heard a girl’s sobbing voice. She sounded around four or five years old.
“Hello? Hello?” she said through sobs.
“This is Beijing. What’s wrong?”
“I’m hungry. Hungry!”
“Where are you?”
“At home… home…” She trailed off into sobbing.
“Did your mom and dad leave you anything to eat?”
“No.”
Like an auntie, Xiaomeng said to the invisible little girl, “Don’t cry. Take a look around, okay? That’s a good kid.”
“I… I can’t find anything.”
“Nonsense! There can’t be nothing to eat in the house,” Huahua exclaimed.
“God, you’re going to scare her,” Xiaomeng said, glaring at him. Then she said to the girl, “Look in the kitchen, sweetie. You’ll find something to eat there.”
The line went silent. Huahua was anxious to patch in another communications port, but Xiaomeng insisted on waiting. Before long, the sobbing girl returned to the phone. “It’s locked. The door’s locked.”
“Well… think back. In the mornings before you go to preschool, where does your mom give you food?”
“I eat onion pancakes for breakfast at preschool.”
“What about Sundays?”
“Mom gets food from the kitchen.” She broke down again.
“Oh for… is it always the kitchen?”
“Sometimes I have instant noodles.”
“Good. Do you know where the instant noodles are?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Go get them.”
The line went silent again, but very soon they heard a rustling. “I found them. I’m hungry,” the girl sobbed.
“Then eat!” Huahua said in exasperation.
“The bag… I can’t open the bag.”
“Sheesh. Idiot. Just bite a corner, and then use your hands to tear an opening.”
“For heaven’s sake. You think she can bite it? She probably doesn’t have any teeth!” But just as Xiaomeng was about to tell her how to open the bag, they heard a tearing sound followed closely by the crunch of dried noodles.
“No, don’t eat it like that. Look around for a thermos.”
The girl ignored Xiaomeng completely and continued to munch noisily. Huahua went to switch to another location, but when he looked up at the map, he stopped in surprise. A dozen new lines had appeared, and more were being added, most of them from major cities. Some cities had two lines, and all of them pointed toward Beijing. The screen showed that more than fifty ports were calling (not all of them displayed on the map), and the number was ticking upward. The children stared in shock, and by the time they recovered enough to patch in another city, the map had more lines than it was possible to count. More than thirteen hundred ports calling, according to the display. And this was just one of the NIT’s ten web addresses, so what they had received was only the tip of the iceberg.
All of the country’s children were calling Beijing.
SUPERNOVA ERA, MINUTE 15
“Hello, Beijing? Why haven’t Mom and Dad come back yet?”
“What? You mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know where they went. They told me not to run off, to wait at home.”
“They surely didn’t tell you they’d be back?”
“Oh. No.”
“Then listen: They’re not coming back!”
“What?”
“Go out and look around. Find some other kids. Go!”