Specs said without emotion, “Don’t bug me. I’m thinking.”
When the assembly began, Virtual Citizen 1 led off. According to the figures showing in the sky, he represented a 97.458 percent share.
“We’re extremely disappointed in this new world. The adults left, leaving us kids behind, so it should be a fun world. But it’s not fun at all. It’s not even as fun as the world was when the adults were around.”
Xiaomeng said, “The adults used to give us food and clothing, so of course we had time to play and take it easy. But not now. We’ve got to work, or else we’ll starve to death. We can’t forget the MSG and salt.”
Virtual Citizen 2 (63.442%): “Xiaomeng, don’t let that trainload of MSG and ten trainloads of salt scare you. That was for one-point-three billion people in the adults’ time. We don’t eat that much.”
Virtual Citizen 3 (43.117%): “Why does Xiaomeng sound so much like an adult? Boring!”
Virtual Citizen 1 (92.571%): “Regardless, we don’t like this world now.”
Huahua asked, “So what kind of world do you want?”
Later historians studying the virtual citizens’ answers to this question looked through the raw records of individual member responses kept by the quantum computer; although only a small proportion were retained, it still amounted to forty gigabytes, or around twenty billion Chinese characters. If printed out as a trade-paperback-size volume, it would be eight hundred meters thick. Below are some representative responses:
I want the sort of country where kids can go to school if they want, but don’t have to if they don’t want to. They can play if they want, and if they don’t, they don’t have to play at all. If they want to eat, they can, and if they don’t, they don’t have to. They can go wherever they want, and if they don’t want to go anywhere, they don’t have to….
I used to hate having adults look after us. Now they’re not around, and the country belongs to the kids. We should really be having lots of fun….
In our country, you can play soccer in the middle of the street….
A country that gives me as much chocolate as I want. And gives Flower (perhaps the speaker’s cat.—Ed.) as many cans of fish as it wants….
A country that celebrates Spring Festival every day. Every day, each person is issued ten packs of whippersnappers, twenty double-bangs, and thirty flash-bangs, as well as a hundred kuai in yasui money, all of them crisp new notes….
In my country, when you eat dumplings you can just eat the filling….
It used to be that only kids could play, but adults couldn’t because they had to go to work. We’ll grow up too, but we don’t want to go to work, we just want to keep playing….
Dad said I don’t work hard at school, so when I grow up I’ll be a street sweeper. If I don’t work hard, my country won’t make me be a street sweeper….
Will the country let us all live in the city?
I’ll only take three classes in schooclass="underline" music, art, and sports….
No proctor for school exams. Kids can give themselves their own marks….
The country should give every class in every school fifty gaming consoles, one for everyone. You play all through class, and whoever can’t get a hundred and twenty thousand points in Battle for the Galaxy gets kicked out! Deet-deet-deet, dong-dong-dong. It’ll be awesome….
Build a huge playground at my house, like the one in Miyun in Beijing, but ten times bigger….
The country should issue us dolls on a set schedule, a different one each time….
Shoot a cool animated series, ten thousand episodes, that never goes off the air….
Puppies are my favorite. Why doesn’t the country give every puppy a pretty little doghouse?
Big Quantum distilled these 200 million messages into one sentence that was uttered by Virtual Citizen 1, representing 96.314 percent of the members in attendance:
“We want a world of fun!”
Xiaomeng said, “The adults have drawn up a detailed five-year plan for the country, and we have to follow it.”
Virtual Citizen 1: “We think the adults’ five-year plan is boring. We’ve drawn up our own five-year plan.”
Huahua asked, “Can you give us a look?”
Virtual Citizen 1: “That’s the point of this assembly. We’ve built a virtual country to show off our five-year plan. Have Big Quantum give you a tour. You’re sure to love it!”
Huahua said to the sky, “Great. Big Quantum, show us around!”
A COUNTRY OF FUN
No sooner had he uttered those words than the blue sky and the crowd vanished before their eyes, leaving the three children hanging in an endless black void. When their eyes adjusted, they saw stars appear in the remote distance, and then a blue orb take shape in space. It hung like a glowing crystal ball in the dark ocean of the infinite cosmos, and spread across its surface a swirl of snow-white clouds. It looked so fragile, liable to shatter at the slightest touch and spill out its blue blood into the cold isolation of space. As the blue crystal ball drew closer, they realized how huge it was, and eventually the gigantic blue planet filled all the sky, and the children could see clearly the borders between oceans and continents. Now all of Asia was visible at once, and a twisting red line appeared on the brown land, a closed loop demarcating the borders and coastline of that ancient country in the east. Its territory drew nearer, and they could begin to make out the ripples of mountain ranges and veinlike rivers. Then Big Quantum spoke: “We’re now in orbit at a height of more than twenty thousand kilometers.”
Earth slowly rotated beneath their feet, and they seemed to be flying toward something. Xiaomeng suddenly shouted, “Look! It’s like there’s a thread up ahead.”
The thread ran from space to the land below, its top half clearly visible against the blackness behind it, almost like a long strand of spider silk joining the Earth to a point in space. Its lower half merged in with the colors of the land and was hard to make out, but with effort they could see that it terminated in the vicinity of Beijing. The children were flying toward the spider silk, and as they got closer they could see that it was as shiny as a silken thread. Sections of it reflected the bright sunlight at times, and its far end flickered like a lamp. It gained width as they drew nearer, and then they could make out details of its structure. Now they knew what the long spider silk actually was: it wasn’t hanging down from space, but was rising from the surface. They could hardly believe their eyes.
“Wow!” Huahua exclaimed. “It’s a building!”
Indeed it was a skyscraper, clad in fully reflective mirrors, towering into space.
The voice of Virtual Citizen 1 sounded in the children’s ears: “All children in the country call this home. This building is twenty-five thousand kilometers high and has three million floors. Each floor is home to an average of one hundred children.”
“You mean every child in the country lives in this one building?” Huahua asked in surprise. But when they landed on the roof, they realized it was not at all impossible. Their impression of the spider silk as narrow was due to their distance and its ratio of height to width, but the rooftop might have been large enough to hold the Workers’ Stadium twice over. The giant flashing signal light in the center, as tall as an ordinary twenty-story building, rotated and shone so brightly they couldn’t look at it head-on; perhaps it was a warning light for passing spacecraft.
They crossed to the other side of the roof, where there was an entrance to the top floor—floor 3 million—of the supertower. This floor, they noticed at once, was one big grassy lawn, with a fountain smack in the center reflecting a warm artificial light. Scattered about the lawn were a few dozen finely wrought cabins of the sort only found in fairy tales, the dwellings of this floor’s hundred children. Inside one of them they saw a typical kid’s room, toys of all kinds strewn about the bed and table. In another, also clearly a kid’s room, the decoration was entirely different, and they found that every room they went into was unique and personalized.