VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We’re babies? How old are you? Thirteen at the oldest. Just a few days ago you’d have been spanked by your dad, but now you’re pretending to be adults? Shame shame shame shame shame! Listen, the adults are gone. It’s only us kids that are left. No one gets to tell anyone what to do anymore!”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “The problem is that your five-year plan is impossible.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “How do you know that if you don’t do it? A hundred years ago, would you have thought all two hundred million kids in the country could be in one place for a meeting? You’re a coward.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “If it was possible, then why didn’t the adults do it?”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “The adults? Hmph! They didn’t know how to have fun. Of course they weren’t going to build a fun world. The world the adults built was awful. Everything about it was so boring. They didn’t play; they just spent their days pouting and going silently to work. Total snoozefest. And they insisted on telling us what to do, can’t do this, can’t do that, can’t play here, can’t play there, so for us it was just school school school and test test test, behave and be a good kid. Ugh ugh ugh ugh! But now it’s just us left, and we want to build a fun world.”
Xiaomeng said, “And how does this fun world of yours produce food? Without food, we’ll all starve to death.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “The adults left us with tons of stuff. That’ll last us for ages.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “Wrong. It’ll run out eventually.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “No it won’t no it won’t! It never ran out for the adults, did it?”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “That’s because they were constantly producing more stuff to eat.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “Production production. Gag. Shut up shut up shut up.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “But what happens when we’ve eaten everything?”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We deal with it then. First we want to build the fun world. Then we’ll tackle food. There were so many people in the adults’ time, but they managed to eat enough without too much work, right?”
Xiaomeng shouted. “My friends, the adults put a lot of work into getting enough to eat.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We never saw that. Did any of you? Did you, Xiaomeng? Hah!”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 2: “That you never saw it doesn’t mean they weren’t working hard, you little idiots.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “You’re the idiot! Wannabe adult. Lame!”
Huahua said, “Let’s take a giant step back. Even if we tackle your five-year plan, can you all handle such a strenuous task?”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “Of course we can.”
Huahua said, “You might have to work twenty-hour days.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We can work twenty-four-hour days.”
Huahua said, “If half of you were Ph.D.s, it might have a chance of working.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We’ll study hard. We’ll each read ten thousand books. We’ll become Ph.D.s!”
Huahua said, “Nuts. You’re tired enough as it is.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “That’s because the work’s so boring. It’s no fun at all. When it’s fun, you don’t get tired. We can work twenty-four hours a day. We’ll all become Ph.D.s. Then we’ll build that fun world. We will we will we will!”
Human group effects are powerful, as can be seen from a crowd of soccer spectators numbering in the tens of thousands; when two hundred million people (and children at that) were all in one place, the effect was more powerful than sociologists and psychologists of the past could have imagined. Individual minds ceased to exist, subsumed into the flood of the group. Years later, many of the participants at that New World Assembly recalled how they abandoned all control of themselves; logic and reason lost all meaning for millions of young children. Now they didn’t want to listen, they didn’t want to act, they just wanted, and wanted, and wanted, wanted that dreamworld, that country of fun.
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “Will the national leaders please answer us? Do you or do you not accept our five-year plan?”
The three leaders exchanged glances. Xiaomeng said, “My friends, you’ve lost your senses. Go home and think it over again.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “We’ve lost our senses?! That’s silly! The two hundred million of us have less sense than the three of you? Silly silly silly silly silly!”
Then new virtual citizens began splitting off.
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 3 (41.328%): “Looks like the country won’t accept our five-year plan. We’ll do it ourselves!”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 4 (67.933%): “By yourselves? Easy to say. You think it’s like making a virtual world on a computer? You need national leaders and the government to do it in the real world. Otherwise you won’t get anywhere.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 3: “Sheesh…”
The tumult in the ocean settled down, and then turned into a listless desert.
Xiaomeng said, “My friends, it’s late. Let’s all go to sleep. There’s still work tomorrow.”
VIRTUAL CITIZEN 1: “Yuck. Work work work, study study study. Total lamefest. And tiring. Lame lame lame lame lame. Tiring tiring tiring tiring tiring…”
The already feeble voice gradually trailed off, and the children began to ascend out of the ocean and exit the session in a reversal of the rain of cartoon avatars they had seen at the start, as if a puddle were evaporating in the sun. Soon it was gone entirely, and the ground popped up a line of text: NEW WORLD ASSEMBLY #214 CONCLUDED.
After taking off their helmets, the three young leaders remained silent for a long while.
This brought the Supernova Era to the end of its second period, a three-month stretch, longer than the Suspension, that again took its name from Specs’s casual description. “Inertia” was what later historians later dubbed it.
After three months coasting on the inertia of the adults’ time, the children’s world at last showed its true face.
7
CANDYTOWN
DREAMTIME
Life seemed to proceed along the same old tracks after the New World Assembly, despite a few unusual signs, the most conspicuous of which was that some children no longer studied mornings and evenings but either went to bed or went online after they finished work. The leadership didn’t pay much attention to the phenomenon, since they felt it was a normal manifestation of work fatigue rather than an omen of some kind. But the practice spread swiftly, and soon work-aged children were skipping not only class but work as well, and younger children began to abandon their studies entirely. At this point the leadership realized something else was present beneath the surface, but it was too late. The development of the situation accelerated before they had time to adopt countermeasures, and as a result the children’s world experienced a second social vacuum.
Unlike the first, this vacuum did not take the form of a catastrophe, but of a joyous holiday. It was a Sunday morning, normally the time when the city was at its quietest, since the children would still be sound asleep from the exhausting, extended six-day work week. But this day was different. The children in the NIT found that the city had awakened from the slumber it had been in since the adults’ departure.
Children were everywhere outside, as if all of them had taken to the streets. It reminded them of the hustle and bustle of the adults’ era, long ago. They moved in small groups, holding hands, laughing, singing, and filling the city with delight. For the entire morning, the children strolled through the city, taking a look here, inspecting something there, as if this was their first visit to the city, or to the world, and every fiber of their being was twinging with the same sensation: This world belongs to us!