“Out of our class, I think Wang Ran and Jin Yunhui also joined the army.”
“Correct. They came to Antarctica too,” Wei Ming said, his expression faltering.
“Where are they now?”
“Wang Ran was evacuated last month with the first batch of wounded, but I don’t know if he made it back home. He was seriously injured in the tank games. He managed to stay alive, but his spine was severed, and he’ll probably never walk again.”
“Oh… and Jin Yunhui? I recall he was a fighter pilot?”
“Correct. A J-10 in the First Airborne Division. His fate was much happier. He crashed into a Su-30 during a fighter game, and both planes were blown to bits. He was posthumously awarded a Nebula medal, but everyone knows he only hit the enemy plane by accident.”
To cover up his own sadness, Huahua asked another question: “Any other kids from our class?”
“We kept in touch the first few months, but by the start of Candytown, most of them, like all the other kids, left their assigned jobs. I don’t know where they ended up.”
“Didn’t Ms. Zheng leave a kid behind?”
“Correct. At first, Feng Jing and Yao Pingping were looking after him. Xiaomeng sent someone to look for the kid, but Ms. Zheng’s final instructions were ‘You may not use your connections to give him any special treatment,’ and so they didn’t let anyone find him. At the start of Candytown, the kid’s nursery was hit by an epidemic, and he ran a high fever. He survived, but the fever took away his hearing. The nursery was disbanded near the end of Candytown, and the last time I saw Feng Jing, she said he had been transferred to another one. No one knows where he is now.”
Huahua was too choked up to speak. A deep sadness came over him, and the numbness he had begun to acquire at the harsh pinnacle of power instantly melted away.
“Huahua,” Wei Ming said, “do you still remember our graduation party?”
Huahua nodded. “How could I forget?”
“Specs talked about how the future can’t be predicted. Anything could happen. He proved it using chaos theory.”
“That’s right. He also mentioned the uncertainty principle…”
“Who would have thought back then that we’d run across each other in a place like this?”
Huahua could no longer hold back his tears. The wind blew them cold on his face almost immediately, and then they froze. He looked up at his classmate. Wei Ming’s eyebrows were white with ice, and the skin on his face was dark and rough and patchy with scars and frostbite and the visible and invisible nicks and scratches left by life and war. His child’s face was already weathered by time.
“We’ve grown up, Wei Ming,” Huahua said.
“Correct. But you’ve got to grow up faster than us.”
“It’s hard for me. And for Specs and Xiaomeng, too.”
“Don’t let anyone know. You can’t let the country’s children know that.”
“And I can’t talk to you about it?”
“I can’t help you, Huahua. Give my regards to Specs and Xiaomeng. You’re the glory of our class. The absolute glory.”
“Take care of yourself, Wei Ming,” Huahua said with feeling as he shook his classmate’s hand.
“You too.” Wei Ming gripped his hand for a moment, and then turned and disappeared into the snow.
Davey boarded the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. Anchored close to shore, this supercarrier launched in the 1990s was a black iron island in the blizzard. Across the runway on the snow-covered flight deck, Davey heard the sound of shots from the gun platform, and asked the captain who had greeted him what was going on.
“Lots of kids from other countries want to board. Marines are preventing them.”
“You dumbass!” Davey roared. “Let every kid aboard who can, no matter where they come from!”
“But… Mr. President, that’s impossible!”
“That’s an order! Tell those marines to get the hell away!”
“Mr. President, I have to be responsible for the safety of John C. Stennis.”
Davey smacked the captain across the head, knocking off his hat. “And you’re not responsible for the lives of the kids on the ice? You’re a criminal!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. As captain I cannot execute your order.”
“I am the commander in chief of the United States of America, for the time being at least. If I so desired, I could have you thrown into the sea this instant, just like your hat. Dare me to try?”
The captain hesitated, and then said to a marine captain, “Tell your people to withdraw. Let anyone who wants to come aboard.”
An unending stream of children from different countries surged up the gangway and onto the deck. The wind was fiercer here, and the leeward side of fighter jets was the only respite from it. Lots of children had fallen into the ocean while boarding the landing craft, and their soaked clothing had now frozen into sparkling coats of ice.
“Let them into the cabins. These kids won’t last long out here before they freeze to death,” Davey said to the captain.
“Can’t do that, Mr. President. The cabins are full to bursting with the American kids who came aboard first.”
“And the hangars? There’s tons of space in there, enough for a few thousand people. Are those full too?”
“They’re full up with planes!”
“Then bring the planes up onto the flight deck.”
“Impossible. The flight deck already has too many other fighters that the horrible weather forced to make an emergency landing here. See, the elevator to the hangars is completely blocked!”
“Then push them into the sea!”
And so, one after another, the ten-million-dollar fighter planes were pushed over the side of John C. Stennis and into the ocean, and the broad flight deck quickly filled with more planes brought up from the hangars on the enormous elevator. The international group of children left the deck for the warm refuge of the cavernous hangars, which soon held thousands of occupants. Once the children had warmed up a bit, they gasped in wonder at the sheer size of the carrier. But on the flight deck out in the snowstorm, over a hundred drenched children had frozen to death.
The final evacuation took three days, and then the huge fleet of more than fifteen hundred ships carrying the last three hundred thousand children off of the continent split into two groups bound for Argentina and New Zealand. More than thirty thousand children succumbed to the cold during the evacuation, the last group of casualties in the Supernova War to die in Antarctica.
The Amundsen Sea returned to its empty state free of its covering of ships. The snow had stopped, but the wind was as fierce as ever, scouring the cold air over the water. As the sky cleared up and a crack appeared in the clouds over the horizon, the newly risen sun shed golden light over Antarctica, onto the deep blanket of snow that now covered the once-exposed rocks and dirt. Perhaps, in some distant future, crowds of people would again set foot on this frigid land in search of the snow-covered bodies of five hundred thousand children, the wreckage of countless tanks, and the two ten-kilometer craters the nuclear blasts left behind. During the continent’s brief springtime, three million children from all over the world had fought each other amid flames and explosions, unleashing their lust for life. But now the epic tragedy of the Supernova War seemed little more than a bad dream in the long night, a mirage beneath the brilliant southern lights. In daylight, the land was a lonely expanse of white. It was as if nothing had ever happened.
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