The talks were originally intended to hammer out all the important details, but the biggest international effort in history concerned an endless ocean of details, so after three days of feverish debate, the children found that they could only sketch out the outlines of an exchange plan. All the remaining details would have to be addressed once the exchange was under way. After this reorientation, the talks entered a fourth day. The children had their own way of resolving international issues and were able to quickly and easily dispense with certain problems that diplomats and heads of state kept their distance from in the adults’ time, often so quickly that the most seasoned diplomats of that age would have been left speechless. The issues resolved and agreements reached during that week were the equal of a hundred Yalta or Potsdam conferences. At the end of it all, the children of the two countries signed a territorial-exchange agreement known as the “Supernova Agreement”:
SUPERNOVA AGREEMENT
1. China and the United States resolve to exchange all their respective territory.
2. The children of the two countries will leave their own territory, and will relinquish sovereignty over that territory; the children of the two countries will resettle in their counterpart’s territory, and will obtain sovereignty over it.
3. When the children of the two countries leave their own territory, they may only take with them the following:
a. Basic necessities for migration, limited to 10 kilograms per child.
b. All government documents.
4. A China-US Territory Exchange Commission will be formed to exercise leadership over the exchange process.
5. The two sides will conduct the exchange on a state and province basis. When the exchange takes place, all of the current residents of a state or province shall vacate that region at the appointed time. Anyone unable to vacate at the appointed time may temporarily migrate to a neighboring state or province that has not yet undergone the exchange, and then vacate with that region’s residents. All states and provinces shall establish state or provincial handover commissions, and shall conduct a handover ceremony when new residents arrive, after which the new residents’ country shall assume sovereignty over that state or province.
6. Before the exchange, all state and provincial handover commissions shall deliver an asset inventory to their counterpart, and accept a review by a representative of their counterpart’s handover commission.
7. Prior to the exchange, deliberate destruction of agriculture, industry, or national defense equipment within one’s own territory is prohibited. If one party discovers its counterpart has taken such acts, it may unilaterally terminate the game, and all consequences shall be the responsibility of the offending party.
8. Transport for the migration shall be resolved jointly, and other countries are invited to lend assistance.
9. Any problems arising during the exchange shall be handled by the China-US Joint Territory Exchange Commission.
10. The China-US Territory Exchange Commission reserves the right of interpretation of this agreement.
THE GREAT MIGRATION
Late at night, the Imperial Palace basked under the blue light of the Rose Nebula. The flock of nocturnal birds that circled Meridian Gate had long since returned to their nests. In the endless stillness, the ancient halls slept soundly and dreamt deep.
Huahua, Specs, and Xiaomeng were the only ones in the palace. The three of them walked slowly down the long exhibition hall. Artifacts that no longer belonged to their country slipped by on either side, ancient bronze and clay made warm and soft by the nebula’s light, and they felt almost as if capillaries were showing on their surface, ancient lives and souls made concrete, and that their soundless breathing surrounded them as they moved. The countless bronze vessels and clay pots seemed laden with a liquid as full of vital energy as blood; the long scroll of Along the River During the Qingming Festival in a glass case was hazy under the blue light, but they could still hear snatches of the hubbub; a terra-cotta warrior up ahead fluoresced blue-white, and it seemed like they were not walking toward it but that it was floating in their direction…. Heading northward from the southernmost premodern section, they crossed the galleries one by one, and time and history flowed back past them under the blue light of the nebula, dynasty by dynasty into the distant past….
The great migration of the two continents had begun.
The children were being swiftly moved off the first two areas to be exchanged, Shaanxi and South Dakota, transferring to various ports on the coast by land and air transport, or temporarily moving to neighboring states or provinces if they missed their chance to go. Each of the two handover commissions had arrived in its counterpart’s region to oversee the migration’s progress. Young migrants assembled at major ports as oceangoing ships arrived in increasing numbers, war vessels and oil tankers, Chinese and American, as well as from other countries, mainly Europe and Japan. The rest of the world’s children buzzed with enthusiasm over this new game between the world’s two biggest countries, and they did everything within their power to aid the biggest human intercontinental migration in history. What prompted them to dispatch ships to the two countries, they couldn’t properly say themselves. Huge ocean fleets were assembled on either side of the Pacific, but no handover ceremony had taken place in Shaanxi or South Dakota, and the migrants had yet to climb aboard their passage across the ocean.
Up in the artifact exhibition, the three young leaders continued toward the northernmost gallery. Huahua let out a gentle sigh, and said to Specs and Xiaomeng, “I spoke with the American kids again at the airport this afternoon, but they still refused.”
After the third round, the two sides had held a series of negotiations over details, during which the Chinese side had proposed on multiple occasions that the Chinese children should be allowed to take the most precious artifacts and ancient books with them during the exchange. This suggestion had been firmly rejected by the American children. Benes and her entourage were skilled negotiators who usually expressed their opposition using various evasive approaches rather than saying no directly, but they broke with precedent when it came to this question. No sooner did the Chinese children mention artifacts and books than they stood up from their chairs and repeated “No! No!” while shaking their heads.
At first, the Chinese children thought this was just stinginess, since such artifacts were extremely valuable if not priceless, but they later discovered this was not the case. The American children would have the same right to carry off their own artifacts as the Chinese children, and if the United States did not have many truly ancient artifacts from its few centuries of history, apart from some Native American artworks, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art were chock-full of art and artifacts from around the world worth a king’s ransom. But when the Chinese children proposed allowing American children to take objects from their territory equal in value to the artifacts the Chinese children took, the Americans still flat-out refused.
During preparations for the Shaanxi migration, American members of the Exchange Commission proposed starting with the Shaanxi Museum of History, built in the 1980s, and the location of the Terra-cotta Army, both of which were far more interesting to them than aircraft factories or space-launch centers. They had an astonishingly detailed awareness of the holdings of all of China’s metropolitan libraries and museums, and could easily produce a printed-out inventory of cultural relics.