1. Dating the start of the Supernova Era. There are two extreme positions on this question, one holding that the era began with the supernova blast, reasoning that a universal symbol carries the most authority for the start of an era. This clearly is untenable, since while human calendars may be tied to cosmic symbols, eras are only marked in history. The second position holds that the era did not begin until the start of the Great Migration, which doesn’t hold up because prior to the migration, or even prior to the Supernova War, history had already progressed away from the Common Era model. The starting point I find most appropriate is the extinguishing of the Epoch Clock. Although critics may point out that the Common Era model still held then, there is an inertia to history, and you can’t, say, argue that the whole world became Christian at the birth of Jesus. In both historical and philosophical significance, the Epoch Clock is inarguably a highly meaningful symbol.
2. The success or failure of the use at the close of the Common Era of country simulations as a means of selecting child leaders, and in particular whether this was legal. I don’t want to comment too much on this issue, since those who believe this method to be unacceptable have not to this day come up with any better solution, much less in those grim days when every country was on the verge of extinction. There are many self-opinionated people in the field of history these days, and the best way to clue them in is to make them walk a train rail set between two tall buildings.
3. Whether the goal of the world war games was play or a fight for Antarctica. It’s hard to answer this question now with an adult mind. In Presupernova war, politics, economics, nationalism, and religion blended into one and are hard to tease apart; so too with the Antarctic Games. In the children’s world, play and national politics were inseparable, two sides of the same coin. This ties into the next issue:
4. The strategies of the Chinese and American children in the Supernova War. It has been proposed that the substantial military advantage commanded by the American children meant they would have easily occupied Antarctica in a conventional war. In such a war, the American children could have used their navy to break the enemies’ sea transport lines, making it impossible for any other country to send troops to the continent. This notion displays a basic ignorance of world politics and considers the Supernova Era world from a shallow, Common Era geopolitical view. Its proponents fail to understand a fundamental rule of world politics: the balance of power principle. In such a situation, the other countries would have immediately set up alliances, and any group counting China, Russia, the EU, and Japan among its members would be powerful enough to stand against the US. The resulting world order would be little different from that of the war games, except that countries would be exchanged for alliances, and politics would have a slightly more Common Era feel to them.
5. Whether the Great Migration was a historical inevitability. This is a profound question. After the exchange of Chinese and American territory, children from other countries joined in the game—Russia swapping with the countries of South America, and Japan with the Middle East—and then it swept the globe as the main driver of postwar world history, essentially performing a hard reformat of global geopolitics. Regrettably, this extremely worthy subject has not yet been studied in any depth; interest remains focused on the outcome of the migration. And no wonder: people are always more interested in the unexpected, which the consequences of the Great Migration certainly were. Before it began, children came up with various possible outcomes, sometimes from the minds of great thinkers and strategists like Vaughn and Specs, but more often from ordinary people. But time proved all of these predictions incorrect. The actual outcome took everyone by surprise, and was beyond the boldest imagination of any of the children of that period…
“Daddy Daddy, come out! Didn’t you promise to look at the blue planet with us? It’s about to come up!”
With a sigh I put down my pen, realizing that once again I’ve unconsciously started into a futile theoretical discussion. And so I decide to end it here. I stand up and go out onto the lawn. The sun is almost below the horizon, and the Rose Nebula is getting light.
“God, the sky’s clean!” I exclaim. The motionless, filthy clouds you used to see every time you went out have vanished, and the sky is a pure, pale red.
“You just noticed? It’s been a week already!” Verené says, tugging at Jingjing.
“Didn’t the government say it couldn’t afford to clean the safety dome?”
“It was volunteers! I went too. I cleaned four hundred square meters!” Jingjing says proudly.
I look up at the top of the dome two thousand meters high, where people are scrubbing away the last of the dirt, looking like so many black dots against the bright blue backdrop of the nebula.
It’s gotten cold, and it’s starting to snow. The verdant grass underfoot, the red sands outside the bubble, the glittering Rose Nebula out in space, and the swirling white snowflakes paint an intoxicatingly gorgeous picture.
“They never get the right adjustments to the climate-control system,” Verené says.
“It’ll get better. Everything’s going to get better…” I say from my heart.
“Come up! Come up!” Jingjing cries.
Over the eastern horizon a blue planet rises like a sapphire set into the pale red veil of the sky.
“Dad, is that where we came from?” Jingjing asks.
I nod. “That’s right.”
“And our grandparents still live there?”
“Yes. They’ve always lived there.”
“Is that Earth?”
Looking at the Earth is like staring into my mother’s pupil, and tears swim in my eyes as I choke out, “That’s right, my child. That’s Earth.”
AFTERWORD
My home lies more than six hundred miles from Beijing, and for at least three decades the journey by train took over seven hours. One day a few years ago, however, I bought a ticket on a futuristic, streamlined high-speed train that had a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour, and I gaped in wonder at the unfamiliar scenery flying by, since the train was traveling a brand new route. The whole trip ended in Beijing just two hours later. A high-speed rail line had appeared on the outskirts of my city, but as for when ground had been broken, and when construction had been completed, I was totally unaware. It was as if it had come into being overnight. Along its journey the train had passed through a tunnel, spending a full ten minutes at nearly two hundred kilometers per hour in what I later learned was the country’s longest rail tunnel. I can remember back to my childhood, and how the digging of the country’s longest rail tunnel (probably not even a tenth the length of this new one) was a huge national news story. Now it doesn’t even make an impression.
That’s how fast China is changing.
Countless tall buildings, hypermarkets, and factories spring up like magic all around you. But the biggest changes are invisible: a wired China is expanding rapidly, and people spend at least half, if not more, of their personal lives online. They interact socially, purchase practically every good imaginable from Taobao up to and including hamsters, and huge groups of them can make their opinions and requests known directly online for events large and small, forming a powerful force of public opinion that is overwhelming traditional media and is rapidly becoming a major determiner of China’s future. The scene in Supernova Era where the internet and a quantum computer facilitate a national dialogue has already basically come to pass in China. The other day I went to Xiong’an New Area in Baoding and visited a brand new city under construction where the supermarkets have no attendants, the hotels are unstaffed, and the vast majority of the cars on the streets are driverless. AI has replaced humanity.