“I think one of them committed suicide, and another was stoned to death…. It all happened in the project’s early days, and it’s been nearly two centuries since then.”
“And the other two?”
“I don’t know. They’re probably still in hibernation.”
“One of them was Chinese. Do you remember him?” Luo Ji ventured, staring nervously at the doctor.
“You mean the one who cast a spell on a star? I think he was mentioned in premodern history class,” the nurse interjected.
“Right. And now he’s…” Luo Ji said.
“I don’t know. I think he’s still in hibernation. I don’t pay much attention to that stuff,” the doctor said absently.
“And the star? The one he cursed, the star with a planet? What happened to it?” he asked, his heart tensing up.
“What do you think happened? It’s probably still there. That spell? What a joke!”
“So nothing at all happened to that star?”
“Nothing I’ve heard, at any rate. You?” he asked the nurse.
“Me neither,” she said, shaking her head. “The world was scared to death back then and lots of silly things happened.”
“And then?” Luo Ji said with a sigh.
“Then there was the Great Ravine,” the doctor said.
“The Great Ravine? What was that?”
“You’ll find out later. For now, rest up,” the doctor said with a gentle sigh. “But it’s probably better that you don’t know about it.” As he turned to leave, his white coat displayed billowing dark clouds, and the nurse’s uniform displayed lots of pairs of eyes, some of them frightened, some brimming with tears.
When the doctor had left, Luo Ji sat motionless on his bed for a long while, mumbling to himself, “A joke. An ancient joke.” Then he began laughing, silently at first, and then in great guffaws, trembling on his bed and frightening Xiong Wen, who wanted to call the doctor.
“I’m fine. Go to sleep,” Luo Ji told him. Then he lay down and soon fell asleep for the first time since his reawakening.
He dreamed of Zhuang Yan and the child. As before, Zhuang Yan walked through the snow, the child asleep in her arms.
When he awoke, the nurse walked in and said good morning to him. Her voice was soft so as not to wake the still-sleeping Xiong Wen.
“Is it morning? Why aren’t there any windows in this room?” Luo Ji asked, looking around.
“Any place on the wall can turn transparent. But the doctors feel that you aren’t ready to look outside. It’s too unfamiliar, and it will distract you and affect your rest.”
“I’ve been revived for a while now, but I still don’t know what the outside world is like. This affects my rest.” Luo Ji pointed at Xiong Wen, and said, “I’m not that kind of person.”
The nurse laughed. “That’s okay. I’m about to go off shift. Shall I take you out for a look around? You can have breakfast after you get back.”
Excitedly, Luo Ji followed the nurse to the on-call room. Looking it over, he could guess what about half of the furnishings were, but he had no idea what the rest were for. There was no computer or similar equipment, but because a display could be activated anywhere on the walls, this was to be expected. Three umbrellas lined up outside the door caught his attention. They were in different styles, but from their shape, they were definitely umbrellas. What surprised him was their bulk. Weren’t there folding umbrellas in this age?
The nurse came out of the changing room dressed in her own clothes. Aside from the flashing movies on the fabric, changes to women’s fashion in this age were well within the scope of Luo Ji’s imagination. Compared to his own era, the major difference was their conspicuous asymmetry. He was pleased that after 185 years had passed, he could still find beauty in women’s clothing. The nurse picked up one of the umbrellas, which must have been fairly heavy, because she had to carry it over her shoulder.
“Is it raining out?”
She shook her head. “You think I’m carrying an… umbrella?” she said, unfamiliar with the last word.
“If it’s not an umbrella, then what is it?” Luo Ji pointed to the device on her shoulder, imagining that she would say some peculiar name for it.
But she didn’t. “It’s my bicycle,” she said.
When they arrived in the corridor, Luo Ji asked, “Is your home far from here?”
“If you’re talking about where I live, it’s not far. Ten or twenty minutes biking,” she said. Then, standing still and fixing him with her charming eyes, she said something that shocked him: “There are no homes now. No one has them. Marriage, family, they went away after the Great Ravine. That will be the first thing you’ll have to get used to.”
“That first thing is something I won’t be able to get used to.”
“Oh, I don’t know. In history class I learned that marriage and family had already begun to disintegrate in your own time. Lots of people didn’t want to be tied down. They wanted free lives.” This was the second time she had mentioned history class.
I was like that once, but then… Luo Ji said to himself. From the moment he’d reawakened, Zhuang Yan and the child had never really left his mind. They were the desktop wallpaper of his consciousness, perpetually on display. But no one here recognized him, and with the situation so uncertain, he couldn’t just rashly ask about their whereabouts, even though he was tormented by longing.
They walked a ways down the corridor. Then, after they’d passed through an automatic door, Luo Ji’s eyes lit up as he saw a narrow platform extending into the distance and felt fresh air blowing toward him. He sensed that he was now outside.
“What a blue sky!” was the first thing he shouted to the outside world.
“Really? It can’t compare to the blue skies of your era.”
Definitely bluer. Much bluer. Luo Ji didn’t say that out loud, just reveled in the boundless blue embrace and let his soul melt. Then he had a flash of doubt: Was this heaven? In his memory, he had only ever seen such a pure blue sky during the five years he had spent apart from the world, secluded in his Garden of Eden. But this blue sky had fewer white clouds, just a couple of pale wisps in the western sky, like someone had unintentionally left a smudge. The sun that had just risen in the east shone like crystal in the entirely transparent air, with its edge rimmed in dew.
Luo Ji turned his eyes downward and immediately became dizzy. From high up, it took him a long moment to realize that what he saw from here was the city. At first he thought he was looking at a giant forest, the slender tree trunks stretching straight up toward the sky, each one sprouting perpendicular branches of varying lengths. The city’s buildings were the leaves hanging off these branches. The layout of the city looked random, and different trees had different densities of leaves. The Hibernation and Reawakening Center formed a part of one of those large trees, and the leaf that contained his bed hung from the narrow platform that now extended out in front of him.
Looking back, the tree trunk his branch was connected to extended so far upward that it disappeared out of view. The branch they were on was located in the middle to upper section of the tree, and above and below them he could see other branches, and the structural leaves that hung on them. On closer inspection, the branches formed an intricate network of bridges in space, bridges with one end left floating in midair.
“What is this place?” Luo Ji asked.
“Beijing.”
He looked at the nurse, even prettier now in the morning sun. Looking back at the place she called Beijing, he asked, “Where’s the city center?”
“In that direction. We’re outside the West Fourth Ring, in Tree 179, Branch 23, Leaf 18, so you’re almost able to see the entire city.”