Luo Ji looked for a bit into the distance where she pointed, and then exclaimed, “Impossible! How is there nothing left?”
“What would be left? In your day, there was absolutely nothing here!”
“Nothing? The Imperial Palace? Jingshan Park? Tiananmen? The China World Trade Center? It hasn’t even been two hundred years. It can’t all have been torn down.”
“All those things are still there.”
“Where?”
“On the surface.”
Seeing Luo Ji’s terrified look, she burst out laughing so hard that she had to lean on the railing for support. “Ah, ha-ha. I forgot. I’m really sorry. I’ve forgotten so many times. Look, we’re underground here. A thousand meters beneath the surface… If I ever get to time travel to your time, you can get back at me and forget to tell me that the city’s on the surface, and I’ll be as terrified as you are now. Ha ha ha…”
“But… this…” He held up his hands.
“The sky is fake. The sun is fake, too,” the woman said, trying to suppress a smile. “Of course, saying it’s fake isn’t right, either, because it’s an image taken from an altitude of ten thousand meters and displayed down here, so maybe it counts as real, too.”
“Why build the city below ground? And a thousand meters—that’s really deep.”
“For the war, of course. Think about it. When the Doomsday Battle comes, won’t the surface be an ocean of fire? Yeah, that battle is another outdated idea now, but when the Great Ravine ended, all the world’s cities developed underground.”
“So all the cites in the world are underground now?”
“The majority of them.”
Luo Ji took stock of the world again. Now he understood that the trunks of the great trees were the pillars supporting the vault of the underground world, and also served as the columns from which the city’s buildings were suspended.
“You won’t be claustrophobic. Look at how broad the sky is! Up on the surface, the sky’s not nearly this wonderful.”
Luo Ji looked again at the blue sky, or rather the projection of the blue sky. He now noticed a few small objects—just some scattered bits, at first, but once his eyes got used to looking, he saw that there were so many that they covered the entire sky. Strangely, the objects in the sky reminded him of someplace completely unrelated, the showcase of a jewelry store. Before he became a Wallfacer, back when he had fallen in love with the Zhuang Yan of his imagination, he had once been so obsessed that he wanted to buy his imaginary angel a present. He went to the jewelry store and looked at all the platinum pendants in the showcase, every one of them exquisite, lying there on the black velvet and twinkling under the spotlights. If the black velvet had been blue, then it would have been just like the sky he saw today.
“Is that the space fleet?” he asked excitedly.
“No. The fleet isn’t visible from here. It’s beyond the asteroid belt. Those, well, they’re everything. The ones with a visible shape are space cities, and the points of light are civilian spacecraft. But sometimes there are warships in orbit, too. Their engines are very bright, so you can’t stare at them…. Okay, I’ve got to get going. You should head back soon. It gets windy here.”
Luo Ji turned around to say good-bye, but was so surprised he couldn’t speak. The woman had her umbrella—or, rather, her bicycle—positioned on her back like a backpack, and then it stood up in back of her and opened overhead to form two coaxial propellers that started up silently, turning in opposition to offset rotational torque. Then she lifted slowly up into the air and hopped over the railing beside her into the abyss that had so dazzled him.
Suspended there, she called to him: “You can see how this is a pretty decent age. Think of your past as a dream. See you tomorrow!”
She flew gracefully, the small propellers churning the sunlight, until she turned into a tiny dragonfly between two giant trees in the distance. Swarms of these dragonflies flew between the giant trees of the city. More notable still were the streams of flying cars like schools of fish navigating endlessly among the plants on the ocean floor. The rising sun shone onto the city and was cut into shafts of light by the trees, coating the traffic with a layer of gold.
Tears streamed down Luo Ji’s face at the sight of this brave new world, and the sensation of newborn life permeated his every cell. The past really was a dream.
When he saw the European man in the reception room, Luo Ji got the feeling that there was something different about him. Later, he realized that it was because the formal suit he wore didn’t flash or display any image, but resembled the clothing of a bygone era. Perhaps this was an expression of solemnity.
After Luo Ji shook his hand, the visitor introduced himself. “I’m Special Commissioner Ben Jonathan from the Solar Fleet Joint Conference. I arranged your reawakening at the committee’s behest, and now, we’re going to attend the final hearing of the Wallfacer Project. Oh, can you understand me? English has changed quite a bit.”
Luo Ji could understand what Jonathan said, but listening to him speak, the sense of Western cultural invasion that Luo Ji had felt over the past few days because of the changes to modern Chinese disappeared, because Jonathan’s English was peppered with Chinese vocabulary. He said “Wallfacer Project” in Chinese, for example. English, formerly the most widely used language, and Chinese, spoken by the largest population, had blended with each other without distinction to become the world’s most powerful language. Luo Ji learned later that the other languages of the world were undergoing the same fusion.
The past isn’t a dream, Luo Ji thought. The past catches up with you. Then he recalled that Jonathan had said the word “final” and wondered if there was hope of a quick resolution after all.
Jonathan looked back, as if to make sure the door had been closed, and then walked over to the wall and activated an interface. He gave a few simple taps on the surface, and then all four walls and the ceiling disappeared into a holographic display.
Now Luo Ji found himself in an auditorium. Although everything was greatly changed, and the walls and table glowed softly, the designers had clearly tried to replicate the style of the old era. Everything from the great circular table and the rostrum to the overall layout embodied a nostalgia that allowed him to know at once where he was. The auditorium was empty but for two staffers laying out documents on the tables. Luo Ji was astonished to see that paper documents were still being used. Just like Jonathan’s clothes, this seemed to be an expression of solemnity.
“Remote meetings are a common practice now. Taking part in this way won’t affect the meeting’s importance or seriousness,” Jonathan said. “There’s still some time before the hearing begins, and you look like you don’t know much about the outside world. Do you need me to tell you a bit about the basics?”
Luo Ji nodded. “Of course. Thank you.”
Jonathan pointed to the auditorium and said, “I’ll be brief. First, the countries. Europe is a single country, called the European Commonwealth, and it includes both eastern and western Europe, but not Russia. Russia and Belarus unified into a country still called the Russian Federation. Canada’s French-speaking and English-speaking areas split into two countries. There have been some changes in other regions, too, but these are the major ones.”
Luo Ji was shocked. “Those are the only changes? It’s been nearly two centuries. I’d have thought the changes would have made the world unrecognizable.”
Jonathan turned back from the auditorium and nodded solemnly at Luo Ji. “Unrecognizable, Dr. Luo. The world is indeed unrecognizable.”