The Wandering Earth (5 page)

Three years later, the impact dust had at last begun to dissipate and humanity was finally approaching its ultimate perihelion. As we reached it, those living on the Eastern Hemisphere had the joy of seeing our world's fastest sunrise and sunset. The Sun leapt from the horizon, only to streak across the sky. The angle of all of Earth's shadows changed so quickly that they looked like the sweeping hands of countless clocks, racing around their imaginary chapter rings with manic determination. It was Earth's shortest day, over in less than an hour.

After that hour, the Sun plummeted back below the horizon and darkness fell across the Earth. I was left with a feeling of sadness. This fleeting day had been like an all too brief synopsis of Earth's 4.5 billion year history in the solar system. And until the end of the universe, Earth would not return.

“The dark has fallen,” Kayoko said then, stricken with grief.

“The longest night,” I replied. We had entered a night that would last 2,500 years. Not until a hundred generations later would the first light of Proxima Centauri again illuminate our hemisphere. The other side of the world was facing the longest day. Even so, it would last just a moment when compared to the age-long night. The Sun would quickly rise to its zenith, where it would remain, motionless, slowly shrinking. Half a century later, it would be difficult to pick out from among the surrounding stars.

The Earth's intended path led it straight to a rendezvous with Jupiter. The Navigation Committee plan was as follows: The Earth's fifteenth orbit would be so elliptical that the aphelion would reach Jupiter's orbit. There Earth would brush past Jupiter, nearly colliding with the giant planet. Using Jupiter's enormous gravity to assist its acceleration, Earth would finally achieve escape velocity.

We first caught sight of Jupiter two months after passing the perihelion. At first the naked eye could only see it as a dim point of light. Soon however, it grew into a small disk. Another month passed and Jupiter had grown to the size of Earth's lost Moon, but it was a sphere of dark crimson, not glowing silver. Already, one could faintly make out its bands. Then some of the Earth Engines beams, all of which had been perpendicular to the Earth for 15 years, began to tilt. Final adjustments were made to the Earth's angle as we approached our cosmic rendezvous.

Jupiter slowly sank below the horizon and three months later it vanished altogether. Now it was visible only to the Western Hemisphere and we knew that two planets had just met.

It almost came as a surprise, when one day we heard that Jupiter would again be visible from the Eastern Hemisphere. Throng upon throng made their way to the surface to witness the cosmic display. When I passed through the gates of the subterranean city and reached the surface, I saw that the Earth Engines that had driven our planet for 15 long years had all fallen completely silent.

Once again, we could see the starlit sky. Our final rendezvous with Jupiter was already in progress.

Everyone nervously stared toward the west as a dim red glow began to appear beyond the horizon. This glow slowly grew, stretching across the entire width of the horizon. Only then did I realize that a neat border had formed between the dim red light and the starry sky. The border was curved, its arc so massive that it spanned from one end of the horizon to the other. Ever so slowly it rose, and as it did, everything below the arc turned dim red. It was as if a theater curtain the size of the night sky was being raised to separate the Earth from the rest of the universe. I could not help but gasp as this occurred to me; that dim red curtain was Jupiter! Of course I knew that Jupiter was 1,300 times the volume of Earth, but only when I saw its immense splendor did I truly take in its incredible size. It is almost impossible to express the horrible feeling of oppression that this cosmic monster engendered as it rose across the entire horizon.

One reporter later wrote, “I could not help but wonder if I had woken in my own nightmare or if the entire universe is but a nightmare in the gigantic mind of that god!” As Jupiter continued its terrible rise, it gradually occupied half of the sky. We could then clearly see the tempests raging in its cloud layers; chaotic, swirling lines of those storms dazed all who beheld their maddening dance. As I stared, I recalled the boiling oceans of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium that lay beneath those thick cloud layers.

Then the famous great red spot of Jupiter rose, the cyclopean maelstrom that had raged for hundreds of thousands of years. It was large enough to swallow our insignificant planet three times over.

Jupiter now filled the entire sky. Earth seemed to be no more than a balloon, bobbing on Jupiter's boiling ocean of dim red clouds! Even worse, Jupiter's giant red spot had come to occupy the middle of our new heaven, like a titanic red eye staring at our world. All of Earth was shrouded in its ghastly red light; in that moment it was impossible for anyone to believe that our tiny Earth could escape the gravitational pull of that enormous monster. For us, it was not even imaginable that Earth could become Jupiter's satellite; we would certainly plummet straight into the inferno concealed beneath that boundless ocean of clouds!

But the navigator's calculations were exact. That bewildering, dim red heaven slowly began to move and, after some indeterminable time, the western sky began to reveal a black crescent. This black quickly grew in size and within it stars began to twinkle; Earth was rushing out of Jupiter's gravitational clutches.

As Earth escaped, sirens began to wail. The gravitational tide that Jupiter had drawn toward itself was rushing back to land. Later I learned that great waves reaching higher than 300 feet had again swept across the continents. As the waters rushed toward the sealed gates of the subterranean cities, I stole one last glimpse at Jupiter, now filling but half of the sky. As I did, I could clearly see streaks marring the planet's cloud oceans. Subsequently, I came to realize, that they had been the result of Earth's own gravitational pull; our planet, too, had caused massive waves on the Jupiter's liquid hydrogen and helium oceans.

Then the Earth, accelerated by Jupiter's gravitational forces, was hurled into deep space.

As we left Jupiter, the Earth reached escape velocity. It no longer needed to return, to lurk within the grasp of the doomed Sun. It was flying toward the vastness of outer space, to begin its long Wandering Age.

It was under the dark red shadow of Jupiter that my son was born, deep beneath the Earth.

A
fter leaving Jupiter behind, the more than 10,000 Asian Earth Engines again began firing at full power, and this time they would not stop for 500 years as they perpetually accelerated Earth toward its destination. In these 500 years, half of Asia's mountains would be consumed, burnt in the Earth Engine's nuclear fire.

Humanity was free, free from the dread of death that had been our constant companion for more than 400 years. What followed was one long, deep, and collective sigh of relief. But the revelry that everyone had expected never materialized. What in fact followed was beyond anything what anyone could have ever imagined.

After our subterranean city's celebratory rally had ended, I donned my thermal suit and ascended to the surface, alone. The mountains of my childhood had already been leveled by the super-excavators, leaving only bare rock face and frozen Earth. The bleak emptiness was broken by splotches of stark white that covered the land as far as the eye could see; the salt marshes left behind by the great ocean tide. Before me loomed the city of my father and my grandfather. What had once been a home to 10 million now lay in a pile of ruins. The Earth Engines' blue glow dragged long shadows from the exposed steel skeletons of the city's skyscrapers as they reached from the Earth like the fossil remains of prehistoric beasts.

The repeated floods and meteorite strikes had destroyed virtually everything that had once stood on the Earth's surface. All that humankind and nature had wrought over millennia lay in ruins. Our world had been reduced to a Mars-like desolation.

Shortly thereafter I noticed that Kayoko had become restless. She would often leave our son to fly off in the car on her own. When she returned, she would only say that she had been to the Western Hemisphere. Then finally, one day she dragged me along.

We traveled for two hours at Mach 4 in our flying car until we could finally see the Sun rising over the Pacific, barely the size of a baseball. It illuminated the frozen ocean below with its faint, cold light.

Kayoko put the car into hover at an elevation of three miles. She then produced a long tube from behind our backs. As she removed its cover, I saw that it was an astronomical telescope, the type that hobbyists use. Kayoko opened the car's window and pointed the telescope at the Sun. Then she asked me to look.

Through the telescope's colored lens I could see the Sun, magnified by several hundred magnitudes. I could clearly see even the Sun's faint halo and the sunspots ever so slowly moving across its surface.

Kayoko connected the telescope to a computer that she had also brought along and captured an image of the Sun. She then opened another image of the Sun on the screen and said, “This is an image of the Sun from four hundred years ago.” As she spoke, the computer began comparing the two images.

“Do you see that?” she asked, pointing at the screen. “All the parameters, the luminosity, the pixel arrays, the pixel probability, the layer statistics — they are all exactly the same!”

I shook my head. “And what does that show? A toy telescope, a basic image processing program and you, an ignorant amateur.” I paused, but then continued. “Just forget about it; don't believe the rumors!”

“You're an idiot,” she shot back, taking back the telescope and turning the flying car around.

Only as she did so did I notice a number of other flying cars in the distance, both above and below us. They were hovering in the air, like we had been, a telescope extending from every car toward the Sun.

Several months later the terrible theory began spreading across the entire world like a wildfire. More and more people took it upon themselves to study the Sun with ever larger and more precise instruments. An NGO even came to launch a group of probes toward the Sun. After three months the probes hit the Sun. The data they sent back finally proved the fact: In the past 400 years, the Sun had not changed, not changed at all.

All around the world, the subterranean cities turned into bubbling volcanoes of unrest threatening to explode at any moment. In this atmosphere, Kayoko and I placed our son in a fostering center in accordance with the laws of the Unity Government. As we returned home, we both felt the undeniable truth that the only strand holding us together had been removed. As we passed the central plaza, we came upon a rally in full swing. We saw that some of the instigators were handing out weapons to the attending citizens.

“Citizens! The Earth as been betrayed! Humanity has been betrayed!” the leader of the rally shouted out. “Civilization has been betrayed! We are all the victims of a colossal hoax! A hoax so great and terrible that it would shock the gods! The Sun still is our old Sun; it will not explode! Past, present and future, it is the very symbol of eternity! What is explosive is the wild and insidious ambition of those in the Unity Government! They fabricated it all so that they could bring about their dictatorial empire! They have destroyed the Earth! They have destroyed human civilization! Citizens, you citizens of conscience, take up arms!” the speaker shouted out to the masses. “Rescue our planet! Rescue civilization! We will topple the Unity Government! We will take control of the Earth Engines! We will guide our planet back from the cold depths of space, home to its intended orbit! We will return to the warm embrace of our Sun!”

Kayoko quietly stepped forward, accepting an assault rifle from one of the men handing out the weapons. In silence she joined a column of armed citizens. She did not look back as she disappeared into the depths of the city together with that vast formation of like-minded citizens. I stood dumbfounded. In my pocket I tightly grasped the medal that had been given in exchange for my father's life and loyalty.

Its points dug into my hand and drew blood.

Three days later the fires of rebellion were ignited simultaneously across the world. Wherever the rebels went, the people rose to meet their call. At that time, very few people still doubted that they had been deceived. Nonetheless, I joined the army of the Unity Government. It was not that I had great faith in the Unity Government, but my family had served in the military for three generations and they had sown the seeds of loyalty deep in my heart. For me, rebellion against the Unity Government was unthinkable, no matter what the circumstances.

One after another, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica fell into rebel hands as the Unity Government drew defensive lines around the Earth Engines in Eastern and Central Asia, ready to defend them to the very last. The rebels quickly surrounded these lines. Their forces vastly outmatched the government troops. There was only one reason that their offensive stalled; it was all about the Earth Engines. The rebel forces had no desire to destroy the engines and so they avoided deploying heavy weapons in this vast theater of war. The government forces could thus cling to their positions, even as their situation worsened with every day.

The two sides remained locked in this stalemate for three months. But, when a succession of twelve Unity Government field armies defected in the midst of critical engagements, the government's defensive lines in East and Central Asia finally and completely collapsed. Two months later, the Unity Government, its situation bleak beyond hope, found itself encircled at the Earth Engine control center, its back to the frozen ocean. All that was left of its army was a contingent of less than 100,000 troops. I was a major in that remnant army.

The control center was the size of a city, built around the Earth Bridge. I found myself in its field hospital, my arm badly burnt by laser fire. It was there I learned that Kayoko had been killed in action in Australia. Like the others in the field hospital, I drank myself into a stupor virtually ever day. We lost all track of the war raging outside, and we could not have cared less.

I do not know how much time had passed when I heard someone shouting at the top of their lungs.

“Do you know how things came to this? You have only yourself to blame. In this war, you stood against humanity and so did I.”

As I turned my head to see, I discovered a general's star gleaming on the speaker's shoulder. He continued his speech. “Be that as it may, we have one more chance to save our souls. The Earth Bridge is only three blocks away. We can take it and hand it over to the sane humanity outside. We gave our all fulfilling our duty to the Unity Government; now we must do the same for our duty to humanity!”

Using my good arm I drew my pistol and together with this suddenly frenzied mass of able-bodied and wounded, I surged down the steel passageways toward the Earth Bridge. To our surprise, we encountered almost no resistance along the way. In fact, more and more people emerged from the maze of metal corridors to join our march. In the end we came upon a gigantic metal gate, rising above us as far as the eye could see. With a loud rumble it opened and we charged onto the Earth Bridge.

Even though we had seen it countless times on TV, we were all nonetheless shocked by the magnificence of the Earth Bridge. In was hard to judge the size of the bridge by just looking at it as its dimensions were hidden by the gigantic hologram that dominated the room. The hologram was a simulation of the solar system. Almost all of it was black space, stretching limitlessly in all directions.

Entering the bridge we seemed to float in the middle of this blackness. Because the model was designed to represent the actual proportions as accurately as possible, the Sun and planets were tiny. They were so tiny that they looked like mere fireflies glowing in the distance. Nonetheless, they remained clearly distinguishable. A conspicuous red spiral expanded out from the distant central dot of light that represented the Sun. It spread like red rings of water on a black ocean. It was the Earth's path. At a point far along the spiral, the line turned from red to bright green, representing the route the Earth had yet to travel.

The green line swept over the top of our heads and as we let our gaze follow it, we could see a splendid sea of stars. The line disappeared into the depth of that sea, its end beyond our purview. Many specks of glittering dust also floated in the middle of the vast blackness of the hologram. As some of these specks floated closer, I realized that they were virtual screens, revealing a scrolling procession of complex figures and curves.

I then saw the Earth Navigation Platform, the apple in the collective eye of humanity. It looked like a silver asteroid, floating in the blackness. Seeing the platform, it was hard to grasp its immense size; the Navigation Platform itself was a large forum, currently densely packed with more than 5,000 people. They included the leaders of the Unity Government and a large part of the Interstellar Migration Committee — which was responsible for implementing the plans for Earth's travels — as well as some last remaining loyalists. As we took all of this in, we heard the voice of the Supreme Executive Officer echo into the black around us.

“Of course we could fight to the end, but that could lead to us losing control of the Earth Engines. If that should happen, the excess fissile material could burn straight through the entire planet or evaporate all of Earth's oceans. And so we have decided to surrender. We understand the people. They have already endured forty generations of hardship and struggle and they have nothing to look forward to for a further one-hundred generations. It would certainly be unrealistic to expect them to remain reasonable throughout it all. But we ask that the people remember that we, the five thousand who stand here, from the Supreme Executive Officer to every last private, stood firm in our convictions to the very end. We know that we will not see the day that we are proven right, but if humanity should endure eternally, all will eventually come to shed tears before our graves. This sphere called Earth shall be an eternal monument in our memory!”

The giant doors of the control center opened with a deep rumble and those 5,000 people, the last of the Earth Faction, emerged. They were then marched to the coast by rebel forces. The road they took was lined with throng upon angry throng. The enraged masses spat at the prisoners and pelted them with rocks and pieces of ice. The visors of some thermal suits shattered, exposing the faces beneath to temperatures more than 150-degrees below freezing. But even as they were numbed by the terrible cold they trudged on, fighting for every step. I saw a small girl pick up a large chunk of ice. Exerting all the strength her small body could muster, she furiously smashed it against the body of an old government official, the unbridled rage in her eyes seeming to burn straight through her visor.

When I heard that every last one of these 5,000 had been sentenced to death, I could not help but feel that they were being treated too leniently. How could one death be enough? How could one death redress their crimes? How could they pay for the crime of perpetrating an insane hoax that destroyed both the Earth and human culture? They should die a thousand times over! I then recalled those astrophysicists who had forecast the explosion of the Sun and those engineers who had designed and built the Earth Engines. They might have all passed away a century ago, but I then truly thought that they should be exhumed and that they too should suffer a thousand deaths.