Chapter 2
The Revival
An ordinary civil court in Shijingshan District, Beijing was to adjudicate on the divorce case of the chief executive of the republic today.
Due to the immense and ever increasing number of divorce cases, as well as the trifling nature of the reasons why people file for divorce, in civil court these days these processes were relegated to computers, only requiring a judge when there were disagreements on property ownership and child support. Luckily, cases like these were getting rarer and rarer. Some local-level courts went to an extreme – in the courtroom a row of computer terminals were installed, and long files of people stood in line before them to submit their divorce petitions. The courtroom thus lost its solemnness and felt more like a ticket hall at a bus terminal. The screen of these terminals showed repeatedly the following content:
Case number L91234564
Please insert the magnetic disk containing your marriage certificate into drive A. Disk reading… Thank you.
Please insert the magnetic disk containing your divorce petition into drive B. Disk reading… Thank you.
Please remove disk A. Insert disk containing your personal, familial, and social information into drive A. Disk reading… Thank you.
Do you consider your marriage beyond any remedy? Yes/No.
Do you have any additional comments? Yes/No.
Thank you. Your divorce petition has been granted.
Would you like to have two print copies of your divorce certificate as a keepsake? Yes/No.
Thank you. We wish each of the two of you happiness!
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…
The most time consuming part of the divorcing process was the commercials, but even those were still popular. Every divorced pair perused the commercials carefully and planned out their divorce ceremony and honeymoon meticulously. They planned out their divorce no less lovingly than how they had planned their wedding, and most left the courtroom holding hands. To the centenarians peeking in to observe the whole process, the peacefulness of the courtroom was more surprising than the number of the divorce-seeking couples. The sense of harmony in these courtrooms declared with certainty that the facade of traditional values and norms were finally crumbling.
But the divorce case today was not as simple as those aforementioned. Not because it involves the Chief Executive specifically - if it hadn’t been for the press conference last night, in this day and age, this event would have only taken an insignificant chunk on the daily newspaper. However, this time the matter was seriously politicized from her risky scheme pushing for a constitutional amendment. Beyond that, there was also disagreement between she and her partner regarding the custody of their child. Neither of them was willing to give her up. For reasons above, several human justices were assigned to this case.
An hour and a half after the court convened, the lawyers representing both parties were on an equal footing making their case for their clients. The judges were also wary of ruling on this nationally publicized case. They eventually resorted to a safe choice: to have the girl make her own decision on her custody.
Immediately the adorable girl was surrounded by centenarian women.
“Xingxing, don’t pick your mom! She is a bad mom, a bad woman!”
“Good girl, your mom not only destroyed her own family, she is going to destroy families of everyone else in the world!”
“See those motorbike-riding homeless kids tramping out on the streets? Your mom is trying to make every kid into one of them! She wouldn’t care if you also become one of them!”
“Yeah, Xingxing, your mom doesn’t love you. Don’t pick her!”
The judges were helpless against this raucous lot. The child was carried to the front of the courtroom, yet the old ladies were still shouting loudly at her.
The chest of the Chief Executive heaved violently. When the security of the republic is at risk, she will be the one making the final call before megaton-nuclear missiles would be launched from their silos in a thunderous roar, but when her own personal life was under threat, she couldn’t even act in her own defense. She also had no allies – all the young folks were at work, and they wouldn’t see the news on TV until evening.
“I’m scared! I want daddy!”
The child was terrified. She let out a tearful cry. Of her two parents, the one who she spent more time with was her father, so she became used to requesting his presence. She was the apple of the eye of her grandparents, and they gave her everything she could ever want. She even had her own personal swimming pool as well as a garden. Though her mom also loved her dearly, she didn’t like her that much. Her mom was always the one removing her from the miniature world built around her by her grandparents, taking her to see the ocean, the forest, the desert, and the cacophonous, scary cities, to crowds of kids who didn’t listen to her and bullied her. She was like a little banana, so ripe that it couldn’t handle but the slightest of touch. She was entirely conditioned to her own little world. Thankfully her mother hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time with her. The Chief Executive also realized with much heartache, that if things continued to go as they did, her Xingxing wouldn’t be happy.
The kid was crying for the loving embrace of her dad and her paternal grandparents.
The court announced its decree. The Chief Executive lost all that she had in her personal life.
Her big eyes stared towards the front, but they were slowly filling up with tears.
“Don’t cry! Or just lower your head. This is awful!” Standing behind, the lieutenant angrily whispered at her.
But the Chief Executive held her head high and left her tears to stream down her face. The lieutenant saw an annoying videographer setting the focus of a TV camera. That evening the two billion people of China were about to see those eyes filled up with tears.
The journalists, who usually crowded the Chief Executive whenever they had a chance, kept their distance in this occasion. Only one female journalist came forth timidly and asked if she had anything to say to the media.
“I’m not getting remarried for the rest of my term.” She said quietly.
“Why?”
“Because by getting married, you get only one soul mate, but if you don't get married, you get countless admirers. I mean young men of this country – I need their help to achieve my aspirations for our nation. Never mind, I am just deceiving myself. I love him. This is really hard for me. I wish he’d focus on digging his undersea tunnel and not find himself a new girlfriend. Even if he finds one, they wouldn’t be happy, so the two of us can come back together after my term is over. Oh, I hope his new partner forgives me, if there is one. Don’t stare at me anymore. I’m crying all right. Leave. Write whatever you wish on your papers. With your power to sway public opinion, even if God himself comes down here, you can still make him get a divorce. How much I envy that twentieth century woman named San Mao (Note: a popular Taiwanese author who wrote about her life in Spanish Sahara living with her Spanish husband). She wasn’t a Chief Executive, so she got to drive around the Sahara with her loved one in a small Jeep, catching fish by the sea, and having a child of her own, that will never be taken away from her, although I don’t remember her having a child. How amazing would that be! I really wish that I could have you serve the remainder of my term on behalf of me… Oh, sorry, this is just what I’m thinking right now. I’ll surely change my mind later. Please don’t take this seriously.”
“Whenever you speak about yourself, you immediately turn into a silly girl. You really want to dissect your thoughts in front of two billion people?” After the press had left, the lieutenant asked the Chief Executive heavy-heartedly. “And you will tell me that this is expected of each Chief Executive by the people.”
“Isn’t it the case? Dear friend, go, I want some time alone.” Said the Chief Executive wearily.
As the lieutenant walked into the distance, the Chief Executive was all by herself in the courtroom. She regretted letting the lieutenant leave without her. She felt lonely in the quiet, lonesome courtroom. She walked out briskly.
Right on the outside was the Shijingshan District Greenbelt. The noises of the city and of the ionosphere jets coming in for a landing were muted in these lush woods. The Chief Executive walked on a plastic-paved trail in the woods.
“Auntie Chief Executive!” She picked up the voice of a child in front of her. The Chief Executive saw a boy in a Telnyashka shirt (Note: a blue and white striped T-shirt, used by the Soviet and Chinese navies. Widely popular in China in the latter part of the 20th century.) He had a big head and big eyes, looking very amiable. He carried a chubby dog in his arms. The Chief Executive immediately recognized the child.
“Xiaoyu, right?”
“You still remember me? You meet so many people every day!” Shouted the child, surprised.
“I also remember that you are six this year.”
Last year in winter, the Chief Executive’s Dongfang sedan had just left the gates of Zhongnanhai (Note: Chinese presidential residence) when it was stopped by a boy in a leather jacket. The road was slippery from the snow. The car almost hit the child, when the child leaped into the car and held tightly onto the clothes of the Chief Executive.
“Auntie, my home is crazy, I can’t bear to live there any more! I talked to everyone I could. I even talked to the mayor, and they refused to do anything about it. They said that most kids were born into families like mine. Why are you being such a baby about it? I can only look to you for help. You have to come with me to my home today!”
Xiaoyu’s household was indeed, as he had described, “crazy”. The oldest family member was born in 1975, aged 210. From then on, each generation was spaced out by around 30 years, so seven generations were living together. This apartment on the 50th floor held 13 people, where eight of them were centenarians. Most of them were just living corpses at this time. When the Chief Executive walked into the door, she saw through the dim light these elderlies, sitting or lying down. With a stranger walking into the apartment, they couldn’t even bother to take a glance at her. Only the noise made by the artificial heart once in a while when they breathe showed a sign of life encased within these wrinkled, blackened bodies. Two cone-shaped household robots were scampering about, taking care of these old people living entirely using modern artificial organs. Each robot had a dozen pneumatic arms, but each hand was taken up by syringes, phlegm suction tubes, and urinals. These mechanical arms move about rapidly following the movement of the robots, bringing about the only source of activity in the household. Among the furniture sat a controller unit, where a handful of fiber optic cables connected to each human body, controlling hundreds of artificial organs in these bodies like the heart, lung, etc. The beeper on the controller unit let off an alarm once in a while, and the robot had to empty one of its hands to make an adjustment on the computer with much difficulty. The entire household looked like a culturing dish for dried up tree bark.
This was the modern Chinese household, a result of both the 21st and 22nd century boom in medical technology and artificial organs, and historical surges in population. This type of household can be found across the 9.6 million square kilometers of Chinese territory.
In China, the population reached 2 billion. Amongst them, five hundred million were above 200 years old, seven hundred million were between 100 and 200 years old, then five hundred million between 70 and 100 years old. Last came the children and young adults at a mere three hundred million, which was 15 percent of the total population.
The Chief Executive waited for fifteen unbearable minutes until Xiaoyu’s parents showed up.
“Comrade Chief Executive, I voted for you at the People’s Conference, but that wasn’t me authorizing you to micromanage my family affairs. Please, go mind your own business!” Said the male occupant jeeringly.
The mother dragged the Chief Executive to the elevator outside the door.
“Forgive us, comrade Chief Executive. He was in a bad mood. It's really hard on our kid that he has to live in this kind of environment. But what can we do about it? We already have a larger living area than most. On the other hand, both my husband and I are very busy. I am the general manager of the Beijing Metallic Hydrogen Plant, and he is a basketball coach. He travels a lot, and whenever we are home, having to deal with the elderlies drains whatever energy we have left, so we have no time to spend with our kid. Furthermore, our relationship isn’t exactly working out. He has a lover outside marriage, and so do I. I feel really bad for our child, but then, most Chinese kids are like him anyway, so we… Comrade Chief Executive, there isn’t much you could help Xiaoyu, but as his mother, I still want to thank you for your attempt. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to ask this or not – are you telling the complete truth on TV?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then what do you think of the current societal and cultural situation of ours? Tell me the truth, or don’t bother.”
“It’s in our national anthem – the Chinese people is at its most perilous moment.”
“Then what is our way out?”
“There is no easy way out. Our republic is only 300 years old, but it needs to come to terms with its heavy, 5000-year cultural heritage.”
“There must be something quick you could do, right? I’m completely oblivious, but you higher-ups should have some kind of an idea.”
“Family as a concept has been codified into law throughout the past thousands of years. So long as that concept exists, we can’t effectively deal with our aging population, and we drain the vitality of the young adults. But what is most fearful is that we risk damaging our next generation.”
As she walked out of the high-rise housing complex, the Chief Executive decided that she would take the political gamble in the last three years of her term to change the traditional social construct of family, and codify it into the constitution.
Back to her latest encounter with Xiaoyu, the Chief Executive knelt down and pulled the boy toward her,
“I am so sorry about last time. That was really lame. There was nothing I could do to help you. How are you doing now?”
“Same old. I go back home very late, and I go to bed as soon as I’m back home. I head out every morning as soon as I wake up.”
The Chief Executive held up Xiaoyu’s face with her slightly trembling hands.
“Auntie, I know that Xingxing left you. Do you want to keep this puppy as your companion?”
The Chief Executive held up the puppy. It licked her face with its warm, moist tongue.
“Today is Sunday. May I take you somewhere fun?”
“You are busy, right? You have such a big country to run.”
“You won’t bother me. I can bring you to where I work.”
“Really? You are taking me to the giant silver sphere?” Shouted Xiaoyu excitedly. “The giant silver sphere” referred to the office building for Chief Executives built above Zhongnanhai late last century. This building was as world renowned as the White House of the US. Especially for boys, it was a place full of mystery.
Together they walked towards it (Note: this will likely take a while. Shijingshan district is about 8 miles away from Zhongnanhai). The plastic-paved path turned colorful. Wherever they stepped on, pressure sensors in the pavement triggered loudspeakers to play beautiful music.
In the past two days, two people were entirely oblivious to the Chief Executive’s speech, her divorce, and anything other than that. They shut themselves within an inflated building. In front of them sat a giant computer screen flickering with soft green light. They were the aforementioned M102 and M103. The screen wrote:
Program running… Six RAM sectors
Program 1: Brain1.exe, memory usage: 337869430031 MB, accessing optical drive D004
Program 2: Brain2.exe, memory usage 295634234523 MB, accessing optical drive D005
Program 3: Brain2.exe, memory usage 307863783255 MB, accessing optical drive D006
Program 4: Brain2.exe, memory usage 354354892910 MB, accessing optical drive D007
Program 5: Brain2.exe, memory usage 323654765782 MB, accessing optical drive D008
Program 6: Brain2.exe, memory usage 372326745643 MB, accessing optical drive D009
Program using CPU core number 0000001 – 5000000 (Note: unrealistic here that it doesn’t start with 0000000)
Remaining CPU cores: 0
Total RAM used: 628000000000 Mb,
Program running, do not write into memory address 00000000A7F885D7H – FFFFFFFF2SD40112H.
“It has been running for 10 hours now.” Said M103 sleepily. He only just woke up from a nap on the carpet.
“It’s creating a simulation model” Said M102 who hasn’t taken his eyes off the screen. “This is no easy feat, grandpa. The human brain is an exceptionally complex system. It contains 15 billion brain cells, and the 3-D molecular scanner collects 500 megabytes of data in each brain cell. In total each brain yields 7500 billion megabytes of data. This is the most complete record of a physical object we’ve ever achieved; it’s closing in on the theoretical limit predicted by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. 7500 billion megabytes! Old man, do you have any idea how much data this is? If we print all of this data on paper and bind it into a book, it’d be a book several times the distance from the earth to the moon thick! Now our supercomputer is dealing with such a large database to build the simulation model for all six brains that we scanned in.”
“I’m doubting if it’ll actually work. Mind you, one of those brains has been dead for 200 years.”
“The computer will calculate the status that the brain was in when it was alive 200 years ago based on the current chemical and physical status of the brain. Biochemistry and biophysics research has provided the computer enough information to predict the changes of proteins and DNA molecules over the past 200 years, so as long as you have an up-to-date scan, no matter how distant the past was, you can create an accurate simulation of it. But certainly this is thanks to you and the previous generations of guards. You’ve taken good care of his body.”
“We really can’t get out of here?”
“We messed with the electric door lock to get in. I set to have it unlock this afternoon at 5 pm. Don’t touch that door, otherwise both of us will be videotaped. We are using the computer without permission. If they find out about us, no amount of your Fen liquor is enough to pay for the user fee! Don’t get antsy. You asked to come with me.”
“That sense of curiosity of mine that had disappeared decades ago got woken up by a kid. Shame! I guarded his casket for more than a decade now… You really think that we can retrieve his memory?”
“Theoretically, yes. But the memory information might just end up as a bunch of binary code that we don’t understand.”
“That’d be a bummer.”
“No, grandpa, someone will decipher these information in the future.”
“You mentioned Fen liquor…”
“In the fridge next to the air conditioning there is some beer… Hey! Leave a couple for me!”
“Look at the screen!”
Simulation model construction complete. Would you like to run this model? (Y/N)
“I can’t be bothered to move over. Type Y. It’s on the top row. Yup, there you go.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“The computer is recognizing each module of the simulation model. This also takes time.”
They waited hour after hour. No output from the computer.
M102 was also getting impatient. He decided to force open the electronic locks and get a roasted duck with M103. They were starving. M102 was also over his worries about getting videotaped by the alarm system. This was a new mainframe computer, and it was temporarily sidelined because of the incessant bickering between departments about allocation of computer terminals. M102 felt that since he couldn’t afford to pay the exorbitant user fees anyway, there was nothing they could do to him even if this had been found out.
M103 agreed with M102’s suggestion. He requested for one more can of beer. When he was halfway done with that can of beer, the computer made a quiet beep.
The digital clock read 13:24, Jun. 12, 2185.
“What are you doing, old man? Trying to get us into more trouble?”
The half-full beer can fell from M103’s hand. The beer spilled all over the laser printer. His hand remained in a holding posture, as if the beer can was still in his hand, but his eyes were fixated on the green screen in front of him. M102 starting wiping the printer with his handkerchief immediately, but the quickest glance at the screen also drew his full attention towards it. Both stared at the screen for a full 2 minutes. There was absolute, unmitigated fear in their gaze.
“This is impossible!”
M102 turned his back and threw himself at the computer room door with all his might. The first Plexiglas door shattered, but the second one wouldn’t budge, as M102 was so horrified that he couldn’t muster enough strength. M103 simply couldn’t move. His legs went soft, and he collapsed onto the floor.
Everything that had been on the screen disappeared entirely, replaced by eight words in enormous font sitting right at the center of the screen, flickering with green light:
“Where am I? I thought I was dead.”