Late at night, a young man walked across Tiananmen Square towards the Memorial Hall. He was codenamed M102 in the 22nd century annuls. The square has long since been converted to a lawn, so the young man’s steps were quiet, despite the large backpack he was carrying. The Memorial hall had an overwhelming dignity in the moonlight, its silhouette gigantic yet well defined. The military guard was disbanded 50 years ago; now the building was only guarded by an old man. He was codenamed M103. He was woken up jus as he fell asleep in the guardhouse in front of the memorial hall by M102’s knock on his door. M102 requested that he be allowed into the hall, but M103 quickly refused him. He took out a white porcelain bottle. The bottle shone tantalizingly at M103 under the moonlight.
“Maotai Wine from the 2080s, it cost me a month’s worth of salary.”
“You should have shown that to me in the first place, silly!” the old man broke open the cap, took a small sip, nodded and said, “You may enter now.”
As M102 walked towards the towering memorial hall, he turned to his back, and asked, “hey old guy, aren’t you interested in knowing what I’m doing?”
“Remember this, silly, in this world there are things worth giving up your life for, but not nearly as many to be worth losing sleep for.”
As M103 had made his point, he went back to the guardhouse.
M102 stepped up the wide staircase swiftly. It took him some effort to push open the heavy gates, which to his surprise were unlocked. He walked through the pitch-black corridors, which further intensified the sense of darkness and silence he was experiencing in this grand palace. He regretted deeply that he didn’t let the gatekeeper come with him. In the shadowy darkness he saw a large white statue zoom past him, as he finally walked into brightness. A stream of soft, pale red light shone from above. The body of the great leader from two centuries ago lay in a crystal casket at the center of the circle of light. Underneath the casket were dark red drapes.
M102 could hardly contain his excitement. His heart beat rapidly. He took out of his backpack two pieces of instrument that looked like cameras, and unfolded an ultra thin screen onto the floor. The screen soon glowed with a weak blue light. M102 continued to adjust his instrument settings. So absorbed was he that two hours had elapsed without him noticing.
A shadow appeared behind M102. It was M103, the guard.
“Holy smokes! You scared the crap out of me. Why didn’t you make a noise? Looks like what I’m doing here is worth your precious sleeping time.”
“I take a walk around every day at this hour. He needs a companion, after all.”
At this moment, the two camera-like instruments were pointing directly at the head of the body. The screen was showing the blue circumference of a head, a red crosshair moved slowly across the image.
“Rest assured, I won’t damage the body”
“I’m not worried. Any out-of-spec disturbance on the casket will alert the sensors”
“So that meant you aren’t needed here as the guard?”
“Everyone has to find a way to live through their elderly years. I think a tomb guard is the perfect job for an old man like me.”
“Shut up! You are calling this place a graveyard?”
“Don’t be afraid, kid, a graveyard is one of the least scary places. It helps you see past death itself.”
“So you don’t fear death any more. Here’s my question for you: how long do you think you have to live?”
“32 years and 4 months, I think.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?”
“When I retired, I bought 600 bottles of Fen liquor (Note: a type of distilled alcohol found in Shanxi province). Because it had a higher alcohol than the law permits, it was the last batch. Up until yesterday, I still had 584 bottles. I drink a cup every other day. Each bottle affords 10 cups, which gives me 11760 days. This bottle of Mao Tai gives me an extra 10 days, that’s how I got the number I gave you earlier.”
“You’d probably live longer than that, since your mind is clear and active like this.”
“Thanks. If so I’d try stay alive. I calculate my lifespan, just so I can have a sense of stability and closure. Those senses are luxuries that are so hard to come by for kids like you. You float in the air, both the present and the future are to you like ever-changing clouds in the sky, you see both hope and fear everywhere. You are too confident. Everyone considers themselves the owner of the world. You pay attention to the government’s annual spending bills, the development of the Yarlung Zangbo River, every part per thousand increase in sand content in the Yangtze river terrifies you, yet the signing of the pact for the Moon’s territory makes you shed tears of excitement. You care about the tonnage of atomic bombs that still exist on the Earth, African politics after the dissolution of South Africa, so on and so forth. You worry too much, and you live a tiring life. During his time, however....” The elder pointed at the body, “During his time, people were a lot more carefree. They didn’t worry much beyond their own daily lives, because they knew the world was run by great minds like him. In the minds of an average person during that period, he is a man with almost divine powers. Their trust towards him had no bounds. Running the country and the world were his job, the average person just needed to mind their own business.”
“History was created by the masses. The masses during that historical period were just passively creating history. As for great men, as the masses created history, history made great men, so in terms of creation, the great man himself is but the grandchild of the people.”
“Your generation looks down upon everything.”
“All right, old guy, enough about history and philosophy. I’ll tell you what I’m doing.”
“Not interested.”
“This instrument shoots out two beams of laser, which converge at a point in the brain, the other instrument measures the interference between the two beams of laser.”
“Just like holographic photography.”
“So you have a basic understanding of the technology already. Yes, this is a type of holographic photography, but the precision is down to the molecular level. Contemporaneously these two devices perform an X-ray diffraction analysis to record every molecular structure in the object. This whole system is called a 3D recorder. It records the object’s complete information down to the position and structure of each molecule. I borrowed this instrument from a friend of mine. What I’m interested in is that my research institute recently developed a software method to simulate molecular interactions between what had been recorded by this instrument. Say I recorded a bottle of milk, if you input the information into the computer, within three days of simulation, you’d see that the milk had gone sour.”
“BORING.”
“Yes, the milk is boring, but what about a human brain? If we upload the 3D information of a human brain into the simulation program, what would happen? If you are still uninterested, you’d be a bonehead.”
“What happens?”
“I don't know yet. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why not scan and simulate your own brain?”
“That’d be great, but in a living organism molecules are changing all the time. It’s even more active in a live brain. Not too long ago, objects needed to be set under liquid helium temperatures to suppress molecular vibration, such that this technology may be applied. Now we can record objects at room temperature, but for systems at higher temperatures, or systems undergoing active chemical reactions, it’s still not possible to do 3D recording.
“You could have visited a morgue.”
“We’ve already done that. We have five brains recorded through that method, this one is the sixth.”
“How long does it take for you to finish?”
“See? The red areas are what had been finished. At this rate we’d need three more hours, but during this time the casket can’t vibrate greater than 2.5 microns at a frequency greater than 20 hertz. Otherwise it’d break the molecular network that had been collected, and I would need to restart the scan. Yesterday a coworker and I were scanning a trilobite fossil from the Cretaceous period, which took us two hours, only to fail in the end. Apparently the vibrations came from an underground nuclear test in Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union. Hope they won’t be doing that in the next three hours. Long live world peace!”
It was 30 minutes past midnight. A crescent moon cast its soft, silvery glow on a Tiananmen Square shrouded in complete silence. A firefly flashed its way across the vast lawn. An advertising blimp with its lights off floated in the air motionless, like an olive floating in the moonlit sky. Close to the Square, architectures of the bygone era slumbered. Further outwards sat clusters of modern skyscrapers built during the early 2100s. As people wished to protect Beijing of its ancient architectural roots, those buildings were designed in the modernist style, clad with leaded glass that diffused light to be in harmony with the surroundings. The buildings reflected the moonlight, like enormous columns of crystal standing in the dark, casting a dreamy shade upon this ancient city.
This was the twilight of June 10th, 2185.
At this moment, the Earth was still a star in the sky.
At this moment, Beijing was still a city on the Earth.