Death's End

Cheng Xin was surprised to find a vendor who sold antique books. She flipped through a few—these books were not ancient for her. All the books drifted in a cloud, and many had their pages spread open like a flock of white-winged birds in the light…. Cheng Xin saw a small wooden box drift in front of her, marked as cigars. She caught it, and immediately a young boy kicked his way over and swore up and down that these were authentic ancient Havana cigars that had been preserved for close to two hundred years. Since they had dried out a bit, he was willing to let them go at a low price that she would not be able to find anywhere else in the Solar System. He even opened the box to let Cheng Xin see what she was getting. She agreed and bought them.

Cao Bin took Cheng Xin to the edge of the city—the inside face of the spherical hull. There were no buildings attached to the hull, and there was no soil—everything was left as bare as the day the city was constructed. It was impossible to tell the curvature in a small area, and they seemed to be standing on a large, flat plaza. Above them, the dense buildings of the city floated, and flickering lights projected onto the “plaza.” Cheng Xin saw that the hull was marked with all kinds of graffiti, stretching as far as she could see. These pictures were vibrant, wild, unrestrained, wanton and full of energy. In the shifting, uncertain light, they seemed to come alive, as though they were dreams deposited from the city above.

Cao Bin didn’t bring Cheng Xin deeper into the city. According to him, the center of the city was chaotic and rather violent. Gangs fought each other, and a few years ago, one of the gang fights had managed to rupture the hull, causing a massive decompression incident. Later, the gangs seemed to come to some kind of unspoken agreement, and settled their disputes in the center of the city, away from the hull.

Cao Bin also told Cheng Xin that the Federation Government had devoted enormous resources to build a social welfare system here in Pacific I. The six million or so inhabitants here were mostly unemployed, but at least they could get the basic necessities for life.

“What will happen here in the event of a dark forest strike?”

“Only annihilation. This city has no thrusters, and even if it did have them, it would be impossible to move it into the shadow of Jupiter and keep it there. Look—” He pointed to the drifting buildings. “If the city accelerated, everything would smash through the hull. Then the city would be like a bag with a hole in the bottom. If we receive a dark forest strike alert, the only thing that can be done is to evacuate the population to the other cities.”

As they left the floating city in eternal night, Cheng Xin gazed at it through the porthole of the dinghy. This was a city of poverty and homelessness, but it also possessed its own rich life, like a weightless version of the famous Song Dynasty painting, Along the River During the Qingming Festival.

She understood that compared to the last era, the Bunker World was not at all an ideal society. The migration to the rim of the Solar System had caused some toxic social conditions, long eliminated by progress, to reemerge. This wasn’t exactly regression, but a kind of spiraling ascent, a necessary condition for the exploration and settlement of new frontiers.

—————

After they left Pacific I, Cao Bin brought Cheng Xin to see a few more space cities with unusual designs. One of them, fairly close to Pacific I, was a wheel with spokes, not unlike a larger version of the space elevator terminal station that Cheng Xin had visited more than sixty years ago.

Cheng Xin was a bit puzzled by the designs of the cities. As a matter of engineering, the wheel seemed ideal. It was far easier to construct than the large, hollow shells used by the other cities, and when completed, a wheel was stronger and better able to survive disasters, as well as being easier to expand.

Cao Bin’s succinct reply to Cheng Xin’s query was “world-sense.”

“What?”

“The sensation of being inside a world. A space city has to have ample interior volume and wide-open views so that the residents can feel they are living inside a world. Although the usable interior surface area isn’t too different from a hollow-shell design, in a wheel design, people always know that they are living inside a narrow tube or a series of such tubes.”