Zero and Other Fictions (10 page)

And so, in this perfect educational environment, little Xi De received the first-class education of a future outstanding administrator. With the precision provided by a computer, his knowledge and physical ability progressed at an astonishing speed.

Ten years passed in the blink of an eye. During that time, the Supreme Committee announced a number of accomplishments, including the establishment of the People's Database. A supercomputer at the Ministry of Security stored information on every citizen in every region of the new world, and information from train stations, bars, stores, and scenic vacation spots was continuously entered in regional computers. After being organized, classified, and deleted where necessary, the information was finally sent to the Central Ministry of Security. In short, with the establishment of the People's Database, the traditional census became a thing of the past.

Sixteen-year-old Xi De learned of this reform from the news. Two weeks later an “executive group” visited the academy. While there, they marked the back of his hand with the number AH5481. In a procedure much like that used by a plastic surgeon, a square silver tab was implanted flawlessly as if it were a new piece of skin on the back of the hand. Three months later, the committee announced the elimination of the currency system. When making a purchase or traveling, all one had to do was touch the ID Confirmation Scanner with the back of one's hand and it was done without the inconvenience of counting out money or making change.

Naturally, a whole series of reforms followed that abolished the limited trade system and a certain amount of licensed small private enterprise; and measures were taken to centralize the management of all service industries. All of this led to unrest in many regions, which was quickly suppressed by the security police. Around that time, a secret anti-Nanning organization started to become active.

4

Stooped over, Professor Kang Zaoshi swayed as he walked up the flight of steps to the classroom building. Behind him lay a well-manicured lawn embellished with a host of strangely shaped metal sculptures. Halfway up, he halted and heaved a sigh as he felt a stabbing pain in the joints of his feet. This was, of course, quite natural for someone of his age—he was eighty-seven and had been teaching at the academy for forty years. It was hard to imagine someone remaining in the same place for forty years. With this thought, he sighed softly, turned, and proceeded up the flight of steps.

The classroom building was a large brown structure of five stories. The walls of each classroom were covered with metal soundproofing and painted brown as well.

The door opened automatically as the professor entered the classroom. He placed the book under his arm beside the terminal at the master console, looked up, and said,

“Good morning, students.”

“Good morning, Professor,” the five students replied in unison.

Then the professor took his seat and hit a key on the keyboard in front of him. Immediately, a colorful image appeared on the screen behind him.

“Professor!” shouted one of the students. “That is the homework from two days ago.”

“What's the date today?” asked the professor.

“The eighteenth.”

“Ah!” The professor hit the key again, changing the image on the screen. “It's age. My memory isn't what it used to be.”

“In our last class, we discussed the social structure of the late twentieth century,” he began. “In those days you could say it was a time of chaos, great and utter chaos.”

Xi De sat in the second row, his chin in his hand, listening intently. For some reason he was fascinated by his class on the modern history of the world. He had never missed a class and on a number of occasions he had returned to the classroom alone to review and enjoy the day's video-taped lesson.

“During the great chaos, there were thirty-four individual schools of philosophy, including pragmatism, analytical philosophy, existentialism, socialism, and communism; there were sixty-four large international organizations, including the United Nations, the Warsaw Pact, NATO, OPEC, and ASEAN, among others; there were also various forms of government—around fifty in all—including democracy, partial democracy, constitutional monarchy, totalitarianism, communism, and mixed communism and capitalism.”

Xi De listened quietly as a series of disturbing images appeared one after another on the screen: cheering crowds, military parades, war, famine, hospitals, the megalomania on the faces of politicians, impassioned speeches, piles of corpses, atomic bomb blasts, and other frightening, cruel, and absurd scenes. What kind of a world was it? He wondered how it compared with the world today. Without a doubt it was a barbaric and dark age.

“The world in those days had a population of four billion people living under a cloud of destruction, living under a terrible threat.…”

The film continued to roll—one dismembered body followed by many.

“Various forms of drugs provided brief escape from the world. They included opium, morphine, marijuana, and LSD. In addition, there were hundreds of religious organizations that served as an opiate. Let us pause here. This is Guyana, where a nuclear reaction test lab was located. At the time, there was a religious organization called the People's Church. One night, the five hundred fanatical members of the group committed suicide because they actually thought they would go to Heaven.”

That was history; the tragic and insane history of humanity. Xi De replayed the earlier visual feed. He couldn't bear to keep watching. He discovered that everyone else was the same.

The professor remained silent for a while, then shook his head and turned off the screen.

“But that wasn't the problem,” said the professor, his low voice calling everyone's attention back to him.

“The problem was that there was no power, system, or theory that could solve the predicament. At the time, a famous sociologist provided a clear description of the situation in these terms: ‘what we see before us is a comprehensive industrial crisis that transcends the conflict between capitalism and Soviet Communism. It is a crisis that has undermined the foundation of our resources, system of values, perception of time and space, and identity, as well as the economy.' What you see before you is the complete collapse of industrial civilization.”

As he listened to the professor's voice, an ever clearer picture took shape in Xi De's mind. He realized to his astonishment that it was the very image of Max Kristen. Right! It was him, Max Kristen. Huge photos of him were hung in the most conspicuous locations in all public places, offices, and factories. His shining eyes shone with the light of profound wisdom; his face, with its sharp features, conveyed confidence, firmness, and moral courage. Right! There was no doubt about it. It was Max Kristen, the great Max Kristen, a beacon of light in a dark age of fear and hopelessness, as the textbooks described him. He was the one who led all of mankind out of that insane and suffocating nightmare.

The class finally ended on an unbearably uncomfortable note.

“Professor,” asked Xi De, running up to the professor as he was about to leave the classroom, “why were the people of the twentieth century so stupid?”

“Stupid? Oh, they weren't stupid at all.”

“Then why would anyone take themselves to the brink of extinction?”

“That's the inevitable result.”

“But Nanning, but if Nanning had not appeared …”

“Perhaps extinction, perhaps not …”

“But you just said that humanity was on the brink of extinction. It was certainly Max Kristen who rescued the world.”

“‘Brink' does not imply the end. Perhaps the great chaos was the prerequisite for great stability. Max Kristen changed the world.”

“Professor, why do you say ‘changed' and not ‘rescued'?”

The professor made no reply. Xi De watched as he departed, silently shrugging his shoulders. Perhaps, due to his age, his thoughts were not that clear. Xi De could not imagine what sort of a world it would be if not for Max Kristen and Nanning. Perhaps humanity would still be killing, until the last person was dead.

He was seventeen, on the verge of becoming a young man. But his education had made him superior to most people. Graduates of the Central Superior Academy were the cream of the new world. His parents often bragged about him to the neighbors. Wrapped in thought, Xi De walked back to the dorm. It would soon be lunchtime. He scrutinized the number AH5481 on the back of his hand. AH was the prefix of the high-ranking administrators of the district and was highly respected throughout society. All he had to do was stay focused on his studies and he could guarantee that one day he would enter the Administrative Department of Central City. If he performed well, he could enjoy vacation time, savoring the pleasures of traveling the firmament. That was the most cherished desire of his father, who was a farmer, and one Xi De would gladly accomplish for him.

5

Since questioning his professor, Xi De had taken a strong interest in that white-haired old man. So he began paying frequent visits to the professor at his residence in the faculty and staff dorm at dusk.

The dorms consisted of rows of exquisite two-story buildings facing a clear man-made river and the distant view of the peaceful green mountains.

In the book-filled rooms where the old man lived (strangely, he didn't own a television), the two of them developed a father-and-son relationship. While his classmates were tirelessly studying, applying themselves in preparation for making a contribution to the new world, Xi De acquired the habit of whiling away an entire evening in the old professor's house. Xi De always helped the old man make tea; then they would play various interesting forms of ancient chess. Beneath an antique clock, time seemed to go back several decades. Sometimes they would go to the storeroom and the professor would remove from a box several wooden sculptures or various metal ornaments ravaged by time. One statue of the Mile Buddha in particular seemed to hold an interesting religious tale. Sometimes the professor would offer some historical artifacts omitted from the textbooks. But each time Xi De wanted to delve more deeply into an issue, the professor would change the subject, as if discussing such things was forbidden.

“Professor,” said Xi De, unable to restrain himself from asking, “have you always been alone?”

The setting sun shone through the window onto the professor's wrinkled brow.

“Ha, Xi De,” the professor replied, laughing softly. “I'm accustomed to being alone, and now there's you.”

“But Professor, how can one get by, cut off from the rest of the world?”

“First, he must be at the end of his life,” said the professor, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Second, he must teach the dying subject of history in this damnable place.”

“How can it be dying?”

“In the new world, no one is interested in the past, because there is no time to look back. Xi De, history is becoming an archive to be consulted only when there is a need. If something has no practical value, it has no reason to exist.”

“But—”

“Let's not talk about it,” said the professor, cutting Xi De short. “How is your class work these days?”

“The school wants me to specialize in resource analysis.”

“Resource analysis is a course that requires that you only complete the sixteenth level of study.”

“My grades haven't been very good. I can't study any course to the twentieth level or beyond.”

“What level are you at now?”

“The thirteenth,” replied Xi De. “I can graduate in another three years.”

“That's too bad,” said the professor as he picked up his teacup and took a sip. “Just keep at it; being a resource analyst isn't bad.”

“I don't understand it— since last year, I haven't been able to focus.”

“You're different from the other young people.” He paused for several seconds, his burning eyes resting on Xi De. “You have intelligence.”

“Intelligence, what's that?”

“It's something natural that humanity is on the verge of losing, and it would take too long to explain.”

Confused, Xi De stared at the professor. Xi De felt he was in the presence of an enigmatic abyss, difficult to comprehend. In the classroom, all questions were answered with reasonable explanations. Higher education did not allow the students to go to bed with any doubts. The instructors wanted you to use a computer in your deliberations, because it could provide answers to all questions as well as assist you in selecting the most accurate answer. Intuition, premonitions, and impulse were proven in the tenth level of education to be a waste of time, irrational, and unscientific. In a highly advanced organization, a mistake in judgment was the most unforgivable of crimes.

In one simple but effective experiment, they had Xi De swallow a pill in a small room. The pill, it was said, could stimulate a certain part of the brain and, after a brief moment, allow him to experience the illusion of floating. No, it was not an illusion! He really saw himself flying in the sky, the blue sea beneath his feet. Flying into a gust of wind, his cheeks smarted, struck by the high-speed atoms of air. Afterward, when he came to his senses, they let him watch the video made while he was hallucinating. He saw with his own eyes that from start to finish, he'd been in that small room, his arms spread, flapping them the way a bird flaps its wings and making all kinds of comical movements.

“We 'd rather trust our instruments,” concluded the lab instructor.

6

 

With the strict, precise, and intellectual education that he had received, young Xi De possessed the necessary technical and specialized knowledge to become a resource analyst. In other words, he finally became an envied administrator. In June, he passed his exams for graduation while the classmates with whom he had entered the academy continued on to the seventeenth level. They shook hands with him, their voices totally devoid of any feeling.