May 21 2011
General Tao was not an economist.
He had told them that from the start.
He was absorbed in remembering this when outside in the courtyard there was a sudden volley of rifle fire.
Intruiging, no? Read the rest here.
May 17 2011
Here’s a story that gave me the warm fuzzies.
It did not look like a classroom. Thirty women, ranging in age from fifteen to sixty-five, sat cross-legged on the floor in a cramped room the size of a large rug. Flies buzzed mercilessly in the 110-degree heat. The women did not look like students, with many staring at their pencils quizzically from behind full burqas, holding a writing utensil for the first time in their lives. As with most rooms in rural villages, there were no tables or chairs.
I have to admit a little scepticism when it comes to our involvement in Afghanistan. I’m not sure that all the bombs, money and clandestine Navy SEAL operations will be that useful to the average guy on the street. But I can speak from personal experience how great and profound being able to read is, and I’m sure literacy among Pashto / Dari speakers in Afghanistan will be wonderful for the country’s future.
May 14 2011
Deep Sea Fish by Chi hui (迟卉). Chapter 5 of 5. Translated by Max Roberts. Read Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here, Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 here.
The Ana Gorge had also been affected by the rising sea level. Yan Si arrived to find that they had been forced to turn off heating, and relocate life-support equipment to tunnels out of reach of the rising sea. People were crammed into any space they could fit into, which was every tunnel that could support life. Some were too scared to take off their pressure since even though it was perfectly safe. The horrors they had seen during the destruction of Rose city left them deeply shaken.
Yan Si offered to help with the distribution of supplies. He wasn’t as graceful as the Titanese, but a lifetime of Earth’s heavier gravity meant that he was stronger than any of them, and could work two shifts without feeling tired.
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Soon they started running low on supplies but still the solar battering continued. And there was no way to get anything else. There wasn’t much carbon to go around to begin with, only enough for the Chen family and the occasional tourists. With so many people, the cycler couldn’t keep up, and many went hungry.
“We have to get through to the Saturn orbital station,” a young man said. “We need help!”
“We are hundreds of meters underground, so just how do you propose we do that?” An old technician answered.
The young man’s face went red. “We could head up through the tunnels, they lead straight to the top of Mount Wilkins,” another voice said.
Hopeful murmurs swept through the ground. But the technician shook his head.
“Mount Wilkins is Saturn side,” he chuckled bitterly. “The station is in orbit over the other side of Titan. We’d never get a message through with an entire moon in between them. And there’s no hope of repositioning the relay satellites, the controls were all destroyed in Rose City.”
Silence.
“I have an idea,” said a high voice. “All I’d need would be a radiation suit and a jet pack.”
Yan Si couldn’t believe his ears. He turned his eyes to the voice and met the gaze of Ishinali Chen.
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There were climbing together. The tunnel to the summit of Mount Wilkins was almost vertical, so a spiral staircase had been cut into its walls.
But whoever had made them obviously hadn’t had humans in mind. Each ‘step’ was as tall as Yan Si. He grabbed the edge of each one, and straining with all his might, pulled himself up.
“Why don’t you just jump up? You’ll pull a muscle doing that.” Ishi asked as she helped him struggle up another ledge.
“I’m afraid I’ll fall off the side,” Yan Si said, looking down the centre of the twisting staircase at how far they had climbed. The ground looked to him like it was at least 200 metres away.
“Ha ha, you are such a deep sea fish.” She laughed loudly at him, and leapt up onto the next step.
“Excuse me?”
“A deep sea fish. All you Earth people are.”
She smiled again. “Look at gravity like an ocean. Deep space has no gravity, so it’s sea level. Earth’s gravity is so strong, so it’s like the seafloor. So people like you who live on earth are like those bottom feeding fish who always stick to the seafloor. Deep sea fish.”
“So that makes you, what, some kind of shallow water fish, does it?”
She laughed. “Of course.” She jumped up again, landing lightly on another step. “Professor, I’ve been reading about the ruins on Rhea, and the lunar surface. Those lifeforms went into space without developing any kind of technology for it, didn’t they?”
“Yes.” That was one of the main points of his work. He didn’t know why she was bringing it up now though.
“They are the real shallow water fish. They just jump, and reach the stars. And he we are, we’ve been trying to reach the stars for the last million years. To us, space rockets are the high technology, but to them they just means of reproduction.” She shrugged. “I figure, if they can do it, I can too. If we can reach Mount Wilkins, I think I might be able to get into orbit from there.”
Yan Si stopped. He knew that it just might be possible..
“Why didn’t you tell me before we left?”
“My mother was there, she would just cry and try to stop me. I couldn’t let her do that.” She smiled. “All it’s going to take is a little push. The jet pack will be enough. I’ll follow the seeds to Rhea. – Actually, I won’t even have to make it that far, just 100 km towards the dark side, and I’ll be able to contact the orbital station.”
“I’d rather you didn’t go alone.”
“We only have one radiation suit, professor.” She shrugged again. “I know what I’m doing, I’m not a child any more.”
Yan Si didn’t answer. They continued climbing.
=====
The closer they got to the summit, the more cracked and broken the steps became. Yan Si couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that a combination of the corrosive liquid methane that rained down occasionally, the rising temperature, and the fact that the steps were made of nothing more than ice, was causing them to break up. All he knew for sure was that just as they climbed high enough to see daylight poking through the top of the stairwell, the step Ishi was standing on gave way, and she fell over the side.
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“Whoa…” Ishi’s voice, quiet but still terrified, came across the com unit as she disappeared.
“Ishi!” He reached out but she fell past before he could grab her.
The wind rushed through the opening at the top of the tunnel, making her fall faster. Yan Si saw her try to open the wings on her suit, but all this did was drive her into a wall as she fell. Finally he heard the heavy crunch of impact with the ground. Then all was still and dark.
He turned, and ran down the steps as fast as he could, shouting Ishi’s name.
“Professor…” Her thin voice. Yan Si held his breath and tried to run faster.
“Ishi, are you all right?”
“Professor, did you know…” He could hear her struggling to breathe. Internal bleeding? Had she broken her back? A rib? Yan Si tried to hail Ana Gorge over his comm unit, but couldn’t get through. The walls were too thick.
“Professor…” Her voice was getting smaller. “You know, I’m a deep sea fish too… We all are. We can only live at the bottom of the ocean, we need our pressurised domes… We can’t live in the shadows… We can’t survive there… If we stay in there too long, we… We die…”
“No, Ishi! We are in the shallows now, aren’t we? We’re there! We can do it! Ishi!”
“The stars are so beautiful, I would have loved to go there, to catch up to them, and tell them that we too can… Can…”
Her voice faded away and finally disappeared.
By the time Yan Si made it all the way down, Ishi had already stopped breathing. Her eyes were open, still staring at the tiny patch of sky visible at the top of the tunnel.
After a moment, Yan Si took the radiation suit and jet pack from her body, and started up the stairs again.
When he reached the top he opened the wings, and flicked on the jet pack. He soared like a bird up through Titan’s atmosphere. The stars winked at him, growing ever brighter. He couldn’t help but think of Ishi’s eyes.
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Titan calling orbital station.
Titan calling orbital station.
Mayday, mayday, requesting urgent assistance for the survivors of Ana Gorge and Rose city. Repeat, this is an urgent request for assistance for the survivors of Ana Gorge and Rose city…
In 2090, astronomers agreed on the site for the first human colony outside the solar system. This was mostly thanks to Yan Si, and his work on decoding the Titanese language. The writing on the ancient monuments turned out to be maps and details of surveys of extra solar planets, and the astronomers had based their decisions on them. The program had been funded by the Chen family. And when the council gave Yan Si the privilege of naming the first exploratory probe, he decided to call it the “Deep Sea Fish”.
The name was inscribed not only on the chassis of the probe, but in Yan Si’s most well known work on interstellar archaeology.
Unfortunately, we are deep sea fish, tied down by gravity. We have our gravity quotas to try to escape it, to try to swim up painfully toward shallower water, but it costs us in resources and lives. Those life forms that went before us, leading the way for us humans, we envy them, seek them, research then…
But, as a girl said once, we should try to catch up with them.
She was a deep sea fish that wouldn’t stay on the ocean floor.
Read the original Chinese in the July 2010 edition of New Realms of Science Fiction. That was the end of Deep Sea Fish, the author and I hope you enjoyed it.
May 13 2011
Deep Sea Fish by Chi hui (迟卉). Chapter 4 of 5. Translated by Max Roberts. Read Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here, Chapter 3 here.
A year and three standard months later, Yan Si returned to Titan to finish his paper. The ventilation tunnels, and the Zhigang ruins were still there, but the magnificent forest of crystal had been turned into a landing pad. Ishi wasn’t to be found anywhere in the university.
Someone from the Chen family told him these days she spent most of her time up on the orbital station, researching those strange crystal “seeds” that orbited Titan and Rhea. She hadn’t been back in a long time.
Yan Si sighed and stuffed the piece of paper with her contact number into his pocket.
He said his thanks, goodbyes, and left the Chen tunnel.
Nowadays it was known as Rose City. 76,000 Titanese lived in its protective bubble throughout the year without any worries about pressure suits, storm season, freezing cold, air pressure, or having to dig airtight tunnels every 15 meters. They dressed however they liked, and strode freely about their domed city. Everyone smiled, confident and proud.
But the longer he stayed, the more clearly he remembered Ishi, her grave face and dark eyes.
One day he found he couldn’t take it any longer. He decided to have a look at a site in the South Gilded Sea. It was similar to the Zhigang ruins, but the subtle differences might prove a theory he had: that the ancient Titanese were as diverse as modern humans. He stopped absentmindedly organising his materials, and put in a requisition for a cutter and some diving equipment.
He set out across the sea. Saturn sparkled in the mist, lighting up Rose City’s enormous dome.The only sounds were the waves on the hull and the static over the com unit.
He took a slightly westerly bearing, heading for the observation station on New Chongming Island. He got quite a surprise when he arrived: the island had almost completely disappeared. The sea level had risen so far that all that was left was a tiny patch of icy land about 20 meters across, with the station perched on top like an abandoned fossil.
Yan Si landed on the flattest part of the island. He waded through the shallows, climbed up some steps, and reached the station. He gathered the equipment he needed and flipped open the logbook to make a note of it. Curious to see who else had been there, he turned back over the earlier pages.
The first half recorded the work done at the station, which Yan Si could see covered sites all over the South Gilded Sea. But in only six months, human activity had caused sea levels to rise so much that everyone had left. They left a few supplies in case they needed to come back, but this was just wishful thinking. The truth was that the workers on New Chongming Island had abandoned it and would probably never return.
Yan Si sighed and put down the logbook. He had been here with Ishi only a year ago, when the place was a hive of activity. Now there was only the lap of waves to keep him company.
It was a bad omen for the whole trip. The rising ocean levels meant that the ocean floor was further away from sea level so most of the lines he had brought weren’t long enough. He wasted hours before he was finally able to get to the ocean floor, and get to work. And when he finally finished his rubbings and brought them back to the surface, a sudden shower destroyed them all…
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After five days of exhausting work Yan Si raised anchor and headed back to the station. He was looking forward to some well earned rest in one of the station’s cosy underground quarters. But when he made his way to its co ordinates, it wasn’t there. Puzzled, he had a look at his map.
The sonar bleeped. With a start, Yan Si noticed a steel pole poking out of the water. The flagpole. The station’s flagpole. In a few days the sea had risen 10 meters, engulfing New Chongming Island completely.
He couldn’t believe it. It took him the longest time before it finally occurred to him to try and hail someone. He got through to Rose City on the intranet immediately. They said they knew about the rising sea level, and had a suspicion that it was caused by the terraforming. They had their hands full, but suggested he head to Nandao Island, and meet up with the family stationed there.
He heaved to, and headed south. It was only pure luck that he caught up with the last of the evacuees.
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Yan Si saw the whole thing over intranet link. He looked on as the sea level rose, and at the almighty explosion when the liquid methane finally reached the heating elements. The dome cracked like an egg. Only a fraction of the people had had time to put on their pressure suits.
Yan Si looked on helplessly as they scrambled like ants from their burrows, before freezing to death, or asphyxiating. They collapsed one after the other, quickly freezing solid and turning pale white.
He couldn’t watch any more and turned to the vast sea. The horizon lilted in the distance with the boat’s rocking.
“Where are we going?” he asked one of the survivors.
“The Ana Gorge,” he replied. “Let’s hope we make it before storm season.”
A chill ran down Yan Si’s spine.
He had read somewhere that most underground living spaces had been closed, abandoned, or both, since work on Rose City had finished. The only people still living in the Ana Gorge with the Chen family. They had done up the tunnels, and were doing quite well running tours of the ruins. And now the Ana Gorge was now the only hope for tens of thousands of people who had nowhere to ride out storm season.
He looked at his watch. The first storm was due in three days.
Read the original Chinese in the July 2010 edition of New Realms of Science Fiction. Check back for Chapter 5.
May 07 2011
Here are a few words that threw me in a spin when I first encountered them in Chinese.
遜尼派 / Sunni Islam- An Islamic sect. Explanation following the next entry…
Shiite Islam / Shia Islam/ Shi’ite Islam /什叶派 – An Islamic sect. Note that “Shiite” is two syllables. The two Islamic sects are mentioned a lot in the coverage of Bahrain. People who believe in the former are called “Sunnis”, the latter “Shiites”, “Shi’ites” or “Shias”. How do you remember which is which? I’ll leave that to you. Just remember that most Muslims are Sunni, with the exception of most of Iran, which is Shiite.
Misrata / 米苏拉塔 A city in Libya, and the scene of heavy fighting.
United Nations Human Rights Council / UNHCR / 联合国人权理事会 The UNHCR has been in the news recently; they had a meeting about Syria.
Damascus / 大马士革 The capital of Syria.
阿萨德 / Assad The surname of the Syrian president.
More coming soon!
May 03 2011
Deep Sea Fish by Chi hui (迟卉). Chapter 3 of 5. Translated by Max Roberts. Read Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here.
Terraforming couldn’t go ahead as planned. By the time storm season had passed media coverage and pressure from the families made sure that instead of Zhigang, work started at Rose Plains. Visitors and settlers alike were delighted. But day by day Ishi’s mood got darker.
Yan Si tried to cheer her up. “You’ve won, Ishi. We’ll get enough time to excavate the ruins. No matter what.” But she just shook her head.
She spoke quietly. “No… It wasn’t just about that, it was about the whole thing… This whole terraforming nonsense…”
“But terraforming is a good thing, isn’t it? No more pressure suits, no more no more helmets, no more storm season, no more freezing cold…” He stopped when he saw how angry Ishi was getting.
Uncomfortable silence. Finally she spoke.
“How would you like to go on a little trip with me, professor?”
=================
They took one of the regular blimps that crossed the ocean. It swam through the reddish orange sky, the cabin a bulging egg sac underneath its belly. Ishi was back to her bubbly self, but Yan Si suspected she was hiding something.
Far away, poking out just above the horizon, Yan Si could make out a faint semicircle: Saturn. They were going to over to the dark side, that part of Titan that was always facing Saturn.
“So where we headed?” he asked.
“Rose Plains.” She answered, smiling. “I’m going to show you something, something special. Something not part of the terraforming project.”
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It was a long journey. After the blimp landed they rented a cutter and set off across the inland sea that stretched across the plains. – The Gilded Sea. It was raining when they arrived. Raining liquid methane.
Rose Plains had become an enormous construction site. A dome of scaffolding pierced the sky, stretching off into the distance, so big it looked like a rainbow. Robots were scampering over it, putting together supports. When it was finished, the interior would be filled with air – proper, Earth air – and the temperature would be a comfortable 22°C year round. The perfect greenhouse. After living inside long enough, the settlers might not even miss their homes on faraway earth.
Ishi tried to ignore it. She jumped ashore and walked along the water’s edge. It was deserted, and she was quite possibly the first person to ever set foot there. The waves were carrying icy debris onto the beach, leaving some, and taking some back out to sea with it. Over time the smaller fragments had accumulated and looked like light grey sand. It squeaked under their feet as they walked. Ishi, native to Titan, walked with such speed and grace that to Yan Si, breathlessly stumbling along behind her, she looked like she might fly away.
They walked around the bay then started heading inland. Then Ishi stopped and pointed. She needn’t have; Yan Si had already seen.
He was looking at a forest. A forest of crystal.
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The top of each structure came up to Yan Si’s waist. They were so delicate; such a structure on Earth would probably crumble in just a moment. But not on Titan. In its low gravity and thick atmosphere they formed into spectacular flowers, shoots, and trees. Row upon row of silver, sky blue, black, and light purple, each refracting the dazzling sky into a different colour.
Yan Si gasped. “Its…”
“Don’t worry,” Ishi said. She seemed to be less tense. Looking at her watch, she said. “We still have 20 minutes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Until Rhea is at its closest point.” She chuckled. ”Saturn’s fifth moon. You’re in for quite a show.”
The minutes ticked over. Yan Si looked for Rhea in the sky, but with the thick atmosphere, Saturn so bright, and the glare coming off the scaffolding, he couldn’t see the tiny moon anywhere. But he knew something big must be happening soon because Ishi’s face brightened after being so dark for so long.
“I think it’s time, professor, I think we should find our seats.”
She climbed up onto one of the larger blocks of ice and gestured for Yan Si to follow. He tried to follow her example, and eventually got up. He lay face down and looked out over the forest.
It was completely quiet as he lay watching. Eventually he noticed the sound of the waves behind him, and after a while it occurred to him that they were getting louder. He turned and saw the sea was getting closer with each surge. The spot they had been standing on moments before was already submerged.
The tide.
Rhea’s gravity was affecting the tide, dragging the sea over the forest of crystals. A hiss came over his comm unit, and it took some time until he was finally able to pinpoint its source: the crystals.
Suddenly with a pop something shot out and streaked across the sky. It sounded to Yan Si like a firecracker, the kind he used to play with as a child. Ishi grabbed his hand and whispered: “Just stay down and watch!”
Eyes wide, mouth open. Amazement.
The cylindrical crystals were shuddering as the waves hit them. Something lodged in their base was being shot out, very strongly too, for they disappeared into the clouds without ever returning. They were firing as soon as the waves touched, like some sort of reverse waterfall.
Yan Si couldn’t tell how long it lasted but finally the waves retreated and all was calm. He tried to get up but his legs were numb so Ishi helped him down from their vantage point.
“What was that?” Yan Si asked.
She shrugged. “Hydrocarbons. Long chains of hydrogen and carbon, maybe with some helium. It’s -178°C here, so everything crystallises. At least that’s what those damn scientists said anyway.”
“It couldn’t be that simple.”
“Of course not.” Ishi turned, her eyes sparkling.
“We’ve done some tests on these things, some of the others and I. In this cold environment the hydrogen/carbon chains fold up into three-dimensional shapes. There’s some kind of information in their structure, and they replicate themselves by taking methane out of the air.
“But that’s not possible here, it’s not cold enough. So they collect here and form structures, from cylinders to spindly growths and seeds. The tide comes in when Rhea gets close enough, and they have special parts which catalyse the ammonia and react to create hydrogen and nitrogen. They make so much that the pressure builds up and forces the seeds inside the cylinders to shoot out. Eventually they enter orbit around Titan.
“Most of the seeds float away but some enter Saturn’s orbit. Rhea has active volcanos spewing out sulphur and if it meets the seeds the two combine; if the temperature is low enough, they form new crystals. They continue in orbit around Saturn and eventually they fall to Titan’s surface again. The methane induces new chemical compounds, namely, everything you see before you right now. And all from a single seed.”
Ishi sighed quietly. “But they said… the scientists from Earth, I mean… they said these things don’t have DNA so they’re not really ‘living’… But professor, if they’re not ‘living’ creatures, then what are we? All for the sake of a little piece of earth here on Titan, this, all this… will….” She gestured to the forest. “It will all disappear.”
Yan Si tried to think of something to say.
“You did your best.”
“Yes, but not enough. It’s like… It’s like trying to block the river using an iceberg. No matter what you do they’ll never listen to you, they’ll always find a way around you… My parent’s generation are from Earth, there are always talking about Earth this, Earth that… But my generation doesn’t care about Earth. We are Titanese. We were born here, grew up here. If I ever went to Earth the gravity would break my bones and the air would suffocate me. We should be reaching out, into space, outwards, not downwards, not to Earth!” She stamped her foot childishly. “I hate Earth!”
Yan Si spoke warmly. “We’re all from Earth.”
“I know.” Ishi looked up, her black eyes little lumps of ice. “But I want to be Titanese.” She nodded at the crystal forest. ”I want to be Titanese like they are Titanese.”
Read the original Chinese in the July 2010 edition of New Realms of Science Fiction. Check back for Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.
Apr 28 2011
Deep Sea Fish by Chi hui (迟卉). Chapter 2 of 5. Translated by Max Roberts. Read Chapter 1 here.
The Titanese marked the passing of days and weeks in the same way as their forebears did on earth. But Saturn’s long years meant that months were of different lengths, and they planned their lives to this unique calendar.
There were no actual ‘storms’ during storm season, at least not any visible to the naked eye. When Titan’s orbit took it outside Saturn’s magnetic field, it took a yearly battering of charged particles from the Sun and the rest of the universe. They brought to Titan’s skies a spectacular but deadly light show: walking in the open for even just a moment was fatal.
So all we can do is hide like rats. In underground shelters instead of sewers, but rats all the same. We’re wasting time! Time we should be spending at the ruins.
Yan Si threw his stylus against his tablet. Every second was torture. He was working on rubbings taken on-site, but he could do that at any time. But now… The damn terraforming project would be pumping untreated hot steam directly into the ocean by the end of storm season!
The computer obviously didn’t share his frustration. All it did was flash a small icon at the bottom of the screen, and inform him in a soft female voice, “You have a visitor. Accept?”
“What? No! Tell them on busy with something important… Oh, forget it, okay. Alright, accept it, whoever it is.”
“Error code 404. Incomplete or incorrect command.”
“Open the door, damn you!” He roared.
It was Ishinari Chen, the Titanese girl. Her grinning face on the monitor lifted his mood.
“Ishi! Hello.”
“Hello professor.” Despite her grin, she seemed on edge.
“Professor, one of the teams has found something in the ventilation tunnels, it looks a bit like another archaeological site… We were wondering if you would want to have a look? I can take you if you’d like.”
Yen frowned. “Ventilation tunnels?”
She nodded. “They run through the mountain. They’ve been here since before the first human settlers, we use them as ventilation for the underground living quarters. Someone found something ancient in one of the oldest ones a couple of days ago, and it looks just like what we found on the ocean floor.”
“Sounds great, I’ll be right there…” He suddenly remembered.
“Will we be alright? Storm season, I mean.”
She laughed. “No, don’t worry professor, there will be hundreds of meters of mountain between the storm and us. You will be able to get started right away.”
“Really? Well, thanks for the good news!” Yen jumped up and started gathering his things.
“I’ll meet you at the family tunnel.”
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There was no government or public institutions on Titan. Each city was made up of families, the smallest of just a few families, the largest up to twenty. Together they were responsible for education, medical care, the welfare of their societies as well as commerce. Each family was a company of sorts, and each family’s business was conducted through it.
Ishi’s family was a largest in the Ana Gorge. They were the original settlers of Titan and their descendants. Members were involved in all areas of society, public and private.
Yan Si approached the entrance to their family tunnel and saw Ishi arguing with a man he didn’t know.
He was impatient, gesturing angrily as he spoke. “Ishinali, we need more from the gravity well. Now we’re happy to trade aluminium for your methane, but you use only 40% as much gravity as us. That’s just too low.”
Ishi wasn’t moved. “It’s always been like that. We’ve done it for years now, we give you 270 kg of hydrogen for each ton. That’s three times what we give the Mars people.”
“But hydrogen is five times the price on Mars, if you go by the carbon standard.” He frowned. “You have raised their quota too!”
“Well, you use less fuel to get here. They only get the slingshot around Saturn, but you get Venus as well.” Impatience flashed across her face. “I think we went over all this at the last meeting.”
He looked disappointed but gave it one last try.
“We give you aluminium, when all the Mars people can give you is iron. And you can’t ignore the extra time and capital we put in just because we get to use an extra slingshot.”
Ishi sighed and nodded. “Look, I’ll bring it up at the next family meeting. We’ll see about a new agreement. Just don’t get your hopes up.”
The man smiled broadly and shook Ishi’s hand, perhaps a little too strongly. He thanked her, excused himself, and continued thanking her loudly as he left. She sighed again and her shoulders drooped.
“Ishi.” Yan Si approached, hoping that she hadn’t noticed him listening earlier. “Good afternoon.”
Her expression changed suddenly, and she smiled as she said, “You’re late, professor.”
“Sorry.” Embarrassed. “We… Um… I mean… Let’s have a look at what you’ve found.”
“Of course, let’s go.” She grinned and set off.
The ventilation tunnels began at the furthest depths of the living areas, and extended deep into the mountain. Ishi said that apart from installing an airlock at the entry, the settlers hadn’t altered them at all. They remained untouched, exactly as they had been when the first humans arrived.
Ishi helped Yan Si with his pressure suit, and together they climbed through the airlock into the first tunnel. As they walked the only sounds were the footsteps and there whistling over the walls. Yen had difficulty keeping up as the tunnels twisted, turned, and branched off. She sprang up the narrow steps easily.
She pointed up through the tunnel. “Sometimes we need to get up there so we had to cut these steps,” she said over the comm unit. Yan Si looked as hard as he could, but couldn’t see anything except darkness.
They climbed for almost an hour. Then Ishi ducked down suddenly, and squeezed into a tunnel barely half her height. Yen hesitated, then followed.
“Mind your knees,” she said. The tunnel gradually widened as they continued, and Ishi stood as soon as she could. Soon there was enough room to walk normally. She came to step, and jumped down. She turned looked up at Yan Si.
“Come on then.”
But he couldn’t hear her. All he could do was stare in wonder and what lay before him.
An enormous cavern, as big as 10 city blocks. It was lit by pinkish light poking in through a crack in its roof. In the middle of this vast space stood an enormous block of ice, carved into a perfect cube. Its corners were worn, but the letters and diagrams carved into it looked as if they had been freshly cut. The cavern walls glistened too, and they also had faint designs.
Ishi led Yan Si towards the icy monument. Scattered around them were some plaques, also carved from ice. They too had been standing frozen for an eternity.
There were two figures standing in front of the enormous cube. From their tall thin figures he could see they were Titanese, and from their quick movements, quite young. Ishi greeted them.
“Have you been able to get through to the solar network yet?”
“Yes. They’ll be here soon.”
“Tell them they can take footage from outside the safety line, and get more people here. And as far as examination goes, the archaeological team from Wangsha have priority.”
Ishi must have had some position of power over them; all the two did was nod and leave.
“Solar network?” Yan Si asked.
“The ambient temperature will rise to 15°C as soon as terraforming begins. Everything you see here will be a puddle of water. What’s written on the walls, everything…” Her voice strained. “We’re not short of water, but we are short of… history, and… belief.
“Professor, we need to let the media know about this, it’s the only way we will stop the damn terraforming project… The families might not want to listen, but they’ll have to when the media gets a hold of it. We can’t let them get away with it, with destroying all that remains of an entire civilisation.”
Yan Si suddenly understood.
“Ishi, you were using us from the very beginning, weren’t you? Getting us to investigate the underwater ruins, it was just a way to delay terraforming until… Until you could find a way to stop it completely, right?”
Her lips tightened in a smile, “Are you saying it wasn’t worth it, professor?”
But he couldn’t answer. He had followed her gaze, and was now looking closely at the designs carved on the cube. The scenes were unmistakable. They had been made by a different life form, on this faraway world so many aeons ago, but the story was plain to see: a story of spherical beings, living, breathing, evolving on Titan, building cities, travelling its oceans… And finally, leaving it, setting out into the wide, unknown universe.
“They’re just like us…” Yen whispered.
“No, no they’re not.” Ishi said quietly.
Yan Si turned to her. The Titanese girl met his gaze with a bitter expression.
Read the original Chinese in the July 2010 edition of New Realms of Science Fiction. Check back for Chapters 3, 4 and 5.
Apr 25 2011
Deep Sea Fish by Chi hui (迟卉). Chapter 1 of 5. Translated by Max Roberts.
By the time we arrived they had already left.
I was six when they found the ruins on the lunar surface. Mum, dad, my brother and I, along with the rest of humanity, crowded in front of our computer screens watching the live stream. The world was bright with excitement. We had found signs of a civilisation, an alien civilisation, another life form!
I still remember. The archaeologist’s hand as he brushed off the thick layer of moon dust, the strange letters that were revealed as it fell away, and then his cold voice as he announced that the ruins had been abandoned for at least twenty thousand years.
Humanity sank into a deep loneliness. My heart thumped like a drum, so hard that I thought it would tear out of my chest and try to catch up with those intelligent beings who abandoned us so long ago.
But we were just too late. All we could do was piece together some of their glory from their scattered footprints.
- Notes dated June 2, 2065, by field archaeologist Yan Si.
They were archaeologists, all nine of them, and they set out from Earth’s Wangsha University on their long journey. They took the space elevator to geostationary orbit, and then a flight to the lunar surface. They got tickets on the monthly shuttle, and after seventeen days of acceleration, ninteen of deceleration and almost a full orbit of Saturn, they arrived in at the space station in high orbit.
Making their way down wasn’t easy. The huge chunks of ice that make up Saturn’s rings flashed past their portholes every now and then, so fast that they were gone before they even had time to be afraid. The cabin listed violently, so much that all the passengers could do was wedge themselves in their seats and pray to various spirits and gods.
A bright reddish orange speck grew closer, standing out against Saturn’s dark face. Closer, ever closer. Bright speck became solid ground, gaseous forms, sky. The shuttle punched through into Titan’s atmosphere, and hot sparks flew and sizzled past the portholes with the friction.
Titan. Saturn’s sixth moon. Everyone sighed with relief as the shuttle finally touched down at Yanzhi. They released their safety belts, stood up, and took from the ground crew what all must wear on Titan: complete pressure suits. Soon everyone was the same, swollen and clumsy in their green and white striped suits, stumbling around in one seventh the gravity of earth, with as much grace and beauty as a king penguin out for an evening waddle. More relaxed and used to their surroundings, they broke off into groups, testing out the communications units in their helmets, idly chatting as they waited for transports to various other destinations on Titan.
But no matter where they are, archaeologists stand out from normal people. The slightly furrowed brow, the pursed lips, the thoughtful expression, the strange tools, the peculiar terms they use that no one within earshot can make heads or tails of…
I think we’re as old as those as those ruins.
Yan Si chuckled and turned to look outside. This was Yanzhi, the biggest combined sea and space port on Titan. Reddish orange light fell on disc shaped cutters anchored offshore; the horizon a little closer than usual; the sky a little closer; all reminded visitors that this world was tiny compared with Earth.
A blimp pushed through the orange clouds, and into Yan Si’s field of view. It reminded him of a dolphin as it pulled in. Some lines dropped from the cockpit, and two ground crew ran out and gathered them up. They tied them down, and the blimp slowly started to descend.
But the pilot obviously couldn’t wait. As Yan Si looked on, a tall figure leapt out of the cockpit, which was still 30 meters up in the air. Before he could even shout out in alarm, the figure spread its arms and a pair of glide wings shot out from its pressure suit. It drifted like a bird through 180°, and eventually touched down with no more commotion than a feather.
In this place, one can fly like an angel.
Yan Si couldn’t help but stare at the pilot. She waved at the ground crew (even with her pressure suit he could tell it was a ‘ she’) , and made her way to the waiting hall. The pressure lock opened and closed with a hiss, and Titan’s atmosphere was replaced with breathable air.
“A fine day, visibility 120 km, temperature 170°C below zero.” Her bright voice buzzed through their com units. Just as he had thought, she was looking for them. She removed her helmet, revealing a young smiling face.
Titanese. A local girl, first generation to be born on Titan.
“Welcome to Titan everyone. Ishinali Chen of the Ana Valley. I’ll be taking care of you during your stay on Titan.” ” She smiled at the visitors. “Call me Ishi.
“So, would you like to have a rest on your first day?” She glanced at the communicator on her arm. “Or perhaps get right to work?”
“We’d like to get to work.” Yan Si did his best not to be distracted by a pretty face. “Group leader. Yan Si. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” She smiled, and turned on the spot without shaking hands. “Let’s head off then, shall we? Tight schedule, as you know.”
Soon they were ploughing through the waves on board the largest of the cutters, a great whale of a vessel and had left Zhigang far behind.
About half an hour later, Yan Si made out a tall peak on the horizon: Mount Wilkins, the tallest point on Titan, the most famous part of the Ana Gorge. They dropped anchor near its southern cliff. The gentle waves lapped against the hull as if to welcome them.
Ishi turned to everyone, looking them over.
“Now, we need to do a final check before we dive: breathing tubes, float tanks and insulation. Liquid methane is only two fifths as heavy as water, so you’ll have no problem sinking.” She smiled. “Coming back up is the hard part, but we’ll do our best to keep you safe.”
We’re not going underwater, we’re going under methane. Yan Si frowned. He looked at the vast Yanzhi ocean, the gentle waves, and the clear ‘water’. It looked just like an ocean on Earth. Only this was an ocean of pure methane, at 178°C below zero.
He still had to remind himself that this place was nothing like Earth.
“After you.” Ishi’s voice startled him. He turned and saw that the tall Titanese was ready and waiting. “We should start the dive sir. Would you like to go first? Or dive together?”
He answered absentmindedly.
“Oh.. together.”
He allowed her to check his breathing tubes, float tanks, propulsion unit, and helmet. She opened a communication channel.
“Let’s go.”
She patted him on the back and they jumped into the deep dark ocean.
They sank like stones.
This wasn’t entirely true. Yan Si felt like he was a feather floating through a fine mist. Titan’s gravity was not quite a fifth of that on Earth, so he felt strangely light. Other figures followed behind him and Ishi, and eventually they all landed on the ocean floor.
Ishi’s voice came through their helmets.
“It’s a bit of a walk from here.”
There was only the slightest resistance as they walked. They didn’t feel tired at all, and in fact Yan Si felt strangely buoyant. He just had to push ever so slightly against the ocean floor, and he would float up, only touching the ground again after what seemed like an eternity.
The other archaeologists were playing around too, bumping about as they tried to keep up with Ishi. She was as graceful as a bird, and would have to stop her fluid strides every now and then to allow everyone else to catch up.
The ground started to slope downward and the light started getting darker. Ishi turned on a lamp and its cold light glowed in the gloom. Then, as if appearing out of nowhere, they saw the ruins.
With the light rippling and willowing with the ocean currents, they looked like something out of a dream. Yan Si approached carefully. They were large structures, and in the cold light he could see they were pale white. They stuck out from the ocean floor here and there to the height of the man, like the bones of a long dead giant.
“We should check our insulation,” he said over the com unit. The voice reflected back in his helmet was shaking.
The ancient ruins were made of ice and organic chemical compounds, but were solid as stone in the minus 200°C of Titan’s ocean. Before disappearing all those millennia ago, the ancient inhabitants had carved messages into them, like cavemen scratching pictures onto rock faces, or ancient craftsmen chiselling hieroglyphics into temple walls.
But to these ancient structures the human body heat was as destructive as molten lava.
Hence the insulation in their suits. It not only protected them from their freezing environment, but also their environment from their destructive warmth. Researcher and researchee were both kept safe from harm.
Yan Si checked their suits, and signalled it was safe to approach. His heart thumped as they examined the strange pictures and symbols in the cold light.
“Come on, let’s get started.”
They got to work. They knew that they needed to be as fast as they could, because once terraforming began in Yanzhi it would be too late. The icy relics would be melted in the boiling ocean like morning dew in the hot afternoon sun.
As Yan Si collected and photographed everything, he looked back at their guide. She was sitting quietly to one side, helping out when she could. Sensing his gaze, she looked up at him. She had a pained expression. There were hundreds of sites like this on the ocean floor, but the developers had only given them a little less than two weeks to examine them all.
Yan Si opened a secure channel to her. “We don’t have enough time, Ishi. This site alone will take at least three days to go through.”
Her voice was warm. “My family has on everything we can, professor. Please, just do your best. Just do whatever you’re able before storm season.”
Read the original Chinese in the July 2010 edition of New Realms of Science Fiction. Check back for Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Apr 19 2011
关于日本的英词汇
环太平洋火山地带 / the Pacific Ring of Fire / ring of fire The areas that border the Pacific (California, Chile, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan etc) have a lot of seismic activity (volcanos, hot springs, earthquakes etc); since they form a circular shape and these things that they produce are hot, they got the name 环太平洋 (…) / the Pacific (…).
9 on the Richter scale / 里氏9级 The Richter scale is used to measure the strength of an earthquake.
Sendai / 仙台市 / 仙台
Miyagi / Miyagi prefecture / 宮城縣 / 宮城县 Japan uses the English word “prefecture” to describe their largest governmental subdivision.
iodized salt / iodised salt / 含碘食盐
cesium / 铯
iodine / 碘 These last two entries refer to two radioactive elements released from the following entry.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant / 福島第一核电站 The “Daiichi” comes from the Japanese name. It literally means “number one” or “first”; I suspect that the first person to translate it mistook it for a proper noun. Also, note that there are two “i” in “Daiichi”, each with the value of a separate syllable. Therefore, “Daiichi” has four syllables (I have heard English reports dropping it down to only two!).
The International Atomic Energy Agency / IAEA (eye-ayeee-aye) / the IAEA (thee-yai-aye-ee-aye) 国际原子能机构 The acronym can come out as a blur when it is spoken very quickly!
reactor / 反应堆
Chernobyl / 切而诺贝尔 The worst nuclear accident in history occurred here in 1986.
spent fuel storage pond / 存储核废料池子 When fuel is used up, it needs to be stored here.
Tokyo Electric Power Company / Tokyo Electric / 东京电力公司
sievert /西弗 / 希沃特 A unit of measurement. Used to measure radiation.
meltdown / 熔毀 / 融化 Nuclear fuel is usually solid; if it gets too hot it starts to melt. Note that the English word is only ever used to refer to a nuclear accident.
zirconium / 锆 Another element. Every elementary metal has a 金字旁 (the left part of the Chinese character). Doesn’t that make sense? One (kinda) exception is gold / 金 which doesn’t need one.
That’s all for today. Let me know if you can think of any improvements or useful words that have been omitted. Next time: something for the monolinguals out there.
Apr 14 2011
Muammar Gaddafi / 穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲 – Also known as just Gaddafi/卡扎菲. By his own admission, has no official state position; referred to as the leader / 领导人. In deference to his military rank, sometimes is called Colonel Gaddafi / 卡扎菲上校. Government military forces are sometimes called Gaddafi forces or Gaddafi’s forces / 卡扎菲部队.
Ben Ghazi / 本加西. This city was captured by rebels / 反叛者 early in the war and is still in rebel hands at time of writing. Often referred to as the rebel stronghold of Ben Ghazi / 反叛者大本营本加西.
no fly zone / 禁飞区. A little ungrammatical in English (wouldn’t “no flying zone” be better?), it looks like the Chinese is a literal translation of it (it’s literally “forbidden flying zone”).
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox / 英国国防大臣福克斯. Australia has a Minister for Defence. America has a Secretary of Defense (note spelling; see below). Britain has a Defence Secretary. Three different English speaking countries, with three different names. The Chinese uses 大臣 for the British position, a designation only used for government positions in countries with monarchs/emperors like ancient China, and modern Britain and Japan.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates / 美国国防部长盖茨. Note that the US word has an ‘s’ in “defense”!
military intervention / 军事干预
ceasefire / cease fire / cease-fire / 停火
Tripoli / 的黎波里 The capital of Libya.
Lockerbie / 洛克比 A town in Scotland. On December 21, 1988 a passenger flight over Lockerbie was brought down by a bomb on board. A Libyan man Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted.
the Jasmine revolution / mo-li-hua-ge-min. This term has been deemed “sensitive” in China, and to use the proper Chinese characters might get this post blocked; this is why I have written it in pinyin. There is some discrepancy in its use: Chinese language media refer to the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East as mo-li-hua-ge-min (in Chinese characters of course), but English language media use the term Jasmine revolution to refer to only those protests in China.
the Arab League / 阿拉伯国家联盟
surface to air missile / 地对空导弹
UN Security Council Resolution 1973 / 联合国安理会1973号决议
to abstain / 弃权 as in to abstain from voting / 投弃权票
the UN Human Rights Council / UNHRC / 联合国人权理事会 Libya’s membership was suspended on March 1.
As always, please let me know if you see any mistakes, or can think of any improvements.
