The Poetry Cloud

劉慈欣：詩雲

The Poetry Cloud

By Liu Cixin

Translated by Chi-yin Ip and Cheuk Wong

THEY ARE on a yacht, Yiyi and two others, sailing across the south Pacific Ocean

on a poetry composition cruise. Their destination, the South Pole. If all goes well,

they will arrive in a couple of days’ time and then pierce through the Earth’s crust

to see the Poetry Cloud.

The sky and ocean are crystal clear today, much too clear for poetry

composition. The American continent that’s usually hidden from view can now be

observed plainly floating above in the sky, forming a dark patch on the eastern

hemisphere that envelopes the world like a giant dome. The continent looks not

much different from a patch of wall left exposed when the sheathing has fallen

off …

Oh, by the way, people now live inside the Earth, or to be more exact, people

now live inside a balloon. That’s right, the Earth has been turned a balloon.

It has been hollowed out, leaving behind only a thin crust about a hundred

kilometres thick. The continents and oceans still remain exactly the same,

however, except for the fact that they are now on the inside. The atmosphere is still

there but it has also moved to the inside. So the Earth is now a balloon, a balloon

with continents and oceans stuck to its inner surface. This hollow Earth still

revolves on its axis, but the effect of the spin is very different: It now provides the

Earth’s gravity. The mass of the thin crust is so small that the gravity produced

by it is not even worth mentioning. Gravity is now mainly generated by the

centrifugal force caused by Earth’s rotation. This gravity is, however, not evenly

spread across the world: it is strongest at the equator—roughly equivalent to 1.5

times of the original gravitational force on Earth—and decreases as the latitude

increases, until it becomes zero at the North and South Poles. The latitude that

the yacht now sails on has exactly the standard gravitational force of the original

Earth, but Yiyi still finds it very difficult to regain the feelings of the old world, the

feelings that one would have felt on the now disappeared solid Earth.

A tiny sun hovered at the core of the hollow Earth, bathing the whole world

in brilliant mid-day rays. The sun’s intensity changes constantly in the course

of twenty-four hours, gradually dimming from maximum brightness till it

extinguishes completely, giving the inside of the hollow Earth days and nights. On

some nights, it also casts the cold gleam of the moon, but as the light only shines

from one spot, one cannot see the full moon.

Of the three on board, two are not actually human. One is a ten-metre-tall

dinosaur named Big-tooth, who rocks the yacht left and right with his every

movement, causing much annoyance to the poet standing in the bow of the yacht.

He is an old bony man, with snowy white hair and beard that mingle together in

the breeze. He is wearing a wide ancient-style robe, like those of the Tang dynasty,

with an immortal air about him, much like a character written in a wild cursive

style with the sky and ocean as backdrop.

This is the creator of the new world, the great Li Bai.

A Gift

IT ALL STARTED ten years ago. At the time, the Devourer Empire had just ended

its two-century-long plunder of the Solar System. These prehistoric dinosaurs

directed their gigantic Ring-world, which was 50,000 kilometres in diameter, away

from the sun and glided towards the Cygnus constellation. The Empire carried

away with it 1.2 billion humans, which the dinosaurs planned to raise like poultry.

But just as the Ring-world was about to reach the orbit of Saturn, it suddenly

began to decelerate, actually turning back along its original track and re-entering

the inner Solar System.

A Ring-world week after the Devourer Empire began its return, Ambassador

Big-tooth set off from their world in a spaceship shaped like an ancient boiler,

carrying in his pocket a human named Yiyi.

‘You’re a gift,’ Big-tooth told Yiyi, his eyes peeping through the porthole the

dark space outside, his deep voice vibrating so hard that it turned Yiyi numb from

head to toe.

‘For whom?’ Yiyi raised his head and shouted out loudly from within the pocket.

From the pocket’s opening, he could only see the dinosaur’s lower jaw, which looked

like a giant rock protruding from the side of a cliff.

‘For the gods! The gods have come to the Solar System, and that’s why the

Empire returned.’

‘Are they real gods?’

‘They’ve mastered unimaginable technologies, and exist in the form of pure

energy. They can jump from one end of the Milky Way to the other in a flash. That

makes them gods enough. If we could but master one-hundredth of that super

technology, the Devourer Empire would have a bright future. We are completing a

grand mission, and you must learn to please the gods.’

‘Why me? My meat is of very inferior quality,’ Yiyi asked. He was more than

thirty years old, and compared to the fair and juicy humans carefully raised by

the Empire, his appearance was much more haggard.

‘Gods don’t eat bugs; they just like to collect them. According to the breeders

you are quite special, and it’s said that you have many students?’

‘I’m a poet. I teach classical literature to the humans kept in the breeding

farms.’ Yiyi pronounced the words ‘poet’ and ‘literature’ with some difficulty, as

these were very rarely used words in Devourish.

‘A boring and useless learning indeed! But the breeders have turned a blind eye

to your teaching activities as the contents seem to be mentally helpful to you bugs,

and thus improve the quality of your meat … I’ve noticed that you think yourself

noble and pure, and others to be beneath your notice. Very interesting feelings for

a little fowl from a feed-lot.’

‘Thus the way with all poets.’ Yiyi straightened himself in the pocket, proudly

holding his head high, though he knew that Big-tooth could not see this.

‘Were your ancestors in the Earth Defence War?’

‘No,’ answered Yiyi, shaking his head. ‘My ancestors from back then were also

poets.’

‘A most useless kind of bug, very rare on Earth even then.’

‘He lives in his own inner world, and does not care for the changes happening

around him.’

‘Good-for-nothings … Ah, we’re nearly there.’

Upon hearing this, Yiyi poked his head out from the pocket and peered through

the porthole. There were two white, glowing objects floating in space before them,

one a square plane, the other a sphere. As the spaceship drew level with the plane,

the plane suddenly disappeared for a second the backdrop of the starry sky,

which meant that it had almost no thickness. The perfectly shaped sphere hovered

above the plane, both of them casting off soft white glows, their surfaces so smooth

and even that nothing distinctive could be seen. They were like two elements

drawn out from a graphic database, two simple and abstract concepts within the

mess and confusion of the universe.

‘Where are the gods?’ asked Yiyi.

‘Those two geometric shapes. Gods like to be concise.’

As they drew near, Yiyi saw that the plane was about the size of a football

field. The spaceship landed on the plane, the flames from the engine touched the

plane first, but left no marks whatsoever. It was as if the plane was nothing more

than an illusion. Yet Yiyi felt the gravitational pull and a tremor as the spaceship

came in contact with the plane, which meant that it could not be an illusion. Big?tooth had obviously been here before, as he opened the cabin door and jumped out

without hesitation. Yiyi’s heart churned when he saw Big-tooth simultaneously

open both doors on either end of the airlock cabin. However, he did not hear the

swoosh of air gushing out from within. As Big-tooth stepped outside, Yiyi could

even smell the fresh air as he stood in the pocket and felt the cold breeze brushing

past his face … This was a kind of wondrous technology that neither man nor

dinosaur could comprehend. Its gentleness and effortlessness astounded Yiyi.

This astonishment pierced even deeper the soul than when humans saw the

Devourers for the first time. Yiyi looked up; the sphere was hovering above them

and, behind it, the galaxy glittered and shone.

‘Ambassador, what little offering have you brought me this time?’ inquired

the god. He spoke in Devourish, his voice low, as if echoing from the depths of an

abyss in the infinite distance, and for the first time, Yiyi felt that even this coarse

dinosaur language could sound pleasant to the ear.

Big-tooth dug his claw his pocket and grabbed Yiyi, then put him down

onto the plane. Yiyi felt its elasticity with his foot. Big-tooth began, ‘My venerable

god, we know that you like to collect little creatures from various universes, and I

have brought you this interesting little specimen, a human from the Earth.’

‘I only care for perfect little creatures. Why have you brought me this filthy

little bug?’ asked the god, the glows of the sphere and plane flickered twice, a

probable sign of disgust.

‘You know this species of bug?’ Big-tooth raised his head in astonishment.

‘I’ve heard travellers from this spiral arm mention them, but I do not know

much about them. In these bugs’ relatively short evolutionary history, the

travellers have often visited Earth, and they were all disgusted by the bugs’ dirty

thoughts, low behaviours, and the chaos and filth in the course of their history.

Hence, till the Earth’s destruction, no one had bothered to establish contact

with them … Throw it away at once!’

Big-tooth grabbed Yiyi and turned his huge head around to see where he could

dump him. ‘The rubbish incinerator is behind you,’ the god’s voice interjected. Big?tooth turned and saw a small hole suddenly appear on the plane, with eerie bluish

lights flickering from within …

‘Don’t you say that! Humans have created great civilizations!’ Yiyi shouted in

Devourish at the top of his lungs, his face turning blue.

The white radiance of the sphere and plane again flickered twice and

the god’s voice sounded in a sneer, ‘Civilization? Ambassador, tell this bug the

meaning of civilization.’

Big-tooth raised Yiyi to eye level, and held him so close that Yiyi could even

hear the gurgling sound of his eyeballs turning in their sockets. ‘Bug, the uniform

measurement of how civilized a race is in this universe is the space dimension

that it has entered. Only those that have entered the sixth dimension or above can

be regarded as having met with the basic criteria for joining the circle of civilized

races. The race of our venerable god already possesses the ability to enter the

eleventh dimension. The Devourer Empire is able to, on a small scale limited to

laboratory trials, enter the fourth dimension, which means that we can only be

regarded as a primitive tribe, while your race is nothing more than weed or moss

to the gods.’

‘Throw him away this minute! Such filth!’ the god pressed, already out of

patience.

Big-tooth ended his speech and marched towards the incinerator holding

Yiyi. Yiyi struggled with all his might and several sheets of white paper fell

from his clothes. As the sheets floated in the air, a thin ray of light shot out

from the sphere, hitting one of them, suspending it in mid-air, and scanning it

in a flash.

‘Wait! What’re these?’

Holding Yiyi suspended right above the incinerator, Big-tooth turned towards

the sphere.

‘Those … are my student’s homework!’ Yiyi answered, struggling hard inside

the dinosaur’s claw.

‘Those square symbols are very interesting, and so are the little matrixes they

create,’ the god muttered, sending out rays and swiftly scanning the other sheets

of paper that had already landed on the plane.


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