“Marco Polo never went to China. The long and even more dangerous road ahead scared him off. He wandered around West Asia for a few years, and later told the rumors he heard along the way to his friend in prison, who wrote the famous travelogue.”
His three listeners once again exchanged looks of astonishment.
“It’s even easier to look up specific people and events later on. Let’s do it one more time with modern history.”
The room was large and very dim. A map—a naval map?—had been spread out on the broad wooden table, surrounded by several men in Qing Dynasty military uniforms. The room was too dark to see their faces.
“We’re in the headquarters of the Beiyang Fleet, quite a ways to go before the First Sino-Japanese War. We’re in the middle of a meeting.”
Someone was talking, but the heavy southlands accent and the poor sound quality made the words unintelligible. Bai Bing explained, “They’re saying that for coastal defense purposes, given their limited funds, purchasing heavy-tonnage ironclads from the West is less worthwhile than buying a large number of fast, steam-powered torpedo boats. Each vessel could hold four to six gas torpedoes, forming a large, fast attack force, maneuverable enough to evade Japanese cannon fire and strike at close range. I asked a number of naval experts and military historians about this. They unanimously believe that if this idea had been implemented, the Beiyang Fleet would have won their battles in the First Sino-Japanese War. He’s brilliantly ahead of his time, the first in naval history to discover the weaknesses of the traditional big-cannons-and-big-ships policy with the new innovations in armaments.”
“Who is it?” Chen Xufeng asked. “Deng Shichang?”
Bai Bing shook his head. “Fang Boqian.”
“What, that coward who ran away halfway through the Battle of the Yellow Sea?”
“The very one.”
“Instinct tells me that all this is what history was really like,” the Senior Official mused.
Bai Bing nodded. “That’s right. I didn’t feel so aloof and ethereal after this stage. I started to despair. I had discovered that practically all the history we know is a lie. Of all the noble, vaunted heroes we hear about, at least half were contemptible liars and schemers who used their influence to claim achievements and write the histories, and managed to succeed. Of those who really did give everything for truth and justice, two-thirds choked to death horribly and quietly in the dust of history, forgotten by everyone, and the remaining one-third had their reputations smeared into eternal infamy, just like Song Cheng. Only a tiny percentage were remembered as they were by history, less than the exposed corner of the iceberg.”
Only then did everyone notice Song Cheng, who’d remained silent throughout. They saw him quietly stir, his eyes alight. He looked like a felled warrior rising to stand once more, taking up his weapon astride a fresh warhorse.
SEARCHING THE PRESENT
“Then you came to Universe No. 1207’s present day, am I correct?” asked the Senior Official.
“That’s right, I set the digital mirror to our time.” As he spoke, Bai Bing moved the time slider to the far end. The point of view once again returned to space. The blue Earth below didn’t look particularly different from how it had appeared in ancient times.
“This is our present day shown through the mirror of Universe No. 1207: after decades of continuous exporting of natural resources and energy, our hinterland province still doesn’t have a presentable industry to its name aside from mining and power generation. All we have is pollution, most of the rural areas still below the poverty line, severe unemployment in the cities, deteriorating law and order… naturally, I wanted to see how our leaders and planners did their jobs. What I saw, well, I don’t need to tell you that.”
“What were you after?” asked the Senior Official.
Bai Bing smiled bitterly, shaking his head. “Don’t think I had some lofty goal like him,” he said, pointing at Song Cheng. “I was just an ordinary person, happy to mind my own business and live out my days in peace. What do your antics have to do with me? I wasn’t planning to mess with you, but… I put so much work into this supersimulation software, and naturally I wanted to get some material benefits out of it. So I called a couple of your people, hoping they’d give me a bit of cash for keeping quiet….” He abruptly swelled with indignation.
“Why did you have to overreact? Why did I have to be eliminated? If you’d just given me the money, we’d all be done here!… Anyway, I’ve finished explaining everything.”
The five people sank into a long silence, all of them watching the image of Earth on the screen. This was the digital mirror of the current Earth. They were in there, too.
“Can you really use this computer to observe everything in the world that’s ever happened?” Chen Xufeng said, breaking the silence.
“Yes, every detail of history and the present day is data in the computer, and that data can be freely analyzed. Anything, no matter how secret, can be observed by extracting the corresponding information from the database and processing it. The database holds an atomic-level digital replica of the entire world, and any part of it can be extracted at will.”
“Can you prove it?”
“That’s easy. You leave the room, go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and come back.”
Chen Xufeng looked at the Senior Official and Lu Wenming in turn, then left the room. He returned two minutes later and looked at Bai Bing wordlessly.
Bai Bing moved the mouse so that the point of view rapidly descended from space to hover above the city, which seamlessly filled the screen. He panned around, searching carefully, and quickly found the No. 2 Detention Center at the city outskirts, then the three-story building they were in. The point of view entered the building, gliding along the empty hallway on the second floor. The two plainclothes detectives sitting on the bench outside appeared onscreen, Chenbing lighting a cigarette. At last, the screen displayed the door of the office they were in.
“Right now, the simulation only lags behind reality as it happens by 0.1 seconds. Let’s go back a few minutes.” Bai Bing nudged the time slider left.
Onscreen, the door swung open and Chen Xufeng walked out. The two police on the bench immediately stood; Chen waved them an all’s-well and walked in the opposite direction. The point of view followed closely, as if someone were filming from right behind him with a camera. In the digital mirror, Chen Xufeng entered the restroom, took a handgun from his trouser pocket, pulled the trigger, and returned it to his pocket. Bai Bing paused the simulation here and rotated the view around to different angles as if it were a 3-D cartoon. Chen Xufeng walked out of the restroom, and the point of view followed him back to the office, revealing the four people waiting for him.
The Senior Official watched the screen expressionlessly. Lu Wenming raised his head warily and eyed Chen Xufeng. “That thing really is impressive,” Lu Wenming said with a dark expression.
“Next I’ll demonstrate an even more impressive feature,” said Bai Bing, pausing the simulation. “Since the universe is stored in the digital mirror on the atomic level, we can search up any and every detail in the universe. Next, let’s see what’s in Chief Chen’s coat pocket.”
On the paused screen, Bai Bing clicked and dragged a rectangle over the area of Chen Xufeng’s coat pocket, then opened an interface to process it. With a series of actions, he removed the cloth on the outside of the pocket, revealing a small piece of folded-up paper inside. Bai Bing pressed Ctrl+C to copy the piece of paper, then started up a 3-D model-processing program and pasted in the copied data. A few more actions unfolded the piece of paper. It was a foreign exchange check for 250,000 USD.