God had gotten up extra early and gone into the kitchen to warm some milk for himself. Ever since the start of the Era of Support, the milk market had prospered. Qiusheng’s family had bought a milk cow for a bit more than ten thousand yuan, and then, imitating others, mixed the milk with water to sell. The unadulterated milk had also become one of the staples for the family.
After the milk was warm, God took the bowl into the living room to watch TV without turning off the liquefied petroleum gas stove.
When Qiusheng’s wife, Yulian, returned from cleaning the cowshed and the pigsty, she could smell gas all over the house. Covering her nose with a towel, she rushed into the kitchen to turn off the stove, opened the window, and turned on the fan.
“You old fool! You’re going to get the whole family killed!” Yulian shouted into the living room. The family had switched to using liquefied petroleum gas for cooking only after they began supporting God. Qiusheng’s father had always been opposed to it, saying that gas was not as good as honeycomb coal briquettes. Now he had even more ammunition for his argument.
As was his wont, God stood with his head lowered contritely, his broom-like white beard hanging past his knees, smiling like a kid who knew he had done something wrong. “I… I took down the pot for heating the milk. Why didn’t it turn off by itself?”
“You think you’re still on your spaceship?” Qiusheng said, coming down the stairs. “Everything here is dumb. We aren’t like you, being waited on hand and foot by smart machines. We have to work hard with dumb tools. That’s how we put rice in our bowls!”
“We also worked hard. Otherwise how did you come to be?” God said carefully.
“Enough with the ‘how did you come to be?’ Enough! I’m sick of hearing it. If you’re so powerful, go and make other obedient children to support you!” Yulian threw her towel on the ground.
“Forget it. Just forget it,” Qiusheng said. He was always the one who made peace. “Let’s eat.”
Bingbing got up. As he came down the stairs, he yawned. “Ma, Pa, God was coughing all night. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You don’t know how good you have it,” Yulian said. “Your dad and I were in the room next to his. You don’t hear us complaining, do you?”
As though triggered, God began to cough again. He coughed like he was playing his favorite sport with great concentration.
Yulian stared at God for a few seconds before sighing. “I must have the worst luck in eight generations.” Still angry, she left for the kitchen to cook breakfast.
God sat silently through breakfast with the rest of the family. He ate one bowl of porridge with pickled vegetables and half a mantou bun. During the entire time he had to endure Yulian’s disdainful looks—maybe she was still mad about the liquefied petroleum gas, or maybe she thought he ate too much.
After breakfast, as usual, God got up quickly to clean the table and wash the dishes in the kitchen. Standing just outside the kitchen, Yulian shouted, “Don’t use detergent if there’s no grease on the bowl! Everything costs money. The pittance they pay for your support? Ha!”
God grunted nonstop to show that he understood.
Qiusheng and Yulian left for the fields. Bingbing left for school. Only now did Qiusheng’s father get up. Still not fully awake, he came downstairs, ate two bowls of porridge, and filled his pipe with tobacco. At last he remembered God’s existence.
“Hey, old geezer, stop the washing. Come out and play a game with me!” he shouted into the kitchen.
God came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. He nodded ingratiatingly at Qiusheng’s father. Playing Chinese Chess with the old man was a tough chore for God; winning and losing both had unpleasant consequences. If God won, Qiusheng’s father would get mad: You fucking old idiot! You trying to show me up? Shit! You’re God! Beating me is no great accomplishment at all. Why can’t you learn some manners? You’ve lived under this roof long enough! But if God lost, Qiusheng’s father would still get mad: You fucking old idiot! I’m the best chess player for fifty kilometers. Beating you is easier than squishing a bedbug. You think I need you to let me win? You… to put it politely, you are insulting me!
In any case, the final result was the same: the old man flipped the board, and the pieces flew everywhere. Qiusheng’s father was infamous for his bad temper, and now he’d finally found a punching bag in God.
But the old man didn’t hold a grudge. Every time after God picked up the board and put the pieces back quietly, he sat down and played with God again—and the whole process was repeated. After a few cycles of this, both of them were tired, and it was almost noon.
God then got up to wash the vegetables. Yulian didn’t allow him to cook because she said God was a terrible cook. But he still had to wash the vegetables. Later, when Qiusheng and Yulian returned from the fields, if the vegetables hadn’t been washed, she would be on him again with another round of bitter, sarcastic scolding.
While God washed the vegetables, Qiusheng’s father left to visit the neighbors. This was the most peaceful part of God’s day. The noon sun filled every crack in the brick-lined yard and illuminated the deep crevasses in his memory. During such periods God often forgot his work and stood quietly, lost in thought. Only when the noise of the villagers returning from the fields filled the air would he be startled awake and hurry to finish his washing.
He sighed. How could life have turned out like this?
This wasn’t only God’s sigh. It was also the sigh of Qiusheng, Yulian, and Qiusheng’s father. It was the sigh of more than five billion people and two billion Gods on Earth.
It all began with an autumn evening three years ago.
“Come quickly! There are toys in the sky!” Bingbing shouted in the yard. Qiusheng and Yulian raced out of the house, looked up, and saw that the sky really was filled with toys, or at least objects whose shapes could only belong to toys.
The objects spread out evenly across the dome of the sky. In the dusk, each reflected the light of the setting sun—already below the horizon—and each shone as bright as the full moon. The light turned Earth’s surface as bright as it is at noon. But the light came from every direction and left no shadow, as though the whole world was illuminated by a giant surgical lamp.
At first, everyone thought the objects were within our atmosphere because they were so clear. But eventually, humans learned that these objects were just enormous. They were hovering about thirty thousand kilometers away in geostationary orbits.
There were a total of 21,530 spaceships. Spread out evenly across the sky, they formed a thin shell around Earth. This was the result of a complex set of maneuvers that brought all the ships to their final locations simultaneously. In this manner, the alien ships avoided causing life-threatening tides in the oceans due to their imbalanced mass. The gesture assured humans somewhat, as it was at least some evidence that the aliens did not bear ill will toward Earth.
During the next few days, all attempts at communicating with the aliens failed. The aliens maintained absolute silence in the face of repeated queries. At the same time, Earth became a nightless planet. Tens of thousands of spaceships reflected so much sunlight onto the night side of Earth that it was as bright as day, while on the day side, the ships cast giant shadows onto the ground. The horrible sight pushed the psychological endurance of the human race to the limit, so that most ignored yet another strange occurrence on the surface of the planet and did not connect it with the fleet of spaceships in the sky.