“We’ll remember,” Qiusheng said and nodded, even though neither he nor his wife nor father nor son really understood God’s words.
“Good,” God sighed, satisfied. “Next I will tell you a secret, a great secret.” He stared at everyone in the family with his blue eyes. His stare was like a cold wind and caused everyone’s heart to shudder. “You have brothers.”
Qiusheng’s family looked at God, utterly confused. But Qiusheng finally figured out what God meant. “You’re saying that you created other Earths?”
God nodded slowly. “Yes, other Earths, other human civilizations. Other than you, there were three others. All are close to you, within two hundred light-years. You are Earth Number Four, the youngest.”
“Have you been to the other Earths?” Bingbing asked.
God nodded again. “Before we came to you, we went first to the other three Earths and asked them to take us in. Earth Number One was the best among the bunch. After they obtained our scientific materials, they simply chased us away.
“Earth Number Two, on the other hand, kept one million of us as hostages and forced us to give them spaceships as ransom. After we gave them one thousand ships, they realized that they could not operate the ships. They then forced the hostages to teach them how, but the hostages didn’t know how, either, since the ships were autonomous. So they killed all the hostages.
“Earth Number Three took three million of us as hostages and demanded that we ram Earth Number One and Earth Number Two with several spaceships each because they were in a prolonged state of war with the other two Earths. Of course, even a single hit from one of our antimatter-powered ships would destroy all life on a planet. We refused, and so they killed all the hostages.”
“Unfilial children!” Qiusheng’s father shouted in anger. “You should punish them!”
God shook his head. “We will never attack civilizations we created. You are the best of the four brothers. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Your three brothers are drawn to invasion. They do not know what love is or what morality is. Their capacity for cruelty and bloodlust are impossible for you to imagine.
“Indeed, in the beginning we created six Earths. The other two were in the same solar systems as Earth Number One and Earth Number Three, respectively. Both were destroyed by their brothers. The fact that the other three Earths haven’t yet destroyed one another is only due to the great distances separating their solar systems. By now, all three know of the existence of Earth Number Four and possess your precise coordinates. Thus, you must go and destroy them first before they destroy you.”
“This is too frightening!” Yulian said.
“For now, it’s not yet too frightening. Your three brothers are indeed more advanced than you, but they still cannot travel faster than one-tenth the speed of light, and cannot cruise more than thirty light-years from home. This is a race of life and death to see which one among you can achieve near-light-speed space travel first. It is the only way to break through the prison of time and space. Whoever can achieve this technology first will survive. Anyone slower will die a sure death. This is the struggle for survival in the universe. Children, you don’t have much time. Work hard!”
“Do the most learned and most powerful people in our world know these things?” Qiusheng’s father asked, trembling.
“Yes. But don’t rely on them. A civilization’s survival depends on the effort of every individual. Even the common people like you have a role to play.”
“You hear that, Bingbing?” Qiusheng said to his son. “You must study hard.”
“When you fly into the universe at close to the speed of light to resolve the threat of your brothers, you must perform another urgent task: find a few planets suitable for life and seed them with some simple, primitive life from here, like bacteria and algae. Let them evolve on their own.”
Qiusheng wanted to ask more questions, but God picked up his cane and began to walk. The family accompanied him toward the bus. The other Gods were already aboard.
“Oh, Qiusheng.” God stopped, remembering. “I took a few of your books with me. I hope you don’t mind.” He opened his bundle to show Qiusheng. “These are your high school textbooks on math, physics, chemistry.”
“No problem. Take them. But why do you want these?”
God tied up the bundle again. “To study. I’ll start with quadratic equations. In the long years ahead, I’ll need some way to occupy myself. Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll try to repair our ships’ antimatter engines and allow us to fly close to the speed of light again!”
“Right,” Qiusheng said, excited. “That way, you’ll be able to skip across time again. You can find another planet, create another civilization to support you in your old age!”
God shook his head. “No, no, no. We’re no longer interested in being supported in our old age. If it’s time for us to die, we die. I want to study because I have a final wish.” He took out the small TV from his pocket. On the screen, his beloved from two thousand years ago was still slowly speaking the final word of that three-word sentence. “I want to see her again.”
“It’s a good wish, but it’s only a fantasy,” Qiusheng’s father said. “Think about it. She left two thousand years ago at the speed of light. Who knows where she is now? Even if you repair your ship, how will you ever catch her? You told us that nothing can go faster than light.”
God pointed at the sky with his cane. “In this universe, as long as you’re patient, you can make any wish come true. Even though the possibility is minuscule, it is not nonexistent. I told you once that the universe was born out of a great explosion. Now gravity has gradually slowed down its expansion. Eventually the expansion will stop and turn into contraction. If our spaceship can really fly again at close to the speed of light, then we will endlessly accelerate and endlessly approach the speed of light. This way, we will skip over endless time until we near the final moments of the universe.
“By then, the universe will have shrunk to a very small size, smaller even than Bingbing’s toy ball, as small as a point. Then everything in the entire universe will come together, and she and I will also be together.”
A tear fell from God’s eye and rolled onto his beard, glistening brightly in the morning sun. “The universe will then be the tomb at the end of The Butterfly Lovers. She and I will be the two butterflies emerging from the tomb…”
A week later, the last spaceship left Earth. God left.
Xicen village resumed its quiet life.
On this evening, Qiusheng’s family sat in the yard, looking at a sky full of stars. It was deep autumn, and insects had stopped making noises in the fields. A light breeze stirred the fallen leaves at their feet. The air was slightly chilly.
“They’re flying so high. The wind must be so severe, so cold—” Yulian murmured to herself.
“There isn’t any wind up there,” Qiusheng said. “They’re in space, where there isn’t even air. But it is really cold. So cold that in the books they call it absolute zero. It’s so dark out there, with no end in sight. It’s a place that you can’t even dream of in your nightmares.”
Yulian began to cry again. But she tried to hide it with words. “Remember those last two things God told us? I understand the part about our three brothers. But then he told us that we had to spread bacteria onto other planets and so on. I still can’t make sense of that.”