“Think of yourself as a computer. You’re just cold hardware, and reality is just data. Accept your input and perform your calculations. That’s how you keep it up.”
“Is that the strategy you’ve used since the supernova?”
“I did that before the supernova. It’s not a strategy. It’s my nature.”
“But I don’t have that nature.”
“Getting out is easy. Just run out in any direction without taking anything with you. Keep going and you’ll get lost pretty quick, and before long you’ll freeze or starve to death in the Antarctic wilderness.”
“Not a bad idea. I just don’t want to be a deserter, is all.”
“Then be a computer.”
Huahua propped himself up and looked at Specs. “Do you really think that everything can be accomplished purely through cold deduction and calculation?”
“Yes. Hiding behind what you imagine to be intuition is actually a complicated set of calculations and deductions. So complicated as to be imperceptible. We need only two things right now: calm, and more calm.”
Huahua got up and patted the snow off his back. “Let’s go back.”
Specs caught him. “Think carefully about what you’re going to say.”
Huahua gave Specs a thin smile under the morning light. “I’ve thought about it. For a computer, our current situation is really nothing more than a simple arithmetic problem.”
The children were silent for a long time at the start of the meeting, still dazed by the nosedive their already grim situation had taken.
The commander of D Group Army broke the silence by pounding on the table and shouting, “Were our adults really that honest? Why didn’t they leave us any?”
The other children echoed similar sentiments:
“That’s right. Why not even a few?”
“They left us empty-handed!”
“If we had just one, the situation would be completely different!”
“Right! Even one would be good.”
“That’s enough,” Lü Gang said. “Stop it with the useless talk.” Then he turned to Huahua. “What are we going to do?”
Huahua stood up and said, “The two group armies in the interior need to evacuate immediately to save their strength in the event of a further nuclear strike by the enemy.”
Lü Gang stood up and began to pace briskly. “You ought to know what that means. If all of our assembled and combat-ready land forces stand down and evacuate, it will take a long time to reassemble them. We’ll lose all combat capacity on Antarctica!”
Specs said, “It’s like reformatting our hard drive.”
Lü Gang nodded. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“But I agree with Huahua. Evacuate immediately,” Specs said firmly.
Bowing his head, Huahua said, “There’s no other way. If the group armies remain in a dense, combat-ready form, the enemy’s next large-scale nuclear strike could wipe out the entire army.”
Lü Gang said, “But if they divide up into a large number of small forces distributed across a wide area, it will be hard to guarantee supplies. They may not survive very long.”
B Group Army commander said, “We’ll take things as they come. Now is not the time for overthinking. The danger grows with every second we stay here. Give the order!”
D Group Army commander said, “Over our heads a sword is dangling by a thin strand of hair. It could drop at any moment.”
Most of the children supported a swift evacuation.
Huahua looked at Specs and Lü Gang, who both nodded. Then he crossed to the front of the conference table and stood there. “Good. Give the evacuation order to the two group armies. There’s no time to plan out the details, so let the forces disperse themselves into battalions. Speed is paramount. Also please be crystal clear about the consequences of this decision, and prepare yourself mentally. The Antarctic mission is going to be very difficult for us from now on.”
The children stood up. An advisor read over the draft of the order, but no one proposed any changes. All they wanted was speed, as much as possible. The advisor took the order to the radio, but all of a sudden a solemn voice broke in, “One moment, please.”
The children turned to look at the speaker, Senior Colonel Hu Bing, the liaison officer for the five special observers. Saluting Huahua, Specs, and Lü Gang, she said, “Sirs, the Special Observer Team will now carry out its final duty!”
The mysterious body organized by the adults before they left consisted of five senior colonels, three from the army and two from the air force. In the event of war, they had the authority to know all confidential information and to listen in on all of the high command’s deliberations. However, the adults had guaranteed that the team would never interfere. That was how it had been throughout the games, where during every military meeting of the high command, those five children had sat silently to one side, listening. They didn’t even take any notes. They just listened. They never spoke, and even after the meetings adjourned they had little interaction with anyone. Gradually the other children in the high command forgot they were there.
Once, when Huahua asked them who was team leader, Hu Bing had answered, “Sir, the five of us have equal power. There is no team leader, but when it is necessary I will serve as liaison.”
That only deepened the mystery of their mission.
Now the five officers gathered in an odd formation, an inward-facing circle, and stood solemnly at attention, as if a flag were being raised in the center. Hu Bing said, “We have a Situation A. Vote.”
Each of the five raised a hand.
Hu Bing turned toward the ammo boxes serving as a conference table and pulled a white envelope from her uniform. Holding it in both hands, she lowered it decorously to the center of the table, and said, “This letter was sent from the last president of our country in the Common Era and is addressed to the country’s current leadership.”
Huahua picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a letter handwritten in fountain pen. He read it aloud:
Children,
When you read this letter, our worst fears have come to pass.
In the last days of the Common Era, we can only make predictions about the future according to our own way of thinking, and on the basis of these predictions, do the work we are able to as well as possible.
But still those fears kept pricking at our hearts. The minds and actions of children are entirely different from adults. The world of children might follow an entirely different track from our predictions. That world might be one unimaginable to us, and we’re powerless to do much for you.
We can only leave you with one thing.
It is the last thing we wanted to leave behind for our children. When we left it, it felt like taking the safety off of a handgun and placing it on the pillow next to a sleeping infant.
We have been as careful as possible, and have appointed a Special Observer Team made up of five of the most dispassionate children, who will vote, based on the situational danger level, whether or not to hand over this legacy to you. If, after ten years, it has not been handed over, it will self-destruct.
We had hoped they would never need to carry out this vote, but now you have opened the envelope.
We write this letter at the final assembly point. We have reached the end of our lives, but our minds are still clear. A child keeping watch at the assembly point delivered this letter to the SOT. We had thought that we had said all we needed to, but in the course of writing this letter, so many things come to mind.