Aye I Longwhite: An American-Chinese teenager’s adventure in the Middle Kingdom and beyond (9 page)

Chang Lin turned her attention back to me.  “So why are you here then?”

“Uh, I know this sounds weird, but um, I’m worried about your safety because you have the skill too, a lot of ‘luck’ or whatever, according to Willstin.  I guess he has access to our test results.”  Willstin nodded.  I rushed out the last sentence, “Anyway, you have to come to the US with me until we figure this out.” 

Chang Lin stared at me.  I winced in anticipation of a rejection.

“Ok, let me go get my passport.  I’ve always wanted to go to the America.”  She did a “
humff” to let me know that she had put in the ‘the’ in front of America on purpose.  She spun on her heels and ran back upstairs.

“Well, that turned out better than I had expected,” I said.

“That turned out worse than I had expected,” Willstin said.

“Why? She didn’t even argue.  She trusted me!”

“I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect her to agree to come.  Even with her high Cho-Qing score and her profile towards spontaneity, there was only a 12% chance of her coming.”

“Wait, you expected her to say no?  And you still came?  What, just to make me happy?”

“Your compliance with this plan is critical.  You said you wouldn’t go to the US unless we had asked Chang Lin.”

I couldn’t decide if I was being protected or being used.

“Her coming certainly increases our risks.”

“I will say she’s my partner for the Robot competition.  We got her a travel authorization as well.”  I made Willstin print and stamp a second one with her name on it before we left
the lab.  “If you, and Yoda, can make me invisible on the net, then you can do it for her too.”

“Yes we can, but it increases the chances of discovery.  And our chances are quite
high already.”

It was time for me to calm Willstin down.  “Do
you
need a tranquilizer shot?”  Willstin was about to tell me that it wouldn’t work on him.  I spoke over him.  “Chang Lin has just increased our chances of success, ok?  She’s super smart, smarter than me, can get us out of a jam with her Chinese, ‘cuz I certainly can’t explain anything if we get stopped.”  And I need a human around me to keep me sane, I thought but didn’t say out loud.  I wasn’t sure if I would hurt Willstin’s feelings, so I decided to treat him like a human.

Chang Lin returned, jumping down the last 2 steps and landing in a crouched fighting pose, like a Japanese anime action hero. 
“Ok, let’s do this!” 

Over the tranquilizer my heart jumped.

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Willstin steered us around.  It was easier just to follow him than to listen to his voice instructions.  Even though he looked like a toddler, he moved like a track star.  We could barely keep up.

We got to the taxi stand, and we all piled into the waiting cab.  It took off before the door even closed.  I guess Willstin had sent it our destination in advance because he didn’t say anything when he had gotten in.

Technically the cab was a robot too, but I hadn’t thought about it that way before.  It was just an automated car.  They used to call it “driverless car,” but that’s a silly name.  Who would want to drive a car?  And even if you wanted to, it wouldn’t have been possible without illegal augmentation since the speeds and reaction times required to drive on the roads are way beyond normal human capabilities.

We finally had 30 minutes of downtime. It would take that long to get out to the Sub-Orbital airport.  They had to put the SO airport way out of downtown because the SO rockets were so loud, even the sound dampening systems couldn’t completely cover the blast offs.  The rattling, like the precursor of an earthquake, was unnerving as well. 

Though nobody said it, I guess it was
also a precaution against a catastrophic launch failure.  The last time there was an explosion on the runway was when I was a young boy.  Well, the last time I heard of one anyway.  The Ministry of Transportation (MoT) was massively embarrassed with that failure, with the Minister losing his job due to not having a head anymore.  I’m sure the MoT worked closely with the Ministry of Communication (MoC) on “public relations” to ensure future mishaps didn’t leak out.  Ministers didn’t like “losing face,” literally.

Exhaustion was catching up with me, so I just zoned out the window, trusting Willstin had everything under control.
It was astounding how we went kilometer after kilometer over the unending city sprawled out below the raised highway.

Chang Lin had fallen asleep, her head resting lightly on my shoulder.  I was careful not to move.

We merged smoothly onto the maglev (magnetic levitation) train, which would ferry our taxi the majority of the way to the SO airport.  Once we were in the maglev, the noise in the cabin dropped away and the ride became noticeably smoother.  Our taxi idled to a stop on the rollers in the train cabin.  Even though I had taken the maglev in from the SO airport when I had arrived in China, I was still amazed by it.

Ostensibly the system saved money because the maglev’s energy and maintenance costs were much
lower than that of other forms of mass transportation.  However, I knew the cost of building a car ferry maglev was exorbitant.   Supposedly this one ran in a huge loop from Shanghai all the way up to Beijing.  It ran continuously. Whenever a particular train broke down, it was smoothly shunted off the parallel emergency track.  Only China could afford such a system.  It really wasn’t a matter of saving energy, even though that’s what MoC proclaimed.  It was clearly China telling the world, “I have the money and the technology and the power to do this.  And you don’t.”

After the energy crisis of 2042, most of the countries entered the spiral of decline. 
These countries soon learned that they could bottom out at a barely functioning level, only if they accepted China’s handouts at the cost of joining China’s hegemony.  Those few countries that refused, hoping for support from the US, decayed into chaos.  Their neighboring countries closed up the borders, striving to contain the spreading anarchy, like quarantining an entire country.

The richer Western countries lasted a decade longer, their decline on a gentler slope.  They had stockpiles of fuel,
possessed the technology and money to start converting over to alternative forms of energy earlier, and had generations of wealth built up, just to blow it all away in one generation on fuel at exorbitant black market rates.  One by one, these Western countries fell into China’s sway, with only the US holding out, based on some misguided sense of patriotism and good ole USA can-do spirit. 

But the fact was the US had built their entire economy on
oil.  The famous businessman Elon Musk had tried to show the way out with his Tesla car company, but he was only one man swimming against the powerful tide.  The government and big business conspired to keep the oil party running as long as it could.  The oil companies kept funding reports showing the boundless oil fields still available, ever deeper hidden, ever harder to extract, but never running dry.  The American public happily partied on, eager to accept the lies, too drunk on the fumes to recognize the cracks in the system.  Until it was too late.

At least my US and China modern history classes agreed on the analysis for why the US eventually fell, why it was forced to join China’s hegemony just to avoid the final fate of anarchy.  There were still differences in the details of the retelling though. 

As my US history teacher explained it, China had underhandedly negotiated the futures of the then undeveloped African countries for mere pittances, for helping the Africans build out their infrastructure with Chinese labor and Chinese equipment.  It had reminded me of how the US had bought Manhattan from the Native Indians for some trinkets worth 60 guilders, which wasn’t a lot even if you converted it to modern renminbi, or “redbacks” as we called the Chinese currency in the US.  My US history teacher implied that the Chinese tricked the poor Africans trading away their long term future – their priceless oil fields and mineral deposits – for the short term improvement in daily living.  The Americans, on the other hand, were handing out tons of humanitarian aid, some through NGO’s (“Non-Government Organizations” - what a dumb name) and some directly from the US government.  We didn’t hand out our aid with “strings attached,” my teacher said righteously.  Even though we had eventually lost to China, we fought a fair fight.  We were the world’s protectors, trying to stave off the power-hungry and amoral leadership of China.  We, the students, felt proud of our honor, our beneficence, our clearly superior moral fiber. 

Then, I went to China and modern history inverted itself.  My Chinese history teacher explained how brilliant the Chinese government officials had been.  They had strategically partnered with the weaker countries, playing a long game of “Go,” surrounding the Western nations with meaningless moves at the edge of the geopolitical game board.  The Western countries were paralyzed by the demagoguery of democracy, the constant rotation of politicians that dictated government policy be short term, to be completed within an election cycle.
  By the time the Western countries woke up to the energy crisis upon them, it was too late.  Their “friends” in the Middle East had sucked their own fields dry, and China had locked up all the remaining oil reserve in the world with not only long term contracts but with the even more binding ties of government treaties and promises of ongoing friendship.  The poor hapless Americans, once so proud, had to come begging for the protection of China.  The Chinese - never the aggressor, always the defender – could only do what any father would do: take in the poor, starving children, be that as it may they’re being foreign devils.  Us obedient students nodded at the wise philosophy of Confucius and felt the weight of responsibility of upholding the great traditions of Chinese culture.

Wow, was I one confused kid.  The Chinese half of me said, “Yeah, take that, dumb Americans!” 

My US half of me said, “Damn Chinese, so superior, always rubbing their 5000 years of history in everyone’s noses.  They’re just lucky President Walker didn’t press the red nuke button.” 

“As if that would
’ve mattered.  The Chinese had laser satellites up in the sky by that time and could’ve easily shot them down.” 

“See!  My point exactly!  They totally broke the Outer Space Treaty. 
Those lying sons of bitches.” 

“Dude,
don’t give me that crap.  The Americans also had secret laser satellites.  It’s not my fault that the Chinese shot them down first.  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” 

“Don’
t go quoting Sun Tzu on me.  It’s still called fighting when you shot down our satellites.”

“Did anyone get killed
, on either side?  No?  Hmm, that sounds like a pretty successful war to me.”

This internal debate could’ve continued on for a lot longer.  I didn’t know which side was right.  I was literally torn down the middle.  But one thing for sure, the US couldn’t afford a maglev.  Most people had to take the biodiesel busses, which let out smelly fumes,
released very much like a mechanical fart, as if its engines didn’t agree with the plant fuel.  Only the uber rich could even afford a private taxi.  The rest had to walk or ride bikes, which you shouldn’t do very much of outside with the air pollution index spiking over 400 on most days. 

The US couldn’t even afford many of the basic robots that kept the streets clean in China and the houses tidy inside.  The US still used human labor for most of th
ese jobs that the Chinese deemed beneath them to do.  And the US was the second richest country in the world.  I literally couldn’t imagine what it was like in the other countries.  The MoC kept a pretty tight lid on that kind of info.  We only knew things were great in MK, ok in the US and a handful of favored countries like Mexico, and everybody else was barely getting by, thanks to the paternal care of China.

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I must’ve dozed off during my weighty ponderings.

“Wake up. 
Time to get this show on the road.”  I don’t know where Willstin got his language module.  It certainly wasn’t the staid one I had picked, “Standard Anglo-American English, (casual).”  I didn’t want Willstin to be mouthing off to the teachers during the oral exam.

I noticed that we had already exited the maglev, and our taxi was turning into the departure terminal.  Chang Lin stretched and rubbed her eyes.  I didn’t point out the little bit of drool she had left on my shoulder.  I was getting worried about the
5,472 RMB charge on the taxi meter.  I only had 10,000 RMB, stolen from my mom.  But the car door swung open and the taxi said, “Thank you bright light,” the standard phrase to welcome and say farewell to guests in Chinese. 

Willstin said, “You’re welcome, keep the change.”  He had tipped 5,000 RMB.

“Damn, you’re generous!” I said.

“Got to take care of my brothers,” replied Willstin, as he jumped into my black
backpack.

“
Where are you getting the money?”

“Don’t you worry about
it.  Let’s just say money isn’t a problem.  Now let’s get to immigration. I have your tickets already.  First class, of course!”