One: A Maze of Associations

How do you measure creativity?

The founder of the associative theory of creativity believed that creativity is the ability to connect disparate elements which are distantly related. “The greater the distance of association between the newly connected elements, the more creative the thought that joins them or the solution to the problem.”

With this belief, he invented the Remote Associative Test: given three words, the subject is asked to think of a word that is associated with all three given words.

An example of an English test question: Same, tennis, head? [The answer will be provided at the end of the story.]

An example of a Chinese test question: 疗，防，统 ? (Heal, prevent, unify?)

“This meat smells good, doesn’t it? Human flesh also smells like this when barbecued,” said Ding Xiao Xi, unprompted, in the Korean barbecue restaurant in Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, the fashionable district in Beijing. “Did you know that when we do surgery on people, we use electrosurgical scalpels? It’s so convenient! This kind of electric knife stops the bleeding while cutting through tissue, too. The only downside is it just causes too much smoke. Just think, if I breathed in any of the patients’ particles, a part of them would live on in my body forever!”

Zhan Xin Yan, who was sitting across from her, lost her appetite all of a sudden, and the aroma of roasted meat began to make her gag, although she had known for a long time that anything Ding Xiao Xi said could never be judged with common sense as the yardstick.

In junior high school, Xiao Xi’s ideas had often stood out like a sore thumb. She’d often scored only one or two points on reading comprehension questions, and was often ostracized by her classmates for it, earning her the nickname “Crazy Xiao Xi.” Xin Yan was still amazed and confused that she had survived the trials of being a medical student and become a real, fully-qualified doctor.

But this time, Xiao Xi realized she had made a faux pas.

She smiled apologetically. “I’m so sorry, Xin Yan, I got sidetracked. I just got too comfortable with you … and had a slip of the tongue again! I haven’t seen you for so many years and suddenly asked you to get dinner together. Actually….”

“Is it because you’re thinking about leaving through the stargate?” Xin Yan really should have guessed from the moment Xiao Xi had asked her to dinner.

Ever since she’d joined the Starlink Bureau, Xin Yan had constantly been asked out to dinner. This wasn’t the first unexpected dinner party she had attended. People had all sorts of reasons for wanting to pass through those tens of thousands of stargates to become the first interstellar human colonists, leaving their lives behind. She just hadn’t expected Xiao Xi, of all people, to want to do that.

Ding Xiao Xi lifted her eyes and nodded firmly.

“The channel is open to all,” Zhan Xin Yan began to dully recite the practiced PR speech, “Just fill out the application form online—”

“I did it a long time ago! I was held back by the Starlink Bureau’s exit physical,” Xiao Xi spoke eagerly. “I’ve been working at the hospital for so many years, and I’ve always met the criteria for the employee physicals. But I kept getting rejected despite the fact that I worked out at the gym for months in advance for the physical. Look!” She rolled up her sweater sleeves to her shoulders and thumped her elbows on the table, straining her biceps for Xin Yan to see.

Xin Yan reached out to steady the teacup that almost toppled over and gestured for her to hurry up and cover herself back up appropriately.

“I’m sorry, I can’t reveal the physical examination criteria.”

“Xin Yan…”

“What’s so great about the stargate?” Xin Yan lowered her voice. “Tian Chi stargates only go one way; the only thing that returns is the bytes of information the Pathfinders send back. You can’t come back if you leave through them. Out there, it’s not as comfortable as Earth. People are just barely able to survive. Over here, we can still eat piping hot meat, but out there, starvation and freezing to death are commonplace. You don’t want to be fooled by those propaganda films. But what’s even more important is…”

Xin Yan stopped and looked around cautiously. She got up, sat on Ding Xiao Xi’s side of the table, and whispered in her ear. “This is inside information, okay: the initial team of Pathfinders who passed through the first stargate a year ago have recently experienced a sharp rate of increase in lost connections. The Starlink Bureau has analyzed the last messages they transmitted back, and it is said that they all broke contact of their own accord. Since then, the Starlink Bureau’s medical tests for selecting Pathfinders have become increasingly stringent, so you won’t be able to just muddle through.”

Ding Xiao Xi stared at the charred and smoldering roast meat and was speechless for a moment. Xin Yan gently patted her on her back.

Without them noticing, snow had begun to fall outside the window, but there was no trace of it on the ground. The stars were connected through the stargates, but the brave pioneers who passed through them were like this thin falling snow, disappearing without a trace.

“Xin Yan,” Xiao Xi licked her lips, “I still want to go. I want to get out of here, the farther away the better.”

Two: Joining Up the Bright Jewels

Even when subjected to the same external stimulus, different subjects’ neurons will form a thousand different patterns of association, just as the same stone will stir up a different pattern of ripples each time it is thrown into a lake. If subjected to the same frequency of light within the band of the spectrum visible to humans, some people will think of a red lily, which makes them feel good, while others will cry in despair, losing their ability to speak, because they are reminded of a bright red teardrop in the corner of their lover’s eye as they turn toward the sunset.

Late at night in Beijing, the snow fell even more heavily. The brand-new Starlink Bureau building in Sanlitun pointed to the stars like a sword. Its many floors were lit up at all times, forming a new landmark in Beijing that never went dark. It was constantly sending selected humans into the deep space of the universe beyond the reach of their eyes.

The Stargate Database Inspection Department was not working overtime, so when Xin Yan brought Ding Xiao Xi in, there was no one there.

“Let me do a search,” said Xin Yan. “Peking University Hospital Zero … General Surgery … ah, there you are!” At the bottom of the medical examination form, densely packed with notes in a cramped hand, was a bright red “A-”, scratched under the column labeled “Neuronal aggregation pattern.” This was followed by the “failed” seal.

“Doesn’t A- mean I barely passed?” Ding Xiao Xi asked.

“The neuronal aggregation pattern is a spectrum. If you’re graded B, that is, normal, then you qualify. If you are graded A or C, that is, at either extreme, then you are disqualified.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“To be selected to leave Earth is a big deal. When it comes to selection criteria, we always weigh our preferences for candidates that veer towards the normal. Even though it is possible to measure indicators such as resistance to stress, general character, learning ability, physical fitness, and so on, through tests, when it comes to a true measure of your heart or guts, there is no way to know how responsible or moral you would be in extreme situations. To prevent further accidents where candidates selfishly destroy the space station because they want to return to Earth, scientists found a way to directly measure the consciousness patterns of the candidate’s brain.”

Xin Yan opened another page to show Xiao Xi a few images of rat brain slices, dyed with voltage-sensitive dyes. “You should know that the brain does not work in partitions, but relies on the aggregation of neurons that are constantly lighting up and extinguishing, which span the entire interior of the skull.”

Xiao Xi stared at Xin Yan blankly. “What does that mean?”

Xin Yan sighed. “Xiao Xi, did you take a neurological association test during your medical exam?”

“I think so, there was a paper with several groups of single characters on it, and I was asked to think of a new character that could form a word with all the characters.”

Xin Yan nodded. “That’s one of the tests. Simply put, a test of the stability of your brain. The test results are a range, from A– to C++ grades, and the selection criteria to qualify, the result that represents the most stable pattern of the neuronal aggregation, is the B grade, in the middle.”

“What, they want that kind of person?” Xiao Xi’s face showed the expression of defiance she had often been criticized for by her teachers when she was a child.

“Theoretically, such people don’t break down easily. They would be responsible enough and have sufficient social skills to cooperate.”

“What do A and C grades mean?”

“C grades are what we call ‘stone-like people.’ Their brains are prone to blocky, large patterns of neuronal aggregation. This is expressed externally as subjects having poor creativity, being stubborn and even depressed. The rigid thinking of the elderly could even bring you to a C++ level.

“On the other hand, A grades are what we call ‘feather-like people,’ whose neuron aggregation patterns are small and scattered. This is manifested in strong associative ability, and subjects can only deal with stimulation in the here and now, and are poor at long-term planning. The extremes are A-, A– ...” Xin Yan remembered Xiao Xi’s grade with a jolt, and swallowed the second half of the sentence before it came out: A- grades were mostly found in children, psychiatric patients and some psychotropic drug abusers.

“Xin Yan, does this mean that I’m weird?” Xiao Xi grinned.

“I can only say that your brain is more active. Creativity and mental stability have always been inversely proportional.” Xin Yan pulled up the details of Xiao Xi’s medical report. In the three-dimensional model of her brain, the activated neurons were like colorful fireworks blooming over and over. “They’re too small, too lively. They’ll think you’re … uncontrollable.”

“So … what do I do?” Xiao Xi stared at the screen, her pale eyes reflecting the fireworks as if her brain had seen itself in a mirror for the first time.

“I have an idea, but you may not like it.”

Three:  Joined hands

In the early 19th century, French anatomists Gal and Spurzheim promoted the belief that the external structure of the skull could indicate a person’s psychological functions and characteristics. This was called Cranial Phrenology.

The day of Ding Xiao Xi’s departure was almost here. The place where the travelers were staged was on another floor of the Starlink Bureau building, and Xin Yan never saw her friend again.

Xiao Xi thought Xin Yan had helped her, but in fact, Xiao Xi had helped Xin Yan. After that exciting night, tinged with the aroma of Korean barbecue, Zhan Xin Yan’s world had suddenly become one of ease.

Tens of thousands of stargates open to exploration, with tens of thousands of colonies in harsh, uninhabited environments, all within reach: it was beyond the wildest of human dreams.

Shortly after taking up her position at the Starlink Bureau, Xin Yan was asked to take a medical examination, not realizing that she was one of the very few who passed. As a standard B-grade regular, after three months, Zhan Xin Yan was slated to depart for an Earth-like planet three hundred light-years away.

Except, she liked the crisp morning sun of Beijing, the greenery on her balcony in her small house in the suburbs, Mimi the kitten sleeping on her body in the middle of the night, her feet on solid ground, and the logical, step-by-step approach to her planned career as a neuroscience researcher, pushing human knowledge and civilization forward on the cutting edge.

The farthest she had been from home was when she’d been on an exchange visit to the United States. In the distant future, she might have planned to take a trip to Mars.

On the day the physical exam results were released, she had walked out of the Starlink Bureau building and let out a deep sigh, which the cool Beijing wind had immediately blown away.

It was her last three months; she should enjoy her planet. The light of the subway station was warm and the chatter of the crowd, pleasant, as the snow fell here and there intermittently, and the people moved about in the shadows.

She had originally made up her mind to say her goodbyes to her family. But the first anniversary of the TianCi Stargate Program came around, and the Bureau lost contact with one after another of the brave pioneering Pathfinders, as group after group of them vanished. And that was on the mildest of the Earth-like planets that could be accessed through the TianCi stargates. The news was censored within the Starlink Bureau. They strengthened the screening of the pioneering Pathfinder corps, so that as time went on, even B-graded neuronal aggregation pattern candidates were disqualified through the medical exam.

But why in the world was this so? Some said that behind every stargate there was a monstrous alien waiting to devour human minds, luring humans out there by using their curiosity about deep space and the universe as bait. Others said it was a curse, reminding humans not to leave Earth, the Garden of Eden, just like how a fish should not rush up out of the water onto shore without evolving first. Xin Yan did not believe either of these rumors, but there were indeed many unknowns about the TianCi stargates.

In short, Xin Yan was not keen to lose her life so soon. Neuronal aggregation patterns are complex and unique, difficult to fake, but it was still possible to switch results with someone else, as long as you knew the other person’s full dataset, including all their biometrics, like fingerprints, pupil scans, and genetic characteristics.

Ding Xiao Xi had offered herself up like a sacrificial lamb. Think about it this way: Xin Yan had warned Xiao Xi about all the known risks, so what she did could not be considered deception. The night Xin Yan swapped her results for Xiao Xi’s and left the Starlink Bureau building, Xiao Xi had clumsily hugged her, tears and green glitter eye shadow rubbing off on her white down jacket. Xiao Xi said she would always remember her. Alas, so be it.

Maybe Xiao Xi would be lucky enough to be the Eve of a new planet, a new civilization. And as for Xin Yan herself, it was enough to continue to have a stable life, to take a normal road all laid out in front of her. Xin Yan looked out of the window, watching the crowds and the traffic flow like little boats through the gaps between the buildings as a flock of carrier pigeons flew overhead. The stars are invisible during the day, she thought, and the TianCi stargates were also beyond the sight of the naked eye. The only thing she could see was ordinary, everyday life.

At the most inopportune moment, Xin Yan’s phone started vibrating, displaying a text from her landlord: “Your lease has been cancelled, please move out by today.” Xin Yan frowned. She was, obviously, a model tenant, and had been renting from Old Man Zhang for three whole years, always paying her rent and utilities right on time, so why…

“Zhan Xin Yan,” her thoughts were interrupted by Director Li, who suddenly appeared at her workstation. The middle-aged man, somewhere in his forties, was frowning slightly. Despite his high rank as an administrator at the Bureau, this specialist brain surgeon still liked to wear a white lab coat to work, signaling that he was a medical worker. “You’ve been suspended,” he said.

Four: The cicada and the silkworm

“Feather-like,” A-grade human brains are similar to the brain of an underdeveloped child, unable to grasp simple metaphors and tending to take them literally. When you tell a crying child that “the ship has sailed” he may be surprised that there isn’t a ship in the room that has just sailed away.

Xin Yan thought it was strange that the director didn’t mention any work-related reasons for laying her off, instead just advancing her a month’s salary and telling her to “take some time off.” It couldn’t have been because she had been caught swapping the files, or the director would never have gone so easy on her.  Anyway, it was time to go home and deal with the issue of her lease.

Just as she entered the hallway of her rented apartment, she heard a cat’s meow. Mimi jumped down from the stair railing on the second floor and landed precisely in Xin Yan’s arms, almost knocking her over. “Bad little boy, how did you get out by yourself?” Xin Yan stroked the yellow fur on his back and continued walking up to her apartment. Had she forgotten to close the door?

As soon as she rounded the turn of the stairs, Xin Yan saw that all her furniture and belongings had been thrown out of her apartment, almost filling the hallway. The landlord, Old Man Zhang, happened to be standing by the door, holding a potted plant in one hand. When he saw Xin Yan, he threw it directly at her feet. The potted plant, which she had spent considerable effort buying and looking after, exploded on the concrete floor, the bright green leaves mixed in a mess with the soil, the roots and stems now visible.

“What are you doing? The contract is not up for another year and a half!” Xin Yan yelled, completely confused as to what was happening.

“Hurry up and clear this mess, don’t take up all of my landing!” The landlord pointed to all her belongings cluttering the space, turned around and went back into the apartment, slamming the door.

“Hey, talk to me properly! Hey!” Xin Yan rushed up and knocked on the door, and also went to knock on the door of her neighbor, whom she had always got along with before, but she was met with no response. She had dug her fingernails so hard into little Mimi that he was hurt, and scurried out of reach onto the railing again.

Xin Yan packed two large boxes of essentials, and then simply left everything else for the rag-and-bone man downstairs. After loading Mimi into the cat bag, Xin Yan sat on a stone bench in the neighborhood and hailed a ride-share car, prepared to go to the nearest hotel for a few days. The ride-share app showed she was the only one in the area waiting for a car, but there was no driver to accept the order. She put her phone back in her pocket, shivering in the extraordinarily cold Beijing wind.

At that moment, Xin Yan saw a girl with two ponytails coming out of the hallway, also pulling two big bulging suitcases that couldn’t be zipped up fully. The girl cursed at the door of the flat, then slammed the suitcases on the ground and sat down on them, crying.

“Hey,” Xin Yan walked over and patted the girl’s shoulder, “were you also evicted by the landlord?”

The girl looked up, her bangs sticking to her face in wisps of tears, her makeup smudged. She was sobbing too hard to speak, her two ponytails bouncing at the back of her head.

For a few minutes, it was difficult to extract more than a few words from her. Then, suddenly, Xin Yan’s heart fluttered. She seemed to have seen this girl before, recently. Where was it…?

Finally, Xin Yan stopped an old cab on the side of the road and said goodbye to the girl who was still waiting for a car from the ride-share app. As she shut the car door, she remembered all of a sudden that just yesterday, she had processed an A-grade profile with an ID photo of this girl with the double ponytail.

She suddenly felt that maybe no one would ever take the girl’s ride-share request.

Five: The Ouroboros of History

The thinking pattern of “stone-like,” C-grade people is often petrified, making it difficult for them to accept new ways of thinking, so they tend to make sense of information according to their own preconceived notions. Thus, if a “stone-like” person encounters an idea that is similar to an idea he already has, he will immediately absorb it and solidify his preconceptions further.

Nobody knew how the diagnostic criteria of neuronal aggregation patterns leaked from the Starlink Bureau, how many people’s data was leaked, or how widely. By now, the data in the form of black and red lists had been circulating for quite some time throughout all the referral systems across the internet, with people exploiting the characteristics of stone-like people by scamming them, as well as increasing numbers of people discriminating against the feather-like people.

There were several experts in neuroscience circles who opposed the premature application of this technology, but TianCi had already commandeered the technology, even though it was still only at the laboratory stage. Once the technology was activated, it started to generate relevant data; once the data was created, there was a risk that the data would be leaked. Now that that Rubicon had been crossed, society at large would have its own way of interpreting and applying it, and from then on everything was out of the researchers’ control. Just as how there was no way to stop the mushroom cloud from rising from the earth the moment mankind first grasped nuclear fission technology.

In fact, Xin Yan had already had an inkling that the information would leak. Before she took the medical examination, the director had asked her for a copy of the neuronal aggregation results of current employees and job applicants, supposedly at the request of the Starlink Bureau’s human resources department. A few months later, the Starlink Bureau’s salary structure had undergone a major adjustment. Some people were promoted, others were dismissed, while a few old-fashioned security guards at the entrance received a considerable number of red packets stuffed with money, which was causing a stir within the Starlink Bureau.

At that time, Xin Yan had not thought too deeply about all this. But now, only a few days after swapping her own results for Ding Xiao Xi’s A-grade results, she was facing being made redundant with no notice, had been violently evicted from her apartment, and even become an invisible person to virtually every essential app, from ride-share to fast food delivery, to hotel booking. Only a youth hostel was willing to take her in. The owner seemed to be an A-grade feather-like person, and the travelers who had recently come to the hostel all had similar temperaments to Xiao Xi. She thought about it for a while, then decided to go back for the girl with the double ponytail and bring her back to the hostel with her.

The thing was, none of the feather-like people at the hostel knew why they were being treated differently. Xin Yan kept silent about her suspicions.

Over the past few days, she had returned to the Starlink Bureau building countless times, but had been turned away by a security team that had been carefully selected by the human resources department to be the most stone-like of the stone-like.

When she returned to the hostel, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was shocked by her disheveled hair and unkempt clothes, and almost cried out. Xin Yan had never been so lonely and desperate in her whole life. She had always been a golden child, studying diligently at school and listening to her parents at home. She’d gotten good grades and her teachers had favored her in all subjects; her relatives envied her family for having such a daughter. Before she’d graduated from college, she’d been sent to a top university in China to study for a doctorate, where she’d studied the brain, the origin of human thinking and consciousness. When the TianCi Program was first announced, she’d heeded the call of the Starlink Bureau to dedicate her talents toward it, and almost became one of the glorious pioneering Pathfinders. She had always been one of those set on the golden path, so how could she have messed it up so badly that she was now in this state, having lost absolutely everything?

She couldn’t help but resent Ding Xiao Xi. Xiao Xi must have experienced what she was now facing, and this was what had motivated her to go to another planet. She regretted swapping profiles with Xiao Xi, and even regretted talking to Xiao Xi in middle school and becoming her only friend when she was still known as “Crazy Xiao Xi.” Maybe Xiao Xi had lost her job, too. After all, she was the one who was operating on people! Who would let a potential psychopath operate on them?

The thought startled Xin Yan, and made her feel sick to her stomach.

Xin Yan was reminded of the 19th century pseudoscience of phrenology, where one’s personality was thought to be predictable through observing the shape of their skull. As for neuronal aggregation visualization … wasn’t it just people looking at brain activity in another way, being able to draw some statistically significant conclusions and then applying them to screen out people who were actually competent in their current occupations? After all, was it really possible to conclude everything about a person from this? Xin Yan knew that there were very few extreme cases, whether on the A- or C+ parts of the curve, and countless subjects who were labeled “abnormal” had been working diligently for a long time, just like Ding Xiao Xi, who had performed hundreds of surgical procedures. Even if she was liable to compare the smell of roasting meat to the smell of a person undergoing surgery, this didn’t matter in the end, since it didn’t get in the way of her treating and saving patients.

The reason why all this hadn’t mattered to Xin Yan before, was that previously she had been deemed safely within the range of “normal,” and had never been forced to face the dark shadows lurking in the corners of society, or felt the ubiquitous discrimination against the blacklisted. She had been so certain that none of this would actually affect her.

But she knew that the pseudoscientific classification of human beings, as a policy, had never led to a happy ending. Historically, behind every classification, different degrees of segregation, division, exclusion, and even bloodshed had often been the outcome. The classification itself always gave people a tool that could enable them to measure each other by a standard that was often one-sided and subjective, and thus easily lead to simplistic, but erroneous, conclusions.

But human beings were always inventing new tests and finding new criteria to classify their fellow humans: by gender, race, skin color; region, school, occupation; astrological sign, MBTI, or even the Enneagram. Excluding what was different, uniting what was similar, screening through subordinates, looking for a good match.

History repeats itself, and how dare she think she would always be labeled “normal” in every single test?

Classification and division. This is what it always meant: “sub-humans” fell through the cracks, while “normal” humans marched blindly forward.

In the hostel bunkbeds not far from the bathroom, dozens of feather-like people were singing softly, and the room’s walls were covered with colorful graffiti. These low-status members of society were scattered all over the place, but when gathered together, brought out the best in one another’s artistic qualities. But Xin Yan couldn’t understand the subtleties of it, or the symbols in the graffiti, just as she could never understand Ding Xiao Xi’s brain waves—how on earth had Xiao Xi come up with the idea that doing surgery with an electrosurgical knife was equivalent to absorbing human particles?

It didn’t matter.

Xin Yan knew she had to shoulder her responsibilities, and do the right thing regardless.

It was just like in middle school. Even though everyone bullied and isolated “Crazy Xiao Xi” back then, she hadn’t turned away from her, even though she didn’t understand her.

“What are you singing? Could you teach me?”

Six:  Cascading Responses

People always believe that thought is different from action, but studies have shown that even when playing an imaginary keyboard and imagining the notes that result from it, the area in the brain of the subject’s cerebral cortex responsible for managing the muscles of the hands expands, making imagining playing the piano roughly equivalent to practicing the piano for two hours a day.

Before she reached the entrance of the Starlink Bureau, Xin Yan found that the whole street was almost blocked. There were media vehicles, crowds, and police officers maintaining order all over the place. The moment someone emerged with a security escort, reporters would swarm forward. Xin Yan also saw many citizen reporters with selfie sticks. Wearing a peaked cap and mask, she pushed her way forward and entered the Starlink Bureau building amidst the chaos.

Since she had no access card, Xin Yan had to climb the stairs one by one, and climbed a total of twenty floors. She remembered that she had often admired the view from the upper floors of the office, but never thought about how lucky she was and how difficult it was for others to climb to that height. After reaching her destination, she took a break in the stairwell to catch her breath.

When she got to her floor, there was no one there. Xin Yan was about to celebrate when suddenly, she heard a voice.

“Xin Yan? What are you doing here?”

She jerked her head up, and once again, Director Li had crept up on her unnoticed. She had not seen him for a few days. The director looked far more haggard, with a lot of stubble growing on his chin, and his white coat was dirty and wrinkled. He was clutching a golden folder in his hand.

“I … I left something here, I had to come back for it….”

“Oh.” The director plopped down across from her, spreading the folder open so as to study it. He didn’t seem to want to pursue the question of how she had gotten in.

“How come the office is empty? What happened to Xiao Yu, Old Lin and the others?”

“There was an altercation outside, so I told them to go home.” He didn’t even look up.

“Director,” Xin Yan gathered her courage, knowing that this was her best chance. They were alone at the moment, so whatever was said, there was still leeway for conciliation with the other colleagues if need be. “Did you suspend me then because my neuronal aggregation pattern rating was A-?”

The weary director finally looked up at her.

“There were so many people who took the Pathfinder physical exam,” she went on. “Were their neuronal aggregation patterns leaked to the public from our Bureau?”

“Graded, leaked … and yes, it was indeed unfair to you,” the director said slowly, “but none of those things matter now.”

“If that doesn’t matter, then what does? Aren’t those people out there, those reporters, here because of this?”

The director finally put down the file in his hand and let out a long sigh, as if his entire person had shrunk another foot in the office chair. “Are you not watching the news these days? Over a dozen more pioneering missions of colonized planets have been lost.”

The director’s eyes were red and puffy. Xin Yan wondered if he’d been crying. He sighed again and flung a dozen A4 printed documents in Xin Yan’s face. “Look at this, just look at this! This time, there are at least fourteen colonies that have lost active contact. It wouldn’t be strange if they’d lost contact because of how harsh the environment is there, but why would they deliberately cut off contact? These are the final documents they sent us, and even the most senior linguists cannot make head or tail of them. Yet they still want me to decrypt them. It’s a waste of time!”

Xin Yan flipped through the documents, which were indeed full of symbols she couldn’t understand. Maybe the alien environment was so strange, maybe the distance of several thousand light-years was really incomparable, but could humans who passed through the stargates really form a new mode of thinking in such a short time as to be completely cut off from the culture of their homeland? Written and spoken language had the most vital and profound influence on a person. How could a colony produce a new language and writing system so quickly?

Wait … Xin Yan’s heart jumped. Hadn’t she just seen an example of just this sort of phenomenon lately…?

“Regarding that leak you were talking about…. If you want to expose it, then go ahead and expose it,” the director snatched the document back from her hand. “When your body is full of lice, you no longer care about the itch. The TianCi Program will go bankrupt, and if the shit’s going to hit the fan, then let it hit the fan. But remember, you’ve been tarred as a person with an ‘A- grade now, so your word may not mean much.”

“Actually, I scored a B-grade. I was all cleared to be a pioneer Pathfinder, but all thanks to Ding…. Well, what happened was I switched my neuron aggregation results with the results of another person.” Xin Yan quickly got the truth over and done with, her hands slick with sweat.

The director looked up at her again and sighed. He no longer seemed to have any strength left to argue with her about this. “The neuronal aggregation pattern visualizer is upstairs, so just take another test yourself and correct your results.”

Xin Yan nodded, grabbed her backpack and ran upstairs. This was what she had longed for, the prize which had been out of her reach these past few days. As long as she cleared her record, she would still be a B-class “normal” person. Whether she returned to her scientific life, stayed in Beijing, or spoke up for other people hurt by their ratings, she would once again have countless options: the whole of society, with its fast-moving cogs and wheels, would once again open its doors to her, and all the systems that provided conveniences and services to everyone else would become available to her again.

Since all her former colleagues had gone, she was only able to do the automated portion of the test. She completed her associative creativity test, and the results of the machine measurements came in quickly. Excitedly, she stood in front of the report printer, expecting a green B.

But what appeared on the sheet was a bright red A. Not an extreme A- like Ding Xiao Xi, but at least an A+.

Once again, Xin Yan’s world collapsed.

Seven: Intermittent Connection Loss

Quiet surroundings increase the perceived saltiness of food, a heated tongue can taste sweetness out of thin air; a silver spoon will make yogurt taste stickier; also, a white spoon makes processed yogurt taste more sour thanks to synesthesia.

Xin Yan had no idea how she had managed to walk down the twenty-odd flights of stairs. She had struggled for five or six hours in the neuronal aggregation lab, repeatedly testing herself and comparing the results. She’d even used a high-speed scanner to take three-dimensional dynamic images of her brain. As a neuroscientist, she had to admit that her neuronal aggregation pattern was no longer at a stable B-grade level. She would never again be able to clear her record and rejoin normal society, let alone succeed in doing anything to change it.

By the time she left the Starlink Bureau office, the evening sun was gone, and the reporters and netizens who had blocked the street at the entrance had dispersed. She didn’t want to take the subway, so she zipped her down jacket all the way, trying to block out the chilly Beijing night air. She noticed that the green eye shadow Xiao Xi had rubbed on her shoulder that fateful night was still there, like a green feather.

Back at the hostel, instead of singing, the girls were gathered to watch the TV hanging on the wall. They never seemed to worry about tomorrow, but seemed more concerned with the emotions of the here and now, a typical characteristic of those with A-grade neuronal aggregation patterns. After hanging out there for a long time, Xin Yan found herself gradually getting a little more emotional as well.

“Yan Yan, you’re back!” Someone greeted her warmly, patting the spot beside her, “The news is talking about your Starlink Bureau.”

Xin Yan hung her down jacket on the shelf by the door, the white collar rubbing off some of the new paint they had applied to the wall that day, but it didn’t matter anymore.

“Yan Yan, do you think that they’ll really stop sending people to the outer planets? Dudu?”

“It’s hard to say ... what do you think?” Xin Yan did not have the strength to say anything more.

“I think it’s too bad, yee!” The other sighed then spoke in the strange manner of some of the feather-like people. “I know humans handicapped, we couldn’t even wing out of solar system. Now we got superhighway shortcut, but what in future it’s blocked? In fact, Ben was drafted into Pathfinders, but didn’t pass selection test. If I had opportunity, I would really want to go for a trip to those faraway planets!”

Xin Yan’s felt this was bittersweet. She had never expected there would be such aspirations among feather-like people. It was a pity they didn’t know that if they hadn’t taken the Starlink Bureau medical examination, they wouldn’t have lost their jobs and houses and be languishing in the youth hostel.

She was already too tired today, so she walked alone to her corner and flopped straight down into her comforter.

She was still half asleep, as all the encounters of the past few days swirled in her mind, illogical and difficult to unravel. Ding Xiao Xi, the Starlink Bureau, the green marks on her down jacket; the girl with the double ponytail, the director, the workstation, the computer; the rioting crowd on the street, the planets in space connected by the stargates, the endless singing in the youth hostel. It was all as though reality had thrown an enormous boulder into the ocean of consciousness and set off a huge wave that would drown all of Xin Yan’s life. It took all the brain cells in her life combined to withstand it.

Her eyes, heavy with sleep, opened a crack as she realized the song was not from a dream. The TV was off and it was the feather-like people, singing softly. Once again, she didn’t understand the lyrics or even know which language they were singing in. All she knew was that the lyrics of the last song had been collectively invented by those girls. Since her own rating had dropped to A, she was afraid that she would join them in the future to sing such songs that no one could understand. Songs of the feather-like people.

Wait … a new language that had appeared within a short period of time? Again, that spark of familiarity came to her suddenly, and this time her conscious mind grabbed hold of it.

Zhan Xin Yan sat up sharply: she had to go to the Starlink Bureau once more, and the sooner the better.

Eight: And the Pearls Shine Together

There are many neurotransmitters that pass information between neurons: dopamine, histamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine. Sometimes, some neurotransmitters do not immediately trigger excitation or inhibition in neurons, but at some point in the future, they will amplify or diminish the response of brain cells to stimuli.

Just as, when you meet someone in your youth, you may have no idea what impact she will have on your life, but her impact becomes clear when you encounter difficulties which you can’t solve by yourself, and she does everything in her power to lend a helping hand and pull you out of the mud.

Late in the Beijing night, Zhan Xin Yan ran all the way to the Starlink Bureau. Her mind was racing.

People always think they are special, that they have a unique subjective consciousness. The brain is indeed influenced by genetics, memories, and childhood experiences, and does in fact have a thousand different reaction patterns. But there are two things that one must not forget: firstly, that all response patterns still exist along a spectrum from A– to C++; and secondly, that with a population of over seven billion people worldwide, there will always be a large number of people with similar neuronal aggregation patterns to you, no matter how unique you are.

What is behind this mindset? Perhaps with two people, having different skin colors, different genders, growing up in different cultures, with ancestors from two different continents: perhaps one, a muscular man and the other, a petite woman; but if they were both provoked by delinquents, both of their first reactions would be to stand up and teach the other person a lesson. This reveals a similar thought pattern going on under the skin.

Of course, most people fall within the B- and B+ spectrum, and belong to the “normal” interval, so putting them together will not result in any problems.  Modern mainstream social groups are no different. However, groups that consist purely of B, A-, and C+ grade thought patterned-people are rare, since these are all extremely narrow areas on the spectrum, and the conformity to particular thinking patterns in such groups will rise by another order of magnitude. Under the careful selection of the Starlink Bureau, these individuals, who would otherwise be scattered throughout the population, are forced to meet others with the same mindset. Then, they are further required to form a highly sophisticated team to cross the stargates on a dangerous interstellar colonization mission, and meanwhile other parts of humanity are ostracized by the system, and given no choice but to huddle at the fringes of society.

This was a phenomenon that had never occurred before the visualization of neuronal aggregation patterns. Something terrible emerges from both groups at the same time: the hyper-inbreeding of minds.

Such groups of people, already similar and at this point converging upon similar conclusions all the time, will soon find that the existing language is so redundant and inefficient that they can know each other’s thoughts with just a few words or even a glance.

New languages are born at a far more rapid rate when social groups are in relative isolation from other groups. At the same time, when these new types of humans then try to communicate with other humans outside their new group, their miscommunication is bound to give rise to pain and frustration. If, on top of everything else, this new group of humans has to deal with the challenges of extreme circumstances, the rate of assimilation within the group is further doubled. Any distance between it and other groups would also reinforce the divide, especially when people are countless lightyears away from a home that they can never return to. Xin Yan believed that this was why those colonies gradually and voluntarily disconnected from Earth after sending impossible-to-interpret messages. The new language was too comfortable, too powerful, and their minds had assimilated into a whole new civilization, perhaps even diverged into a new species, through constant hyper-inbreeding in the alien environment.

The catastrophic consequences of inbreeding are well known. And this time, perhaps for the first time in the history of human civilization, we can see the consequences of the inbreeding of minds.

So it wasn’t that there were unknown monsters guarding the other side of the stargate, devouring human minds. Rather, it was man’s own arrogance that was cutting off the species’ spread throughout the universe.

When she finally arrived at the Starlink Bureau, Xin Yan was panting as she rubbed her knees, her face messed up with the flow of sweat and tears. There were still two dozen flights of stairs to climb, and she had to—

“Hey! What the hell! You can’t go in there!” A man appeared out of nowhere and blocked her path. Xin Yan’s heart sank: this was the stone-like security guard who had stopped her many times a few days ago when she had come here, and he was known for his stubbornness. According to the Director, the most immovable concept in their hearts was to “Protect the Starlink Bureau at all costs.”

“I am here to save Starlink!” said Xin Yan, gathering up her courage. “Please believe me!”

“Really?” The man’s dark eyes lit up for a moment. Sadly, it seemed he, too, knew that the Starlink Bureau, which he had faithfully guarded all these years, was about to be drowned in the world’s spittle along with the TianCi Project. “Come on then, I’ll open the elevator for you.”

A few minutes later, the elevator opened on the floor of the Starlink Bureau where they received the letters sent home by the Pathfinders, just as she had hoped. Xin Yan glanced at the security guard gratefully. He simply turned on the overhead light for her.

The letter office was much like the one she had worked in before, with the Starlink Bureau logo in gold all over the place. It was deserted, with papers scattered everywhere, and a row of light blue triangular machines humming in the middle, still receiving letters from members of the East Asian Expedition, coming in byte by byte.

Xin Yan had to find evidence here to support her theory. After all, thanks to the TianCi system, her social credit was now bankrupt. Prejudice against A-grade feather-like people aside, the mere switching of the neuronal aggregation pattern records without permission was enough to send her to court. She had dodged a bullet because the Director simply couldn’t be bothered with her for now, so perhaps the storm would pass. She had to stop her mind from imagining what would happen otherwise.

All throughout the long night, she read countless letters, but failed to turn up any convincing evidence for her theory. How could one demonstrate that the evils of thought inbreeding were spreading when the Pathfinders never returned through the stargates to Earth, and they could only send back information measured in bytes every day through the incredibly narrow reverse channel? The Pathfinding pioneers were in the thick of the situation, so they couldn’t necessarily realize it through their own minds; after all, you can’t cut butter with a knife made of butter. The same was true for the group of feather-like people who were happy in their ignorance, and it was only because she was an outsider who had unintentionally intruded upon them that she’d identified the underlying problem.

Wait … an outsider? She, Zhan Xin Yan, was an outsider amongst the feather-like people, so wouldn’t Ding Xiao Xi, who had crossed the stargate, be an outsider to that Pathfinder group as well? Xiao Xi, could you have discovered this too?

Xin Yan rushed to the library shelf, looking for the letters sent back from the planet where Ding Xiao Xi had gone. One by one, as she rummaged through the golden folders, her heartbeat kept getting faster and faster. She had turned into a very emotional person.

Finally, she found it. The documents marked “Ding Xiao Xi” had already formed a thick pile. But when Xin Yan opened it, there were no words—only hundreds of ink dots scattered on a sheet of A4 paper, as if in Braille,  and the Starlink Bureau annotations were just a few repeating words: unreadable, unreadable, unreadable.

Holding the code that Ding Xiao Xi had sent back from tens of lightyears away, Xin Yan fell to the ground. No, she didn’t want to believe it. Even if thought assimilation happened very quickly and strongly, Xiao Xi must surely have resisted being assimilated so quickly. She must have had a solution. She wiped the tears from her eyes and curled up in a corner of the library, analyzing the books of dots sent from the heavens one by one.

Suddenly, that familiar feeling came back.

Nine: How the Stars were Connected

How were the stars finally connected?

To quote two ancient poems:

Their mutual hate is as much as waves can hold words, their mutual love makes the unfathomable ocean seem shallow – Li Shangyin, Tang Dynasty poet (722 – 846 AD)

So long as I am in the mortal realm, my love will last forever; the only sound that I can hear is the endlessly flowing river.  – Bai Juyi, Tang Dynasty poet (813 – 858 AD)

Ding Xiao Xi was the only human in the history of mankind to have left through the stargates and returned to Earth.

Perhaps phrasing it this way is not entirely accurate.  After all, her physical body was already in the unknowable vastness of space beyond the stargates, perhaps turned into pulverized dust, and what had returned to Earth was merely the bytes of information she had been transformed into. And the three-dimensional dot patterns that returned were nothing less than the most unique and important patterns a human being could possess: her neuronal aggregation patterns.

After Xin Yan entered the dot patterns in the folders into the neuronal aggregation simulation system, an incomplete copy of “Ding Xiao Xi” opened her eyes inside the computer. There was no way to tell if she had consciousness, but if you gave her a stimulus, she would respond like Ding Xiao Xi. Ask her a question and you would hear Ding Xiao Xi’s answer.

At a global launch where she was introduced to everyone, Ding Xiao Xi told the story of how her teammates, who were highly aligned in their thinking patterns, quickly developed a new language after she arrived on the target planet with the pioneering team, and how they were killed when they made the wrong choices. Because their communication with Earth was poor, they became increasingly inward looking and insular, almost forming a single hive mind.

Ding Xiao Xi noticed this phenomenon, but she, as an illegal emigrant, could only cautiously try her best to pretend to be like everyone else. Gradually, things began to get out of hand. Several teammates died tragically, and the rest discussed abandoning the mission and disconnecting from Earth. Xiao Xi remembered that Xin Yan had once told her about such things, only the people on Earth never had the chance to learn the truth behind it. And she, as a perpetual outsider, saw in her cold eyes the inklings of the truth in the periphery of her vision.

Once again, she was not accepted by the “normal” people around her, and once again, she wanted to escape to a faraway place. Her eyes turned back to the stargate, even though everyone told her that no one could go back through it.

In the end, all that remained of Xiao Xi’s soul was a piece of her, the piece first rescued by Xin Yan.

When Chinese New Year came around, Xin Yan decided to stay in her rental house in Beijing for the festival. She wasn’t alone. She decorated the room with fresh green shoots, and the kitten, who had been in the care of the girl with the twin ponytails, was back. Turning on the holographic projector, Ding Xiao Xi’s virtual image appeared on the couch, still wearing green eye shadow.

“You’ve decided?”

Xin Yan nodded. “I’ve been chosen again this time, and you’re the one in charge of doing the neuronal aggregation pattern assessment at the Starlink Bureau, how can you still not know?”

“Damn those confidentiality restrictions! I really can’t reveal any of it!” Xiao Xi leaned back and crossed her legs. “Now those old fogeys are so strict, they have to ration the respective numbers of A, B, and C-level personnel going to each planet, creating artificial diversity of thought. If you ask me, there isn’t any need to assess people at all. You could just randomly select people.”

“At least it’s a little better than before.” Xin Yan got up and went to the kitchen, bringing back a steaming plate of dumplings. “I’m going to eat, so please don’t say anything about human particles or anything like that.”

“Hey, couldn’t you say that fragments of those patients have followed me to space, and now I guess they are scattered among the stargates, so they have ‘boldly gone where no man has gone before’!”

“Please, have mercy on me!” Xin Yan bit into the pork and cabbage dumplings, her tears falling onto the table. The stream of information that had returned through the stargate had ultimately been too small, so she had used a generic brain model as a substrate, plus the data from the medical examinations left behind from Xiao Xi’s time at the Starlink Bureau, and had just barely succeeded at recreating Xiao Xi’s unique and vivid neuronal aggregation patterns. Her memories from the stargate travel were blurred and fragmented, so the Ding Xiao Xi before her had suffered far less struggle, pain and strife than the real Xiao Xi, but also lacked her new steely determination. The glib, feel-good story of the global launch had now gotten all mixed up with Xin Yan’s own theories, and she would never know what Ding Xiao Xi had actually gone through in the far corners of the universe.

The “Xiao Xi” in front of her looked real and animated, but she still missed that hug in front of the Starlink Bureau, that firm, warm hug which had resulted in green eye shadow smudged on her down jacket.

“Xin Yan,” Xiao Xi turned her head to look out the window, not noticing her friend’s tears.

“What’s wrong?” asked Xin Yan.

“It is said that in this era, everyone has their own theory about what happened in space, about the sudden appearance of the stargates. What is your theory?” asked Xiao Xi.

Xin Yan sighed, “I don’t know, I’d rather wait for the results of the scientists’ exploration.”

“Actually, I have a theory.” Once again, Ding Xiao Xi’s eyes were filled with bright, artificial crystals, unlike the real ones reflected in the starry night sky. “Beginning with Earth, an almost unidirectional passage to tens of thousands of Earth-like planets suddenly appears for a limited time for human, cosmic particles to pass through. Isn’t this like the neuronal aggregates that spring up inside the brain after being stimulated externally? Perhaps humans are the transmitters, taking some information we don’t even know about ourselves to another neuron?”

“You’re saying it’s possible that the universe is a brain?” Xin Yan laughed. “Where’d this old science fiction trope come from?”

“Don’t laugh.” The virtual Xiao Xi’s tone got serious. “When it comes to a mind, it isn’t relevant what matter makes it up. What is actually relevant is the way the matter is connected. With enough nodes and layers, the neural network can make any substance mimic the brain’s thinking, even if the vessel is a limited, broken old speaker. And as my existence proves, with just a few hundred three-dimensional dot arrays recording my key neuronal aggregation patterns, built upon the basic brain structure, Ding Xiao Xi can still come alive and appear before you.”

Xin Yan was silent for a moment.

“Actually,” Xiao Xi turned her gaze to Xin Yan, “I’ve analyzed the connection patterns of the stargates, and they do have some similarities to neuronal aggregation patterns of the brain, only at a much larger scale. It’s just that compared to humans, the scope of the universe and spacetime is beyond our imagination. Perhaps the rise and fall of millions of species bore witness to but two brain cells connecting, and perhaps the flickering fire of civilization, burning bright and then falling to ashes, was for nought other than to serve as a neurotransmitter that sends one point of information off to the right point at the right moment. And what about what’s outside the universe? What kind of world is stimulating this immense mind?”

Xin Yan looked at Xiao Xi, still unable to utter a single word.

“Xin Yan, forgive my selfishness, I want you to do one more thing for me.” Xiao Xi lowered her gaze. “I don’t know why, but all this time I’ve been obsessed with single-universe non-deterministic neurology, and I’m incredibly eager to glimpse the world outside this universe. Recently, I finally had a breakthrough. I discovered that some stargates are connected in a way that is very much like the visual centers of the human brain. External stimuli can be recorded there in an extremely informative form, and perhaps some discoveries can be made.”

“I…”

“Xin Yan, if you have decided to travel far away, can you help me to visit those planets? I know that Ding Xiao Xi is dead, and the crumbling neuronal aggregation patterns in front of you, even if they were very advanced, are no longer her. She’s gone, but you are still here, Xin Yan. Are you willing to help me? Are you still willing to help Ding Xiao Xi?”

The night grew deeper, and gradually, the stars appeared and blazed brighter and brighter. The two of them stood, like twin stars illuminated by the light of countless neurons spanning time and space. Zhan Xin Yan nodded.

The answer to the English test question in the introduction was: match

References

Wang Ye, Yu Rongjun, and Zhou Xiaolin. “A valid tool for creative research–the Remote Association Test (RAT).” Advances in Psychological Science 13.6 (2005): 734-738.

Susan Greenfield. “A day in the life of the brain.” Shanghai Literature and Arts Press.

Max Bertolero and Danielle S. Bassett. How Matter Becomes Mind, 2019

Wright, Logan G., et al. “Deep Physical Neural Networks Trained with Backpropagation.” Nature 601.7894 (2022): 549-55. print.