April 12, 1961, Baikonur Cosmodrome

Sergei Korolev stood beside the scorched and blackened launch pad. Nearly an hour had gone by since the rocket had risen to the heavens, and still waves of heat gushed up over the rim of the spaceport’s flame trench. The early Kazakhstani spring felt like the height of summer, here.

Korolev tilted his head to the blue sky. The exhaust trail had faded, and up there, in that outer space that he could not see, the world’s first cosmonaut had already flown the better part of half an orbit around the planet.

“Comrade Chief Designer, please accept the congratulations of a common person!”

Korolev turned to see a middle-aged man in work clothes extending a hand. Judging by the man’s attire, he was one of the lowest-level workers on the base. Korolev shook the proffered hand. The man drew a small bottle from one trouser pocket and fished a metal shot glass from another.

“We should drink together in celebration, Comrade Chief Designer, but I only have the one cup.” He twisted the bottle cap off with his teeth and filled the cup with clear liquor.

Korolev accepted the filthy cup. In those days, the Chief Designer’s body was already plagued by illness. The doctors had discovered a tumor in his colon. Korolev knew he shouldn’t be drinking. In this moment of glorious achievement, he could be forgiven if he were to ignore this insignificant person entirely. However, though Sergei Korolev on this day might have slighted senior bureaucrats and generals, he would never ignore this man from the lowest of classes. During his years in the Siberian gulag and sharashka labor camps, Korolev’s status had been lower even than this person’s caste. In those days, he had moved rocks around a mineshaft with nothing in his belly.

Now this common person held the bottle out toward the Chief Designer, touched his cup with a clink and then took a brief, fierce swig from the bottle’s mouth. “To mark this great occasion, will you allow me to tell you a funny story?”

Korolev likewise threw back his head. He downed the clear liquor, and the vodka spread warmth through his body like rocket fuel.

“Have a little more, Sir.” The man refilled Korolev’s glass.

“Thank you. And what is your funny story?” the Chief Designer asked, with the slightest of smiles.

“I am an alien, a visitor from another world. You can call me simply… G. I came to this planet to do my fieldwork. My research involves the important festivals of this Earth.”

“Oh, is that so?” Korolev responded with a chuckle. “Then you must have found plenty of material to write about. As long as the scope of your investigation has been broad enough, you must have discovered that every day on Earth is a holiday for someone.”

“I have been here, doing this research, for many years now. None of those festivals is important. In my time here, I have not myself been the discoverer of any new days of any real significance.”

“What about Christmas? Isn’t Christmas important?”

“Of course not, especially not for the Bolsheviks.”

“OK, well, what about the New Year?”

“That also has no great meaning. That day simply marks one more revolution of this planet around its sun.”

“Then how would you define a significant holiday?” Korolev asked, a little distracted. He turned and moved toward the military jeep, not far away. He wanted to get back to the control center. The Vostok spacecraft would soon decelerate and begin its reentry procedure.

“I’ll give you some examples recorded by my predecessors: The Festival of the Great Division.”

“What?” Korolev asked, slowing his steps.

“To commemorate the first division of living cells on Earth. Of course, that was a long time ago, several billions of years.”

Korolev, about to get into the vehicle, stopped and leaned on the door to look back at G.

“Another example: The Day of Landfall. That was the day lifeforms first climbed up from the ocean onto dry land. Then there is the Day of Descent, which marks the first time the Hylobatidae gibbons came down from the trees. There’s also the Festival of the Upright, the Tool Festival, Fire Day, and so on. There are a few others.”

“But all of those festivals—we cannot know their specific dates,” Korolev objected.

“Well, then you can pick any day you like. Wasn’t Christmas established rather arbitrarily by the Church in the fourth century of the Common Era? The Bible does not precisely record the day of Jesus’s birth.”

Korolev leaned forward to get into the car, but G held his sleeve. “Comrade Chief Designer, what I am trying to say is that today may become a major holiday for humanity, the first I have discovered in my years of research. I designate this day the Day of Birth.”

“Day of Birth? Who was born this day?”

“Why, humanity.”

“But humanity came into being long ago.”

“Oh, no. If you could put yourself in the shoes of Lieutenant Gagarin at this moment—or has he now been promoted to Major?—you would finally see that the Earth is a blue womb. Only an infant born out of this womb can be said to be truly born. Ah, Comrade Chief Designer, I am sorry that my funny story is not, in the end, very funny.”

Korolev once again shook G’s hand. “No. Very interesting. Thank you, Comrade. I will surely celebrate this holiday every year in the future.”

“Oh, no. No.” G shook his head. “Whether today can truly become the Day of Birth for humanity, we still must wait and see, Comrade Chief Designer. We still must wait and see before we can know for certain.”

After the Chief Designer’s car had driven away, the communication unit in G’s brain sent a message to the transfer dispatch station on the Moon. From there, the message was sent back to the mother planet:

“Records of the Blue Planet: April 12, 1961

“This date may become the Day of Birth for this planet. Current assessment probability: 52.69%.  Continuing to monitor.”

October 5, 2050, Beijing Institute for Brain Sciences and Ergonomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The following lines of text materialized one after another on the giant display screen over the course of some minutes, as if typed by an invisible hand:

• Eye is a humid bean. Eye cans put eaten dates into the sister. Treeperiod14onfirewine. Fly. Amen.
• I am a humid bean, and I can put eaten dates into the cistern, 3.14onfire9. Fly again.
• I am a human being. I can input thought-ought-eat data into the system: 3.141fine9. Trying again.
• I am a human being, and I can input thought data into the system: 3.14159.

When the final line appeared, the laboratory exploded in cheers. These words were the first data a human brain had input directly and accurately into a computer. The scientist wearing the prototype induction headgear that day was the first to realize direct cognitive connection between human and machine.

The excitement in the room lasted for more than an hour, before people began to drift away. By that time, Ding Yi, the Chief Scientist on the brain-computer interface project, had also finally calmed a bit after the celebration.

“Honored Professors, please accept the congratulations of a common person.”

Ding Yi and the other researchers all turned to see a middle-aged man holding a broom and smiling at them with the slightest of smiles. They recognized him as a handyman who performed odd jobs in the laboratory. Never before had a single word passed between the scientists and this man, but now the custodian leaned his broom against a wall, drew a bottle of baijiu from one pocket of his work clothes, and from another pocket fished out a stack of paper cups which he had obviously taken from the water cooler by the laboratory door. After he had shared out the cups, he poured a mouthful of liquor for each of the scientists in turn.

“Do you even know what we’re doing here?” someone asked.

Like all the scientists who had made history before them, these people were only aware to a certain degree of the significance of the breakthrough they had made upon this day. Still, they could not grasp it fully in the moment. So many of the seemingly epoch-making achievements of the past were overwhelmed, drowned beneath the tsunami of the passage of time. At this moment, the researchers’ primary sensation was of intense relief, a burden lifted, after the completion of an all-consuming endeavor. To discover that the office handyman was interested in their results was a matter of great curiosity.

“Of course I know what you are doing. This is an important moment,” the man said.

People began to throw back the erguotou in their paper cups, and the Beijing liquor spread warmth through their bodies like the data from an updating system circulating through a network.

“To mark this occasion, will you allow me to tell you a funny story?” asked the handyman.

“A funny story? Ha, yeah, tell us a funny story.”

“I am an alien, a visitor from another world. You can call me simply… G. I came to this planet to do my fieldwork. My research involves the important festivals of this Earth.”

“Oh yeah?” responded the most garrulous scientist, already feeling the pleasant effects of the alcohol. “Then you must have plenty to write about. If the scope of your research is broad enough, you must have found that every day on Earth is a holiday. These days it seems we have more and more festivals every year. It was only a few decades ago that they invented Single’s Day on November 11, to entice lonely people to spend even more money online. Now the capitalists even have the gall to invent Double’s Day—Nun-chucks Day! Ha!” he chuckled obscenely. “To convince gay men to spend more money online, giving gifts to each other. Anything that you can imagine is a holiday on Earth, and many things you could never imagine.”

“Oh, I have been here, doing this research, for many years now. None of those festivals is important. In my time here, I have not myself been the sure discoverer of any new days of any real significance. Possibly one. What I am trying to say is that today may become a major holiday for humanity. It may be the first I have discovered in my years of research.”

The scientists looked at each other and nodded knowingly. Ding Yi said to G, “Yes, it’s possible. And what would you call this holiday?”

“I’m not sure yet.” G tilted his head back and drank down the little remaining baijiu in the bottle. “Ah. The last time I drank these spirits was with the venerable Comrade Chief Designer.”

“The Chief Designer? Comrade Chief Designer? Who are you talking about?” someone asked.

“Korolev. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.”

Ding Yi nodded: “The chief designer of mankind’s first spaceship. But you couldn’t have been alive when Korolev was alive, could you?”

“Chief Ding,” someone teased, “remember, he’s an alien.”

“Ha. Yes. I forgot. Nevertheless, Mr. G,” Ding Yi took a tiny sip out of his cup, “these great men of earlier generations—Korolev, von Braun—are indeed worthy of honor. But our breakthrough today may possibly make all of them completely irrelevant.”

“Oh?” G asked through a mask of perfect innocence.

“After this breakthrough, the brain-computer interface will develop rapidly. Soon, the internet will not connect computers, but our very minds. What will follow as a matter of course is that people’s memories, consciousness, our very personalities, will be uploaded. Humans will live in virtual worlds. They will have whatever they want, do whatever they wish. They will be gods. Every person can own a world of their own making.”

“Or even an entire universe,” G said. “Each person could have their own universe.”

“Yes. That’s right,” said a young scientist in his Beijing accent. “So, taking off in a rocket and flying through outer space will be nothing to them. Meaningless.”

“In fact, this incredible process has already begun,” Ding Yi said. “The internet, the mobile web, wearable devices, VR, ‘The Internet of Things.’ Remember all that? A few decades ago, parents actually scolded their children for spending too much time on their screens. Now, disconnecting from the internet and spending too much time in reality is what makes people idle and unproductive, corrupt and depraved. This breakthrough today has allowed mankind to pass back through the locked gates of the IT Garden of Eden.”

“Mr. Alien,” one of the men asked, “can you imagine this future IT paradise?”

G replied, “The virtual world of the future is indeed a heaven. Everyone there is a god, and its beauty is beyond your imagination. But I am trying to imagine the real world of that age. At first, there will be fewer and fewer people living in reality. The virtual paradise is so good; who would be willing to remain in a harsh and painful reality? Every one of them would scramble over the fallen bodies of their neighbors in order to to upload themselves. The earth will gradually become a desolate place, with no sign of human habitation. In the end, there will be no one in reality at all, and the world will return to the way it was before humans appeared. The forest will cover everything; wild animals will roam freely. But in a lonely corner of a certain continent there will be a cavernous vault, and in that vault a colossal computer will run, on and on, and in that computer will reside tens of billions of virtual humans.”

“Ah! How poetic you are! Hey, you, over there, Little Li, go get us another bottle of baijiu. Oh, never mind. Mr. Alien, come out with us. Eat and drink and celebrate with us!” Ding Yi said, his arm wrapping itself around G’s shoulder.

G shook his head, placed his empty bottle into the trash basket, and leaned over to reclaim his broom. He began to clean up the mess of a laboratory that had been full of people working all night long for several days in a row.

He spoke softly, as if in a dream, as he labored: “After I parted with the Comrade Chief Designer, I roamed through space and visited countless worlds. Those planets were blue, red, yellow… wombs of every conceivable color. They were all, every one of them, replete with the nurturing philosophies in which wise civilizations are bred. They all grew to maturity in reality and flew out toward space, only to be extinguished in the virtual world, like fireflies over a lotus pond: a flash here, a flash there, all finally vanishing into the dark night. Look at the sky, all of you. It is full of stars. Still, it is silent. Do you know why it is silent? Oh, Honored Professors, I am so sorry that my funny story is not, in the end, very funny at all.”

G picked up the trash basket and walked slowly out of the laboratory. His back was stooped, and he cut a more aged silhouette than the scientists remembered.

“Huh. Turns out the janitor was a fucking graduate student,” someone mocked.

“Yeah. Getting his PhD in the goddamn humanities.”

“Ha. Yes,” Ding Yi laughed at the jokes, then sighed. “There you see the sad end of all such ‘literary youths.’ Only the virtual world can save them.” Ding Yi’s final words drew a few sniggering laughs from his junior colleagues.

Outside the gate of the building, the communication unit in G’s brain sent a message to the transfer dispatch station on the Moon. From there, the message was sent back to the mother planet:

“Records of the Blue Planet: October 5. 2050

“Projected Day of Birth Festival (April 12, 1961) canceled. October 5, likely new holiday. Temporary designation: Day of Miscarriage.”