Chapter 53: The Sky Is High, But Birds Cannot Fly Freely

Chapter 53: The Sky Is High, But Birds Cannot Fly Freely

Looking at the floating city on the screen, I couldn’t help asking, “Uncle, why do these cities have to float? Wouldn’t it be better on the ground? Floating in midair looks very sci-fi, and the view is great—sure—but life would have to be inconvenient. And unsafe.”

Uncle said, “Elite people know how to enjoy life far better than ordinary people. First, the air near the ground is affected by all kinds of natural and industrial factors and isn’t nearly as fresh as the air higher up. Floating promotes circulation and keeps the air clean. Second, there are four seasons in a year, and summers get hot. One family can run the air conditioning to cool itself down, but that doesn’t work outdoors—let alone for an entire city of a million people to stay cool all at once. Floating is the best solution. Think of it as building a resort city on a mountaintop a thousand meters above sea level in the Mundane World. And the height here can be adjusted. Each city doesn’t sit at a fixed altitude—it rises and lowers automatically with the temperature.”

I asked, “Then what if someone wants to come down?”

Uncle said, “Elite people rarely walk when they go out. Long-distance travel is all done by flight. You’ve seen shuttle boots, haven’t you? There are also plenty of other spatial vehicles—flying cars, flying motorcycles, and so on. The vehicles you see on the streets now are used only by people who are nostalgic for them. Transportation has never been a problem. Besides, most elite people only live on the continent during vacations. The rest of the time, they spend mainly in virtual space.”

I marveled, “A city this size must have an enormous volume and weight. How do they make it float? What’s the source of its anti-gravity?”

Uncle said, “You should know that the things taught in the Mundane World—magnetic levitation, aerodynamic lift—aren’t actually anti-gravity. Gravity on Earth refers to gravitation, which isn’t a force in itself. Experiments have never found a graviton. Einstein already gave the answer in relativity: gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime. So the effective approach to anti-gravity is to shield or cancel it out. In other words, you don’t fight gravity with force—you use exotic matter and negative energy to produce reverse curvature and alter the spacetime curvature around the floating object. After the Elite World was established, the supercomputer used AI to present scientists with a Casimir-effect amplification plan, and that solved the anti-gravity problem once and for all.”

I was taken aback. “Technology this remarkable—why not share it with all of humanity?”

Uncle sighed. “You see? The question has come right back to where it started. I think Gu Qiutang must have told you something of this history. From the day AI grew powerful enough to solve every human problem, the struggle between human and human—between saint and demon—has never stopped. Communism could have been realized, but forces opposed to human nature would not allow it. That is the crux. If the first people to master the highest technology are saints, they spread it to all humanity. But if they are demons, they turn it into a tool of exploitation and control over the entire world. AI is only a means. The core supercomputer is not a judge or a savior. At present, it doesn’t appear to possess the attributes of saint or demon. But humans do. Among normal people, there aren’t many true demons—and there aren’t many true saints either. Everyone is a mixture. A contradiction. It comes down to which side holds sway in your own heart. The world as it stands today is the product of that struggle between saint and demon within the human heart. Whether a person becomes a saint or a demon is the greatest test any person will ever face.”

I said, “Don’t worry, Uncle. I won’t become a demon. I may never become a saint, but as a human being—emotionally and morally both—I could never allow myself to become…