Until now, they’d gathered here to watch forbidden videos, foreign news and movies smuggled in, broadcast with a pocket projector against the concrete wall.

They could be disciplined for that.

These last few days, since Sun Liu had fallen, since all the proponents of science in the Chinese leadership had been expunged, since the reactionaries had taken control, they’d entered a more dangerous phase.

One that could see them expelled, if not worse.

Yuguo started to open his mouth, to talk about Zhi Li, about how she knew who he was meeting.

Xioabo cut him off.

“I have Professor Jiang’s draft manuscripts,” he blurted out. Xiaobo stuck his hand forward. In his palm was another data fob.

“Professor Jiang…” Yuguo said.

“Funding all cut yesterday,” Wei said. “Placed on administrative leave. Lab sealed up. Servers offline.”

“Nano-systems,” Lee breathed. “Self-replication. Banned now.”

“How did you get this?” Longwei asked, turning to Xiaobo.

Xiaobo just shook his head.

“What’s important now is that we keep it from disappearing entirely,” Lee said. He took the fob from Xiaobo’s hand, slid it into his custom slate. Diagnostics appeared. Their own crude malware and integrity checkers. Their hopelessly primitive checks for state spyware.

Yuguo thought again of Zhi Li’s passing words to him. He opened his mouth to say something.

Lee cut him off this time. “What has everyone else managed to liberate?”

Everyone had brought something, some piece of data that was censored, or that they feared soon would be now that Sun Liu was out, and the reactionaries were in. There was a textbook on autonomous adaptive AI methods, a paper on advances in anonymity network mathematics, a brief bio on one of newly promoted Standing Committee members.

Wei had brought a photo set. Photos of tanks and soldiers, surrounding the Advanced Computing Building a few hundred meters from here, three weeks ago, the night Shanghai had gone dark.

Why? Why that building?

“What about you, Yuguo? What have you got?”

Yuguo looked down at his feet, shook his head in shame.

“It’s OK,” Lee said, putting his hand on Yuguo’s shoulder. “Give me your fob. Everyone gets a copy of everything. The bit is mightier than the sword. Anyone trying to crack down on what we can study should fear us.”

Finally the damn broke in Yuguo.

“They’re not scared,” he said. Zhi Li winked at him again in his mind, all-knowing, condescending, unconcerned.

He told them of it. Of how she’d known where he was going.

“They’re not scared of us,” Yuguo said. “They’re laughing at us.”

27
Opera Night

Friday 2040.11.09

“I hate Beijing,” Zhi Li said, watching the neon of the city slide by outside the windows of the limousine. “It’s so old.”

“Relax,” her lover, Lu Song, said. He reached over and took her small hand in his massive one. “We’ll see the opera, get photographed with the Premier, and get back to Shanghai.”