“Brilliant!” The observatory head claps his hands a few times flatteringly. “So few leaders have such an understanding of fundamental theory. I bet even Professor Ding thinks so.” He winks again at Ding Yi.

“What she said is basically correct.” Ding Yi slowly knocks the ash from his pipe onto the carpet.

“Right, right. If Professor Ding thinks so—” The observatory head beams with happiness.

“Just enough to show her superficiality.” Ding Yi digs more tobacco out of his coat pocket.

The observatory head freezes. The scientists around him titter.

The governor smiles tolerantly. “I also majored in physics, but the last thirty years, I’ve forgotten practically all of it. Compared to you all here, my knowledge of physics and cosmology, I’m afraid, isn’t even superficial. Hell, I only remember Newton’s three laws.”

“But that’s a long way from understanding it.” Ding Yi lights his newly filled pipe.

The observatory head shakes his head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

“Professor Ding, we live in two completely different worlds.” The governor sighs. “My world is a practical one. No poetry. Bogged down with details. We spend our days bustling around like ants, and like ants, our view is just as limited. Sometimes, when I leave my office at night, I stop to look up at the stars. A luxury that’s hard to come by. Your world is brimming with wonder and mystery. Your thoughts stretch across hundreds of light-years of space and billions of years of time. To you, the Earth is just a speck of dust in the universe. To you, this era is just an instant in time too short to measure. The entire universe seems to exist to satisfy your curiosity and fulfill your existence. To be frank, Professor Ding, I truly envy you. I dreamed of this when I was young, but to enter your world was too difficult.”

“But it’s not too difficult tonight. You can at least stay in Professor Ding’s world for a while. See the world’s greatest moment together,” the observatory head says.

“I’m not so lucky. Everyone, I’m extremely sorry. The Yangtze dykes are ready to burst. I must go right away to make sure that doesn’t happen. Before I go, though, I still have some questions I’d like to ask Professor Ding. You’ll probably find these questions childish, but I’ve thought hard about them and I still don’t understand. First question: The sign of contraction is the universe changing from redshift to blueshift. We will see light from all the galaxies shift toward blue at the same time. However, right now, the farthest galaxies we can observe are about fourteen billion light-years away. According to your calculations, the entire universe will contract at the same moment. If that’s the case, it should be about fourteen billion years before we can see the blueshift from them. Even the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, should still need four years.”

Ding Yi slowly lets out a puff of smoke. It floats in the air like a shrinking spiral galaxy.