The Wandering Earth Read Online Free PDF

followed in its wake. From the sixth orbit on, the subterranean cities were thrown into mortal peril as magma seepage became all too frequent and catastrophic events.
    On the day it happened, I was just on my way home from school when I heard the blare of the municipality's emergency broadcast.
    “Alert! All citizens of City F112! The city's northern protective barrier has been breached by crustal stress and magma has entered the city! Magma has entered the city! At this moment magma is flowing into Block Four! The Underway exits are blocked off. All citizens are to gather in the central plaza and evacuate from there via elevator. Attention, the evacuation will commence according to Article Five of the Exigency Law! I repeat: The evacuation will commence according to Article Five of the Exigency Law!”
    Looking around the labyrinth of passages, our subterranean city seemed eerily normal. But I was aware of the immediate danger; there were only two Underways to the outside and one was blocked since last year due to necessary reinforcement work on the protective barrier. If the other way was also blocked, we could only escape by elevator through the vertical shafts and the carrying capacity of the elevators was very limited. It would take very long indeed to evacuate all 360,000 inhabitants that way. There was no need, however, for it to turn into a struggle for survival; the Exigency Laws of the Unity Government ensured a well-ordered escape.
    It brought to mind an ethical question in the olden days; it had gone, 'You are in a flood and you can only save one person. Do you rescue your father or your son?' In the eyes of our age, that question made absolutely no sense.
    When I arrived in the central plaza, I saw the other inhabitants already lining up in long rows according to their age. Closest to the elevator doors stood the robot nurses holding the infants, then came the kindergarteners, followed by the children in primary school and so on; my place in the ranks was still rather close to the front.
    At the time my father was on duty in Low-Earth-Orbit, leaving only my mother and myself in the city, and I could not find her. Running along the crowded ranks, I looked for her, but was soon stopped by soldiers. I knew that she would be in the last group, all the way at the end. Our city was first and foremost a school city, with only a few families, and she had already calculated where her age peers would be.
    The queue moved at an exasperatingly slow pace. It took three long hours before it was my turn, but I felt no relief as I boarded the elevator. I knew that there were still 20,000 college students between my mother and her survival; I could already smell the strong odor of sulfur.
    Two and a half hours after I had made it to the surface, magma swallowed the entire subterranean city a third of a mile below me. Imagining my mother's final moments felt like twisting a knife in my heart. She, along with 18,000 others that could not be pulled out, must have seen the magma surge into the central plaza. The power had already failed then, leaving the horrible crimson glow of the magma as the only remaining light. The white dome high over the square would have slowly blackened under the heat and those trapped would have surely perished. They must have never felt the magma actually engulf them; the scorching air, hotter than 2,000-degrees, would have taken their lives long before.
     
    But life had to go on, and even in our cruel and terrible reality, the enticing sparks of love could flash at any moment. During the twelfth journey to the aphelion, the Unity Government, in an attempt to ease humanity's anxiety, unexpectedly revived the Olympic Games 200 years after they had been suspended. I was going to participate, having been selected for the motorized sled rally team. The competition would involve racing my motorized sled from Shanghai, across the frozen Pacific, and then on to New York.
    As soon as the starting shot rang out,