Taking care of gods by Liu Cixin

Author:Liu Cixin [Cixin, Liu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Ciencia ficción
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2012-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

6

The relationship between the Gods and the humans had finally deteriorated beyond repair.

The complete breakdown between God and Qiusheng’s family occurred after the incident involving instant noodles. One day, before lunch, Yulian came out of the kitchen with a paper box and asked why half of the box of instant noodles she had bought yesterday had already disappeared.

“I took them,” God said in a small voice. “I gave them to those living by the river. They’ve almost run out of things to eat.”

He was talking about the place where the Gods who had left their families were gathering. Recently, there were frequent incidents of abuse of the Gods in the village. One particularly savage couple had been beating and cursing out their God, and even withheld food from him. Eventually the God tried to commit suicide in the river that ran in front of the village, but luckily others were able to stop him.

This incident received a great deal of publicity. It went beyond the county, and the city’s police eventually came, along with a bunch of reporters from CCTV and the provincial TV station, and took the couple away in handcuffs. According to the God Support Law, they had committed God abuse, and would be sentenced to at least ten years in jail. This was the only law that was universal among all the nations of the world, with uniform prison terms.

After this, the families in the village became more careful, and stopped treating the Gods too poorly in front of other people. But at the same time, the incident worsened the relationship between the Gods and the villagers. Eventually, some of the Gods left their families and other Gods followed. By now almost one third of the Gods in Xicen had already left their assigned families. These wandering Gods set up camp in the field across the river and lived a primitive, difficult life.

In other parts of the country and across the world, the situation was the same. Once again, the streets of big cities were filled with crowds of wandering, homeless Gods. The number quickly increased, like a repeat of the nightmare three years ago. The world, full of Gods and people, faced a grave crisis.

“Ha, you’re very generous! You old fool! How dare you eat our food while giving it away?” Yulian began to curse loudly.

Qiusheng’s father slammed the table and got up. “You idiot! Get out of here! You miss those Gods by the river? Why don’t you go and join them?”

God sat silently for a while, thinking. Then he stood up, went to his tiny room, and packed up his few belongings. Leaning on his bamboo cane, he slowly made his way out the door, heading in the direction of the river.

Qiusheng didn’t eat with the rest of his family. He squatted in a corner with his head lowered, not speaking.

“Hey, dummy! Come here and eat. We have to go into town to buy feed this afternoon,” Yulian shouted at him. Since he refused to budge, she went over to yank his ear.

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