The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

by Ken Liu

Centillion is not some big, scary government. It’s a private company, whose motto happens to be “Make things better!” Just because you want to live in the dark ages doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of ubiquitous computing.

“Grandpa would say, ‘pu ta pu hsiang shih.’ It means that sometimes you can’t become friends until you’ve fought each other.”

People shape and stage the experiences of their lives for the camera, go on vacations with one eye glued to the video camera. The desire to freeze reality is about avoiding reality.

Sometimes she thinks of the Regulator as a dependable lover, a comforting presence to lean on. Sometimes she thinks she’s addicted. She does not probe deeply behind these thoughts.

“If we meet new life and new civilization down there, we’ll need people like me, the forever children, to learn about them and understand them without fear.”