The Dark Forest

Year 205, Crisis Era

Darkness. Before the darkness there was nothing but nothingness, and the nothingness was without color. Nothing was in the nothingness. Darkness at least meant that there was space. Soon, disturbances appeared in the darkness of space, penetrating everything like a gentle breeze. It was the sensation of time passing, for the nothingness was without time, but now time took shape in a glacial thaw. Only much later was there light, at first as a shapeless blob of brightness, and then, after another long wait, the shape of the world gradually emerged. The newly resurrected consciousness struggled to make sense of it, at first managing to work out a few thin, transparent tubes, then a human face behind them, which quickly disappeared, exposing the creamy-white light of the ceiling.

Luo Ji awoke from hibernation.

The face reappeared. It belonged to a man with a gentle expression who looked at Luo Ji and said, “Welcome to our era.” As he spoke, a field of vibrant roses flashed on his white lab coat, then gradually faded and disappeared. As he continued speaking, the coat displayed a continuous assortment of delightful images that matched his expressions and emotions: seas, sunsets, and woods in the drizzle. He told Luo Ji that his illness had been cured during hibernation, and that his reawakening had gone smoothly. Recovery would take just three days or so, and then he would completely regain normal bodily functions….

Luo Ji’s mind, still sluggish and only partially awake, caught just one piece of information out of everything the doctor said: This was year 205 of the Crisis Era, and he had been in hibernation for 185 years.

He found the doctor’s accent peculiar at first, but he soon discovered that although the sounds of standard Mandarin hadn’t changed much, it had been stuffed with a large quantity of English words. As the doctor spoke, the text of what he said was displayed on the ceiling, apparently through voice recognition. Perhaps to help the newly awakened better understand, the English words were replaced with Chinese characters.

At last the doctor said that Luo Ji could be transferred from the revival room to the general ward. His coat showed an evening scene in which a setting sun rapidly turned into a starry sky to say farewell. As this was going on, Luo Ji felt his bed begin to move. Just out the door, he heard the doctor call out, “Next.” Twisting his head back to look, he saw another bed enter the revival room bearing someone who had obviously just been taken out of the hibernation chamber. The bed was quickly wheeled to a bank of monitors, and the doctor, his coat now a pure white, tapped on the wall with a finger, causing one-third of it to display complex curves and data that he began to manipulate intensely.

Luo Ji realized that his own reawakening was probably not a major event at all, but rather just a part of day-to-day work here. The doctor was friendly, but in his eyes Luo Ji was nothing more than an ordinary hibernator.

Like the revival room, the hallway had no lamps. The walls themselves emitted light, and although it was soft, Luo Ji still had to squint. But as he did so, the walls in the section of corridor he was in dimmed, and the dimmed segment followed him as his bed moved. Once his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he opened them again, at which point the hallway brightened again, remaining in his comfort zone. Evidently the hallway’s brightness adjustment system was able to monitor the changes in his pupils.

Judging by that, he had to be in a personalized age.

This far exceeded his expectations.

As the walls passed slowly by, he saw lots of activated displays of different sizes randomly distributed on them. Some of them were moving images that he didn’t have the time to look at clearly, and might have been left behind by users who forgot to turn them off.

Sometimes, his automatic bed crossed paths with people walking down the hallway. He noticed that both the soles of their feet and the bed’s wheels made luminous, watery waves of pressure where they contacted the ground, like what used to happen when you pressed a finger onto an LCD in his own time. The long corridor gave him an intense sense of cleanliness, as clean as a 3-D computer animation, although he knew all of it was real. He moved through it with a sense of tranquility and comfort he had never known before.

But what impressed him most about the people he saw was that everyone—doctors, nurses, and nonstaff alike—appeared clean and elegant, and smiled warmly at him or waved when they approached. Their clothes displayed gorgeous images, a different style for each person, some abstract, others concrete. He was won over by their expressions, because he knew that the eyes of ordinary people were the best reflection of the level of civilization in a time and place. He had once seen a set of photos taken by European photographers in the late Qing Dynasty, and his deepest impression had been of the dull expressions of the people in the photographs. Officials and commoners alike had eyes that revealed only numbness and stupidity, lacking the slightest shred of vitality. When the people of this new era looked at Luo Ji’s eyes, they might be having the same feeling about him. The gazes that crossed his own were full of a vigorous wisdom, and a sincerity, understanding, and love that he had rarely perceived in his own age. But what impressed him most was the confidence in their expressions. The sunny confidence that filled every pair of eyes had evidently become the spiritual backdrop for the people of this new era.

This did not seem to be an age of despair, and that was another unexpected surprise.

Luo Ji’s bed moved soundlessly into the general ward, which held two more reawakened hibernators. One of them was lying on a bed. The other, next to the door, was packing his things with a nurse’s help and seemed about ready to leave. From the look in their eyes, Luo Ji knew that both of them were from his own era. Their eyes were like the windows of time, and through them he had another glance of that gray era he had come from.

“How can they be that way? I’m their great-grandfather!” Luo Ji heard the hibernator who was about to leave complaining.

“You can’t pull seniority in front of them. It’s the law: Hibernation doesn’t count as age, so in the presence of the elderly, you’re the younger generation…. Let’s go. They’ve waited in the reception room long enough,” the nurse said. Although she tried to avoid English words, sometimes she stumbled over Chinese words, as if speaking an ancient tongue, and was forced to use the modern language. Then the wall would display a translation into Chinese.

“I can’t even understand it when they talk. All that bird-speak mixed in!” the hibernator said, as he and the nurse each picked up a bag and went out the door.

“In this age, you’ve got to keep learning. Otherwise, you’ll just have to go live up top,” Luo Ji heard the nurse say. By now he could understand the modern language without difficulty, but he was still unclear what the nurse meant by her last sentence.

“Hello. Did you hibernate due to illness?” the hibernator in the bed beside Luo Ji asked. He was young, and looked to be in his early twenties.

Luo Ji opened his mouth but no sound came out. The young man smiled at him encouragingly. “You can speak. Try harder!”

“Hello,” Luo Ji managed hoarsely.

The young man nodded. “The one who just left did. I didn’t. I came here to escape from reality. Oh, and my name’s Xiong Wen.”

“Here… how is it?” Luo Ji asked, much more easily this time.

“I don’t really know. I’ve only been here five days. Still, it’s definitely a good era. But for us, it’s bound to be difficult to integrate into society. Mostly because we woke up too soon. A few years later would have been better.”

“A few years later? Wouldn’t that be even harder?”

“No. It’s still a state of war now, so society can’t take care of us. In a few decades, after the peace talks, there’ll be peace and prosperity.”

“Peace talks? With whom?!”

“Trisolaris, of course.”

Shaken by Xiong Wen’s final statement, Luo Ji strove to sit up. A nurse entered and helped him up to a half-sitting position in bed.

“They said they want peace talks?” he asked anxiously.

“Not yet. But they’ll have no other choice,” Xiong Wen said, nimbly getting out of his bed and coming over to sit down on Luo Ji’s. He had clearly been anticipating the pleasure of introducing someone newly awakened to this era. “Don’t you know? Humanity is amazing now. Simply amazing!”

“How?”

“Our spacecraft are incredibly powerful. Far more powerful than Trisolaran ships!”

“How is that possible?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Put the superweapons aside and look purely at speed. They can reach fifteen percent of the speed of light! Tons faster than the Trisolarans!”

When Luo Ji turned a skeptical eye toward the nurse, he noticed that she was exceptionally pretty. Everyone in this age seemed to be attractive. She nodded with a smile. “It’s true.”

Xiong Wen went on, “And do you know how many ships there are in the space fleet? I’ll tell you: two thousand! Twice as many as the Trisolarans! And the number’s still growing!”

Luo Ji glanced again at the nurse, who nodded.

“You know how badly off the Trisolaran Fleet is now? In two centuries they’ve passed through the, ah, the space dust they call the snow patch three times. I heard someone say that the most recent time was four years ago, and the telescope observed that their formation has become sparser. They’re not holding together. More than half of the ships stopped accelerating long ago, and they decelerated considerably when they crossed the dust. They’re crawling now, and they won’t reach the Solar System for more than eight hundred years. They might already be broken hulks. Projecting from their current speed, no more than three hundred ships will arrive on time two centuries from now. However, one Trisolaran probe will reach the Solar System soon. This year. The other nine are following afterward and will get here three years later.”

“The probe… What’s that?” Luo Ji asked in confusion.

The nurse said, “We don’t encourage the exchange of practical information. When the previous reawakened hibernator learned about these things, it took him many days to calm down. It’s not conducive to recovery.”

“It makes me happy, so what’s it to you?” Xiong Wen said with a shrug. Then he returned to his own bed to lie down. As he lay watching the soft light emitted by the ceiling, he sighed, “The kids are all right. They’re really all right.”

“Who’s a kid?” the nurse sniffed. “Hibernation doesn’t count as age. You’re the kid.” To Luo Ji’s eyes, she actually looked younger than Xiong Wen, although he knew that his appearance-based judgment of age might not be accurate in this era.

The nurse said to him, “The people from your time are all pretty despairing. But things aren’t really all that serious.”

To Luo Ji, this was the voice of an angel. He felt like he had turned into a child who had just awakened from a nightmare, and all the frightening things he had experienced were taken care of by a smile from an adult. When she spoke, her nurse’s uniform shone a fast-rising sun, and under its golden light, the dry yellow earth turned green, and flowers bloomed in wild abandon….

When the nurse had gone, Luo Ji asked Xiong Wen, “What about the Wallfacer Project?”

Xiong Wen shook his head in confusion. “Wallfacer… ? Never heard of it.”

Luo Ji asked when Xiong Wen had entered hibernation. It had been before the Wallfacer Project had started, when hibernation was very expensive. His family must have had money. But if he hadn’t heard anything about the Wallfacer Project in the five days he had been awake, that meant that even if the program hadn’t been forgotten in this era, it was no longer important.

Next, Luo Ji personally experienced the level of technology of this new age in two trivial areas.

Soon after he entered the ward, the nurse carried in his first meal after reawakening, a very small quantity of milk and bread and jam, because his stomach functions were still recovering. He took a bite of bread and felt like he was chewing sawdust.

“Your sense of taste is still recovering, too,” the nurse said.

“It’ll taste even worse once you’ve recovered,” Xiong Wen said.

The nurse laughed. “Of course, it’s not as good as the food grown on the surface in your era.”

“Then where does this come from?” Luo Ji asked, through his full mouth.

“It’s produced in a factory.”

“You’re able to synthesize grain?”

Xiong Wen answered for the nurse. “There’s no other option but to synthesize it. The land won’t grow any crops anymore.”

Luo Ji felt sorry for Xiong Wen. There had been people in his era who had become immune to technology and were indifferent to any sort of technological wonder, and Xiong Wen was apparently one of them. He was unable to properly appreciate this new age.

The next discovery was an incredible shock to Luo Ji, although the thing itself was still quite plain. The nurse pointed to the cup of milk and told him that it had been put into a heating cup especially for hibernators, because the people of this era generally did not drink hot liquids. Even coffee was taken cold. If he wasn’t used to drinking cold milk, he could heat it up simply by moving a slider near the bottom of the cup to the desired temperature. When he finished drinking, he inspected the cup. It looked like an ordinary glass cup apart from a thick, opaque base which must contain the heat source. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find any controls but the slider, and when he tried to twist the base, he found it was integrated with the rest of the cup.

“Don’t mess around with the supplies. You don’t understand them yet. It’s dangerous,” the nurse said after watching Luo Ji’s efforts.

“I’d like to know where it gets recharged.”

“Re… charged?” The nurse awkwardly repeated the word, evidently hearing it for the first time.

“Charge. Recharge,” Luo Ji said in English, but the nurse just shook her head in confusion.

“What happens when the batteries run out?”

“Batteries?”

“Batteries,” he said in English. “You don’t have batteries anymore?” When the nurse shook her head again, he said, “Then where does the electricity in the cup come from?”

“Electricity? There’s electricity everywhere,” the nurse said disapprovingly.

“The electricity in the cup won’t run out?”

“It won’t run out.”

“It’s inexhaustible?!”

“Inexhaustible. How could electricity run out?”

When the nurse left, Luo Ji still was unable to let go of the cup. He ignored Xiong Wen’s ridicule, for his surging emotions told him that he was holding a sacred object, the age-old dream of humanity: a perpetual motion machine. If humanity had really achieved inexhaustible energy, then they could achieve practically everything. Now he believed the words of the pretty nurse: Things might not be so serious.

When the doctor came into the ward for a routine checkup, Luo Ji asked him about the Wallfacer Project.

“I know of it. It’s an ancient joke,” the doctor replied offhandedly.

“What happened to the Wallfacers?”

“I think one of them committed suicide, and another was stoned to death…. It all happened in the project’s early days, and it’s been nearly two centuries since then.”

“And the other two?”

“I don’t know. They’re probably still in hibernation.”

“One of them was Chinese. Do you remember him?” Luo Ji ventured, staring nervously at the doctor.

“You mean the one who cast a spell on a star? I think he was mentioned in premodern history class,” the nurse interjected.

“Right. And now he’s…” Luo Ji said.

“I don’t know. I think he’s still in hibernation. I don’t pay much attention to that stuff,” the doctor said absently.

“And the star? The one he cursed, the star with a planet? What happened to it?” he asked, his heart tensing up.

“What do you think happened? It’s probably still there. That spell? What a joke!”

“So nothing at all happened to that star?”

“Nothing I’ve heard, at any rate. You?” he asked the nurse.

“Me neither,” she said, shaking her head. “The world was scared to death back then and lots of silly things happened.”

“And then?” Luo Ji said with a sigh.

“Then there was the Great Ravine,” the doctor said.

“The Great Ravine? What was that?”

“You’ll find out later. For now, rest up,” the doctor said with a gentle sigh. “But it’s probably better that you don’t know about it.” As he turned to leave, his white coat displayed billowing dark clouds, and the nurse’s uniform displayed lots of pairs of eyes, some of them frightened, some brimming with tears.

When the doctor had left, Luo Ji sat motionless on his bed for a long while, mumbling to himself, “A joke. An ancient joke.” Then he began laughing, silently at first, and then in great guffaws, trembling on his bed and frightening Xiong Wen, who wanted to call the doctor.

“I’m fine. Go to sleep,” Luo Ji told him. Then he lay down and soon fell asleep for the first time since his reawakening.

He dreamed of Zhuang Yan and the child. As before, Zhuang Yan walked through the snow, the child asleep in her arms.

When he awoke, the nurse walked in and said good morning to him. Her voice was soft so as not to wake the still-sleeping Xiong Wen.

“Is it morning? Why aren’t there any windows in this room?” Luo Ji asked, looking around.

“Any place on the wall can turn transparent. But the doctors feel that you aren’t ready to look outside. It’s too unfamiliar, and it will distract you and affect your rest.”

“I’ve been revived for a while now, but I still don’t know what the outside world is like. This affects my rest.” Luo Ji pointed at Xiong Wen, and said, “I’m not that kind of person.”

The nurse laughed. “That’s okay. I’m about to go off shift. Shall I take you out for a look around? You can have breakfast after you get back.”

Excitedly, Luo Ji followed the nurse to the on-call room. Looking it over, he could guess what about half of the furnishings were, but he had no idea what the rest were for. There was no computer or similar equipment, but because a display could be activated anywhere on the walls, this was to be expected. Three umbrellas lined up outside the door caught his attention. They were in different styles, but from their shape, they were definitely umbrellas. What surprised him was their bulk. Weren’t there folding umbrellas in this age?

The nurse came out of the changing room dressed in her own clothes. Aside from the flashing movies on the fabric, changes to women’s fashion in this age were well within the scope of Luo Ji’s imagination. Compared to his own era, the major difference was their conspicuous asymmetry. He was pleased that after 185 years had passed, he could still find beauty in women’s clothing. The nurse picked up one of the umbrellas, which must have been fairly heavy, because she had to carry it over her shoulder.

“Is it raining out?”

She shook her head. “You think I’m carrying an… umbrella?” she said, unfamiliar with the last word.

“If it’s not an umbrella, then what is it?” Luo Ji pointed to the device on her shoulder, imagining that she would say some peculiar name for it.

But she didn’t. “It’s my bicycle,” she said.

When they arrived in the corridor, Luo Ji asked, “Is your home far from here?”

“If you’re talking about where I live, it’s not far. Ten or twenty minutes biking,” she said. Then, standing still and fixing him with her charming eyes, she said something that shocked him: “There are no homes now. No one has them. Marriage, family, they went away after the Great Ravine. That will be the first thing you’ll have to get used to.”

“That first thing is something I won’t be able to get used to.”

“Oh, I don’t know. In history class I learned that marriage and family had already begun to disintegrate in your own time. Lots of people didn’t want to be tied down. They wanted free lives.” This was the second time she had mentioned history class.

I was like that once, but then… Luo Ji said to himself. From the moment he’d reawakened, Zhuang Yan and the child had never really left his mind. They were the desktop wallpaper of his consciousness, perpetually on display. But no one here recognized him, and with the situation so uncertain, he couldn’t just rashly ask about their whereabouts, even though he was tormented by longing.

They walked a ways down the corridor. Then, after they’d passed through an automatic door, Luo Ji’s eyes lit up as he saw a narrow platform extending into the distance and felt fresh air blowing toward him. He sensed that he was now outside.

“What a blue sky!” was the first thing he shouted to the outside world.

“Really? It can’t compare to the blue skies of your era.”

Definitely bluer. Much bluer. Luo Ji didn’t say that out loud, just reveled in the boundless blue embrace and let his soul melt. Then he had a flash of doubt: Was this heaven? In his memory, he had only ever seen such a pure blue sky during the five years he had spent apart from the world, secluded in his Garden of Eden. But this blue sky had fewer white clouds, just a couple of pale wisps in the western sky, like someone had unintentionally left a smudge. The sun that had just risen in the east shone like crystal in the entirely transparent air, with its edge rimmed in dew.

Luo Ji turned his eyes downward and immediately became dizzy. From high up, it took him a long moment to realize that what he saw from here was the city. At first he thought he was looking at a giant forest, the slender tree trunks stretching straight up toward the sky, each one sprouting perpendicular branches of varying lengths. The city’s buildings were the leaves hanging off these branches. The layout of the city looked random, and different trees had different densities of leaves. The Hibernation and Reawakening Center formed a part of one of those large trees, and the leaf that contained his bed hung from the narrow platform that now extended out in front of him.

Looking back, the tree trunk his branch was connected to extended so far upward that it disappeared out of view. The branch they were on was located in the middle to upper section of the tree, and above and below them he could see other branches, and the structural leaves that hung on them. On closer inspection, the branches formed an intricate network of bridges in space, bridges with one end left floating in midair.

“What is this place?” Luo Ji asked.

“Beijing.”

He looked at the nurse, even prettier now in the morning sun. Looking back at the place she called Beijing, he asked, “Where’s the city center?”

“In that direction. We’re outside the West Fourth Ring, in Tree 179, Branch 23, Leaf 18, so you’re almost able to see the entire city.”

Luo Ji looked for a bit into the distance where she pointed, and then exclaimed, “Impossible! How is there nothing left?”

“What would be left? In your day, there was absolutely nothing here!”

“Nothing? The Imperial Palace? Jingshan Park? Tiananmen? The China World Trade Center? It hasn’t even been two hundred years. It can’t all have been torn down.”

“All those things are still there.”

“Where?”

“On the surface.”

Seeing Luo Ji’s terrified look, she burst out laughing so hard that she had to lean on the railing for support. “Ah, ha-ha. I forgot. I’m really sorry. I’ve forgotten so many times. Look, we’re underground here. A thousand meters beneath the surface… If I ever get to time travel to your time, you can get back at me and forget to tell me that the city’s on the surface, and I’ll be as terrified as you are now. Ha ha ha…”

“But… this…” He held up his hands.

“The sky is fake. The sun is fake, too,” the woman said, trying to suppress a smile. “Of course, saying it’s fake isn’t right, either, because it’s an image taken from an altitude of ten thousand meters and displayed down here, so maybe it counts as real, too.”

“Why build the city below ground? And a thousand meters—that’s really deep.”

“For the war, of course. Think about it. When the Doomsday Battle comes, won’t the surface be an ocean of fire? Yeah, that battle is another outdated idea now, but when the Great Ravine ended, all the world’s cities developed underground.”

“So all the cites in the world are underground now?”

“The majority of them.”

Luo Ji took stock of the world again. Now he understood that the trunks of the great trees were the pillars supporting the vault of the underground world, and also served as the columns from which the city’s buildings were suspended.

“You won’t be claustrophobic. Look at how broad the sky is! Up on the surface, the sky’s not nearly this wonderful.”

Luo Ji looked again at the blue sky, or rather the projection of the blue sky. He now noticed a few small objects—just some scattered bits, at first, but once his eyes got used to looking, he saw that there were so many that they covered the entire sky. Strangely, the objects in the sky reminded him of someplace completely unrelated, the showcase of a jewelry store. Before he became a Wallfacer, back when he had fallen in love with the Zhuang Yan of his imagination, he had once been so obsessed that he wanted to buy his imaginary angel a present. He went to the jewelry store and looked at all the platinum pendants in the showcase, every one of them exquisite, lying there on the black velvet and twinkling under the spotlights. If the black velvet had been blue, then it would have been just like the sky he saw today.

“Is that the space fleet?” he asked excitedly.

“No. The fleet isn’t visible from here. It’s beyond the asteroid belt. Those, well, they’re everything. The ones with a visible shape are space cities, and the points of light are civilian spacecraft. But sometimes there are warships in orbit, too. Their engines are very bright, so you can’t stare at them…. Okay, I’ve got to get going. You should head back soon. It gets windy here.”

Luo Ji turned around to say good-bye, but was so surprised he couldn’t speak. The woman had her umbrella—or, rather, her bicycle—positioned on her back like a backpack, and then it stood up in back of her and opened overhead to form two coaxial propellers that started up silently, turning in opposition to offset rotational torque. Then she lifted slowly up into the air and hopped over the railing beside her into the abyss that had so dazzled him.

Suspended there, she called to him: “You can see how this is a pretty decent age. Think of your past as a dream. See you tomorrow!”

She flew gracefully, the small propellers churning the sunlight, until she turned into a tiny dragonfly between two giant trees in the distance. Swarms of these dragonflies flew between the giant trees of the city. More notable still were the streams of flying cars like schools of fish navigating endlessly among the plants on the ocean floor. The rising sun shone onto the city and was cut into shafts of light by the trees, coating the traffic with a layer of gold.

Tears streamed down Luo Ji’s face at the sight of this brave new world, and the sensation of newborn life permeated his every cell. The past really was a dream.

When he saw the European man in the reception room, Luo Ji got the feeling that there was something different about him. Later, he realized that it was because the formal suit he wore didn’t flash or display any image, but resembled the clothing of a bygone era. Perhaps this was an expression of solemnity.

After Luo Ji shook his hand, the visitor introduced himself. “I’m Special Commissioner Ben Jonathan from the Solar Fleet Joint Conference. I arranged your reawakening at the committee’s behest, and now, we’re going to attend the final hearing of the Wallfacer Project. Oh, can you understand me? English has changed quite a bit.”

Luo Ji could understand what Jonathan said, but listening to him speak, the sense of Western cultural invasion that Luo Ji had felt over the past few days because of the changes to modern Chinese disappeared, because Jonathan’s English was peppered with Chinese vocabulary. He said “Wallfacer Project” in Chinese, for example. English, formerly the most widely used language, and Chinese, spoken by the largest population, had blended with each other without distinction to become the world’s most powerful language. Luo Ji learned later that the other languages of the world were undergoing the same fusion.

The past isn’t a dream, Luo Ji thought. The past catches up with you. Then he recalled that Jonathan had said the word “final” and wondered if there was hope of a quick resolution after all.

Jonathan looked back, as if to make sure the door had been closed, and then walked over to the wall and activated an interface. He gave a few simple taps on the surface, and then all four walls and the ceiling disappeared into a holographic display.

Now Luo Ji found himself in an auditorium. Although everything was greatly changed, and the walls and table glowed softly, the designers had clearly tried to replicate the style of the old era. Everything from the great circular table and the rostrum to the overall layout embodied a nostalgia that allowed him to know at once where he was. The auditorium was empty but for two staffers laying out documents on the tables. Luo Ji was astonished to see that paper documents were still being used. Just like Jonathan’s clothes, this seemed to be an expression of solemnity.

“Remote meetings are a common practice now. Taking part in this way won’t affect the meeting’s importance or seriousness,” Jonathan said. “There’s still some time before the hearing begins, and you look like you don’t know much about the outside world. Do you need me to tell you a bit about the basics?”

Luo Ji nodded. “Of course. Thank you.”

Jonathan pointed to the auditorium and said, “I’ll be brief. First, the countries. Europe is a single country, called the European Commonwealth, and it includes both eastern and western Europe, but not Russia. Russia and Belarus unified into a country still called the Russian Federation. Canada’s French-speaking and English-speaking areas split into two countries. There have been some changes in other regions, too, but these are the major ones.”

Luo Ji was shocked. “Those are the only changes? It’s been nearly two centuries. I’d have thought the changes would have made the world unrecognizable.”

Jonathan turned back from the auditorium and nodded solemnly at Luo Ji. “Unrecognizable, Dr. Luo. The world is indeed unrecognizable.”

“No, there were early signs of those changes in our era.”

“But there’s one thing you never anticipated: There are no longer any great powers. All countries have declined in political power.”

“All the countries? Then who rose up?”

“A suprastate entity: the space fleet.”

Luo Ji thought this over for a while before realizing what Jonathan meant. “You mean the space fleet is independent?”

“Yes. The fleets do not belong to any country. They form independent political and economic entities that, like countries, are members of the UN. Right now, there are three major fleets in the Solar System: the Asian Fleet, the European Fleet, and the North American Fleet. Their names refer only to their primary region of origin, but the fleets themselves are no longer subordinate to those regions. They are entirely independent. Each one possesses the political and economic might of a superpower of your era.”

“My god,” Luo Ji exclaimed.

“But please don’t misunderstand. Earth is not ruled by a military government. The territory and sovereignty of the space fleets is in space, and they rarely interfere with the internal affairs of terrestrial society. This is stipulated by the UN charter. So right now the human world is divided into two international spheres: the traditional Earth International, and the newly emerged Fleet International. The three fleets of Fleet International—the Asian, European, and North American—make up the Solar Fleet, and the former Planetary Defense Council evolved into the Solar Fleet Joint Conference, nominally the highest command body in the Solar Fleet. However, as with the UN, it has a coordinating function, but no real power. In fact, it’s a Solar Fleet in name only. The actual power of humanity’s space-based armed forces lies in the hands of the supreme command of the three major fleets.

“Well, then, you now know enough to take part in today’s hearing. It was convened by the SFJC, which inherited the Wallfacer Project.”

Then a window opened up on the holographic display, and an image of Bill Hines and Keiko Yamasuki appeared in it. They looked unchanged. Hines greeted Luo Ji with a smile, but Yamasuki sat impassively next to him, giving only a slight nod of acknowledgement at Luo Ji’s greeting.

Hines said, “I just woke up, Dr. Luo. I was quite sorry to learn that that planet you cursed is still orbiting its star fifty light-years away.”

“Heh. A joke. An ancient joke,” Luo Ji said self-mockingly, with a wave of his hand.

“But compared to Tyler and Rey Diaz, you’re pretty lucky.”

“You appear to be the only successful Wallfacer. Perhaps your strategy really has elevated human intelligence.”

Hines displayed the same self-mocking smile that Luo Ji had just exhibited, and he shook his head. “No, it really hasn’t. I know now that after we entered hibernation, research into the human mind quickly encountered an insurmountable obstacle. Going forward meant approaching the quantum level of the brain’s thought mechanisms. But at that point, like all other science, they hit the impassible sophon barrier. We didn’t elevate human intelligence. If I did anything at all, it was just to increase some people’s confidence.”

When Luo Ji entered hibernation, the mental seal had not yet been developed, so he didn’t really understand the last thing Hines said. But he noticed that when he said it, a mysterious smile flashed across Keiko Yamasuki’s frosty face.

The window vanished, and then Luo Ji realized that the auditorium was full of people. Most of them were dressed in military uniforms whose styles hadn’t changed all that much. None of the attendees had pictures decorating their clothing, but their lapel pins and epaulets all glowed.

The SFJC still used a rotating chair system. It was currently held by a civilian officer. As Luo Ji looked at him, he was reminded of Garanin. The thought struck him that he was an ancient man from two centuries ago, but he was at least fortunate compared to those of his own age who had been annihilated by the river of time.

Once the meeting opened, the chair spoke. “Representatives, at this hearing, we will hold the final vote on Proposition 649, put forth by the North American Fleet and the European Fleet at the forty-seventh Joint Conference this year. First, let me read the proposition.

“In the second year of the Trisolar Crisis, the UN’s Planetary Defense Council established the Wallfacer Project. It was adopted unanimously by the permanent members of the UN and was implemented the following year. At its core, the Wallfacer Project attempted to develop hidden strategies for resisting the Trisolaran invasion by tasking four Wallfacers nominated by permanent member states with formulating and executing strategic plans in the seclusion of their own minds, out of reach of the sophons’ omnipresent surveillance. The UN promulgated the Wallfacer Act to guarantee privileges to the Wallfacers for formulating and executing their plans.

“The Wallfacer Project has been going on for two hundred five years to date, a time frame that has included more than a century’s hiatus. During this time, leadership of the project passed from the former PDC to the present SFJC.

“The Wallfacer Project arose out of a unique historical background. The Trisolar Crisis had just begun, and in the face of a devastating crisis unheard of in human history, the international community had descended to unprecedented levels of fear and despair. This was the climate into which the Wallfacer Project was born. It was not a rational choice, but a struggle of desperation.

“The facts of history have proven that, as a strategic plan, the Wallfacer Project was a complete and utter failure. It is no exaggeration to say that it was the most naïve and foolish action that human society as a whole has ever taken. The Wallfacers were granted unprecedented power without any legal oversight, and even possessed the freedom to deceive the international community. This violated the basic moral and legal norms of human society.

“During the execution of the Wallfacer Project, enormous quantities of strategic resources were exhausted for no reason. Wallfacer Frederick Tyler’s mosquito swarm was proven to have no strategic significance, while Wallfacer Manuel Rey Diaz’s Mercury-chain-reaction plan was unrealizable, even given humanity’s present capabilities. Moreover, both of those plans were criminal. Tyler sought to attack and wipe out Earth’s fleet, while Rey Diaz’s even more sinister goal was to hold every life on the planet hostage.

“The other two Wallfacers were similarly disappointing. The true strategic intent of Wallfacer Hines’s mental upgrade plan has not yet been revealed, but the use in the space forces of its preliminary result, the mental seal, is also a crime. It is a serious violation of freedom of thought, which is the foundation of the survival and further progress of human civilization. As for Wallfacer Luo Ji, he first irresponsibly squandered public funds on his own hedonistic lifestyle and then played to the crowds with ridiculous mysticism.

“We believe that given the decisive growth in humanity’s strength and its seizure of the initiative in the war, the Wallfacer Project no longer has any meaning. The time has come to bring the problem that history has passed down to us to an end. We propose that the SFJC immediately terminate the Wallfacer Project and abolish the UN Wallfacer Act.

“Here ends the proposition.”

The chair slowly set down the proposal document, and, glancing around the auditorium, said, “We will commence the vote on SFJC Proposition 649. All in favor?”

All of the representatives raised their hands.

Voting in this era was still done by primitive methods. Staffers walked through the auditorium solemnly verifying the number of votes, and when they reported the result to the chair, he announced, “Proposition 649 has passed unanimously and is effective immediately.” The chair raised his head. Luo Ji didn’t know whether he was looking at Hines or himself, because, like at the first remote hearing he had attended 185 years before, he still didn’t know where in the auditorium his and Hines’s images were displayed. “Now that the Wallfacer Project is terminated, the Wallfacer Act is abolished as well. On behalf of the SFJC, I hereby notify Wallfacers Bill Hines and Luo Ji that your Wallfacer status has been revoked. All associated rights granted you by the Wallfacer Act, as well as the corresponding legal immunity, are no longer in effect. You have recovered your identity as ordinary citizens of your respective countries.”

The chair declared the hearing adjourned. Jonathan stood up and switched off the holographic image, switching off Luo Ji’s two-century-long nightmare in the process.

“Dr. Luo, as far as I am aware, this is the outcome you were hoping for,” Jonathan said to him with a smile.

“Yes. It’s just what I wanted. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner. And I thank the SFJC for restoring my ordinary status,” Luo Ji said, from the depths of his heart.

“The hearing was simple. Just a vote on a proposition. I’ve been empowered to discuss matters with you in more detail. You may start with your biggest concern.”

“What about my wife and child?” Luo Ji asked, unable to hold back the question that had been tormenting him since reawakening. It was a question he had wanted to ask when he first met Jonathan, before the start of the meeting.

“Don’t worry. They’re both fine. They’re still in hibernation. I can give you their files, and you can apply to reawaken them whenever you’d like.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” Luo Ji’s eyes grew moist, and once again he had that feeling of arriving in heaven.

“However, Dr. Luo, I have a small piece of advice,” Jonathan said as he slid closer to Luo Ji on the couch. “It’s not easy for a hibernator to get used to life in this age. I advise you to stabilize your own life first before you wake them up. The UN funds are enough to keep them in hibernation for another two hundred thirty years.”

“Well, how am I supposed to live out there?”

The commissioner laughed off his question. “Don’t worry about that. You might not be used to the times, but living won’t be an issue. In this age, social welfare is excellent, and a person can enjoy a comfortable life even if they don’t do anything at all. The university you used to work at is still there, right in this city. They said they would consider the question of your work, and they’ll contact you later on.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Luo Ji, and it nearly made him shudder. “What about my security when I go out? The ETO wants to kill me!”

“The ETO?!” Jonathan burst into laughter. “The Earth-Trisolaris Organization was completely wiped out a century ago. There’s no social foundation for them to exist in the world anymore. Of course, there are still people who have those ideological tendencies, but they aren’t able to organize. You’ll be absolutely safe outside.”

As he was about to leave, Jonathan dropped his official attitude, and his suit started shining with an exaggerated, distorted image of the sky. He smiled and said to Luo Ji, “Doctor, out of all the historical figures I’ve seen, you’ve got the greatest sense of humor. A spell. A spell on a star. Ha ha ha…”

Luo Ji stood alone in the reception room, ruminating in silence over the reality before him. After two centuries as a messiah, he was once again an ordinary person. A new life was waiting before him.

“You’re a commoner, my boy,” a gruff voice loudly intruded on Luo Ji’s thoughts. When he looked back toward the door, he saw Shi Qiang coming in. “Heh. I heard it from the guy who just left.”

It was a happy reunion. They traded experiences, and Luo Ji learned that Shi Qiang had reawakened two months before. His leukemia had been cured. The doctors had also discovered that he was at high risk of liver disease, probably due to drinking, so they had taken care of that, too. To the two of them, it didn’t really feel like they had been apart for very long. No more than four or five years, since there was no sense of time in hibernation. But meeting in a new era two centuries in the future added a deeper level to their friendship.

“I’ve come to pick you up when you’re discharged. There’s no reason to stay here,” Shi Qiang said as he took a set of clothes out of his backpack and had Luo Ji put them on.

“Isn’t it… a little big?” Luo Ji asked, opening up the jacket.

“Look at you. Two months late waking up, and you’re a yahoo next to me. Try it on.”

Shi Qiang pointed out an object on the front of the shirt and told him that he could use it to adjust the sizing. When Luo Ji put on the clothes, he heard a hissing sound, and the clothing slowly shrank to fit the dimensions of his body. It was the same with the trousers.

“Hey, you’re not wearing that same set of clothes you wore two centuries ago, are you?” Luo Ji asked, looking at Shi Qiang. He remembered quite clearly that the leather jacket Shi Qiang was wearing now was the same one he had on the last time he saw him.

“Most of my belongings got lost in the Great Ravine, but my family did keep that set of clothes for me. But it wasn’t wearable. You’ve got some things left over from that era too, and when you’re settled down you can go pick them up. I tell you, my boy, when you see how that stuff has changed, that’s when you’ll really know that nearly two hundred years isn’t a short length of time.” As he spoke, Shi Qiang pressed something somewhere on his jacket and his outfit turned entirely white. The leather texture had just been an image. “I like it like the past.”

“Can mine do that too? Can it put up images like theirs?” Luo Ji asked, looking at his own clothes.

“They can, but it’s a little hard to get it set up. Let’s go.”

Luo Ji and Shi Qiang took the elevator in the trunk down to the ground floor, passed through the tree’s large foyer, and out into the new world.

When the commissioner shut off the holographic image of the hearing, the meeting had not actually concluded. Luo Ji had in fact noticed that when the chair declared the meeting adjourned, a sudden voice had rung out. It was a woman’s voice, and while he hadn’t been able to make it out clearly, everyone in the assembly had turned in a particular direction. Then Jonathan had turned off the image. He must have noticed it, too, but once the chair had adjourned the meeting, Luo Ji, now an ordinary citizen without Wallfacer status, was not eligible to participate even if it was still in progress.

The speaker was Keiko Yamasuki. She said, “Mr. Chair, I have something to say.”

The chair said, “Dr. Yamasuki, you are not a Wallfacer. You are allowed to attend today’s meeting due to your special status, but you do not have the right to speak.”

None of the representatives seemed interested in her. They were getting up to leave. For them, the entire Wallfacer Project was nothing but a footnote in history that they had to spend energy dealing with. But what she said next stopped them in their tracks. She turned to Hines and said, “Wallfacer Bill Hines, I am your Wallbreaker.”

Hines, who was getting up to leave, felt his legs buckle at Yamasuki’s words, and he sat down in his chair again. The people in the auditorium glanced at each other, and then began to whisper, as the blood gradually drained from Hines’s face.

“I hope you have not all forgotten the significance of that title,” Yamasuki said imperiously to the assembly.

The chair said, “Yes, we know what a Wallbreaker is. But your organization does not exist anymore.”

“I know.” She appeared totally calm. “But as the last member of the ETO, I will fulfill my duty for the Lord.”

“I should have known it, Keiko. I should have known,” Hines said, his voice trembling. He looked weak. He had known that his wife was a devotee of the ideas of Timothy Leary, and he had seen her fanatical desire to alter the human mind through technological means, but he had never connected it with a deeply hidden hatred of humanity.

“First off, I’d like to say that the true goal of your strategic plan was not the elevation of human intelligence. You more than anyone are aware that it is utterly impossible for human technology to accomplish this in the foreseeable future, because you were the one who discovered the quantum structure of the brain. You know that when the study of the mind reaches the quantum level, the sophon lockdown on fundamental physics means that scientific research will be like water with no source: It’s got no grounding, and will never succeed. The mental seal was not just a chance by-product of your study of the mind. It was the thing you always wanted. That was the ultimate goal of your research.” She turned to the assembly. “Now, what I’d like to know from all of you is this: In the years that we’ve been in hibernation, what happened to the mental seal?”

“It didn’t have much of a history,” the representative of the European Fleet said. “Nearly fifty thousand people from national space forces voluntarily accepted faith in victory through the mental seal, and they formed a special class in the military known as the ‘Imprinted.’ Later on, about ten years after you went into hibernation, the use of the mental seal was found by the International Court of Justice to be a crime, an infringement on the freedom of thought, and the sole mental seal device—the one in the Faith Center—was put into storage. The manufacture and use of that type of equipment was placed under a worldwide ban nearly as strict as nuclear nonproliferation. And, in fact, the mental seal was even harder to obtain than nuclear weapons, primarily because of the computer it used. By the time you entered hibernation, computing technology had basically stopped moving forward. The computer used by the mental seal is still a supercomputer today and is inaccessible to ordinary individuals and organizations.”

Then Keiko Yamasuki revealed her first piece of substantive information: “What you don’t know is that there was more than one mental seal device. Five were made, each with its own accompanying supercomputer. The other four, Hines secretly handed over to people who had already accepted the seal, the ones you call the Imprinted. There were only around three thousand of them at that time, but they had already formed a tightly knit supranational organization within the militaries of individual countries. Hines did not tell me this. I learned it from the sophons. The Lord does not care about staunch triumphalism, so we didn’t take action.”

“And how is this significant?” the chair asked.

“Let’s hypothesize, shall we? The mental seal device is not a continuously operating piece of equipment. It’s only activated when necessary. Each device can be used for quite a long time, and if they’re properly maintained, it would be no problem for them to be used for half a century. If the four devices were used in turn, one run into the ground before the next one is started up, they would have been able to last for two centuries. Which means that the Imprinted may not have died off, but might have endured from generation to generation up to the present day. It’s a religion that believes in faith hardened by the mental seal, and its induction ceremony is the voluntary use of the mental seal on your own mind.”

The representative of the North American Fleet said, “Dr. Hines, you have lost your Wallfacer status and no longer have the legal power to deceive the world. Would you please tell the Joint Conference the truth: Is your wife, or, rather, your Wallbreaker, telling the truth?”

“It’s true,” Hines said, with a heavy nod.

“That’s a crime!” the representative of the Asian Fleet said.

“Perhaps it is,” Hines said, and nodded again. “But just like all of you, I don’t know whether the Imprinted have endured to the present day.”

“That’s not important,” the representative of the European Fleet said. “I think the next step should be to find the mental seal devices that are still around and seal them up or destroy them. As for the Imprinted, if they voluntarily accepted the mental seal, then that doesn’t appear to have violated the laws of the time. If they applied the mental seal to other volunteers, then they were under the dominance of the faith or belief that they had already received through technical means, so they should not be subjected to punishment. So the only thing we need to do is find the mental seals. The matter of the Imprinted might not need to be pursued at all.”

“That’s right. It’s not a bad thing for there to be a few people in the Solar Fleet who have absolute faith in victory. At least, it won’t cause any harm. It should remain a matter of personal privacy, and no one needs to know who they are. Although it’s hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily undergo the mental seal today, because humanity’s victory is so apparent,” the representative of the European Fleet said.

Keiko Yamasuki smiled derisively, revealing a seldom-seen expression that conjured up for the assembly an ancient picture of moonlight reflecting off the scales of a snake in the grass.

“You’re being naïve,” she said.

“You’re being naïve,” Hines echoed his wife, and deeply bowed his head.

She turned once again to her husband. “Hines, you’ve always hidden your thoughts from me. Even before you became a Wallfacer.”

“I was afraid you’d despise me,” he said, head still down.

“How many times did we look silently into each other’s eyes in the bamboo grove in the quiet of the Kyoto night? From your eyes I saw a Wallfacer’s loneliness, and I saw your desire to speak. How many times did you almost tell me the truth? You wanted to bury your head in my arms, put everything into words through your tears, and obtain total release. But the duty of a Wallfacer prevented you. Deceit, even toward the one you loved the most, was one of your responsibilities. So I could only look into your eyes in the hope of finding some trace of your true thoughts. You don’t know how many sleepless nights I spent waiting next to you as you slept soundly, waiting for you to talk in your sleep…. More often, I carefully observed you, studying your every move and capturing your every look, including the years you were first in hibernation. I recalled every detail about you, not out of longing but because I wanted to see your true thoughts. For a very long time, I failed. I knew you wore a mask, but I knew nothing of what was below the mask. The years passed, until finally, when you had just awakened and walked through the neural-network cloud to my side, and I looked into your eyes, I finally understood. I’d matured eight years, while you were still the you of eight years before. And so you were exposed.

“From that moment, I knew the real you: a deep-rooted defeatist and a staunch Escapist. Both before and after you became a Wallfacer, your sole goal was to achieve an exodus of humanity. Compared to the other Wallfacers, your genius lay not in strategic deception, but in concealing and disguising your true worldview.

“But I still didn’t know how you would achieve this goal through your research into the brain and thoughts. I was confused even when the mental seal came out, all the way up until the moment I entered hibernation, when I remembered their eyes. The eyes of those people who had been given the mental stamp… they were like yours. And all of a sudden I understood an expression of yours that I’d never been able to read before. That was when I broke through to your real strategy, but it was too late to say anything.”

The representative of the North American Fleet said, “Ms. Keiko Yamasuki, I don’t think there’s anything unusual here. We know the history of the mental seal. In the first group of fifty thousand volunteers, the procedure was carried out under the strictest of supervision.”

“That’s right,” she said. “But the supervision was only absolutely effective so far as the content of the faith proposition was concerned. The mental seal itself was much harder to supervise.”

“But the literature indicates that the supervision of the technical details of the mental seal was very strict as well, and it underwent a large number of tests before it was put into operation,” the chair said.

Yamasuki shook her head. “The mental seal is an incredibly complicated piece of equipment. Any supervision will have gaps. Specifically, one tiny minus sign out of hundreds of millions of lines of code. Even the sophons didn’t detect it.”

“A minus sign?”

“When the neural circuit model for judging a proposition to be true was discovered, Hines also discovered the model for judging a proposition to be false. That was what he needed. He concealed this discovery from everyone, including me. It wasn’t difficult, because the two models were highly similar. It manifested as the direction of flow of a key signal in the neuron transmission model, and in the mathematical model of the mental seal, it was represented by a sign. Positive for true, negative for false. Working in extreme secrecy, Hines manipulated this sign in the mental seal’s control software. In all five devices, the sign was negative.”

A deathly silence fell over the auditorium, a silence that had manifested only once before during a PDC Wallfacer Hearing two centuries ago, when Rey Diaz had shown off the “cradle” on his wrist and had told the assembly that the device receiving the anti-trigger signal was nearby.

“Dr. Hines, what have you done?” The chair turned toward him in anger.

Hines raised his head, and everyone could see that his pallid face had returned to normal. His voice was calm and even. “I admit that I underestimated the power of humanity. The progress that you’ve made is truly unbelievable. I have seen it, and I believe it, and I also believe that victory in the war belongs to humanity. This faith is as steadfast as if it had been imprinted by the mental stamp. The defeatism and Escapism of two centuries ago is truly ridiculous. However, Mr. Chair and representatives, I would like to say to the world that it is impossible to make me repent of what I have done.”

“You still think you shouldn’t repent?” the representative of the Asian Fleet demanded angrily.

Hines raised his head. “It’s not a question of ‘should.’ It’s an impossibility. I used the mental seal to imprint this proposition on myself: Everything about my Wallfacer plan is entirely correct.”

The assembly exchanged amazed glances, and Yamasuki even turned to her husband with the same expression.

Hines flashed her a small smile and nodded. “Yes, dear, if you’ll permit me to call you that. Only by doing that could I obtain the spiritual strength necessary to execute the plan. Yes, right now I believe all I’ve done is correct. I absolutely believe it, regardless of what reality says. I used the mental seal to turn myself into my own god, and God can’t repent.”

“In the not-too-distant future, when the Trisolaran invaders surrender to a more powerful human civilization, will you still think that?” the chair asked, with a look in his eyes that was more curious than amazed.

Hines nodded earnestly. “I’ll still think that I’m right. Everything about my Wallfacer plan is entirely correct. Of course, in the face of the facts, I’ll be put through a hell of a torture.” He turned to his wife. “Dear, you know I’ve already suffered that torture once, when I believed that water was toxic.”

“Let’s come back to the present day,” the representative of the North American Fleet said, interrupting everyone’s whispered discussions. “It’s just speculation that the Imprinted have endured. It’s been over one hundred seventy years, after all. If a class or organization with such an absolute faith in defeatism exists, why haven’t there been any signs of it?”

“There are two possibilities,” the representative of the European Fleet said. “One is that the mental seal vanished long ago, and this is just a false alarm….”

The representative of the Asian Fleet completed his thought. “But there’s another possibility: The most frightening thing about the situation is the fact that there aren’t any signs.”

Luo Ji and Shi Qiang walked through the underground city shaded by the tree-shaped structures as streams of cars flew through the gaps in the sky above them. Because the buildings were “leaves” hanging in the air, the ground was wide open, and the widely spaced trunks of the giant trees meant there was no sense of streets, just a rolling plaza dotted with tree trunks. The environment was wonderful: The wide swaths of grasses, forests of actual trees, and fresh air all made it look at first glance like beautiful countryside. Pedestrians passed through in shining clothes like glowing ants. Luo Ji was impressed to no end by the urban design that elevated modern noise and crowdedness into the air and let the ground return to nature. Here, there was no shadow of the war, only human comforts and pleasures.

Before they had gotten far, he heard a woman’s gentle voice. “Is that Mr. Luo Ji?” He looked around and found that the voice was coming from a billboard on the grass at the side of the road. An attractive woman dressed in a uniform was looking at him from the moving image.

“I am,” he said with a nod.

“Hello. I am Financial Counselor 8065 of the General Banking System. Welcome to our era. I will now inform you of your current financial situation.” As she spoke, a table of data appeared beside her. “These are your financial records for Year 9 of the Crisis Era, including deposits at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the China Construction Bank. There are investments in quoted securities as well, but those items may have been partially lost during the Great Ravine.”

“How does she know I’m here?” he whispered.

Shi Qiang said, “A chip’s been implanted in your left arm. Don’t worry, these days everyone’s got one. It’s like an ID card. All billboards can recognize you. Ads are all personalized now, so no matter where you go, everything on the billboards is showing just for you.”

Apparently hearing Shi Qiang’s words, the counselor said, “Sir, this isn’t an advertisement. It’s a service from the General Banking System.”

“How much do I have on deposit?” Luo Ji asked.

A highly complicated chart appeared next to the counselor. “This is the status of all your interest-bearing accounts since Year 9 of the Crisis Era. It’s fairly complicated, but you can access it in your personal information area from now on.” Another, simpler chart popped up. “This is your current financial situation in all of the various subsystems of the General Banking System.”

Luo Ji had no concept of what those figures meant, and asked blankly, “That’s… how much?”

“My boy, you’re a rich man!” Shi Qiang said, slapping him vigorously. “I may not have as much as you, but I’ve still got money. Heh, two centuries of interest—it’s a real long-term investment. Pauper to tycoon. I only regret not saving a little more.”

“Well… are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” Luo Ji asked, skeptically.

“Hmm?” The big eyes of the counselor looked at Luo Ji quizzically.

“It’s been more than one hundred eighty years. Wasn’t there any inflation? Did the finance system really just continue on smoothly?”

“You’re overthinking it,” Shi Qiang said, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Luo Ji knew then that tobacco was still around. But when Shi Qiang took one out, he was able to puff out clouds of smoke without lighting it.

The counselor replied, “There were many rounds of inflation during the Great Ravine, and the finance and credit systems came close to collapse. But according to current laws, interest on the deposits of hibernators is calculated according to a special formula that excludes the Great Ravine, and instead transfers the deposit amount over to the financial level of the post-Ravine period and resumes calculating interest from there.”

“Wow, that’s some preferential treatment!” Luo Ji exclaimed.

“My boy, these are good times,” Shi Qiang said, blowing out smoke. Then, raising his still-burning cigarette, he said, “Except the cigarettes are terrible.”

“Mr. Luo Ji, this is just an opportunity for us to get acquainted. When it’s convenient for you, we can discuss your personal financial arrangements and investment plan. If there’s nothing else, then I’ll say good-bye.” The counselor smiled and waved good-bye.

“I’ve got one question,” he said quickly. He didn’t know what to call young women in this era, and didn’t want to risk making a mistake by addressing her improperly. So he simply said, “I’m not too familiar with this era, so please forgive me if my question is offensive to you.”

The counselor smiled, and said, “Not a problem. Our responsibility is to help you get acquainted with this era as quickly as possible.”

“Are you a real person or a robot? Or are you a program?”

The question didn’t faze the counselor. She replied, “Of course I’m a real person. Could a computer handle services as complicated as this?”

After the woman on the billboard disappeared, Luo Ji said to Shi Qiang, “Da Shi, there are some things I find hard to understand. This is an age that has invented perpetual motion and can synthesize grain, but computer technology doesn’t seem to have advanced at all. Artificial intelligence can’t even handle personal finance.”

“What perpetual motion? You mean a perpetual motion machine?” Shi Qiang said.

“Yeah. It signifies unlimited energy.”

Shi Qiang looked around him. “Where?”

Luo Ji pointed up to the stream of traffic. “Those flying cars. Do they consume oil or batteries?”

Shi Qiang shook his head. “Neither. Earth’s oil was pumped dry. Those cars can fly forever without batteries and they’ll never run out of power. They’re pretty awesome. I’m thinking of getting one myself.”

“How can you be so unmoved by a technological miracle? Unlimited power for humanity. This is as big an event as when Pangu created the heavens and the Earth! Don’t you realize what a magnificent age this is?”

Shi Qiang tossed aside the cigarette butt; then, thinking better of it, reached down and retrieved it from the grass and threw it into a nearby garbage can. “I’m unmoved? You’re an intellectual whose imagination has gotten away from him. The technology is something we actually had in our era.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I don’t understand most tech, but I do know a bit about this one thing in particular because, as it happens, I once had occasion to use a police bug that had no batteries but never ran out of power. You know how it worked? It was powered remotely by microwaves. That’s what electricity is today, although the methods are a little different from our day.”

Luo Ji stopped and stared at Shi Qiang for a long while, then up at the flying cars in the air. He thought about the heating glass, and finally understood: It was just a wireless power supply. The power source emitted electricity in the form of microwaves or other EM radiation to form an electric field over a certain space, allowing any equipment within it to draw power through an antenna or resonant coil. Like Shi Qiang had said, even two centuries ago, this technology was entirely ordinary. The only reason it hadn’t been commonplace was because the power loss was too great. Only a small portion of the power emitted into a space could be used, but the majority was lost. In this era, however, mature controlled fusion technology meant that energy sources had been greatly enriched, to the point that losses from wireless power supplies were acceptable.

“And the synthetic grain? Can’t they synthesize grain?” Luo Ji asked.

“I’m not really sure about that. Grain is still grown from seed, it’s just that it’s grown in factories in those cultivation tank things. Crops are all genetically modified, and I’ve heard that wheat grows just an ear, with no stalk. And it grows pretty quickly because of the strong artificial sunlight, and other things like intense, growth-inducing radiation. A season of wheat and rice can be harvested in a week, so from the outside it looks just like it’s produced on a production line.”

“Oh—” Luo Ji punctuated his thought with an extended sigh as the gorgeous bubbles before his eyes burst to reveal the true face of the world, and he knew that in this great new era, sophons still floated everywhere and human science was still deadlocked. Existing technology could never cross the line set down by the sophons.

“And the spacecraft that can reach fifteen percent of light speed?”

“Well, that’s true. When those warships mobilize, it’s like a tiny sun in the sky. And their space weapons—the day before yesterday I saw a news report on TV about an Asian Fleet exercise. A laser cannon swept a target ship as big as a carrier. Half of that iron guy evaporated like a chunk of ice, and the other half exploded like fireworks in a shower of sparkling molten steel. And there are railguns that can fire a hundred iron spheres a second, each the size of a football, at tens of kilometers per second. In a few minutes they can flatten a mountain on Mars…. So even though there isn’t any of your perpetual motion, with these technologies, humanity is more than capable of putting down the Trisolaran Fleet.”

Shi Qiang handed Luo Ji a cigarette and taught him how to twist the filter tip to light it. They smoked and watched the snow-white swirls drift upward. “Anyway, my boy, these are good times.”

“Yes. Good times.”

Luo Ji had hardly finished speaking when Shi Qiang pounced on him and the two of them tumbled onto the grass a few meters away, hearing a loud noise at their heels as a flying car smashed into the spot where they had just been standing. Luo Ji felt the impact of the blast, and metal debris whizzed overhead, taking out half the billboard and sending the transparent glass tubes of the display crashing to the ground. While he was still on the ground with a dizzy head and a black eye, Shi Qiang leapt up and ran over to the flying car. Its disc-shaped body was entirely broken and deformed, but due to the lack of onboard fuel, it hadn’t caught fire. There was only the sound of sparks crackling in the twisted metal.

“There’s no one in the car,” Shi Qiang said to Luo Ji, who was limping over.

“Da Shi, you saved my life again,” Luo Ji said, leaning on his shoulder and massaging his injured leg.

“I don’t know how many times I’ll have to. You really ought to grow some sense, and a few more eyes.” He pointed to the totaled flying car. “Remind you of anything?”

Luo Ji thought about that occasion two centuries before and shivered involuntarily.

Lots of pedestrians crowded round, the scenes of terror on their clothing flashing as one. Two police cars landed, sirens blaring, and several officers got out to form a line around the broken car. Their uniforms flashed like the police light, drowning out the crowd’s clothing with their brightness. The one officer who came over to Shi Qiang and Luo Ji had clothing so bright they had to shut their eyes.

“You were right here when the car fell. You aren’t hurt, are you?” he said with concern. He evidently could see that the two of them were hibernators, because he made an effort to speak “ancient Chinese.”

Before Luo Ji could answer, Shi Qiang pulled the officer who had asked the question across the tape and out of the crowd. Once they had gotten away, the officer’s uniform stopped flashing.

“You need to check up on this. It might be an assassination attempt,” he said.

The officer laughed. “Really? It’s just a traffic accident.”

“We want to report it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. We’re reporting it.”

“You’re making a big deal out of it. You may have been startled, but it really was a traffic accident. However, according to the law, if you insist on reporting it…”

“We insist.”

The officer pressed a display area on his sleeve. It popped up an information window, which he looked over, and then said, “It’s been reported. For the next forty-eight hours, the police will track you, but this requires your agreement.”

“We agree. We might still be in danger.”

The officer laughed again. “It’s really a common occurrence.”

“A common occurrence? Let me ask you: On average, how many traffic accidents of this kind take place in this city every month?”

“There were six or seven all of last year!”

“I’ll have you know, officer: In our time, this city had more than that every day.”

“Cars all ran on the ground in your day. I can’t even imagine how dangerous that was. Well, you’re now in the police surveillance system. You’ll be notified of any progress on your case, but, please believe me, this is an ordinary traffic accident. Whether or not you filed a report, you would still receive compensation.”

After they left the police and the scene of the accident behind, Shi Qiang said to Luo Ji, “We’d better get back to my place. I don’t feel at ease when I’m outside. It’s not far. We probably should walk back. Taxis are unmanned, so it’s not safe.”

“But hasn’t the ETO been destroyed?” Luo Ji asked, looking about him. Off in the distance, the fallen car had been lifted up by a larger flying car. The crowd had dispersed, and the police car had left. A municipal works vehicle had landed, and several workmen had gotten out to gather scattered debris and begin repairs to the ground, which had been damaged by the crash. Following the small commotion, the city had returned to its normal, pleasing calm.

“Perhaps it has. But you’ve got to trust my intuition, my boy.”

“I’m no longer a Wallfacer.”

“That car didn’t seem to think so…. While we’re walking, pay attention to the cars above you.”

They kept to the “shade” of the treelike buildings as much as possible, and crossed any open spaces they reached at a run. Soon they arrived at a broad plaza, and Shi Qiang said, “My place is just opposite. It’s too far to go around, so we’ll have to make a run for it.”

“Isn’t that being a little paranoid? Maybe it was just a traffic accident.”

“That’s a ‘maybe,’ though. There’s nothing wrong with being careful…. See that sculpture in the center of the plaza? If anything happens, we can hide there.”

There was a square sandy area in the center of the plaza, like a miniature desert. The sculpture that Shi Qiang mentioned, located right in the center of the sand, was a group of black pillar-like objects, each two or three meters tall. From a distance, it looked like a grove of withered black trees.

Luo Ji ran across the plaza behind Shi Qiang. When they neared the sandy area, he heard Shi Qiang call, “Hurry. Get in there!” and he was dragged skidding across the sand and then headlong into the withered grove. Lying on the grove’s warm sand, he looked up between the black pillars at the sky and saw a flying car zoom down and buzz the grove before pulling up and accelerating away. The gust of wind it left in its wake blew a burst of sand into the air, which hit the pillars with a whoosh.

“Maybe it wasn’t headed for us.”

“Hmm. Maybe,” Shi Qiang said, as he sat up and dumped the sand out of his shoes.

“Will they laugh at us for this?”

“Don’t be afraid of that crap. Who’s going to recognize you? Besides, we’re from two centuries ago, so even if we’re entirely normal, people are still gonna laugh. My boy, nothing’s lost by being careful. What if the thing really was headed for you?”

Only then did Luo Ji turn his attention to the sculpture they were inside. He noticed that the pillars weren’t withered trees, but arms extending out of the desert. The skinny arms were just skin and bones, so at first glance they looked like dead tree trunks. The hands atop them made a variety of distorted gestures to the sky and seemed to express a kind of endless pain.

“What kind of sculpture is this?” Within this group of struggling arms, Luo Ji felt a chill, even though he was still sweating from the run. At the sculpture’s edge, he saw a solemn obelisk, on which was carved a line of large golden characters: make time for civilization, for civilization won’t make time.

“The Great Ravine Memorial,” Shi Qiang said. He did not seem interested in explaining further, but led Luo Ji out of the sculpture and across the other half of the plaza at a fast clip. “Okay, my boy. This tree’s where I live,” Shi Qiang said, pointing to the massive architectural tree in front of them.

Luo Ji looked around him as he walked. All of a sudden he heard the floor creak, and then the ground fell away under his feet and he plummeted downward. Shi Qiang grabbed hold of him when his chest was already at ground level and struggled to haul him up. After he had his footing, the two of them stared at the hole in the ground. It was the mouth of a sewer, and its cover had slid aside just as Luo Ji was about to step on it.

“My god! Are you all right, sir? That’s really dangerous!” said a voice issuing from a small billboard next to them. The billboard was attached to a small pavilion containing a machine selling drinks and such, and the speaker was a young man dressed in a blue uniform. His face was pale, and he seemed even more frightened than Luo Ji. “I’m with the Office of Evacuation and Drainage at the Third Municipal Administration Company. That cover opened automatically. It might be a software failure.”

“Does this happen often?” Shi Qiang asked.

“Oh, no, no. At least, this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.”

Shi Qiang picked up a small round stone from the grass next to the road and tossed it down the hole. It was quite some time before they heard any sound. “Damn. How deep is it?” he asked the man in the billboard.

“Around thirty meters. So, like I said, it’s really dangerous! I’ve inspected the surface drainage system. The sewers in your day were all pretty shallow. This accident has been recorded. You…” He glanced at his sleeve as he spoke. “Ah, Mr. Luo. You can go to the TMAC to be compensated.”

At last they reached the lobby leading to Shi Qiang’s tree, #1863. He said that he lived on branch 106, near the top, and advised Luo Ji to eat down below before going up. They went into a restaurant on one side of the lobby. Aside from being as clean as a 3D rendering, one characteristic of this age was even more obvious here than when he first saw it in the reawakening center: Dynamic information windows were everywhere, on the walls, tabletops, chairs, the floor and ceiling, and even on small objects like the glasses and napkin holders on the table. Everything had an interface and display with scrolling text or moving images. It was as if the entire restaurant was a giant computer display showing off a diverse and glittering splendor.

Not many people were dining. They chose a table by the window and sat down. Shi Qiang tapped the tabletop to activate an interface and then ordered a few dishes. “I can’t read the foreign writing, so I’ve only ordered Chinese ones.”

“The world seems like it’s built using bricks made from displays,” Luo Ji sighed.

“That’s right. Anything smooth can light up.” As Shi Qiang spoke he took out a pack of cigarettes and passed it to Luo Ji. “Look at this. Just a pack of cheap cigarettes.” As soon as Luo Ji held the pack in his hands, it started displaying an animated image of several miniature pictures that seemed like an options menu.

“This… it’s just a film that can display images,” Luo Ji said as he looked at the pack.

“A film? You can go online with this gadget!” Shi Qiang reached over and tapped the pack, and one of the miniature pictures sank in like a button. Then the advertisement he selected took over the entire pack.

In the picture, Luo Ji saw a family with one child sitting in a living room. The picture obviously came from the past, and a shrill voice sounded from the pack: “Mr. Luo, this is the era you used to live in. We know that in that age, owning a house in the capital was the grand dream of every person. Now, the Greenleaf Group can help you achieve that dream. As you can see, this is a wonderful age. Houses have turned into leaves on a tree, and the Greenleaf Group can provide you with every kind of leaf.” Here the picture showed a scene of leaves being added to a tree branch, and then a dazzling variety of hanging homes, one of which was even completely transparent, with furnishings inside that seemed suspended in midair. “Of course, we can also build you a traditional home on the surface to return you to the warmth of the Golden Age, and build you a warm… family…” A lawn and detached home, perhaps another old photo, appeared onscreen. The voice artist in the ad spoke in fluent “ancient Chinese,” but paused momentarily before the word “family,” then said it with particular emphasis. After all, it was something the speaker didn’t have, something that belonged to the past.

Shi Qiang took the cigarette pack out of Luo Ji’s hands, withdrew the last two cigarettes, passed one to him, and then crumpled the empty pack into a ball and tossed it onto the table. On the crumpled ball, the images still flashed, but the sound had disappeared. “Whenever I go anywhere, the first thing I do is to turn off every screen that’s around me. They’re so annoying,” Shi Qiang said, turning off the tabletop and floor displays with his hands and feet. “But the people here can’t be away from them.” He pointed around them. “There aren’t any computers anymore. Anyone who wants to go online or something can just tap any smooth surface. Clothing and shoes can be used as computers, too. Believe it or not, I’ve even seen toilet paper that you can go online with.”

Luo Ji pulled out a napkin. It was just ordinary, non-wired paper, but the paper box activated, and the pretty woman on it hawked bandages to Luo Ji, evidently aware of today’s experiences and guessing that his arms and legs might have gotten scraped up.

“God,” Luo Ji sighed, and stuffed the napkin back in the box.

“This is the information age. Our times were pretty damn primitive,” Shi Qiang said with a laugh.

While they waited for their food, Luo Ji asked Shi Qiang about his life. He felt a little guilty for only asking now, but looking back on how the day had gone, he had been something of a clockwork machine ticking relentlessly forward. Only now did he have a bit of free time.

“They had me retire. It’s not a bad deal,” Shi Qiang said simply.

“Was it the Public Security Bureau, or the unit you were at later? Are they still around?”

“They’re around. And the PSB is still the PSB. But even before hibernation I wasn’t connected to it anymore. The unit I was with later now belongs to the Asian Fleet. You know, the fleet is like a big country, so I’m a foreigner now.” Saying this, he exhaled a long cloud of smoke. He watched the cloud ascend, as if he was trying hard to unravel a mystery.

“Countries don’t have the significance they used to…. The world’s changed. It’s confusing. Fortunately, Da Shi, you and I are the kind of indifferent people who can live, and live well, no matter what happens.”

“Luo, my boy, to tell you the truth, I’m not as open-minded as you in certain things. I’m not as uninvolved. If I’d been through everything you have, I’d have fallen apart long ago.”

Luo Ji picked up the crumpled cigarette pack from the table, opening it to reveal the image that was still showing, with only a little discoloration. It was playing the Greenleaf Group advert. He said, “Whether as messiah, or as refugee, I can always use what resources I have to try and live a happy life. You might think I’m selfish, but to be honest, this is the only thing I respect about myself. Da Shi, let me say something about you. You look like a careless person, but deep in your bones you’re someone who prizes responsibility. Leave that responsibility completely behind now. Look at this age. Who needs us? Carpe diem is our most sacred duty.”

“Sure, but if I gave up all responsibility, you wouldn’t have much of an appetite at all right now.” Shi Qiang tossed his cigarette into the ashtray, activating a cigarette advert.

Luo Ji realized he had misspoken. “Oh, no, Da Shi, you’ve still got to carry out your responsibility to me. I’ll die if I leave you. Already today you’ve saved me one, two, three times. Or at least two and a half!”

“I can’t just leave someone to die, you mean? That’s the life I’ve got, a life of saving yours,” Shi Qiang said disapprovingly as he cast his eyes about him, probably looking for someplace selling cigarettes. Then he looked back, leaned in to Luo Ji, and whispered, “But you really were a messiah for a little while, my boy.”

“It’s impossible for anyone in that position to be of sound mind. Fortunately, I’m now back to normal.”

“How did you come up with the idea of putting a spell on that star?”

“I was seriously paranoid back then. I don’t want to think about it. Believe it or not, Da Shi, I’m certain that while I was asleep, they not only cured my illness, but also conducted psychiatric treatment. Really, I’m not the same person now that I was back then. How could I have been so stupid as to have that kind of idea? That sort of delusion?”

“What delusion? Let me hear it.”

“It’s difficult to explain briefly. Besides, there’s no point. In your work, you must have run into delusional patients, people who were always thinking someone wanted to kill them. Is there any point to listening to those people talk?” Luo Ji methodically tore the cigarette pack into pieces. This time the display was destroyed, but the scraps still flashed in a grotesquely colored heap.

“Okay. We’ll talk about something happy. My son is still alive.”

“What?” Luo Ji asked, practically jumping up in his surprise.

“I just learned about it two days ago. He looked me up. We haven’t met, just spoken by phone.”

“He’s not…”

“I don’t know how long he spent in prison, but afterward he went into hibernation. He said it was to come to the future to see me. Who knows where the kid got the money. Now he’s on the surface, and he’s arranged to come over tomorrow.”

Luo Ji stood up excitedly, sweeping flashing scraps of paper to the floor. “Oh, Da Shi, that’s just… We’ve got to drink to that.”

“A drink, then. The alcohol in this age tastes awful, but it’s still the same strength.”

Then the food came. Luo Ji didn’t recognize anything, and Shi Qiang said, “Nothing’s good. There are restaurants supplied by traditional farms, but those are all high-end places. We’ll eat at one when Xiaoming comes.”

But Luo Ji’s attention had shifted to the server. Her face and body were unrealistically beautiful, and he saw that the other servers sliding between the tables had the same angelic appearance.

“Hey, don’t stare like an idiot. They’re fake,” Shi Qiang said, without looking up.

“Robots?” Luo Ji asked. At last the future had something he had seen in one of his childhood science fiction stories.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

Shi Qiang pointed to a robot server and said, “This silly girl only knows how to serve food. They travel fixed paths. How stupid is that? Once I saw a table that had been temporarily moved, but they kept bringing dishes to the original location, so everything crashed to the ground.”

When the robot server had laid out the food, it smiled sweetly and wished them a good meal. Its voice did not sound robotic, but was incredibly lovely. Then, it extended a slender hand and picked up the dinner knife in front of Shi Qiang….

Like lightning, Shi Qiang’s eyes shot from the knife in the server’s hands to Luo Ji across the table from him. He leapt up, vaulted the table, and pulled Luo Ji violently off his chair to the floor. Almost simultaneously, the robot stabbed the knife right where Luo Ji’s heart would have been. The knife went through the back of the chair, activating its information interface. The robot retracted the knife and stood beside the table with a serving tray in its other hand, still with the sweet smile on its unrealistically beautiful face. Panicked, Luo Ji struggled to stand up, then hid behind Shi Qiang. But Shi Qiang just waved his hand, saying, “Don’t worry. It’s not that agile.”

The robot stood motionless, holding the knife and smiling, and once again wished them a good meal in its gentle voice.

The startled diners had clustered around them looking at the scene in amazement. Then the duty manager came rushing over. When she heard Shi Qiang accusing the restaurant’s robot of attempted murder, she shook her head. “Sir, that’s impossible! Their eyes don’t see people. They only see the sensors on the tables and chairs!”

“I’ll testify that it picked up a dinner knife and tried to kill that man. We saw it with our own eyes!” one man said in a loud voice. The other onlookers added their proof.

While the duty manager was considering how to rebut this, the robot stabbed the knife at the chair a second time, putting it precisely through the hole punctured the first time and eliciting a few screams.

“Have a pleasant meal,” it said with a smile.

A number of other people arrived, including the restaurant’s engineer. When he pressed the back of the robot’s head, the smile left her face and she said, “Forced shutdown. Breakpoint data backed up.” Then she froze in place.

“It’s probably a software failure,” the engineer said, wiping away cold sweat.

“Does this happen often?” Shi Qiang said with a sarcastic smile.

“No, no. I swear, I’ve never even heard of anything like this,” the engineer said, then directed two assistants to haul the robot out.

The duty manager energetically explained to the customers that until the cause of the failure was identified, the restaurant would use real human servers, but about half of the customers left anyway.

“You both reacted pretty fast,” one bystander said admiringly.

“Hibernators. In their era, people had experience with this kind of sudden incident,” someone else said. His clothing displayed a swordsman.

The duty manager said to Luo Ji and Shi Qiang, “Sirs, this was truly… Anyway, I guarantee that you’ll receive compensation.”

“Good. Now let’s eat.” Shi Qiang beckoned Luo Ji to retake his seat, and a human server brought over new dishes to replace those that had spilled.

Sitting there, his shock not yet abated, Luo Ji felt the uncomfortable hole in the chair back. “Da Shi, it seems the whole world is against me. I used to have a favorable impression of it.”

Shi Qiang considered one of the dishes in front of him, then said, “I’ve got some ideas about this.” He looked up and poured Luo Ji a drink. “Ignore it for now. I’ll tell you in detail later.”

“Here: to carpe diem, to living one day at a time. One hour at a time, even,” Luo Ji said as he raised his glass. “Here’s to your still-living son.”

“Are you really okay?” Shi Qiang said, shooting him a smile.

“I’ve been a messiah. Nothing scares me.” He shrugged, then drained his glass. The taste of the alcohol made him wince. “This is like rocket fuel.”

“You kill me, my boy. That attitude of yours has always killed me,” Shi Qiang said, sticking up a thumb.

The leaf where Shi Qiang lived was at the top of the tree. It was a spacious house, and was fully equipped with facilities for comfortable living. It had a gym, and even an indoor garden with a fountain.

He said, “The fleet gave me these temporary living quarters. They said I can buy a better leaf with my retirement money.”

“Does everyone have so much space to live in these days?”

“Probably. This kind of structure is the best use of space. A big leaf is equivalent to an entire building from our era. But mainly it’s because there are fewer people. Far fewer, ever since the Great Ravine.”

“But Da Shi, your country is in space.”

“I won’t be going there. I’m already retired, you know.”

Luo Ji’s eyes felt more comfortable here, largely because most of the information windows in Shi Qiang’s house were closed, although there were scattered flashes in the walls and on the floor. Shi Qiang tapped an interface on the floor with his foot, turning one wall entirely transparent and unfurling the night city before their eyes. It was a dazzling, giant forest of Christmas trees chained together by the lights of the traffic.

Luo Ji went over to the sofa, which was hard as marble to the touch. “Is this for sitting?” he asked. At Shi Qiang’s affirmative, he sat gingerly down on it, only to feel like he was sinking into soft clay. The sofa’s cushions and backrest adapted to a person’s body, forming a mold completely in sync with their body shape, keeping pressure to a minimum.

His vision from the slab of iron ore in the Meditation Room of the UN Building two centuries ago had become reality.

“Do you have any sleeping pills?” he asked. Now that he was in a space that felt safe, exhaustion hit him.

“No, but you can buy them here,” Shi Qiang said, and operated the wall again. “Here. Nonprescription sleeping pills. This one, River of Dreams.”

Although Luo Ji thought he would witness some sort of high-tech hardware-over-the-network transmission, the reality was much simpler than he imagined. In a few minutes, a small, flying delivery van pulled up outside the transparent wall and delivered the medicine through the portal that had just opened up with a slender mechanical arm. Luo Ji took the medicine from Shi Qiang. It was a traditional box without any active display. The instructions said to take one pill, so he opened the pack, took one out, and reached out for the glass of water on the coffee table.

“Wait a moment,” Shi Qiang said, taking the box out of Luo Ji’s hands and reading it carefully before returning it to him. “What does this say? The one I asked for was called River of Dreams.”

Luo Ji saw a long string of complicated English-language drug names. “I don’t recognize it. But it’s certainly not River of Dreams.”

Shi Qiang activated a window on the coffee table and began looking for a medical consult. With Luo Ji’s help, they found one, a white-clothed consulting physician who examined the box, then looked from the box to Shi Qiang with a peculiar expression.

“Where did this come from?” the doctor asked warily.

“I bought it. Right here.”

“Impossible. This is a prescription drug. It’s only for use in the hibernation center.”

“What’s it got to do with hibernation?”

“It’s short-term hibernation medicine. It can make someone hibernate for ten days to a year.”

“You just swallow it?”

“No. It requires a whole set of external systems to sustain internal bodily circulatory functions before short-term hibernation can be achieved.”

“And if you take it without them?”

“Then you’d die for sure. But you’d die comfortably. So it’s often used for suicide.”

Shi Qiang closed the window and tossed the box onto the table. He looked straight at Luo Ji for a while, then said, “Damn it.”

“Damn it,” Luo Ji said, pitching back onto the sofa. Then he was subjected to the final attempt on his life that day.

When his head touched back against the sofa, the hard headrest quickly adapted to the back of his head and began to form an impression of its shape. But the process didn’t stop there. His head and neck continued to sink, until the headrest on either side formed a pair of tentacles that squeezed tight around his neck. He had no time to cry out, but could only open his mouth and eyes and scramble with his hands.

Shi Qiang bounded into the kitchen and returned with a knife, which he used to hack at the tentacles a few times, then resorted to his own hands to pry them from Luo Ji’s neck. When Luo Ji left the sofa and pitched forward onto the floor, the sofa’s surface lit up and displayed a large string of error messages.

“How many times have I saved your life today, my boy?” Shi Qiang asked, rubbing his hands.

“This is… the… sixth,” Luo Ji said, through gasps. He vomited onto the floor. When he finished, he leaned back weakly against the sofa, but then pulled back immediately, as if shocked. He didn’t know where to put his hands. “How long will it be before I can be as agile as you and save my own life?”

“Probably never,” Shi Qiang said. A vacuum cleaner–like machine glided over to clean up the vomit on the floor.

“Then I’m dead meat. This is a twisted world.”

“It’s not that bad. I’ve got an idea about the whole situation, at least. The first attempt on your life failed, and then there were five more attempts. This is stupidity, not professional behavior. Something somewhere must have gone wrong…. Let’s contact the police immediately. We can’t wait for them to crack the case.”

“Who made a mistake, and where? Da Shi, it’s been two centuries. Don’t just apply your mind-set from our time.”

“It’s the same thing, my boy. Certain things are the same no matter the age. As for whose mistake it is, I really don’t know. I even wonder whether such a ‘who’ actually exists….”

The doorbell rang. Shi Qiang opened it to see several people standing outside. They wore civilian clothes, but Shi Qiang identified them before the leader had even flashed his ID.

“Wow. So there are actual footbeats in this society. Come on in, officers.”

Three of them entered the house, leaving two others outside to guard the door. The officer in charge, who looked about thirty years old, surveyed the room. Like Shi Qiang and Luo Ji, he had all the displays on his clothes turned off, which put them at ease, and he spoke a pure, fluent “ancient Chinese” without any English words.

“I’m Officer Guo Zhengming with the PSB’s Digital Reality Department. I apologize for our tardy arrival. That was negligent. The last time there was a case like this was half a century ago.” He bowed to Shi Qiang. “I pay my respects to my senior officer. Aptitude like yours is very rare in the force these days.”

As Officer Guo was speaking, Luo Ji and Shi Qiang noticed that all of the information windows in the house had switched off. The leaf had evidently been cut off from the external hyper-information world. The other two officers were hard at work. They were holding something he hadn’t seen in ages: a notebook computer. But the computer was as thin as a sheet of paper.

“They’re installing a firewall for this leaf,” Officer Guo explained. “Rest assured, you’re safe now. And I’ll guarantee that you’ll receive compensation from the municipal PSB system.”

“Today,” Shi Qiang said, counting off on his fingers, “we’ve been guaranteed compensation four times.”

“I know. And lots of people in lots of departments have lost their jobs over this. I beg for your cooperation, so that I don’t join them. Thanks in advance,” he said, bowing to them.

Shi Qiang said, “I understand that. I’ve been in that position. Do you need us to brief you on the situation?”

“No. We’ve actually been tracking you all along. It’s just negligence.”

“Can you tell us what’s happening?”

“Killer 5.2.”

“What?”

“It’s a network virus. The ETO first released it about a century into the Crisis Era, and then there were lots of subsequent variants and upgrades. It’s a murder virus. First it establishes the identity of the target by a variety of methods including the chip everyone has implanted in their body. When it locates the target, the Killer virus manipulates every possible piece of external hardware to carry out the murder. Its concrete manifestation is what you experienced today. It seems like everything in the world wants to kill you. So, at the time, people called it a ‘modern hex.’ For a while, the Killer software was even commercialized and sold on the online black market. You entered the personal ID number of your target and uploaded the virus. Then, even if that person was able to evade death, they would still have a hard time living in society.”

“The industry developed as far as that? Incredible!” Shi Qiang exclaimed.

“Software from a century ago can still run today?” Luo Ji asked incredulously.

“Sure it can. Computer technology stopped advancing long ago. When the Killer virus first appeared, it killed quite a few people, including a head of state, but eventually it was controlled by firewalls and antivirus software and gradually faded away. This version of Killer is programed specifically to attack Dr. Luo, but because the target was in hibernation, it never had the opportunity to take any concrete action. It stayed dormant and wasn’t detected or recorded by the information security system. It was only when Dr. Luo emerged into the world today that Killer 5.2 activated itself and carried out its mission. It’s just that its creators were wiped out a century ago.”

“They were still trying to kill me a century ago?” Luo Ji said. A mood he thought was gone forever returned, and he struggled to dispel it again.

“Yes. The key thing about this version of the Killer virus is that it was programmed specifically for you. It was never activated, which is why it was still lurking in wait today.”

“Then what are we supposed to do now?” Shi Qiang asked.

“The entire system will be cleaned of Killer 5.2, but that will take some time. Before it’s completed, you have two choices. First, Dr. Luo can be given a temporary false identity, but this will not totally guarantee his safety and might lead to other more serious consequences. Due to the technological sophistication of the ETO software, Killer 5.2 might have already recorded other characteristics of its target. In one case that caused a sensation a century ago, when a protected individual was given a false identity, Killer used fuzzy recognition to simultaneously kill over a hundred people, target included. The other choice, and my personal recommendation, is for you to live up on the surface for a while. Killer 5.2 won’t have any hardware to manipulate up there.”

Shi Qiang said, “I agree. Even without this situation, I’ve been wanting to go up to the surface.”

“What’s on the surface?” Luo Ji asked.

Shi Qiang explained, “Most of the reawakened hibernators live on the surface. It’s hard for them to adapt down here.”

“That’s right. So you ought to spend at least some time up there,” Officer Guo said. “Many aspects of modern society—politics, economics, culture, lifestyle, and relations between the sexes—have changed greatly in two centuries, so it takes some time for us to adapt.”

“But you’ve adapted well enough,” Shi Qiang said, looking him over. He and Luo Ji had both noticed that the officer had said “us.”

“I went into hibernation because of leukemia, and I was quite young when I reawakened, just thirteen years old,” Guo Zhengming said with a laugh. “But people still don’t understand the difficulties I’ve had. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone for psychological treatment.”

“Are there many other hibernators like you who have totally adapted to modern life?” Luo Ji asked.

“Lots. But you can still live quite well on the surface.”

“Special Contingent of Future Reinforcements commander Zhang Beihai reporting,” Zhang Beihai said, and saluted.

Behind the commander of the Asian Fleet flowed the brilliant Milky Way. Fleet Command was in orbit around Jupiter and rotated continuously to produce artificial gravity. Zhang Beihai noticed that the room lights were relatively dim, and the wide windows seemed intended to integrate the interior environment with space outside as closely as possible.

The commander saluted back. “Greetings, predecessor.” He looked quite young, his Asian features illuminated by the glow of his epaulets and cap insignia. When he was issued a uniform on the sixth day after he reawakened, Zhang Beihai had noticed the familiar emblem of the space force: a silver star shining rays in four directions, the rays in the shape of sword. Two centuries had passed, and while the insignia had not changed much, the fleet had become an independent country, with a president as its supreme leader. The commander was just in charge of the military.

Zhang Beihai said, “That’s too much, Commander. We’re all just new recruits now, who have to learn everything.”

The commander smiled and shook his head. “You can’t say that. You’ve already learned everything there is to know here. And the knowledge you’ve got, we’ll never be able to learn. That’s why we awakened you now.”

“Commander Chang Weisi of the Chinese Space Force asked me to convey his greetings.”

Zhang Beihai’s words touched something in the commander’s heart. He turned and looked out through the window at the river of stars, like the upper reaches of a long river. “He was an exceptional general, one of the founders of the Asian Fleet. Today’s space strategy still uses the framework he established two centuries ago. I wish that he could have seen this day.”

“Today’s achievements are far beyond anything he ever dreamed.”

“But all of this began in his… in your time.”

Then Jupiter appeared, at first as a sliver of an arc that quickly took over the entire field of view in the window, bathing the office in its orange light. The dreamlike patterns of hydrogen and helium in its vast gaseous ocean were on a breathtaking scale and fascinating in their detail. The Great Red Spot moved into view. The superstorm that could hold two Earths looked like the giant, pupilless eye of this blurry world. The three fleets had put their primary base on Jupiter because its hydrogen-helium ocean held an inexhaustible supply of fusion fuel.

Zhang Beihai was transfixed by the Jovian scene. Countless times he had dreamed of the new domain that now presented itself before his eyes. He waited until Jupiter had moved out of the window before speaking. “Commander, the great achievements of this age are what make our mission unnecessary.”

The commander turned to him and said, “No, that’s not right. The Future Reinforcement Plan was a farsighted initiative. During the Great Ravine, when the space armed forces were on the brink of collapse, the special reinforcement contingents played a major role in stabilizing the overall situation.”

“But our contingent arrived too late to be of assistance.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s how things are,” the commander said. The lines on his face turned gentle. “After you left, they sent more special reinforcement contingents to the future, and the last to be sent out were the first to be reawakened.”

“That’s understandable, Commander, since their knowledge framework was closer to that era’s.”

“Right. Eventually your contingent was the only one left in hibernation. The Great Ravine ended and the world entered a period of rapid development. Defeatism had practically vanished, so there was no need to reawaken you. At the time, the fleet made the decision to keep you until the Doomsday Battle.”

“Commander, this was actually what we all hoped for,” Zhang Beihai said excitedly.

“And it’s the highest honor of all space servicemen. They were well aware of this when they made that decision. But present circumstances are totally different, as you of course know.” The commander pointed at the river of stars behind him. “The Doomsday Battle might never even take place.”

“That’s excellent, Commander. My small regret as a soldier counts for nothing compared with the great victory humanity is about to welcome. I just hope you’ll be able to fulfill our one request: to let us join the fleet at the lowest level, as ordinary soldiers, to do whatever work we can.”

The commander shook his head. “The length of service for all special contingent personnel will resume from the date of reawakening, and ranks will be elevated one or two levels.”

“Commander, that shouldn’t be. We don’t want to spend our remaining years in an office. We want to go to the fleet’s front lines. Two centuries ago, the space force was our dream. Without it, our lives have no meaning. But even at our present ranks, we are unqualified for work in the fleet.”

“I never said I wanted you to leave the fleet. Precisely the opposite. You will all be working in the fleet to complete a highly important mission.”

“Thank you, Commander. But what mission can there be for us today?”

The commander did not answer him. Instead, as if it had only just occurred to him, he said, “Are you okay with talking while standing like this?” The commander’s office had no chairs, and the table had been designed to be high enough to work at while standing. Fleet Command’s rotation produced one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which meant there wasn’t much difference between standing and sitting.

Zhang Beihai smiled and nodded. “Not a problem. I spent a year in space.”

“And the language? Do you have any communication problems in the fleet?”

The commander was speaking standard Chinese, but the three fleets had formed a language of their own, similar to the modern Chinese and modern English on Earth, but with the two languages blended more closely. Chinese and English words each accounted for half of the vocabulary.

“At first—mostly because I couldn’t distinguish between Chinese and English vocabulary—but I was able to understand it pretty quickly. Speaking is more difficult.”

“That doesn’t matter. If you just use English or Chinese when you speak, we’ll be able to understand you. So that means that the General Staff Department has fully briefed you?”

“That’s right. In the first few days on base, they gave us a comprehensive introduction to everything.”

“Then you must be aware of the mental seal.”

“That’s right.”

“Recent investigations still haven’t discovered any signs of the Imprinted. What’s your read?”

“I believe that one possibility is that the Imprinted have disappeared. Another possibility is that they’ve been deeply hidden. If a person has an ordinary defeatist mentality, they will speak of it to others. But a one-hundred-percent unshakeable technologically hardened faith will inevitably produce a corresponding sense of mission. Defeatism and Escapism are intimately related, and if the Imprinted really exist, then their ultimate mission is bound to be accomplishing an escape into the universe. But to achieve this goal, they have to deeply conceal their true thoughts.”

The commander nodded with approval. “An excellent analysis. This is the opinion of General Staff.”

“Commander, the second alternative is very dangerous.”

“Yes, it is, particularly with the Trisolaran probe so close to the Solar System. The fleet is divided by command system classifications into two major groups. The first, a distributed command system, is a traditional structure akin to the naval craft you once commanded. The captain’s orders are carried out by various operating personnel. The second is a centralized command system. The captain’s orders are carried out automatically by the ship’s computer. The most recently built advanced space warships, as well as those currently under construction, fall into this category. It is mainly against this category of warship that the mental seal poses a threat, because the captain wields enormous power in the command system. He can unilaterally control when the ship leaves and returns to port, its speed and course, and even a large portion of its weapons systems. Under this command system, you could call the ship an extension of the captain’s body. Right now, 179 of the 695 stellar-class warships in the fleet have a centralized command system. The commanding officers on board these ships will be the focus of review. Originally, all the warships involved in the review process were supposed to be docked and sealed up, but present circumstances no longer permit this, because the three fleets are preparing to intercept the Trisolaran probe when it arrives. This will be the first actual engagement between the Space Fleet and the Trisolaran invaders, so all warships must be on standby.”

“So, Commander, the command authority for centrally commanded warships must be turned over to reliable individuals,” Zhang Beihai said. He had been speculating about his mission but had not guessed it yet.

“Who is reliable?” the commander asked. “We don’t know the extent of the mental seal, and we have no information about the Imprinted. In these circumstances, no one can be trusted, not even me.”

The sun appeared outside the window. Although its light was far weaker than on Earth from this distance, the commander’s body was hidden in a glare when the disc passed behind him, leaving only his voice: “But you are all reliable. When you entered hibernation, the mental seal didn’t exist. And one of the most important factors for your selection two centuries ago was your loyalty and faith. You are the only trustworthy group available to us in the fleet right now. So the fleet has decided to put the authority of the centralized command system into your hands, to appoint you as acting captains, through whom every order issued by the former captains must pass before being issued to the command system.”

Two tiny suns ignited in Zhang Beihai’s eyes. He said, “Commander, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Saying no to an order is not our tradition.”

The commander’s use of “our” and “tradition” warmed Zhang Beihai, letting him know that the bloodline of the military of two centuries ago still endured in the space fleet of today.

“Commander, we’re from two centuries ago, after all. In the context of the navy of our time, it’s like using an official in the Beiyang Fleet to command a twenty-first century destroyer.”

“Do you think that the Qing admirals Deng Shichang and Liu Buchan[1] would really be unable to command your destroyers? They were educated, and their English was good. They would have learned. Today, captaining a space warship doesn’t involve technical details. Captains issue general commands, but the warship is a black box to them. Besides, the warships will be docked at base while you serve as acting captain. They won’t be navigating. Your duty will be to convey the former captains’ commands to the control system once you’ve determined whether or not the commands are normal. You’ll be able to pick that up as you learn.”

“We’ll have too much power in our hands. You could let the former captains retain a portion of that power, and we could supervise their orders.”

“If you think about it carefully, you’ll realize that won’t work. If the Imprinted really do occupy key battle positions, they’ll take any necessary measures to evade your supervision, including assassinating their supervisors. A centrally supervised ship on standby requires just three commands to take off, after which it’s too late to do anything. The system must only acknowledge commands from the acting captain.”

As the personnel craft flew past the Asian Fleet’s Jupiter base, Zhang Beihai felt he was flying over a range of towering mountains, except each was a docked warship. The naval base had entered nightside orbit around Jupiter, and the steel mountain clusters slept silently under the surface phosphorescence and the silvery moonlight from Europa overhead. A moment later, a ball of white light rose from the edge of the mountain range, lighting the moored ships in perfect clarity in an instant. To Zhang Beihai, it looked like a sunrise over the mountains, casting a moving shadow of the fleet upon the turbulent Jovian atmosphere down below. When a second light rose over the other side of the fleet, he realized it wasn’t the sun, but two warships that were entering the dock and turning their fusion engines toward the base to decelerate.

The fleet’s chief of staff, who was delivering Zhang Beihai to his new post, told him that more than four hundred warships, representing two-thirds of the Asian Fleet, were now moored at the base. The remainder of the fleet’s ships now cruising the Solar System and beyond were also expected to return to port.

Zhang Beihai had to tear himself away from the grand spectacle of the fleet and return to reality. “Sir, won’t recalling all of the ships provoke any Imprinted there are to immediate action?”

“Hmm. No, the order recalling the ships was given for another reason—​a real one, not an excuse, although it does sound a little ridiculous. You haven’t been watching the news lately, I take it?”

“No. I’ve been reading materials on Natural Selection.”

“Don’t worry about that. You’ve got a good grasp of things, judging from the last phase of basic training. Your task now is to familiarize yourself with the systems to the point that everything can proceed in an orderly manner once you go aboard. It’s not as hard as you think…. Competition among the three fleets for the task of intercepting the Trisolaran probe has turned into bickering, but a preliminary agreement was hammered out by the Joint Conference yesterday: Each fleet’s ships will assemble back at base. A special committee will supervise the execution of the maneuver to avoid any ships being dispatched without authorization to carry out the interception.”

“Why has it come to that? Any technological information and intelligence obtained from a successful interception would be shared.”

“Yes, but it’s a question of honor. There’s considerable political capital to be gained by the fleet that makes first contact with Trisolaris. Why did I call it ridiculous? Because it’s cheap and absolutely risk-free. The worst thing that could happen is if the probe self-destructs during the interception process, so everyone’s gunning for it. If it was a battle with the main Trisolaran Fleet, then all sides would try to preserve their strength. Politics today isn’t all that different from your time…. Look, there’s Natural Selection.”

As the personnel craft approached Natural Selection and the sheer bulk of the iron mountain gradually became clear, the image of Tang floated up in Zhang Beihai’s mind. Natural Selection, comprised of a disc-shaped body and a separate cylindrical engine, looked entirely different from that seagoing aircraft carrier of two centuries before. When Tang met its untimely end, it was like he had lost his spiritual home, even though he had never moved in. Now, this giant spaceship gave him a new feeling of home. On Natural Selection’s stalwart hull, his spirit found a place to live after two centuries of wandering, like a child enfolded in the embrace of some enormous power.

Natural Selection was the flagship of the third squadron of the Asian Fleet, and in gross tonnage and performance it was second to none. Possessing the latest non-media fusion propulsion system, at full thrust it could accelerate to 15 percent of the speed of light, and its impeccable internal ecological systems could sustain a long-term voyage. In fact, an experimental version of this system was first put into use on the moon seventy-five years ago and had not yet exhibited any major defects or faults. Natural Selection’s weapons were the most powerful in the fleet, too. Its gamma-ray lasers, railguns, high-energy particle beams, and stellar torpedoes made up a four-way weapons system that could obliterate the surface of an Earth-sized planet.

Natural Selection now occupied Zhang Beihai’s entire field of view so that only part of it was visible from the personnel craft. He noticed that the outer walls of the ship were mirror-smooth, a broad mirror that perfectly reflected the atmospheric ocean of Jupiter, as well as the gradual approach of the personnel craft.

An oval opening appeared in the outer wall of the ship. The craft flew straight inside and came to a halt. The chief of staff opened the cabin door and exited first. Although Zhang Beihai was slightly nervous because he hadn’t seen the craft pass through an air lock, he immediately sensed the influx of fresh air from the outside. The technology to maintain a pressurized compartment opening directly into space without allowing air to leak out was not something he had seen before.

Zhang Beihai and the chief of staff were inside a giant sphere the diameter of a soccer field. Spaceship compartments typically adopted a spherical structure, because during acceleration, deceleration, or change of direction, any point on the sphere could serve as a floor or ceiling, and during weightlessness, the center of the sphere would be the crew’s main activity space. In Zhang Beihai’s time, cabins had been modeled on the structure of Earth buildings, so he was not at all used to this entirely new cabin structure. The chief of staff told him that this was the fighter hangar, but since there were no fighters right now, a formation of Natural Selection’s two thousand officers and soldiers was floating in the center of the sphere.

Before Zhang Beihai entered hibernation, national space forces had begun conducting drills in the weightlessness of space. They had developed specifications and drill books as a result, but implementation had been particularly difficult. Personnel could use their space suits’ microthrusters to move about outside the cabin, but since they lacked propulsion equipment inside, they had to maneuver by pushing against bulkheads and paddling the air. Under such conditions, it was very difficult to form neat lines. Now, he was astonished at the sight of more than two thousand people floating in space in such a neat formation without any supports. These days, personnel moved through weightless cabins primarily by using magnetic belts, fabricated from superconductors and containing a circuit that generated a magnetic field that interacted with the magnetic field that was always present in the cabins and corridors of the spacecraft. With a tiny controller in hand, they could move freely inside the ship. Zhang Beihai was now putting on such a belt, but it would require skill to master.

He watched the formation of space soldiers, a generation that had grown up in the fleet. Their tall, slender bodies had none of the clumsy sturdiness of people growing up under Earth’s gravity, but possessed the light agility of spacers. Three officers were in front of the formation, and his gaze eventually rested on the young woman in the center with four glittering stars on her shoulder—Natural Selection’s captain, no doubt. A typical representative of new space humanity, taller even than Zhang Beihai, who was himself quite tall. She drifted easily over from the formation, her slender body floating through space like an elegant musical note. When she reached Zhang Beihai and the chief of staff she stopped, and the hair that had been floating behind her rippled around the fair skin of her neck. Her eyes were full of sunshine and vitality, and Zhang Beihai immediately trusted her, because the Imprinted would never wear such an expression.

“Dongfang Yanxu, captain of Natural Selection,” she said, saluting him. A note of playful challenge appeared in her eyes. “On behalf of the entire crew, I offer a gift to my forbear.” She extended her hand, and he saw that, although the object she held in it had changed quite a bit, it was still recognizably a pistol. “If you really find that I have defeatist thinking and Escapist goals, you may use this to kill me.”

Getting to the surface was easy. The trunk of every giant tree building was a pillar supporting the dome of the underground city, and from the trunk you could take an elevator directly to the surface, passing through more than three hundred meters of rock. When Luo Ji and Shi Qiang exited the elevator, they felt nostalgic, a feeling prompted by one thing: The walls and floor of the exit hall did not have activated display windows. Information was displayed on actual display screens that hung from the ceiling. It looked like an old subway station, and most of the handful of people in it wore clothes that didn’t flash.

When they passed through the hall air lock, they were met by a hot wind blowing dusty air.

“There’s my boy!” Shi Qiang shouted, pointing at a man bounding up the steps. From this distance, Luo Ji could make out only that the man was in his forties, so he was a little surprised at Shi Qiang’s certainty. As Shi Qiang hurried down the stairs to welcome his son, Luo Ji turned his eyes from the reunion to the surface world before him.

The sky was yellow. He now realized why the image of the sky showing in the underground city was shot from a height of ten thousand meters, because, from the ground, the sun was only visible as a hazy outline. Sand covered everything on the ground, and cars passed by on the streets dragging dusty tails. It was another sight from the past for Luo Ji: cars that traveled on the ground. They didn’t seem to run on gasoline. They came in all kinds of weird shapes, and some were new and some old, but they all shared one feature: Every car had a flat sheet installed on the roof, like an awning. Across the street, he saw an old-era building with sand-covered windowsills and windows that were either boarded up or glassless black holes. However, people were evidently living in some of the rooms, because he saw clothing hanging outside to dry and even some potted flowers on the windowsills. Though the airborne sand and dust kept visibility low, he soon located a couple of familiar building outlines farther away and knew for certain that he was in the same city where he had spent half his life two centuries ago.

He walked down the steps to the two men who were hugging and pounding each other in their excitement. Seeing the middle-aged man up close, he knew that Shi Qiang hadn’t made a mistake.

“Dad, when you figure it, I’m only five years younger than you,” Shi Xiaoming said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Not bad, kiddo. I was afraid some damn white-bearded old man would be calling me Dad,” Shi Qiang said with a chuckle. Then he introduced Luo Ji to his son.

“Oh, Dr. Luo. You used to be world famous,” Shi Xiaoming said, as he looked Luo Ji up and down.

The three of them headed toward Shi Xiaoming’s car, which was parked at the side of the road. Before they got in, Luo Ji asked about the thing on the roof.

“It’s an antenna. Up on the surface, we have to use whatever electricity leaks through from the underground city, so the antennas are a little larger, and the power is only enough to run the cars on the ground. They can’t fly.”

The car wasn’t fast, due either to the power or the sand on the road. Luo Ji looked out the window at the sandy city. He had a belly full of questions, but Shi Xiaoming and his father kept talking and he couldn’t get a word in.

“Mom passed away in Year 34 of the Crisis. Me and your granddaughter were with her then.”

“Oh, good…. You didn’t bring my granddaughter with you?”

“After the divorce, she went with her mom. I looked up her file. She lived into her eighties and died in Year 105.”

“Too bad I never met her…. How old were you when your sentence ended?”

“Nineteen.”

“What did you do then?”

“Everything. At first, with no other way out, I kept up the swindles, but then I did a bit of legitimate business. After I had the money, I saw the signs of the Great Ravine and went into hibernation. I didn’t know then that things would get better later on. I just wanted to see you.”

“Is our house still there?”

“Land-use rights were extended past the original seventy-year period, but I only got to stay a short time before it was demolished. The one we bought later is still there, but I haven’t been to see it.” Shi Xiaoming pointed outside. “The city population isn’t even one percent of what it was in our day. Do you know what the most worthless thing is? That house. You dedicated your entire life to it, Dad, but everything’s empty now. You can live wherever you like.”

Finally Luo Ji managed to seize a gap in their conversation to ask, “Do all reawakened hibernators live in the old city?”

“No way! They live outside. There’s too much sand in the city. But mostly, it’s because there’s nothing to do. Of course, you can’t go too far from the underground city, or you can’t get electricity.”

“What do all of you do?” Shi Qiang asked.

“Think: What can we do that the kids can’t? Farming!” Shi Xiaoming, like other hibernators, no matter their age, had the habit of calling modern people “kids.”

The car left the city and drove east. As the sand lessened to reveal the highway, Luo Ji recognized it as the old expressway between Beijing and Shijiazhuang, although both sides were piled high with sand now. The old buildings still stood there amid the sand, but what brought a spark of life to this desertified plain of northern China were the small oases ringed by sparse trees, which Shi Xiaoming said were hibernator settlements.

They drove into one oasis, a small residential community surrounded by a sand-break of trees that Shi Xiaoming called New Life Village #5. When he got out of the car, Luo Ji felt time flowing backward: rows of six-story apartments fronted by open space, old men playing chess on stone tables, mothers pushing baby carriages, and a few children playing soccer on the sparse lawn growing on the sand….

Shi Xiaoming lived on the sixth floor with a wife nine years younger than him. She had entered hibernation in Year 21 due to liver cancer, but was completely healthy now. They had a four-year-old son who called Shi Qiang “Grampa.”

A sumptuous lunch had been laid out to welcome Luo Ji and Shi Qiang: local farm produce, chicken and pork produced at other nearby farms, and even home-brewed alcohol. They called three of their neighbors to join them, three men who—like Shi Xiaoming—had entered hibernation relatively early, back when it was expensive and available only to rich members of the upper class or their sons and daughters. Now, gathered here after a span of more than a century, they were all just ordinary people. Shi Xiaoming introduced one neighbor as Zhang Yan, the grandson of Zhang Yuanchao, the man he had cheated back in the day.

“Remember how you made me return the money I cheated him out of? I began the day I got out, and that’s how I met Yan. He had just graduated from college. Taking inspiration from his two neighbors, we went into the funeral business and called our firm the High and Deep Company. ‘High,’ for space burials. We shot ashes into the Solar System, and later on we were able to launch entire bodies. For a price, of course. ‘Deep,’ for mine burials. At first we used abandoned shafts, and later on we dug new ones, since they would work equally well as anti-Trisolaris tombs too.”

The man called Yan was a little older—he looked to be in his fifties or sixties. Shi Xiaoming explained that Yan had been reawakened once before and lived for more than thirty years before going back into hibernation.

“What’s our legal status here?” Luo Ji asked.

Shi Xiaoming said, “Completely equivalent to modern residential areas. We count as the city’s distant suburbs, and we have a proper district government. It’s not just hibernators who live here. We also have modern people, and people from the city often come out here for fun.”

Zhang Yan took over: “We call the modern people ‘walltappers,’ because when they first get here they’re always touching the wall out of habit, trying to activate something.”

“So life’s okay?” Shi Qiang asked.

They all said it was pretty good.

“But along the road I saw the fields you plant. Can you really support yourselves by growing crops?”

“Why not? In the cities these days, agricultural products are luxury items…. The government’s actually quite good to hibernators. Even if you don’t do anything, you can still live comfortably off government subsidies. But you’ve got to have something to do. The idea that hibernators all know how to farm is nonsense. No one was a farmer at first, but this is all we can do.”

The conversation quickly turned to the history of the past two centuries.

“So what was the deal with the Great Ravine?” Luo Ji brought up the question he had long been wanting to ask.

Instantly their faces grew serious. Seeing that the meal was almost over, Shi Xiaoming allowed the topic to continue. “You’ve probably learned a little about it over the past few days. It’s a long story. For more than a decade after you went into hibernation, life was pretty good. But later on, when the pace of economic transformation picked up, the standard of living declined by the day and the political climate constricted. It really felt like wartime.”

A neighbor said, “It wasn’t just a few countries. The entire Earth was like that. Society was on edge, and if you said something wrong they would say you were ETO, or a traitor to humanity, so nobody felt safe. And film and television from the Golden Age began to be restricted, and then was banned worldwide. Of course, there was too much of it to ban effectively.”

“Why?”

“They were afraid of eroding the fighting spirit,” Shi Xiaoming said. “Still, so long as there was food to eat, you could make do. But later on, things got worse, and the world began to starve. This was about twenty years after Dr. Luo went into hibernation.”

“Because of the economic transition?”

“Right. But environmental deterioration was also a major factor. The environmental laws were there, but in those pessimistic times, the general attitude was, ‘What the hell is environmental protection for? Even if Earth turns into a garden, isn’t it all going to the Trisolarans anyway?’ Eventually, environmental protection was seen as no less treasonous to humanity than the ETO. Organizations like Greenpeace were treated like ETO branches and suppressed. Work on the space forces accelerated the development of highly polluting heavy industry, which made environmental pollution unstoppable. The greenhouse effect, climate anomalies, desertification…” He sighed.

“When I entered hibernation, desertification was just starting,” another neighbor said. “It’s not what you imagine, like the desert advancing from the Great Wall. No! It was patchwork erosion. Perfectly fine plots of land in the interior began turning to desert simultaneously, and it spread from those points, like how a damp cloth dries in the sun.”

“Then agricultural production plummeted, and grain reserves were exhausted. And then… and then came the Great Ravine.”

“Did the prediction that the standard of living would go backward a hundred years come true?” Luo Ji asked.

Shi Xiaoming gave a few bitter chuckles. “Ah, Dr. Luo. A hundred years? In your dreams! A hundred years back from that time would have been… around the 1930s or so. A paradise compared to the Great Ravine! No way the two are the same. For one thing, there were so many more people than in the Great Depression—8.3 billion!” He pointed at Zhang Yan. “He saw the Great Ravine when he reawakened for a while. You tell them.”

Zhang Yan drained his glass. Eyes blank, he said, “I have seen the grand march of hunger. Millions of people fleeing famine on the great plains through sand that blocked out the sky. Hot sky, hot earth, and hot sun. When they died, they were divided up on the spot…. It was hell on Earth. There are tons of videos to watch if you want. You think of that time, and you feel lucky to be alive.”

“The Great Ravine lasted for about half a century, and in those fifty-odd years, the world population dropped from 8.3 billion to 3.5 billion. Think about what that means!”

Luo Ji got up and went over to the window. From here he could see the desert across the protective tree line, its yellow covering of sand extending silently to the horizon under the noonday sun. The hand of time had smoothed over everything.

“And then?” Shi Qiang asked.

Zhang Yan let out a long breath, as if no longer having to talk about that period of history had taken a burden off his shoulders. “After that, well, some people came to terms with it, and then more and more people did. They wondered whether it was worth it to pay so high a price, even if it was for victory in the Doomsday Battle. Think about what’s more important: the child dying of starvation in your arms, or the continuation of human civilization? Right now you might think the latter choice is more important, but you wouldn’t have in that day and age. No matter what the future might bring, the present is most important. Of course, that mind-set was outrageous at first, the classic thinking of a traitor to humanity, but you couldn’t stop people from thinking it. And very soon the entire world thought so. There was a popular slogan back then, which soon became a famous historical quote.”

“‘Make time for civilization, for civilization won’t make time,’” Luo Ji contributed, without looking back from the window.

“Right, that one. Civilization is meant for us.”

“And after that?” Shi Qiang asked.

“A second Enlightenment, a second Renaissance, a second French Revolution… You can find all that stuff in the history books.”

Luo Ji turned back in surprise. The predictions he had made to Zhuang Yan two centuries before had come to pass. “A second French Revolution? In France?!”

“No, no. That’s just a saying. It was the entire world! After the revolution, the new national governments terminated their space strategies and poured their attention into improving people’s lives. And then critical technology emerged: Genetic engineering and fusion technology were harnessed for large-scale food production, ending the age of weather-dependent food. From then on, the world would no longer be hungry. Everything moved quickly after that—there were fewer people, after all—and in the space of just two decades, life returned to pre–Great Ravine levels. Then Golden Age levels were restored. People had set their hearts on this road of comfort, and no one wanted to go back.”

“There’s another term you might find interesting, Dr. Luo,” said the first neighbor, drawing closer to him. An economist before hibernation, he had a deeper understanding of the issues. “It’s called civilization immunity. It means that when the world has suffered a serious illness, it triggers civilization’s immune system, so that something like the early Crisis Era won’t happen again. Humanism comes first, and perpetuating civilization comes second. These are the concepts that today’s society is based on.”

“And after that?” Luo Ji asked.

“After that came the freaky stuff.” Shi Xiaoming grew excited. “Originally, the countries of the world had planned to live in peace and push the Trisolar Crisis onto the back burner, but what do you think happened? There was swift progress everywhere. Technology sped forward and broke through all the technical obstacles that had stood in the way of space strategy before the Great Ravine, one after the other!”

“That’s not freaky,” Luo Ji said. “Emancipation of human nature inevitably brings with it scientific and technological progress.”

“After about half a century of peace following the Great Ravine, the world turned its thoughts back to the Trisolaran invasion and felt it ought to reconsider the war. With humanity’s power now on a completely different plane than before the Great Ravine, a global state of war was again declared, and construction was begun on a space fleet. But unlike the first time, national constitutions were clear about one thing: Resource expenditure for the space strategy had to be kept within a specified range, and must not have a disastrous impact on the world economy and on community life. And that’s when the space fleets became independent countries….”

“You don’t actually have to think about any of this, though,” the economist said. “From now on, just think about how to live a good life. That old revolutionary slogan is just an adaptation of the old saying from the Golden Age: ‘Make time for life, or life won’t make time.’ To new life!”

When they had drained their last glass, Luo Ji praised the economist for putting things so well. Now his mind had space only for Zhuang Yan and the child. He wanted to get settled as soon as possible, and then go wake them.

Make time for civilization, make time for life.

After boarding Natural Selection, Zhang Beihai found that the modern command system had evolved far beyond what he had imagined. The giant spacecraft, equal in volume to three of the largest seagoing carriers of the twenty-first century, was practically a small city, but it had no bridge or command module, or even a captain’s room or operations room. In fact, it had no specific functional compartments whatsoever. All of them were identical, regular spheres that differed only in size. At any location inside the ship, you could just use a data glove to activate a holographic display, which, due to the high cost, was a rarity even in Earth’s super-wired society. And at any location, so long as you had the appropriate system permissions, you could pull up a complete command console, including a captain’s interface, which effectively made the entire ship, even the passageways and bathrooms, a bridge, command module, captain’s room, and operations room! To Zhang Beihai, it felt like the evolution from a client-server model to a browser-server model in late-twentieth-century computer networks. With the former, you could only access the server through specific software installed on a computer, but using the latter, you could access the server from any computer on the network so long as you had the right permissions.

Zhang Beihai and Dongfang Yanxu were situated in an ordinary cabin that, like every other one, had no special instruments or screens. It was just a spherical compartment whose bulkheads were white most of the time, making it feel like the inside of a giant Ping-Pong ball. When gravity was produced by ship acceleration, any part of the spherical bulkhead could be transformed into a shape suitable for use as a chair.

For Zhang Beihai, this was another aspect of modern technology that few people had imagined: the elimination of single-purpose facilities. Only the first tendrils of this trend had appeared on Earth, but it was part of the fundamental structure of the far more advanced world of the fleet. This world was spare and simple. Devices were no longer permanently installed, but would appear when necessary at any location required. The world, made complex by technology, was becoming simple again, its technology hidden deeply behind the face of reality.

“Now we come to your first onboard lesson,” Dongfang Yanxu said. “Of course, you really shouldn’t be getting this lesson from a captain who’s under review, but no one in the fleet is more trustworthy than I am. Today, we’ll demonstrate how to launch Natural Selection and put it into navigation mode. And, in fact, so long as you remember what you see today, you’ll have closed off the primary opening for the Imprinted.” As she spoke, she used her data glove to call up a holographic star chart in the air. “This may be a little different from the spatial maps of your time, but it still uses the sun as the origin.”

“I studied this in training, so I can read it fine,” Zhang Beihai said, looking at the star chart. His memory of the ancient Solar System map he and Chang Weisi had stood in front of two centuries ago was still fresh. This chart, however, precisely marked out the positions of all celestial bodies within a radius of one hundred light-years of the sun, at a scale more than a hundred times greater than the older one.

“You don’t really need to understand much. In the present state, navigation to any position on the map is prohibited…. If I were Imprinted, and wanted to hijack Natural Selection to flee into the cosmos, I’d first need to select a heading, like this.” She activated a point on the map, turning it green. “Of course, we’re just in simulation mode right now, because I no longer have permissions. When you obtain captain’s permissions, I’ll have to go through you to perform the operations. But if I really submitted this operation request, it would be a dangerous act, and you should refuse it. You should also report me.”

Once the heading was activated, an interface appeared in the air. Zhang Beihai was already quite familiar with the appearance and operations from his training, but he still listened patiently to Dongfang Yanxu’s explanation and watched how she brought the huge ship from complete shutdown to hibernation, then to standby, and finally to Slow Ahead.

“If these were real operations, Natural Selection would now leave port. What do you think? Simpler than spaceship operations in your day?”

“Yes. Much simpler.” When he and the other special contingent members first saw the interface, they were surprised at its simplicity, and the total lack of technical detail.

“The operation is totally automatic, leaving the technical process entirely hidden from the captain.”

“This display only shows general parameters. How do you see the ship’s operational status?”

“Operational status is monitored by officers and noncommissioned officers at lower levels. Their displays are more complex—the further down you go, the more complicated the interface becomes. As captain and vice-captain, we must focus our attention on more important matters…. Very well, let’s continue. If I were Imprinted… There I go with that supposition again. What do you think?”

“Given my position, any response would be irresponsible.”

“Fine. If I were Imprinted, then I’d set the throttle directly to Ahead Four. No other ship in the fleet can catch Natural Selection under Ahead Four acceleration.”

“But you couldn’t do that, even if you had the permissions, because the system will only proceed to Ahead Four if it detects that all passengers are in a deep-sea state.”

Under maximum propulsion, the ship’s acceleration could reach 120 gs, but this exerted a force more than ten times what a human could tolerate under normal conditions. To go to maximum, they had to enter a “deep-sea state,” which consisted of the cabins being filled with an oxygen-rich “deep-sea acceleration fluid” that trained personnel could breathe directly. As they breathed, it would fill their lungs and then the rest of their organs. First dreamed up in the first half of the twentieth century, the liquid was intended at the time to facilitate ultra-deep dives. Pressure was in equilibrium inside and outside of a human body filled with deep-sea acceleration fluid, meaning it could sustain high pressures like a deep-sea fish. The environment of a liquid-filled cabin in a rapidly accelerating spacecraft was like that of the deep sea, so the liquid was now being used to protect human bodies against the ultra-high acceleration of space travel. Hence the term “deep-sea state.”

Dongfang Yanxu nodded. “But you should know that there’s a way to get around that. If you set the spacecraft to remote control, then it will assume that no one is on board and won’t perform the check. This setting is part of the captain’s permissions.”

“Let me try it and you tell me if I’ve got it right.” Zhang Beihai activated an interface in front of him and began setting up remote control mode for the spacecraft, looking at a small notebook from time to time as he did so.

Dongfang Yanxu smiled at the notebook. “There are more efficient recording methods now.”

“Oh, it’s just habit. For particularly important things, it’s always more reassuring to write them down like this. It’s just that I can’t find a pen now. I brought two with me into hibernation, but only the pencil was still usable.”

“You’ve learned quickly.”

“That’s because the command system retains a lot of the navy’s style. After all these years, the names of things haven’t even changed. The engine orders, for example.”

“The space fleet did have its origins in the navy…. Okay, you’ll soon be receiving system permissions as the acting captain of Natural Selection. This warship is in class-A standby, or, as they called it in your time, ‘fired up and ready to go.’” She extended her slender arms and turned a circle in the air.

Zhang Beihai had not been able to figure out how to perform that action using the superconducting belt. “We didn’t ‘fire up’ in those days. But you evidently know quite a bit of naval history,” he said, changing the subject from the sensitive issue that was liable to make her hostile to him.

“A grand old branch of the service.”

“Doesn’t the space fleet inherit that grandeur?”

“Yes. But I’m going to leave it. I plan on resigning.”

“Because of the review?”

She turned to look at him, her thick black hair leaping again from the lack of gravity. “You encountered this sort of thing all the time back then, didn’t you?”

“Not necessarily. But if we did, every comrade would understand, because undergoing review is one of the duties of a soldier.”

“Two centuries have passed. This is no longer your time.”

“Dongfang, don’t deliberately widen the gap. There are similarities between the two of us. Soldiers in all ages have to bear up under humiliation.”

“Are you advising me to stay?”

“No.”

“Ideological work. That’s the word, isn’t it? Wasn’t that your duty once?”

“Not anymore. I have a new duty.”

She floated easily around him, as if carefully studying him. “Is it that we’re children to you? Half a year ago I went to Earth, and in one hibernator district, a six- or seven-year-old boy called me a kid.”

He laughed.

“Are we kids to you?”

“In our day, seniority was very important. In the countryside, there were adults who called children Aunt and Uncle because of family seniority.”

“But your seniority is unimportant to me.”

“I can see that in your eyes.”

“Your daughter, and your wife—they didn’t come with you? Special Contingent family members were allowed to hibernate, too, as far as I’m aware.”

“They didn’t come, and they didn’t want me to go. You know, trends at the time pointed toward a very bleak future. They criticized me for being irresponsible. She and her mother moved out, and in the dead of night the day after they left, the Special Contingent received the order. I didn’t even have time to see them again. It was on a late winter’s night, a cold one, that I left home carrying my bags…. Of course, I’m not expecting you to understand any of this.”

“I understand…. What happened to them?”

“My wife died in Year 47. My daughter in Year 81.”

“They saw the Great Ravine.” She lowered her eyes and remained silent for a while. Then she activated a holographic window and switched to an external display mode.

The bulkheads of the white sphere melted like wax and Natural Selection vanished, leaving them suspended in infinite space, facing the misty starfield of the Milky Way. They were now two independent beings in the universe, unattached to any world, with nothing but the abyss surrounding them. They hung in the universe like the Earth, the sun, and the galaxy itself, with no origin and no destination. Simply existing…

Zhang Beihai had experienced this feeling before, 190 years ago, when he floated in space wearing nothing but a space suit, holding a pistol loaded with meteorite bullets.

“I like it this way, where you can ignore the spacecraft and the fleet and everything outside your own mind,” she said.

“Dongfang,” he called softly.

“Hmm?” The captain turned around, her eyes shining with the starlight of the Milky Way.

“If the day comes when I have to kill you, please forgive me,” he said gently.

She met his words with a smile. “Do I look to you like I’m Imprinted?”

He looked at her in the sunlight coming from five AU away. She was a lithe feather floating against the backdrop of the starfield.

“We belong to the Earth and the sea, you belong to the stars.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s very good.”

“The probe’s gone out!”

The report from the duty officer came as a shock to Dr. Kuhn and General Robinson. They knew that once the news got out it would make waves in both the Earth International and the Fleet International, particularly since the latest observations of the probe’s speed meant that it would cross the orbit of Jupiter in just six days.

Kuhn and Robinson were on the Ringier-Fitzroy Station that orbited the sun along the outside rim of the asteroid belt. Floating in space five kilometers away from the station were the most peculiar objects in the Solar System: a set of six giant lenses, the top one 1,200 meters in diameter, and the five below it slightly smaller in size. This was the latest incarnation of the space telescope, but unlike the previous five generations of the Hubble, this space telescope had no barrel, or any connecting material at all between the six giant lenses. They floated independently, the rim of each lens equipped with multiple ion thrusters that could precisely adjust the distance between them or change the orientation of the entire group. Ringier-Fitzroy Station was the control center for the telescope, but even from this close, the transparent lenses were practically invisible. When technicians and engineers would fly between them during maintenance, the universe on either side would be grossly distorted, and if they were at the proper angle, the protective iris on the surface would reflect the sunlight and reveal the entire giant lens, whose curved surface would then resemble a planet covered in bewitching rainbows. The telescope broke with the Hubble series naming convention and was dubbed the Ringier-Fitzroy Telescope, to commemorate the two men who discovered the tracks of the Trisolaran Fleet. Although their discovery had no scholarly significance, the name was fitting, because the primary purpose of this massive telescope, a joint project of the three major fleets, was the continued monitoring of the Trisolaran Fleet.

A team like Ringier and Fitzroy—a lead scientist from Earth and a head of military affairs from the fleet—had always been in charge of the telescope, and in every such team there were the same differences of opinion that Ringier and Fitzroy had. Right now, Kuhn wanted to squeeze in some observation time for his own study of the cosmos, while Robinson worked to stop him, so as to safeguard the fleet’s interests. They argued about other things, too: For example, Kuhn reminisced over the wonderful way that Earth’s superpowers, headed up by the United States, were leading the world, in contrast to the fleets’ current inefficient bureaucracy; but every time he did so, Robinson would ruthlessly dismantle Kuhn’s ridiculous historical fantasies. But the most heated argument was over the station’s rotation speed. The general insisted on a slow rotation for minimal gravity, even to the point of keeping the station in an entirely weightless state with no rotation at all, while Kuhn stumped for a fast rotation and Earth standard gravity.

But what was happening now overwhelmed all of that. The probe having “gone out” meant that its engines had turned off. Two years before, far beyond the Oort Cloud, the probe had begun to decelerate, which meant that its engine had started up in a sun-facing direction, enabling the space telescope to track the probe by engine light. Now that the light had gone out, tracking was no longer possible, because the probe itself was far too small—probably no bigger than a truck, based on the wake it left crossing the interstellar dust. An object that small out on the periphery of the Kuiper Belt, no longer emitting its own light and reflecting the weak light of the distant sun even more weakly—even a telescope as powerful as Ringier-Fitzroy couldn’t see such a tiny dark object so far off in the darkness of space.

“The three fleets don’t know how to do anything but struggle over power. This is just perfect—the target’s been lost….” Kuhn grumbled, waving his arms for emphasis. He forgot the station was now in a weightless state, and his movements caused him to perform a somersault.

For the first time, General Robinson did not defend the fleet. The Asian Fleet had originally dispatched three light, high-speed ships to track the probe at close range, but after the dispute erupted among the three fleets over the right to intercept, the Joint Conference had issued a resolution recalling all craft to base. The Asian Fleet repeatedly protested that the three fighter-class spaceships had been stripped of all weapons and external equipment and were carrying a crew of just two people each to achieve maximum acceleration for tracking the target, and even so, they could not possibly intercept the probe. However, the European and North American Fleets were unconvinced, and insisted that all spaceships in transit be recalled and replaced by three spaceships dispatched by Earth International as a fourth party. If not for that, the fleet ships would already have made close contact with the probe and begun tracking it. Earth’s ships, dispatched by the European Commonwealth and China, had not even passed the orbit of Neptune.

“Perhaps. Its engines might start up again,” the general said. “It’s still traveling pretty fast, and if it doesn’t decelerate it won’t be able to rest in solar orbit. It’ll pass right through the Solar System.”

“Are you the Trisolaran commander? Maybe the probe wasn’t ever planning on remaining in the Solar System, but was just going to pass through anyway!” Kuhn said. Then a thought suddenly struck him. “If the engines are off, then it can’t change course! Can’t you just figure out where it’s headed and send the tracking spacecraft to wait for it?”

The general shook his head. “That’s not precise enough. It’s not like an air force search in Earth’s atmosphere. One miniscule error, and you’ll be hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilometers off course. In such a huge area, the tracking craft won’t be able to find such a tiny, dark target…. But we’ve got to come up with a way somehow.”

“What can we do? Let the fleet figure it out.”

The general turned tough. “Doctor, you’ve got to realize the nature of the situation. Even though this isn’t our fault, the media won’t care. The Ringier-Fitzroy system was, after all, responsible for tracking the probe in deep space, so a good portion of that dirty water is going to land on our heads.”

Kuhn said nothing, but remained with his body perpendicular to the general’s for a while. Then he asked, “Is there anything else outside Neptune’s orbit that could be useful?”

“For the fleet, probably nothing. For Earth…” The general turned to ask the duty officer and soon learned that the UN Environmental Protection Organization had four large ships near Neptune, working on the early stages of the Fog Umbrella Project. The three small craft newly tasked with tracking the probe had been dispatched from those ships.

“And they’re there to mine oil film?” Kuhn asked. The reply was affirmative. Oil film was a substance found in Neptune’s rings. At high temperatures, it turned into a rapidly diffusing gas that then condensed into nanoparticles in space, forming space dust. It was so called because when it evaporated, it became highly diffusive, so a small quantity of the substance could form a large patch of dust, like a tiny droplet of oil spreading into an oil film of molecular thickness across a large area of water. Dust formed from this oil film had another property: Unlike other types of space dust, “oil-film dust” was not easily dispersed by the solar wind.

It was the discovery of oil film that made the Fog Umbrella Project possible. The plan was to use nuclear blasts in space to evaporate and spread the oil-film substance into a cloud of oil-film dust between the sun and Earth as a means of decreasing the sun’s radiation on Earth and alleviating global warming.

“I remember there’s supposed to be a stellar bomb near Neptune orbit from before the wars,” Kuhn said.

“There is. And the Fog Umbrella spaceships brought along a few, too, for blasting Neptune and its satellites. I’m not sure of the precise number.”

“I’d say one is enough,” Kuhn said excitedly.

Like Wallfacer Rey Diaz had predicted two centuries prior when he developed the stellar hydrogen bomb for his Wallfacer plan, although the weapon would be of limited use in the Doomsday Battle, the major powers wanted it to prepare for the possible outbreak of interplanetary war between humans. More than five thousand bombs had been manufactured, mostly during the Great Ravine, when international relations grew volatile due to lack of resources, and humanity was pushed to the brink of war. When the new era dawned, the horrifying weapons became dangerous nonessentials that were kept in storage in outer space, although they still belonged to countries on Earth. A few of them were blown up in planetary engineering projects, and another set was sent into orbit in the remote Solar System with the notion that the fusion materials could supplement the fuel of long-range spacecraft. However, because of the difficulty involved in dismantling the bombs, this idea was never realized.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Robinson asked, his eyes aglow. He was a little rueful that he hadn’t thought up such a simple idea himself, and that Kuhn had snatched the opportunity to go down in history.

“Give it a try. It’s the only thing we’ve got.”

“If your idea works, Doctor, then the Ringier-Fitzroy Station will forever revolve fast enough to generate Earth gravity.”

“It’s the biggest thing humanity has ever made,” the commander of Blue Shadow said, as he looked out the spacecraft’s window into the pitch-black of space. Nothing was visible, but he tried to convince himself that he could see the dust cloud.

“Why isn’t it lit by the sun, like the tail of a comet?” the pilot said. He and the commander were the only crew on Blue Shadow. He knew the density of the dust cloud was as thin as a comet’s tail, or about the same as a vacuum created in an Earth-based laboratory.

“Maybe the sunlight is too weak.” The commander looked back at the sun, which, in the lonely space between Neptune’s orbit and the Kuiper Belt, looked like a large star, its disc shape only barely distinguishable. Still, even the weak sunlight could still cast shadows on the bulkhead. “Besides, a comet tail is only visible from a certain distance away. We’re just at the edge of the cloud.”

The pilot tried to conjure up a mental image of the thin yet gigantic cloud. A few days ago, he and the commander had seen with their own eyes how small the cloud was when compressed into a solid. At the time, the giant spaceship Pacific had arrived from Neptune and left behind five things when it stopped in this section of space. The Blue Shadow’s mechanical arm first retrieved a stellar hydrogen bomb from the early days of the war, a cylinder five meters long and a meter and a half in diameter. Next it picked up four large spheres between thirty and fifty meters in diameter. The four spheres, the oil film harvested from Neptune’s rings, were placed at points several hundred meters from the bomb. Once Pacific had departed the vicinity, the bomb exploded, forming a small sun whose light and heat surged into the cold abyss of space and instantly vaporized the surrounding spheres. The gaseous oil film diffused rapidly under the typhoon of H-bomb radiation, then cooled into countless tiny particles of dust, forming a cloud. The cloud had a diameter of two million kilometers, greater than that of the sun.

The dust cloud was located in the region that the Trisolaran probe was expected to pass through, according to path observations made prior to its engine shutting off. Dr. Kuhn and General Robinson hoped to precisely determine the probe’s path and position by the tracks it left in the man-made dust cloud.

Following the formation of the cloud, Pacific returned to Neptune base, leaving behind three small spaceships that would track the probe closely once its wake showed. Blue Shadow was one of them. The small high-speed ship had been dubbed a “space racer.” With a small capsule that could seat five as its only payload, its remaining volume was entirely occupied by a fusion engine, giving it high acceleration and maneuverability. Once the dust cloud took shape, Blue Shadow flew through the entire area to test whether wakes would be left, with quite satisfactory results. Of course, the wakes could only be observed by the space telescope more than one hundred AU distant. From Blue Shadow itself, its own wake was invisible, and the surrounding space was as deserted as it always had been. Still, after passing through the cloud, the pilot insisted that the sun looked a little dimmer, that its formerly sharp circumference had gone a bit blurry. Instrument observations confirmed the sole visual impression they had of this giant creation.

“Less than three hours to go,” the commander said, looking at his watch. The dust cloud was actually a giant, thin satellite in orbit around the sun, its position constantly changing. When it eventually moved out of the space where the probe might pass through, another dust cloud would have to be created behind it.

“Do you really hope we’ll catch up to it?” the pilot asked.

“Why not? We’re making history!”

“Won’t the thing attack us? We’re not soldiers. This really ought to be done by the fleet.”

Then their spacecraft received a message from the Ringier-Fitzroy Station reporting that the Trisolaran probe had entered the dust cloud and left a wake, and that precise parameters had been calculated for its trajectory. Blue Shadow was ordered to move immediately to rendezvous with and closely track the target. The station was more than one hundred AU away from Blue Shadow, meaning the message was delayed more than ten hours in transit, but the key had made an impression in the mold. Orbital calculations had even taken into account the effect of the thin dust cloud, so a rendezvous was just a matter of time.

Blue Shadow set a course in accordance with the probe’s path and once again entered the invisible dust cloud, this time heading in the direction of the Trisolaran probe. It was a long flight this time, and over the course of more than ten hours, both pilot and commander grew sleepy. But the continuously shrinking distance between them and the probe kept them on edge.

“I see it! I see it!” the pilot shouted.

“What are you talking about? There’s still over fourteen thousand kilometers to go!” rebuked the commander. The naked eye could not possibly see a truck at a distance of fourteen thousand kilometers, even given the transparency of space. But soon he saw it for himself: On the trajectory described by the parameters, against the silent backdrop of space, a point of light was in motion.

After a moment’s thought, the commander understood: The cloud of dust larger than the sun had been unnecessary, since the Trisolaran probe had restarted its engines and was continuing to decelerate. It did not intend to skip through the Solar System. It would remain here.

Because it was only a temporary measure in the fleets, the ceremony for handing over captain’s permissions on Natural Selection was a simple and low-key affair attended only by Captain Dongfang Yanxu, Acting Captain Zhang Beihai, First Vice-Captain Levine, and Second Vice-Captain Akira Inoue, as well as a special team from the General Staff Department.

Despite this era’s technological development, they had still not managed to overcome the stagnation of fundamental theory, so Natural Selection’s permissions transfer was done via means Zhang Beihai was familiar with: three-factor retina, fingerprint, and passphrase authentication.

Once the General Staff team had finished resetting the pupil and fingerprint data that identified the captain in the system, Dongfang Yanxu surrendered her pass phrase to Zhang Beihai: “Men always remember love because of romance only.”

“You don’t smoke,” he replied calmly.

“And the brand was lost during the Great Ravine,” she said with a trace of disappointment, and lowered her eyes.

“But the password’s a good one. Not many people knew it back then either.”

The captain and vice-captains exited, leaving Zhang Beihai alone to update the password and obtain complete control over Natural Selection.

“He’s clever,” Akira Inoue said when the door to the spherical cabin vanished.

“Ancient wisdom,” Dongfang Yanxu said, watching the spot where the door had disappeared, as if trying to see through it. “We’ll never be able to learn the stuff he brought from two centuries ago, but he can learn what we know.”

Then the three of them remained silent and waited. Five minutes passed, clearly too long for changing a password, especially since Captain-in-waiting Zhang Beihai had come through training as the most skilled command system operator out of all the members of his Special Contingent. Five more minutes passed. The two vice-captains began swimming impatiently in the corridor, but Dongfang Yanxu remained silent and motionless.

At last the door reappeared. To their surprise, the spherical cabin had turned black. Zhang Beihai had a holographic star map pulled up on which the labels had been blocked, leaving only the twinkling stars. From the doorway, he seemed to be suspended outside the spaceship, with his interface floating alongside him.

“I’m done,” he said.

“Why did it take so long?” Levin grumbled.

“Were you relishing the thrill of gaining Natural Selection?” Akira Inoue asked.

Zhang Beihai said nothing. He didn’t look at the interface, but gazed off instead at a star in a distant part of the map. Dongfang Yanxu noticed that a green light was flashing in the direction he was looking.

“That would be ridiculous,” Levin said, picking up from Akira Inoue. “May I remind you that the captainship still belongs to Colonel Dongfang? The acting captain is just a firewall. I’m sorry to be rude about it, but that’s pretty much the truth.”

Akira Inoue said, “And this state won’t last for very long. The investigation of the fleet is nearing an end, and it’s basically been proven that the Imprinted don’t exist.”

He was about to go on, but was stopped by a low gasp of surprise from the captain. “Oh, god!” she said, and the two vice-captains, following her eyes, noticed Natural Selection’s current status on Zhang Beihai’s interface.

The warship had been set into remote control mode, thereby bypassing the check for deep-sea state prior to Ahead Four. Outside communication had been severed. And, finally, most of the captain’s settings for putting the ship into maximum propulsion were in place. With the push of just one more button, Natural Selection would head off at maximum speed to the target selected on the map.

“No, this can’t be happening,” Dongfang Yanxu said, her voice so low only she could hear it. It was for her own ears, in response to her earlier “god” exclamation. She had never believed in the existence of God, but now her prayers were real.

“Are you insane?” Levin shouted. He and Akira Inoue rushed toward the cabin, only to crash into the bulkhead. There was no door, just an oval-shaped section of wall that had turned transparent.

“Natural Selection is about to proceed to Ahead Four. All crew must enter deep-sea state immediately,” Zhang Beihai said, every word in his solemn, calm voice lingering in the air like an ancient anchor standing in the chill wind.

“This is impossible!” Akira Inoue said.

“Are you Imprinted?” Dongfang Yanxu asked, quickly calming herself.

“You know that’s not possible.”

“ETO?”

“No.”

“Then who are you?”

“A soldier carrying out his duty to fight for humanity’s survival.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’ll explain after acceleration is complete. I repeat: All crew must enter deep-sea state immediately.”

“This is impossible!” Akira Inoue repeated.

Zhang Beihai turned around and, without so much as looking at the two vice-captains, stared straight at Dongfang Yanxu. His eyes instantly reminded her of the emblem of the Chinese Space Force, bearing swords and stars alike.

“Dongfang, I said that I would be sorry if I had to kill you. There’s not much time.”

Then the deep-sea acceleration fluid appeared within Zhang Beihai’s spherical compartment, forming into balls in the weightless environment. Each liquid globe, containing his distorted reflection along with the interface and the star map, began to combine into larger ones. The two vice-captains looked at Dongfang Yanxu.

“Do as he says. The whole ship will enter deep-sea state,” the captain said.

The two vice-captains stared at her. They knew what the consequences were for proceeding to Ahead Four outside of the deep-sea protective state: The body would be plastered to the bulkhead by a force 120 times that of Earth gravity. First blood would burst out under the immense weight, spreading into a thin layer of impossibly huge, radially patterned blood stains, and then the organs would be squeezed out, forming another thin layer that would be pressed together with the body into an ugly Dali painting….

As they left for their cabins, they issued orders to the entire ship to enter a deep-sea state.

“You’re a well-qualified captain.” Zhang Beihai nodded at Dongfang Yanxu. “This shows maturity.”

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever we’re going, it’s a more responsible choice than staying here.”

And then he was submerged in the deep-sea acceleration fluid, and Dongfang Yanxu could only make out a murky body through the liquid now filling the spherical compartment.

Floating in the translucent liquid, Zhang Beihai recalled his diving experience in the navy two centuries before. He had never imagined that the ocean would be so dark a few dozen meters down, but that undersea world gave him the same feeling he later found in space. The ocean was space in miniature on Earth. He tried breathing, but his reflexes made him violently cough up liquid and residual gas, and his body shifted with the recoil. Still, there wasn’t the suffocation that he had anticipated, and as cool liquid filled his lungs, the oxygen it contained was supplied to his blood. He could breathe freely, like a fish.

On the interface suspended in the liquid, he saw that the deep-sea acceleration fluid was filling each occupied compartment in the spaceship in turn. The process continued for more than ten minutes. His consciousness began to blur as the breathing liquid was injected with a hypnotic component that put everyone aboard ship into a state of sleep so as to avoid damage to the brain from the high pressure and relative hypoxia generated by acceleration at Ahead Four.

Zhang Beihai felt his father’s spirit alight on the spaceship from the beyond, becoming one with it. He pressed the button on the interface, issuing in his mind the command that he had been working toward his entire life:

“Natural Selection, Ahead Four!”

A small sun appeared in Jovian orbit, its bright light washing out the phosphorescence of the planet’s atmosphere. Dragging the sun behind it, the stellar-class warship Natural Selection eased out of the Asian Fleet base and accelerated rapidly, casting shadows of the other warships—each dark spot big enough to contain the Earth—onto the Jovian surface. Ten minutes later, a larger shadow was flung onto Jupiter like a curtain drawn across the giant planet. Natural Selection was passing Io.

It was at this point that the Asian Fleet High Command confirmed the incredible fact that Natural Selection had defected.

The European and North American Fleets issued protests and warnings to the Asian Fleet under the initial impression that it was an unauthorized move to intercept the Trisolaran probe, but they soon realized from Natural Selection’s heading that this was not the case. It was headed in the opposite direction from the Trisolaran invasion.

The various systems hailing Natural Selection gradually let up after receiving no response. The high commands began to deploy pursuit and intercept ships, although they soon realized that little could be done about the defector warship. Bases on four of Jupiter’s moons possessed sufficient firepower to destroy Natural Selection, but they would not take that path, because it was quite likely that only a small minority of those on board, or even a single individual, had actually defected, and the two thousand-odd soldiers in deep-sea state were merely hostages. Commanders at the gamma-ray laser base on Europa could only watch as the small sun flew across the sky and into outer space, sprinkling Europa’s vast ice sheets with light like burning phosphorus.

Natural Selection crossed the orbits of sixteen Jovian moons, and achieved escape velocity by the time it reached Callisto. Seen from the Asian Fleet base, the small sun gradually shrank, turning into a bright star that remained faintly visible for a week, as a reminder from the stars of the lasting pain of the Asian Fleet.

Since the pursuing force had to enter deep-sea state, it took forty-five minutes after Natural Selection left for those ships to launch, lighting up Jupiter with another six suns.

At Asian Fleet Command, which had stopped rotating, the commander silently faced the giant dark side of Jupiter as lightning flashed in the atmosphere ten thousand kilometers below him. Powerful radiation from the fusion engines of Natural Selection and the pursuing force had caused atmospheric ionization and lightning. The fleeting lightning strikes illuminated the surrounding atmosphere, visible at this distance as halos in constantly changing locations, turning the surface of Jupiter into a pond spattered with fluorescent rain.

Natural Selection accelerated in silence to one-hundredth the speed of light, the point of no return for its fusion fuel consumption. Now unable to return to the Solar System under its own power, it had become a lonely boat bound to forever wander in outer space.

The commander of the Asian Fleet gazed at the stars trying unsuccessfully to find one in particular, for all there was in that direction was the faint light of the pursuers’ fusion engines. A report soon came in: Natural Selection had stopped accelerating. A while later, Natural Selection restored communication with the fleet. Then the following communication took place, with delays of more than ten seconds between transmissions due to the fact that the ship was now over five million kilometers away:

NATURAL SELECTION: Natural Selection calling Asian Fleet! Natural Selection calling Asian Fleet!

ASIAN FLEET: Natural Selection, Asian Fleet reads you. Report your status.

NATURAL SELECTION: This is acting captain Zhang Beihai. I’ll speak directly to the fleet commander.

FLEET COMMANDER: I’m listening.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I take full responsibility for Natural Selection’s breakaway voyage.

FLEET COMMANDER: Is anyone else responsible?

ZHANG BEIHAI: No. Responsibility is mine alone. The situation has nothing at all to do with anyone else aboard Natural Selection.

FLEET COMMANDER: I want to talk to Captain Dongfang Yanxu.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Not now.

FLEET COMMANDER: What is the ship’s current status?

ZHANG BEIHAI: All is good. Every crew member is still in deep-sea state, apart from me. Power systems and life support are operating normally.

FLEET COMMANDER: And your reasons for this treason?

ZHANG BEIHAI: I may have deserted, but I am no traitor.

FLEET COMMANDER: Your reasons?

ZHANG BEIHAI: Humanity is certain to lose on the battlefield. I only want to save one of Earth’s stellar-class spaceships to preserve a seed of human civilization in the universe, a scrap of hope.

FLEET COMMANDER: That makes you an Escapist.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I’m just a soldier fulfilling his duty.

FLEET COMMANDER: Have you received the mental seal?

ZHANG BEIHAI: You know that’s not possible. That technology wasn’t around when I went into hibernation.

FLEET COMMANDER: Then your unusually resolute defeatist beliefs are baffling.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I don’t need the mental seal. I am the master of my beliefs. My faith is resolute because it doesn’t come from my own intelligence. At the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, my father and I began to seriously consider the most basic questions about this war. Gradually, a group of deep-thinking scholars, including scientists, politicians, and military strategists, gathered around him. They called themselves the Future Historians.

FLEET COMMANDER: Was it a secret organization?

ZHANG BEIHAI: No. They studied very basic questions, and their discussions were always conducted in the open. The government and military even came forward and held several academic conferences on Future History. And it was from their research that I arrived at the mind-set that humanity is doomed.

FLEET COMMANDER: But the theories of Future History have since been proven incorrect.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Sir, you underestimate them. They not only predicted the Great Ravine but the Second Enlightenment and Second Renaissance as well. What they predicted for today’s era of prosperity is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. And, finally, they predicted that humanity would be totally defeated, wiped out in the Doomsday Battle.

FLEET COMMANDER: Have you forgotten that you’re on a spaceship capable of traveling at fifteen percent of the speed of light?

ZHANG BEIHAI: Genghis Khan’s cavalry attacked with the speed of twentieth-century armored units. The mounted crossbow of the Song Dynasty had a range of up to fifteen hundred meters, comparable to twentieth-century assault rifles. But it’s impossible for ancient cavalry and crossbows to compete with modern forces. Fundamental theory determines everything. The Future Historians clearly saw this point. You, on the other hand, have been blinded by the dying radiance of low-level technology and are luxuriating in the nursery of modern civilization, without any mental preparation whatsoever for the coming ultimate battle that will determine the fate of humanity.

FLEET COMMANDER: You come from a great army, one that was victorious over an enemy with far more advanced equipment. It won victory in one of the largest land wars in the world, relying solely on seized weapons. Your behavior is a disgrace to that army.

ZHANG BEIHAI: My dear commander, I’m more qualified than you to speak of that army. Three generations of my family served in it. During the Korean War, my grandfather attacked a Pershing tank armed with a grenade. The grenade hit the tank and slid off before exploding. The target was barely scratched, but my grandfather was hit by machine-gun fire from the tank, had both legs broken under its treads, and spent the rest of his life an invalid. But compared to two of his comrades, who were crushed to a pulp, he was lucky…. It’s that army’s history that so clearly taught us the significance of a technological gap during wartime. The glory you know is what you’ve read in the history books, but our trauma was cemented by the blood of our fathers and grandfathers. We know more than you do what war means.

FLEET COMMANDER: When did you conceive of your treasonous plan?

ZHANG BEIHAI: I repeat: I may have deserted, but I am not a traitor. I conceived of the plan the last time I saw my father. I saw in his eyes what I needed to do, and it took me two centuries to realize my plan.

FLEET COMMANDER: And to do this you disguised yourself as a triumphalist. A very successful disguise.

ZHANG BEIHAI: General Chang Weisi almost saw through me.

FLEET COMMANDER: Yes. He was keenly aware that he had never worked out the foundation of your triumphalist faith, and his suspicions were only aggravated by your unusual enthusiasm for radiation propulsion systems capable of interstellar travel. He had always been opposed to you joining the Special Contingent of Future Reinforcements, but he couldn’t breach his superiors’ orders. He warned us in the letter he sent, but did so in your era’s subtle way, and we overlooked it.

ZHANG BEIHAI: In order to obtain a spacecraft capable of fleeing into space, I killed three people.

FLEET COMMANDER: We did not know that. Maybe no one did. But one thing is certain: The research direction chosen at that time was crucial for the subsequent development of spaceflight technology.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Thank you for saying so.

FLEET COMMANDER: I will also say that your plan will fail.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Perhaps. But it hasn’t yet.

FLEET COMMANDER: Natural Selection’s fusion fuel is only at one-fifth capacity.

ZHANG BEIHAI: But I had to act immediately. There would be no other opportunity.

FLEET COMMANDER: What it means is that you’re only able to accelerate to one percent of light speed now. You can’t consume excess fuel, because the spaceship’s life-support systems still need power to maintain operations for a timespan that could be as short as a few decades or as long as a few centuries. But at that speed, the pursuing force will catch up to you quite soon.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I still control Natural Selection.

FLEET COMMANDER: True. And of course you know our concern: that pursuit will drive you to continue accelerating, expending fuel until life support fails and Natural Selection becomes a dead ship at near-absolute zero. That’s why the pursuit force won’t draw near Natural Selection for the time being. We have confidence that the commander and soldiers aboard will solve their own warship’s problems.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I’m also convinced that all problems will be resolved. I will shoulder my responsibility, but I still firmly believe that Natural Selection is headed in the right direction.

When Luo Ji jerked awake, he recognized something else that had endured from the past: firecrackers. It was dawn, and through the window the desert glowed white in the early light, illuminated by bursts of firecrackers and fireworks. Then came an urgent knock at the door. Without waiting for it to be answered, Shi Xiaoming opened it up and charged in, his face red with excitement as he urged Luo Ji to watch the news.

Luo Ji watched television only rarely. Since arriving in New Life Village #5, he had returned to a life in the past. After the post-awakening impact of the new era, this was a precious feeling for him, and, for the time being, he didn’t want to be disturbed by information about the present day. He spent most of his time immersed in memories of Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia. All of the paperwork had been filed for their reawakening, but government controls on hibernators meant that it would not happen for two months.

The television news broadcast the following: Five hours ago, the Ringier-Fitzroy Telescope observed the Trisolaran Fleet cross yet again into an interstellar dust cloud. This was the seventh time since its launch two centuries ago that the fleet had revealed itself by passing through a dust cloud. The fleet had lost its rigorous formation, so that the brush shape it had formed on passing through the first cloud was now altered beyond all recognition. But just as in its second crossing, a bristle was observed extending out in front. What was different this time, however, was that the shape of the track indicated that the bristle was not a probe, but a warship of the fleet. Having completed the acceleration and cruising legs of their journey to the Solar System, some of the ships in the Trisolaran Fleet had been observed decelerating as early as fifteen years ago. Ten years ago, the majority of them had begun to slow down. It was clear now that this particular ship had never reduced speed. In fact, judging from its path through the dust cloud, it was still accelerating. At its current rate of acceleration, it would arrive in the Solar System half a century before the rest of the fleet.

A lone ship charging into Solar System territory and in range of Earth’s powerful fleet would be suicide, if it was an invasion. This left just one possible conclusion: It was coming to negotiate. Observations of the Trisolaran Fleet over the course of two centuries had determined the maximum acceleration of every ship, and projections indicated that this advance ship would be unable to decelerate sufficiently, so it would pass right through the Solar System in 150 years. That meant just two possibilities. The first was that the Trisolarans wanted Earth to assist in deceleration. More likely was that, before the ship passed out of the Solar System, it would drop a smaller craft that could decelerate more easily, a ship that would be carrying the Trisolaran negotiation delegation.

“But if they desired to negotiate, wouldn’t they notify humanity by sophon?” Luo Ji asked.

“That’s easy to explain!” Shi Xiaoming said excitedly. “It’s a different way of thinking. The Trisolarans have totally transparent minds, so they imagine that we already know what they’re thinking!”

Even though the explanation was unconvincing, Luo Ji shared Shi Xiaoming’s feeling, like the sun outside was rising early.

When the sun rose for real, the revelry reached a climax. This was just a small corner of the world, and the center of the activity was in the underground cities, where people left their trees and crowded into the streets and plazas, their clothing turned up to maximum brightness to form a glowing sea of light. Virtual fireworks blossomed in the vaults overhead, and at times a colorful burst covered the entire sky, its brilliant light a match for the sun.

News continued to arrive. The government was cautious at first, and its spokespersons stated repeatedly that there was no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that Trisolaris had the intent to negotiate. But, at the same time, the UN and the SFJC convened an emergency summit to formulate strategies for negotiation procedures and terms….

In New Life Village #5, a short interlude paused the revelry: A city legislator came to make a speech. He was a fanatical supporter of what was called Project Sunshine and was taking this opportunity to win the support of the hibernator community.

Project Sunshine was a UN proposal whose main thrust was that, in the event of a human victory in the Doomsday Battle, defeated Trisolarans ought to be provided with space in the Solar System. There were various versions of the project. The Weak Survival Plan set up Pluto, Charon, and the moons of Neptune as Trisolaran reservations that would grant admission only to those aboard the defeated Trisolaris ships. The living conditions on these reservations would be very poor, and they would rely on fusion energy and the support of human society to sustain themselves. The Strong Survival Plan would use Mars for the Trisolaran sojourn and would eventually admit all Trisolaran immigrants, in addition to members of the fleet. This plan would provide Trisolaran civilization with the Solar System’s best living conditions apart from Earth. The other versions were more or less situated between these two, but there were also a few more extreme ideas, such as accepting Trisolarans into Earth society. Project Sunshine had won broad support from Earth International and Fleet International, and preliminary studies and planning had already begun, with many nongovernmental forces in both Internationals pushing for it. Yet it had encountered fierce resistance from the community of hibernators, who had even coined a name for supporters of the project: “Dongguo,” after the soft-hearted scholar in the fable who saved a wolf’s life.[2]

As soon as the legislator’s speech began, he was met with strong pushback from the audience, which tossed tomatoes at him. Ducking, he said, “I’d like to remind you that we’re in a humanitarian age following the Second Renaissance. The life and civilization of every race are accorded the greatest respect. You are bathed in the light of this age, are you not? Hibernators in modern society enjoy citizenship in complete equality and suffer no discrimination. This principle is recognized in the constitution and in the law, but more importantly, it exists in everyone’s heart. I trust you can appreciate this. Trisolaris, too, is a great civilization. Human society must acknowledge its right to exist. Project Sunshine is not a charity. It is an acknowledgement and an expression of humanity’s own value! If we… Hey, jerks. Focus on your work!”

The legislator’s final line was addressed to his team, who were busily gathering up the tomatoes that had fallen to the ground—they were quite expensive underground, after all. When the hibernators saw this, they began tossing cucumbers and potatoes onto the stage as well, and thus the minor confrontation was resolved in mutual merriment.

At noon, every household feasted. On the grass, a sumptuous meal of unadulterated agricultural products was laid out for the city folk who had come to join in the fun, including Mr. Dongguo the legislator and his entourage. The festivities continued tipsily through the afternoon and until sunset, which was exceptionally beautiful that evening. The sandy plains outside the neighborhood looked creamily soft and delicate under the red-orange sun, and the rolling dunes looked like the bodies of sleeping women….

By nighttime, one news item pushed their flagging spirits to new heights of excitement: the Fleet International had made the decision to combine the stellar-class warships of the Asian Fleet, the European Fleet, and the North American Fleet into a single fleet of 2,015 ships to sally forth in unison and intercept the Trisolaran probe as it crossed the orbit of Neptune!

The news propelled the revelry to a renewed climax, and fireworks filled the night sky. But it also elicited some disdain and mockery.

“Mobilizing two thousand warships for a tiny probe?”

“It’s like using two thousand butcher knives to kill a chicken!”

“That’s right! Two thousand cannons to hit a mosquito! It’s not that tough!”

“Hey, everyone, we should be more understanding of the Fleet International. You know, it might be the only chance they’ll get to fight Trisolaris.”

“Right. If this can be called fighting.”

“It’s okay. Just think of it as a military parade for humanity. Let’s see what this superfleet’s got. It’ll scare the Trisolarans to death! They’ll be so frightened they won’t be able to pee. If they even have pee.”

Laughter.

Close to midnight, more news came: The combined fleet had set off from Jupiter base! Viewers were informed that in the southern sky, the fleet could be seen with the naked eye. At this, the revelers quieted down for the first time and searched the sky for Jupiter. It wasn’t easy, but under the guidance of the expert on the television, they soon located the planet in the southwest. At this point, the light of the combined fleet was moving in Earth’s direction from a distance of five AU. Forty-five minutes later, the brightness of Jupiter suddenly increased, soon surpassing Sirius to become the brightest object in the night sky. Then a brilliant shining star separated from Jupiter, like a soul leaving a body. The planet returned to its original brightness as the star moved slowly away from it. That was the launch of the combined fleet.

At practically the same time, live images of Jupiter base reached Earth. On the television, people saw the sudden appearance of two thousand suns in the blackness of space. Standing out awesomely in the eternal night of space, their clean rectangular formation put one thought in everyone’s mind: God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Under the light of those two thousand suns, Jupiter and its moons seemed to have caught fire. The planet’s atmosphere, ionized by the radiation, produced lightning that filled the entire fleet-facing hemisphere and covered it in a giant blanket of electric light. The fleet accelerated with no disruption to its formation, its huge wall blocking out the sun, and then made a stately advance into space with the force of a thundercloud, declaring to the universe the dignity and invincibility of the human race. The human spirit that had been repressed since the first appearance of the Trisolaran Fleet two centuries ago had finally found total liberation. At this moment, all the stars in the galaxy silently held back their light, and Human and God stepped out proudly into the universe as one.

The people wept and cheered, and many of them were moved to loud wails. Never before in history had there been such a moment, in which every single person felt fortunate and proud to be a member of the human race.

But there were some who kept their heads. Luo Ji was one of them. Surveying the crowd, he noticed that someone else was calm: Shi Qiang was off by himself, leaning against one side of the giant holographic television, smoking a cigarette and watching the revelers indifferently.

Luo Ji went over and asked, “What are you…”

“Ah, hello my boy. I’ve got a duty to fulfill.” He indicated the ebullient crowd. “Extreme joy easily turns to grief, and now’s the best time for something to happen. Like when Mr. Dongguo lectured this morning. If I hadn’t come up with the tomatoes and such in a timely fashion, they would have used stones.”

Shi Qiang had recently been appointed chief of police for New Life Village #5. To the hibernators, the fact that someone belonging to the Asian Fleet, someone who no longer was a Chinese citizen, had been given an official post in the national government was a little strange. However, his work had been universally acclaimed among the villagers.

“Besides, I’m not the type to get carried away,” he continued, clapping Luo Ji across the shoulders. “Neither are you, my boy.”

“No, I’m not.” Luo Ji nodded. “I was always out for instant gratification. The future had nothing to do with me, even though for a while there I was forced to become a messiah. Maybe my present state is a sort of compensation for the harm from that. I’m going to bed. Believe it or not, Da Shi, I’ll actually be able to get to sleep tonight.”

“Go and see your colleague. He just arrived. Humanity’s victory might not be a good thing for him.”

Luo Ji was slightly taken aback by this remark. Looking at the man Shi Qiang pointed to, he realized with surprise that it was the old Wallfacer Bill Hines. His face was ashen and he seemed to be in a trance. He had been standing not far off from Shi Qiang and had only just now noticed Luo Ji. When they hugged each other in greeting, Luo Ji felt that Hines’s body seemed to tremble with weakness.

“I came looking for you,” he said to Luo Ji. “Only the two of us, history’s rubbish, understand each other. But now, I’m afraid even you don’t understand me.”

“What about Keiko Yamasuki?”

“Remember the Meditation Room in the UN Assembly Building?” Hines said. “It was always deserted. Tourists only visited occasionally…. Do you remember the chunk of iron ore? She committed seppuku on top of it.”

“Oh…”

“Before she died, she cursed me, saying that my life would be worse than death, since I’m marked with the mental seal of defeatism even as humanity is victorious. She was right. I’m in real pain right now. Of course I’m happy for the victory, but it’s impossible for me to believe any of it. It’s like there are two gladiators fighting in my mind. You know, it’s far harder than trying to believe that water is drinkable.”

After he and Shi Qiang had gotten Hines set up with a room, Luo Ji returned to his own room and soon fell asleep. Once again he dreamed of Zhuang Yan and the child. When he woke, the sun was shining through the window and the revelries were still going on outside.

Natural Selection flew at 1 percent of the speed of light on a course between Jupiter and the orbit of Saturn. Behind it, the sun was now small, although it was still the brightest of the stars, while up ahead, the Milky Way shone with an even greater brilliance. The ship’s heading was more or less in the direction of Cygnus, but in the expanse of outer space, its speed was imperceptible. To a nearby observer, Natural Selection would have seemed suspended in deep space. From its own vantage point, in fact, all movement throughout the universe had been erased, leaving the ship seemingly in a static state, with the Milky Way ahead and the sun behind. Time seemed to have stopped.

“You have failed,” Dongfang Yanxu said to Zhang Beihai. All personnel aboard the ship but the two of them were still in deep-sea sleep state. Zhang Beihai remained shut inside the spherical compartment, and Dongfang Yanxu, unable to enter, had to talk with him through the communication system. Through the section of bulkhead that was still transparent, she could see the man who had hijacked humanity’s most powerful warship floating quietly in the center of the compartment, head bent, intent on writing in a notebook. In front of him floated an interface that showed the ship on standby for Ahead Four, ready to go at the press of a button. Around him floated several globs of liquid deep-sea acceleration fluid that hadn’t yet been evacuated. His uniform had dried, but its wrinkles made him look much older.

He ignored her and continued to write, head bent.

“The pursuing force is only 1.2 million kilometers away from Natural Selection,” she said.

“I know,” he said without looking up. “You were wise to keep the entire ship in deep-sea state.”

“It had to be this way. Otherwise, agitated officers and soldiers would have attacked this cabin. And if you took Natural Selection to Ahead Four at will, you would have killed them all. That’s also the reason why the pursuers haven’t closed in.”

He said nothing. Flipping a page in the notebook, he continued writing.

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” she asked softly.

“You never imagined I’d do what I’m doing now.” He paused a few seconds, then added, “The people of my time have our own ways of thinking.”

“But we’re not enemies.”

“There are no permanent enemies or comrades, only permanent duty.”

“Then your pessimism about the war is totally unfounded. Trisolaris has just shown signs of wanting talks, and the combined Solar Fleet has set off to intercept the Trisolaran probe. The war will end with a victory for humanity.”

“I’ve seen the news that came in…”

“And you still persist in your defeatism and Escapism?”

“I do.”

She shook her head in frustration. “Your way of thinking really is different from ours. For instance, you knew from the start that your plan would be unsuccessful, because Natural Selection has only a fifth of its fuel and is certain to be caught.”

He set down his pencil and looked out of the cabin at her. His eyes were calm as water. “We’re all soldiers, but do you know what the biggest difference between soldiers from my time and soldiers now is? You determine your actions according to possible outcomes. But for us, we must carry out our duty regardless of the outcome. This was my only chance, so I took it.”

“You’re saying that to comfort yourself.”

“No. It’s my nature. I don’t expect you to understand, Dongfang. We’re separated by two centuries, after all.”

“So you’ve carried out your duty, but there’s no hope for your Escapist endeavor. Surrender.”

He smiled at her, then looked back at his writing. “It’s not time yet. I need to write down all that I’ve experienced. Everything across two centuries needs to be written down, so that it might be of assistance to a few sober-minded people in the next two centuries.”

“You can dictate to the computer.”

“No, I’m used to writing by hand. Paper lasts longer than a computer. Don’t worry. I’ll bear full responsibility.”

Ding Yi looked out through Quantum’s broad porthole. Even though the holographic display in the spherical cabin provided a better view, he still liked seeing things with his own eyes. What he saw was that he was situated on a large plane consisting of two thousand small, dazzling suns whose light seemed to set his gray hair aflame. The sight had grown familiar to him in the days since the launch of the combined fleet, but its grandeur still shook him each time he looked. The fleet was not just in this configuration as a show of force or majesty. In a traditional naval configuration of staggered columns, the radiation produced by the engine of every warship would have an effect on the ships to the rear. In this rectangular formation, the ships were separated by about twenty kilometers. Even though each of them was an average of three to four times the size of a naval aircraft carrier, from that distance they were practically dots, with only the glow of the fusion engines to prove their existence in space.

The combined fleet was in a dense formation, one that had only ever been used in fleet review. In a normal cruising formation, the ships ought to have been spaced at roughly three hundred to five hundred kilometers, so a twenty-kilometer spacing was basically like sailing hull-to-hull through the ocean. Many of the generals in the three fleets disagreed with this dense formation, but conventional formations presented a number of thorny problems. First of all, there was the principle of fairness in battle opportunity. If the probe were approached in a standard formation, then the ships at the edge would still be tens of thousands of kilometers away from the target when the formation reached minimum distance. If combat broke out during the capture, a fair number of the ships could not have been considered to have taken part, leaving them nothing in the history books but eternal regret. But the three fleets couldn’t break off into their own subformations, because it was impossible to coordinate which of them would occupy the most advantageous position in the overall formation. So the formation had to be made as dense as possible, a review formation that placed all ships within combat distance of the probe. A second reason for selecting this formation was that the Fleet International and the United Nations both desired stunning visuals, not so much to show off for Trisolaris as to give the masses something to look at. The visual impact held enormous political significance for both groups. With the main enemy force still two light-years away, the dense formation was certainly not in danger.

Quantum was located in a corner of the formation, giving Ding Yi a view of the majority of the fleet. When they crossed the orbit of Saturn, all the fusion engines turned toward the forward direction and the fleet began to decelerate. Now, as the fleet closed in on the Trisolaran probe, its velocity was negative—it was traveling back toward the sun as it closed the distance separating it from its target.

Ding Yi put a pipe to his lips. With no loose tobacco in this age, it was an empty pipe that dangled there, the lingering flavor of two-century-old tobacco faint and indistinct, like a memory of the past.

He had been reawakened seven years earlier and had been teaching in the Peking University physics department since then. Last year he had put in a request to the fleet asking to be one of the people who would examine the Trisolaran probe up close when it was intercepted. Although Ding Yi was held in high regard, his request had been refused until he declared that he would kill himself in front of the three fleet commanders if they did not comply. Then they said they would think about it. In fact, selection of the first person to contact the probe was a knotty problem, because first contact with the probe meant first contact with Trisolaris. According to the fairness principle to be observed during interception, none of the three fleets could be permitted to enjoy this honor alone, but sending someone from each of them presented operational problems and could complicate matters. So the mission had to be undertaken by someone outside Fleet International. Ding Yi was naturally the most suitable candidate, although another unstated reason lay at the core of his request’s ultimate approval: Neither the Fleet International nor the Earth International had much confidence in obtaining the probe, because it was practically certain to self-destruct during or after intercept. Before it did so, close-range observation and contact were imperative if they wanted to obtain as much data as possible. As the discoverer of the macroatom and the inventor of controlled fusion, the veteran physicist was completely qualified in this area. At any rate, Ding Yi’s life was his own, and at eighty-three, his unparalleled qualifications naturally gave the old man the power to do anything he wanted.

At the final meeting of Quantum command before the intercept began, Ding Yi saw an image of the Trisolaran probe. Three tracking craft had been dispatched by the three fleets to replace Earth International’s Blue Shadow. They had captured an image at a distance of five hundred kilometers from the target, the closest that any human spacecraft had come to the probe. The probe was about as large as expected, 3.5 meters long, and when Ding Yi saw it, he had the same impression as everyone else: a droplet of mercury. The probe was a perfect teardrop shape, round at the head and pointy at the tail, with a surface so smooth it was a total reflector. The Milky Way was reflected on its surface as a smooth pattern of light that gave the mercury droplet a pure beauty. Its droplet shape was so natural that observers imagined it in a liquid state, one for which an internal structure was impossible.

Ding Yi remained silent after he saw the image of the probe. He did not speak at the meeting, and his expression was downcast.

“Master Ding, you seem to have something on your mind,” the captain said.

“I don’t feel good,” he said softly, and pointed at the holographic probe with his pipe.

“Why? It looks like a harmless work of art,” an officer said.

“And that’s why I don’t feel so good,” Ding Yi said, shaking his gray head. “It looks like a work of art rather than an interstellar probe. It’s not a good sign when something’s so far removed from our own mental concept.”

“It is peculiar. Its surface is entirely sealed. Where’s the engine nozzle?”

“Yet its engine lights up. We’ve observed that. When it went out for a second time, Blue Shadow wasn’t close enough to capture an image in time, so we don’t know where the light came from.”

“What is its mass?” Ding Yi asked.

“We don’t have an exact value right now. A rough value, obtained through high-precision gravitational instruments, is less than ten tons.”

“Then at least it’s not made of matter from a neutron star.”

The captain put an end to the officers’ discussion and continued with the meeting. He said to Ding Yi, “Master Ding, this is how the fleet has planned out your visit: After the unmanned craft completes its capture of the target and carries out an observation period, if nothing unusual is found, you will enter the capture craft on a shuttle and conduct a close-up observation of the target. You may not stay longer than fifteen minutes. This is Major Xizi. She will represent the Asian Fleet and accompany you as you carry out your examination.”

A young officer saluted Ding Yi. Like the other women in the fleet, she was tall and slender, the very epitome of New Space Humanity.

With only a glance at the major, Ding Yi turned to the captain. “Why does there have to be someone else? Can’t I go alone?”

“Of course not, sir. You’re unfamiliar with the space environment, and you need assistance throughout the entire process.”

“In that case, I’d better not go. Does someone really need to follow me…” He broke off without uttering “to death.”

The captain said, “Master Ding, this trip is dangerous, to be sure, but not completely so. If the probe self-destructs, then it will most likely occur during the intercept. The likelihood of it self-destructing two hours after the intercept is very low, so long as the examination process does not use destructive instruments.”

In point of fact, the primary reason the Earth and Fleet Internationals decided to send a human to the probe was not for an inspection. When the world saw the probe for the first time, everyone was captivated by its magnificent exterior. The mercury droplet was just so beautiful, so simple in shape yet masterfully styled, with each point on its surface in exactly the right place. It was imbued with a graceful dynamism, as if at every moment it was dripping endlessly in the cosmic night. It inspired the feeling that even if human artists tried out every possible smooth closed shape, they wouldn’t come up with this one. It transcended every possibility. Not even in Plato’s Republic was there such a perfect shape: straighter than the straightest line, more circular than a perfect circle, a mirrored dolphin leaping out of the sea of dreams, a crystallization of all the love in the universe…. Beauty is always paired with good, so if there really existed a demarcation between good and evil in the universe, this object would fall on the good side.

So a hypothesis was quickly worked out: The object might not even be a probe. Further observation confirmed this hypothesis, to an extent. People first noticed its exterior, the highly smooth finish that made it a total reflector. The fleet conducted an experiment on the probe using a large quantity of monitoring equipment: Its entire surface was irradiated with different wavelengths of high-frequency electromagnetic waves, and the reflectance was measured. To their shock, they discovered that at every frequency, including visible light, the reflection was practically 100 percent. No absorption was detected. This meant that the probe could not detect any high-frequency waves—or, in layman’s terms, it was blind. There must be a particular significance to a blind design. The most reasonable guess was that it was a token of goodwill from Trisolaris to humanity, expressed through its nonfunctional design and beautiful form. A sincere desire for peace.

So the probe was given a new name inspired by its shape: “the droplet.” On both Earth and Trisolaris, water was the source of life and a symbol of peace.

Public opinion maintained that a formal delegation ought to be sent to make contact with the droplet, rather than an expedition team made up of a physicist and three ordinary officers. But after careful consideration, Fleet International decided to keep its original plan unchanged.

“Can’t you at least swap in someone else? Letting this young lady…” Ding Yi said, gesturing at Xizi.

Xizi smiled at him and said, “Master Ding, I am Quantum’s science officer. I’m in charge of off-ship scientific expeditions during our voyages. This is my duty.”

“And women make up half the fleet,” the captain said. “Three people will accompany you. The other two are science officers sent by the European and North American Fleets. They’ll be reporting shortly. Master Ding, let me reiterate one point: According to the decision of the SFJC, you must be the first to make direct contact with the target. Only then are they permitted to make contact.”

“Pointless.” Ding Yi shook his head again. “Humanity hasn’t changed at all. So eager to chase after vanity…. But, rest assured, I’ll do as you wish. I just want to have a look, is all. What I’m really interested in is the theory behind this super-technology. But I’m afraid that this life is… ah.”

The captain floated over to him and said with concern, “Master Ding, you can go rest now. The intercept will be starting soon, and you need to preserve your energy before setting off on your expedition.”

Ding Yi looked up at the captain. For a moment he didn’t realize that the meeting was going to continue after he left. Then he looked back at the image of the droplet, noticing now how its round head reflected a regular row of lights that gradually deformed toward the rear, merging into the reflected pattern of the Milky Way. That was the fleet. He looked again at Quantum’s commanders floating before him, all of them so very young. Just children. They looked so noble and perfect, from the captain to the lieutenants, and their eyes shone with a godlike wisdom. The light of the fleet streaming in through the portholes was tinted like a golden sunset by the auto-darkening glass, enveloping them all in gold. Behind them floated the image of the droplet like a supernatural silver symbol, making the place otherworldly and transcendent, and turning them into a host of gods atop Mount Olympus…. Something stirred deep within him, and he grew excited.

“Master Ding, do you have something else to add?” the captain asked.

“Er, I’d like to say…” His hands moved aimlessly, and he let his pipe float in the air. “I’d like to say that you kids have been great to me over the past few days….”

“You’re the man we admire the most of all,” a vice-captain said.

“Oh… so there are a few things I’d really like to say. Just… the nonsense of an old fool. You don’t have to take it seriously. Still, children, as someone who’s crossed two centuries, I’ve been through a bit more than you…. Of course, like I said, don’t take it seriously….”

“Master Ding, if you’ve got something to say, then just say it. You really have our highest respect.”

Ding Yi slowly nodded. Then he pointed upward. “If this spaceship has to go to maximum acceleration, everyone here will need to… be immersed in a liquid.”

“That’s right. Deep-sea state.”

“Yes, right. The deep-sea state.” Ding Yi hesitated again, and ruminated for a moment before resolving to go on. “When we go out for our examination, could this ship, ah, Quantum, be put into a deep-sea state?”

The officers looked at each other in surprise, and the captain said, “Why?”

Ding Yi’s hands began fluttering again. His hair glowed white under the fleet’s light. Like someone had noticed when he first came aboard, he looked quite a bit like Einstein. “Um… well, at any rate there’s no harm in doing it, right? You know, I don’t have a good feeling.”

After saying this, he remained silent, his eyes locked onto the infinite distance. At last he reached out, plucked the pipe out of the air, and put it into his pocket. Without saying good-bye, he awkwardly worked his superconductor belt to float toward the door as the officers watched him.

When he was halfway out, he slowly turned back around. “Children, do you know what I’ve been doing all these years? Teaching physics at a university and advising doctoral students.” As he looked out at the galaxy, an inscrutable smile played on his face—tinted with, the officers noticed, a hint of sadness. “Children, a man from two centuries ago is still able to teach university physics today.” With that, he turned and left.

The captain wanted to say something to him, but now that he was gone, the words didn’t come out. He remained deep in thought. Some of the officers looked at the droplet, but more of them turned their attention to the captain.

“Captain, you’re not going to take him seriously, are you?” one lieutenant asked.

“He’s a wise scientist, but he’s still an ancient man. Their thoughts about modern things are always…” someone else added.

“But in his field, humanity hasn’t made any progress. It’s still stuck at his era’s level.”

“He spoke of intuition. I think his intuition may have discovered something,” an officer said, in a voice full of awe.

“Also…” Xizi blurted out. But looking at the surrounding officers who outranked her, she swallowed the rest of her words.

“Major, please continue,” the captain said.

“Also, like he said, there’s no harm in doing it,” she said.

“Think about it this way,” a vice-captain said. “According to present battle plans, if the capture fails and the droplet unexpectedly escapes, then the fleet can only deploy fighters as a tracking force. But long-range tracking needs to be stellar-class, so the fleet ought to have warships prepared. This is an oversight in the plan.”

“Make a report to the fleet,” the captain said.

The fleet’s approval was swift: When the examination team had set off, Quantum and the neighboring stellar-class warship Bronze Age would enter a deep-sea state.

To capture the droplet, the fleet’s formation maintained a distance of one thousand kilometers from the target, a figure decided after careful calculation. There were various hypotheses about the manner in which the droplet might self-destruct, but the maximum release of energy would come from self-destruction by antimatter annihilation. Since the droplet had a mass of less than ten tons, the largest energy burst that needed to be considered was that produced by the annihilation of five tons each of matter and antimatter. That annihilation, if it occurred on Earth, would be enough to destroy all life on the planet surface, but in space, the energy would be released entirely in the form of light radiation. For stellar-class warships, with their super anti-radiation capacity, one thousand kilometers was far enough to allow for a sufficient margin of safety.

The capture would be accomplished by Mantis, a small unmanned craft that had previously been used for collecting mineral specimens in the asteroid belt. Its key feature was an extra-long robotic arm.

At the start of the operation, Mantis crossed the five-hundred-kilometer line held by the previous monitoring craft and carefully approached the target, flying slowly and pausing for several minutes every fifty kilometers so that the dense omnidirectional surveillance system behind it could perform a complete scan of the target. Only after confirming that there were no abnormalities did it proceed.

At one thousand kilometers from the target, the combined fleet had matched speed with the droplet, and most of the warships had turned off their fusion engines to drift silently in the abyss of space, their giant metal hulls reflecting the weak sunlight. They were like abandoned space cities, the whole fleet array a silent, prehistoric Stonehenge. The 1.2 million people in the fleet held their breath as they watched Mantis on its brief voyage.

The images seen by the fleet traveled at the speed of light for three hours before reaching Earth, where they were transmitted to the eyes of three billion people similarly holding their breath. All activity in the human world had stopped. The flying cars had disappeared from among the giant trees, and a stillness had fallen over the underground metropolises. Even the global information network, busy since its birth three centuries before, emptied out. The majority of data transmissions were images from twenty AU away.

Mantis’s stop-and-go advance took half an hour to cover a distance that was hardly even a step through space. Finally, it hung in place fifty meters from the target. Now the Mantis’s distorted reflection could be clearly seen in the droplet’s mercury surface. The ship’s many instruments began a close-range scan of the target, first confirming prior observations: The droplet’s surface temperature was even lower than the surrounding space, close to absolute zero. Scientists had thought that there might be powerful cooling equipment inside the droplet, but Mantis’s instruments were still unable to detect anything about the target’s internal structure.

Mantis extended its extra-long robot arm toward the target, starting and stopping over the fifty-meter distance. But the dense monitoring system did not pick up anything abnormal. The grueling process lasted half an hour before the tip of the arm finally reached the target’s position and touched it, an object that had come from four light-years away on a nearly two-century-long trek through space. When the robot arm’s six digits grasped hold of the droplet at last, a million hearts in the fleet beat as one, echoed three hours later by three billion hearts on Earth.

Holding the droplet, the mechanical arm waited motionless. When the target still showed no response or abnormality after ten minutes, it began to pull it back.

It was at this point that people noticed a strange contrast: The mechanical arm was obviously designed purely as a functional object, with a rugged steel frame and exposed hydraulics that felt complicatedly technological and crudely industrial. But the droplet was perfect in shape, a smoothly gleaming, solid drop of liquid whose exquisite beauty erased all functional and technical meaning and expressed the lightness and detachment of philosophy and art. The steel claw of the robot arm clutched the droplet like the hairy hand of Australopithecus clutching a pearl. The droplet looked so fragile, like a glass thermos liner in space, that everyone was afraid it would shatter in the claw. But that did not occur, and the robot arm began to retract.

It took another half hour for the arm to retract and pull the droplet into Mantis’s main cabin, after which the two bulkheads gradually came together. If the target were to self-destruct, this would be the most likely time. The fleet and Earth behind it waited quietly, as if through the silence they could hear the sound of time flowing through space.

Two hours later, nothing had happened.

The fact that the droplet had not self-destructed was final proof of what people had guessed: If it was a military probe, it surely would have self-destructed after falling into enemy hands. It was now certain that this was a gift from Trisolaris to humanity, a sign of peace sent in that civilization’s baffling mode of expression.

Once again the world erupted with joy. This time the revelry wasn’t as wild and abandoned as the last, because humanity’s victory and the end of the war were no longer anything unanticipated. Taking a thousand steps back, even if the coming negotiations broke down and the war continued, humanity would still ultimately be the victors, because the presence in space of the combined fleet had given the masses a visual impression of human power. Earth now had the calm confidence to face any sort of enemy.

With the arrival of the droplet, people’s feelings toward Trisolaris slowly began to change. They increasingly began to recognize that the race marching toward the Solar System was a great civilization, one that had experienced two-hundred-odd cyclic catastrophes and had endured with unbelievable tenacity. Their arduous journey of four light-years across the vastness of space was all for the sake of finding a stable star, a home in which to live out their lives…. The public’s feelings toward Trisolaris began to change from enmity and hatred to sympathy, compassion, and even admiration. People also realized another fact: Trisolaris had sent out the ten droplets two centuries ago, but humanity had only just realized their true significance. This was no doubt because the behavior of Trisolaris was overly subtle, as well as a reflection of the fact that humanity’s state of mind had been distorted by its own bloody history. In a global online referendum, citizen support for Project Sunshine rose rapidly, increasingly inclined toward the Strong Survival Plan that offered Mars as a Trisolaran reservation.

The UN and the fleets accelerated their preparations for negotiations, and the two internationals began organizing delegations.

All of this took place in the day after the droplet was captured.

But what excited people most of all was not the facts before their eyes, but the rudimentary outline of a bright future: What sort of fantastic paradise would the Solar System become after the union of Trisolaran technology and human power?

At about the same distance on the other side of the sun, Natural Selection coasted silently at 1 percent the speed of light.

“Message just received: The droplet didn’t self-destruct upon capture,” Dongfang Yanxu said to Zhang Beihai.

“What’s a droplet?” he asked. They faced each other through the transparent bulkhead. His face was haggard.

“The Trisolaran probe. Now we have confirmation that it’s a gift to the human race, an expression of the Trisolaran wish for peace.”

“Is that so? That’s very good.”

“You don’t seem to care very much.”

He didn’t reply. Instead he lifted the notebook up in front of him with both hands. “I’ve finished.” Then he put it into a close-fitting pocket.

“So can you hand over control of Natural Selection now?”

“I can, but first I’d like to know what you plan on doing once you’ve gained control.”

“Decelerating.”

“To rendezvous with the pursuing force?”

“Yes. Natural Selection’s fuel store is below return capacity, so it needs to refuel before being able to return to the Solar System. But the pursuing force doesn’t have enough fuel for us. Those six ships are only half the tonnage of Natural Selection, and in their pursuit they’ve accelerated to five percent of light speed and decelerated a similar amount. They’ve got enough fuel for a return. So Natural Selection’s personnel will have to return aboard the pursuing force. Later, a ship carrying enough fuel will be sent after Natural Selection to take it back to the Solar System, but that will require time. We need to decelerate as much as possible before leaving to minimize that time.”

“Don’t decelerate, Dongfang.”

“Why?”

“Deceleration will consume all of Natural Selection’s remaining fuel. We can’t become a powerless ship. No one knows what will happen. As captain, you ought to keep that in mind.”

“What can happen? The future is clear: The war will end and humanity will win, and you’ll be proven totally wrong!”

He smiled at her excitement, as if trying to quell it. As he looked at her, there was a softness in his eyes that had never been there before. It rocked her emotions. She found his defeatism unbelievable, and suspected him of having other motivations for defecting. She had even wondered about his sanity. But for some reason she felt a certain attachment to him. She had left her father when she was very young, certainly not anything unusual for a child of that era. Fatherly love was something ancient. But in this ancient soldier from the twenty-first century, she had come to understand it.

He said, “Dongfang, I come from troubled times. I’m a realist. All I know is that the enemy is still there and it’s still approaching the Solar System. As a soldier knowing this, I can’t be happy until everyone is at peace…. Don’t decelerate. This is the condition under which I’ll relinquish control. Of course, the only guarantee I have is your character.”

“I promise that Natural Selection will not decelerate.”

Zhang Beihai turned and floated to the interface panel, where he called up the permissions-transfer interface and entered his password. After a series of taps, he turned it off.

“Natural Selection’s captain’s privileges have been transferred to you. The password is still Marlboro,” he said, without looking back at her.

Dongfang Yanxu called up an interface in the air and quickly confirmed this. “Thank you. But I ask you not to come out of that cabin for the time being, or open the door. The ship’s personnel are awakening from deep-sea state and I’m afraid they might act aggressively toward you.”

“Will they make me walk the plank?” At her mystified expression, he laughed. “It’s a form of the death penalty on ancient ships. If it had really carried on through to today, you would have to shove a criminal like me right out into space…. Okay. I’d quite like to be alone.”

The shuttle that sailed out of Quantum seemed as small as a car leaving a city compared to its mother ship. The light of its engine illuminated only a small part of the ship’s hull, like a candle beneath a cliff. It eased out of Quantum’s shadow into the sunlight, its engine nozzle glowing like a firefly as it flew toward the droplet a thousand kilometers away.

The expedition team consisted of four people: a major and a lieutenant colonel from the European and North American Fleets, Ding Yi, and Xizi.

Through the porthole, Ding Yi looked back at the receding fleet formation. Quantum, situated in a corner, still appeared large, but its nearest neighbor, the warship Cloud, was so small that its shape could only barely be made out. Farther away, the ranks of warships were just rows of points across his field of view. Ding Yi knew that the rectangular array was a hundred ships in length by twenty in width, with an additional fifteen ships maneuvering outside of the formation. But when he counted along the length, by the time he reached thirty he couldn’t see clearly, and that was just six hundred kilometers away. It was the same looking up, where the short side extended vertically. The warships that could be made out in the far distance were just fuzzy points of light under the weak sunlight, nearly indistinguishable from the starry background. Only when their engines started up would the fleet array be totally visible to the naked eye. The combined fleet was a one-hundred-by-twenty matrix in space. He imagined another matrix being multiplied with it, the horizontal elements from one multiplied in turn with vertical elements from the other to form an even larger matrix, although in reality the only important constant for the matrix was one tiny point: the droplet. He didn’t like extreme asymmetry in mathematics, so this attempt to calm himself through mental gymnastics failed.

When the force of acceleration subsided, he struck up a conversation with Xizi, who was sitting next to him. “Child, are you from Hangzhou?”

Xizi was staring straight ahead, as if trying to locate Mantis, which was still hundreds of kilometers away. Then she recovered and shook her head. “No, Master Ding. I was born in the Asian Fleet. I don’t know whether my name has anything to do with Hangzhou.[3] I’ve been there, though. It’s a nice place.”

“It was a nice place back in our day. But West Lake has now turned into Crescent Lake, and it’s in a desert…. Still, even though the desert’s everywhere, today’s world still reminds me of the south, and the age in which the women were as graceful as the water.” As he said this, he looked at Xizi, whose enchanting silhouette was set off by the soft light of the distant sun that streamed in through the porthole. “Child, looking at you, I’m reminded of someone I once loved. Like you, she was a major, and although she wasn’t as tall as you, she was just as beautiful….”

“In the old days, lots of girls must have been in love with you,” Xizi said to Ding Yi, turning back to him.

“I wouldn’t usually bother the girls I liked. I believed in what Goethe said: ‘If I love you, what business is it of yours?’”

Xizi laughed.

He went on, “Oh, if only I had the same attitude toward physics! My life’s biggest regret is that we’ve been blinded by the sophons. But here’s a more positive way of thinking about it: If we’re exploring laws, what business is that of the laws? One day, perhaps, humanity—or maybe someone else—will explore the laws so thoroughly that they’ll be able to alter not only their own reality, but perhaps the entire universe. They’ll be able to turn every star system into whatever shape they require, like kneading a ball of dough. But so what? The laws still won’t have changed. Yes, she’ll still be there, the one unchanging presence, forever young, like how we remember a lover….” As he spoke, he pointed out the porthole at the brilliant Milky Way. “And when I think about that, my worries go away.”

Xizi said nothing, and they fell into a heavy silence. Mantis soon came into view, albeit as a point of light two hundred kilometers away. The shuttle rotated 180 degrees, and the engine nozzle, now pointing ahead of them, began their deceleration.

The fleet was now directly ahead of the shuttle, around eight hundred kilometers away, a trivial distance in space, but one that turned the massive warships into barely visible points. The fleet itself was distinguishable from the starry background only by its neatly arranged ranks. The entire rectangular array seemed like a grid covering the Milky Way, its regularity standing in stark contrast to the chaos of the starfield. With its great size made tiny by the distance, the power of the formation was made apparent. Many people in the fleet and the distant Earth behind it who were watching this image sensed that it was a visual display of what Ding Yi had just been talking about.

The shuttle reached Mantis and the force of deceleration cut off. To the shuttle’s passengers, the speed of the process made it feel as if Mantis had suddenly popped up in space.

Docking was completed quickly. Since Mantis was unmanned, there was no air in the cabin, so the four members of the expedition team put on light space suits. Upon receiving final instructions from the fleet, they filed weightlessly through the docking hatch and into Mantis.

The droplet floated dead center in Mantis’s one spherical main cabin. Its colors were entirely different from the image seen aboard Quantum, paler and softer, evidently due to differences in the scene reflected on its surface—the droplet’s total reflectance meant that it had no color of its own. Arranged in the main cabin of Mantis was the folded robotic arm, an assortment of equipment, and several piles of asteroid rock samples. Floating in a mechanical and stony environment, the droplet once again presented a contrast between exquisiteness and crudeness, aesthetics and technology.

“It’s the tear of the blessed mother,” Xizi said.

Her words were transmitted from Mantis at the speed of light, first to the fleet and then resonating three hours later throughout the entire human world. Xizi, the lieutenant colonel, and the major from the European Fleet—ordinary people on the expedition team placed, by unexpected circumstance, in a central position at the pinnacle moment in the history of civilization—shared a common feeling now that they were so close to the droplet: All sense of the distant world’s unfamiliarity vanished, replaced by an intense desire for recognition. Yes, in the cold expanse of the universe, all carbon-based life shared a common destiny, one that might take billions of years to cultivate, but a destiny that cultivated feelings of love that transcended time and space. And now, they sensed that love in the droplet, a love that could bridge the chasm of any enmity. Xizi’s eyes were wet, and three hours later, the eyes of billions of people like her would fill with tears.

But Ding Yi watched all of this dispassionately from the rear. “I see something else,” he said. “Something far more sublime. A realm where both self and other are forgotten, an effort to encompass everything by shutting out everything.”

“That’s too much philosophy for me to understand,” Xizi laughed through her tears.

“Dr. Ding, we don’t have much time.” The lieutenant colonel motioned for Ding Yi to come forward to be the first to touch the droplet.

Ding Yi floated slowly toward the droplet and placed a hand on its surface. To avoid frostbite from the cold mirror surface, he had to touch it with a gloved hand. Then the three officers touched it, too.

“It looks so fragile. I’m afraid of breaking it,” Xizi said softly.

“I can’t feel any friction at all,” the lieutenant colonel marveled. “It’s so smooth.”

“How smooth is it?” Ding Yi asked.

To answer that question, Xizi took out a cylindrical instrument, a microscope, from a pocket in her space suit. She touched the lens to the droplet, and they could see a magnified image of the surface on the instrument’s small display. Displayed on the screen was a smooth mirror.

“What’s the magnification?” Ding Yi asked.

“A hundred times.” Xizi pointed to a number in the corner of the screen, then adjusted the magnification to one thousand.

The enlarged surface remained a smooth mirror.

“Your device is broken,” the lieutenant colonel said.

Xizi removed the microscope from the droplet and placed it against her space suit visor. The other three drew closer to look at the screen, where the visor—a surface which, to the naked eye, looked as smooth as the droplet—was a rough and rocky beach on the screen under one-thousand-times magnification. Xizi returned the microscope to the surface of the droplet, and the screen once again displayed a smooth mirror, no different from the surrounding, unmagnified surface.

“Increase it by another factor of ten,” Ding Yi said.

This was beyond the capabilities of optical magnification, so Xizi carried out a series of operations to switch the microscope from optical to electron tunneling mode. Now the magnification power stood at ten thousand.

The magnified surface remained a smooth mirror. The smoothest surface that human technology could produce revealed itself as rough at just one thousand times magnification, like Gulliver’s impression of the face of the beautiful giantess.

“Adjust to a hundred thousand times,” the lieutenant colonel said.

Still they saw a smooth mirror.

“A million times.”

A smooth mirror.

“Ten million times.”

Macromolecules would be visible at this magnification, but what they saw on the screen remained a smooth mirror without the slightest sign of roughness, no difference in smoothness from the surrounding unmagnified surface.

“Push it up again!”

Xizi shook her head. This was the electron microscope’s highest level of magnification.

More than two centuries before, in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke had described a black monolith left on the moon by an advanced alien civilization. Surveyors had measured its dimensions with ordinary rulers and had found a ratio of one to four to nine. When these were rechecked using the most high-precision measurement technology on Earth, the ratio remained an exact one to four to nine, with no error at all. Clarke described it as a “passive yet almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection.”

Now, humanity was facing a far more arrogant display of power.

“Can an absolutely smooth surface really exist?” Xizi gasped.

“Yes,” Ding Yi said. “The surface of a neutron star is nearly absolutely smooth.”

“But this has a normal mass!”

Ding Yi considered this, then looked about him. “Hook up to the spaceship computer and find the spot that the robot arm gripped during capture.”

This was accomplished remotely by a fleet surveillance officer. The Mantis computer projected thin red laser beams to mark the position on the droplet surface that had been gripped by the steel claw. Xizi examined one of the spots with the microscope, and at a magnification of ten million times, she still saw a smooth, flawless mirror.

“How high was the pressure at the point of contact?” the lieutenant colonel asked, and soon received a reply from the fleet: approximately two hundred kilograms per square centimeter.

Smooth surfaces are easily scratched, but the strong metal clamp did not leave any scratches on the droplet’s surface.

Ding Yi floated away in search of something within the cabin. He returned with a rock pick, perhaps dropped in the cabin by someone during collection of rock samples. Before anyone could stop him, he slammed it forcefully into the mirror surface. There was a clang, crisp and melodious, like the pick had smashed into jade-paved ground. The sound traveled through his body, but the other three didn’t hear it because of the vacuum. With the handle of the pick, he pointed out the spot he had struck, and Xizi examined it with the microscope.

At ten million times magnification, it was still a smooth mirror.

Ding Yi tossed the pick aside dejectedly and looked away from the droplet, deep in thought. The eyes of the three officers, and the eyes of the million people in the fleet, were all focused on him.

“All we can do is guess,” he said, looking up. “The molecules in this thing are neatly arranged, like an honor guard, and they’re mutually solidifying. Do you know how solid it is? It’s as if the molecules are nailed into place. Even their own vibrations are gone.”

“That’s why it’s at absolute zero!” Xizi said. She and the other two officers understood what Ding Yi was getting at: At normal densities of matter, the separation between atomic nuclei is quite large. It would be no easier to fix them all in place than it would be to join the sun to the eight planets with rods to form a stationary truss.

“What force would allow that?”

“There’s only one option: strong interaction.”[4] Through his visor, it was obvious that Ding Yi’s forehead was covered in sweat.

“But… that’s like shooting the moon with a bow and arrow!”

“Indeed, they’ve shot the moon with a bow and arrow…. The tear of the blessed mother?” He gave a chilly laugh, a mournful sound that made them shiver, and the three officers knew what it meant: The droplet wasn’t fragile like a tear. Entirely the opposite: Its strength was a hundred times greater than the sturdiest material in the Solar System. All known substances were as fragile as paper by comparison. It could pass through the Earth like a bullet through cheese, without even the slightest harm to its surface.

“Then… what’s it here for?” the lieutenant colonel blurted out.

“Who knows? Maybe it really is just a messenger. But it’s here to give humanity a different message,” Ding Yi said, turning his gaze away from the droplet.

“What?”

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”

The words were followed by a momentary silence as the three other members of the expeditionary team and the million members of the combined fleet ruminated over their meaning. Then, all of a sudden, Ding Yi said, “Run.” The word was uttered softly, but then he raised his hands and shouted hoarsely, “Stupid children. Run!”

“Run where?” Xizi asked in fright.

Just seconds after Ding Yi, the lieutenant colonel realized the truth. Like Ding Yi, he shouted desperately: “The fleet! Evacuate the fleet!”

But it was too late. Powerful interference had already wiped out their communication channels. The image being transmitted from Mantis vanished, and the fleet was unable to hear the lieutenant colonel’s final call.

A blue halo emerged from the tip of the droplet’s tail. It was small at first, but very bright, and cast a blue shroud over its surroundings. Then it dramatically expanded, turning from blue to yellow and finally to red. It almost seemed as if the droplet wasn’t producing the halo, but had just drilled out from within it. The halo weakened in luminosity as it expanded, and when it had reached a diameter twice that of the largest part of the droplet, it vanished. The instant it vanished, a second small blue halo emerged from the tip. Like the first one, it expanded, changed color, weakened, and quickly disappeared. The halos continued to emerge from the droplet’s tail at a rate of two or three a second, and under their propulsion, the droplet began to move forward, and then rapidly accelerated.

But the four members of the expedition team never saw the second halo emerge, because the first one was accompanied by ultra-high temperatures approaching that of the sun’s core, which vaporized them instantly.

The hull of Mantis glowed red, resembling from the outside a paper lantern whose candle had just been lit. Its metal body melted like wax, but no sooner had the ship begun to melt than it exploded, dispersing into space as an incandescent liquid with hardly any solid fragments left behind.

From a thousand kilometers away, the fleet had a clear view of Mantis’s explosion, but the initial analysis was that the droplet had self-destructed. Everyone felt sorrow for the sacrifice of the four expedition team members, followed by disappointment that the droplet was not a messenger of peace. But the human race did not have even the slightest bit of psychological preparation for what was about to happen.

The first anomaly was identified by the fleet’s space surveillance computer, which discovered during the course of processing images of Mantis’s explosion that one of the fragments was abnormal. Most of the pieces were molten metal that flew uniformly through space following the explosion, but this one was accelerating. Of course, only a computer was able to find a tiny object among the massive quantity of flying fragments. From an immediate search of its database and knowledge bank, which included an enormous amount of information on Mantis, it arrived at several dozen possible explanations for the peculiar debris, but none was correct.

Neither computer nor human realized that the explosion had destroyed only Mantis and the four-member expedition team, but not the droplet.

As for the accelerating fragment, the fleet’s space surveillance system issued only a level-three attack alarm, because the approaching object was not a warship and was headed toward one corner of the rectangular formation. On its current heading, it would pass outside the formation and would not strike any warship. Due to the large number of level-one alarms issued following the Mantis explosion, this level-three alarm was completely ignored. The computer had, however, also noted the fragment’s high rate of acceleration. By three hundred kilometers it had already passed the third cosmic velocity and was continuing to gain speed. The alert was upgraded to level two, but was still ignored.

By the time the fragment had flown roughly 1,500 kilometers from the explosion site toward the corner of the formation, only fifty-one seconds had elapsed. By the time it reached the corner, it was traveling at a speed of 31.7 kilometers per second. Now it was on the periphery of the formation, 160 kilometers away from Infinite Frontier, the first warship in this corner of the array. The fragment did not pass by the formation, but executed a thirty-degree turn, and, without slowing down, sped straight toward Infinite Frontier. In the roughly two seconds it took to cover that distance, the computer actually dropped its alert from level two back to level three, concluding that the fragment wasn’t actually a physical object due to the fact that its motion was impossible under aerospace mechanics. At twice the third cosmic velocity, executing a sharp turn without a drop in speed was like slamming into an iron wall. If it was a vessel containing a metal block, the change in direction would have exerted such force as to flatten that metal block into a thin film. So the fragment had to be an illusion.

In that manner, the droplet struck Infinite Frontier at twice the third cosmic velocity, at a heading straight along the first row of the fleet rectangle.

The droplet struck Infinite Frontier in its rear third and passed through with no resistance, as if penetrating a shadow. The extreme speed of the impact meant that two highly regular entry and exit holes roughly the diameter of the droplet’s thickest part appeared in its hull. But no sooner had they appeared than the holes deformed and vanished as the surrounding hull melted under the heat produced by the high-speed impact and the ultrahigh temperature of the droplet’s trailing halo. The part of the ship that had been hit turned red-hot, and the redness spread from the point of impact until it covered half the ship, like a chunk of iron that had just been taken out of the forge.

After passing through Infinite Frontier, the droplet continued onward at a speed of thirty kilometers per second. In the space of three seconds it had crossed ninety kilometers, passing first through Yuanfang, Infinite Frontier’s neighbor in the first row, and then through Foghorn, Antarctica, and Ultimate, leaving their hulls red-hot, as if the warships were giant lamps lined up.

Then Infinite Frontier exploded. It and the four warships after it were hit in the fusion fuel tanks. But unlike Mantis’s conventional, high-temperature explosion, this explosion was a fusion reaction triggered in Infinite Frontier’s fuel. No one ever figured out whether the fusion reaction had been sparked by the droplet’s ultra-high-temperature propulsive halo or some other factor. The fireball of the thermonuclear explosion appeared at the point of impact with the fuel tank and swiftly expanded until it illuminated the entire fleet against the velvety background of space, outshining the Milky Way.

Nuclear fireballs then took shape on Yuanfang, Foghorn, Antarctica, and Ultimate in succession.

In the next eight seconds, the droplet passed through ten more stellar-class warships.

By this point, the expanding nuclear fireball had engulfed the entirety of Infinite Frontier and had begun to shrink, while more fireballs were lighting up and expanding on other ships that had been struck.

The droplet continued to traverse the length of the array, penetrating one stellar-class warship after another at intervals of less than a second.

The fusion fireball on Infinite Frontier had gone out, leaving the ship’s hull totally melted. Now it exploded, spewing a million tons of glowing, dark-red metallic liquid like a bud bursting into bloom, the molten metal scattering unimpeded in an omnidirectional storm of burning metallic magma.

The droplet continued its advance, following a straight line through more warships and leaving a line of ten nuclear fireballs behind it. The entire fleet shone in the flames of these burning small suns as if it had been set ablaze and turned into a sea of light. Behind the line of fireballs, the melted warships continued to fling waves of hot molten metal into space, as if massive rocks were being pitched into a magma sea.

In one minute and eighteen seconds, the droplet had completed a two-thousand-kilometer course, passing through each of the hundred ships in the first row of the combined fleet’s rectangular formation.

By the time the last ship in the row, Adam, was swallowed up in a nuclear fireball, the bursts of metallic magma at the opposite end had scattered, cooled, and spread out, leaving the heart of the explosion—the spot where Infinite Frontier had been a minute before—empty of practically everything. Yuanfang, Foghorn, Antarctica, Ultimate… all of them vanished one after another into metallic magma. When the last nuclear fireball in the line went out and darkness fell upon space once more, the gradually cooling magma that had barely been visible reappeared as dark red lights in the blackness of space, like a two-thousand-kilometer-long river of blood.

After punching through Adam, the droplet flew a short distance of about eighty kilometers through empty space, then executed another sharp turn unexplainable by humanity’s aerospace mechanics. This time the angle it described was even smaller: just fifteen degrees off a total reversal, executed nearly instantaneously even as it maintained a constant speed. Then, after a small heading adjustment that brought it in line with the second row of warships in the fleet’s array—or what was now the first row, in light of the recent destruction—it sped toward the first ship in that row, Ganges, at thirty kilometers per second.

Until this point, Fleet Command had not made any response.

The fleet’s battle information system had faithfully carried out its mission and captured through its massive monitoring network a complete record of all battle information over the course of that one minute and eighteen seconds. The sheer amount of information was for the time being only analyzable by the computerized battlefield decision-making system, which had arrived at the following conclusion: A powerful enemy space force had appeared in the vicinity and had launched an attack on the fleet. However, the computer did not provide any information about that enemy force. Only two things were certain: 1. The enemy space force was located at the position occupied by the droplet, and 2. The force was invisible to every means of detection they possessed.

By this time, fleet commanders were in a state of numb shock. For nearly two centuries, research into space strategy and tactics had dreamed up every possible kind of extreme battle condition, but witnessing a hundred warships blowing up like a string of firecrackers in under a minute was beyond what their minds could comprehend. The tide of information surging out of the battle information system meant that they were forced to rely on the analyses and judgments of the computer battlefield decision-making system and focus their attention on detecting an invisible enemy fleet that didn’t even exist. All battle monitoring capacity was directed into the distant regions of space, ignoring the danger right in front of them. A fair number of people even believed that the powerful invisible enemy might be a third-party alien force distinct from humanity and Trisolaris, because in their subconscious minds, Trisolaris remained the weaker, losing side.

The fleet’s battle monitoring system did not detect the droplet’s presence any earlier primarily because it was invisible to radar at all wavelengths and could only be located through analysis of visible spectrum images, but visible images were treated with far less importance than radar data. Most of the fragments scattered through space in storms of exploded debris were liquid metal melted by the high-temperature nuclear blasts, upward of a million tons melted in the destruction of each ship. A fair proportion of this massive amount of molten debris was roughly the same size and shape as the droplet, which presented the computer image analysis system with the difficult task of distinguishing the droplet from the debris. Besides, practically all of the commanders believed that the droplet had self-destructed inside Mantis, so no one issued specific instructions to perform such an analysis.

Meanwhile, other circumstances were exacerbating the confusion of battle. Debris ejected from the explosions of the first row of warships soon reached the second row, prompting their battle defense systems to respond with high-energy lasers and railguns to intercept the debris. These flying fragments, consisting largely of metal melted by the nuclear fireballs, were irregular in size, and although they had been partially cooled in flight by the low temperatures of space, only their outer shells had solidified. Their insides were still in a fiery liquid state, and when struck, they scattered in a brilliant explosion of fireworks. It was not long before the second row turned into a flaming barrier parallel to the dull “river of blood” left behind by the exploded warships in the first, roiling with explosions as if washed in a tide of fire surging from the direction of that invisible enemy. Debris flew thick as hail, more than defensive systems could block, and when fragments slipped through and struck the warships, the impact of these jets of solid-liquid metal possessed considerable destructive power. A number of the ships in the fleet’s second row suffered major hull damage, and some were even punctured. Shrill decompression alarms blared….

Although the dazzling battle with debris did receive notice, given the circumstances, it was hard for the computers and humans in the command system to avoid the misconception that the fleet was engaged in a fierce exchange of fire with an enemy space force. Neither person nor machine noticed the tiny figure of Death that had begun to destroy the second row of ships.

And so, when the droplet charged at Ganges, the hundred warships in the second row were still assembled in a straight line. A death formation.

The droplet surged like lightning, and in the space of just ten seconds, it passed through twelve warships: Ganges, Columbia, Justice, Masada, Proton, Yandi, Atlantic, Sirius, Thanksgiving, Advance, Han, and Tempest. As in the destruction of the first row, each warship turned red-hot after penetration, before being engulfed in a nuclear fireball that left a million tons of dark red, glowing, metallic magma that then exploded. In this brutal destruction, the lined-up warships were like a two-thousand-kilometer fuse that burned with such intensity that it left behind nothing but ash glowing a dull, dark red.

One minute and twenty-one seconds later, the hundred ships in the second row had been completely annihilated.

After passing through the last ship, Meiji, the droplet reached the end of the row and turned another acute angle to charge straight at the first ship in the third row, Newton. During the destruction of the second row, debris from the explosions had raged into the third. The tide of debris included molten metal flung from explosions in the second row as well as mostly cooled metal fragments from the ships of the first. Most of the third-row ships had by now started up their engines and defensive systems and had begun maneuvering, which meant that this time, the ships were not situated along a perfectly straight line, as had been the case for the first and second rows. Nevertheless, the hundred ships were still roughly in line. After the droplet passed through Newton, it sharply adjusted direction and, in a twinkling, crossed the twenty kilometers separating Newton from Enlightenment, now at a three-kilometer offset from the line. From Enlightenment, it turned sharply again, raced toward Cretaceous, which was moving toward the other side, and penetrated it. Following this broken path, the droplet drilled through the ships in the third row one after the other, never dropping its speed below thirty kilometers per second.

When analysts subsequently observed the droplet’s route, they were amazed to discover that its every turn was a sharp corner, not the smooth curve of a human spacecraft. The diabolical flight path demonstrated a space drive entirely beyond human comprehension, as if the droplet was a shadow without mass, unconcerned with the principles of dynamics, moving at will like the nib of God’s pen. During the attack on the fleet’s third row, the droplet’s sharp changes of direction occurred at a rate of two or three per second, a deathly embroidery needle sewing a thread of destruction through the row’s hundred ships.

The droplet took two minutes and thirty-five seconds to destroy the third row of ships.

By this time, all of the warships in the fleet had started their engines. Although the array had lost its shape entirely, the droplet continued to strike the evacuating ships. The pace of destruction slowed, but, at any given time, three to five nuclear fireballs were burning among the ships. Their deathly flames drowned out the glow of the engines, turning them into a cluster of terrified fireflies.

The fleet command system still had no clue about the true source of the attack and continued to focus its energies on searching for the imaginary invisible enemy fleet. However, subsequent analysis of the massive clouds of vague information transmitted by the fleet revealed that it was at this point that the earliest analysis to come close to the truth was performed by two low-ranking officers in the Asian Fleet. One was Ensign Zhao Xin, an assistant targeting screener on Beifang, and the other was Captain Li Wei, an intermediate EM weapons system controller on Wannian Kunpeng. A transcript of their conversation follows:

ZHAO XIN: This is Beifang TR317 calling Wannian Kunpeng EM986! This is Beifang TR317 calling Wannian Kunpeng EM986!

LI WEI: This is Wannian Kunpeng EM986. Please be advised, transmitting ship-to-ship voice communication at this information level is a violation of wartime regulations.

ZHAO XIN: Is that Li Wei? This is Zhao Xin! You’re who I’m trying to find!

LI WEI: Hi! I’m glad to know you’re still alive.

ZHAO XIN: Captain, here’s the thing. I’ve discovered something that I’d like to transmit to the shared command level, but my privileges are too low. Could you help me out?

LI WEI: My privileges are too low, too. But shared command has plenty of information right now. What do you want to transmit?

ZHAO XIN: I’ve analyzed a visual image of the battle—

LI WEI: Shouldn’t you be analyzing radar information?

ZHAO XIN: That’s a system fallacy. When I analyzed the visual image and extracted only the speed characteristic, do you know what I found? Do you know what’s been going on?

LI WEI: You seem to know.

ZHAO XIN: Don’t think I’ve gone crazy—you know me, we’re friends.

LI WEI: You’re a stone-cold beast. You’ll be the last to go crazy. Go ahead.

ZHAO XIN: Listen, it’s the fleet that’s gone crazy. We’re attacking ourselves!

LI WEI:…

ZHAO XIN: Infinite Frontier attacked Yuanfang, and Yuanfang attacked Foghorn, and Foghorn attacked Antarctica, and Antarctica…

LI WEI: You’re out of your damn mind!

ZHAO XIN: That’s what’s happening. A attacks B; and after B is attacked, but before it explodes, it attacks C; and after C is attacked but before it explodes, it attacks D…. It’s like every warship that was hit attacked the next warship in the row—like an infection, damn it, or a game of pass the parcel, but to the death. It’s insane!

LI WEI: What weapons are they using?

ZHAO XIN: I don’t know. I picked up a projectile in the image, so frickin’ tiny and so frickin’ fast, way the hell faster than your railguns. And incredibly precise. It hit the fuel tanks every single time!

LI WEI: Send me the analysis.

ZHAO XIN: I’ve sent it over, the original data and vector analysis both. Take a look, god damn it!

Ensign Zhao Xin’s analysis, though unconventional, was pretty close to the truth. Li Wei took half a minute to study the information he sent over. In that time, another thirty-nine warships were destroyed.

LI WEI: I’ve noticed something about the speed.

ZHAO XIN: What speed?

LI WEI: The speed of the small projectile. Its speed when it’s launched from each warship is slightly slower. Then it accelerates to thirty kilometers per second during flight. Then it strikes the next warship, and when it launches from that warship prior to the explosion, its speed is a little slower. Then it accelerates….

ZHAO XIN: That doesn’t mean anything….

LI WEI: What I mean is… it’s a little like drag.

ZHAO XIN: Drag? How so?

LI WEI: Every time this projectile passes through a target, the drag slows it down.

ZHAO XIN: I see what you’re doing. I’m not stupid. You said “this projectile” and “passes through a target.”… Is it a single object?

LI WEI: Take a look outside. Another hundred ships have exploded.

This conversation took place not in the modern language of the fleet but in twenty-first-century Mandarin. From the mode of speech, it was obvious that the two were hibernators. There were few hibernators serving in the fleet, and although most of them had awakened while still very young, they still lacked a modern person’s capacity to absorb information, which meant that most of them carried out relatively low-level duties. It was later discovered that the vast majority of officers and soldiers who recovered their senses and good judgment the earliest during the grand destruction were hibernators. These two officers, for instance, despite being at a level that did not even permit them the use of the ship’s advanced systems, were nonetheless able to perform a remarkable piece of analysis.

Zhao Xin and Li Wei’s information was not passed up the fleet command system, but the system’s analysis of the battle was headed in the right direction. Realizing that the invisible enemy force posited by the computer decision-making system didn’t exist, attention was now focused on analyzing the aggregated battle information. After a search and match on massive amounts of data, the system finally discovered the continued existence of the droplet. The image of the droplet extracted from battle recordings was unchanged apart from the addition of a propulsion halo at the tail. It was still a perfect droplet shape, only this time what was reflected as it sped onward was the glow of nuclear fireballs and metal magma, glaring brightness alternating with dark red. It looked like a drop of burning blood. Further analysis arrived at a model of the droplet’s attack path.

Various scenarios for the Doomsday Battle had been concocted during two centuries of the study of space strategy, but in the minds of strategists, the enemy had always been big. Humanity would meet the main part of the mighty Trisolaran force on a space battlefield, with every warship a fortress of death the size of a small city. They had imagined every extreme form of weapons and tactics the enemy could possibly possess, the most terrifying of which involved the Trisolaran Fleet launching an attack using antimatter weapons, and obliterating a stellar-class battleship with antimatter the size of a rifle bullet.

But now the combined fleet had to face facts: Their only enemy was a tiny probe, one drop of water out of the enormous ocean of Trisolaran strength, and this probe attacked using one of the oldest and most primitive tactics known to human navies: ramming.

Roughly thirteen minutes passed from the moment the probe started its attack until the fleet command system arrived at the correct assessment. Given the complex and grim battlefield conditions, this was fairly quick, but the droplet was quicker. In twentieth-century naval battles, there might have been time for commanders to be summoned to the flagship for a conference once the enemy fleet appeared on the horizon. But space battles were measured in seconds, and in that thirteen-minute span, more than six hundred warships were destroyed by the probe. Only then did humanity realize that command of a space battle was beyond their reach. And due to the sophon block, it was beyond the reach of their artificial intelligence as well. Purely in terms of command, humanity might never have the capacity to engage in a space battle with Trisolaris.

The speed of the droplet’s strikes and its invisibility to radar meant that defensive systems on the first ships hit never responded. But as the distance between the warships grew and the droplet’s striking distance increased, defensive systems on all warships were recalibrated based on the droplet’s target characteristics. This meant that Nelson was the first ship to attempt to intercept, using laser weapons to increase the accuracy of firing on the small, high-speed target. When struck by the multiple beams, the droplet emitted a powerful visible light, even though the Nelson had fired gamma-ray lasers that were invisible to the naked eye. The droplet’s imperceptibility to radar had never been understood, since it had a completely reflective surface and a shape that was perfectly diffuse, but perhaps the ability to alter the frequency of reflected electromagnetic waves was the secret to this invisibility. The light emitted from the droplet when it was struck was so bright it drowned out the nuclear fireballs going off all around it, forced the monitoring systems to dim their images to avoid damage to their optical components, and caused sustained blindness to anyone who looked directly at it. In other words, this superpowerful light was indistinguishable from darkness in its effect. The droplet, wrapped in this all-engulfing light, entered Nelson and was extinguished, plunging the battlefield into pitch darkness. Moments later, the nuclear fireballs reestablished their dominance and the droplet emerged from Nelson unscathed and sped straight for Green, eighty-odd kilometers away.

Green’s defense system switched over to EM-based kinetic weapons to intercept the attacking droplet. The metal shells fired by the railgun possessed enormous destructive power, and the kinetic energy inherent in their high speed meant that every shell that struck the target hit with the force of a bomb. Against ground targets, they would flatten a mountain in no time at all. The droplet’s relative velocity only added to the shells’ energy, but when they struck, the droplet slowed only slightly before it adjusted its propulsion and recovered its speed. Under a dense hail of shells, it flew straight at Green and penetrated it. Under the ultrahigh magnification microscope, the droplet’s surface would still be mirror-smooth and totally scratch-free.

Strong-interaction material differs from ordinary matter like solid differs from liquid. The attacks on the droplet by human weapons were like waves striking a reef. Damaging it was impossible, which meant that nothing in the Solar System could destroy it. It was untouchable.

The fleet command system had just stabilized itself, only to be plunged once again into chaos. This time, its despair over the loss of every weapon available to it meant it would not recover from this collapse.

The merciless slaughter in space continued. As the distance between ships grew, the droplet accelerated and had soon doubled its speed to sixty kilometers per second. Exhibiting a cool and precise intelligence in its continuous attacks, it solved the traveling salesman problem in local regions with perfect accuracy, hardly ever retracing its path. With its targets in constant motion, the droplet accomplished a huge range of accurate measurements and complex calculations effortlessly and at high speed. In the course of its intensely focused massacre, it would occasionally veer off to the edges of the group of ships to quickly dispatch a few outliers and arrest the fleet’s inclination to flee in that direction.

The droplet usually made precise strikes on the ships’ fuel tanks—whether it found them by real-time location detection or with the use of a stored database of every ship’s structure provided by the sophons was unknown. However, in around 10 percent of the targets, the droplet did not strike the tanks. The destruction of those ships did not involve fusion in the nuclear material, so it took a comparatively long time for the red-hot ships to finally explode, a brutal situation in which the crew suffered under high temperatures before burning to death.

The evacuation of the ships did not go smoothly. It was too late to enter deep-sea state, so the warships could only evacuate at Ahead Three acceleration, which made scattering impossible. Like a sheepdog racing alongside a flock, the droplet executed occasional blocking strikes at different positions at the fleet’s edges to keep it in shape.

Space was full of cooled or still-molten debris and large chunks of warships, so ship defense systems had to continually sweep their flight path with lasers or railguns. The fragments formed glittering, flaming arcs that wrapped each ship in a brilliant canopy. Yet some debris still slipped through the defenses and caused serious hull damage and even loss of navigational capability when they struck the ships directly. Collision with larger fragments was fatal.

Despite the collapse of the fleet command system, High Command remained in charge during evacuation, but the density of the initial formation meant collisions between ships were unavoidable. Himalaya and Thor collided head-on at high speed and were smashed to bits. Messenger rear-ended Genesis, and the air that leaked like a hurricane through the gashes tore into both ships and blew personnel and other objects out into space, forming tails that dragged along in the wake of the two giant wrecks.

Most horrifying of all was what happened to Einstein and Xia, whose captains bypassed system protections via remote control mode and entered Ahead Four acceleration. None of their personnel was protected by deep-sea state. Images transmitted from Xia showed a hangar emptied of fighters but occupied by over a hundred people who were flattened against the deck by the high gs once acceleration began. From this vantage point, observers saw crimson flowers of blood bloom on the white space the size of a football field, forming extremely thin layers that spread out and ultimately merged into one under the immense force…. Spherical cabins presented the ultimate horror: At the beginning of hypergravitation everyone inside slid to the bottom, and then the devil’s weighty hand squished them all into a lump, as if balling up a pile of clay men, with no time for anyone to even scream. The only sound was of shattering bones and viscera squeezing out. Then the pile of flesh and bones was submerged in a bloody liquid that turned eerily clear once the solids were precipitated out by the high gs, its surface flat and motionless as a mirror under the intense force. It seemed solid, and the formless pile of flesh, bone, and organs lay within it like rubies sealed in crystal….

Afterward, people initially thought that putting Einstein and Xia into Ahead Four had been a mistake made during the chaos, but further analysis repudiated this view. Using the remote control mode to bypass the stringent procedures required by the warship control system prior to executing Ahead Four acceleration, including the confirmation that all personnel were in deep-sea state, involved a complicated series of operations that were unlikely to have been made in error. In the information transmitted from the two ships, it was also found that, prior to entering Ahead Four, Einstein and Xia had been using fighters and smaller craft to transport personnel outside. They did not enter Ahead Four until the droplet drew nearer and neighboring warships began to explode. This suggested that they intended to escape the droplet at top acceleration to preserve humanity’s warships, but even Einstein and Xia were unable to evade the droplet’s clutches. The keen-eyed death god noticed that two ships were accelerating far faster than the average rate of the group and swiftly caught up to them and destroyed the ships and their lifeless cargo.

But two other warships successfully accelerated at Ahead Four and escaped the droplet’s attack: Quantum and Bronze Age, which had both entered deep-sea state prior to the battle, at Ding Yi’s behest. As soon as the third row of ships had been destroyed, the two of them entered Ahead Four and made an emergency escape in the same direction. Their position in a corner of the array, with the entire fleet separating them from the droplet, gave them sufficient time to escape into the depths of space.

More than a thousand ships, over half the fleet, had been destroyed in a twenty-minute attack.

Space was chock-full of debris in a cluster ten thousand kilometers in diameter, a rapidly expanding metallic cloud whose edges were illuminated time and again by the nuclear fireballs of exploding warships, as if a giant, stony face were flickering in and out of the cosmic night. In between the fireballs, the glow of metallic magma turned the cloud into a blood-red sunset.

The remaining warships were scattered widely, but nearly all of them were still within the metallic cloud. The majority had exhausted their railguns and had to rely on lasers to open up a path through the cloud, but the energy drain made the lasers underpowered and left the ships to wend a slow, torturous path through the debris. Most of them moved at a speed practically the same as the cloud’s rate of expansion, turning it into a death trap from which evacuation and flight were impossible.

The droplet’s speed was now ten times the third cosmic velocity, or roughly 170 kilometers per second. Its course took it smashing through debris that liquefied under impact, splashing away at high speed to collide with other debris and giving the droplet a brilliant tail. First it resembled a comet bristling with rage, but as the tail lengthened, it turned into a huge silver dragon that stretched ten thousand kilometers. The entire metallic cloud glowed with the dragon’s light as it whipped to and fro in its mad dance. The warships penetrated by the dragon’s head began to explode along its body, so that it was dotted with the nuclear explosions of four or five small suns at any given time. Further back, molten battleships became million-ton metallic magma explosions that dyed its tail a bewitching bloodred….

The brilliant dragon was still flying thirty minutes later, but the nuclear fireballs on its body had disappeared, and its tail was no longer bloodred. Not a single warship remained in the metallic cloud.

When the dragon flew out of the cloud, its body vanished at the cloud’s edge, its head followed by its tail. Then it began taking out the remnants of the fleet. Only twenty-one warships had cleared the cloud, most of them suffering enough damage in the process that they retained minimal acceleration or were even coasting unpowered. These were quickly caught and destroyed by the droplet. The metallic clouds formed from the newly exploded ships expanded and merged into the larger cloud.

The droplet had to spend a bit more time destroying the five mostly intact ships because they had already picked up speed and were headed in different directions. The final ship to be destroyed, Ark, had traveled a considerable distance from the cloud, so when the fireball of its explosion lit up space for a few seconds before going out, it was like a solitary lamp in the wind of the wilderness.

Humanity’s space-based armed forces had been annihilated.

The droplet briefly accelerated in the direction Quantum and Bronze Age had fled, but soon abandoned the chase because the two targets were too far away and had picked up too much speed. And thus, Quantum and Bronze Age became the only survivors of the tremendous destruction.

The droplet left the field of slaughter and set its heading in the direction of the sun.

Apart from those two complete warships, a small number of people in the fleet had survived the holocaust by boarding fighters or other small craft before the destruction of their ships. Although the droplet could have destroyed them effortlessly, it had no interest in small spacecraft. The biggest threat to these vessels, which lacked defensive systems and couldn’t survive an impact, was from high-speed metal fragments, and some of them were destroyed by debris after leaving their mother ships. They had the greatest chance of survival at the beginning and the end of the attack, because at the start the metallic cloud had not yet formed, and by the end the cloud had grown far less dense as it expanded.

The surviving small craft and fighters drifted for a few days beyond the orbit of Uranus and were eventually rescued by civilian spacecraft plying that region of space. The survivors numbered around sixty thousand, and included the two hibernator officers who had made the first correct assessment of the droplet’s attack: Ensign Zhao Xin and Captain Li Wei.

The region eventually became still, and the metallic cloud lost its luster in the coldness of the cosmos and disappeared into darkness. Over the years, under the pull of the sun’s gravity, the cloud stopped its expansion and began to lengthen, ultimately forming a long strip that turned into an extremely thin metallic belt around the sun, as if a million restless souls were floating endlessly in the cold outer reaches of the Solar System.

The destruction of the entirety of humanity’s space force was accomplished by just one Trisolaran probe, and nine like it were three years away from the Solar System. The ten of them together weren’t even one ten-thousandth the size of a single warship, and Trisolaris had a thousand of those that even now were flying onward toward the Solar System.

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”

Awakening from a long sleep, Zhang Beihai looked at the time: He had been asleep fifteen hours, perhaps the longest he had ever slept apart from his two centuries in hibernation. Now he felt a new feeling. Examining his mind, he realized where this feeling came from.

He was on his own.

In the past, even when floating alone in the endlessness of space, he had never had the feeling of being on his own. His father’s eyes were watching him from the beyond with a gaze that was present every moment of every day. Like the sunlight during daytime and the starlight at night, it had become a part of his world. Now his father’s gaze had disappeared.

Time to go out, he said to himself as he adjusted his uniform. He had slept weightless, so no part of his hair or clothing was out of place. Taking a last look at the spherical cabin in which he had spent more than a month, he opened the door and drifted out, prepared to calmly face the fury of the crowd, to face the countless expressions of disdain and condemnation, to face the final judgment… and to face, as a conscientious soldier, a life whose duration he did not know. Whatever happened, the rest of his life was sure to be calm.

The corridor was empty.

He advanced slowly, passing compartments on either side, all of them open. They were all identical to his own spherical cabin, their snow-white walls resembling pupilless eyes. The environment was clean, and he saw no open information windows. The ship’s information system had probably been restarted and reformatted.

He recalled a movie he had seen in his youth, in which the characters lived in a Rubik’s Cube world made up of countless identical cubic rooms, each of which contained a different sort of death mechanism. They passed from one room to the next, endlessly….

The free rein of his thoughts surprised him. This used to be a luxury, but now that his nearly two-century-long mission was at an end, his mind could walk a leisurely path.

He turned a corner, and ahead of him was another, longer corridor that was just as empty. The bulkheads emitted an even, milky-soft light that was enough to make him lose his sense of depth. The world felt compact. Again, the doors to the spherical cabins on either side were all open, and each one was an identical white space.

Natural Selection looked abandoned. To Zhang Beihai’s eyes, the massive ship he occupied was one enormous yet concise symbol, a metaphor for some law hidden beneath reality. He had the illusion that these identical white spherical spaces extended endlessly into space around him, repeating infinitely through the universe.

An idea popped into his mind: holography.

Every spherical cabin could achieve total manipulation and control of Natural Selection, so, at least from an informatics perspective, every cabin was the totality of Natural Selection. That meant Natural Selection was holographic.

The ship itself was a metal seed carrying the total information of human civilization. If it germinated somewhere in the universe, then it might grow into a complete civilization. The part contained the whole, hence human civilization might be holographic as well.

He had failed. He had not managed to spread these seeds, and for this he felt regret. But not sadness, and not just because he’d done everything he could to carry out his duty. His mind, now freed, took flight, and he imagined the universe as holographic, every point containing the whole, so that the entire universe endured so long as one atom remained. Suddenly he had an all-encompassing sense of focus, the same feeling that Ding Yi had just over ten hours ago at the other end of the Solar System on the last stage of his approach toward the droplet, while Zhang Beihai was still asleep.

He reached the end of the corridor and opened the door to enter the warship’s largest spherical hall, the one he had arrived at when he first entered Natural Selection three months ago. As before, a formation of fleet officers and soldiers was floating in the center of the sphere, but their numbers were several times greater and made up three layers in the formation. The two-thousand-strong crew of Natural Selection formed the center layer, which he realized was the only real layer. The other two were holograms.

Looking closer, he saw that the hologram formations were made up of the officers and soldiers from the four pursuing ships. Right in the center of the three-layer formation was a row of five colonels: Dongfang Yanxu and the captains of the four other ships. All but Dongfang Yanxu were holograms that were evidently being transmitted from the pursuing ships. When he entered the hall, the eyes of five thousand people focused on him with an expression clearly not directed at a defector. The captains saluted in order.

“Blue Space, of the Asian Fleet!”

“Enterprise, of the North American Fleet!”

“Deep Space, of the Asian Fleet!”

“Ultimate Law, of the European Fleet!”

Dongfang Yanxu was the last to salute him. “Natural Selection, of the Asian Fleet! Sir, the five stellar-class warships you have preserved for humanity are all that is left of Earth’s space fleet. Please accept your command!”

“It’s a collapse. Everything’s collapsed. It’s a collective mental breakdown!” Shi Xiaoming sighed and shook his head. He had just returned from the underground city. “The whole city’s out of control. It’s chaos.”

The administrative officials had all come to a meeting of the neighborhood government. Hibernators made up two-thirds, with modern people accounting for the rest. They were easily distinguishable now: Although they were in a state of extreme depression, the hibernator officials kept their composure despite their low spirits, while the moderns manifested signs of breakdown to varying degrees and lost control on multiple occasions during the course of the meeting. Shi Xiaoming’s words plucked at their fragile nerves once again. The neighborhood chief executive’s eyes were wet with tears, and when he covered his face to weep, it prompted several other modern officials to weep with him. The official in charge of education laughed hysterically, and several other moderns began to snarl, before tossing their cups on the ground….

“Quiet down,” Shi Qiang said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had a dignity that quieted the modern officials. The executive and the others who were crying struggled to hold back their tears.

“They’re just kids,” Hines said, shaking his head. Attending the meeting as a people’s representative, he was perhaps the only person who had benefited from the destruction of the combined fleet, because now that reality was in line with his mental seal, he had returned to normal. Previously, he had been tormented day and night by the mental seal in the face of what seemed like an all-but-certain victory, and he had nearly suffered a mental breakdown. He had been sent to the largest hospital in the city, where expert psychiatrists had been powerless to help him, although they had proposed a novel idea, which Luo Ji and the suburban officials helped carry out. As in Daudet’s “The Siege of Berlin,” or the old Golden-Age film Good Bye, Lenin!, why not fabricate a fictional environment in which humanity had failed? Fortunately, at the pinnacle of modern virtual technology, it wasn’t at all hard to create such an environment. Every day at his residence, Hines watched news that was broadcast especially for him, accompanied by lifelike three-dimensional images. He saw a portion of the Trisolaran Fleet accelerate and arrive at the Solar System early, and humanity’s combined fleet suffer heavy losses in a battle at the Kuiper Belt. Then the three fleets were unable to hold the line at Neptune’s orbit, and they were forced to stage a difficult resistance at Jupiter’s orbit….

The neighborhood official in charge of manufacturing this false world got quite wrapped up in it, and when the crushing defeat actually took place, he was the first to suffer a mental breakdown. He had exhausted his imagination painting humanity’s defeat in the most disastrous way possible, both for Hines’s needs and for his own personal pleasure, but cruel reality far outstripped anything he had imagined.

When the images of the fleet’s destruction twenty AU away reached Earth after a three-hour delay, the public behaved like a gang of desperate children, turning the world into a nightmare-plagued kindergarten. Mass mental breakdown spread rapidly, and everything went out of control.

In Shi Qiang’s neighborhood, all the officials ranked higher than him either resigned or simply broke down and did nothing, so the higher-level authorities gave him an emergency appointment to take over the duties of the local chief executive. It may not have been all that important a post, but the fate of this hibernator neighborhood was in his hands during this crisis. Fortunately, compared to the underground city, the hibernator societies remained relatively stable.

“I would ask everyone to remember the situation we’re in,” Shi Qiang said. “If there’s ever a problem with the artificial environmental system in the underground city, the place will turn to hell and everyone there will flood out to the surface. If that happens, this place won’t be fit for survival. We had better consider migration.”

“Migration where?” someone asked.

“To somewhere sparsely populated, like the northwest. Of course, we would have to send people to check it out first. Right now, no one can say what will happen to the world, or whether there will be another Great Ravine. We have to make preparations to survive totally on agriculture.”

“Will the droplet attack Earth?” someone else asked.

“What’s the point of fretting?” Shi Qiang shook his head. “No one can do anything about it, at any rate. And until it punches through the Earth, we’ve still got to live, right?”

“That’s right. Worrying is pointless. I’m quite clear on that point,” Luo Ji said, breaking his silence.

Humanity’s seven remaining spaceships flew away from the Solar System, split into two groups: five ships comprised of Natural Selection and its pursuers and another group of two ships, Quantum and Bronze Age, which had survived the droplet’s devastation. The two small fleets were at opposite ends of the Solar System, separated by the sun. They were on headings that took them in almost opposite directions, and gradually getting farther apart.

On Natural Selection, after Zhang Beihai heard the account of the combined fleet’s annihilation, his expression didn’t change. His eyes remained calm as water, and he said lightly, “A dense formation is an unforgivable error. Everything else was to be expected.”

“Comrades,” he said, sweeping his eyes over the five captains and the three layers of assembled officers and soldiers, “I call you by that ancient title because I want us all to share a common will from this day forward. Each of you must understand the reality we are facing, and must envision the future that we will face. Comrades, we can’t go back.”

Indeed, there was no going back. The droplet that had destroyed the combined fleet was still in the Solar System, and nine others would arrive in three years. For this small fleet, their former home was now a death trap. From the information they had received, human civilization would totally collapse even before the main Trisolaran Fleet arrived, so Earth’s doomsday was not far off. The five ships had to accept the responsibility of carrying civilization forward, but all they could do was to fly onward, and fly far. The spaceships would be their home forever, and space would be their final resting place.

Together, the 5,500 crewmembers were like an infant who had been cut from its cord, then cruelly tossed into the abyss of space. Like that infant, there was nothing they could do but cry. Yet Zhang Beihai’s calm eyes were a strong force field that upheld the stability of the formation and helped them maintain their military poise. Children cast aside into the endless night needed a father most of all, and now, like Dongfang Yanxu, they found the power of that father in the person of this ancient soldier.

Zhang Beihai went on. “We will be a part of humanity forever, but we are an independent society and must rid ourselves of our psychological dependence on Earth. Now we need to choose a new name for this world of ours.”

“We come from Earth, and we may be the sole inheritors of Earth civilization, so let’s call ourselves Starship Earth,” Dongfang Yanxu said.

“Excellent.” Zhang Beihai nodded approvingly, then turned to the formation. “From now on, we are each of us citizens of Starship Earth. This moment might be a second starting point for human civilization. There are many things we need to do, so I would ask all of you to return to your posts now.”

The two hologram formations vanished, and Natural Selection’s formation began to disperse.

“Sir, should our four ships rendezvous?” the captain of Deep Space asked. The captains had not vanished.

Zhang Beihai shook his head firmly. “That’s not necessary. You are currently around two hundred thousand kilometers from Natural Selection, and although that’s close, a rendezvous would expend nuclear fuel. Energy is the foundation of our survival, and with what little we have, we must conserve as much as we can. We are the only humans in this part of space, so I understand your desire to gather together, but two hundred thousand kilometers is a short distance. From now on, we have to think about the long term.”

“Yes, we have to think about the long term,” Dongfang Yanxu repeated softly, her eyes still staring at the horizon as if surveying the long years ahead of them.

Zhang Beihai continued, “A citizens’ assembly must be convened immediately to set down basic issues, then the majority of the people need to be put into hibernation as soon as possible so that the ecological systems can be operated at a minimum…. Whatever transpires, the history of Starship Earth has begun.”

Zhang Beihai’s father’s eyes emerged from the beyond once again, like rays from the edge of the cosmos that penetrated everything. He felt the gaze, and in his heart he said, No, Dad. You really can’t rest. It’s not over. It’s started up again.

The next day, still keeping Earth time, Starship Earth convened its first plenary Citizens’ Assembly, held in a venue formed from the combination of five holographic subvenues. The citizens in attendance numbered around three thousand, and the remainder who were unable to leave their posts networked in.

First off, the assembly identified an urgent matter: the destination of Starship Earth’s voyage. Maintaining the current heading unchanged was passed by unanimous vote. This target was the one Zhang Beihai had set for Natural Selection, a heading in the direction of Cygnus—or, more precisely, the star NH558J2, one of the planetary systems closest to the Solar System. It had two planets, both of which were gaseous like Jupiter and not suitable for human life, but could provide supplemental nuclear fuel. It now appeared that the choice of destination had been made after considerable thought, because along a different heading, at a distance just 1.5 light-years farther than their present destination, there was another planetary system which, according to observations, contained a planet whose natural environment was similar to Earth’s. But that system had just one planet, and if it turned out to be an inhospitable world—the conditions for a hospitable world were more exacting than the rough observations from light-years away could reveal—then Starship Earth would miss the chance to refuel. After reaching NH558J2 and refueling, they could fly at even higher speeds toward their next target.

NH558J2 was eighteen light-years away from the Solar System. At their present speed, taking into account various uncertainties in the voyage, Starship Earth would reach it in two thousand years.

Two millennia. The grim number presented another clear picture of the present and the future. Even taking hibernation into account, most of the citizens of Starship Earth would never live to see their destination. Their lives would last just a small part of the twenty-century-long voyage, and even for their descendants who would reach it, NH558J2 was just a way station. No one knew what their next destination would be, much less when Starship Earth would finally reach its true, hospitable home.

In fact, Zhang Beihai had been exceptionally rational in his thinking. He clearly knew that Earth’s suitability for human life was no coincidence, much less an effect of the anthropic principle, but rather was an outcome of the long-term interaction between the biosphere and the natural environment, an outcome that would not likely be repeated on another planet around some far-flung star. His choice of NH558J2 implied another possibility: Perhaps a hospitable world would never be found, and the new human civilization would forever voyage on a starship.

But he did not make this idea explicit. It might take the next generation born on Starship Earth to truly be able to accept a starship civilization. The present generation would have to live their lives sustained by the thought of a home on an Earth-like planet.

The assembly also determined Starship Earth’s political status. It decided that the five ships would remain part of the human world forever, but under the present circumstances, it was impossible for Starship Earth to be politically subordinate to Earth or the three fleets, so it would become a totally independent country.

When this resolution was transmitted back to Solar System, the UN and the SFJC were silent for quite some time before replying. Without taking a position, they merely sent their tacit blessing.

And thus the human world was divided into three internationals: the ancient Earth International, the Fleet International of the new era, and the Starship International that was voyaging into the depths of the cosmos. The last group had just over five thousand people, but it carried with it all the hope of human civilization.

At the second meeting of the Citizens’ Assembly, they began discussing the issue of Starship Earth’s leadership structure.

When the meeting began, Zhang Beihai said, “I think it’s too early for this agenda item. We’ve got to determine the shape of society on Starship Earth before we can decide what sort of governing bodies we need.”

“You mean, we need to draft a constitution first,” Dongfang Yanxu said.

“At least the basic principles for a constitution.”

So the meeting continued along those lines. The inclination of the majority was that because Starship Earth was a highly fragile ecosystem traveling through the harsh environment of space, a disciplined society had to be established to guarantee a unified will to survive under these conditions. Someone proposed maintaining the present military system, and the idea received majority support.

“You mean a totalitarian society,” Zhang Beihai said.

“Sir, there ought to be a nicer name for it. We’re military, after all,” the captain of Blue Space said.

“I don’t think it’ll work.” Zhang Beihai shook his head decisively. “Staying alive is not enough to guarantee survival. Development is the best way to ensure survival. During our voyage, we’ll have to develop our own science and technology to expand the size of our fleet. The historical facts of the Middle Ages and the Great Ravine prove that a totalitarian system is the greatest barrier to human progress. Starship Earth requires vibrant new ideas and innovation, and this can only be accomplished through the establishment of a society that fully respects freedom and individuality.”

“Are you talking about establishing a society like the modern Earth International, sir? Starship Earth has certain intrinsic conditions,” a low-ranking officer said.

“That’s right.” Dongfang Yanxu nodded at the speaker. “Starship Earth may have few people, but it possesses a highly refined information system through which any problem can easily be put to discussion and vote by all citizens. We can establish the first truly democratic society in human history.”

“That won’t work either.” Zhang Beihai shook his head again. “Like those citizens said before, Starship Earth is traveling through the harsh environment of space, where catastrophes that threaten the entire world might occur at any time. Earth’s history during the Trisolar Crisis has demonstrated that, in the face of such disasters, particularly when our world needs to make sacrifices in order to preserve the whole, the humanitarian society you have in mind is especially fragile.”

All of those in attendance at the meeting glanced at each other, their eyes holding the same question: So what should we do?

Smiling, Zhang Beihai said, “I’m thinking too simply. There’s never been an answer to this question throughout human history, so how can we solve it in one meeting? It will, I think, require a long process of practice and exploration before we can find the social model most suitable for Starship Earth. After the meeting, discussions should be opened up on the issue…. Please forgive me for disrupting the meeting’s agenda. We should continue with the original topic.”

Dongfang Yanxu had never seen Zhang Beihai smile like that. He rarely smiled, and when he occasionally did, it was confident and forgiving. But this smile had shown an apologetic shyness that she had never seen before. Even though interrupting the meeting wasn’t a big deal, he was a man with an especially discreet mind, and this was the first time he had put forth an opinion only to retract it. She noticed his distraction. He hadn’t taken notes during this meeting, unlike the careful recording he had done at the previous one. He was the only one on board who still used an ancient pen and paper, and it had become an emblem for him.

So what was occupying his thoughts now?

The meeting turned toward the matter of governing bodies. The citizens tended to feel that conditions were not yet right for holding elections, so the ships’ present chains of command should not be changed. Captains would lead their respective ships, and a Starship Earth Authority Committee formed from the five of them would discuss and decide upon major affairs. Zhang Beihai was unanimously elected as chair of the committee, to serve as supreme commander of Starship Earth. The resolution was put to the entire assembly, and passed with 100 percent of the votes.

But he refused the appointment.

“Sir, it’s your responsibility,” the captain of Deep Space said.

“On Starship Earth, you’re the only one with the prestige to command all the ships,” Dongfang Yanxu said.

“I feel I’ve fulfilled my responsibility. I’m tired, and I’ve reached retirement age,” Zhang Beihai said softly.

When the meeting adjourned, Zhang Beihai called for Dongfang Yanxu to stay behind. Once everyone had left, he said, “Dongfang, I want to recover my position as acting captain of Natural Selection.”

“Acting captain?” She eyed him in surprise.

“Yes. Give me operational permissions over the ship again.”

“Sir, I can hand over the captain’s chair of Natural Selection to you. I mean it. And the Authority Committee and the body of citizens certainly won’t oppose it.”

He shook his head with a smile. “No, you’ll still be the captain, with a captain’s full power to command. Please trust me. I won’t interfere with your work at all.”

“Then why do you want an acting captain’s privileges? Is there a need for them in your present position?”

“I just like the ship. It’s been a dream of ours for two centuries. Do you know what I’ve done for this ship to be here for us today?”

When he looked at her, the stony hardness that had been in his eyes was gone, revealing a tired emptiness and a deep sorrow that made him look like a different person. He was no longer the calm, grim survivor who thought deeply and acted decisively, but rather a man bent with the weight of time. Looking at him, she felt a concern and compassion she had never felt before.

“Sir, don’t think about those things. Historians have a fair evaluation of your actions in the twenty-first century: Choosing research in radiation propulsion was a key step in the right direction for humanity’s space technology. Perhaps at the time, it… it was the only choice, just like escape was the only choice for Natural Selection. Besides, according to modern law, the statute of limitations ran out long ago.”

“But I can’t get rid of the cross I bear. You can’t understand…. I have feelings for this ship, more feelings than you. I feel like it’s a part of me. I can’t leave it. Also, I’ve got to have something to do in the future. Having things to do puts my mind more at ease.”

Then he turned and left, a tired figure floating away, turning into a small black dot within the huge white spherical space. Dongfang Yanxu watched until he disappeared into the whiteness, and a loneliness she had never felt before surged in from all sides and overcame her.

In future Citizens’ Assembly meetings, the people of Starship Earth immersed themselves in the passion of creating a new world. They held lively debates on the constitution and social structure of the world, drafted various laws, and planned the first election…. There was a thorough exchange of views between officers and soldiers of different ranks, and among the different ships. People acknowledged their prospects and looked forward to Starship Earth forming a core that would snowball into a future civilization, continually increasing in size as the fleet reached star system after star system. An increasing number of people began calling Starship Earth a “second Eden,” a second point of origin for human civilization.

But this state of wonder did not last very long, because Starship Earth truly was a Garden of Eden.

As Natural Selection’s chief psychologist, Lieutenant Colonel Lan Xi headed the Second Civilian Service Department, an agency of military officers trained in psychology that was responsible for psychological health on the ship during long space voyages and in battle. When Spaceship Earth began its journey of no return, Lan Xi and his subordinates went on alert, like warriors facing an attack from a powerful enemy. The plans they had rehearsed on many previous occasions had prepared them for a wide range of possible psychological crises.

They agreed that the biggest enemy was none other than “Problem N”: nostalgia, or homesickness. This was, after all, the first time that humankind had embarked on an endless voyage, so Problem N had the potential to cause a mass psychological disaster. Lan Xi commanded CSD2 to take every necessary precaution, including establishing dedicated channels for communicating with Earth and the three fleets. This enabled everyone on board to maintain constant contact with their family and friends on Earth and in the fleet, and allowed them to watch most of the news and other programming from the two Internationals. Although Starship Earth was seventy AU away from the sun, meaning that signals were delayed nine hours, the quality of communication with Earth and the fleets was excellent.

In addition to conducting active psychological counseling and adjustments when signs of Problem N cropped up, CSD2 psychological officers also prepared an extreme means of responding to a large-scale mass psychological disaster: quarantining an out-of-control crowd in hibernation.

Subsequent events demonstrated that these concerns were superfluous. While Problem N was widespread on Starship Earth, it was far from out of control, and did not even reach the level of previous, ordinary long-range voyages. Lan Xi was confused by this at first, but he soon found a reason: After the destruction of humanity’s main fleet, Earth had lost all hope. Even though the ultimate doomsday was still two centuries away (using the most optimistic estimate), the news from Earth informed them that the world, plunged into chaos by the heavy blow of the great defeat, was full of the stench of death. For Starship Earth, there was nothing on the Earth or in the Solar System to provide them with sustenance. Nostalgia for a home like that was limited.

However, an enemy nevertheless appeared, one that was more ominous than Problem N. By the time that Lan Xi and CSD2 realized it, their position had already been overcome.

Lan Xi knew from his experience that on long space voyages Problem N tended to crop up in soldiers and low-ranking officers first, because their jobs and responsibilities commanded less of their attention compared to high-ranking officers, and their mental conditioning was comparatively poor. So CSD2 turned its attention to the lower levels from the start, but the shadow first fell upon the upper levels.

Around that time, Lan Xi noticed something peculiar. The first election for Starship Earth’s governing bodies was about to take place, an election that would be open to the entire population, meaning that most of the senior commanders were facing a transition from being military officers to being government officials. Their positions would be reshuffled, and many of them would be replaced by lower-ranking competitors. Lan Xi was surprised to learn that no one in Natural Selection’s senior command was overly concerned about the election that would determine the rest of their lives. He saw no senior officers engaging in even the least bit of campaigning, and when he mentioned the election, none of them was at all interested. He couldn’t help but recall Zhang Beihai’s absentmindedness during the second Citizens’ Assembly meeting.

Then he began to see symptoms of psychological imbalance among officers above the rank of lieutenant colonel. Most of them started to become increasingly introverted, spending long periods alone with their thoughts and sharply reducing their social interactions. They spoke less and less at meetings, sometimes choosing to become completely silent. Lan Xi noticed that the light had disappeared from their eyes, and their expressions had turned gloomy. They couldn’t look anyone in the eye for fear that others would notice the fog in theirs. When they occasionally met someone’s gaze, they would break away immediately like they had been shocked…. The higher the rank, the more serious the symptoms. And there were signs that it was spreading through the lower ranks, too.

There was no way for psychological counseling to proceed. Everyone stubbornly refused to talk to the psychological officers, so CSD2 was compelled to exercise its special power to conduct mandatory counseling. Still, most of their subjects remained silent.

Lan Xi decided that he needed to talk to the supreme commander, so he went to Dongfang Yanxu. Although Zhang Beihai had once held supreme prestige and status on Natural Selection and the whole of Starship Earth, he had rejected it all, withdrawing from the race and insisting he was an ordinary person. The only duties he had retained were those of acting captain: transmitting the captain’s orders to the ship’s control system. The remainder of his time he spent wandering Natural Selection, learning about the specifics of the ship from officers and soldiers at all ranks and showing a constant affection for the space ark. Apart from this, he remained calm and indifferent, practically unaffected by the ship’s mass psychological shadow. He was no doubt trying to remain aloof, but Lan Xi knew of another important reason for his immunity: The ancients were not as sensitive as moderns, and in the present circumstances, numbness served an excellent self-protective function.

“Captain, you ought to give us some indication of what’s happening,” he said.

“Lieutenant Colonel, you ought to be the one giving us an indication.”

“Do you mean that you don’t know anything about your present state?”

An infinite sadness welled up in her dull eyes. “I only know that we’re the first humans who have gone into space.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the first time humanity has really gone to space.”

“Oh. I see what you mean. Before, no matter how far humans traveled into space, they were still just a kite sent aloft by Earth. They were connected to Earth by a spiritual line. Now that line has been severed.”

“That’s right. The line is severed. The essential change is not that the line has been let go, but that the hand has disappeared. The Earth is heading toward doomsday. In fact, she’s already dead in our minds. Our five spacecraft are not connected to any world. There is nothing around us apart from the abyss of space.”

“Indeed. Humanity has never faced a psychological environment like this before.”

“Yes. In this environment, the human spirit will be fundamentally changed. People will become—” She suddenly broke off, and the sadness in her eyes vanished, leaving only gloom, like a cloud-covered sky after the rain has stopped.

“You mean that in this environment, people will become new people?”

“New people? No, Lieutenant Colonel. People will become… non-people.”

At that last word, Lan Xi shuddered. He looked up at Dongfang Yanxu, and she met his gaze. In the blankness of her eyes, all he saw were tightly closed windows to her soul.

“What I mean is that we won’t be people in the old sense…. Lieutenant Colonel, that’s all I can say. Just do your best. And…” The words that followed seemed like she was talking in her sleep. “It’ll be your turn soon.”

The situation continued to deteriorate. The day after Lan Xi’s talk with Dongfang Yanxu, there was a vicious injury on Natural Selection. A lieutenant colonel with the ship’s navigational system fired upon another officer bunking with him. According to the victim’s recollection, the officer had awakened suddenly in the middle of the night and, noticing that the victim was also awake, had accused him of eavesdropping on him talking in his sleep. In the struggle, his emotions had gotten away from him and he had fired the gun.

Lan Xi went at once to see the detained lieutenant colonel. “What were you afraid of him hearing you say in your sleep?” he asked.

“You mean he really heard it?” the attacker asked in terror.

Lan Xi shook his head. “He said that you didn’t say anything.”

“So what if I did say something? You can’t take sleep talk for the truth! My mind doesn’t really think that. Surely I’m not going to go to hell for something I said in my sleep!”

In the end, Lan Xi was unable to draw out what the attacker imagined he said in his sleep, so he asked whether he minded going under hypnotherapy. Unexpectedly, the attacker once again blew up at this suggestion, lunging at Lan Xi and strangling him until the military police finally came in and pried him off. Leaving the brig, one MP who had overheard the conversation said to Lan Xi, “Lieutenant Colonel, don’t mention hypnotherapy again unless CSD2 wants to become the most hated place on the ship. You wouldn’t last very long.”

So Lan Xi had to contact Colonel Scott, a psychologist aboard Enterprise. Scott also served as the ship’s chaplain, a position most ships in the Asian Fleet did not have. Enterprise and the other three ships in the pursuing force were still two hundred thousand kilometers away.

“Why is it so dark over there?” Lan Xi asked as he looked at the video sent over from Enterprise. The curved walls of the cabin Scott was in had been adjusted to glow a faint yellow, and they displayed an image of the stars outside, making it look as if he was inside a fogged-over cosmos. His face was shrouded in shadow, but even so, Lan Xi could still sense Scott’s eyes slipping quickly away from his gaze.

“The Garden of Eden is growing dark. Blackness will swallow everything,” Scott said in a weary voice.

Lan Xi had consulted him because, as chaplain of Enterprise, he would likely have had people confide the truth in him during confession, and he might be able to pass on some advice. But at these words, and noticing how the colonel’s eyes loomed in the shadows, Lan Xi knew that he would come up with nothing. So he suppressed the question he was about to ask and turned to another, one that surprised even him:

“Will what happened in the first Garden of Eden be repeated in the second?”

“I don’t know. At any rate, the vipers have come out. The snakes of the second Garden of Eden are even now climbing up people’s souls.”

“You mean, you’ve eaten the fruit of knowledge?”

Scott slowly nodded. Then he bowed his head, but did not raise it again, as if he was trying to hide the eyes that would betray him. “You could say that.”

“Who will be expelled from the Garden of Eden?” Lan Xi’s voice quavered, and a cold sweat was on his palms.

“Many people. But unlike the first time, this time some people might remain.”

“Who? Who will remain?”

Scott gave a long sigh. “Lieutenant Colonel Lan, I’ve said enough. Why don’t you seek the fruit of knowledge for yourself? Everyone’s got to take that step, after all. Isn’t that right?”

“Where should I seek it?”

“Set down your work, and think about it. Feel more, and you’ll find it.”

After speaking with Scott, Lan Xi halted his busy work amid chaotic feelings, and stopped to think, as the colonel had advised. Faster than he had imagined, Eden’s cold, slippery vipers crawled into his consciousness. He found the fruit of knowledge and ate it, and the last rays of sunshine in his soul disappeared forever as everything plunged into darkness.

On Starship Earth, an invisible, taut string was being pulled close to snapping.

Two days later, the captain of Ultimate Law committed suicide. He had been standing on the aft platform at the time, a platform enclosed in a transparent dome that made it seem exposed to space. The stern of the ship faced the Solar System, where the sun was by now no more than a yellow star just a bit brighter than the rest. The peripheral spiral arm of the Milky Way lay in this direction, its stars sparse. The depth and expanse of deep space exhibited an arrogance that left no support for the mind or the eyes.

“Dark. It’s so fucking dark,” the captain murmured, and then shot himself.

When Dongfang Yanxu learned that the captain of Ultimate Law had committed suicide, she had the premonition that time was up, so she convened an emergency meeting with the two vice-captains in the large spherical fighter hangar.

In the corridor on the way to the hangar, she heard someone behind her call her name. It was Zhang Beihai. In her gloomy state of mind, she had practically forgotten about him for the past couple of days. He looked her up and down, his eyes full of a fatherly concern that gave her an undreamed-of sense of comfort, for it was hard to find a pair of eyes without a shadow on Starship Earth these days.

“Dongfang, I don’t think you’ve been right lately. I don’t know the reason, but you seem to be hiding something. What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer his question, but instead asked, “Sir, how have you been lately?”

“Well. Very well. I’ve been touring all over the place and studying. I’m familiarizing myself with Natural Selection’s weapons system. Of course, I’m only scratching the surface, but it’s fascinating. Imagine how Columbus would feel visiting an aircraft carrier. I’m the same way.”

Seeing how calm and relaxed he was now, Dongfang Yanxu felt a little jealous. Yes, he had completed his great endeavor and had the right to enjoy tranquility. The history-making great man had turned back into an ignorant hibernator. All he needed now was protection. With that in mind, she said, “Sir, don’t ask anyone else about the question you just asked. Don’t ask about any of this.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t I ask?”

“It’s dangerous to ask. Besides, you really don’t need to know. Believe me.”

He nodded. “Very well. I won’t ask. Thank you for treating me like an ordinary person. That’s all I’ve been hoping for.”

She said a hurried good-bye, but as she went her own way, she heard the voice of the founder of Starship Earth behind her: “Dongfang, no matter what happens, let things go as they will. Everything will be okay.”

She saw the two vice-captains in the center of the spherical hall. She had chosen to meet them here because the size of the hall made it feel like they were in the wilderness. The three of them floated at the center of a world of pure white, as if the whole universe was empty except for them. It lent a sense of security to their conversation.

Each of them looked in a different direction.

“We have to make things clear,” she said.

“Yes. Every second we delay is dangerous,” Vice-Captain Levine said. Then he and Akira Inoue turned around to face Dongfang Yanxu. His meaning was clear: You are the captain, you speak first.

But she didn’t have the courage.

Whatever happened now, at the second dawn of human civilization, might be the foundation of a new Homeric epic or a Bible. Judas became who he was because he was the first to kiss Jesus, and that made him fundamentally different from the second one to kiss him. It was the same now. The first to speak would mark a milestone in the history of the second civilization. Perhaps he or she would become Judas, or perhaps Jesus, but whatever the possibility, Dongfang Yanxu did not have that courage.

But she had to undertake her own mission, so she made a smart choice. She did not avoid the gaze of her vice-captains. Language was not necessary now. All communication could be accomplished through the eyes. As they stared at each other, their interlocking gazes were like information conduits linking their three souls together and communicating everything at high speed.

Fuel.

Fuel.

Fuel.

The route is still unclear, but at least two clouds of interstellar dust have been found.

Drag.

Of course. After passing through them, the spaceships will drop to 0.03 percent of the speed of light due to drag from the dust.

We’re still more than ten light-years away from NH558J2. We’ll need sixty thousand years to get there.

Then we’ll never arrive.

The ships may arrive, but the life on board won’t. Even hibernation can’t be sustained for that long.

Unless…

Unless speed is maintained through the dust clouds, or we accelerate afterward.

Fuel is insufficient.

Fusion fuel is the only source of energy aboard ship, and it needs to be used in other areas: environmental systems, possible course corrections….

And for deceleration once the target system is reached. NH558J2 is much smaller than the sun. We can’t achieve orbit relying solely on gravity for deceleration. We’ll have to expend large quantities of fuel, or else we’ll fly by the target star system.

All of the fuel on Starship Earth is basically enough for two spacecraft.

But, if we’re careful, it’s enough for just one.

Fuel.

Fuel.

Fuel.

“And then there’s the issue of parts,” Dongfang Yanxu said.

Parts.

Parts.

Parts.

Particularly parts for critical systems: fusion engines, information and control systems, environmental systems.

It may not be as urgent as fuel, but it’s the foundation of long-term survival. NH55J82 doesn’t have a hospitable planet for settlement or establishment of industry, or even the necessary resources to do so. It’s just a place to refuel before heading to the next system, where industry can be established to produce parts.

Natural Selection has only two levels of redundancy for key parts.

Too few.

Too few.

Apart from the fusion engines, most of the key parts on Starship Earth are interoperable.

Engine parts can be used after modification.

“Can all personnel be gathered onto one or two ships?” Dongfang Yanxu said aloud, but her voice was only meant to guide the direction of their eye communication.

Impossible.

Impossible.

Impossible. There are too many people. Environmental and hibernation systems can’t accommodate them all. If present capacity is boosted even a little, it will be disastrous.

“So, is it clear now?” Dongfang Yanxu’s voice resounded in the empty white space like the mutterings of someone deeply asleep.

Clear.

Clear.

Some people must die, or everyone will die.

Then their eyes went silent. The three of them felt an intense desire to turn away, as if shaken by thunder from the depths of the universe that made their souls quake in terror. Dongfang Yanxu was the first to stabilize her own gaze.

“Stop it,” she said.

Stop it.

Don’t give up.

Don’t give up?

Don’t give up! Because no one else has given up. If we give up, then we’ll be expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Why us?

Of course, it shouldn’t be them, either.

But someone has to be expelled. The Garden of Eden has a limited capacity.

We don’t want to leave the garden.

So we can’t give up!

Three pairs of eyes, so close to breaking apart, locked together again.

Infrasonic H-bomb.

Infrasonic H-bomb.

Infrasonic H-bomb.

Every ship is equipped with them.

It’s hard to defend against a stealth launch.

Their gazes separated temporarily as their minds were pushed to the brink of collapse. They needed rest. When the three pairs of eyes met once again, they were uncertain and erratic, like candles flickering in the wind.

Evil!

Evil!

Evil!

We’ll become devils!

We’ll become devils!

We’ll become devils!

“But… what are they thinking?” Dongfang Yanxu asked softly. To the two vice-captains, her voice, while soft, seemed to linger uninterrupted in the white space, like the buzz of a mosquito.

Yes. We don’t want to become devils, but who knows what they’re thinking.

Then we’re already devils, or how else could we think of them as devils unprovoked?

Very well, then we won’t think of them as devils.

“That won’t solve the problem,” Dongfang Yanxu said with a gentle shake of her head.

Yes. Even if they aren’t devils, the problem remains.

Because they don’t know what we’re thinking.

Suppose they know that we’re not devils?

The problem still exists.

They don’t know what we’re thinking about them.

They don’t know what we’re thinking about what they’re thinking about us.

That carries on in an endless chain of suspicion: They don’t know what we’re thinking about what they’re thinking about what we’re thinking about what they’re thinking about what we’re…

How can this chain of suspicion be broken?

Communication?

On Earth, perhaps. But not in space. Some people must die, or everyone will die. This is the unwinnable dead hand that space has dealt for the survival of Starship Earth. An insurmountable wall. In the face of it, communication has no meaning.

Only one choice is left. The question is who makes that choice.

Dark. It’s so fucking dark.

“We can’t delay any longer,” Dongfang Yanxu said decisively.

No more delays. In this dark region of space, the duelists are holding their breath. The string is about to snap.

Every second, the danger grows exponentially.

Since it’s all the same no matter who pulls it, why not pull it ourselves?

Then Akira Inoue suddenly broke the silence: “There’s another choice!”

We sacrifice ourselves.

Why?

Why us?

The three of us could, but do we have the authority to make this choice on behalf of the two thousand people on Natural Selection?

The three of them were standing on a knife blade. Though its cuts were painful, a jump off either side would be into a bottomless abyss. These were the labor pains for the birth of the new space humans.

“How about this?” Levine said. “First lock in the targets, and then think it over some more.”

Dongfang Yanxu nodded. Levine called up a control interface for the weapons system in the air and opened up the window for the infrasonic H-bombs and carrier missiles. On a spherical coordinate system with Natural Selection at the origin, Blue Space, Enterprise, Deep Space, and Ultimate Law were displayed as four points of light two hundred thousand kilometers away. The distance masked the structure of the targets, for at the scale of space, everything was just a point.

But the four points of light were ringed with four red halos, four deathly nooses indicating that the weapons system had already locked on the targets.

Stunned, the three of them looked at each other and shook their heads to say that it wasn’t their doing.

Apart from them, privileges to place a target lock in the weapons system were also held by the arms control and target screening officers, but their lock placement had to be authorized by the captain or vice-captain. That left just one other person with direct privileges to lock a target and launch an attack.

We’re idiots. He’s only someone who’s changed history twice!

He realized all of this first!

Who knows when he realized it? Maybe when Starship Earth was founded, or even earlier, when he learned that the combined fleet had been destroyed. He is the last to show worry. Like the parents of his era, always keeping their children in mind.

Dongfang Yanxu flew across the spherical hall as fast as she could, followed closely by the two vice-captains. They went out the door and down that long corridor until they arrived at the door to Zhang Beihai’s cabin. Suspended in front of him was an interface identical to the one they had just seen. They rushed forward, but the scene from Natural Selection’s escape replayed itself: They crashed into the bulkhead. There was no door, just an oval-shaped area where the bulkhead was transparent.

“What are you doing?” Levine shouted.

“Children,” Zhang Beihai said, the first time he had addressed them this way. Even though his back was turned, they could imagine that his eyes were as calm as water. “Let me do this.”

“You mean, ‘If I don’t go to hell, who will?’[5] Is that it?” Dongfang Yanxu said in a loud voice.

“From the moment I became a soldier, I was prepared to go there if necessary,” he said, continuing with the weapons’ prelaunch operations. From outside, the three of them saw that while he wasn’t skilled at these operations, every step he took was correct.

Tears welled up in Dongfang Yanxu’s eyes, and she cried, “Let’s go together. Let me in. I’ll go to hell with you!”

He made no answer, but continued his manipulations. He set the guided missiles for manual self-destruct so that they could be detonated by the mother ship while in flight. Only after finishing the last step did he say, “Dongfang, think. Could we have made this choice before? Absolutely not. But now we can make it, because space has turned us into new humans.” He set the missiles’ warheads to explode at a distance of fifty kilometers from each target. This would avoid causing the targets any internal damage, but an even greater distance would still be within the fatal range for any life aboard the targets. “The birth of a new civilization is the formation of a new morality.” He removed the first safety lock on the H-bomb warheads. “When they look back in the future on everything we’ve done, it may seem entirely normal. So, we won’t go to hell, children.” The second safety lock was removed.

Suddenly, the alert sounded throughout the ship like the crying of ten thousand ghosts in the darkness of space. Display interfaces popped up in midair like snowflakes, showing a huge quantity of information that Natural Selection’s defense systems had received about the incoming missiles, but no one had time to read it.

There was a space of just four seconds from the sounding of the alert to the detonation of the infrasonic H-bombs.

Images transmitted back to Earth from Natural Selection showed that Zhang Beihai may have understood all of this in just one second. He had imagined that his heart had grown as hard as iron through the arduous procession of more than two centuries, but he had overlooked something hidden in the deepest part of his soul, and had hesitated before making the final decision. He tried to restrain the trembling of his heart, and it was that last moment’s softness that killed him and everyone on board Natural Selection. After the month-long face-off in the darkness, he was just a few seconds slower than the other ship was.

Three small suns lit up the blackness of space, forming an equilateral triangle with Natural Selection at the center, at an average distance of forty kilometers. The fusion fireball lasted for twenty seconds and sparkled with infrasonic frequencies that were invisible to the naked eye.

The returned images showed that in the three seconds that remained, Zhang Beihai turned to Dongfang Yanxu, flashed her a smile, and spoke: “It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same.”

The exact words were only a guess, because he didn’t have time to finish before a powerful electromagnetic pulse arrived from three directions, vibrating Natural Selection’s enormous hull like a cicada’s wings. The energy in these vibrations was converted to infrasonic waves, which, in the image, looked like a fog of blood that enveloped everything.

The attack had come from Ultimate Law, which had fired twelve cloaked missiles armed with infrasonic H-bombs at the four other ships. The three missiles fired at Natural Selection, which was two hundred thousand kilometers away, had been launched before the others so that the ones fired at its three neighboring ships would reach their detonation points at the same time. A vice-captain had taken over after the suicide of Ultimate Law’s captain, but it was unknown who ultimately made the decision to launch the attack. And it would never be known.

Ultimate Law was not one of the lucky ones remaining in the Garden of Eden at the end.

Of the three other pursuing ships, Blue Space had been the best prepared against unexpected incidents. Before it was attacked, it had turned its interior into a vacuum and put all personnel in space suits. Because infrasonic waves were impossible in a vacuum, no personnel were injured, and the body of the ship suffered only minimal damage from the electromagnetic pulse.

Right after the nuclear fireballs exploded, Blue Space began its counterattack with lasers, the fastest response possible. It lit up Ultimate Law with five gamma-ray laser beams and burned five huge holes in its hull. Its insides quickly caught fire and there were minor explosions, causing the ship to lose all combat capability. Harsher attacks from Blue Space followed, and under continuous attack by nuclear missiles and a rain of railgun fire, Ultimate Law exploded violently, leaving no survivors.

At almost the same time as Starship Earth’s Battle of Darkness was going on, a similar tragedy was taking place far on the other side of the Solar System. Bronze Age launched a sudden strike on Quantum, using the same infrasonic H-bombs to kill off all life inside its target, but preserving the target ship whole. Because the two ships had sent only minimal information back to Earth, no one knew exactly what had taken place between them. They had both gone into intense acceleration to escape from the probe attack, but they had not decelerated like Natural Selection’s pursuers had, so their remaining fuel ought to have been more than enough to return to Earth.

The boundlessness of space nurtured a dark new humanity in its dark embrace.

In the expanding metal cloud formed from the explosion of Ultimate Law, Blue Space rendezvoused with Enterprise and Deep Space, neither of which showed signs of life, and collected all of their fusion fuel. After stripping them of their hardware, Blue Space flew the two hundred thousand kilometers to Natural Selection and did the same to that ship. Starship Earth was like a construction site in space now, the massive hulls of the three dead ships dotted with the sparks of laser welding. If Zhang Beihai had still been alive, the scene would certainly have reminded him of the aircraft carrier Tang two centuries before.

Blue Space took pieces of the three derelict warships and set them up in a Stonehenge formation, forming a tomb in outer space. There, they held a funeral for all the victims of the Battle of Darkness.

Wearing space suits, the 1,273 crew members of Blue Space assembled in a floating formation at the center of the tomb. These were the remaining citizens of Starship Earth. Around them, huge pieces of spaceships towered like a ring of mountains, the gashes cut into the wreckage like enormous mountain caves. The bodies of 4,247 victims remained within this debris, which cast its shadows over all of the living as if they were a mountain valley at midnight. The only light was the iciness of the Milky Way where it shone through the gaps between the wreckage.

Moods remained calm during the funeral. The new space humans had passed through their infancy.

A small votive lamp was lit. It was a fifty-watt bulb with a hundred spare bulbs next to it that would be automatically substituted in the lamp. Powered by a small nuclear battery, the votary lamp could remain continuously lit for tens of thousands of years. Its dim light was like a candle in the mountain valley, casting a small halo onto a high cliff of the wreckage and shining on a piece of titanium bulkhead engraved with the names of the victims. There was no epitaph.

One hour later, the space tomb was illuminated one final time by the light of Blue Space’s acceleration. The tomb was traveling at 1 percent of the speed of light. In several hundred years it would decelerate to 0.03 percent of light speed due to the drag from interstellar dust clouds. It would still reach NH558J2 in sixty thousand years, but Blue Space would already have headed off toward its next star system more than fifty thousand years before that.

Blue Space traveled deep into space carrying plenty of fusion fuel and an eight-fold redundant supply of critical parts. There was so much material it was impossible to fit it all inside the craft, so several external storage compartments were attached to the hull, completely altering the ship’s appearance and turning it into an enormous, ugly, irregular body. Indeed, it looked like a traveler on a long journey.

The previous year, on the opposite side of the Solar System, Bronze Age had accelerated away from the ruins of Quantum in the direction of Taurus.

Blue Space and Quantum had come from a world of light, but they had become two ships of darkness.

The universe had once been bright, too. For a short time after the big bang, all matter existed in the form of light, and only after the universe turned to burnt ash did heavier elements precipitate out of the darkness and form planets and life. Darkness was the mother of life and of civilization.

On Earth, an avalanche of curses and abuse rolled out into space toward Blue Space and Bronze Age, but the two ships made no reply. They cut off all contact with the Solar System, for to those two worlds, the Earth was already dead.

The two dark ships became one with the darkness, separated by the Solar System and drifting further apart. Carrying with them the entirety of human thoughts and memories, and embracing all of the Earth’s glory and dreams, they quietly disappeared into the eternal night.

“I knew it!”

That was the first thing Luo Ji said upon learning about the Battle of Darkness that had taken place at the edges of the Solar System. Leaving behind a baffled Shi Qiang, he ran out of the room and raced through the neighborhood until he stood facing the northern China desert.

“I was right! I was right!” he shouted at the sky.

It was late at night, and, perhaps because of the rain that had just fallen, atmospheric visibility was excellent. The stars were visible, although they weren’t nearly as clear as in the twenty-first century, and they were far sparser than before, since only the brightest could be seen. Yet he still swelled with that feeling he had on that cold night on the frozen lake two centuries ago: Luo Ji the ordinary person had disappeared, and he became a Wallfacer once again.

“Da Shi, I have in my hands the key to human victory!” he said to Shi Qiang, who had followed after him.

Shi Qiang laughed. “Oh?”

Shi Qiang’s slightly mocking laughter dashed Luo Ji’s excitement. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“So what will you do now?” Shi Qiang asked.

Luo Ji sat down on the sand, and his mood crashed rapidly. “What should I do? It looks like there’s nothing I can do.”

“You could at least find a way to report it upstairs.”

“I don’t know if that would work, but I’ll give it a try. Even if it’s just to fulfill my responsibility.”

“How high up will you go?”

“The highest. The UN secretary general. Or the chair of the SFJC.”

“That won’t be easy, I’m afraid. We’re just ordinary people now…. Still, you’ve got to try. You can, uh, go to the city government first. Find the mayor.”

“Very well. I’ll go to the city, then.” He stood up.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, I’ll go alone.”

“Even at this rank, I’m still an official. I’ll have an easier time meeting the mayor.”

Luo Ji looked up at the sky and asked, “When does the droplet reach Earth?”

“The news said it’ll arrive in ten or twenty hours.”

“Do you know what it’s coming to do? Its mission wasn’t to destroy the combined fleet. Nor was it to attack the Earth. It’s here to kill me. I don’t want you to be with me when it does.”

Shi Qiang laughed the same mocking laugh again. “There’s still ten hours, right? By that time, I’ll just stay farther away from you.”

Luo Ji shook his head with a wry smile. “You’re not taking me seriously at all. So why do you want to help me?”

“My boy, it’s up to the top whether they believe you or not. I always play things safe. If you were selected from out of billions of people two centuries ago, there’s got to be a reason, right? If I delay you here, then won’t I be condemned by the ages? If the higher-ups don’t take you seriously, I won’t have lost anything. It’s just a trip into the city. But there’s one thing: You say that the thing that’s flying toward Earth is coming to kill you. I don’t believe that at all. I’m well acquainted with killing, and that’s excessive, even for Trisolarans.”

They reached the passage from the old city to the underground city in the early hours of morning and saw that the elevators going down were still functioning normally. Lots of people were coming out carrying large quantities of luggage. Few were going down, however, and on their elevator there were only two other people.

“Are you hibernators? They’re all going up top. Why are you going down?”

“The city’s in chaos,” one of them, a young man, said. On his clothes, fireballs shone continually against a black background. A closer look revealed that it was an image of the destruction of the combined fleet.

“Then what are you going down for?” Shi Qiang asked.

“I’ve found a place to live on the surface, so I’m going down to get a few things,” he said. Then he nodded at them. “You on the surface are going to get rich. We don’t have any houses there, and the property rights to the surface houses are mostly in your hands. We’ll have to buy them off you.”

“If the underground city collapses and all those people rush to the surface, there’s probably not going to be any actual buying or selling,” Shi Qiang said.

A middle-aged man huddling in a corner of the elevator was listening to them, and he suddenly covered his face with his hands and let out a whine. “No. Oh…” Then he squatted down and started crying. His clothing showed a classical biblical scene: a naked Adam and Eve standing beneath a tree in the Garden of Eden as a bewitching snake crawled between them. It may have been a symbol for the recent Battle of Darkness.

“There are lots of people like him,” the young man said, pointing disdainfully at the weeping man. “Unsound of mind.” His eyes lit up. “Actually, doomsday is a wonderful time. The most wonderful time, even. This is the only time in history where there’s a chance for people to abandon all of their cares and burdens and belong entirely to themselves. It’s stupid to be like him. The most responsible way of life right now is to enjoy ourselves while we can.”

When the elevator reached the bottom, Luo Ji and Shi Qiang exited the hall and immediately smelled the strong, strange odor of something burning. The underground city was brighter than before, but it was an irritating white light. Looking around, what Luo Ji saw through the gaps in the huge trees wasn’t the blue sky, but a total blank. The projection of the sky on the vault of the underground city had vanished. The blankness reminded him of spherical spaceship cabins he had seen on the news. The lawns were littered with a mess of debris that had fallen from the huge trees. Not far off was the wreckage of several crashed flying cars, one of which was in flames and surrounded by a crowd of people who were picking up other combustibles from the lawn and throwing them into the flames. Someone even threw in his own clothing while it was still flashing images. A ruptured underground pipe sprayed a high column of water, drenching a group of people who played around in it like children. From time to time they would scream excitedly in unison and scatter to avoid debris falling from the trees, then they would regroup and continue their revels. Luo Ji looked up again and saw fires in several places on the trees. The sirens of flying firefighting vehicles screamed as they flew through the air, dangling plucked tree leaves that had caught fire….

He noticed that the people they met on the streets fell into two types, much like the two people they had encountered in the elevator. One type was depressed, walking with dull eyes or simply sitting on the lawns enduring the torment of despair, a despair whose cause had now shifted from humanity’s defeat to the present difficult living conditions. The other type was in a state of crazed excitement and grew intoxicated from indulgence.

Traffic in the city was in chaos. It took Luo Ji and Shi Qiang half an hour to hail a taxi, and when the driverless flying car that carried them passed through the huge trees, Luo Ji was reminded of his first horrific day in the city and felt the tension of riding a roller coaster. Fortunately, the car soon arrived at City Hall.

Shi Qiang had been here several times because of work, and was fairly familiar with the place. After a considerable number of steps, they finally received permission to meet the mayor, but they had to wait until the afternoon. Luo Ji had expected complications, so the mayor’s acceptance of the meeting caught him by surprise, since this was an extraordinary time, and they were little people. At lunch, Shi Qiang told Luo Ji that the mayor had taken office the day before. He used to be the official in charge of hibernator affairs in the city government and was, in a way, Shi Qiang’s superior, so he knew him fairly well.

“He’s one of our countrymen,” Shi Qiang said.

In this age, the meaning of the term “countryman” had shifted from geography to temporality. But it wasn’t used between all hibernators. Only those who had entered hibernation at roughly the same time counted as countrymen. When they got together across the long years, temporally based countrymen shared an even closer affinity than geographically based countrymen used to.

They waited until half past four to see the mayor. High-ranking officials in this age typically possessed a star quality, with only the most attractive getting elected, but the current mayor was plain. He was about Shi Qiang’s age, but far thinner, and he had one trait that made him identifiable as a hibernator at a glance: He wore glasses. They were definitely antiques from two centuries ago, because even contact lenses had long since disappeared. But people who used to wear glasses tended to feel that something was wrong with their appearance when they didn’t wear them, so lots of hibernators wore them even after their vision was repaired.

The mayor looked utterly exhausted and seemed to have difficulty rising from his chair. When Shi Qiang apologized for the interruption, and congratulated him on his promotion, he shook his head. “These are vulnerable times. Us rugged savages come in handy again.”

“You’re the highest-ranking hibernator on Earth, right?”

“Who knows? As the situation develops, we might have countrymen promoted to even higher positions.”

“And the former mayor? Mental breakdown?”

“No, no. There are strong people in this age, too. He was very competent, but he was killed in a car crash in a riot area two days ago.”

The mayor noticed Luo Ji behind Shi Qiang and immediately extended a hand. “Oh, Dr. Luo, hello. Of course I recognize you. I worshiped you two centuries ago, because out of those four people, you seemed most like a Wallfacer. I really couldn’t figure out what you wanted to do.” But their hearts sank at the next thing he said. “You’re the fourth messiah I’ve received in the past two days. And there are dozens more waiting outside who I don’t have the energy to see.”

“Mayor, he’s not like them. Two centuries ago—”

“Of course. Two centuries ago, he was selected from billions of people, and it’s for that reason that I decided to see you.” The mayor pointed at Shi Qiang. “There’s something else I need you for, but we’ll talk about that afterward. First, let’s talk about what you’ve got. But I have a small request: Can you not talk about your plan to save the world? They’re always so long. First just tell me what you need me to do.”

After Luo Ji and Shi Qiang explained what they wanted, the mayor immediately shook his head. “Even if I wanted to help, I couldn’t. I’ve got piles of stuff of my own I need to report to the senior leadership. But that level’s lower than you imagine. It’s just provincial and national leaders. It’s hard for everyone. You ought to know that the senior leadership is handling even bigger problems right now.”

Luo Ji and Shi Qiang had been paying attention to the news, so naturally they knew about the bigger problems that the mayor referred to.

The annihilation of the combined fleet saw the swift resurrection of Escapism after two centuries of silence. The European Commonwealth had even drafted a plan to select one hundred thousand candidates for departure through a nationwide drawing, and the plan had been passed by a popular vote. But after the results of the drawing, the majority of those who had not been picked were furious, leading to widespread rioting. The public turned unanimously to Escapism as crime against humanity.

After the Battle of Darkness erupted between the surviving warships in outer space, accusations of Escapism gained new meaning: Recent events had proved that when the spiritual bonds with Earth were snapped, people in space suffered total spiritual alienation. So even if escape were successful, what survived would no longer be human civilization, but some other dark and evil thing. And like Trisolaris, that thing would be the antithesis of human civilization and an enemy of it. It had even been given a name: Negacivilization.

As the droplet came closer to Earth, the public’s sensitivity to Escapism reached a peak. The media warned it was highly likely that someone would attempt to escape before the droplet’s attack. Crowds flocked to the vicinity of the space ports and the base points of the space elevators with the intent of cutting off all channels into space. They did indeed possess that ability. In this age, the citizens of the world all had the freedom to own weapons, and most of them had small laser guns. Of course, a laser pistol posed no threat to the cabin of the space elevator or the launching spacecraft, but unlike a traditional gun, a large number of lasers could focus their light on a single point. If ten thousand laser pistols fired at one point at the same time, they were unstoppable. Crowds numbering in at least the tens of thousands, with up to a million people in places, gathered around the base points and launching sites, and at least a third were carrying weapons. When they saw a cabin ascend or a spacecraft launch, they would fire their weapons simultaneously. The straight path of the laser beam made aiming incredibly precise, so most of the beams would focus on the target and destroy it. In this way, Earth’s transport links with space were almost entirely severed.

The chaos grew worse. Over the past couple of days, the target of the attacks had shifted to space cities in synchronous orbit. Rumors flew thick online that certain cities had been converted into escape ships, so they too became subject to attack by the people of Earth. Owing to the vast distance, laser beams dissipated and were weakened by the time they reached targets in space, and given the additional factor of the space cities’ rotation, no material injury was caused. But the activity became a kind of collective entertainment for humanity in those last days. That afternoon, the European Commonwealth’s third space city, New Paris, had been subject to simultaneous irradiation by ten million laser beams from the northern hemisphere, causing the temperature in the city to rise sharply and prompting the evacuation of its residents. From the space city, the Earth had been brighter than the sun.

There was nothing more for Luo Ji and Shi Qiang to say.

“I was really impressed with your work at the Hibernation Immigration Bureau,” the mayor said to Shi Qiang. “And Guo Zhengming. You know him, right? He was just promoted to director of the Public Security Bureau, and he recommended you to me. I hope you’ll come work at the city government. We need people like you right now.”

Shi Qiang thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Once I’ve settled things in my neighborhood. How’s the situation in the city right now?”

“The situation is deteriorating, but it’s still under control. Right now the focus is on maintaining the operation of the induction field power supply. Once that goes, the city will collapse completely.”

“These riots are different from those in our day.”

“Yeah, they are. First, their source is different. They’re sparked by total despair for the future and are incredibly hard to handle. At the same time, we have fewer means at our disposal than in those days.” As the mayor was speaking, he pulled up an image on the wall. “This is the central plaza from a height of a hundred meters.”

The central plaza was where Luo Ji and Shi Qiang had taken refuge from the flying car. From this vantage point, the Great Ravine Memorial and its surrounding patch of desert couldn’t be seen. The entire plaza was white, with white dots crawling around like rice in a pot of porridge.

“Are those people?” Luo Ji asked in wonder.

“Naked people. It’s a tremendous sex party, with more than a hundred thousand people, and it’s still growing.”

Acceptance of heterosexual and homosexual relations in this era was far beyond anything Luo Ji had imagined, and some things were no longer considered remarkable. Still, the sight before them came as a shock to both of them. Luo Ji was reminded of the dissolute scene in the Bible before humanity received the Ten Commandments. A classic doomsday scenario.

“Why doesn’t the government put a stop to it?” Shi Qiang asked sharply.

“How would we stop it? They’re completely within the law. If we take action, the government would be the one committing a crime.”

Shi Qiang let out a long sigh. “Yes, I know. In this age, police and the military can’t do much.”

The mayor said, “We’ve been through the law, and we haven’t found any provisions for coping with the present situation.”

“With the city like this, it would be better if the droplet smashed it apart.”

Shi Qiang’s words jerked Luo Ji awake. He asked hurriedly, “How long until the droplet gets to Earth?”

The mayor replaced the image of spectacular promiscuity with a breaking news channel showing a simulation of the Solar System. The eye-catching red line that marked the path of the droplet looked like the orbit of a comet, except that it terminated close to the Earth. In the lower right was a countdown clock indicating that if the droplet didn’t reduce speed, it would reach Earth in four hours and fifty-four minutes. The news crawl was now displaying an expert analysis of the droplet. Despite the terror gripping the world, the scientific community had recovered its senses after the initial shock of defeat, so the analysis was calm and sober. Though humanity knew absolutely nothing about the droplet’s energy source and drive mechanism, the analyst felt that it had run into a power consumption problem, because its acceleration toward the sun after destroying the combined fleet had been particularly sluggish. It had passed close by Jupiter but, ignoring the three warships at the base, used the planet’s gravity to accelerate, a move that further demonstrated that the droplet’s energy was limited to the point of exhaustion. Scientists believed that the notion that the droplet would crash into Earth was utter nonsense, but they had no idea what it had actually come to do.

Luo Ji said, “I have to leave, or else the city will really be destroyed.”

“Why?” the mayor asked.

“Because he thinks the droplet wants to kill him,” Shi Qiang said.

The mayor laughed, but his smile was stiff. Apparently he hadn’t laughed in a long time. “Dr. Luo, you’re the most self-absorbed person I’ve ever met.”

Luo Ji and Shi Qiang drove off immediately after traveling back to the surface from the underground city. The city’s inhabitants were pouring out in large numbers, which meant that ground traffic was so heavy that it took them half an hour to leave the old city and reach full speed on the highway to the west.

On the car’s television, they saw that the droplet was approaching Earth at a speed of seventy-five kilometers per second and showed no sign of slowing. At that rate, it would arrive in three hours.

The weakening of the induction field power supply slowed the car, and Shi Qiang had to tap a storage battery to maintain speed. They reached the large hibernator residential area, but drove past New Life Village #5 and continued westward. They stayed silent along the way, speaking little and focusing their attention on the breaking news on the television.

The droplet passed lunar orbit without slowing. At this rate it would reach Earth in just half an hour. No one knew how it would behave, so to avoid a panic, the news didn’t predict a point of impact.

Luo Ji made a determined effort to welcome the moment he had long wanted to postpone, and said, “Da Shi, stop here.”

Shi Qiang stopped the car and they got out. The sun, now nearing the horizon, cast long shadows of the two men on the desert. Luo Ji felt the earth beneath his feet turn as soft as his heart. He almost lacked the strength to stand.

He said, “I’ll try my best to reach a sparsely populated area. There’s a city ahead of us, so I’m going to turn this way. You find your own way back, and get as far as possible from the direction I’m going.”

“My boy, I’ll wait for you here. When it’s over, we’ll go back together.” Shi Qiang took out a cigarette from his pocket and looked around for a lighter before remembering that the cigarette didn’t need to be lit. Like the other things he had brought from that distant past, his personal habits had not changed at all.

Luo Ji smiled a little sadly. He hoped Shi Qiang actually believed that, because at least that would make their parting a little easier to take. “Wait if you’d like. When the time comes, you had better move to the other side of the embankment. I don’t know how powerful the strike will be.”

Shi Qiang smiled and shook his head. “You remind me of an intellectual I met two hundred years ago. He had the same hangdog look you’ve got. I remember him sitting out early in the morning in front of the Wangfujing church, crying…. But he got out okay. I checked after I woke up: He lived to be nearly a hundred.”

“What about the first guy to touch the droplet, Ding Yi? I believe you knew each other, too.”

“He had a death wish. Nothing you could do about that.” Shi Qiang looked up at the sky clothed in sunset, as if reminding himself what the physicist looked like. “Still, he was a truly broad-minded man, the kind that could accept any situation. I never met anyone like him in my whole life. Seriously, a great mind. My boy, you ought to learn from him.”

“And again I say to you: We’re just ordinary people, you and I.” He looked at his watch, knowing that there was no more time for delay. He extended a firm hand to Shi Qiang. “Da Shi, thank you for everything you’ve done for me the past two centuries. Good-bye. Maybe we’ll meet again in some other place.”

Shi Qiang did not take his hand, but gave him a wave. “Cut the crap! Believe me, my boy. Nothing’s going to happen. Go, and when it’s over, hurry back and get me. And don’t blame me if I make fun of you tonight over drinks.”

Luo Ji got into the car quickly, not wanting Shi Qiang to see the tears in his eyes. Sitting there, he strove to etch the rearview-mirror image of Shi Qiang onto his mind, then set off on his final journey.

Maybe they would meet again someplace. The last time it had taken two centuries, so what would the separation be this time? Like Zhang Beihai two centuries before, Luo Ji suddenly found himself hating that he was an atheist.

The sun had now entirely set, and the desert on either side of the road shone white in the twilight, like snow. It suddenly occurred to him that it was along this very stretch of road two centuries ago that he had driven in the Accord with his imaginary lover, when the northern China plain was covered with real snow. He felt her hair blowing in the wind, its strands teasing him with their strange tickles on his right cheek.

No, no. Don’t say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don’t know, the world feels unlimited.

Okay. Then let’s do our best to get lost.

Luo Ji had always had the feeling that Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia had been brought into the world by his imagination. He felt a stab in his heart when the thought entered his mind, because, at this moment, love and longing were the most excruciating things in the world. Tears blurred his vision as he strove to keep his mind blank. But Yan Yan’s lovely eyes stubbornly surfaced through the blankness, accompanied by Xia Xia’s intoxicating laughter. It was all he could do to focus his attention on the television news.

The droplet had passed the Lagrange point,[6] but it still sped toward Earth at constant speed.

Luo Ji parked the car at what he thought was the most fitting spot, the border between the plain and the mountains, where there were no people or buildings as far as he could see. The car stood in a valley surrounded by a U-shaped ring of mountains, which would dissipate some of the shock waves from the impact. He took the television from the car and carried it onto the open sand, where he sat down.

The droplet crossed the 34,000-kilometer geosynchronous orbit altitude and passed close by the space city New Shanghai, whose inhabitants all clearly saw the bright point of light pass rapidly across their sky. The news declared that the impact would occur in eight minutes.

The news finally predicted the latitude and longitude of impact: to the northwest of China’s capital.

Luo Ji knew that already.

Twilight had fallen heavily now, and the colors of the sky had shrunk to a small space in the west, like a pupilless eyeball watching the world indifferently.

Perhaps as a way to pass the remaining time, Luo Ji began to look back on his life.

It had been divided into two entirely distinct parts. The part after he became a Wallfacer spanned two centuries, but it felt densely compacted. He passed quickly back through it as if it had been just yesterday. That part of his life didn’t seem like his own, including the love that was engraved onto his bones. It all felt like a fleeting dream. He didn’t dare think about his wife and child.

Contrary to his expectations, his memories of life before becoming a Wallfacer were a blank. All that he could fish out from the sea of memory were a few fragments, and the farther back he went, the fewer there were. Had he really been to high school? Had he really attended primary school? Had he really had a first love? Some of the fragments bore clear scratches, reminding him that those things had indeed taken place. The details were vivid, but the feelings had vanished without a trace. The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end.

He looked around at the twilight mountains, recalling that one winter’s night he spent here more than two hundred years ago, in the mountains that had grown tired of standing for hundreds of millions of years, and had lain down “like old villagers basking in the sun,” as his imaginary lover had once said. The fields and cities of the northern China plain had long since turned to desert, but the mountains didn’t seem to have changed. They were still plain and ordinary in shape, and withered grasses and vitex vines still grew stubbornly from the crevices in the gray rocks, no lusher and no sparser than two centuries ago. Two centuries was far too short for any visible change to come to these rocky mountains.

What was the human world like in the eyes of the mountains? Perhaps just something they saw on a leisurely afternoon. First, a few small living beings appeared on the plain. After a while, they multiplied, and after another while they erected structures like anthills that quickly filled the region. The structures shone from the inside, and some of them let off smoke. After another while, the lights and smoke disappeared, and the small things vanished as well, and then their structures toppled and were buried in the sand. That was all. Among the countless things the mountains had witnessed, these fleeting events were not necessarily the most interesting.

Finally, Luo Ji located his earliest memory. He was surprised to discover that the life he could remember also began on the sand. It was in his own prehistoric age, in a place he couldn’t remember, and with people he couldn’t recall, but he clearly remembered the sandy shore of a river. There was a round moon in the sky, and the river rippled under the moonlight. He was digging in the sand. When he had dug out a pit, water seeped through the bottom, and in the water there was a small moon. He kept digging like that, digging lots of pits and bringing forth lots of small moons.

That was his earliest memory. Before that, everything was blank.

In the dark of night, only the light of the television illuminated the small patch of sand surrounding him.

As Luo Ji worked to maintain a blank state in his mind, his scalp tightened, and he felt like an enormous hand had covered the entire sky overhead and was pressing down on him.

But then the giant hand slowly withdrew.

At a distance of twenty thousand kilometers from the surface, the droplet changed direction and headed directly toward the sun.

The TV reporter shouted, “Attention northern hemisphere! Attention northern hemisphere! The droplet has grown brighter, and you can see it with the naked eye!”

Luo Ji looked up. He could actually see it: It wasn’t too bright, but its high speed made it easily distinguishable as it crossed the sky like a meteor and vanished in the west.

At last the droplet reduced its velocity relative to the Earth to zero and rested at a point 1.5 million kilometers away. A Lagrange point. That meant that, in the days to come, it would remain motionless relative to both Earth and sun, squarely between the two.

Luo Ji had a hunch that something else might happen, so he sat on the sand and waited. The mountains, like old men beside and in back of him, waited quietly with him and gave him a sense of security. For the time being, there was no more important information in the news. A world uncertain whether or not it had escaped catastrophe waited nervously.

Ten minutes passed, but nothing happened. The monitoring system showed the droplet suspended motionless, the propulsion halo gone from its tail and its round head facing the sun. It reflected the bright sunlight, so that its front third appeared to be on fire. To Luo Ji, some sort of mysterious induction seemed to be taking place between the droplet and the sun.

The image on the television suddenly blurred, and the sound turned scratchy. Luo Ji sensed commotion in the surrounding environment: A startled flock of birds took flight in the mountains, and a dog barked in the distance. It might have been a false impression, but he felt his skin begin to itch. The television’s sound and picture jittered for a moment and then cleared up. Later it was learned that the interference was still present, but global telecommunications systems had quickly filtered out the sudden noise with their anti-interference capabilities. However, the news reacted slowly to this development because of the vast amounts of monitoring data that needed to be pooled and analyzed. It was another ten minutes or more before precise information became available.

The droplet was sending a continuous, powerful electromagnetic wave directly at the sun with an intensity far exceeding the sun’s amplification threshold and a frequency that covered all the bands that the sun could amplify.

Luo Ji began to giggle, and then laughed until he choked. Yes, he really was self-absorbed. He should have thought of all of this long ago. Luo Ji wasn’t important. The sun was important. From now on, humanity could no longer use the sun as a powerful antenna to transmit messages to the universe.

The droplet had sealed it off.

“Hah! My boy, nothing’s happened! We really should have wagered on it.” At some point, Shi Qiang had made his way over to Luo Ji. He had flagged down a car to get here.

Luo Ji felt like something had been drained out of him. He lay limply down on the sand, which was still warm from the sun. It was comfortable beneath him.

“Yes, Da Shi. We can go and live our lives now. Everything’s finished.”

“My boy, this is the last time I help you do Wallfacer stuff,” Shi Qiang said on the road back. “That occupation must cause mental problems, and you’ve just had another episode.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Luo Ji said. Outside, the stars that were visible yesterday had vanished, and the black desert and night sky joined into one at the horizon. A section of road illuminated by the headlights stretched out ahead of them. The world was like the state of Luo Ji’s mind: darkness everywhere, with one spot incredibly clear.

“You know, it’ll be easy for you to get back to normal. It’s time for Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia to reawaken. Although, with the recent chaos, I don’t know if they’ve suspended reawakening. But even if they have, it won’t be for very long. The situation will quickly stabilize, I think. After all, there’s still time left for several generations. Didn’t you say you can go and live your life?”

“I’ll go inquire at the Hibernation Immigration Bureau tomorrow.” Shi Qiang’s words reminded Luo Ji of the bit of color that existed in his dull mind. Maybe a reunion with his wife and child was his only chance for redemption.

But humanity was beyond hope.

As they neared New Life Village #5, Shi Qiang suddenly slowed the car. “Something’s not right,” he said, looking ahead. Following his gaze, Luo Ji saw a glow in the sky cast by a light on the ground, but the high embankments on the roadway meant they couldn’t see its source. The glow was in motion. It didn’t seem like the lights of a residential area.

When the car turned off the highway, a strange and spectacular sight met them: The desert between New Life Village #2 and the highway had been turned into a shining blanket dense with lights, like an ocean of fireflies. It took Luo Ji a moment to realize that it was a crowd of people. All of them were from the city, and the light came from their clothes.

As the car slowly approached the crowd, everyone ahead of them raised their hands to block the glare of the headlights, so Shi Qiang turned them off, leaving them facing a bizarre, gaudy human wall.

“Looks like they’re waiting for someone,” Shi Qiang said, looking at Luo Ji, who tensed up at his expression. The car stopped, and Shi Qiang went on, “You stay here and don’t move. I’ll go have a look.” He jumped out of the car and walked over to the crowd. Against the glowing human wall, Shi Qiang’s stocky body stood out as a black silhouette. Luo Ji watched him walk to the crowd, then exchange a few words with the people before turning and walking back.

“Turns out they’re waiting for you. Go,” he said, leaning on the door. Seeing Luo Ji’s face, he reassured him, “Relax. It’ll be okay.”

Luo Ji got out of the car and went over to the crowd. He had grown familiar with the wired clothing of modern people, but in the desolate desert, he still had the feeling that he was walking toward the Other. But when he drew closer and could make out their expressions, his heart began to beat faster.

The first thing he had learned when he awakened from hibernation was that the crowds of every age have their own unique expression. The differences across time to this far-off age were remarkable—you could easily distinguish between moderns and hibernators who had only just reawakened. But the expressions Luo Ji saw now weren’t modern, nor were they twenty-first century. He didn’t know what era they belonged to. Fear nearly rooted him to the spot, but his trust in Shi Qiang propelled his steps mechanically forward.

When he had gotten closer to the crowd, he finally stopped, because he saw the images they had on their clothes.

Their clothing displayed pictures of Luo Ji—some still photographs, some videos.

Luo Ji had rarely appeared before the media since becoming a Wallfacer, so he hadn’t left much of a visual record, but a fairly complete set of those videos and images was now on display on the people’s clothing. On some people, he even saw photographs of his pre-Wallfacer self. The clothing took its images from the Internet, which meant that these images must be circulating worldwide. He also noticed that the images were in their original state and had not been subjected to the artistic deformation that the moderns liked to do, which meant that they had just appeared online.

When they saw him stop, the crowd moved toward him. When they got as close as two or three meters, the people in front held back the rest of the crowd, and then knelt down. Those behind them knelt down successively in a wave of glowing people that receded along the sand.

“Lord, save us!” he heard someone say. The words buzzed in his ears.

“Oh god, save the world!”

“Great spokesman, uphold justice in the universe!”

“Angel of justice, save humankind!”

Two people came up to Luo Ji, and he recognized the one whose clothing wasn’t glowing as Hines. The other man was a soldier with glowing badges and ribbons.

Hines said to him gravely, “Dr. Luo, I’ve just been appointed your liaison to the UN Wallfacer Project Commission. It is my duty to inform you that the Wallfacer Project has been revived, and you have been named the sole Wallfacer.”

The soldier said, “I am special commissioner Ben Jonathan of the SFJC. We met when you had just been reawakened. I am also instructed to inform you that the Asian Fleet, the European Fleet, and the North American Fleet have agreed with the revalidation of the Wallfacer Act and have recognized your status as Wallfacer.”

Hines pointed to the crowd kneeling on the sand, and said, “In the eyes of the public, you now have two identities. For theists, you are the angel of justice. To atheists, you are the spokesperson for a just, superior civilization in the Milky Way.”

This was followed by silence, with all eyes focused on Luo Ji. He thought for a while, but came up with only one possibility: “The spell worked?” he ventured.

Hines and Jonathan nodded, and Hines said, “187J3X1 has been destroyed.”

“When?”

“Fifty-one years ago. It was observed a year ago, but no one was paying much attention to that star, so the observations were only discovered this afternoon. A few desperate people in the SFJC wanted to find inspiration in history, and they remembered the Wallfacer Project and your spell. So they looked at 187J3X1 and found that it wasn’t there anymore. In its place was a nebula of debris. They scanned through all observational records of the star until its destruction a year ago, then pulled all of the observational data of 187J3X1 at the time it exploded.”

“How do they know it was destroyed?”

“You’re aware that 187J3X1 was in a stable period, like the sun, so it would be impossible for it to go nova. And its destruction was observed: A body traveling close to the speed of light struck 187J3X1. The tiny object—they’re calling it a ‘photoid’—was observed the instant it passed into the periphery of the stellar atmosphere by the tracks it made. Even though it was small in volume, its near-light velocity meant that its vastly amplified relativistic mass had reached one-eighth of 187J3X1’s by the time it struck the target. It destroyed the star immediately. The star’s four planets were also vaporized in the blast.”

Luo Ji looked up at the night’s dark sky, where the stars were practically invisible. He walked forward, and the people stood up and silently made a path for him, closing back together immediately behind him. They were all trying to push closer to him, as if yearning for sunlight amid the cold, but they respectfully left him a circle of space, a dark spot in a fluorescent ocean, like the eye of a storm. A man pushed forward and fell to the ground in front of Luo Ji, compelling him to stop, and then the man kissed his feet. A few others entered the ring to repeat that act. Just when the situation seemed about to go out of control, there were critical shouts from the crowd, prompting the people to scramble and retreat back into the group.

Luo Ji continued on ahead, but realized that he didn’t know where he was going. He stopped, found Hines and Jonathan in the crowd, and walked over to them.

“So what should I do now?” he asked when he reached them.

“You’re a Wallfacer, so of course you can do anything within the scope of the Wallfacer Act,” Hines said to him with a bow. “Although the act still has restrictions, you can now mobilize practically all of the resources of Earth International.”

“That includes the Fleet International’s resources, too,” Jonathan added.

Luo Ji thought for a moment, and said, “I don’t need to tap any resources right now. But if I’ve really recovered the power granted by the Wallfacer Act…”

“There’s no doubt about that,” Hines said. Jonathan nodded.

“Then I’ll make two requests. First, order will be restored in all cities, and normal life will resume. There’s no mystery about this request. I’m sure you understand.”

Everyone nodded. Someone said, “The world is listening, oh god.”

“Yes, the world is listening,” Hines said. “Restoring stability will require time, but because of you we have faith that it can be done.” His words were echoed in the crowd.

“Second: Everyone, go home. Leave this place in peace. Thank you!”

The people were silent after hearing this, but soon began to buzz as his words were passed back through the crowd. The crowd began to disperse, slowly and unwillingly at first, but eventually the pace picked up and car after car headed off down the road in the direction of the city. The many people walking along the roadside looked like a long glowing colony of ants in the night.

Then the desert was empty once again. Only Luo Ji, Shi Qiang, Hines, and Jonathan were left on the sand littered with chaotic footprints.

“I am truly ashamed of my former self,” Hines said. “Human civilization has a history of just five thousand years, yet we cherish life and freedom so highly. There must be civilizations in the universe with a history of billions of years. What sort of morality do they possess? Is there any point to that question?”

“I’m ashamed for myself, too. The past few days, I’ve even begun to doubt God,” Jonathan said. When he saw Hines about to cut in, he raised his hand to stop him. “No, friend. We might be talking about the same thing.”

They embraced, tears streaming down their faces.

“So, gentlemen,” Luo Ji said as he patted them on the back. “You can go back. If I need you, I’ll get in touch. Thank you.”

He watched them go off, supporting each other like a happy pair of lovers. Now he and Shi Qiang were the only ones left.

“Da Shi, anything you’d like to say now?” he said, turning to Shi Qiang with a smile.

Shi Qiang stood rooted to the spot, as stunned as if he had just witnessed a thrilling magic trick. “My boy, I’m damn confused.”

“What? You don’t believe I’m an angel of justice?”

“You’d have to beat me to death before I’d say that.”

“And a spokesperson of a superior civilization?”

“A little better than an angel, but I don’t believe that either, to tell you the truth. I’ve never thought that was the case.”

“Don’t you believe in fairness and justice in the universe?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re in law enforcement.”

“I said I don’t know. I’m genuinely confused.”

“Then you’re the most sober one here.”

“So can you tell me about the justice of the universe?”

“Very well. Come with me.” Then Luo Ji walked straight out into the desert, with Shi Qiang following close behind him. They walked a long while in silence, then crossed the highway.

“Where are we going?” Shi Qiang asked.

“To the darkest place.”

They crossed the highway to where the embankment blocked out the lights of the residential area. Groping about in the dark that surrounded them, Luo Ji and Shi Qiang sat down on the sandy ground.

“Let’s begin,” Luo Ji’s voice sounded in the dark.

“Give me the easy version. At my level, I’m not going to understand anything complicated.”

“Everyone can understand, Da Shi. The truth is simple. It’s the kind of thing that, once you hear it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t come up with it yourself. Do you know about mathematical axioms?”

“I took geometry in high school. ‘Only one straight line can be drawn between two points.’ That kind of thing.”

“Right. So now we’re going to set out two axioms for cosmic civilization. First, survival is the primary need of civilization. Second, civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.”

“And then?”

“That’s it.”

“What can you derive from those little things?”

“The same way you can figure out an entire case from a bullet or a drop of blood, cosmic sociology is able to describe a complete picture of galactic and cosmic civilization from those two axioms. That’s what science is like, Da Shi. The cornerstone of every discipline is quite simple.”

“So let’s see you derive something.”

“First, let’s talk about the Battle of Darkness. Would you believe me if I said that Starship Earth was a microcosm of cosmic civilization?”

“No. Starship Earth lacked resources like parts and fuel, but the universe doesn’t. It’s too big.”

“You’re wrong. The universe is big, but life is bigger! That’s what the second axiom means. The amount of matter in the universe remains constant, but life grows exponentially. Exponentials are the devils of mathematics. If there’s a microscopic bacterium in the ocean that divides once every half hour, its descendants will fill the entire ocean in the space of a few days, so long as there are sufficient nutrients. Don’t let humanity and Trisolaris give you a false impression. These two civilizations are tiny, but they are only in their infancy. Once a civilization passes a certain technological threshold, the expansion of life through the universe is frightening. For instance, take humanity’s present navigation speed. In a million years, Earth civilization could fill the galaxy. And a million years is a short time measured against the universe.”

“So you’re saying that, taking the long view, the entire universe might have that kind of… what are they calling it, a ‘dead hand’?”

“No need for the long view. Right now the entire universe has been dealt that dead hand. Like Hines said, civilization may have started in the universe billions of years ago. Looking at the signs, the universe might be packed full already. Who knows how much empty space there is in the Milky Way or the universe, or how many resources are left?”

“But that’s not right, is it? The universe looks empty. We haven’t seen any other alien life apart from Trisolaris, right?”

“That’s what we’ll talk about next. Give me a cigarette.” Luo Ji groped about in the dark for a while before taking the cigarette from Shi Qiang’s hand. When Luo Ji next spoke, Shi Qiang realized he had moved to a spot three or four meters away. “We need to increase the distance to make it feel more like outer space,” Luo Ji said. Then he lit the cigarette by twisting its filter, and Shi Qiang lit one of his own. In the dark, two tiny red planets stood in distant opposition.

“Okay. To illustrate the problem, we now need to establish the most elementary model of cosmic civilization. These two balls of flame represent two civilized planets. The universe is made up of only these two planets, and apart from them there’s nothing else. Erase all of our surroundings. Can you locate that feeling?”

“Yeah. That’s an easy feeling to find in a dark place like this.”

“Let’s call these two civilized worlds your civilization and my civilization. They’re separated by a great distance, say, a hundred light-years. You can detect that I exist, but you don’t know any details. However, I’m completely ignorant of your presence.”

“Right.”

“Now we need to define two concepts, ‘benevolence’ and ‘malice’ between civilizations. These words themselves aren’t very rigorous in a scientific context, so we’ve got to restrict their meaning. ‘Benevolence’ means not taking the initiative to attack and eradicate other civilizations. ‘Malice’ is the opposite.”

“That’s a low bar for benevolence.”

“Next, consider your options for dealing with me. Please remember that the axioms of cosmic civilization should be kept in mind throughout the process, as well as the distance scale and the environment of space.”

“I could choose to communicate with you.”

“If you do that, you should be aware of the price you’ll pay: You’ll have exposed your existence to me.”

“Right. In the universe, that’s no small thing.”

“There are different degrees of exposure. The strongest form of exposure is when I know your precise interstellar coordinates. Next is when I know your general direction, and the weakest is when I only know of your existence. But even the weakest form of exposure makes it possible for me to search for you, because since you’ve detected my existence, I know that I’ll be able to find you. It’s only a matter of time, from the standpoint of technological development.”

“But my boy, I could still take the risk to talk to you. If you’re malicious, then it’s my bad luck. But if you’re benevolent, then we could have further exchanges and ultimately be united into a benevolent civilization.”

“Okay, Da Shi. Now we’ve come to the crux of it. Let’s return to the axioms of cosmic civilization: Even if I’m a benevolent civilization, can I determine at the start of our communication whether or not you are also benevolent?”

“Of course not. That would violate the first axiom.”

“So once I’ve received your message, what should I do?”

“Naturally, you ought to determine whether I’m benevolent or malicious. Malicious, and you eradicate me. Benevolent, and we can continue communicating.”

The flame on Luo Ji’s side rose up and moved back and forth. Evidently he had gotten up and was pacing. “That’s fine on Earth, but not out in the universe. So next we’ll introduce an important new concept: the chain of suspicion.”

“That’s an odd term.”

“The term is all I had at first. It wasn’t explained to me. But, later, I was able to infer its meaning from the words themselves.”

“Who didn’t explain it?”

“…I’ll tell you later. Let’s continue. If you think I’m benevolent, that’s not a reason to feel safe, because according to the first axiom, a benevolent civilization can’t predict that any other civilization is benevolent. You don’t know whether I think you’re benevolent or malicious. Next, even if you know that I think you’re benevolent, and I also know that you think I’m benevolent, I don’t know what you think about what I think about what you’re thinking about me. It’s convoluted, isn’t it? This is just the third level, but the logic goes on indefinitely.”

“I get what you mean.”

“That’s the chain of suspicion. It’s something that you don’t see on Earth. Humanity’s shared species, cultural similarities, interconnected ecosystem, and close distances means that, in this environment, the chain of suspicion will only extend a level or two before it’s resolved through communication. But in space, the chain of suspicion can be very long. Something like the Battle of Darkness will already have taken place before communication can resolve it.”

Shi Qiang took a drag on his cigarette, and his contemplative face emerged from the darkness for a moment. “It looks now like the Battle of Darkness has a lot to teach us.”

“That’s right. The five ships of Starship Earth formed a quasi-cosmic civilization, not a real one, because they consisted of a single species—humans—who were very close to each other. But even so, when they were dealt that dead hand, the chain of suspicion emerged. In actual cosmic civilization, the biological differences between different groups might be as high as the kingdom level, and cultural differences are even further beyond our imagining. Add to this the vast distances between them, and you have chains of suspicion that are practically indestructible.”

“That means that the outcome is the same, regardless of whether we’re benevolent civilizations or malicious civilizations?”

“That’s right. That’s the most important aspect of the chain of suspicion. It’s unrelated to the civilization’s own morality and social structure. It’s enough to think of every civilization as the points at the end of a chain. Regardless of whether civilizations are internally benevolent or malicious, when they enter the web formed by chains of suspicion, they’re all identical.”

“But if you’re much weaker than I am, you’re not a threat to me. So I could always communicate with you, right?”

“That won’t work, either. Here we need to introduce a second important concept: the technological explosion. I didn’t get a full explanation for this, either, but it was far easier to infer than the chain of suspicion. Human civilization has five thousand years of history, and life on Earth might be as much as a few billion years old. But modern technology was developed over the course of three hundred years. On the scale of the universe, that’s not development. It’s an explosion! The potential for technological leaps is the explosive buried within every civilization, and if it’s lit by some internal or external factor, it goes off with a bang. On Earth it took three hundred years, but there’s no reason why humanity should be the fastest of all cosmic civilizations. Maybe there are others whose technological explosions were even more sudden. I’m weaker than you, but once I’ve received your message and know of your existence, the chain of suspicion is established between us. If at any time I experience a technological explosion that suddenly puts me far ahead of you, then I’m stronger than you. On the scale of the universe, several hundred years is the snap of a finger. And it might be that my knowledge of your existence and the information I received from our communication was the perfect spark to set off that explosion. That means that even though I’m just a newborn or growing civilization, I’m still a big danger to you.”

Shi Qiang watched Luo Ji’s flame in the darkness as he thought for a few seconds, then looked at his own cigarette. “So I have to keep quiet.”

“Do you think that will work?”

They smoked. The balls of flame brightened and their faces emerged from the darkness like the gods of this simple universe, deep in thought.

Shi Qiang said, “No, it won’t. If you’re stronger than me, then since I was able to find you, one day you’ll be able to find me. And then there will be a chain of suspicion between us. If you’re weaker than me, you could experience a technological explosion at any time, and that would take us back to the first case. To sum up: one, letting you know I exist, and two, letting you continue to exist, are both dangerous to me and violate the first axiom.”

“Da Shi, you’ve really got a clear mind.”

“My brain can keep up with yours so far, but we’re only getting started.”

Luo Ji was silent in the dark for a long time. His face emerged in the weak light of the ball of flame two or three times before he said, “Da Shi, this isn’t a start. Our reasoning has already reached a conclusion.”

“Conclusion? We haven’t figured anything out! Where’s the picture of cosmic civilization you promised?”

“If neither communication nor silence will work once you learn of my existence, you’re left with just one option.”

In the long silence that followed, the two flames went out. There was no wind, and the dark silence turned thick as asphalt, connecting sky and desert into a murky whole. At last Shi Qiang uttered one word in the darkness: “Fuck!”

“Extrapolate that option out to the billions upon billions of stars and hundreds of millions of civilizations, and there’s your picture,” Luo Ji said, nodding in the darkness.

“That’s… that’s really dark.”

“The real universe is just that black.” Luo Ji waved a hand, feeling the darkness as if stroking velvet. “The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”

Shi Qiang lit another cigarette, if only to have a bit of light.

“But in this dark forest, there’s a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’” Luo Ji said.

“Has anyone heard it?”

“That’s guaranteed. But those shouts alone can’t be used to determine the child’s location. Humanity has not yet transmitted information about the exact position of Earth and the Solar System into the universe. From the information that has been sent out, all that can be learned is the distance between Earth and Trisolaris, and their general heading in the Milky Way. The precise location of the two worlds is still a mystery. Since we’re located in the wilderness of the periphery of the galaxy, we’re a little safer.”

“So what’s the deal with the spell?”

“Using the sun, I transmitted three images to the cosmos. Each one consisted of thirty points representing the planar projection of a three-dimensional coordinate system containing the position of thirty stars. Combining the three images into three-dimensional coordinates forms a cubic space populated by those thirty points. That represents the relative positions of 187J3X1 and its twenty-nine surrounding stars. There’s also a label pointing out 187J3X1.

“Think about it carefully and you’ll get it. A hunter in a dark forest, stalking with bated breath, suddenly notices that a piece of bark has been stripped from a tree in front of him. On the eye-catching bit of white wood that’s been revealed is a position in the forest, written in characters all hunters can recognize. What will he think about that location? He’s certainly not going to imagine that someone has laid out supplies for him there. Out of all the possibilities, the most likely one is that the blaze is informing everyone that there’s live prey at that location that needs to be eliminated. It doesn’t matter what motivated someone to leave the mark. What’s important is that the dead hand has stretched the nerves of the dark forest to the breaking point, and it’s the most sensitive nerve that’s most liable to make a move. Suppose there are a million hunters in the forest—the number of civilizations on the billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way could be thousands of times that. Perhaps nine hundred thousand of them will disregard the marking. Of the remaining one hundred thousand, maybe ninety thousand of them will probe the location, and, after confirming that it has no life, disregard it. But one of the remaining ten thousand hunters will surely make a choice to fire on that position, because for civilizations at a certain level of technological development, attacking may be safer and less of a hassle than probing. If there’s really nothing at that location, then it’s no loss.

“Now,” Luo Ji concluded, “that hunter has appeared.”

“That spell of yours can’t be sent anymore, right?”

“That’s right, Da Shi. The spell needs to be broadcast to the entire galaxy, but the sun’s been locked down, so it can’t be sent anymore.”

“Was humanity just a step late?” Shi Qiang flicked aside his cigarette end. The flame drew an arc through the darkness as it fell, momentarily illuminating a small circle of sandy ground.

“No, no. Think about it: If the sun hadn’t been sealed off, and I had threatened Trisolaris with sending out a spell against them, what would have happened?”

“You would’ve been stoned to death like Rey Diaz. And then they would have enacted legislation to prohibit anyone else from thinking along those lines.”

“That’s right, Da Shi. Because we’ve already revealed the distance between the Solar System and Trisolaris as well as our general heading in the Milky Way, exposing the location of Trisolaris is tantamount to exposing the location of the Solar System. That’s a death strategy. Maybe we’re a step late, but it’s a step that humanity would never be able to take.”

“You should have threatened Trisolaris back then.”

“Things were too weird. I wasn’t certain about the idea at the time, so I needed to confirm it. After all, there was plenty of time. But the real reason was that, deep in my heart, I really didn’t have the mental strength. I don’t think anyone else would, either.”

“Thinking about it now, we shouldn’t have gone to see the mayor today. This situation—if the world learns about it, then it’s even more hopeless. Think about how the first two Wallfacers ended up.”

“You’re right. The same thing would happen to me, so I hope that neither of us says anything. But you still can, if you want. Like someone once told me: Either way, I’ve fulfilled my duty.”

“Don’t worry, my boy. I won’t say anything.”

“Regardless, there’s no longer any hope.”

They walked along the embankment and to the highway, where it was slightly less dark. The sparse lights of the residential area in the distance were enough to blind them.

“There’s one more thing. That person you mentioned?”

Luo Ji hesitated. “Forget it. All you need to know is that the axioms of cosmic civilization and the theory of the dark forest were not my invention.”

“Tomorrow I’m going into the city to work with the government. If you need any help in the future, just say the word.”

“Da Shi, you’ve helped me more than enough. I’ll head into the city tomorrow, too, to the Hibernation Immigration Bureau, to take care of waking up my family.”

Contrary to Luo Ji’s expectations, the Hibernation Immigration Bureau said that reawakening Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia was still blocked, and the bureau’s director made it clear to him that his Wallfacer powers were ineffective in this regard. He consulted Hines and Jonathan, who were unacquainted with the details of the situation, but they told him that the revised Wallfacer Act contained a provision stating that the UN and Wallfacer Project Commission could take all necessary steps to ensure that the Wallfacer remained focused on his work. Which meant that, after two centuries, the UN was once again using Luo Ji’s situation as a tool to coerce and control him.

Luo Ji requested that his hibernator settlement remain in its current state and be kept free of outside harassment. This request was faithfully executed. The news media and the masses of pilgrims were kept at a distance, and after calm was restored throughout New Life Village #5, it was like nothing at all had happened.

Two days later, Luo Ji attended the first hearing of the revived Wallfacer Project. He didn’t go to the underground UN headquarters in North America, but attended by video link from his spartan residence in New Life Village #5, where scenes from the assembly appeared on the ordinary television in his room.

“Wallfacer Luo Ji, we were prepared to face your anger,” the commission chair said.

“My heart has been burnt to ash. It no longer has the capacity for anger,” Luo Ji said, reclining lazily on the sofa.

The chair nodded. “That’s a wonderful attitude. However, the commission feels you ought to leave your village. That little place isn’t a worthy command center for the defense of the Solar System.”

“Do you know about Xibaipo? It’s an even smaller village not far from here. Over two centuries ago, that’s where our nation’s founders commanded one of the largest offensives in history.”[7]

The chair shook his head. “Clearly you haven’t changed at all. Very well. The commission respects your habits and choices. You should get to work. It’s not going to be like back then, with you claiming that you’re always at work, is it?”

“I can’t work. The conditions for my work no longer exist. Can you harness stellar power to broadcast my spell into the universe?”

The representative of the Asian Fleet said, “You know that’s impossible. The droplet’s radio suppression of the sun is continuous. And we don’t anticipate that it will stop for the next two or three years, by which time the nine other droplets will have reached the Solar System.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do.”

The chair said, “No, Wallfacer Luo Ji. There’s one important thing you haven’t done. You haven’t disclosed the secret of the spell to the UN and SFJC. How did you use it to destroy a star?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“And if it were a condition for reawakening your wife and child?”

“That’s a despicable thing to say at a time like this.”

“This is a secret hearing. Besides, the Wallfacer Project doesn’t have any place in modern society. The revival of the Wallfacer Project means that all decisions made by the UN’s Wallfacer Project Commission two centuries ago are still in effect. And according to those resolutions, Zhuang Yan and your child would reawaken at the Doomsday Battle.”

“Didn’t we just fight the Doomsday Battle?”

“The two Internationals don’t think so, since the main Trisolaran Fleet has yet to arrive.”

“Keeping the secret of the spell is my responsibility as a Wallfacer. Otherwise, humanity will lose its last hope, though that hope may already be gone.”

In the days following the hearing, Luo Ji stayed inside, drinking heavily, and spent most of his time in a state of intoxication. People occasionally saw him emerge with his clothes disheveled and his beard long. He looked like a tramp.

When the next Wallfacer Project hearing was convened, Luo Ji again attended from home.

“Wallfacer Luo Ji, your condition has us worried,” the chair said when he saw Luo Ji’s unkempt appearance in the video. He directed the camera around Luo Ji’s room, and the assembly could see that it was littered with bottles.

“You ought to get to work, if only to restore yourself to a normal state of mind,” the representative of the European Commonwealth said.

“You know what will return me to normal.”

“The reawakening of your wife and child really isn’t all that important,” the chair said. “We don’t want to use that to control you. We know that we can’t control you. But it’s a resolution made by the previous commission, so addressing the issue presents some difficulties. Bottom line: There must be a condition.”

“I reject your condition.”

“No, no, Dr. Luo. The condition has changed.”

At the chair’s words, Luo Ji’s eyes lit up, and he sat up straight on the sofa. “And now the condition is…”

“It’s simple. Couldn’t be simpler. You just have to do something.”

“If I can’t send a spell out into the universe, there’s nothing I can do.”

“You have to think of something to do.”

“You mean, it could be something meaningless?”

“So long as it looks significant to the public. In their eyes, you’re either the spokesman of the force of cosmic justice or a heaven-sent angel of justice. At the very least, these identities can be used to stabilize the situation. But if you do nothing, you’ll lose the faith of the public after a while.”

“Achieving stability that way is dangerous. It’ll lead to no end of trouble.”

“But what we need right now is to stabilize the global situation. The nine droplets are coming to the Solar System in three years, and we have to be prepared to deal with that.”

“I really don’t want to waste resources.”

“In that case, the commission will provide you with a task. One that won’t waste resources. I’ll ask the chairman of the SFJC to explain it to you,” the chair said as he gestured to the SFJC chairman, who was also attending via video. The SFJC chairman was evidently in some space-based structure, because the stars were shifting slowly across the broad window behind him.

He said, “Our estimate of the arrival of the nine droplets in the Solar System is based entirely on speed and acceleration estimates obtained when they crossed the final interstellar dust cloud four years ago. They differ from the one that’s already here in that their engines operate without emitting light. They don’t emit any other high-frequency electromagnetic radiation that could provide a position. This is likely a self-adjustment made after humanity successfully tracked the first droplet. Locating and tracking such small, dark bodies in outer space is incredibly difficult, and now that we’ve lost their tracks, we don’t know when they’ll reach the Solar System. We don’t even know how to detect that they’ve arrived.”

“So what can I do?” Luo Ji asked.

“We hope that you can lead the Snow Project.”

“What’s that?”

“Using stellar hydrogen bombs and Neptune’s oil film, we will manufacture clouds of space dust that the droplets will leave tracks in when they pass through.”

“You’ve got to be joking. You do realize that I’m not entirely ignorant about space.”

“You were an astronomer once. That makes you even more qualified to lead this project.”

“Making a dust cloud was successful last time because the approximate path of the target was known. But now we know nothing. If the nine droplets accelerate or change course while dark, then they might even enter the Solar System from another side altogether! Where are you going to spread the dust cloud?”

“In every direction.”

“You mean to say that you’re going to manufacture a ball of dust to envelop the entire Solar System? If that’s the case, then you’re the one who’s been sent by God.”

“A ball of dust is impossible, but we can make a ring of dust on the ecliptic plane, between the asteroid belt and Jupiter.”

“But what if the droplets enter outside the ecliptic plane?”

“That can’t be helped. But from an astrodynamics perspective, if the droplet group wants to encounter every planet in the Solar System, then the greatest likelihood is entry on the ecliptic plane. That’s what the first droplet did. That way, the dust cloud will be able to capture their tracks, and, once captured, the Solar System’s optical tracking system will be able to lock onto them.”

“But what’s the point of that?”

“We’ll at least know that the droplet group has entered the Solar System. They might strike civilian targets in space, so all ships will need to be recalled, or at least those in the droplets’ path. And the inhabitants of space cities will have to be evacuated to Earth, because those are weak targets.”

“There’s another matter that’s even more critical,” the Wallfacer Project Commission chair said. “Identifying safe routes for the possible withdrawal of spacecraft into deep space.”

“Withdrawal into deep space? We’re not talking about Escapism, are we?”

“If you must use that name.”

“Why not begin the escape now?”

“Present political conditions do not permit it. But when the droplet group approaches Earth, a limited-scale flight might become acceptable to the international community. Of course, it’s only a possibility. But the UN and the fleets must make preparations for it.”

“I understand. But the Snow Project doesn’t really require me.”

“It does. Even inside the orbit of Jupiter, creating a dust cloud is an enormous undertaking and will require the deployment of almost ten thousand stellar hydrogen bombs, more than ten million tons of oil film, and the formation of an enormous space fleet. To accomplish that within three years requires taking advantage of your current status and prestige to organize and coordinate the resources of the two Internationals.”

“If I agree to undertake this mission, when will you wake them?”

“Once the project is started. Like I said, it won’t be a problem.”

But the Snow Project never got fully off the ground.

The two Internationals were not interested in the project. What the public wanted was a strategy for global salvation, not a plan that would merely inform them of the enemy’s arrival so they could escape. Besides, they knew that this wasn’t the Wallfacer’s idea. It was just a plan implemented by the UN and SFJC that exploited his authority. A full launch of the Snow Project would bring the entire space economy to a standstill and lead to a general economic recession on Earth and in the fleet. In addition, contrary to the UN’s prediction, as the droplets drew nearer, Escapism turned even more repugnant in the eyes of the public, so the two Internationals were unwilling to pay such a high price for an unpopular plan. As a result, both the construction of a fleet to gather the oil film material on Neptune and the manufacture of sufficient stellar hydrogen bombs to supplement the fewer than one thousand from the Great Ravine that were still usable made very slow progress.

But Luo Ji poured himself entirely into the project. At first, the UN and the SFJC had only wanted to exploit his prestige to mobilize the resources needed, but Luo Ji immersed himself in every detail of the project, spending sleepless nights shoulder-to-shoulder with the scientists and engineers of the Technical Committee and proposing many of his own ideas. For example, he suggested that a small interstellar ion engine be installed onto each bomb to allow them a certain degree of mobility in orbit, enabling timely adjustments to the density of the stellar cloud in different regions. More importantly, the hydrogen bombs could act as attack weapons. He called them “space mines,” and argued that even though stellar hydrogen bombs had proven incapable of destroying droplets, they might in the long run be useful against Trisolaran ships, because they had no evidence that the ships were also constructed out of strong-interaction material. He personally determined the orbit for every bomb’s deployment. From a modern technological perspective, his ideas may have been full of a twenty-first-century ignorance and naiveté, but his prestige and Wallfacer status meant that most of his suggestions were adopted.

Luo Ji treated the Snow Project as a means of escape. He knew that he wanted to escape reality, and the best way to do that at present was to involve himself deeply in the project. But the more he devoted himself to it, the more disappointed in him the world became. Everyone knew he had only attached himself to the largely insignificant project so that he could see his wife and child as soon as possible. The world waited for a plan for salvation that never materialized. Luo Ji declared over and over in the media that without the capability to use stellar power to send out a spell, he was powerless to do anything.

The Snow Project ground to a halt after a year and a half, at which time only 1.5 million tons of oil film had been collected from Neptune. Even adding the 600,000 tons collected for the Fog Umbrella, the figure was still far from what the project required. Ultimately, 3,614 stellar hydrogen bombs packed in oil film were deployed in an orbit two AU from the sun. This wasn’t even a fifth of the intended number. When detonated, they would form a large number of independent dust clouds orbiting the sun, rather than a continuous dust cloud belt, greatly reducing their effectiveness as a warning.

It was an age in which hope came as quickly as disappointment, and after anxiously waiting for a year and a half, the public lost faith and patience in Luo Ji the Wallfacer.

At the general meeting of the International Astronomical Union, a body that last attracted worldwide attention in 2006 when it revoked Pluto’s eligibility as a planet, a large number of astronomers and astrophysicists were of the opinion that the explosion of 187J3X1 was a chance occurrence. Being an astronomer, Luo Ji may have discovered certain signs that the star would explode. The theory was full of holes, but more and more people came to believe it, accelerating Luo Ji’s decline in prestige. In the eyes of the public, his image gradually transitioned from messiah to commoner, and then to fraud. He still enjoyed the Wallfacer status granted by the UN, and the Wallfacer Act was still in effect, but he no longer had real power.

Year 208, Crisis Era

On a cold, drizzly autumn afternoon, a meeting of the New Life Village #5 Residents’ Council came to the following decision: Luo Ji would be expelled from the neighborhood on the grounds that he was affecting the normal life of the neighborhood’s residents. While the Snow Project was in progress, Luo Ji had frequently gone out to attend meetings, but the majority of his time was still spent in the area, and he kept in contact with various Snow Project entities from home. Disruptions had only worsened as his position declined, since from time to time crowds of people would gather at the foot of his building to jeer at him or throw stones at his window. Media interest in the spectacle was enough to make reporters as numerous as protestors. But the real reason for Luo Ji’s expulsion was that he was an utter disappointment to the hibernators.

When the meeting adjourned that evening, the neighborhood committee director went to Luo Ji’s home to inform him of the council’s decision. After pressing the doorbell repeatedly, she pushed open the unlatched door and practically choked on the mix of alcohol, smoke, and sweat that filled the room. She noticed that the walls had been converted into city-style information surfaces that allowed information screens to be called up anywhere with just a tap. A confusion of images filled the walls, most of them displaying complex data and curves, but the largest showing a sphere suspended in space: a stellar hydrogen bomb packed in oil film. The transparent film with the bomb clearly visible within it reminded the director of a marble, the sort of thing children liked to play with back in Luo Ji’s day. It rotated slowly. There was a small protrusion at one pole—the ion engine—and in the sphere’s smooth surface was the reflection of a tiny sun. All of those dazzling screens turned the room into a huge gaudy box. Since the lights were off, they were the only source of illumination, dissolving everything into blurry color so that it was hard at first to distinguish what was a physical presence and what was just an image.

Once the director’s eyes had adapted, she saw that the place looked like the basement of a drug addict, the floor littered with bottles and cigarette ends, the piles of clothes covered in ash like a garbage heap. She eventually managed to locate Luo Ji among the garbage. He was curled up in a corner, black against the backdrop of the images like a withered branch that had been cast aside. She thought he was asleep at first, but then noticed that his sightless gaze was fixed on the piles of garbage on the ground. His eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard, his body gaunt, and he seemed unable to support his own weight. When he heard the director he greeted her and turned toward her slowly, then just as slowly nodded at her, so that she knew he was still alive. But the two centuries of torment that had accumulated in his body had now completely overwhelmed him.

The director didn’t show the slightest bit of mercy toward this man who had been totally used up. Like other people of their era, she had always felt that, regardless of how dark the world seemed, ultimate justice was still present in some unseen place. Luo Ji had first validated that belief and then mercilessly shattered it, and her disappointment with him had turned to shame and then anger. Coldly, she announced the results of the meeting.

Luo Ji nodded slowly a second time, then forced a voice through his swollen throat. “I’ll leave tomorrow. I ought to be going. If I’ve done anything wrong, I ask for your forgiveness.”

It was only two days later that the director learned the true meaning of his final words.

In fact, Luo Ji had been planning on leaving that night. After seeing the neighborhood committee director off, he rose unsteadily to his feet and went into the bedroom in search of a travel bag, which he packed with a few items, including a short-handled shovel he had found in the storage room. The shovel’s triangular handle poked out of the travel bag. Then he retrieved a filthy jacket from the floor, put it on, slung the bag across his back, and went out. Behind him, the room’s information walls continued to flash.

The hallway was empty, but at the foot of the stairs he ran into a kid, probably just home from school, who stared at Luo Ji with a strange and unreadable expression as he left the building. Outside, he found that it was still raining, but he didn’t want to go back for an umbrella.

He didn’t go to his own car because that would attract the attention of the guards. Walking along the street, he left the neighborhood without running into anyone. Then he walked through the protective forest belt outside the neighborhood and he was in the desert, the drizzle sprinkling on his face like the light caress of a pair of cold hands. Desert and sky were hazy in the dusk, like the blank space of a traditional painting. He imagined himself added to that blank space, like the painting that Zhuang Yan had left behind.

He reached the highway, and after a few minutes was able to flag down a car carrying a family of three, who warmly welcomed him aboard. They were hibernators on their way back to the old city. The child was small and the mother young, and they were squeezed next to the father in the front seat, whispering to each other. Occasionally the child would burrow his head into his mother’s bosom, and whenever this happened the three of them burst out laughing. Luo Ji watched, spellbound, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying because music was playing in the car, old songs from the twentieth century. He listened as he rode, and after five or six songs, including “Katyusha” and “Kalinka,” he was filled with a longing to hear “Tonkaya Ryabina.” He had sung that song to his imaginary lover on that village stage two centuries ago, and later with Zhuang Yan in the Garden of Eden on the shore of the lake that reflected the snowy peaks.

Then the headlights of an oncoming car illuminated the backseat as the child was glancing backwards. He turned entirely around to stare at Luo Ji, then shouted, “Hey, he looks like the Wallfacer!” The child’s parents turned to look at him, and Luo Ji had to admit that he was.

Just then, “Tonkaya Ryabina” started playing.

The car stopped. “Get out,” the child’s father said coldly, as mother and child watched him with expressions as chilly as the autumn rain outside.

Luo Ji didn’t move. He wanted to listen to the song.

“Please get out,” the man said, and Luo Ji could read the words in their eyes: Not being able to save the world isn’t your fault, but giving the world hope only to shatter it again is an unforgiveable sin.

So he had to get out of the car. His travel bag was tossed out after him. As the car drove off, he ran after it for a few steps in the hopes of being able to listen to a little more of “Tonkaya Ryabina,” but the song disappeared into the cold, rainy night.

By now he was at the edge of the old city. The old high-rises of the past were visible in the distance, standing black in the rainy night, each building’s few scattered lights looking like lonely eyes. He came across a bus stop and sat shielded from the rain for nearly an hour before a driverless public bus finally arrived that was headed in the direction he wanted to go. It was mostly empty, and the six or seven people who were seated there looked like hibernators from the old city. No one on the bus spoke, just sat silently in the gloom of this autumn night. The journey passed smoothly until a little over an hour later, when someone else recognized him, and then everyone on the bus unanimously asked him to leave. He argued that he had paid the credits to buy a ticket, so surely he had the right to a seat, but a gray-haired old man took out two cash coins—rarely seen these days—and tossed them at him. So in the end he was forced off the bus.

As the bus started up, someone stuck their head out the window to ask, “Wallfacer, what are you doing with that shovel?”

“I’m digging my own grave,” Luo Ji said, to a burst of laughter from the bus.

No one knew that he was telling the truth.

The rain was still coming down. There wouldn’t be any more cars now, but fortunately he wasn’t too far from his destination. He shouldered his backpack and headed off. After walking for about half an hour, he turned off the highway and onto a path. It got much darker away from the road lamps, so he took a flashlight out of his bag to illuminate the ground under his feet. The path grew more difficult, and his sodden shoes squished on the ground. He slipped time and again into the mud, which covered his body, and he had to resort to using the shovel from his bag as a walking stick. All he could see ahead of him was fog and rain, but he knew that he was walking in the right general direction.

After walking another hour through the rainy night, he reached the cemetery. Half of it was buried beneath the sand, while the half on slightly higher ground was still exposed. He used the flashlight to search the rows of headstones, ignoring the imposing monuments and only looking at the inscriptions on the smaller stones. Rainwater on the stones reflected the light like flashing eyes. He noticed that all of the headstones had been erected in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Those people were fortunate—in their last moments, they must have believed that the world they lived in would exist forever.

He didn’t have much hope that he would find the headstone he was looking for, but, as it turned out, he found it quickly. The odd thing was, despite the passage of two centuries, he recognized it without even looking at the inscription. Maybe it was the wash of the rain, but the headstone showed no traces of time. The inscription, Grave of Yang Dong, seemed like it had been cut yesterday. Ye Wenjie’s grave sat beside her daughter’s, the two tombstones identical apart from the inscription. Ye Wenjie’s bore only her name and the dates of her birth and death, reminding him of the small tablet at the ruins of Red Coast Base, a memorial for the forgotten. The two headstones stood silently in the night rain, as if they’d been waiting for Luo Ji’s arrival.

He felt tired, so he sat down next to Ye Wenjie’s grave, but he soon began to shiver from the rain’s chill. Grasping the shovel, he stood up and, next to the graves of mother and daughter, began digging his own.

At first, digging into the wet ground required little effort, but as he got farther down, the earth turned hard and was littered with stones, which made him feel like he was digging into the mountain itself. He at once felt both the power and the powerlessness of time: Maybe only a thin layer of sand had been deposited over the course of two centuries, but the long geologic age when humans were not present had produced the mountain that now housed these graves. He dug with great effort, resting frequently, and the night slipped away unnoticed.

Sometime after midnight, the rain stopped, and then the clouds parted to reveal some of the starry sky. These were the brightest stars that Luo Ji had seen since arriving in this age. On that evening 210 years ago, he and Ye Wenjie had stood facing the same stars.

Now he saw only the stars and the headstones, the two greatest symbols of eternity.

Finally, he ran out of stamina and couldn’t dig any more. Looking at the pit he had dug, he saw that it was a little shallow for a grave, but it would have to do. Doing this was nothing more than a reminder to others that he wished to be buried on this spot, anyway. His most likely resting place would be the crematorium, where he would be burnt to ashes and then discarded in some unknown place. But it didn’t really matter. It was highly likely that shortly after his death, his remains would join the world in an even grander fire and be reduced to individual atoms.

Resting against Ye Wenjie’s headstone, he quickly dropped off to sleep. Perhaps it was because of the cold, but he once again dreamed of the snowy field. On it he saw Zhuang Yan holding Xia Xia, her scarf like a flame. She and the child were calling soundlessly to him. He shouted back desperately for them to leave this place because the droplet would strike right here, but his vocal cords produced no sound. It was like the entire world had gone mute, and everything stayed absolutely silent. But Zhuang Yan seemed to understand what he meant and walked far across the snowy field holding the child, leaving a string of footprints in the snow like a faint ink mark on a traditional painting. The snow was blank, and the ink mark was all that revealed the land, revealed the existence of the world. The impending destruction was all-encompassing, but it was a destruction that had nothing to do with the droplet….

Once more, Luo Ji’s heart tore painfully and his hands clutched at the air in vain, but in the blankness of the snowy field, there was only Zhuang Yan’s distant form, now a small black dot. He looked about him, hoping to find anything else that was real in the blank world. As it turned out, he found it: two black tombstones standing side by side on the snowy ground. At first they were eye-catching in the snow, but then their surface began to change. They turned to mirrors that recalled the finish of the droplet, and their inscriptions disappeared. He bent down toward one of them, wanting to look at himself in the mirror, but what he saw in the mirror wasn’t a reflection. The snowy field in the mirror did not have the figure of Zhuang Yan, just a line of faint footprints in the snow. He whipped his head around and saw that the snowy field outside the mirror was just a blank expanse—the footprints had disappeared. When he turned back to the mirrors, they reflected the blank world and were practically invisible themselves. But his hand could still feel their cold, smooth surface….

He awoke when it was just daybreak. The graveyard was clearer in the first light of dawn, and from his prone vantage point, the surrounding headstones made him feel like he was in a prehistoric Stonehenge. He had a high fever, and his body’s violent trembling sent his teeth chattering. His body seemed like a wick that had burnt dry and was consuming itself. He knew that the time had come.

Leaning against Ye Wenjie’s headstone, he tried to stand up, but then a small, moving black dot caught his attention. Ants ought to be fairly rare during this season, but it was indeed an ant crawling on the stone. Like its fellow ant two centuries before, it was attracted by the inscription and devoted itself to exploring the mysterious crisscrossing trenches. Luo Ji’s heart experienced a last spasm of pain as he watched it, this time for all life on Earth.

“If I’ve done anything wrong, I’m sorry,” he said to the ant.

He stood up with difficulty, trembling weakly. He had to support himself on the headstone to be able to stand. Reaching out a hand, he straightened his soaked, mud-covered clothing and wild hair, then groped in his jacket pocket for a metal tube: a fully charged pistol.

Then, facing the dawn in the east, he began a final showdown between the civilization of Earth and the civilization of Trisolaris.

“I am speaking to Trisolaris,” Luo Ji said. His voice wasn’t loud. He thought about repeating himself, but he knew that they could hear him.

Nothing changed. The headstones stood quietly in the stillness of the dawn. Puddles on the ground reflected the brightening sky like countless mirrors, giving the illusion that the Earth was a mirrored sphere with the ground and the world just a thin layer on top. The rain’s erosion had exposed small pieces of the sphere’s smooth surface.

It was a world that had not awakened yet, and didn’t know that it was now a chip placed on a cosmic gambling table.

Luo Ji raised his left hand, revealing an object on his wrist the size of a watch. “This is a vital signs monitor linked through a transmitter to a cradle system. You remember Wallfacer Rey Diaz from two centuries ago, so you certainly know about cradle systems. The signal sent from this monitor travels the links of the cradle system to the Snow Project’s 3,614 bombs deployed in solar orbit. The signal is sent once every second to maintain the bombs in a non-triggered state. If I die, the system’s maintenance signal will vanish and all of the bombs will detonate, turning the oil film surrounding the bombs into 3,614 interstellar dust clouds ringing the sun. From a distance, the sun’s visible light and other high-frequency bands will appear to flicker through the dust cloud coverage. The position of every bomb has been precisely arranged in solar orbit so that this flickering will generate a signal transmitting three simple images of the sort I sent out two centuries ago: each image an arrangement of thirty points, with one labeled, for composition into a three-dimensional coordinate diagram. But, unlike last time, the position will contain the transmission of Trisolaris relative to its surrounding twenty-nine stars. The sun will be a galactic lighthouse casting that spell, in the process, of course, also exposing the position of the sun and Earth. To receive the entire transmission at any single point in the galaxy will take more than a year, but there ought to be more than a few civilizations that have the technology to observe the sun from multiple vantage points. If that’s the case, they may only need a few days, or even a few hours, to obtain all the information they need.”

As daylight brightened, the stars went out one by one like the gradual shutting of innumerable eyes, even as the morning sky slowly opened in the east like a single giant eye. The ant continued its climb, threading the maze of Ye Wenjie’s name on her gravestone. Its species had been living on the Earth a hundred million years before the emergence of this gambler who now leaned on the stone. Even though it had no care for what was now happening, it held a stake in the world.

Luo Ji left the gravestones and stood beside the pit he had dug for himself. He placed the tip of the pistol to his heart and said, “Now, I’m going to stop the beating of my heart. By doing so, I will be committing the greatest crime in the history of our two worlds. I express my deepest apologies to our two civilizations for the crime that I commit, but I have no regrets, because this is the only option. I know the sophons are nearby, but you have ignored humanity’s call. Silence is the greatest form of contempt, and we have put up with this contempt for two centuries. Now, if you wish, you can continue to remain silent. I will give you thirty seconds.”

He marked time according to his pulse, counting two beats to a second since his heart was beating so rapidly, but in his heightened anxiety he started off wrong and had to begin again. So he wasn’t certain how much time had passed by the time the sophons appeared. Possibly less than ten seconds in objective time, but subjectively, it took a lifetime. He saw the world before his eyes split into four parts: one part made up of the real world that surrounded him; the other three, deformed images in three spheres that appeared suddenly overhead, whose mirror surfaces were exactly like the gravestones he had seen in his last dream. He didn’t know which of the sophons’ dimensional unfoldings this was, but the three spheres were big enough to cover half the sky above him, blocking out the brightening light in the east. In the spheres’ reflection of the western sky, he could see a few lingering stars, and the bottom of the spheres reflected a deformed graveyard and his own image. What he most wanted to know was why there were three of them. His first thought was that they symbolized Trisolaris, just like the work of art that Ye Wenjie had seen at the final ETO gathering. But looking at what the spheres reflected—an uncommonly clear, albeit deformed, picture of reality—he had the sense that they were entrances to three parallel worlds, implying three possible choices.

But what he saw next negated this notion, because the three spheres flashed the same word:

“Can I discuss terms?” Luo Ji asked, looking up at the three spheres.

The words displayed simultaneously on the spheres in letters that glowed a striking red. He saw no deformation in the line of text. It was straight, and seemed as if it was both on the surface of and within the spheres. He reminded himself that he was looking at a projection of higher-dimensional space into a three-dimensional world.

“This is not a negotiation. These are my demands, if I am to go on living. All I wish to know is whether or not you accept.”

“Have the droplet, or rather the probe, cease its transmissions toward the sun.”

The spheres’ answer was faster than he anticipated. He had no way to verify it at the moment, but he sensed subtle changes in his surroundings, as if a background noise whose continued existence meant it had escaped notice, had disappeared. Of course, this could be an illusion, since humans don’t sense electromagnetic radiation.

“Have the nine droplets en route to the Solar System change course immediately and fly away.”

This time the answer from the three spheres was delayed by a few seconds.

“Please give humanity the means to verify this.”

This was still impossible for him to verify, but he believed Trisolaris.

“The final condition: the Trisolaran Fleet may not cross the Oort Cloud.”

“Then, like the droplet group, set a course away from the Solar System.”

“Death isn’t a certainty. Perhaps human or Trisolaran ships can catch up and rescue them.”

“If changing course is a lengthy process, get started on it now. That will give me and all the other lives a chance to live on.”

The period of silence lasted for three minutes. Then:

“Good,” Luo Ji said, as he removed the pistol from his chest. With his other hand he leaned on the gravestone, trying not to fall. “Were you already aware that the universe is a dark forest?”

“No. This device is far more advanced than Rey Diaz’s. So long as I am alive, the signal won’t be interrupted.”

“Thank you,” Luo Ji said, and he sat down against the headstone. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to die.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No. I’m not a savior. I just want to leave here like an ordinary person and go home. I’ll rest for a bit and then be on my way.”

Two of the three spheres disappeared. The text on the one that remained, which no longer glowed, now seemed dim and dreary.

Luo Ji nodded. “Blocking the sun with dust clouds to send an interstellar message wasn’t my invention. Twentieth-century astronomers had already proposed the idea. And you actually had multiple chances to see through me. During the duration of the Snow Project, for example, I was always concerned with the precise placement of the bombs in solar orbit.”

“Another chance was when I consulted a group of physicists with questions about sophon unfoldings in space. If the ETO was still around, they would have already seen through me.”

“Also, I requested that the Snow Project build this peculiar cradle trigger system.”

“Your contempt for them was unfair. Those three Wallfacers were great strategists. They saw clearly the inevitable fact of humanity’s defeat in the Doomsday Battle.”

“That’s not my affair,” Luo Ji said, and let out a long sigh. He felt as relaxed and as comfortable as if he had just been born.

“Humanity’s negotiators will no doubt first propose that you help us build a better signal transmission system, so that we’ll have the ability to transmit a spell into space at any time. Even though the droplet has lifted its seal on the sun, the present system is too primitive.”

“They may, as far as I understand things, be more inclined toward gravitational waves. After the sophons arrived, this was the area in which human physics progressed furthest. Of course, they’ll need a system whose principles they can understand.”

“That’s between you and them. It’s strange. Right now I don’t feel like a member of the human race. My greatest desire is to be rid of it all as soon as possible.”

“This is important to you as well. The technology of Trisolaris has developed at a constant speed, and two centuries later, you still haven’t sent a faster follow-up fleet. In order to rescue the diverted Trisolaran Fleet, you have to rely on the future of humanity.”

“No problem. I feel much better now. After I go back, I’ll immediately hand over the cradle system, and then I’ll have no more to do with all of this. Finally, I’d like to say thank you.”

“Because you let me live. Or, if you think about it a different way: You let us both live.”

The sphere vanished, returning to its eleven-dimensional microscopic state. A corner of the sun was peeking out in the east, casting gold across a world that had survived destruction.

Luo Ji slowly stood up. After taking a last look at the gravestones of Ye Wenjie and Yang Dong, he stumbled slowly back the way he came.

The ant had reached the summit of the headstone and proudly waved its feelers at the rising sun. Out of all life on Earth, it was the only witness to what had just taken place.

Five Years Later

Luo Ji and his family could see the gravitational-wave antenna in the distance, but it was still another half-hour drive away. Only when they arrived did they get a real sense of its enormous size. The antenna, a horizontal cylinder a kilometer and a half long and fifty meters in diameter, was entirely suspended about two meters off the ground. Its surface was mirror-smooth, half of it reflecting the sky and half the northern China plain. It reminded people of a few things: the giant pendulums of the Three Body world, the sophons’ lower-dimensional unfoldings, and the droplet. The mirrored object reflected a Trisolaran concept that humanity was still trying to figure out. In the words of a well-known Trisolaran saying, “Hiding the self through a faithful mapping of the universe is the only path into eternity.”

The antenna was surrounded by a big green meadow that formed a small oasis in the desert of northern China, but this meadow had not been specially planted. Once the gravitational-wave system had been completed, it began sending continuous, unmodulated emissions that were indistinguishable from the gravitational waves emitted from supernovae, neutron stars, or black holes. The density of the gravitational beam had a peculiar effect in the atmosphere: Water vapor collected above it, so that it frequently rained in the antenna’s vicinity. At times, the rain only fell within a radius of three or four kilometers, and a small, circular raincloud would hang in the air above the antenna like a giant flying saucer, leaving the brilliant sunshine in the surrounding area visible through the rain. And so this area grew lush with wild vegetation. But today, Luo Ji and his family did not witness that spectacle. Instead, they saw white clouds gather over the antenna, only to dissipate when the wind blew them away from the beam. Yet new clouds were continually forming, making the round patch of sky seem like a time wormhole to some other cloud universe. Xia Xia said that it looked like the white hair of a giant old man.

As the child ran about on the grass, Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan followed behind, until they reached the antenna. The first two gravitational-wave systems were built in Europe and North America, and employed magnetic levitation that suspended them a few centimeters from the base. But this antenna used antigravity, and could have been raised up into space if so desired. The three of them stood on the grass beneath the antenna, looking up at the huge cylinder curling up over their heads like the sky. Its large radius gave the bottom a low curvature, which meant there was no distortion in the reflected image. The setting sun now shone beneath the antenna, and, in the reflection, Luo Ji could see Zhuang Yan’s long hair and white dress fluttering in the golden sunlight like an angel looking down from the sky.

He lifted up the child and she touched the antenna’s smooth surface, pressing hard in one direction. “Can I make it turn?”

“If you push long enough, you can,” Zhuang Yan said—then, looking at Luo Ji with a smile, asked, “Right?”

He nodded at her. “With enough time, she could move the Earth.”

As had occurred so many times before, their eyes met and intertwined, a continuation of that gaze they had held in front of the Mona Lisa’s smile two centuries before. They had discovered that the language of the eyes that Zhuang Yan had dreamed up was now a reality, or maybe loving humans had always possessed this language. When they looked at each other, a richness of meaning poured from their eyes just as the clouds poured from the cloud well created by the gravitational beam, endless and unceasing. But it wasn’t a language of this world. It constructed a world that gave it meaning, and only in that rosy world did the words of the language find their corresponding referents. Everyone in that world was god; all had the ability to instantaneously count and remember every grain of sand in the desert; all were able to string together stars into a crystal necklace to hang around a lover’s neck….

The lines were displayed on a lower-dimensional unfolding of a sophon that appeared abruptly beside them. The mirrored sphere seemed like a droplet that had fallen off of some melted area on the cylinder above them. Luo Ji knew few Trisolarans and didn’t know who it was who was speaking to them, or whether this one was on Trisolaris or on the fleet that was growing increasingly distant from the Solar System.

“Probably.” Luo Ji nodded with a smile.

“Why?”

“Isn’t that correct?”

“That’s only an expression, of course. Just a nonrigorous… analogy.”

“May I ask who you are?”

“My god, and you’re still alive?” Zhuang Yan exclaimed.

“Please accept our respects,” Luo Ji said.

“That’s a goal worth taking risks for.”

“I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest.”

The sun was setting. Now only its tip was exposed beyond the distant mountains, as if the mountaintop was inset with a dazzling gemstone. Like the grass, the child running in the distance was bathed in the golden sunset.

“Of course she’s not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.”