Highlights
Helena left home and began to live and ply her trade on her own. She had been to Jerusalem and Trabzon, and even visited Venice. She was no longer hungry, and she dressed in beautiful clothes. But she knew that she was no different from a blade of grass growing in the mud by the road: indistinguishable from the muck, as travelers trampled over her.
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During that time, Tianming dated two women, but the relationships fizzled quickly. It wasn't that Cheng Xin already occupied his heart: For him, she would always be the sun behind a veil of clouds. All he wanted was to look at her, to feel her light and warmth. He dared not dream of taking a step toward her. He never even sought out news about her. He guessed, based on her intelligence, that she would go for a Ph.D., but he made no conjectures about her personal life. The main barrier between him and women was his own withdrawn personality. He struggled to build his own life, but it was too difficult.
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we include some basic sensors and take into account the necessary antenna and radioisotope power source to transmit information back from the Oort Cloud, about two to three thousand kilograms ought to do it." "No!" Vadimov shook his head. "It has to be like Cheng Xin said: light as a feather." "If we stick with the most basic sensors, maybe one thousand kilograms would be enough. I can't guarantee that's going to succeed--you're giving me almost nothing to work with." "You're going to have to make it work," said Wade. "Including the sail, the entire probe cannot exceed one metric ton in mass. We'll devote the strength of the entire human race to propel one thousand kilograms. Let's hope that's light enough."
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As soon as Cheng Xin walked into the PIA chief's spacious office, she was greeted by the strong smell of cigar smoke. A large painting hung on the wall. A leaden sky and the dim, snow-covered ground took up most of the painting; in the distance, where the clouds met the snow, a few dark shapes lurked. A closer examination revealed them to be dirty buildings, most of them one-story clapboard houses mixed with a few European-style houses with two or three stories. Based on the shape of the river in the foreground and other hints in the geography, this was a portrait of New York at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The overwhelming impression given off by the painting was coldness, which Cheng Xin thought fit the person sitting under the painting rather well.
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A few titters. Camille laughed the loudest. "My dear, you have sketched for us a scene out of a cartoon. Your spaceship is filled with a pile of nuclear bombs, and there's a giant sail. On the ship is a hero who bears more than a passing resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He tosses the bombs behind the ship, where they explode to push the ship forward. Oh, it's so cool!" As the rest of the staff joined in the mirth, she continued. "You may want to review your homework from freshman year in college and tell me: one, how many nuclear bombs your ship will have to carry; and, two, with that kind of thrust-to-weight ratio, what sort of acceleration you can achieve."
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"What new plan? A five-hundred-gram cat?" "Of course not." Vadimov's and Camille's eyes brightened. Cheng Xin also seemed to have recovered her strength. She stood up. Accompanied by military escort vehicles and helicopters, an ambulance departed with the Fourth Wallfacer. Against the lights of New York City, Wade's figure appeared as a black ghost, his eyes glinting with a cold light. "We'll send only a brain," he said.
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ages!" "Doesn't everything we've been through seem like a dream?" "I feel like I'm dreaming now." "I'm utterly terrified of space." "Me too. I'm retiring as soon as we get back. I'm going to buy a farm and spend the rest of my life on solid ground." It had been fourteen years since the complete destruction of the Earth's combined fleet. The survivors, after engaging in separate internecine battles of darkness, cut off all contact with the home planet. However, for a year and a half thereafter, Bronze Age continued to receive transmissions from Earth, most of which were surface radio communications, but which also included some transmissions intended for space.
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Most people surely understood that these reactions were excessive and meaningless. The peak of the Earth's projection of electromagnetic signals into space had occurred during the age of analog signals, when television and radio transmission towers operated at high power levels. But as digital communication became prevalent, most information was transmitted via wires and optical cables, and even radio transmissions for digital signals required far less power than analog signals. The amount of electromagnetic radiation spilling into space from the Earth had fallen so much that some pre-Crisis scholars had fretted that the Earth would become impossible to discover by friendly aliens.
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Only something like the transmission by Ye Wenjie, which relied on the power of the sun as an antenna, could be intercepted by listeners among the stars.
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Although the celebrating crowd around them continued to dance and wave their arms, they made no sound. All that anyone from Bronze Age could hear was the fleet captain's voice. His face still bore a kind smile, but in that eerie silence, his voice sounded as sharp as the edge of a sword. "You're hereby informed that you have been dishonorably discharged. You are no longer members of the Solar System Fleet. But the stain you have brought upon the fleet can never be erased! You will never see your loved ones again, because they have no wish to see you. Your parents are ashamed of you, and most of your spouses have long ago divorced you. Even though society has not discriminated against your children, they spent the past decade growing up in the shadow of your disgrace. They despise you!
Oof
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Just as Bronze Age was about to begin accelerating away from home again, the unimaginable happened: A sophon unfolded into low dimensions on the ship, establishing a quantum communication channel with Earth. Finally, the crew received confirmation of all that had occurred.
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A cold voice spoke to them from somewhere. "All armed crew members must immediately relinquish your weapons. If you do not cooperate, we cannot guarantee your safety. You're under arrest for murder in the first degree and crimes against humanity."
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SCOTT: We're not traitors against humanity! Where were you when we fought for Earth? PROSECUTION: You are absolutely traitors! While the ETO from two centuries ago only betrayed the interests of humanity, today, you betray our most basic moral principles, a far worse crime.
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The Germans made a film based on Jones's experiment, and Jones himself wrote a book about it: The Third Wave. When those of us aboard Bronze Age found out that we were doomed to wander space forever, we formed a totalitarian state as well. Do you know how long it took? Five minutes.
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JUDGE: What did you do with the bodies? ROVINSKI: We built a monument to them, like Blue Space did. JUDGE: You mean, you left the bodies in the monument? ROVINSKI: No. I doubt that the monument built by Blue Space had any bodies in it, either. JUDGE: You haven't answered my question. I asked what you did with the bodies. ROVINSKI: We refilled the food stores on Bronze Age with them. JUDGE: All of them? ROVINSKI: All of them. JUDGE: Who made the decision to turn the bodies into food? ROVINSKI: I... really can't remember. It seemed a completely natural thing to do at the time. I was responsible for logistics and support aboard the ship, and I directed the storage and distribution of the bodies. JUDGE: How were the bodies consumed?
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ROVINSKI: Carol Joiner was the communications officer aboard Quantum. He was eating a part of her. JUDGE: How could he know that? ROVINSKI: We were all fitted with a tracking and identification capsule about the size of a grain of rice. It was implanted under the skin of the left arm. Sometimes the cooking process didn't remove it. I'm sure he just found it on his plate and used his communicator to read it.
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In the end, Captain Neil Scott and six other senior officers were convicted of murder and crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. Of the remaining 1,768 members of the crew, only 138 were declared innocent. The rest received sentences ranging from twenty to three hundred years. The Fleet International prison was located in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Thus, the prisoners had to leave Earth again. Although Bronze Age had reached geosynchronous orbit, the prisoners were doomed never to travel the last thirty thousand kilometers of their 350-billion-kilometer voyage home.
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It took only an hour to complete the session. Schneider tapped the floating control interface a few times, as though closing some windows out of habit. All of a sudden, he kicked the spherical wall of the cabin hard, and propelled himself to the other end of the chamber. Simultaneously, the walls shifted and divided the cabin into two halves. The three officers and the military policeman were trapped in one half, and Schneider was alone in the other. Schneider brought up a floating window. He tapped on it, his fingers a blur. It was the control interface for the communications system. Schneider brought the ship's high-powered interstellar communications antenna online. A faint pop. A small hole appeared in the cabin wall, and the cabin was filled with white smoke. The barrel of the military policeman's gun poked through the hole and aimed at Schneider.
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SCHNEIDER: At that moment--not the moment of the attack, but the moment when I realized that Bronze Age would never return home, when the ship would be my entire world--I changed. There was no process; I was simply transformed from head to toe. It was like the legendary mental seal.
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SCHNEIDER: Of course not. I was talking metaphorically. Space itself is a kind of mental seal.... In that moment, I gave up my individual self. My existence would be meaningful only if the collective survived.... I can't explain it better than that. I don't expect you to understand, Your Honor. Even if you boarded Bronze Age and sailed twenty thousand AU from the Solar System, or even farther, you still wouldn't understand.
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Trisolaris brought up the idea of sending a speedy droplet--formally, it was called a strong-interaction space probe--to pursue and destroy Blue Space. But Earth unequivocally refused. From humanity's perspective, Blue Space should be dealt with as a matter of internal affairs. The Doomsday Battle was humanity's greatest wound, and after more than a decade, the pain had not lessened one whit. Permitting another droplet attack on humans was absolutely politically unacceptable. Even though the crew of Blue Space had become aliens in the minds of most people, only humanity should bring them to justice.
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The UN and the Solar System Fleet wanted to reclaim DX3906, but this couldn't be done legally unless the owner agreed to transfer the title. Thus Cheng Xin was awakened from her slumber after 264 years of hibernation. The first thing she found out after emerging from hibernation was this: As she had expected, there was no news whatsoever about the Staircase Program. The Trisolarans had not intercepted the probe, and they had no idea of its whereabouts. The Staircase Program had been forgotten by history, and Tianming's brain was lost in the vastness of space. But this man, this man who had merged into nothingness, had left a real, solid world for his beloved, a world composed of a star and two planets.
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Cheng Xin tried to think as AA suggested and forced herself to return to the present. She had only been here for a few days, and had just grasped the broadest outline of the history of the past three centuries. The strategic balance between the humans and the Trisolarans as a result of dark forest deterrence had shocked her the most. A thought popped into her mind. A world dedicated to femininity... but what does that mean for deterrence?
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"What if he killed millions? I can guarantee you such a person would not be considered a murderer. Indeed, such a person may not even be thought to have broken any law. If you don't believe me, just study history! Anyone who has killed millions is deemed a 'great' man, a hero. "And if that person destroyed a whole world and killed every life on it--he would be hailed as a savior!" "They're talking about Luo Ji," said AA. "They want to put him on trial." "Why?"
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During the brief life of the Stars Our Destination Project, a total of fifteen individuals were granted ownership of seventeen stars. Other than Cheng Xin, the other fourteen owners were lost to history, and no legal heirs could be located. The Great Ravine acted like a giant sieve, and too many did not make it through. Now, Cheng Xin was the only one who held legal title to a star.
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To Cheng Xin, AA resembled a vivacious bird fluttering around her nonstop. AA told Cheng Xin that she was familiar with people like her, who had come from the past--known as "Common Era people" after the old calendar--since her own dissertation advisor was a physicist from back then. Her knowledge of Common Era people was why she had been appointed as Cheng Xin's liaison from the UN Space Development Agency as her first job after her doctorate.
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"I'm working for you now," she said, "so let me speak for a minute about your interests. Are you nuts?! Of all the choices available to you, you picked the worst! You could have sold the star along with the planets, and you would have become one of the richest people in the universe! Alternatively, you could have refused to sell, and kept the entire solar system for yourself. The law's protection of private property is absolute, and no one could have taken it away from you. And then you could have entered hibernation and woken up only when it's possible to fly to DX3906. Then you could go there! All that space! The ocean, the continents... you can do whatever you want, of course, but you should take me with you--"
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But, in our age, conscience and duty are not ideals: an excess of either is seen as a mental illness called social-pressure personality disorder. You should seek treatment."
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From time to time, a window or two left the traffic in the road and followed them for a while, and drifted back into the current when AA and Cheng Xin showed no interest. All
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Understanding dawned on her after a moment. The trend had been obvious even earlier. The decade of the 1980s was probably the last time when masculinity, as traditionally defined, was considered an ideal. After that, society and fashion preferred men who displayed traditionally feminine qualities. She recalled the Asian male pop stars of her own time who she had thought looked like pretty girls at first glance. The Great Ravine interrupted this tendency in the evolution of human society, but half a century of peace and ease brought about by the Deterrence Era accelerated the trend.
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After the start of the Deterrence Era, most heavy industries had moved into orbit, and the Earth's natural ecology recovered. The surface of the Earth now looked more like it did in pre--Industrial Revolution times. Due to a drop in population and further industrialization of food production, much of the arable land was allowed to lie fallow and return to nature. The Earth was transforming into a giant park.
Good emperor of dune
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When the deterrent is the complete destruction of both the deterrer and the deteree, the system is said to be in a state of ultimate deterrence. Compared to other types of deterrence, ultimate deterrence is distinguished by the fact that, should deterrence fail, carrying out the threat would be of no benefit to the deterrer. Thus, the key to the success of ultimate deterrence is the belief by the deteree that the threat will almost certainly be carried out if the deteree thwarts the deterrer's goals. This probability, or degree of deterrence, is an important parameter in deterrence game theory. The degree of deterrence must exceed 80 percent for the deterrer to succeed. But people soon discovered a discouraging fact: If the authority to carry out the threat in dark forest deterrence is held by humanity as a whole, then the degree of deterrence is close to zero.
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In a sense, everyone alive would be unaffected. But in the event of deterrence failing, carrying out the threat and broadcasting would mean that destruction could come at any moment, a far worse result than not carrying out the threat. Thus, if deterrence failed, the reaction of humankind as a whole could be easily predicted.
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The art and culture of this age were nothing like what she had imagined, but it wasn't simply a matter of a return to classical style, either. It was more of a spiraling sublimation of post-postmodernism, built upon a new aesthetic foundation. For instance, A Fairy Tale of Yangtze contained profound metaphors for the universe and space and time. But Cheng Xin was most impressed by the disappearance of the gloomy despair and bizarre noise so prevalent in the postmodern culture and art of the twenty-first century. In their place was an unprecedented warm serenity and optimism. "I love your era," said Cheng Xin. "I'm surprised."
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But Trisolaris defied those expectations. Within a brief period of time, they systematically transmitted an enormous amount of knowledge. The treasure trove mainly consisted of basic scientific information, including mathematics, physics, cosmology, molecular biology of Trisolaran life forms, and so on. Every subject was a complete system
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Trisolarans produced sophisticated, high-quality art. Scholars called this phenomenon cultural reflection. Human civilization now possessed a mirror in the universe, through which humanity gained a new understanding of itself through a novel perspective. In the following ten years, Trisolaran reflection culture became popular on Earth, and began to displace the decadent native human culture that had lost its vitality. Reflection culture became the new source for scholars seeking new cultural and aesthetic ideas.
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the same time, Trisolaris itself remained shrouded in mystery, with almost no details about the world itself being transmitted. The
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This wasn't a lie. Cheng Xin really had been found. Her mother had never married, but one night, while on a date with her boyfriend at the time, she saw a three-month-old baby abandoned on a park bench, along with a bottle of milk, a thousand yuan, and a slip of paper with the baby girl's birthday. Her mother and the boyfriend had intended to bring the baby to the police, who would have turned the baby over to the city's civil affairs department, who would have sent her to an orphanage. Instead, her mother decided that she wanted to bring the baby home and go to the police in the morning. Perhaps it was the experience of being a mother for a night, or some other reason, but the next morning, she found that she couldn't send the child away. Every time she thought of parting from the young life, her heart ached, and so she decided to become the child's mother.
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Her mother had held her hand and said, "My darling, the three of us are together because of love...." Cheng Xin spent that night standing in front of her parents' window. In her mind, the night breeze and the twinkling stars and everything else repeated her mother's last words. Three centuries later, she was finally ready to do something for love. "I will be a candidate for the Swordholder," she said to the young mother.
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Gravity had been pursuing Blue Space for half a century. It finally approached its target. Only three AU separated the hunter and the hunted. Compared to the 1.5 light-years that the two ships had traversed, this was mere inches.
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Most of the one hundred-plus officers and crew aboard Gravity didn't experience this solitude because they had spent the majority of the past fifty years in hibernation. During routine cruising, only about five to ten crew members needed to be on duty. As the crew rotated through hibernation, each person was usually on duty for three to five years.
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The entire pursuit was a complex game of acceleration between Gravity and Blue Space. First of all, Blue Space couldn't just accelerate continuously, as doing so would cost it precious fuel and ultimately deprive it of mobility. Even if it managed to escape Gravity, it would be committing suicide in the endless empty desert of outer space if it exhausted its fuel. Although Gravity had more fuel onboard than Blue Space, it had constraints of its own. Since it needed to be prepared for a return voyage, its fuel reserves had to be divided into four equal parts: the acceleration away from the Solar System; the deceleration before its destination; the acceleration toward the Solar System
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A year previously, when Gravity and Blue Space were thirty AU apart, something not entirely unexpected occurred: Gravity and the two accompanying droplets entered a region of space where the sophons lost their quantum ties to home, terminating real-time communications with Earth. Gravity had to communicate with Earth through only neutrinos and radio. Transmissions from Gravity now took a year and three months to reach the Earth, and the ship had to wait an equally long time to receive a reply.
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"Doctor, I'm a survivor of the Doomsday Battle. After my ship exploded, I was curled up in a life pod the size of your desk, drifting in the vicinity of Neptune's orbit. By the time I was rescued, I was close to death, but my mind was still sound, and I never suffered any delusions.... I believe what I saw." Devon got up and walked away. He turned around at the cabin door. "If I meet that bastard again--doesn't matter where--I'm going to kill him."
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But the micrometeoroid had to have come from space. Based on the condition of the rupture, the micrometeoroid had struck the tube at a relative velocity of thirty thousand meters per second. It would have been impossible to accelerate the projectile to such speed from within the ship, much less from within the ecological area. "It's like a ghost," a sublieutenant named Ike muttered, and left. His choice of words was meaningful: About ten hours earlier, he had seen another, bigger ghost.
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The doctor pulled Guan Yifan along, and the two drifted toward the bow of the ship. If the ship were accelerating, going from the stern of the ship to the bow would be equivalent to climbing up a one-kilometer well, but in the weightlessness of coasting, the trip was a lot easier. Plaza #1 was located at the bow of the cylindrical ship, under a semispherical, transparent dome. Standing there was like standing in space itself. Compared to the holographic projections of the star field on the walls of spherical cabins, this place induced an even stronger sense of the "desubstantiation effect." "Desubstantiation effect" was a concept from astronautic psychology. Humans on Earth were surrounded by objects, and the image of the world in their subconscious was thus material and substantial. But in deep space, away from the Solar System, the stars were only distant points of light and the galaxy was nothing more than a luminous mist. To the senses and the mind, the world lost its materiality, and empty space dominated. A space voyager's subconscious image of the world thus became desubstantiated. This mental model was the baseline in astronautic psychology. Mentally, the ship became the[…]
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Guan shook his head, struggling to remember. "I don't know if it was a dream; I don't know if I was awake. Sometimes, you can think you're waking from a dream, only to find yourself still dreaming; other times, you're awake, but it seems like you're dreaming." "The second situation is extremely rare. If you experienced that, then it was almost certainly a symptom of some mental disorder. Oh, sorry, now you're unhappy with me again." "No, no. I think we're actually very similar. We both have our targets of observation. You observe the deranged, and I observe the universe. Like you, I also have some criteria for evaluating whether the observed objects are sound: harmony and beauty, in the mathematical sense."
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"Because of the speed of light. The known universe is about sixteen billion light-years across, and it's still expanding. But the speed of light is only three hundred thousand kilometers per second, a snail's pace. This means that light can never go from one end of the universe to the other. Since nothing can move faster than the speed of light, it follows that no information and motive force can go from one end of the universe to the other. If the universe were a person, his neural signals couldn't cover his entire body; his brain would not know of the existence of his limbs, and his limbs would not know of the existence of the brain. Isn't that paraplegia? The image in my mind is even worse: The universe is but a corpse puffing up." "Interesting, Dr. Guan, very interesting!
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Those who had been awakened faced the prospect of both a target nearly at hand and the loss of real-time communications with Earth. This loss did not pull them spiritually closer to the crew of Blue Space. To the contrary, like a child who was separated from her parents, the crew distrusted the parentless wild children even more. Everyone wished to capture Blue Space as quickly as possible and return home. Even though both crews were in the cold vastness of space, voyaging in the same direction at approximately the same speed, the natures of their voyages were completely different. Gravity had a spiritual anchor, while Blue Space was adrift
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Guan Yifan turned his gaze back to West. "Last night, I had a dream. I went somewhere, somewhere really open, open in a way that you can't even imagine. After I woke up, reality felt very enclosed and narrow, and that was how I came to be claustrophobic. It's like... if, as soon as you were born, you were locked inside a small box, you wouldn't care because that was all you've known. But once you've been let out and they put you back in, it feels completely different."
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Most people were convinced that the six droplets were hidden somewhere in the Solar System. But because the droplets were tiny, fast, and invisible to radar, they were extremely difficult to locate and track. Even by spreading oil films or using other advanced detection techniques, humans could only reliably detect droplets if they approached within 1/10 AU of the Earth, or fifteen million kilometers. Outside this sphere, the droplets were free to roam undetected. At maximum speed, a droplet could cross fifteen million kilometers in ten minutes. This was all the time the Swordholder would have to make a decision if dark forest deterrence broke down.
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Luo Ji stood tall and straight. He looked at the white wall, which he had stared at for more than half a century, for a few more seconds. Then he bowed slightly. He was paying his respects to his enemy. To have stared at each other across an abyss of four light-years for half a century had bonded them by a link of destiny.
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By the time the swords had clashed but once, one side had already fallen in a pool of blood. But before this moment, the opponents stared at each other like statues, sometimes for as long as ten minutes. During this contest, the swordsman's weapon wasn't held by the hands, but by his heart. The heart-sword, transformed through the eyes into the gaze, stabbed into the depths of the enemy's soul. The real winner was determined during this process: In the silence suspended between the two swordsmen, the blades of their spirits parried and stabbed as soundless claps of thunder. Before a single blow was struck, victory, defeat, life, and death had already been decided.
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Throughout this time, Luo Ji had remained silent, not uttering a single word. As a matter of fact, after a person ceased to speak for ten or fifteen years, he lost his powers of speech. He might still be able to understand language, but he would not be able to speak. Luo Ji certainly could no longer speak; everything he had to say, he put into his gaze against the wall. He had turned himself into a deterrence machine, a mine ready to explode on contact at each and every moment during the long years of the past half century, maintaining the precarious balance of terror between two worlds.
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In Cheng Xin's subconscious, she was a protector, not a destroyer; she was a woman, not a warrior. She was willing to use the rest of her life to maintain the balance between the two worlds, until the Earth grew stronger and stronger with Trisolaran science, until Trisolaris grew more and more civilized with Earth culture, until one day, a voice told her: Put down that red switch and return to the surface. The world no longer needs dark forest deterrence, no longer needs a Swordholder.
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She turned around and saw the mushroom cloud on the horizon. Formed by the earth and dust thrown up from deep underground, it was very thick, appearing almost solid. It looked so out of place in the serene scene that it resembled a bad Photoshop job. A closer examination led Cheng Xin to imagine it as an ugly bust showing a strange expression in the setting sun. That was where the droplet had penetrated the Earth.
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Half a century of cruising in formation with the droplets made everyone familiar with their appearance, and what they saw now shocked them. The droplet on the display was still shaped like a teardrop, but its surface was no longer a perfectly smooth mirror. Instead, it was dim and coppery yellow, as though full of rust. It was as if a magician's spell of eternal youth had failed, and the marks left by three centuries of spaceflight had all appeared at once. Instead of a shining spirit, the droplet had turned into an ancient artillery shell drifting through space. Communications with the Earth during the last few years had given these officers some basic insight into the principles of strong-interaction materials. They knew that the surface of a droplet was held in a force field generated by mechanisms inside. This force field counteracted the electromagnetic force between particles, allowing the strong nuclear force to spill out. Without the force field, strong-interaction material reverted to ordinary metal.
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The original plan had intended the hailing message as an experiment; there was no preparation for how to develop further communications. While the three in the pinnace debated what to do, the Ring sent a second bitmap to the pinnace: 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 1, 4, 2, 1, 5, 9. Then a third bitmap: 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 16, 6, 10, 10, 4, 7. A fourth: 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 19, 5, 1, 15, 4, 8. A fifth: 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 7, 2, 16, 4, 1, 14.
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I think there's an even more interesting question: Have we encountered them before? Think about the Earth: It's been careening through space for several billion years. Is it not possible that it had entered a four-dimensional fragment in the past?" "That would have been an astonishing sight. I find it hard to imagine that humanity had experienced it.... But I wonder if dinosaurs could have located warped points..." "Why are there bubbles at all? Why are there so many four-dimensional fragments in three-dimensional space?"
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This was the first time humans had come close to a four-dimensional object. Similar to high-dimensional spatial sense, they felt the magnificence of high-dimensional materiality. The Ring was completely sealed, and they could not look inside the band, but they could feel an immense sense of depth and of containment. What they were seeing wasn't just a Ring, but an infinity of Rings all stacked together in concealment. This sensation of four-dimensionality impressed itself upon the soul, and gave the observers the experience of seeing the mountain contained in a mustard seed described in Buddhist parables.
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Widnall said, "If we really discover a photoid, it would be better to not issue a warning at all. It's useless, anyway. To die suddenly without even knowing what hit you is actually a rather fortunate fate. But you'd rather torture a few billion people for twenty-four hours. I think that's akin to a crime against humanity."
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Seeing this silvery graveyard more than forty trillion kilometers away made Widnall wax philosophical. "From a scientific perspective, 'destroy' isn't really accurate. Nothing has disappeared. All the matter that used to be there is still there, and so is all the angular momentum. It's only the arrangement of matter that has changed, like a deck of cards being reshuffled. But life is like a straight flush: Once you shuffle, it's gone."
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That smile, like a crack in the ice, spread across Wade's face. "You are perfectly aware that if I break my promise, it will actually be a blessing for you. But unfortunately, I will keep my promise." Wade walked back and straightened his leather jacket, which only caused more wrinkles to appear. He stood in front of Cheng Xin and solemnly said, "I promise that if, during the process of researching lightspeed spaceflight, we discover anything that may harm the human race, regardless of the form of the danger, we'll awaken you. You'll have the final say and can take back all of my authority."
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"You believe he'll keep his promise?" asked Cheng Xin. AA stared straight ahead, as though looking at a ghost Wade. "I do. I think the devil will do as he says. But just like he said, that's not necessarily a good thing for you. You could have saved yourself, Cheng Xin, but in the end, you didn't." Ten days later, Thomas Wade became the president of the
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Everything you own. Your company, your wealth, your authority, your position--and if possible, your reputation and glory. I will use them all to build lightspeed ships, for your ideals, and for the grandness of the human spirit."
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It was time: The hydrogen bomb exploded. Without the obstruction of an atmosphere, nearly all of its energy was released in the form of radiation. In the live feed taken from about four hundred kilometers away, a fireball appeared next to the Sun. Soon, the brightness and size of the fireball exceeded the Sun itself, and the camera's filters quickly dimmed the light. If someone were to gaze at it directly from this distance, he or she would be blinded permanently. By the time the fireball reached maximum brightness, there was nothing in the camera's view but pure whiteness. The flame seemed ready to swallow the entire universe.
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Bunker Era, Year 11 Bunker World #37813, your hibernation is at an end. You have been in hibernation for 62 years, 8 months, 21 days, and 13 hours. Your remaining hibernation allotment is 238 years, 3 months, 9 days. This is Asia Hibernation Center #1, Bunker Era, Year 11, May 9, 2:17 P.M.
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The clouds began to dissipate, revealing a large opening. Through the opening, Cheng Xin did not see a blue sky; instead, she saw... more ground. The ground in the sky was studded with the buildings of a city very similar to the city around her, except she was now looking "down"--or "up"--at it. This must have been the "other side" Cao Bin referred to. Cheng Xin realized that the rising "mountainside" in the distance wasn't a mountain at all, but continued to rise until it connected with the "sky." The world was a giant cylinder, and she was standing on the inside of it. "This is Space City Asia I, in the shadow of Jupiter," Cao Bin said. The new world that had seemed so common a moment ago now stunned her. Cheng Xin felt that she had finally, truly awakened.
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The city government is different from the atmospheric system, much more complicated. When you get there, pay attention to the office politics. Don't get too close to anyone at first, but don't hold yourself apart either."..."It's not right to charge separately for the heat; that should have been included in the electric bill."..."If they had subbed for that fool earlier they wouldn't have lost so badly."..."Don't be so disappointed. I've been here since the city was built, and how much do you think I make every year?"..."That fish is no longer fresh. Don't even think about steaming it."..."The other day, when they had to make an orbital adjustment, Park Four's water spilled again and flooded a large area."..."If she doesn't like him, he should just give up. All that effort is just going to be wasted."..."That can't be authentic. I don't even think it's a high-quality imitation. Are you kidding me? At that price?"... Cheng Xin's heart felt warm and co
——————
Pacific I was a city in permanent night, and each building maintained illumination with a nuclear battery. Thus, the interior was filled with glowing, floating lights. Most of the buildings in the city were simple shacks built from abandoned construction materials. Since there was no "up" or "down," most of the shacks were cube-shaped, with windows (which also acted as doors) on all six sides. Some were shaped as spheres, which had the advantage of being more resilient, as the drifting buildings inevitably collided against each other. There was no notion of land ownership in Pacific I because all the buildings drifted around with no permanent location. In principle, each resident had the right to use any space in the city. The city had a large number of homeless individuals who didn't even possess a shack. All of their possessions were kept in a large net sling to prevent them from scattering everywhere,
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As they left the floating city in eternal night, Cheng Xin gazed at it through the porthole of the dinghy. This was a city of poverty and homelessness, but it also possessed its own rich life, like a weightless version of the famous Song Dynasty painting, Along the River During the Qingming Festival. She understood that compared to the last era, the Bunker World was not at all an ideal society. The migration to the rim of the Solar System had caused some toxic social conditions, long eliminated by progress, to reemerge. This wasn't exactly regression, but a kind of spiraling ascent, a necessary condition for the exploration and settlement of new frontiers.
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In total, behind Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, there were sixty-four large space cities and nearly a hundred medium and small cities, plus numerous space stations. Nine hundred million people lived in the Bunker World. This was almost the entirety of the human race. Even before the arrival of the dark forest strike
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The closest approach, like you experienced just now, was a hundred and fifty kilometers, basically brushing right by us. We don't really have a choice. Jupiter has thirteen moons, and it's impossible for the space cities to avoid them all. Europa's orbit is inclined only slightly from the equator, and so it's very close to these cities here. It's the main source of water for the Jovian cities, and we've built a lot of industry on it. But when the dark forest strike comes, all of it will have to be sacrificed. After the solar explosion, all of the Jovian moons' orbits will shift dramatically. Maneuvering the space cities to avoid them at that time will be a very complicated operation."
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The first was North America I, the closest city to Asia I. The main advantage of its spherical construction was that a single artificial sun at the center was sufficient to illuminate the entire city, but the disadvantage of such a design was obvious as well: The gravity changed depending on one's latitude. The equator had the most gravity, which decreased as you went up in latitude. The polar regions were weightless. Inhabitants in the different regions had to adjust to life under various gravity conditions.
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North America I had been completed early on. With a radius of twenty kilometers and twenty million inhabitants, it was the largest city by population. It acted as the prosperous commercial center for all the Jovian cities.
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Europe IV had the smallest population of all the cities, only 4.5 million. It was the wealthiest city of the Bunker World. The exquisite houses illuminated by miniature suns amazed Cheng Xin. Each house came with its own swimming pool, and a few had wide lawns. Tiny white sails dotted the serene equatorial sea, and people sat on the shore, fishing leisurely. She saw a yacht sail by slowly, and it looked as luxurious as any yacht on ancient Earth. There was a cocktail party being held aboard the yacht with live musicians.... She was astonished that such life could be transplanted into the shadow of Jupiter, eight hundred million kilometers from the Earth.
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Millions of construction workers had lived in Pacific I during the early years of the Bunker Project. As the project progressed, it was used to warehouse construction materials. Later, as the numerous flaws of this early-phase experimental space city became apparent, it was abandoned. But, after the resettlement to the Bunker World had been completed, people began to live here again, and finally formed a city of their own, with a city government and police force. However, the authorities only maintained the most basic public infrastructure, and society was left basically to run on its own. Pacific I was the only city to which people were free to immigrate without a residential permit. Most of the population consisted of unemployed and homeless wanderers, poor people who had lost social security for various reasons, and bohemian artists. Later, it became the base for extremist political organizations.
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Cheng Xin and Cao Bin drifted close to a group of homeless men gathered around an open fire. Such a fire would have been prohibited in any other city. The fuel seemed to be some kind of flammable construction material. Due to the weightlessness, the flames did not rise up, but formed a ball of fire floating in place. The way they drank was also special. They tossed alcohol out of bottles, forming liquid spheres in the air. Then the men, dressed in rags and with unshaven faces, drifted along with them, capturing the spheres with their mouths and swallowing. One of the drunken men vomited, and the vomit rushing out of his mouth propelled him back, sending him tumbling in midair....
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The Earth was now barely inhabited. Only about five million people remained there. These were individuals who did not wish to leave their home and who had no fear of the prospect of Death at any moment. Many brave men and women living in the Bunker World also traveled to Earth as tourists, though each journey meant gambling with their lives. As time passed, the anticipated dark forest strike loomed larger, and people gradually adapted to life in the Bunker World. Their yearning for their homeland lessened as they busied themselves in their new homes, and fewer and fewer now visited the Earth. The public no longer cared much about news from the home world, and were only vaguely aware that Nature was enjoying a resurgence. Forests and grasslands covered every continent, and those who stayed behind had to carry guns to defend against wild beasts when they went out, but it was rumored that they lived like kings, each with a vast estate and personal forests and lakes. The entire Earth was now only a single city in the Solar System Federation.
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What happened after 高 Way was sucked in was almost too strange to describe. Scientists observed the black hole via remote-controlled microscopes, and discovered that at the black hole's event horizon--that's the surface of that tiny sphere with a diameter of twenty-one nanometers--there was the figure of a person. It was 高 Way passing through the event horizon. "Under general relativity, a distant observer would see a clock near the event horizon slow down, and the process of 高 Way falling toward the event horizon would also slow down and stretch into infinity. "But within 高 Way's own frame of reference, he had already passed through the event horizon. "Even more oddly, the figure's proportions were normal. Perhaps it was because the black hole was so small, but tidal forces did not seem to be at work. He had been compressed into the nanometer range, but space there was also extremely curved. More than one physicist believed that the body structure of 高 Way wasn't harmed at the event horizon. In other words, he's probably still alive at this moment.
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Six years after the commencement of studies on the black hole specimen, 高 Way died. According to the official account of the World Academy of Sciences, he was accidentally 'sucked into the black hole' during an experiment.
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Inside Lightspeed II, there was a protective net around the black hole with a radius of five thousand meters. Research personnel were forbidden to enter. Since the radius of Leda was originally only eight thousand meters, the black hole's gravity at this distance was not much greater than the gravity on the surface of the original Leda. It's not a very powerful pull--a person standing there was essentially weightless, and could easily escape using the thrusters on their space suit. Thus, Gao couldn't have been 'sucked' in.
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And thus the life insurance company refused to pay out, although 高 Way had passed through the event horizon in his frame of reference, and should now be dead. But the insurance contract was made within the frame of reference of our world, and from this perspective, it is impossible to prove that 高 Way is dead. It's not even possible to begin the settlement process. Insurance claims settlement can only occur after the conclusion of an accident, but as 高 Way is still falling toward the black hole, the accident isn't over, and will never be over.
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The next coil is one point five million kilometers away, four or five times the distance from the Earth to the moon. You can't see it," Cao Bin said. "This is a supercollider capable of accelerating a particle to the energy level of the big bang. Ships are not allowed anywhere near the orbit of the accelerator. A few years ago, a lost freighter drifted into the orbit by mistake and was hit by a beam of accelerated particles. The ultrahigh-energy particles struck the ship and produced high-energy secondary showers that vaporized the ship and its cargo of millions of tons of mineral ore in an instant." Cao
——————
But one week later, Federation Fleet Command revealed to the world the captured antimatter bullets. The pile of golden Death stunned everyone. The Halo Group was declared an illegal organization, and the Federation Government confiscated all its property and took over the circumsolar particle accelerator. The Federation Fleet declared a long-term occupation of Halo City, and the Academies of Science and Engineering were dissolved. More than three hundred people, including Wade, the other leaders of the Halo Group, and the city self-defense force, were arrested. In the subsequent trial in Federation court, Thomas Wade was convicted of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of the laws prohibiting research into curvature propulsion. The sentence was death.
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Once she was outside the detention center, Cheng Xin picked out one of the cigars and borrowed a light from one of the guards. She took her first puff of a cigar in her life. Oddly, she didn't cough. She watched the white smoke rise in the sunlight of the capital, watched it dissipate in her tear-filled vision like the three centuries she and Wade had lived through. Three days later, a powerful laser vaporized Thomas Wade in one-ten-thousandth of a second.
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She was only thirty-three. Cheng Xin and AA rode Halo back to the Jovian city cluster and once again entered hibernation in Asia I. The contracted-for time was two hundred years, but they included a provision in the contract stating they should be awakened if a dark forest strike occurred before then. And then they slept. Dreamless.
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Fleet International, which had been formed to combat the Trisolaran invasion, lost its reason for existence and gradually diminished in relevance until it was finally dissolved. The Solar System Fleet that had belonged to Fleet International became the property of the Solar System Federation. This was the first time in human history where a unified world government controlled the majority of humanity's armed forces. Since it was no longer necessary to maintain a large space force, the fleet's size was drastically reduced. After the commencement of the Bunker Project, most of the then-extant hundred-plus stellar-class warships were converted for civilian use. After they were disarmed and their ecological cycling systems removed, they became interplanetary industrial transports for the Bunker Project. Only
——————
The danger of lightspeed ships lay not only in the trails, but also in upsetting the new social stability in the Bunker World, a prospect that could not be tolerated. A resolution was passed to authorize the government takeover of Halo City and the circumsolar particle accelerator, and to put a complete stop to the Halo Group's theoretical research and technical development in curvature propulsion. Thereafter, the Halo Group's behavior would be subjected to close monitoring.
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Wade gestured for the self-defense force to leave. They departed noiselessly, and the hall brightened as though a dark cloud had dissipated. Wade struggled to stand, walked around the pile of antimatter cartridges, and slowly opened the glass dome. He blew at the curvature propulsion platform and Cheng Xin's hair disappeared. He closed the dome, turned to Cheng Xin, and smiled. "You see, I've kept my promise, little girl."
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They returned to Australia. Only Canberra remained inhabited, and a tiny town government there called itself the Australian Federal Government. The Parliament House where Sophon had proclaimed the plan for the extermination of the human race was still there, but thick layers of vegetation sealed its doors, and vines climbed up the eighty-meter-tall flagpole. They found Fraisse's record in the government archives. He had lived until he was 150, but finally, time had defeated him. He had died more than ten years ago.
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Examining the data was Singer's job; judging the sincerity of the coordinates was Singer's joy. Singer understood that what he did wasn't important--it just filled in the pieces. But it had to be done, and the task was enjoyable. Speaking of enjoyment, when this seed had departed from the home world, that world was still a place full of joy. But later, as the home world began to war against the fringe world, joy diminished. By now, more than ten thousand grains of time had passed. There wasn't much joy to speak of on the home world or in this seed. The happiness of the past was recorded in classical songs, and singing those songs was another of the few joys left. Singer sang one of these classical songs as he reviewed the data.
Alien
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The set of coordinates was broadcast by long membrane, and even Singer himself couldn't be sure what told him that the set of coordinates was sincere--intuition could not always be explained. He decided to cleanse it. He wasn't busy, and the task wasn't going to distract him from singing. Even if he got it wrong, it was not a big deal. Cleansing was not a precision task and didn't require absolute accuracy. It also wasn't urgent. He just had to get it done eventually. This was also why his position wasn't prestigious. Singer took a mass dot out of the seed's magazine, then he turned to look for the star indicated by the set of coordinates. The main core guided his gaze, like a spear sweeping through the starry sky. Singer grasped the mass dot with a force field feeler and prepared to flick it. But then he saw the location indicated by the set of coordinates and the feeler relaxed.
——————
Back to the coordinates. Many sets of coordinates flitted across space, like the matrix insects flitting across the sky of the home world. Picking up coordinates was the job of the main core, which swallowed all the messages passing through space: medium membrane, long membrane, light membrane, and maybe one day even short membrane. The main core remembered the positions of all the stars. By matching the received data against various map projections and position schema, it could pick out the coordinates of the messages' origin. It was said that the main core could match position schema from five hundred million time grains ago. Singer never tried anything like that--it would be meaningless. In that distant age, the low-entropy clusters in space were rare and far apart, and had not evolved the hiding gene and the cleansing gene. But now--
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Sincere coordinates followed certain patterns. For instance, a mass cluster of coordinates was usually insincere. But these patterns were all only heuristics. Judging the sincerity of coordinates effectively required intuition. The main core on this seed was incapable of this task, and even the supercore back on the home world could not do it. This was one reason why low-entropy entities had no substitute.
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Singer
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Singer's spirit crossed the chasm of space and time, resonated with the spirit of the broadcaster, and felt its terror and anxiety, along with other feelings unfamiliar to the home world, such as hatred, envy, greed, and so on. But for the most part, it was terror. Terror was what endowed a set of coordinates with sincerity. For all low-entropy entities, terror guaranteed existence.
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Singer soon understood why the cleansing had happened so fast. He saw a slow fog in the vicinity of that destroyed world. The slow fog was about half a structure length away from that world. Seen by itself, it wasn't apparent where the fog had come from, but when connected with the broadcast coordinates, it was obvious that the fog belonged to that world. The slow fog showed that the world was dangerous, which was why the cleansing had come so quickly. It appeared that there were other low-entropy entities with even sharper intuition than he; but that wasn't strange. It was as the Elder said: In the cosmos, no matter how fast you are, someone will be faster; no matter how slow you are, someone will be slower.
We are nothing
——————
If Singer were patient, all sincere coordinates would eventually be cleansed by other, unknown low-entropy entities. But this was not a good thing for either the home world or the seed. Since Singer had received the set of coordinates and even glanced at the world pointed to by the coordinates, Singer had a connection to that world. It would be naïve to think of this connection as unidirectional. Recall the great law of reversible discovery: If you could see a low-entropy world, then that low-entropy world could also see you--it was only a matter of time. Thus, waiting for others to complete cleansing was dangerous.
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Among the "personal effects" was something that piqued Singer's interest. It was a record of the dead world's three communications with another location using medium membrane. Medium membrane was the least efficient communication membrane, also called primitive membrane. Most communications preferred long membrane, though it was said that even short membrane could be used to convey messages. If true, that would make the communicators akin to gods. But Singer liked primitive membrane. He thought primitive membrane possessed a simple beauty, symbolizing an age full of joy. He often turned primitive membrane messages into songs. He thought they sounded pretty, even if he didn't understand them. Understanding them wasn't necessary, however; other than coordinates, primitive membrane messages didn't have much useful information. It was enough to enjoy the music.
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Why did whoever cleansed the dead three-star world not also cleanse the world of the Star-Pluckers? Many possibilities. Perhaps they hadn't noticed these three communications--primitive membrane messages often didn't get much attention. But given the millions upon millions of worlds out there, someone would have noticed--Singer was just one who did. Even without Singer, some other low-entropy entity would have noticed them; it was just a matter of time. Or perhaps they had noticed them, but decided that a low-entropy group that didn't possess the hiding gene wasn't much of a threat, and cleansing them was more trouble than it was worth.
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"There's no point. The bunker is useless," Cao Bin said, lowering his eyes. "How far is the photoid from the Sun?" Cheng Xin asked. "There's no photoid." "Then what have you found?" Cao Bin gave a wretched laugh. "A slip of paper."
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Bai Aisi pondered this. "No. This desert wasn't the result of the Earth's natural evolution, but the result of man-made forces. The behavior of civilizations can't be grasped through the laws of physics." "Very good. Then why do we and our colleagues all want to try to explain the conditions of today's cosmos, and to predict its future, solely through deductions based on the laws of physics?" Ding Yi's words surprised Bai Aisi. The man had never revealed such thoughts in the past. Bai Aisi said, "I think that's beyond physics. The goal of physics is to discover the fundamental laws of nature. Although the man-made desertification of the Earth could not be calculated directly from physics, it still follows laws. Universal laws are constant."
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After another hour during which no signs of the slip could be detected, Vasilenko ordered the pinnace to return to Revelation. But the two crew members on duty in the pinnace didn't acknowledge the order; the radio only transmitted a hurried conversation between them. "Look out below! What's going on?" "It's rising!" "Don't touch it! Get out!!" "My leg! Ahhh--" After the scream, the monitoring terminal on Revelation showed one of the crew members leaving the pinnace and activating the thrusters on his space suit in an attempt to escape. They saw a bright light; the source was the bottom of the pinnace, which was melting! The pinnace looked like a scoop of ice cream dropped onto a scalding sheet of glass: The bottom was melting and spreading in every direction. The "glass" was invisible, and the plane's existence was indicated only by the spreading pool of melted pinnace material. The pool spread into an extremely thin sheet and emitted bewitching, colorful lights, like fireworks scattered through a sheet of glass.
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As soon as he saw the escaping crewman's feet touch the invisible plane, Vasilenko gave the order. Revelation wasn't a stellar ship, so when it engaged in Full Ahead acceleration, the crew did not need to enter into the protective deep-sea state. But the hypergravity was enough to sink everyone deep into their seats. Since the order was given in such a hurry, a few couldn't get to their seats in time and fell to the stern of the ship with injuries. Revelation's exhaust nozzles emitted a plasma stream several kilometers long that pierced the dark night of space. Far in the distance, where the pinnace was still melting, they could see the phosphorescent glow like will-o'-the-wisps in the wilderness. From the zoomed-in view on the monitoring terminal, they could see that only the very top part of the pinnace was left, and that too soon disappeared into the brilliant plane. The body of the dead crewman was also diffused into the plane, showing up as a gigantic, man-shaped glow. His body had been transformed into a slice on the plane without thickness. Though large in area, it had no volume. "We're not moving[…]
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When the projectile was about 150 AU from the Sun, the gravitational waves it emitted began to rapidly decrease in frequency. The advance warning system discovered that this was due to its deceleration. Within a few days, the projectile's velocity went from lightspeed to one-thousandth of lightspeed, and continued to decrease. Such low speed meant that it wasn't enough to threaten the Sun, which provided further comfort. In addition, at this speed, human spacecraft could keep up with it. In other words, it was possible to send out ships to intercept it.
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Ding Yi continued, "At the beginning of the crisis, when the sophons were interfering with the particle accelerators, a few people committed suicide. At the time, I thought what they did made no sense. Theoreticians should be excited by such experimental data! But now I understand. Those people knew more than I did. Take Yang Dong, for instance. She knew much more than I did, and thought further. She probably knew things we don't even know now. Do you think only sophons create illusions? Do you think the only illusions exist in the particle accelerator terminals? Do you think the rest of the universe is as pure as a virgin, waiting for us to explore? Too bad that she left with everything she knew."
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Just as four-dimensional space collapses into three dimensions, three-dimensional space can collapse into two dimensions, with one dimension folding and curling into the quantum realm. The area of that slice of two-dimensional space--it only has area--will rapidly expand, causing more space to collapse.... We're now in space that is falling toward two dimensions, and ultimately, the entire Solar System will follow. In other words, the Solar System will turn into a painting with no thickness."
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On the plane two thousand kilometers away, the light emitted by the two-dimensionalized pinnace and crewmen had already gone out. Compared to collapsing from four dimensions to three, the fall from three dimensions to two gave off much less energy. Two two-dimensional structures were revealed clearly by the starlight. On the two-dimensionalized pinnace, it was possible to see the details of three-dimensional structures unfolded in two dimensions--the crew cabin, the fusion reactor, and so on--as well as the curled-up figure of the crewman in the cabin. In the figure of the other crewman, the bones and blood vessels could be clearly discerned, as well as all the body parts. During the process of falling into two dimensions, every point on a three-dimensional object was projected onto the plane in accordance with precise geometric principles, and so these two figures turned out to be the most complete and precise images of the original three-dimensional pinnace and people. All the internal structures were now laid out side by side in two dimensions with nothing hidden.
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True. What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant past, when humanity was but a babe: Carving words into stone.
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True, to the extraterrestrial discoverers of the far future, the human classics left on the walls here would probably resemble Linear A, Cretan hieroglyphics, and other ancient scripts that no one could read. Perhaps there was no realistic hope that anyone would. By the time the builders of this monument truly understood the power of time, they no longer believed that a vanished civilization could really leave behind any marks that would last through geologic eons. As Luo Ji had said, this wasn't a museum. A museum was built for visitors; a tombstone was built for the builders. The three continued onward, and Luo Ji's cane tapped along the ground rhythmically.
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Van Gogh's representation of space had left a deep impression on her. In his subconscious, space seemed to have structure. Cheng Xin wasn't an expert in theoretical physics back then, but she knew that according to string theory, space, like material objects, was made up of many microscopic vibrating strings. Van Gogh had painted these strings: In his paintings, space--like mountains, wheat fields, houses, and trees--was filled with minute vibrations. Starry Night had left an indelible mark in her mind, and she was amazed to see it again four centuries later on Pluto.
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Each large ring was composed of many smaller rings, full of detailed structures. As they examined the planets further, the two giant eyes now more resembled the rings of a newly felled tree. Around each two-dimensional planet were a dozen or so small circles--moons that had also been flattened. Around Saturn was another faint large circle--its rings. They could still find the Sun in the sky, a small disk emitting faint yellow light. Since the two planets were still on the other side of the sun, their area after collapsing into two dimensions was breathtaking. Both planets had no thickness anymore.
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Cheng Xin and AA asked Luo Ji to come onto Halo. Luo Ji said he would like to see it, and went to look for a space suit. As the three of them carried the artifacts out of the monolith, the sight of a flattening Earth greeted them. The Earth was the first solid planet to collapse into two dimensions. Compared to Neptune and Saturn, the "tree rings" in the two-dimensionalized Earth were even more replete with fine details--the yellow mantle gradually shifted over to the deep red nickel-iron core--but the overall area was much smaller than the gas giants. Unlike in their imagination, they couldn't see any hint of blue.
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On the surface, they saw that yet another two-dimensional planet had appeared in the sky: Mercury (Venus was on the other side of the Sun at this moment). It looked smaller than the two-dimensional Earth, but the light generated by its recent collapse into two dimensions made it very bright. After they packed the artifacts in the hold, Cheng Xin and AA came out of Halo. Luo Ji, who was waiting outside, leaning on his cane, said, "All right. I think that's enough. It's meaningless to carry more, anyway."
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They were much taller, and each had a unique design. The tips of some of the skyscrapers almost touched the axis of the city. Buildings in the shapes of trees reappeared as well, and they looked about as large as the ones that had been built on Earth, though the leaves hung more densely. It was possible to imagine the city's beauty and magnificence when lit up at night. But now, only cold moonlight illuminated it, and the tree-buildings cast wide shadows so that the rest of the city appeared as ruins nestled in the shade of a giant forest.
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These are probably the darkest things in the universe," Cheng Xin said. The death lines showed no details except an exceptional blackness showing the boundaries of the zero-lightspeed region, with no real surface. Looking up, the lines showed up clearly even against the dark backdrop of space. "These are the deadest things in the universe as well," said Guan Yifan. "Zero-lightspeed means absolute, one hundred percent death. Inside it, every fundamental particle, every quark is dead. There is no vibration. Even without a source of gravity inside, each death line is a black hole. A zero-gravity black hole. Anything that falls in cannot reemerge." Yifan picked up a rock and tossed it toward one of the death lines. The rock disappeared inside the absolute darkness.
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Are these the most advanced lightspeed ships?" "Maybe. But this is a rarely seen technique. Death lines are usually the products of Zero-Homers." "Zero-Homers?" "They're also called Resetters. Maybe they're a group of intelligent individuals, or a civilization, or a group of civilizations. We don't know exactly who they are, but we've confirmed their existence. The Zero-Homers want to reset the universe and return it to the Garden of Eden."
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The space suit had no automatic systems, and everything required manual operation. "There are no computer chips inside this suit at all. Right now, none of our computers--electronic or quantum--work anymore." "Why?" "The speed of light right now is less than twenty kilometers per second."
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Neural computers. Computers that can operate under reduced lightspeed. The shuttle and Hunter both have two control systems, one of which is based on neural computers." Cheng Xin was amazed that such machines existed. "The key isn't the speed of light, but the system design. The transmission of chemical signals in the brain is even slower, only two or three meters per second--not much faster than us walking. Neural computers can still work because they imitate the highly parallel processing found in the brains of higher animals. All the chips are designed specifically to function under reduced-lightspeed conditions."
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There are many laws that can be manipulated into weapons, but most commonly, the focus is on spatial dimensions and the speed of light. Typically, lowering spatial dimensions is a technique for attack, and lowering the speed of light is a technique for defense. Thus, the dimensional strike on the Solar System was an advanced attack method. A dimensional strike is a sign of respect. In this universe, respect is not easy to earn. I guess you could consider it an honor for Earth civilization."
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While Cheng Xin was still recovering from the shock, Yifan continued, "The speed of light is also frequently used as a weapon. I'm not talking about building light tombs--or, as you call them, black domains. Those are just defensive mechanisms employed by weak worms like us. The gods do not stoop so low. In war, it's possible to make reduced-lightspeed black holes to seal the enemy inside. But more commonly, the technique is used to construct the equivalents of pits and city walls. Some reduced-lightspeed belts are large enough to traverse an entire arm of a galaxy. In places where the stars are dense, many reduced-lightspeed black holes can be connected together into chains that stretch for tens of millions of light-years. That's a Great Wall at the scale of the universe. Even the most powerful fleets, once trapped, would not be able to escape. Those barriers are very difficult to cross."
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The longest few lines, in fact, took up almost a third of the sky. These lines crossed each other at different angles and made space appear far more confusing and chaotic than before. "I think they're stars," repeated Yifan. "A star's light must pass through two interfaces before getting to us: First, it must go through the interface between regular lightspeed and reduced lightspeed, and then through the event horizon of the black hole. That's why the stars look so strange to us now." "We're inside the black domain?" "That's right. We're inside the light tomb."
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More than eighteen million years after the DX3906 system turned into a reduced-lightspeed black hole, seventeen billion years after the birth of the universe, a man and a woman held each other tightly. Cheng Xin sobbed her heart out over Yifan's shoulder. In her memories, she had cried like this only once before, when Tianming's brain had been taken out of his body. That was... 18,903,729 years plus six centuries ago, and those six centuries were but a rounding error at such geologic timescales. This time, she cried not only for Tianming. She cried out of a sense of surrender. She finally understood how she was but a mote of dust in a grand wind, a small leaf drifting over a broad river
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Average atomic decay dating results (error range: 0.4%): Stellar time periods lapsed: 6,177,906; Earth years lapsed: 18,903,729.
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They could see the backs of two figures standing on the horizon: a man and a woman. The man had just put down his uplifted arm. "That's us," said Cheng Xin. In front of those two figures, they could see a distant white house and trees, exact duplicates of the ones nearby. They couldn't see what was at the feet of those figures due to the distance, but they could guess that it was another black field. At the end of the world was a duplicate of it, or maybe a projection.
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Thus, this is a completely enclosed world in which the end is also the beginning. The images we see all around us are the result of light returning to the starting point after crossing the world. We're still in the same world we started from, because this is the only world that exists. Every copy we see around us is just an image of this world." "So this is..." "Yes!" Yifan swept his arm around to indicate everything. "Yun Tianming once gave you a star, and now he's given you a universe. Cheng Xin, this is an entire universe. It might be small, but it's a complete universe."
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The fusion drive activated and the thrusters emitted a dim blue light. The spaceship slowly went through the door of the universe. The message in a bottle and the ecological sphere were the only things left in the mini-universe. The bottle faded into the darkness so, in this one-cubic-kilometer universe, only the little sun inside the ecological sphere gave off any light. In this minuscule world of life, a few clear watery spheres drifted serenely in weightlessness. One tiny fish leapt out of a watery sphere and entered another, where it effortlessly swam between the green algae. On a blade of grass on one of the miniature continents, a drop of dew took off from the tip of the grass blade, rose spiraling into the air, and refracted a clear ray of sunlight into space.