The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)

by Liu Cixin

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.