Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)

by Liu Cixin

This was a scene that had never occurred and would never occur again in the history of Christianity: Accompanied by solemn hymns, under the light of dim candles, the Byzantine emperor, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Orthodox Christians of the East and Catholics from Italy, soldiers in full armor, merchants and sailors from Venice and Genoa, and multitudes of ordinary citizens all gathered in front of God to prepare for the final battle of their lives.

The age of magic began at four o’clock on the afternoon of May 3, 1453, when the high-dimensional fragment first intersected with the Earth. It ended at nine o’clock on the evening of May 28, 1453, when the fragment left the Earth behind. After twenty-five days and five hours, the world returned to its normal orbit.

Whoever was responsible for decorating this room had made quite an effort: There were new, pretty curtains on the windows, fresh flowers in vases, and numerous pink paper hearts on the walls. But their well-intentioned attempt to humanize the situation had achieved the exact opposite: The frightful pall cast by death was mixed with an eerie cheerfulness, as though they were trying to turn a tomb into a nuptial chamber.

The Trisolar Crisis’s impact on society was far deeper than people had imagined at first. To give some imperfect analogies: In terms of biology, it was equivalent to the moment when the ancestors of mammals climbed from the ocean onto land; in terms of religion, it was akin to when Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; in terms of history and sociology … there are no suitable analogies, even imperfect ones.

But if he were to have a tombstone, he would like it to say: He came; he loved; he gave her a star; he left.

We can throw resources at this problem until the laws of physics bend.

“It’s based on an old idea in aerospace circles. Stanislaw Ulam first proposed something like it back in 1946. It’s called nuclear pulse propulsion.”

Enough! Don’t get bogged down on details right now. We’re not evaluating feasibility; rather, we’re trying to figure out if it’s worthwhile to study the idea’s feasibility. Focus on big-picture barriers.”

Moreover, due to the presence of sophons, the plan for sending a probe would be completely transparent to the enemy, making its chances of successfully gathering any valuable intelligence nonexistent.

He dropped his habitual indifferent tone and screamed like a crazed wild animal. “We’re going to advance! Advance! We’ll stop at nothing to advance!”

Humanity had to struggle to adjust to this kind of warfare, in which they were completely transparent to the enemy.

Even though the sophons allowed the Trisolarans to learn about humanity, surely they would still be interested in capturing a live specimen for up-close study.

In traditional intelligence warfare, sending a spy whose identity was known to the enemy was a meaningless gesture. But this war was different.

A new technology can transform society, but when the technology is in its infancy, very few people can see its full potential. For example, when the computer was first invented, it was merely a tool for increasing efficiency, and some thought five computers would be enough for the entire world.

Cheng Xin learned that artificial hibernation didn’t exactly match its public image. For one thing, it didn’t involve ultra-low temperatures. The procedure replaced the blood in the body with an antifreeze cryoprotectant, then brought the body temperature down to minus-fifty-degrees Celsius. Relying on an external cardiopulmonary bypass system, the body’s organs maintained an extremely low level of biological activity. “It’s like standby mode on a computer,” said the director.

She rarely saw him perform the tasks that she associated with conventional administration: making phone calls, reading documents, attending meetings, and so forth. She didn’t know when, if ever, Wade did these things. All she could see was him sitting, deep in thought, always deep in thought.

Dark forest deterrence hung over two worlds like the Sword of Damocles, and Luo Ji was the single hair from a horse’s tail that held up the sword. Thus, he came to be called the Swordholder.

Faced with such a puzzling response, humans came up with multiple explanations. The most plausible theory posited that the Trisolarans understood the advantage of the accelerating pace of human scientific development and wanted to gain access to new knowledge through us. Earth was treated as a knowledge battery: After it was charged fully with Trisolaran knowledge, it would provide more power.

After the tenth year of the Deterrence Era, besides additional scientific information, Trisolaris began to transmit cultural and artistic products done in imitation of human models: films, novels, poetry, music, paintings, and so on. Surprisingly, the imitations were not at all awkward or childish; right away, the Trisolarans produced sophisticated, high-quality art. Scholars called this phenomenon cultural reflection.

“To be able to determine the fate of all of humanity and another race with a single finger is very attractive to some men from that era. Some devote their entire lives to pursue such power. They become obsessed with it.”

The whiteness everywhere contrasted strongly with his black Zhongshan suit.5

“Why?” Cheng Xin muttered, as if asking herself. “Because the universe is not a fairy tale.”

This was a society of absolute equality: Money had no use here, and everyone received exactly the same ration.

Five centuries ago, civilized men of Earth—most of whom had actually been criminals in Europe—stepped onto this continent and shot the Aboriginal peoples in the woods for sport.

When Sophon proclaimed the establishment of “reservations,” people paid attention. It brought to mind the tragic fate of the native peoples of North America, another faraway continent where the arrival of civilized men of Earth brought sorrow.

“For a Māori warrior, the key is to hold the enemy’s gaze. He must defeat the enemy first with his eyes, then kill him with the taiaha.”

“What about food? Where are we going to get food?” someone else shouted. They were no longer terrified of Sophon. All that was left was despair. Sophon scanned the hall, meeting the eyes of everyone present. “Food? Everyone, look around: You are surrounded by food, living food.”

People usually resorted to this analogy: Imagine a race of flat beings living inside a two-dimensional picture. No matter how rich or colorful the picture was, the flat people could only see the profile of the world around them. In their eyes, everything consisted of line segments of various lengths. Only when such a two-dimensional being was taken up out of the picture into three-dimensional space and looking down on the world could he see the entirety of the image. This analogy simply expressed in some more detail the indescribability of experiencing four-dimensional space.

Given this description, those who had never experienced four-dimensional space might get the wrong impression that they were seeing everything “through” the hull. But no, they were not seeing “through” anything. Everything was laid out in the open, just like when we look at a circle drawn on a piece of paper, we can see the inside of the circle without looking “through” anything.

But when one viewed the three-dimensional world from four-dimensional space, all concealed and hidden details were revealed simultaneously, since three-dimensional objects were laid open at every level. Take a sealed container as an example: One could see not only what was inside, but also the interiors of the objects inside. This boundless disclosure and exposure led to the unlimited details on display.

When an object was revealed at all levels in four-dimensional space, it created in the viewer a vertigo-inducing sensation of depth, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that went on without end.

“Four-dimensional space contains three-dimensional space, just as three-dimensional space contains two-dimensional space. To make another analogy: We’re located inside a three-dimensional sheet of paper in four-dimensional space.”

“The entirety of our three-dimensional space is a large, thin sheet of paper, sixteen billion light-years across. Somewhere on this sheet of paper is a tiny, four-dimensional soap bubble.”

“These attacks are not part of some interstellar war, but a matter of conveniently eliminating possible threats. By ‘casual,’ what I mean is that the only basis for the attack is the exposure of the target’s location. There will be no reconnaissance or exploration conducted against the target beforehand. For a supercivilization, such exploration is more expensive than a blind strike. By ‘economical,’ what I mean is that the attack will employ the least expensive method: using a small, worthless projectile to trigger the destructive potential already present in the target star system.”

In a decisive tone, he said, “I’ve considered it. Here’s my question: If Trisolaris showed certain signs of being dangerous when observed from a distance, does there exist some sign that can be shown to the universe to indicate that a civilization is harmless and will not threaten anyone else, thus avoiding a dark forest strike? Can Earth civilization broadcast such a ‘safety notice,’ if you will, to the universe?”

It took only one week before these pioneers stopped collective farming. It wasn’t because the Green Saviors were lazy—their enthusiasm alone could have sustained them through some period of diligence—rather, it was because the bodies of modern humans had changed considerably from the past. They were more flexible and agile compared to past generations, but were no longer adapted to boring, repetitious physical labor.

Historically, the discovery of the dark forest state of the universe was a giant blow to most major religions, especially Christianity. In fact, the damage to religion was evident even early on during the Crisis Era. When Trisolaran civilization was discovered, Christians had to wrestle with the fact that the aliens were not in the Garden of Eden, and God never mentioned them in Genesis. For more than a century, churches and theologians struggled to complete a new interpretation of the Bible and of accepted doctrines—and just when they had almost succeeded in patching up the faith, the monster that was the dark forest appeared.

“Before we say good-bye, I’m going to finish my last mission. It’s a message.” Sophon bowed deeply to both of them. Then she straightened up and looked at Cheng Xin. “Yun Tianming would like to see you.”

Based on the still very limited knowledge humans had of the Trisolarans, sex among them involved the two partners melding their bodies into one. Thereafter, the combined body would split into three to five new lives. These were their descendants, and the “children” referred to by Tianming. But these individuals inherited part of their parents’ memories, and were relatively mature at birth, which differentiated them from human children. Trisolarans really didn’t have childhood. Both Trisolaran and human scholars believed that this biological difference was one of the root causes of the great differences between their cultures and societies.

The safety of Tianming wasn’t just important for him individually, he, to date, the only person embedded in an alien society. His position was irreplaceable for humanity’s future survival.

The committee member representing the literary analysis group asked to speak first. This group had been a last-minute addition, composed mainly of writers and scholars of Common Era literature. It was thought that there might be a minuscule chance—unlikely though it was—that they could be of use.

After all, he had only an undergraduate degree dating back to the Common Era, which meant that he had less knowledge than a contemporary middle school student.

Equally important was the fact that the interpretation provided the model for how Tianming had hidden his message in the three stories. He employed two basic methods: dual-layer metaphors and two-dimensional metaphors.

The false alarm was the result of the explosive amplifying effects of a hyper-information society when fed sensitive news. Its source was an anomaly detected by the first observation unit of the advance warning system. The anomaly was real, though it had nothing to do with photoids.

He was like a piece of nuclear fuel. Even when it was sealed up in a lead container, one could feel its power and threat.

This seemed to be another swing of the pendulum: the leisure and comfort of the last age had disappeared, and it was once again a harried society. In this age, most people no longer belonged to the leisure class, but had to work for a living.

There was no notion of land ownership in Pacific I because all the buildings drifted around with no permanent location.

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.

His extraordinary professional success would only be possible in this age, but despite his accomplishments, most of his supervisors and colleagues thought of him as merely a high-powered intelligence battery. He was tortured by his illness and tried to change

After all these decades, theoreticians and experimenters alike were in despair. There was a saying: If there really were a Creator, the only thing He welded shut in all Creation was the speed of light.