To Hold Up the Sky

by Liu Cixin

Here’s another perverse thought experiment: If you were to make a meatball out of humankind, its diameter would be less than a kilometer.

If you shrank the solar system to the size of a dinner plate, the diameter of a correspondingly shrunken Milky Way would still be one hundred thousand kilometers.

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,”* said the High Archon. “The most comprehensible thing about the universe is that it is incomprehensible,” said the senator.

At the close of everything, everything began.

So-called warmth is just a brief effect of an equally brief spasm produced after the universe was born. It’s gone in an instant like light after sunset. Energy dissipates. Only the cold is eternal. The beauty of the cold is the only enduring beauty.”

“Survival. Ha! It’s just the diaper of a civilization’s infancy that needs to be changed. Later, that’s as easy as breathing. You’ll forget there ever was a time when it took effort to survive.”