Death's End

by Cixin Liu

  It was said that Master Batuo, the founder of Shaolin Monastery, had meditated in front of a wall for ten years until his shadow was carved into the stone. If so, Luo Ji could have inscribed his own shadow into this wall five times.

  The PDC chair stopped Cheng Xin and the fleet chief of staff. “Still ten minutes until the handover,” he whispered.

  In the last ten minutes of his fifty-four-year career as the Swordholder, Luo Ji remained steadfast.

  At the beginning of the Deterrence Era, Luo Ji had enjoyed a brief period of happiness. He had been reunited with his wife, Zhuang Yan, and daughter, Xia Xia, and relived the joy of two centuries ago. But within two years, Zhuang Yan took the child and left Luo Ji. There were many stories told about her reasons. A popular version went like this: While Luo Ji remained a savior in the eyes of the public, his image had already transformed in the minds of those he loved the most. Gradually, Zhuang Yan had come to realize that she was living with a man who had already annihilated one world and held the fate of two more in his hand. He was a strange monster who terrified her, and so she left with their child. Another popular story said that Luo Ji left them, instead, so that they could live a normal life. No one knew where Zhuang Yan and their child had gone—they were probably still alive, living tranquil, ordinary lives somewhere.

  His family had left him at the time when gravitational wave transmitters took over the task of deterrence from the circumsolar ring of nuclear bombs. Thereafter, Luo Ji embarked on his long career as the Swordholder.

  In this cosmic arena, Luo Ji faced not the fancy moves of Chinese sword fighting, resembling dance more than war; nor the flourishes of Western sword fighting, designed to show off the wielder’s skill; but the fatal blows of Japanese kenjutsu. Real Japanese sword fights often ended after a very brief struggle lasting no more than half a second to two seconds. 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.

  Luo Ji stared at the white wall with just such an intense glare, aimed at a world four light-years away. He knew that the sophons could show his gaze to the enemy, and his gaze was endowed with the chill of the underworld and the heaviness of the rocks above him, endowed with the determination to sacrifice everything. The gaze made the enemy’s heart palpitate and forced them to give up any ill-considered impulse.

  There was always an end to the gaze of the swordsmen, a final moment of truth in the contest. For Luo Ji, one participant in this universal contest, the moment when the sword was swung for the first and last time might never arrive.

  But it could also happen in the next second.

  In this manner, Luo Ji and Trisolaris stared at each other for fifty-four years. Luo Ji had changed from a carefree, irresponsible man into a true Wallfacer, who faced his wall for more than half a century; the protector of Earth civilization who, for five decades, was ready to deal the fatal blow at a moment’s notice.

  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.

  “It is time to hand over the final authority for the gravitational wave universal broadcast system.” The PDC chair broke the silence solemnly.

  Luo Ji did not move from his pose. The fleet chief of staff walked over, intending to help him get up, but Luo lifted a hand to stop him. Cheng Xin noticed that the motion of his arm was strong, energetic, without a hint of the hesitation one might expect in a centenarian. Then, Luo Ji stood up by himself, his posture steady. Cheng Xin was surprised to see that Luo Ji did not push against the ground with his hands as he uncrossed his legs and stood up. Even most young men couldn’t perform such a motion effortlessly.

  “Mr. Luo, this is Cheng Xin, your successor. Please pass the switch to her.”

  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.

  Then he turned to face Cheng Xin. The old and new Swordholders stood apart, silently. Their eyes met for only a moment, but in that moment, Cheng Xin felt a sharp ray of light sweeping across the dark night of her soul. In that gaze, she felt as light and thin as a sheet of paper, even transparent. She could not imagine what kind of enlightenment the old man in front of her had achieved after fifty-four years of facing the wall. She imagined his thoughts precipitating, becoming as dense and heavy as the crust above them or as ethereal as the blue sky above that. She had no way to know, not until and unless she herself had walked the same path. Other than a bottomless profundity, she could not read his gaze.

  With both hands, Luo Ji handed over the switch. With both hands, Cheng Xin accepted this heaviest object in the history of the Earth. And so, the fulcrum upon which two worlds rested moved from a 101-year-old man to a 29-year-old woman.

  The switch retained the warmth from Luo Ji’s hand. It really did resemble the hilt of a sword. It had four buttons, three on the side and one at the end. To prevent accidental activation, the buttons required some strength to press, and they had to be pressed in a certain order.

  Luo Ji backed up two steps and nodded at the three people in front of him. With steady, strong strides, he walked toward the door.

  Cheng Xin noticed that, throughout the entire process, no one offered a word of thanks to Luo Ji for his fifty-four years of service. She didn’t know if the PDC chair or the fleet chief of staff meant to say something, but she could not recall any of the rehearsals for the ceremony including plans for thanking the old Swordholder.

  Humankind did not feel grateful to Luo Ji.

  In the lobby, a few black-suited men stopped Luo Ji. One of them said, “Mr. Luo, on behalf of the Prosecution for the International Tribunal, we inform you that you have been accused of suspected mundicide. You are under arrest and will be investigated.”

  Luo Ji did not even spare them a glance as he continued to walk toward the elevator. The prosecutors stepped aside instinctively. Perhaps Luo Ji did not even notice them. The sharp light in his eyes had been extinguished, and in its place was a tranquility like the glow of a sunset. His three-century-long mission was finally over, and the heavy load of responsibility was off his shoulders. From now on, even if the feminized humankind saw him as a devil and a monster, they all had to admit that his victory was unsurpassed in the entire history of civilization.

  The steel door had remained open, and Cheng Xin heard the words spoken in the lobby. She felt an impulse to rush over and thank Luo Ji but stopped herself. Dejectedly, she watched him disappear into the elevator.

  The PDC chair and the fleet chief of staff left as well, saying nothing.

  With a deep rumble, the steel door closed. Cheng Xin felt her previous life seep out of the narrowing crack in the door like water escaping from a funnel. When the door shut completely, a new Cheng Xin was born.

  She looked at the red switch in her hand. It was al
ready a part of her. She and it would be inseparable from now on. Even when she slept, she had to keep it by her pillow.

  The white, semicircular hall was deathly silent, as though time was sealed in here and no longer flowed. It really did resemble a tomb. But this would be her entire world from now on. She decided that she had to give life to this place. She didn’t want to be like Luo Ji. She wasn’t a warrior, a duelist; she was a woman, and she needed to live here for a long time—perhaps a decade, perhaps half a century. Indeed, she had been preparing for this mission her whole life. Now that she stood at the starting point of her long journey, she felt calm.

  But fate had other ideas. Her career as the Swordholder, a career she had been preparing for since her birth, lasted only fifteen minutes from the moment she accepted the red switch.

  The Final Ten Minutes of the Deterrence Era, Year 62

  November 28, 4:17:34 P.M. to 4:27:58 P.M.: Deterrence Center

  The white wall turned bloody red, as though the hellish magma behind it had burned through. Highest alert. A line of white text appeared against the red background, each character a terrifying scream.

  Incoming strong-interaction space probes detected.

  Total number: 6.

  One is headed toward the L1 Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Sun.

  The other 5 are headed for the Earth in a 1-2-2 formation.

  Speed: 25,000 km/s. Estimated arrival time at the surface: 10 minutes.

  Five floating numbers appeared next to Cheng Xin, glowing with a green light. These were holographic buttons: Pressing any of them would bring up a corresponding floating window displaying more detailed information gathered from the advance warning system sweeping the region of space within fifteen million kilometers out from the Earth. The Solar System Fleet General Staff analyzed the data and passed it on to the Swordholder.

  Later, Earth would learn that the six droplets had been hiding just outside the fifteen-million-kilometer advance-warning zone. Three of them had relied on solar interference from the Sun to avoid detection, and the other three had disguised themselves in the orbiting space trash scattered in this region. Most of the space trash consisted of spent fuel from the early fusion reactors. Even without these measures, it would have been nearly impossible for the Earth to discover them outside the advance-warning zone because people had always assumed that the droplets were hiding in the asteroid belt, farther away.

  The thunderclap that Luo Ji had been waiting for for half a century arrived within five minutes of his departure, and struck Cheng Xin.

  Cheng Xin didn’t bother pressing any of the holographic buttons. She didn’t need any more information.

  Right away, she understood the profundity of her error. In the depths of her subconscious, the vision she had held of the mission of the Swordholder had always been utterly, completely wrong. To be sure, she had always planned for the worst, or at least made an effort to do so. Guided by specialists from the PDC and the fleet, she had studied the deterrence system in detail and discussed various possible scenarios with strategists. She had imagined scenarios even worse than the current one.

  But she had also committed a fatal error, an error that she did not and could not have realized. The error, however, was also the very reason she had been elected to be the second Swordholder.

  In her subconscious, she had never truly accepted that the events facing her now were possible.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 14 million kilometers. The closest one is at 13.5 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: nine minutes.

  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.

  When she faced that distant world as the Swordholder, Cheng Xin, unlike Luo Ji, did not feel this was a life-or-death contest. She thought of it as a game of chess. She would sit tranquilly before the chessboard, thinking of all the openings, anticipating the opponent’s attacks, and devising her own responses. She was ready to spend her life playing this game.

  But her opponents hadn’t bothered to move any pieces on the board. Instead, they had simply lifted the chessboard and smashed it at her head.

  The moment Cheng Xin accepted the red switch from Luo Ji, the six droplets had begun accelerating at maximum power toward the Earth. The enemy did not waste a single second.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 13 million kilometers. The closest one is at 12 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: eight minutes.

  Blankness.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 11.5 million kilometers. The closest one is at 10.5 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: seven minutes.

  Blankness, nothing but blankness. In addition to the white hall and the white letters, everything else around her had also turned a blank white. Cheng Xin seemed to be suspended in a milky universe, just like a bubble of milk sixteen billion light-years across. In this vast blankness, she found nothing to hold on to.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 10 million kilometers. The closest one is at 9 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: six minutes.

  What was she supposed to do?

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 9 million kilometers. The closest one is at 7.5 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: five minutes.

  The blankness began to dissipate. The forty-five-kilometer-thick crust above her reasserted its presence: sedimentary time. The lowest stratum, or the layer immediately above the Deterrence Center, had probably been deposited four billion years ago. The Earth had been born only five hundred million years before that. The turbid ocean was in its infancy, and nonstop flashes of lightning struck its surface; the Sun was a fuzzy ball of light in a haze-veiled sky, casting a crimson reflection over the sea. At short intervals, other bright balls of light streaked across the sky, crashing into the sea and trailing long tails of fire; these meteor strikes caused tsunamis that propelled gigantic waves to smash onto continents still laced with rivers of lava, raising clouds of vapor generated by fire and water that dimmed the Sun.…

  In contrast to this hellish but magnificent sight, the turbid water brewed a microscopic tale. Here, organic molecules were born from lightning flashes and cosmic rays, and they collided, fused, broke apart again—a long-lasting game played with building blocks for five hundred million years. Finally, a chain of organic molecules, trembling, split into two strands. The strands attracted other molecules around them until two identical copies of the original were made, and these split apart again and replicated themselves.… In this game of building blocks, the probability of producing such a self-replicating chain of organic molecules was so minuscule that it was as if a tornado had picked up a pile of metallic trash and deposited it as a fully-assembled Mercedes-Benz.

  But it happened, and so, a breathtaking history of 3.5 billion years had begun.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 7.5 million kilometers. The closest one is at 6 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: four minutes.

  The Archean Eon was followed by the Proterozoic Eon, each billions of years; then the Paleozoic: the Cambrian’s seventy million years, the Ordovician’s sixty million years, the Silurian’s forty million years, the Devonian’s fifty million years, the Carboniferous’s sixty-five million years, and the Permian’s fifty-five
million years; then the Mesozoic: the Triassic’s thirty-five million years, the Jurassic’s fifty-eight million years, and the Cretaceous’s seventy million years; then the Cenozoic: the Tertiary’s 64.5 million years and the Quaternary’s 2.5 million years.

  Then humanity appeared. Compared to the eons before, mankind’s history was but the blink of an eye. Dynasties and eras exploded like fireworks; the bone club tossed into the air by an ape turned into a spaceship. Finally, this 3.5-billion-year-long road full of trials and tribulations stopped in front of a tiny human individual, a single person out of the one hundred billion people who had ever lived on the Earth, holding a red switch.

  Average distance of incoming formation of strong-interaction space probes: approximately 6 million kilometers. The closest one is at 4.5 million kilometers. Estimated arrival time at the surface: three minutes.

  Four billion years were layered on top of Cheng Xin, suffocating her. Her subconscious tried to reach the surface, to catch a breath above it. In her subconscious, the surface was teeming with life, the most prominent form being the giant reptiles, including dinosaurs. Densely, they packed the ground, all the way to the horizon. Among the dinosaurs, between their legs and under their bellies, were the mammals, including humans. Still lower, under and between countless pairs of feet, were surging black currents of water: innumerable trilobites and ants.… In the sky, hundreds of billions of birds formed a dark, swirling vortex that blotted out the firmament, and giant pterodactyls could be seen among them from time to time.…

  Everything was deathly quiet. The eyes were the most terrifying: the eyes of dinosaurs; the eyes of trilobites and ants; the eyes of birds and butterflies; the eyes of bacteria.… The humans alone possessed one hundred billion pairs of eyes, equal to the number of stars in the Milky Way. Among them were the eyes of ordinary men and women, and the eyes of Da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Einstein.