by Cixin Liu
Then Zhang Yuanchao slammed the table with a noise three times louder, knocking over two of the cups and startling a yelp from the Sichuan woman. He pointed his finger at the other two in turn. “Fine. You’re an elite, and you’ve got money. That leaves me. What the hell do I have? I’m just a poor man, so it serves me right that my line will be wiped out?” With obvious effort he restrained himself from kicking over the table, then turned and stormed out. Yang Jinwen followed him.
* * *
The Second Wallbreaker carefully put new goldfish into the bowl. Like Evans, he enjoyed isolation, but he needed the companionship of beings other than humans. He often spoke to the goldfish like he spoke to the Trisolarans, two forms of life whose long-term presence on Earth he was looking forward to.
Just then the sophon’s text appeared on his retina.
I’ve recently been studying A Story of Three Kingdoms, and like you said, deceit and trickery are an art, just like the markings on a snake.
“My Lord, once again you bring up the snake.”
The more beautiful the markings on a snake, the more fearsome it looks. We didn’t use to care about humanity escaping, so long as they stopped existing in the Solar System, but now we have adjusted our plans and have decided to prevent humanity from fleeing. Letting an enemy whose thoughts are totally opaque flee into the cosmos is very dangerous.
“Do you have a specific plan in mind?”
The fleet has made adjustments to its Solar System deployment. It will detour in four directions at the Kuiper Belt6 and encircle the Solar System.
“If humanity really flees, your fleet will be too late to do anything by the time they do.”
That is true, so we require your assistance. The next mission of the ETO is to halt or delay humanity’s escape plans.
The Wallbreaker smiled. “My Lord, you really don’t have to worry about that at all. No large-scale flight of humanity will ever happen.”
Even given the present, limited space for technological development, humanity might be able to build generation ships.
“The greatest obstacle to flight is not technology.”
Then is it disputes among countries? This UN special session may resolve that problem, and if it can’t, then developed countries are entirely capable of brushing aside the opposition of developing countries and forcing a plan through.
“The greatest obstacle to flight is not disputes among countries, either.”
Then what is it?
“Disputes among people. The question of who goes and who stays behind.”
That doesn’t seem like a problem to us.
“We thought so at first, but it turns out to be an insurmountable obstacle.”
Can you explain?
“You may be familiar with human history, but you will probably find this hard to comprehend: Who goes and who remains involves basic human values, values which in the past promoted progress in human society, but which, in the face of ultimate disaster, are a trap. Right now, the majority of humanity has not realized how deep this trap is. Lord, please believe my words. No human can escape this trap.”
* * *
“Uncle Zhang, you don’t have to decide now. You’ve asked all the necessary questions, and it’s not a small amount of money, after all,” Shi Xiaoming said to Zhang Yuanchao, his face a picture of serenity.
“It’s not that. Is the plan for real? The TV says—”
“Don’t you mind what the TV says. Two weeks ago the government spokesperson said that freezing accounts was impossible, but now look what’s happened.… Think reasonably. You’re an ordinary man, and you’re thinking about the continuation of your family line. What about the president and the premier? Won’t they be thinking about the continuation of the Chinese people? And the UN about the continuation of the human race? This UN special session is actually an international cooperative plan that will formally launch the Human Escape Plan. This is a pressing matter.”
Lao Zhang slowly nodded. “It does seem that way when you think about it. But I still feel like escape is a long way off. Should I really be worrying about it?”
“Uncle Zhang, you misunderstand. Escape can’t be all that far off. Do you think the escape ships will only take off three or four hundred years from now? If that were true, then the Trisolaran Fleet could catch them easily.”
“Then when will the ships head out?”
“You’re about to have a grandson, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your grandson will see those ships take off.”
“He’ll be aboard one?”
“No, that’s impossible. But his grandson could be.”
“That’s…” Zhang worked it out. “About seventy or eighty years.”
“It’ll be longer than that. The wartime government will tighten population controls and build delays into the birth restrictions, so it’ll be forty years to a generation. The ships will take off in about one hundred twenty years.”
“That’s pretty quick. Can they be built in time?”
“Uncle Zhang, think back to what things were like one hundred twenty years ago. It was still the Qing Dynasty! It took over a month to go from Hangzhou to Beijing, and the emperor had to spend days cooped up in a sedan chair to get to his summer retreat. Now it’s less than three days from Earth to the moon. Technology develops fast, which means that the pace of development is always on the increase. If you add to that the fact that the whole world is pouring all its energy into space technology, then there’s no question at all that spaceships can be created in about one hundred twenty years.”
“Isn’t space travel pretty dangerous?”
“That’s true, but won’t Earth be dangerous then, too? Look at how things are changing now. The country’s main economic force is being used to establish a space fleet, which is not a commercial good and will not bring in one cent in profit. People’s lives will only get worse. Add to that the sheer size of our base population, and simply having enough to eat becomes a problem. And then take a look at the international situation. Developing countries don’t have the ability to escape, and developed countries have refused to socialize their technology. But the poorer and smaller countries won’t give up. Aren’t they threatening to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? And they may take more extreme actions in the future. Who knows—in a hundred and twenty years, before the alien fleet even arrives, the world might be engulfed in the flames of war! Who knows what sort of life your great-grandson’s generation will lead. Besides, the escape ships aren’t what you imagine. Comparing them to the Shenzhou spaceship and the ISS is ridiculous. The ships will be big, each of them a small city, and a complete ecosystem to boot. Just like a tiny Earth. Humanity can live on them forever without any outside supplies. And most importantly, there will be hibernation. We can do that now, even. The passengers on board will spend most of their time in hibernation, where a century feels like no more than a day, until they reach the new world or they reach an accord with the Trisolarans to return to the Solar System. Then they’ll wake up. Isn’t that a much better life than suffering back on Earth?”
Zhang Yuanchao thought this over in silence.
Shi Xiaoming went on. “Of course, to be completely honest with you, space travel is indeed a dangerous thing. No one knows what sort of hazards they might encounter in space. I know you’re mostly doing this for the continuation of your Zhang lineage, but don’t let it worry you…”
Zhang stared at him as if he had been pricked. “How can you young people say things like that? Why wouldn’t I worry?”
“Let me finish, Uncle Zhang. I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that even if you don’t plan on sending your descendants to flee in spaceships, this fund is worth buying, guaranteed. Once it’s available for the general public to buy, the price will soar. There are lots of rich people, you know, and there aren’t many other avenues for investment, and hoarding is illegal. Besides, the more money you have, the more you think about preserving your line,
wouldn’t you say?”
“Right. I know that.”
“Uncle Zhang, I’m being totally honest here. The escape fund is currently in a preliminary phase and has only a small number of special internal salespeople. It wasn’t easy for me to get in on the quota. At any rate, when you’ve thought it over, give me a call, and I’ll help you fill out the paperwork.”
When Shi Xiaoming had gone, Lao Zhang stood on the balcony looking out at the sky, which hung a little hazily over the halo of the city, and said to himself, My children, will your grandpa really send you someplace where night lasts forever?
* * *
When King Wen of Zhou next set foot onto the desolation of Three Body world, a small sun was rising. Although it did not give much heat, it lit the wasteland quite clearly. The wasteland was completely empty.
“Is there anyone here? Anyone?”
Then his eyes lit up as he saw someone riding a galloping horse from the horizon. Recognizing him at a distance as Newton, he ran toward him, waving wildly. Newton soon reached his side, reined in his horse, and, after dismounting, hurriedly adjusted his wig.
“What are you shouting for? Who restarted this damned place?”
King Wen didn’t answer his question, but took his hand and said urgently, “Comrade, my comrade, listen to me. The Lord has not abandoned us. Or, rather, Its abandonment was for a reason, and It will need us in the future. It…”
“I know that,” Newton said, impatiently brushing aside King Wen’s hand. “The sophons sent me a message too.”
“So that means that the Lord sent a message to lots of us at the same time. Excellent. The organization’s contact with the Lord won’t ever be monopolized again.”
“Does the organization still exist?” Newton wiped away sweat with a handkerchief.
“Of course it exists. The Redemptionists totally collapsed after the global strike, and the Survivors split off and developed into an independent force. Only the Adventists are left in the org now.”
“The strike purified the org. This is a good thing.”
“Since you’re here, you must be an Adventist. But you seem to be out of the loop. Are you on your own?”
“My only contact is with one other comrade, and he didn’t tell me anything but this Web address. I barely escaped the awful global strike with my life.”
“Your escape instincts were ably demonstrated during the Qin Shi Huang era.”
Newton looked around. “Is it safe?”
“Of course. We’re at the bottom of a multilevel maze, and it’s practically impossible to discover. Anyone who managed to storm their way in here wouldn’t be able to trace user locations. For security reasons, after the strike, the org put every branch into isolation with mutual contact kept to a minimum. We need a place to meet, and a buffer area for new members. This is more secure than the real world.”
“Have you noticed that attacks on the organization in the real world have slackened considerably?”
“They’re clever. They know the org is the only means of obtaining intelligence on the Lord, as well as the only opportunity of getting their hands on the technology that the Lord passes to us, even though there’s only a minute chance of that happening. That’s the reason they’ll let the org continue to exist to a certain extent, but I think they’ll come to regret it.”
“The Lord isn’t so clever. It doesn’t even comprehend the ability to be clever.”
“So It needs us. The existence of the org is valuable, and all comrades should know of this as soon as possible.”
Newton mounted his horse. “Very well. I’ve got to go. I’ll stay longer once I’ve verified that it’s really secure here.”
“I guarantee to you that it’s absolutely safe.”
“If that’s true, then there’ll be more comrades gathering here next time. Good-bye.” Saying this, Newton urged his horse off into the distance. By the time its hoofbeats had dissipated, the small sun had become a shooting star, and a cloak of darkness descended upon the world.
* * *
Luo Ji lay limp on the bed, watching the woman put on clothes after a shower through eyes still hazy from sleep. The sun, already high in the sky, shone through the curtains and turned her into a graceful projected silhouette, like a scene from a black-and-white movie he had forgotten the name of. But what he needed to remember now was her name. What was she called? Keep calm. First, her last name: If it was Zhang, then she would be Zhang Shan. Or was it Chen? Then, Chen Jingjing … no, those were previous women. He thought about looking at his phone, but it was still in his pocket and he had tossed his clothes on the carpet. Besides, they had only known each other for a little while and he hadn’t entered her number into his phone yet. The important thing now was not to have it be like that one time he’d asked outright—the consequences had been disastrous. So he turned to the television, which she had turned on and muted. On the screen, seated around a large round table, the UN Security Council was in session—wait, it wasn’t the Security Council anymore, but he couldn’t remember its new name. He was really out of it.
“Turn it up,” he said. His words sounded distant without a term of endearment, but he didn’t care about that now.
“You really seem to be interested.” She sat combing her hair but didn’t adjust the sound.
Luo Ji reached over to the bedside table and picked up a lighter and a cigarette and lit it as he stretched his bare feet out of his towel and wiggled his big toes in satisfaction.
“Look at you. You call yourself a scholar?” She watched his wriggling toes in the mirror.
“A young scholar,” he added, “with few accomplishments. But that’s because I don’t put in the effort. I’m actually full of inspiration. Sometimes, what other people might spend a lifetime working on, I can figure out with a moment’s thought.… Believe it or not, I was almost famous once.”
“Because of that subculture stuff?”
“No, not that. It was another thing I was working on at the same time. I established cosmic sociology.”
“What?”
“It’s the sociology of aliens.”
She snickered, then tossed her comb aside and began putting on her makeup.
“Don’t you know about the celebrity tendency in academia? I could’ve been a star.”
“Alien researchers are a dime a dozen these days.”
“That’s only after all this new crap came out,” Luo Ji said as he pointed at the mute television, which was still showing the large table and the people seated round it. The segment was awfully long. Was it live? “Academics didn’t use to study aliens. They sifted through piles of old paper and become celebrities that way. But later the public got tired of the cultural necrophilia of that old crew, and that’s when I came along.” He stretched his bare arms toward the ceiling. “Cosmic sociology, aliens, and lots of alien races. More of them than there are people on Earth, tens of billions! The producer of that Lecture Room television program talked about doing a series with me, but then it all actually happened, and then…” He swept a circle with a finger, and sighed.
She wasn’t listening too closely to him, reading the subtitles on the television instead: “‘We reserve all options in regard to Escapism…’ What does that mean?”
“Who’s talking?”
“It looks like Karnoff.”
“He’s saying that Escapism needs to be treated as harshly as the ETO, and that a guided missile needs to be dropped on anyone making a Noah’s Ark.”
“That’s kind of harsh.”
“No,” he said forcefully. “It’s the wisest strategy. I came up with it long ago. And even if it doesn’t come to that, no one’s going to fly away, anyway. You ever read a book by Liang Xiaosheng called Floating City?”
“I haven’t. It’s pretty old, isn’t it?”
“Right. I read it when I was a kid. Shanghai’s about to fall into the ocean, and a group of people go house to house seizing life preservers and then destroying them en masse, f
or the sole purpose of making sure that no one would live if everyone couldn’t. I remember in particular there was one little girl who took the group to the door of one house and cried out, ‘They still have one!’”
“You’re just the sort of asshole that always sees society as trash.”
“Bullshit. The fundamental axiom of economics is the human mercenary instinct. Without that assumption, the entire field would collapse. There isn’t any fundamental axiom for sociology yet, but it might be even darker than economics. The truth always picks up dust. A small number of people could fly off into space, but if we knew it would come to that, why would we have bothered in the first place?”
“Bothered with what?”
“Why would we have had the Renaissance? Why the Magna Carta? Why the French Revolution? If humanity had stayed divided into classes, kept in place by the law’s iron rule, then when the time came, the ones who needed to leave would leave, and the ones who had to stay behind would stay. If this took place in the Ming or Qing Dynasties, then I’d leave, of course, and you’d stay behind. But that’s not possible now.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you took off right now,” she said.
Which was, in fact, the truth. They had reached a mutual parting of ways. He had been able to reach this point with all of his previous lovers, never early or late. He was especially pleased with his control over the pace this time. He had known her for just one week, and the breakup proceeded smoothly, as elegantly as a rocket discarding its booster.
He backtracked to an earlier topic: “Hey, it wasn’t my idea to establish cosmic sociology, you know. Do you want to know whose it was? You’re the only one I’m going to tell, so don’t get scared.”
“Whatever. I can’t believe most of what you say anyway, apart from one thing.”
“Uh … forget it. What one thing?”
“Come on and get up. I’m hungry.” She picked up his clothes from the carpet and threw them on the bed.
They ate breakfast in the main restaurant of the hotel. Most of the occupants of the tables around them looked serious, and at times they could catch snatches of conversation. Luo Ji didn’t want to listen, but he was like a candle on a summer night. The words, like insects crowding around the flame, kept working their way into his head: Escapism, socialized technology, ETO, transformation to a wartime economy, equatorial base, charter amendment, PDC, near-Earth primary warning and defensive perimeter, independent integrated mode …
