The Dark Forest

by Cixin Liu

  Shi Qiang answered. “Hey, brother Luo. So now you remember me, eh? First, tell me: How’s Yan Yan doing?”

  “Fine. Excellent. Wonderful. Thank you!”

  “That’s good. So it turns out I’ve completed my final mission.”

  “Final mission? Where are you?”

  “Back home. I’m getting ready for hibernation.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got leukemia. I’m going to the future to cure it.”

  Luo Ji slammed his foot down on the brakes and stopped short. Zhuang Yan yelped. He looked at her in concern, but, seeing that nothing was wrong, he resumed talking to Shi Qiang.

  “Er … when did this happen?”

  “I got irradiated on a previous mission and then got ill last year.”

  “My god! I didn’t delay you, did I?”

  “With this sort of thing, delay isn’t relevant. Who knows what medicine will be like in the future?”

  “I’m truly sorry, Da Shi.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the job. I didn’t bother you about it because I figured we would be able to meet again sometime. But I’d like to tell you something in case we can’t.”

  “Please.”

  After a lengthy silence, Shi Qiang said, “‘Three things are unfilial, and having no issue is the greatest.’13 Brother Luo, the lineage of the Shi family four hundred years from now is in your hands.”

  The call disconnected. Luo Ji looked up at the sky, where the drone had disappeared. The empty blue wash of the sky was his heart.

  “You were talking to Uncle Shi?” Zhuang Yan asked.

  “Yes. Did you meet him?”

  “I met him. He’s a nice man. The day I left he accidentally broke the skin on his hand and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was pretty scary.”

  “Oh … Did he say anything to you?”

  “He said you were doing the most important thing in the world, and he asked me to help you.”

  Now the forest had entirely disappeared, leaving only grassland between them and the mountain. In silver and green, the composition of the world had turned simple and pure, and, to Luo Ji’s mind, more and more like the girl sitting beside him. He noticed a hint of melancholy in her eyes, and he became aware that she was sighing softly.

  “Yan Yan, what’s wrong?” he asked. It was the first time he had called her that, but he thought, If Da Shi can call her that, why can’t I?

  “It’s such a beautiful world, but when you think about how someday there may be no one here to see it, it’s quite sad.”

  “Won’t the aliens be here?”

  “I don’t think they appreciate beauty.”

  “Why?”

  “My dad said that people who are sensitive to beauty are good by nature, and if they’re not good, then they can’t appreciate beauty.”

  “Yan Yan, their approach to humans is a rational choice. It’s the responsible thing to do for the survival of their species, and has nothing to do with good or evil.”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Mr. Luo, you’re going to see them, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If they’re really like you say, and you defeat them in the Doomsday Battle, then, well, could you…” She tilted her head to look at him, and hesitated.

  He was about to say that the possibility of that was practically nil, but he controlled himself, and said, “Could I what?”

  “Why do you have to drive them out into space to die? Give them a plot of land, and let them coexist with us? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  Luo Ji dealt silently with his emotions for a moment, then pointed up to the sky and said, “Yan Yan, I’m not the only one who heard what you just said.”

  Zhuang Yan looked up nervously. “Oh, right. There must be tons of sophons around us.”

  “It might have been the Trisolar High Consul himself who heard you.”

  “And you’re all laughing at me, aren’t you?”

  “No. Yan Yan, do you know what I’m thinking right now?” He had a strong impulse to take hold of her slender left hand, which was lying next to the steering wheel, but he controlled himself. “I’m thinking that the person who might actually have a chance of saving the world is you.”

  “Me?” She burst out laughing.

  “You, except that you’re not enough. Or, rather, there aren’t enough people like you. If a third of humanity was like you, then Trisolaris might negotiate with us about the possibility of coexisting on the world. But now…” He let out a long sigh.

  Zhuang Yan flashed a helpless smile. “Mr. Luo, it hasn’t been easy for me. Going out into the world after graduation, I was like a fish swimming into the sea, where the water was muddy and I couldn’t see anything at all. I wanted to swim to clearer waters, but all that swimming got tiring.…”

  I wish I could help you swim to those waters, he said to himself.

  The road began to climb the mountain, and as the altitude increased, the vegetation grew sparse, exposing the naked black rock. For one stretch of road, they seemed to be driving on the surface of the moon. But soon they crossed the snowline and were surrounded by white, and a crisp chill filled the air. He grabbed down jackets from the travel bag in the backseat, and they put them on and continued ahead.

  Before long they reached a roadblock, a conspicuous sign in the middle of the road that warned, DANGER: AVALANCHE SEASON. ROAD AHEAD CLOSED. So they got out of the car and walked to the snow at the roadside.

  The sun had started its descent, casting shadows around them on the snowy slope. The pure snow was pale blue in color, almost weakly fluorescent. The jagged peaks in the distance were still lit and shone silver in all directions, a light that seemed to issue from the snow itself, as if it was this mountain and not the sun that had been illuminating the world all along.

  “Okay, now the painting’s entirely blank,” he said, sweeping his hands about him.

  Zhang Yan drank in the white world around her. “Mr. Luo, I actually did do a painting like this once. From a distance, it was a white sheet of paper, almost entirely blank, but closer in you would see fine reeds in the lower left corner, and in the upper right the traces of a disappearing bird. In the blank center, two infinitesimally tiny people.… It’s the painting I’m proudest of.”

  “I can imagine it. It must be magnificent.… So, Zhuang Yan, now that we’re in this blank world, are you interested in learning about your job?”

  She nodded, but looked anxious.

  “You know about the Wallfacer Project, and you know that its success relies on its incomprehensibility. At its highest level, no one on Earth or Trisolaris, apart from the Wallfacer himself, understands it. So, Zhuang Yan, no matter how inexplicable you find your work, it definitely has meaning. Don’t try to understand it. Just do it as best you can.”

  She nodded nervously. “Yes, I understand.” Then she laughed and shook her head. “I mean, I get it.”

  Looking at her amid the snow, the whiteness lost all dimension, and the world faded around her, leaving her its only presence. Two years before, when the literary image he had created had come to life in his imagination, he had tasted love. Now, in the blank space of this grand natural painting, he understood love’s ultimate mystery.

  “Zhuang Yan, your work is to make yourself happy.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “You must become the happiest woman on Earth. This is part of the Wallfacer plan.”

  The light of the peak that illuminated their world was reflected in her eyes, and complex feelings drifted across the purity of her gaze. The snowy peak absorbed all sound from the outside world, and he waited patiently in the silence, until finally she said, in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance, “Then … what should I do?”

  Luo Ji grew animated. “Whatever you want to! Tomorrow, or when we go back tonight, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you wish, and live life as you please. As a Wallfacer, I can help you realize all of it.�
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  “But I…” She looked at him helplessly. “Mr. Luo, I … I don’t need anything.”

  “That’s not possible. Everyone needs something! Aren’t young people always chasing after something?”

  “Have I ever chased after anything?” She slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Ah, yes. A carefree young woman like you might not need to. But you’ve got to have a dream, at least. You like painting, so have you ever thought of having an individual exhibition at the world’s largest gallery or art museum?”

  She laughed, as if Luo Ji had turned into a foolish child. “Mr. Luo, I paint for myself. I’ve never thought about that stuff.”

  “Well then. You must have dreamed of love,” he said without hesitation. “You’ve got the means now, so why not go find it?”

  The sunset was draining its light from the snowy peak. Zhuang Yan’s eyes darkened, and her expression softened. She said gently, “Mr. Luo, that’s not something you can go in search of.”

  “True.” He calmed himself down and nodded. “Then, how about this: Don’t think long term, just think about tomorrow. Tomorrow, you know? Where do you want to go tomorrow? What do you want to do? What will make you happy tomorrow? You’re able to come up with something, surely.”

  She thought earnestly for a while, and finally said, hesitantly, “If I tell you, can you really make it happen?”

  “Of course. Tell me.”

  “Then, Mr. Luo, can you take me to the Louvre?”

  * * *

  When Tyler removed the blindfold, his eyes weren’t adjusted to the light and he had to squint. Despite the bright lights affixed to the rock walls of this mountain cave, it was dark here—quite dark, in fact—because the light was absorbed by the walls. He smelled antiseptic, and noticed the cave was set up like a field hospital, with lots of open aluminum cases containing neatly packed drugs, as well as oxygen tanks, small UV disinfectant cabinets, mobile shadowless operating lamps, and several portable medical devices that looked like X-ray machines and defibrillators. It looked like it had just been unpacked and could be re-boxed at any time. Tyler saw two assault rifles hanging on a rock wall, but their similarity in color to the rock behind made them easy to miss. A stony-faced man and woman walked past him. They weren’t in white lab coats, but they were definitely a doctor and a nurse.

  The bed, near the cave entrance, was a sea of white: the curtains behind it, the old man under the bedsheets, the old man’s long beard, the scarf around his head, and even his face—all white. The light in that area was more like candlelight, obscuring some of the whiteness and casting a weak golden sheen across the remainder, turning the place into a classical oil painting of a saint.

  Tyler spat inwardly. “Damn it to hell. How did it come to this?”

  As he walked over to the bed, he tried to overcome the pain in his hip and inner thigh by adopting a stately, steady pace. He stopped at the bedside, before the man that he and his government had dreamed of finding for so many years. He could hardly believe he was real. He looked at the old man’s pale face, and it was like the media always said: This was the kindliest face in the world.

  Man truly was a peculiar animal.

  “I’m honored to meet you,” Tyler said with a slight bow.

  “As am I,” the old man said politely. He didn’t move, but while his voice was reed-thin, it could render power inert but never snap, like spider silk. The old man gestured to the end of the bed, and Tyler sat down gingerly, not knowing whether or not it was intended as kindness. There was no chair, after all. The old man said, “You must be tired. Was it your first time on a mule?”

  “Ah, no. I rode one when I visited the Grand Canyon.” Although his legs hadn’t hurt so much back then. “Are you doing well?”

  The old man slowly shook his head. “Surely you can see that I don’t have long to live.” A playful light suddenly entered his deep eyes. “You’re about the least likely person to want me to die of illness. I am truly sorry.”

  The irony in this last sentence pricked Tyler, but it was the truth. One of his greatest fears had once been that the man would die of illness or old age. The secretary of defense had prayed on many an occasion that an American cruise missile or Special Forces bullet would drop on the man’s head before he died of natural causes, even if it happened just a minute before death. Natural death would be the man’s greatest triumph, and mark the failure of the war on terror. Even now, the man was edging close to glory. There had been opportunities, of course: Once a Predator drone had snapped his picture in the courtyard of a mosque in the mountains of northern Afghanistan. Simply crashing the drone into him would have made history, not to mention the fact that it had been carrying Hellfire missiles that day. But the young officer on duty lacked the courage to make a unilateral decision once he made the positive ID. Instead, he had reported it up the command chain, and when they checked again the target was gone. Tyler, roused from his bed, had erupted in anger and shattered a precious piece of Chinese porcelain he had at home.

  Tyler wanted to avoid the awkward subject, so he brought out his briefcase and set it on the bed. “I have a small gift for you,” he said, opening the case. He took out a set of hardcover books. “This is the latest Arabic version.”

  With effort, the old man reached out a hand as thin as kindling and plucked out the bottommost volume. “Ah, I’ve only read the first trilogy. I had someone buy the others, but I never had the time to read them, and then I lost them.… Excellent, thank you. I like them very much.”

  “There’s a legend that says you named your organization after these novels.”14

  The old man set the book gently to one side and smiled. “Let it stay a legend. You have your wealth and technology. Legends are all we have.”

  Tyler picked up the book the old man had set down, and faced him like a pastor holding a Bible. “I’ve come to make you into Seldon.”

  The same playful light returned to the old man’s eyes. “Oh? What do I need to do?”

  “Let your organization be preserved.”

  “Preserved until when?”

  “Until four centuries from now. Until the Doomsday Battle.”

  “And you think that’s possible?”

  “Yes, if it continues to develop. Let its soul and spirit permeate the space force so that your organization will be part of it forever.”

  “And you value that so highly because?” The sarcasm in the old man’s voice grew stronger.

  “Because it’s one of the few armed forces available to humanity that uses lives as a weapon. You know, fundamental science has been frozen by the sophons, and this imposes corresponding limitations on advances in computer science and artificial intelligence. In the Doomsday Battle, space fighters will still be piloted by humans, and that requires an army who possesses that spirit. Ball lightning requires a close-range attack.”

  “What else have you brought with you besides those books?”

  Tyler stood up excitedly from the bed. “That depends on what you need. So long as you can ensure the preservation of your organization, I can give you anything.”

  The old man motioned for Tyler to sit down. “I sympathize with you. After so many years, you still don’t know what our needs truly are.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “Weapons? Money? No, no. What we need is far more precious. The organization doesn’t exist because of Seldon’s ambitious goals. You can’t get a sane, rational person to believe in and die for that. It exists because it possesses something, something that’s its air and blood, and without which the organization would wither away immediately.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hatred.”

  Tyler was silent.

  “On the one hand, thanks to our common enemy, our hatred of the West has faded. On the other, the human race that the Trisolarans want to wipe out includes the hated West, so to us, perishing together would be a joy. So we don’t hate the Trisolarans.” The old man spr
ead his hands. “You see, hatred is a treasure more precious than gold or diamonds, and a weapon keener than any in the world, but now it’s gone. It’s not yours to give back. So the organization, like me, does not have long to live.”

  Tyler remained silent.

  “As for Seldon, I’d say his plan is an impossible one.”

  Tyler let out a sigh and sat back down on the bed. “You mean you’ve read the ending?”

  The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. “No, I haven’t read it. That’s just what I think. What? Does the Seldon Plan fail in the book? The author is an exceptional man, if that’s the case. I’d imagined he wrote a happy ending, may Allah protect him.”

  “Asimov’s been dead for many years.”

  “Ah, the wise always die young. May he find heaven, whichever one it is.…”

  For most of the way back, Tyler was not blindfolded, giving him the opportunity to see the steep, barren mountains of Afghanistan. The young man who led his mule even trusted him enough to leave his assault rifle hanging from the saddle, right next to Tyler’s hand.

  “Have you killed anyone with that gun?” he asked.

  The young man didn’t understand, but an older, unarmed man riding next to them answered for him. “No. There hasn’t been any fighting for a long time.”

  The young man looked up questioningly at Tyler. He had no beard on his childlike face, and his eyes were as clear as the blue sky of western Asia.

  Mom, I’m going to be a firefly.

  * * *

  At the Fourth PDC Wallfacer Hearing, Tyler appeared fatigued from his long journey as he submitted revisions to his mosquito swarm plan. “I want every fighter in the mosquito fleet to be equipped with two control systems: a pilot-operated mode and a drone mode. Switching to drone mode will allow me to control all of the fighters in the fleet.”

  “You’re very hands-on.” Hines snickered.

  “I’ll be able to instruct the fleet to form a mosquito group and voyage to the battle zone, then tell it to disassemble and reenter formation. When it engages the enemy fleet, I will command the weapons module on each fighter to select its own target and attack automatically. I’d imagine that even with the lockdown on the fundamentals of physics, current AI technology will develop enough in the next three centuries to permit that.”