by Cixin Liu
The sound of a gunshot from the lake.
Luo Ji returned home late that evening after the child was sound asleep. Zhuang Yan asked softly, “Did Mr. Tyler leave?”
“Yes. He’s gone,” he said wearily.
“He seemed worse off than you.”
“Yes. That’s because he didn’t take an easy path.… Yan, have you watched TV recently?”
“No. I…” She paused, and Luo Ji knew what she was thinking. With the outside world growing more serious by the day, and the gap widening between life here and life outside, the difference made her uneasy. “Is our life really part of the Wallfacer plan?” she asked, looking at him with that same innocent face.
“Of course. What is there to doubt?”
“But can we truly be happy when all humanity is unhappy?”
“My love, your responsibility when all of humanity is unhappy is to make yourself happy. With Xia Xia, your happiness gains a point, and the Wallfacer plan gains a point toward its success.”
Zhuang Yan stared silently at him. The language of facial expressions she had envisioned in front of the Mona Lisa five years ago seemed to have been partially realized between her and Luo Ji. More and more, he could read her mind through her eyes, and what he read now was, How can I believe that?
Luo Ji pondered this for a long time, and finally said, “Yan, everything has an ending. The sun and the universe will die one day, so why should humanity believe that it ought to be immortal? Listen, this world is paranoid. Fighting a hopeless war is a fool’s errand, so look at the Trisolar Crisis from a different perspective and leave your cares behind. Not just the ones involving the crisis, but everything else from before that. Use the time that’s left to enjoy life. Four hundred years! Or, if we refuse the Doomsday Battle, then nearly five hundred. That’s a fair amount of time. Humanity used the same period to go from the Renaissance to the information age, and in the same space could create a carefree, comfortable life. Five idyllic centuries without needing to worry about the distant future, where the sole responsibility is to enjoy life. How wonderful.…”
He realized that he had spoken unwisely. Claiming that the happiness of her and the child were part of the plan added another layer of protection to her life by making her happiness into a responsibility. This was the only way to ensure that she maintained a balanced mind in the face of the cruel world. He could never resist her eternally innocent eyes, so he didn’t dare look at her when she questioned him. But now, because of the Tyler factor, he had involuntarily told the truth.
“When you say that, are you being a Wallfacer?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I am,” he said, to fix the situation.
But her eyes said, You really did seem to believe that!
UN Planetary Defense Council, Wallfacer Project Hearing #89
At the start of the hearing, the rotating chair spoke to strongly urge that Luo Ji be required to attend the next hearing, arguing that refusal to participate was not part of the Wallfacer plan because the PDC’s supervisory authority over the Wallfacers trumped the Wallfacers’ own strategic plans. The proposal was unanimously adopted by all permanent member representatives, and with the emergence of the first Wallbreaker and the suicide of Wallfacer Tyler in mind, the other two Wallfacers attending the meeting heard the unspoken implications of the chairman’s words.
Hines spoke first. His neuroscience-based plan was still in its infancy, but he described the equipment he was envisioning as a basis for further research. He called it the Resolving Imager. Based on computed tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance, it operated by scanning in all cross sections of the brain at once, which required cross sectional accuracy on the scale of the internal structure of brain cells and neurons. This would bring the number of simultaneous CT scans to several million, to be synthesized by computer into a digital model of the brain. Other technical requirements were even greater: The scan needed to be conducted at a rate of twenty-four frames per second to produce a dynamic synthetic model that could capture all brain activity at a neuron-level resolution, making it possible to precisely observe thought activity in the brain, or even replay all neural activity throughout the thinking process.
Then Rey Diaz described the progress of his plan. After five years of research, the digital star model for super-high-yield nuclear weapons had been completed and was now being thoroughly debugged.
Next, the PDC scientific advisory panel presented a report on its feasibility study of the two Wallfacers’ plans.
The advisory panel felt that although there were in theory no obstacles to Hines’s Resolving Imager, the technical difficulties far exceeded current conditions, and modern CT scanning was about as far from RI technology as black-and-white film was from modern high-definition cameras. Data processing presented the biggest technical hurdle to the RI device, because scanning and modeling an object the size of the human brain with neuron-level precision required power that was unavailable to modern computers.
The obstacle to Rey Diaz’s stellar bomb was the same: present computing power was insufficient. After inspecting the calculations required by the completed portion of the model, the panel’s expert group felt that the most powerful of today’s computers would take twenty years to model a hundredth of a second of the fusion process. Since the model would need to be run repeatedly in the course of research, practical application was an impossibility.
The panel’s chief computer scientist said, “Right now, computer technology based on traditional integrated circuits and Von Neumann architecture is nearing the limit of its technological development. Moore’s law is going to collapse. Of course, we can still squeeze out the last few drops of lemonade from these traditional electronic and technological lemons. In our opinion, even given the present deceleration in supercomputer progress, the computing power required by the two plans is still achievable. It just requires time. Optimistically, twenty to thirty years. Those goals, if they are reached, will represent the peak of human computing technology, and any further progress will be difficult. With frontier physics under sophon lockdown, the next-gen and quantum computers that we once dreamed of are now very unlikely to be realized.”
“We’ve reached the wall that the sophons have erected across our scientific road,” the chair said.
“Then there’s nothing that we can do for twenty years,” Hines said.
“Twenty years is the most optimistic estimate. As a scientist, you ought to know what cutting-edge research is like.”
“Then the only thing to do is hibernate and wait the arrival of capable computers,” Rey Diaz said.
“I’ve decided to hibernate, too,” Hines said.
“If that’s the case, then I will ask the two of you to greet my successor in twenty years,” the chair said with a smile.
The mood of the hearing relaxed. Now that the two Wallfacers had decided to enter hibernation, the hearing’s participants sighed with relief. The emergence of the first Wallbreaker and his Wallfacer’s suicide had dealt a heavy blow to the entire project. Tyler’s suicide in particular had been a foolish act. If he had lived, people would still be in doubt about whether the mosquito swarm had really been his plan. His death was tantamount to a final confirmation of the existence of the terrible plan. He had vaulted out of the vicious cycle at the cost of his life, prompting increasing murmurs of criticism of the Wallfacer Project among the international community. Public opinion demanded further restrictions on Wallfacer power, but the very nature of the Wallfacer Project meant that too many restrictions would make it difficult for the Wallfacers to conduct their strategic deceptions, rendering the entire project meaningless. The Wallfacer Project possessed a leadership structure that human society had never before seen, and it required time to adjust and adapt to it. It was clear that the hibernation of the two Wallfacers would provide a buffer period for that to take place.
A few days later, in a top-secret underground structure, Rey Diaz and Hines entered hibernation.
* * *
Luo Ji found himself in an ominous dream. He dreamt he was walking the halls of the Louvre. It was a dream he had never had before, because the past five years of bliss had given him no cause to dream of previous joys. In this dream, he was alone with the loneliness that had been absent for five years. His every footstep reverberated through the palace halls, and something seemed to leave him with every reverberation, until at last he dared not take another step. In front of him was the Mona Lisa. She no longer smiled, but looked on him with compassion in her eyes. When his footsteps stopped, the sound of the outdoor fountains trickled in and gradually grew louder, at which point he awoke to find that the sound was coming from the real world. It was raining.
Luo Ji reached out to hold his beloved’s hand, and discovered that his dream had become a reality.
Zhuang Yan was gone.
He rolled out of bed and entered the nursery, where a lamp was softly glowing, but Xia Xia wasn’t there. On the little bed, tidily made up, was one of Zhuang Yan’s paintings, a favorite of both of theirs. It was practically blank, and from a distance it looked like a sheet of paper. Closer in, you could see fine reeds in the lower left, and in the upper right the traces of a vanishing goose. In the blank center were two infinitesimally tiny people. But now, a graceful line of text had been added to it:
My love, we’re waiting for you at doomsday.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Could such a dream life last forever? It was bound to happen, so don’t worry. You’re mentally prepared for it, Luo Ji told himself, but a wave of dizziness came over him. As he picked up the painting and went toward the living room, his legs quavered and he felt as if he was floating.
The living room was empty, but the embers in the fireplace glowed a hazy red that made everything look like melting ice. The rain continued outside. It was to the same sound of rain that she had walked out of his dreams five years ago, and now she had returned to them, taking their child with her.
He picked up the phone to call Kent, but then he heard soft footsteps outside. A woman’s footsteps, but not Zhuang Yan’s. Even so, he tossed the phone down and went outside.
Luo Ji immediately recognized the slender figure standing on the porch in the rain, even though he could only see a silhouette.
“Hello, Dr. Luo,” Secretary General Say said.
“Hello … Where are my wife and child?”
“They’re waiting for you at doomsday,” she said, repeating the words in the painting.
“Why?”
“This is a PDC resolution, to let you work and fulfill your Wallfacer responsibilities. No harm will come to them, and children are better suited to hibernation than adults.”
“You’ve kidnapped them! That’s criminal!”
“We did not kidnap anyone.”
Luo Ji’s heart quaked at the implications of Say’s statement, and he pushed them out of his mind rather than face that reality. “I said that having them here was part of the plan!”
“But after a thorough investigation, the PDC decided that it was not part of the plan, and so took steps to prompt you to get to work.”
“Even if it’s not kidnapping, you took away my child without my consent, and that’s against the law.” When he realized who he was including in “you,” his heart quaked again and he leaned back feebly against the pillar behind him.
“True, but it is well within acceptability. Do not forget, Dr. Luo, that this and all of the resources you have tapped do not fall under existing legal frameworks, so the UN’s actions in the present time of crisis can be justified under the law.”
“Are you still working on behalf of the UN?”
“Yes.”
“You were reelected?”
“Yes.”
He wanted to change the subject to avoid facing the cold facts, but he failed. What will I do without them? What will I do without them? his heart asked over and over. Finally it slipped out of his mouth as he slid down the pillar to the ground. It felt like everything was collapsing around him, turning to magma from the top down, except that this time the magma was burning and pooled inside his heart.
“They’re still here, Dr. Luo. They’re waiting for you safe and sound in the future. You’ve always been a sober person, and you must become even more sober now. If not for all humanity, then for your family.” Say looked down at the ground, where Luo Ji sat beside the column on the brink of a breakdown.
Then a gust of wind blew rain onto the porch. Its refreshing chill and Say’s words managed to cool the fire raging in Luo Ji’s heart to an extent.
“This was your plan from the beginning, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but this step was taken only when there was no other choice.”
“So she was … When she came, was she really a woman who did traditional painting?”
“Yes.”
“From the Central Academy of Fine Arts?”
“Yes.”
“Then was she…”
“Everything you saw was the real her. Everything you knew about her was true. Everything that made her her: Her past life, her family, her personality, and her mind.”
“You mean she really was that kind of woman?”
“Yes. Do you really think she could have faked it for five years? That’s how she really was. Innocent and gentle, like an angel. She didn’t fake anything, including her love for you, which was very real.”
“Then how could she carry out such a cruel deception? To never let anything slip for five years?”
“How do you know she never let anything slip? Her soul was shrouded in melancholy from the first time you saw her on that rainy night five years ago. She didn’t hide it. That melancholy stayed with her for five years like an ever-present background music that never stopped the whole time, and that’s why you didn’t notice.”
Now he understood. When he first saw her, what had it been that had touched the softest place in his heart? That made him feel like the entire world was an injury to her? That made him willing to protect her with his life? It was that gentle sadness concealed within her clear, innocent eyes—a sadness that, like the light in the fireplace, shone gently through her beauty. It was indeed an imperceptible background music that had quietly permeated his subconscious and pulled him step by step into the abyss of love.
“I can’t find them, can I?” he asked.
“That’s right. Like I said, this is a PDC resolution.”
“Then I’ll go with them to doomsday.”
“You may.”
Luo Ji had imagined he would be turned down, but—just as when he had given up his Wallfacer status—there was practically no space between his statement and Say’s reply. He knew that things weren’t as easy as that. He asked, “Is there a problem?”
“No. This time it really is fine. You know, since the birth of the Wallfacer Project there has always been dissent within the international community. Out of their own interests, most countries have supported some of the Wallfacers while opposing others, so there was always going to be a side that wants to be rid of you. Now that the first Wallbreaker is out and Tyler has failed, forces opposed to the project have grown more powerful and have driven its supporters to a stalemate. If at this point you proposed going directly to doomsday, it would be a compromise plan acceptable to both sides. But, Dr. Luo, are you truly willing to do that while humanity is fighting for survival?”
“You politicians sound off about humanity at the drop of a hat, but I can’t see humanity. I can only see individuals. I’m just one individual, an ordinary person, and I can’t take on the responsibility of saving all of humanity. I just want to live my own life.”
“Very well. But Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia are two of those individuals. Don’t you want to fulfill your responsibility to them? Even if she hurt you, I can see you still love her. And there’s the child, too. From the moment Hubble II finally confirmed the Trisolaran invasion, one thing has been certain: Humanity will fight to the end. When your beloved and your child awaken i
n four centuries, doomsday and the flames of war will be upon them, but by that time you’ll have lost your Wallfacer status and will be powerless to protect them. They will only be able to share a hellish existence with you while you await the final annihilation of the world. Is that what you want? Is that the life you want to give your wife and child?”
Luo Ji said nothing.
“If you won’t think of anything else, then just imagine that Doomsday Battle four centuries from now, and the look in their eyes when they see you! What sort of a person will they see? A man who abandoned the woman he loves most, together with all of humanity? A man unwilling to save all of the world’s children? A man who wouldn’t even save his own child? Are you, as a man, capable of withstanding their gaze?”
Luo Ji bent his head in silence. The sound of the nighttime rain falling on grass and lake was like myriad entreaties from another time and space.
“Do you really believe that I can change all of that?” Luo Ji asked, raising his head.
“Why not try? Of all the Wallfacers, you may have the greatest hope of success. I’ve come today to tell you that.”
“Go on, then. Why?”
“Because out of all of humanity, you are the only person that Trisolaris wants dead.”
Leaning against the pillar, Luo Ji stared at Say, but saw nothing. He struggled to remember.
Say went on. “That car crash was meant for you. It just accidentally hit your girlfriend.”
“But that really was an accident. That car changed direction because two other cars collided.”
“They had been planning that for a long time.”
“But I was just an ordinary person back then, with no special protection. It would’ve been simple to kill me. Why go to such lengths?”
“To make the murder look like an accident, so as not to attract any attention. They almost succeeded. There were fifty-one traffic accidents that killed five people in the city that day. But a scout hidden within the ETO provided an intelligence report confirming that the ETO had orchestrated the attempt on your life. And what’s most frightening is this: The order came from Trisolaris itself, conveyed to Evans through the sophons. To this date, that is the only assassination they’ve ever ordered.”
