by Cixin Liu
“I really should have been here with you,” Hines repeated with more emotion.
“Fortunately we still got the computer we wanted. Its performance is ten thousand times better than when you entered hibernation.”
“Traditional architecture?”
“Traditional architecture. A few more drops squeezed out of the lemon of Moore’s law. It astonished the computing community—but this time, my love, we’ve really come to the end.”
A peerless computer. If humanity failed, it would never be equaled, Hines thought, but did not say it out loud.
“With this computer, research on the Resolving Imager became much easier.” Then she suddenly asked, “Love, do you have any idea of what a hundred billion looks like?” When he shook his head, she smiled and stretched out her hands around her. “Look. This is a hundred billion.”
“What?” At a loss for words, Hines looked at the white fog around him.
“We’re in the middle of the supercomputer’s holographic display,” she said as she manipulated a gadget hanging at her chest. He noticed a scroll wheel on it, and thought it might be something like a mouse.
As she adjusted it, he felt a change in the surrounding fog. It thickened in what was clearly a magnification of a particular region. Then he noticed that it was made up of an uncountable number of tiny glowing particles, and these particles were emitting the moonlike illumination rather than scattering light from an outside source. As the magnification continued, the particles became shining stars, but instead of seeing the starry sky over Earth, it was like he was situated at the heart of the Milky Way, where the stars were dense and left practically no room for darkness.
“Every star is a neuron,” she said. Their bodies were plated in silver by the ocean formed from a hundred billion stars.
As the hologram continued to enlarge, he noticed innumerable thin tentacles extending radially from every star to form intricate connections, wiping out the starfield and situating him inside an infinitely large network structure.
The image enlarged further, and every star began to exhibit a structure that was familiar to him from electron microscopy, that of brain cells and synapses.
She pressed the mouse and the image returned instantly to the white fog state. “This is a full view of the structure of the brain captured using the Resolving Imager scanning three million cross sections simultaneously. Of course, what we’re seeing now is the processed image—for the convenience of observation, the distance between neurons has been magnified by four or five orders of magnitude so it looks like we vaporized a brain. However, the topology of the connections between them has been preserved. Now, let’s take a look at a dynamic view.…”
Disturbances appeared in the fog, glittering points in the mist that looked like a pinch of gunpowder sprinkled onto a flame. Keiko Yamasuki enlarged the image until it resembled a starfield, and Hines saw the surging of startide in a brain-universe, the disturbances in the ocean of stars appearing in different forms at different locations: some like streams, others like vortexes, and others like the sweeping tides, all of it instantly mutable and giving rise to stunning pictures of self-organization within the teeming chaos. Then the image changed again to resemble a network, and he saw myriad nerve signals busily passing messages along thin synapses, like flashing pearls within the flow of an intricate network of pipes.…
“Whose brain is this?” he asked in wonder.
“Mine,” she said, looking lovingly at him. “When this thought picture was taken, I was thinking of you.”
Please note: When the light turns green, the sixth batch of test propositions will appear. If the proposition is true, press the right-hand button. If the proposition is false, press the left-hand button.
Proposition 1: Coal is black.
Proposition 2: 1 + 1 = 2.
Proposition 3: The temperature in winter is lower than in summer.
Proposition 4: Men are generally shorter than women.
Proposition 5: A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
Proposition 6: The moon is brighter than the sun.
The statements were displayed in succession on the small screen in front of the test subject. Each proposition was displayed for four seconds, and the subject pressed the left-hand or right-hand buttons according to his own judgment. His head was encased in a metal cover that allowed the Resolving Imager to capture a holographic view of his brain, which the computer would process into a dynamic neural network model for analysis.
In this, the initial stage of Hines’s research project, the subject engaged in only the simplest of critical thinking, and the test propositions had concise and clear answers. During such simple thoughts, the operation of the cerebral neural network was relatively easy to identify and provided a starting point for a more in-depth study of the nature of thought.
The research teams led by Hines and Keiko Yamasuki had made some progress. They discovered that critical thinking was not produced in any specific location in the cerebral neural network but used a particular mode of nerve impulse transmission, and that with the powerful computer’s assistance, this model could be retrieved and located from among the vast network of neurons using a method quite similar to the star positioning the astronomer Ringier had provided to Luo Ji. Unlike finding a particular position pattern in a starfield, in the universe of the brain the pattern was dynamic and was only identifiable by its mathematical characteristics. It was a little like looking for a small whirlpool in an expansive ocean, which meant that the computing power it required was many orders of magnitude greater than that of the starfield and was only feasible on this latest machine.
Hines and his wife strolled through the cloud map of the brain in the holographic display. Every time a point of critical thinking was identified in the subject’s brain, the computer would indicate its position on the image with a flashing red light. This was actually just a way to provide a more intuitive feast for the eyes and was not strictly required by the study. The important thing was the analysis of the internal structure of nerve impulse transmission at the point of thought, for there lay hidden the mysteries of the essence of the mind.
Just then the research team’s medical director came in and said that Subject 104 was experiencing problems.
When the Resolving Imager had just been developed, scanning such a huge quantity of cross sections generated powerful radiation that was fatal to any life being scanned, but successive improvements had brought the radiation below the danger line, and a large number of tests had demonstrated that so long as filming was kept below a set length of time, the Resolving Imager would not cause any damage to the brain.
“He seems to have caught hydrophobia,” the medical director said, as they hurried toward the medical center.
Hines and Keiko Yamasuki stopped in their tracks in surprise. Hines stared at the medical director: “Hydrophobia? Did he somehow get rabies?”
The medical director raised a hand and tried to sort out his thoughts: “Oh, I’m sorry. That wasn’t accurate. He doesn’t have any physical problems, and his brain and other organs have not been damaged at all. It’s just that he’s afraid of the water, like someone with rabies. He refuses to drink, and he won’t even eat moist food. It’s an entirely psychological effect. He just believes that water is toxic.”
“Persecutory delusion?” Keiko Yamasuki asked.
The medical director waved a hand. “No, no. He doesn’t think that anyone put poison in the water. He just believes the water itself is toxic.”
Again, Hines and his wife stopped still, and the medical director shook his head helplessly. “But psychologically, he’s completely normal in every other way.… I can’t explain it. You’ve got to see it for yourselves.”
Subject 104 was a volunteer college student who had come to earn some pocket money. Before they entered the patient’s room, the director told Hines and his wife, “He hasn’t had a drink in two days. If this continues, he’ll become severely dehydrated and we’l
l have to hydrate him by force.” Standing at the door he pointed to a microwave oven, and said, “You see that? He wants bread and other food baked completely dry before he’ll eat it.”
Hines and his wife entered the patient’s room. Subject 104 looked at them with fear in his eyes. His lips were cracked and his hair disheveled, but otherwise he looked entirely normal. He tugged at Hines’s sleeve and said in a hoarse voice, “Dr. Hines, they want to kill me. I don’t know why.” Then he pointed a finger at a glass of water sitting on the cabinet next to the head of the bed. “They want me to drink water.”
Hines looked at the glass of clear water, certain that the subject did not have rabies, because true hydrophobia would cause spasms of terror at the mere sight of it. The sound of running water would induce madness, and there might even be an intense fear response if others simply talked about it.
“From his eyes and speech, he ought to be in a normal psychological state,” Keiko Yamasuki said to Hines in Japanese. She had a degree in psychology.
“Do you really believe that water is toxic?” Hines asked.
“Is there any question? Just like the sun has light and the air has oxygen. You can’t deny this basic fact, can you?”
Hines leaned on his shoulder and said, “Young man, life was born in the water and can’t exist without it. Your own body is seventy percent water.”
Subject 104’s eyes darkened, and he slumped back in bed, clutching his head. “That’s right. This question tortures me. It’s the most incredible thing in the universe.”
“Let me see Subject 104’s experiment record,” Hines said to the medical director after they left the patient’s room. When they reached the director’s office, Keiko Yamasuki said, “Look at the test propositions first.”
The test propositions displayed on the computer screen one by one:
Proposition 1: Cats have a total of three legs.
Proposition 2: Rocks are not living.
Proposition 3: The sun is shaped like a triangle.
Proposition 4: Iron is heavier than cotton of the same volume.
Proposition 5: Water is toxic.
“Stop,” Hines said, pointing to Proposition 5.
“His answer was ‘false,’” the director said.
“Look at all parameters and operations following the answer to Proposition 5.”
The records indicated that once Proposition 5 was answered, the Resolving Imager increased the strength of its scan of the critical thinking point in the subject’s cerebral neural network. To improve the accuracy of the scan of this area, the intensity of the radiation and the magnetic field were increased in this small region. Hines and Keiko Yamasuki carefully examined the long list of recorded parameters on the screen.
“Has this enhanced scan been done to other subjects and on other propositions?” Hines asked.
The director said, “Because the effect of the enhanced scan was not particularly good, it was canceled after four tries due to fears of excessive localized radiation. The previous three…” He consulted the computer, and then said, “were all benign true propositions.”
“We should use the same scanning parameters and repeat the experiment for Proposition 5,” Keiko Yamasuki said.
“But … who will do it?” asked the director.
“I will,” Hines said.
Water is toxic.
Proposition 5 appeared in black text on a white background. Hines pressed the left “False” button, but he felt nothing apart from a slight sensation of heat produced by the intensive scanning at the back of his head.
He exited the Resolving Imager lab and sat down at a table, as a crowd, which included Keiko Yamasuki, watched. On the table stood a glass of clear water. He picked up the glass and slowly drew it to his lips and took a sip. His movements were relaxed and he wore an expression of quiet calm. Everyone began to sigh with relief, but then they noticed that his throat wasn’t moving to swallow the water. The muscles of his face stiffened and then twitched slightly upward, and into his eyes came the same fear Subject 104 exhibited, as if his spirit was fighting with some powerful, shapeless force. Finally he spat out all of the water in his mouth and knelt down to vomit, but nothing came out. His face turned purple. Hugging Hines to her, Keiko Yamasuki clapped him on the back with one hand.
When he had recovered his senses, he held out a hand: “Give me some paper towels,” he said. He took them and carefully wiped off the droplets of water that had splashed on his shoes.
“Do you really believe that water is toxic, love?” Yamasuki asked, tears in her eyes. Prior to the experiment she had asked him repeatedly to replace the proposition with a false one that was entirely harmless, but he had refused.
He nodded. “I do.” He looked up at the crowd, helplessness and confusion in his eyes. “I do. I really do.”
“Let me repeat your words,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Life was born in the water and can’t exist without it. Your own body is seventy percent water!”
Hines bowed his head and looked at the water stains on the floor. Then he shook his head. “That’s right, dear. This question tortures me. It’s the most incredible thing in the universe.”
* * *
Three years after the breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion, new and unusual heavenly bodies had taken their place in the Earth’s night sky, up to five of them now simultaneously visible in one hemisphere. The bodies changed dramatically in luminance, outshining Venus at their brightest, and often blinked rapidly. Sometimes one of them would suddenly erupt with a rapid increase in brightness, then go out after two or three seconds. They were fusion reactors undergoing tests in geosynchronous orbit.
Non-media radioactive propulsion had won out as the research path for future spacecraft. This type of propulsion required high-powered reactors that could only be tested in space, leading to these glowing reactors thirty thousand kilometers out in space known as nuclear stars. Every time a nuclear star erupted, it represented a disastrous defeat. But contrary to what most people believed, nuclear star eruptions were not explosions in the nuclear reactor, but the exposure of the core when the outer hull of the reactor melted from the heat produced by fusion. The fusion core was like a small sun, and because it melted Earth’s most heat-tolerant materials as if they were wax, it had to be contained by an electromagnetic field. These restraints frequently failed.
On the balcony of the top floor of Space Command, Chang Weisi and Hines had just witnessed one such eruption. Its moonlike glow cast its shadows onto the wall before disappearing. Hines was the second Wallfacer that Chang Weisi had met, after Tyler.
“The third time this month,” Chang Weisi said.
Hines looked out at the now-darkened night sky. “The power of these reactors only reaches one percent of what’s needed for future spacecraft engines, and they don’t operate stably. And even if the required reactors were developed, engine technology will be even more difficult. We’re sure to encounter the sophon block there.”
“That’s true. The sophons are blocking our every path,” Chang Weisi said as he looked off into the distance. The sea of lights in the city seemed even more brilliant now that the light in the sky had disappeared.
“A glimmer of hope fades as soon as it is born, and one day it will be destroyed forever. It’s like you said: The sophons block our every path.”
Chang Weisi said, with a laugh, “Dr. Hines, you’re not here to talk defeatism with me, are you?”
“That’s precisely what I want to talk about. The resurgence of defeatism is different this time. It’s based on the drastically reduced living conditions in the general population and has an even greater impact in the military.”
Chang Weisi looked back from the distance but said nothing.
“I understand your difficulties, General, and I’d like to help you.”
Chang Weisi looked at Hines in silence for a few seconds, his expression unreadable to the other man. Then, without replying to his offer, he said
, “The evolution of the human brain needs twenty thousand to two hundred thousand years to achieve noticeable changes, but human civilization has a history of just five thousand years. So what we’re using right now is the brain of primitive man.… Doctor, I really applaud your unique ideas, and perhaps this is where the real answer lies.”
“Thank you. All of us are basically Flintstones.”
“But is it really possible to use technology to enhance mental ability?”
This got Hines excited. “General, you’re not so primitive, at least compared to others! I notice you said ‘mental ability’ rather than ‘intelligence.’ The former is much broader than the latter. To overcome defeatism, for example, we can’t simply rely on intelligence. Given the sophon block, the higher your intelligence, the more trouble you have establishing a faith in victory.”
“So give me an answer. Is it possible?”
Hines shook his head. “How much do you know about my and Keiko Yamasuki’s work before the Trisolar Crisis?”
“Not too much. I believe it was: The essence of thought is not on the molecular level but is carried out on the quantum level. I wonder, does that imply—”
“It implies that the sophons are waiting for me. Just like we’re waiting for them,” Hines said pointing at the sky. “But right now, our research is still quite a ways from our goal. Still, we’ve come up with an unexpected by-product.”
Chang Weisi smiled and nodded, showing cautious interest.
“I won’t talk about the details. Basically, we discovered the mind’s mechanism for making judgments in the cerebral neural network, as well as the ability to have a decisive impact on them. If we compare the process by which a human mind makes judgments to a computer’s process, there’s the input of external data, calculation, and then the final outcome. What we’re able to do is omit the calculation step of the process and directly produce an outcome. When a certain piece of information enters the brain, it exerts an influence on a particular part of the neural network, and we can cause the brain to render a judgment—to believe that the information is genuine—without even thinking about it.”
