by Cixin Liu
The mayor looked utterly exhausted and seemed to have difficulty rising from his chair. When Shi Qiang apologized for the interruption, and congratulated him on his promotion, he shook his head. “These are vulnerable times. Us rugged savages come in handy again.”
“You’re the highest-ranking hibernator on Earth, right?”
“Who knows? As the situation develops, we might have countrymen promoted to even higher positions.”
“And the former mayor? Mental breakdown?”
“No, no. There are strong people in this age, too. He was very competent, but he was killed in a car crash in a riot area two days ago.”
The mayor noticed Luo Ji behind Shi Qiang and immediately extended a hand. “Oh, Dr. Luo, hello. Of course I recognize you. I worshiped you two centuries ago, because out of those four people, you seemed most like a Wallfacer. I really couldn’t figure out what you wanted to do.” But their hearts sank at the next thing he said. “You’re the fourth messiah I’ve received in the past two days. And there are dozens more waiting outside who I don’t have the energy to see.”
“Mayor, he’s not like them. Two centuries ago—”
“Of course. Two centuries ago, he was selected from billions of people, and it’s for that reason that I decided to see you.” The mayor pointed at Shi Qiang. “There’s something else I need you for, but we’ll talk about that afterward. First, let’s talk about what you’ve got. But I have a small request: Can you not talk about your plan to save the world? They’re always so long. First just tell me what you need me to do.”
After Luo Ji and Shi Qiang explained what they wanted, the mayor immediately shook his head. “Even if I wanted to help, I couldn’t. I’ve got piles of stuff of my own I need to report to the senior leadership. But that level’s lower than you imagine. It’s just provincial and national leaders. It’s hard for everyone. You ought to know that the senior leadership is handling even bigger problems right now.”
Luo Ji and Shi Qiang had been paying attention to the news, so naturally they knew about the bigger problems that the mayor referred to.
The annihilation of the combined fleet saw the swift resurrection of Escapism after two centuries of silence. The European Commonwealth had even drafted a plan to select one hundred thousand candidates for departure through a nationwide drawing, and the plan had been passed by a popular vote. But after the results of the drawing, the majority of those who had not been picked were furious, leading to widespread rioting. The public turned unanimously to Escapism as crime against humanity.
After the Battle of Darkness erupted between the surviving warships in outer space, accusations of Escapism gained new meaning: Recent events had proved that when the spiritual bonds with Earth were snapped, people in space suffered total spiritual alienation. So even if escape were successful, what survived would no longer be human civilization, but some other dark and evil thing. And like Trisolaris, that thing would be the antithesis of human civilization and an enemy of it. It had even been given a name: Negacivilization.
As the droplet came closer to Earth, the public’s sensitivity to Escapism reached a peak. The media warned it was highly likely that someone would attempt to escape before the droplet’s attack. Crowds flocked to the vicinity of the space ports and the base points of the space elevators with the intent of cutting off all channels into space. They did indeed possess that ability. In this age, the citizens of the world all had the freedom to own weapons, and most of them had small laser guns. Of course, a laser pistol posed no threat to the cabin of the space elevator or the launching spacecraft, but unlike a traditional gun, a large number of lasers could focus their light on a single point. If ten thousand laser pistols fired at one point at the same time, they were unstoppable. Crowds numbering in at least the tens of thousands, with up to a million people in places, gathered around the base points and launching sites, and at least a third were carrying weapons. When they saw a cabin ascend or a spacecraft launch, they would fire their weapons simultaneously. The straight path of the laser beam made aiming incredibly precise, so most of the beams would focus on the target and destroy it. In this way, Earth’s transport links with space were almost entirely severed.
The chaos grew worse. Over the past couple of days, the target of the attacks had shifted to space cities in synchronous orbit. Rumors flew thick online that certain cities had been converted into escape ships, so they too became subject to attack by the people of Earth. Owing to the vast distance, laser beams dissipated and were weakened by the time they reached targets in space, and given the additional factor of the space cities’ rotation, no material injury was caused. But the activity became a kind of collective entertainment for humanity in those last days. That afternoon, the European Commonwealth’s third space city, New Paris, had been subject to simultaneous irradiation by ten million laser beams from the northern hemisphere, causing the temperature in the city to rise sharply and prompting the evacuation of its residents. From the space city, the Earth had been brighter than the sun.
There was nothing more for Luo Ji and Shi Qiang to say.
“I was really impressed with your work at the Hibernation Immigration Bureau,” the mayor said to Shi Qiang. “And Guo Zhengming. You know him, right? He was just promoted to director of the Public Security Bureau, and he recommended you to me. I hope you’ll come work at the city government. We need people like you right now.”
Shi Qiang thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Once I’ve settled things in my neighborhood. How’s the situation in the city right now?”
“The situation is deteriorating, but it’s still under control. Right now the focus is on maintaining the operation of the induction field power supply. Once that goes, the city will collapse completely.”
“These riots are different from those in our day.”
“Yeah, they are. First, their source is different. They’re sparked by total despair for the future and are incredibly hard to handle. At the same time, we have fewer means at our disposal than in those days.” As the mayor was speaking, he pulled up an image on the wall. “This is the central plaza from a height of a hundred meters.”
The central plaza was where Luo Ji and Shi Qiang had taken refuge from the flying car. From this vantage point, the Great Ravine Memorial and its surrounding patch of desert couldn’t be seen. The entire plaza was white, with white dots crawling around like rice in a pot of porridge.
“Are those people?” Luo Ji asked in wonder.
“Naked people. It’s a tremendous sex party, with more than a hundred thousand people, and it’s still growing.”
Acceptance of heterosexual and homosexual relations in this era was far beyond anything Luo Ji had imagined, and some things were no longer considered remarkable. Still, the sight before them came as a shock to both of them. Luo Ji was reminded of the dissolute scene in the Bible before humanity received the Ten Commandments. A classic doomsday scenario.
“Why doesn’t the government put a stop to it?” Shi Qiang asked sharply.
“How would we stop it? They’re completely within the law. If we take action, the government would be the one committing a crime.”
Shi Qiang let out a long sigh. “Yes, I know. In this age, police and the military can’t do much.”
The mayor said, “We’ve been through the law, and we haven’t found any provisions for coping with the present situation.”
“With the city like this, it would be better if the droplet smashed it apart.”
Shi Qiang’s words jerked Luo Ji awake. He asked hurriedly, “How long until the droplet gets to Earth?”
The mayor replaced the image of spectacular promiscuity with a breaking news channel showing a simulation of the Solar System. The eye-catching red line that marked the path of the droplet looked like the orbit of a comet, except that it terminated close to the Earth. In the lower right was a countdown clock indicating that if the droplet didn’t reduce speed, it would reach Earth in four hours and fifty-four minutes
. The news crawl was now displaying an expert analysis of the droplet. Despite the terror gripping the world, the scientific community had recovered its senses after the initial shock of defeat, so the analysis was calm and sober. Though humanity knew absolutely nothing about the droplet’s energy source and drive mechanism, the analyst felt that it had run into a power consumption problem, because its acceleration toward the sun after destroying the combined fleet had been particularly sluggish. It had passed close by Jupiter but, ignoring the three warships at the base, used the planet’s gravity to accelerate, a move that further demonstrated that the droplet’s energy was limited to the point of exhaustion. Scientists believed that the notion that the droplet would crash into Earth was utter nonsense, but they had no idea what it had actually come to do.
Luo Ji said, “I have to leave, or else the city will really be destroyed.”
“Why?” the mayor asked.
“Because he thinks the droplet wants to kill him,” Shi Qiang said.
The mayor laughed, but his smile was stiff. Apparently he hadn’t laughed in a long time. “Dr. Luo, you’re the most self-absorbed person I’ve ever met.”
* * *
Luo Ji and Shi Qiang drove off immediately after traveling back to the surface from the underground city. The city’s inhabitants were pouring out in large numbers, which meant that ground traffic was so heavy that it took them half an hour to leave the old city and reach full speed on the highway to the west.
On the car’s television, they saw that the droplet was approaching Earth at a speed of seventy-five kilometers per second and showed no sign of slowing. At that rate, it would arrive in three hours.
The weakening of the induction field power supply slowed the car, and Shi Qiang had to tap a storage battery to maintain speed. They reached the large hibernator residential area, but drove past New Life Village #5 and continued westward. They stayed silent along the way, speaking little and focusing their attention on the breaking news on the television.
The droplet passed lunar orbit without slowing. At this rate it would reach Earth in just half an hour. No one knew how it would behave, so to avoid a panic, the news didn’t predict a point of impact.
Luo Ji made a determined effort to welcome the moment he had long wanted to postpone, and said, “Da Shi, stop here.”
Shi Qiang stopped the car and they got out. The sun, now nearing the horizon, cast long shadows of the two men on the desert. Luo Ji felt the earth beneath his feet turn as soft as his heart. He almost lacked the strength to stand.
He said, “I’ll try my best to reach a sparsely populated area. There’s a city ahead of us, so I’m going to turn this way. You find your own way back, and get as far as possible from the direction I’m going.”
“My boy, I’ll wait for you here. When it’s over, we’ll go back together.” Shi Qiang took out a cigarette from his pocket and looked around for a lighter before remembering that the cigarette didn’t need to be lit. Like the other things he had brought from that distant past, his personal habits had not changed at all.
Luo Ji smiled a little sadly. He hoped Shi Qiang actually believed that, because at least that would make their parting a little easier to take. “Wait if you’d like. When the time comes, you had better move to the other side of the embankment. I don’t know how powerful the strike will be.”
Shi Qiang smiled and shook his head. “You remind me of an intellectual I met two hundred years ago. He had the same hangdog look you’ve got. I remember him sitting out early in the morning in front of the Wangfujing church, crying.… But he got out okay. I checked after I woke up: He lived to be nearly a hundred.”
“What about the first guy to touch the droplet, Ding Yi? I believe you knew each other, too.”
“He had a death wish. Nothing you could do about that.” Shi Qiang looked up at the sky clothed in sunset, as if reminding himself what the physicist looked like. “Still, he was a truly broad-minded man, the kind that could accept any situation. I never met anyone like him in my whole life. Seriously, a great mind. My boy, you ought to learn from him.”
“And again I say to you: We’re just ordinary people, you and I.” He looked at his watch, knowing that there was no more time for delay. He extended a firm hand to Shi Qiang. “Da Shi, thank you for everything you’ve done for me the past two centuries. Good-bye. Maybe we’ll meet again in some other place.”
Shi Qiang did not take his hand, but gave him a wave. “Cut the crap! Believe me, my boy. Nothing’s going to happen. Go, and when it’s over, hurry back and get me. And don’t blame me if I make fun of you tonight over drinks.”
Luo Ji got into the car quickly, not wanting Shi Qiang to see the tears in his eyes. Sitting there, he strove to etch the rearview-mirror image of Shi Qiang onto his mind, then set off on his final journey.
Maybe they would meet again someplace. The last time it had taken two centuries, so what would the separation be this time? Like Zhang Beihai two centuries before, Luo Ji suddenly found himself hating that he was an atheist.
The sun had now entirely set, and the desert on either side of the road shone white in the twilight, like snow. It suddenly occurred to him that it was along this very stretch of road two centuries ago that he had driven in the Accord with his imaginary lover, when the northern China plain was covered with real snow. He felt her hair blowing in the wind, its strands teasing him with their strange tickles on his right cheek.
No, no. Don’t say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don’t know, the world feels unlimited.
Okay. Then let’s do our best to get lost.
Luo Ji had always had the feeling that Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia had been brought into the world by his imagination. He felt a stab in his heart when the thought entered his mind, because, at this moment, love and longing were the most excruciating things in the world. Tears blurred his vision as he strove to keep his mind blank. But Yan Yan’s lovely eyes stubbornly surfaced through the blankness, accompanied by Xia Xia’s intoxicating laughter. It was all he could do to focus his attention on the television news.
The droplet had passed the Lagrange point,25 but it still sped toward Earth at constant speed.
Luo Ji parked the car at what he thought was the most fitting spot, the border between the plain and the mountains, where there were no people or buildings as far as he could see. The car stood in a valley surrounded by a U-shaped ring of mountains, which would dissipate some of the shock waves from the impact. He took the television from the car and carried it onto the open sand, where he sat down.
The droplet crossed the 34,000-kilometer geosynchronous orbit altitude and passed close by the space city New Shanghai, whose inhabitants all clearly saw the bright point of light pass rapidly across their sky. The news declared that the impact would occur in eight minutes.
The news finally predicted the latitude and longitude of impact: to the northwest of China’s capital.
Luo Ji knew that already.
Twilight had fallen heavily now, and the colors of the sky had shrunk to a small space in the west, like a pupilless eyeball watching the world indifferently.
Perhaps as a way to pass the remaining time, Luo Ji began to look back on his life.
It had been divided into two entirely distinct parts. The part after he became a Wallfacer spanned two centuries, but it felt densely compacted. He passed quickly back through it as if it had been just yesterday. That part of his life didn’t seem like his own, including the love that was engraved onto his bones. It all felt like a fleeting dream. He didn’t dare think about his wife and child.
Contrary to his expectations, his memories of life before becoming a Wallfacer were a blank. All that he could fish out from the sea of memory were a few fragments, and the farther back he went, the fewer there were. Had he really been to high school? Had he really attended primary school? Had he really had a first love? Some of the fragments bore clear scratches, reminding him that those thi
ngs had indeed taken place. The details were vivid, but the feelings had vanished without a trace. The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end.
He looked around at the twilight mountains, recalling that one winter’s night he spent here more than two hundred years ago, in the mountains that had grown tired of standing for hundreds of millions of years, and had lain down “like old villagers basking in the sun,” as his imaginary lover had once said. The fields and cities of the northern China plain had long since turned to desert, but the mountains didn’t seem to have changed. They were still plain and ordinary in shape, and withered grasses and vitex vines still grew stubbornly from the crevices in the gray rocks, no lusher and no sparser than two centuries ago. Two centuries was far too short for any visible change to come to these rocky mountains.
What was the human world like in the eyes of the mountains? Perhaps just something they saw on a leisurely afternoon. First, a few small living beings appeared on the plain. After a while, they multiplied, and after another while they erected structures like anthills that quickly filled the region. The structures shone from the inside, and some of them let off smoke. After another while, the lights and smoke disappeared, and the small things vanished as well, and then their structures toppled and were buried in the sand. That was all. Among the countless things the mountains had witnessed, these fleeting events were not necessarily the most interesting.
Finally, Luo Ji located his earliest memory. He was surprised to discover that the life he could remember also began on the sand. It was in his own prehistoric age, in a place he couldn’t remember, and with people he couldn’t recall, but he clearly remembered the sandy shore of a river. There was a round moon in the sky, and the river rippled under the moonlight. He was digging in the sand. When he had dug out a pit, water seeped through the bottom, and in the water there was a small moon. He kept digging like that, digging lots of pits and bringing forth lots of small moons.
