by Cixin Liu
But one week later, Federation Fleet Command revealed to the world the captured antimatter bullets. The pile of golden Death stunned everyone.
The Halo Group was declared an illegal organization, and the Federation Government confiscated all its property and took over the circumsolar particle accelerator. The Federation Fleet declared a long-term occupation of Halo City, and the Academies of Science and Engineering were dissolved. More than three hundred people, including Wade, the other leaders of the Halo Group, and the city self-defense force, were arrested.
In the subsequent trial in Federation court, Thomas Wade was convicted of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of the laws prohibiting research into curvature propulsion. The sentence was death.
Cheng Xin went to a detention center located near the Supreme Federation Court in Earth I, the Solar System Federation’s capital, to see Wade one last time. They looked at each other through a transparent barrier and said nothing. Cheng Xin saw that this old man, 110 years old, was as placid as the puddle at the bottom of a well that was about to dry out. There would be no more ripples.
Cheng Xin passed the box of cigars she had bought in Pacific I through an opening in the barrier. Wade opened the box, took out three of the ten cigars, and pushed the box back through the opening.
“I won’t be able to use the rest,” he said.
“Tell me more about yourself. Your work, your life. I want to tell those who would come later about you,” Cheng Xin said.
Wade shook his head. “I am but one of the countless who have died and will die. What is there to tell?”
Cheng Xin knew that what divided them wasn’t just this transparent barrier, but also the deepest chasm in this world, a chasm that could never be bridged.
“Do you have anything to say to me?” Cheng Xin asked. She was surprised that she wanted to hear his answer.
“Thank you for the cigars.”
It took a long while before Cheng Xin understood that this was what Wade wanted to say to her. His last words. All his words.
They sat in silence, neither looking at the other. Time turned into a stagnant pool that drowned them. Then, the tremors of the space city adjusting its position returned Cheng Xin to reality. She stood up slowly and softly said good-bye.
Once she was outside the detention center, Cheng Xin picked out one of the cigars and borrowed a light from one of the guards. She took her first puff of a cigar in her life. Oddly, she didn’t cough. She watched the white smoke rise in the sunlight of the capital, watched it dissipate in her tear-filled vision like the three centuries she and Wade had lived through.
Three days later, a powerful laser vaporized Thomas Wade in one-ten-thousandth of a second.
Cheng Xin returned to Asia I’s hibernation center and awakened 艾 AA. They returned to the Earth.
They rode Halo back. After the Halo Group had been dissolved and its property confiscated, the Federation Government returned a small portion of the company’s vast wealth to Cheng Xin. The amount was about equal to the value of the Halo Group at the time Wade took over. It was still a large sum, though minuscule when compared to the total wealth of the vanished company. Halo was part of the property returned to Cheng Xin—though this was the third ship to bear that name. It was a small stellar yacht capable of seating up to three. The shipboard ecological cycling system was comfortable and refined, like a lovely small garden.
Cheng Xin and AA wandered over the barely inhabited continents of the Earth. They swept over endless forests, rode on trotting horses across grasslands, lingered over empty beaches. Most cities had become covered by forests and vines, leaving only small patches of civilization for the remaining residents. The total human population on the Earth was about what it was near the end of the Neolithic Age.
The longer they stayed on the Earth, the more all of civilization’s history seemed a dream.
They returned to Australia. Only Canberra remained inhabited, and a tiny town government there called itself the Australian Federal Government. The Parliament House where Sophon had proclaimed the plan for the extermination of the human race was still there, but thick layers of vegetation sealed its doors, and vines climbed up the eighty-meter-tall flagpole. They found Fraisse’s record in the government archives. He had lived until he was 150, but finally, time had defeated him. He had died more than ten years ago.
They went to Mosken Island. The lighthouse built by Jason was still there, but it was no longer lit. The region was completely uninhabited. They heard again the rumbling of the Moskstraumen, but all they could see was the empty sea in the light of the setting Sun.
Their future was equally empty.
AA said, “Why don’t we go to the world after the strike, the world after the Sun is gone? Only then will we find a life of serenity.”
Cheng Xin also wanted to go to that time, but not for a life of serenity. She had stopped a catastrophic war and she was becoming the target of the worship of millions. She could no longer live in this era. She wanted to see Earth civilization survive the dark forest strike and prosper after—it was the only hope that could comfort her heart. She imagined life in that post-strike nebula. There, she would find true tranquility, maybe even happiness. That would be the last harbor of her life’s voyage.
She was only thirty-three.
Cheng Xin and AA rode Halo back to the Jovian city cluster and once again entered hibernation in Asia I. The contracted-for time was two hundred years, but they included a provision in the contract stating they should be awakened if a dark forest strike occurred before then.
And then they slept. Dreamless.
PART V
Bunker Era, Year 67 Orion Arm of the Milky Way
Examining the data was Singer’s job; judging the sincerity of the coordinates was Singer’s joy.
Singer understood that what he did wasn’t important—it just filled in the pieces. But it had to be done, and the task was enjoyable.
Speaking of enjoyment, when this seed had departed from the home world, that world was still a place full of joy. But later, as the home world began to war against the fringe world, joy diminished. By now, more than ten thousand grains of time had passed. There wasn’t much joy to speak of on the home world or in this seed. The happiness of the past was recorded in classical songs, and singing those songs was another of the few joys left.
Singer sang one of these classical songs as he reviewed the data.
I see my love;
I fly next to her;
I present her with my gift,
A small piece of solidified time.
Lovely markings are carved into time
As soft to the touch as the mud in shallow sea.
Singer did not complain much. Survival required so much thought and mental energy.
Entropy increased in the universe, and order decreased. The process was like the boundless wings of the giant balance bird pressing down upon all of existence. But low-entropy entities were different. The low-entropy entities decreased their entropy and increased their order, like columns of phosphorescence rising over the inky-dark sea. This was meaning, the highest meaning, higher than enjoyment. To maintain this meaning, low-entropy entities had to continue to exist.
As for any meaning higher than that, it was pointless to think about. Thinking about the subject led nowhere and was dangerous. It was even more pointless to think about the apex of the tower of meaning—maybe there wasn’t an apex at all.
Back to the coordinates. Many sets of coordinates flitted across space, like the matrix insects flitting across the sky of the home world. Picking up coordinates was the job of the main core, which swallowed all the messages passing through space: medium membrane, long membrane, light membrane, and maybe one day even short membrane. The main core remembered the positions of all the stars. By matching the received data against various map projections and position schema, it could pick out the coordinates of the messages’ origin. It was said that the main core could match p
osition schema from five hundred million time grains ago. Singer never tried anything like that—it would be meaningless. In that distant age, the low-entropy clusters in space were rare and far apart, and had not evolved the hiding gene and the cleansing gene. But now—
Hide yourself well; cleanse well.
Out of all the coordinates, only some were sincere. Believing in insincere coordinates meant cleansing empty worlds. This was wasteful. And there were other harms besides. These empty worlds might be useful in the future. It was incomprehensible why anyone would send out insincere coordinates—they would get what they deserved someday.
Sincere coordinates followed certain patterns. For instance, a mass cluster of coordinates was usually insincere. But these patterns were all only heuristics. Judging the sincerity of coordinates effectively required intuition. The main core on this seed was incapable of this task, and even the supercore back on the home world could not do it. This was one reason why low-entropy entities had no substitute.
Singer had this skill, this intuition, but it wasn’t a gift or instinct; rather, it was something honed by the accumulated experience of tens of thousands of time grains. A set of coordinates seemed nothing more than a simple matrix in the eyes of the uninitiated, but to Singer, it was alive. Its every detail was expressive. For instance, how many reference points were taken? What was the method for marking the target star? And many other subtle details besides. The main core was able to provide some information, such as the historical records associated with this set of coordinates, the direction of the coordinate broadcast source, the broadcast time, and so forth. Together, these formed an organic whole, and what emerged in Singer’s consciousness was a sense of the coordinate broadcaster himself. Singer’s spirit crossed the chasm of space and time, resonated with the spirit of the broadcaster, and felt its terror and anxiety, along with other feelings unfamiliar to the home world, such as hatred, envy, greed, and so on. But for the most part, it was terror. Terror was what endowed a set of coordinates with sincerity. For all low-entropy entities, terror guaranteed existence.
Just then, Singer noticed a sincere set of coordinates near the course of the seed. The set of coordinates was broadcast by long membrane, and even Singer himself couldn’t be sure what told him that the set of coordinates was sincere—intuition could not always be explained. He decided to cleanse it. He wasn’t busy, and the task wasn’t going to distract him from singing. Even if he got it wrong, it was not a big deal. Cleansing was not a precision task and didn’t require absolute accuracy. It also wasn’t urgent. He just had to get it done eventually. This was also why his position wasn’t prestigious.
Singer took a mass dot out of the seed’s magazine, then he turned to look for the star indicated by the set of coordinates. The main core guided his gaze, like a spear sweeping through the starry sky. Singer grasped the mass dot with a force field feeler and prepared to flick it. But then he saw the location indicated by the set of coordinates and the feeler relaxed.
Of the three stars, one was missing. There was a white cloud of dust in its place, like the feces of an abyss whale.
It’s already been cleansed. Nothing more to do.
Singer put the mass dot back into storage.
That was fast.
He activated a main core process to trace the source of the mass dot that had killed that star. This was a hopeless task with almost zero chance of success, but required by established procedure. The process soon terminated, and like every other time, yielded no results.
Singer soon understood why the cleansing had happened so fast. He saw a slow fog in the vicinity of that destroyed world. The slow fog was about half a structure length away from that world. Seen by itself, it wasn’t apparent where the fog had come from, but when connected with the broadcast coordinates, it was obvious that the fog belonged to that world. The slow fog showed that the world was dangerous, which was why the cleansing had come so quickly. It appeared that there were other low-entropy entities with even sharper intuition than he; but that wasn’t strange. It was as the Elder said: In the cosmos, no matter how fast you are, someone will be faster; no matter how slow you are, someone will be slower.
Every set of broadcast coordinates would eventually be cleansed; it was just a matter of sooner versus later. One low-entropy entity might think this set of coordinates insincere, but on the millions upon millions of low-entropy worlds there were billions upon billions tasked with cleansing—someone would think it sincere. All low-entropy entities possessed the cleansing gene, and cleansing was an instinct. Also, cleansing was a very simple thing. The cosmos was full of sources of potential power—one just had to trigger them to complete the task. It required so very little, and didn’t even delay singing.
If Singer were patient, all sincere coordinates would eventually be cleansed by other, unknown low-entropy entities. But this was not a good thing for either the home world or the seed. Since Singer had received the set of coordinates and even glanced at the world pointed to by the coordinates, Singer had a connection to that world. It would be naïve to think of this connection as unidirectional. Recall the great law of reversible discovery: If you could see a low-entropy world, then that low-entropy world could also see you—it was only a matter of time. Thus, waiting for others to complete cleansing was dangerous.
The next task was to put this now-useless set of coordinates into the data bank called the tomb. This was also required by established procedure. Of course, all other information having to do with the location needed to go into the data bank as well, just as personal effects were buried with the body, as was the custom on the home world.
Among the “personal effects” was something that piqued Singer’s interest. It was a record of the dead world’s three communications with another location using medium membrane. Medium membrane was the least efficient communication membrane, also called primitive membrane. Most communications preferred long membrane, though it was said that even short membrane could be used to convey messages. If true, that would make the communicators akin to gods. But Singer liked primitive membrane. He thought primitive membrane possessed a simple beauty, symbolizing an age full of joy. He often turned primitive membrane messages into songs. He thought they sounded pretty, even if he didn’t understand them. Understanding them wasn’t necessary, however; other than coordinates, primitive membrane messages didn’t have much useful information. It was enough to enjoy the music.
But this time, Singer was able to understand some of the message, because some parts carried a self-decoding system! Although Singer was only able to understand a little, grasp an outline, it was enough for him to see an incredible history.
First, the other location had broadcast a message via primitive membrane. The low-entropy entities of that world clumsily plucked their star—Singer decided to call them the Star-Pluckers—like ancient bards of the home world plucking the strings of the rough country zither, to send out the message. It was this message that contained the self-decoding system.
Although the self-decoding system was primitive and clumsy, it was sufficient to allow Singer to see that a subsequent message sent out by the dead three-star world followed the same encoding scheme—apparently an answer to the first message sent by the Star-Pluckers! This was already nearly inconceivable, but after that, the Star-Pluckers responded again!
Interesting. Very interesting!
Singer had indeed heard of low-entropy worlds that possessed neither the hiding gene nor the hiding instinct, but this was the first time he had seen one. Of course, the three communications between these two would not reveal their absolute coordinates, but they did expose the distance between the two worlds. If the distance were fairly large, it wouldn’t be a big deal either; but the distance was very short, only 416 structures—the two worlds were practically on top of each other. This meant that if one world’s coordinates were exposed, the other would also be exposed—it was just a matter of time.
This was how the Star-Pluckers’
coordinates were revealed.
Nine time grains after the first three communications, another record appeared: The Star-Pluckers plucked their star again to send out another broadcast... a set of coordinates! The main core was certain that it was a set of coordinates. Singer looked for the star indicated by the coordinates and saw that it had also been cleansed, about thirty-five time grains ago.
Singer thought that perhaps he had been wrong. The Star-Pluckers must have possessed the hiding gene. They obviously had the cleansing gene, so it was impossible that they didn’t also possess the hiding gene. But like most coordinate broadcasters, they didn’t have the ability to cleanse on their own.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Why did whoever cleansed the dead three-star world not also cleanse the world of the Star-Pluckers? Many possibilities. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed these three communications—primitive membrane messages often didn’t get much attention. But given the millions upon millions of worlds out there, someone would have noticed—Singer was just one who did. Even without Singer, some other low-entropy entity would have noticed them; it was just a matter of time. Or perhaps they had noticed them, but decided that a low-entropy group that didn’t possess the hiding gene wasn’t much of a threat, and cleansing them was more trouble than it was worth.
But that would be a mistake, a terrible mistake! Broadly speaking, if low-entropy entities like these Star-Pluckers really didn’t have the hiding gene, then they would not be afraid of exposing their own presence, and they would expand and attack without fear.
At least until they got killed.
However, as applied to this particular case, the situation was more complicated. The first three communications were followed nine time grains later by the coordinate broadcast. Then, sixty time grains after that, there was another long-membrane coordinate broadcast from somewhere else, pointing at the dead three-star world. The chain of events painted an uneasy picture, a picture that indicated danger. The cleansing against the dead three-star world had happened twelve time grains ago, so the Star-Pluckers must have realized that their own position had been revealed. Their only choice was to shroud themselves in slow fog so that they would appear perfectly safe and no one would bother them.
