by Cixin Liu
Of course, the pinnace and the crewmen no longer possessed any thickness.
It was unclear how large the plane had spread by now; only those two images indicated its presence.
Revelation slid faster toward the plane, toward that abyss whose thickness was zero.
“Everyone, don’t be sad. No one will be able to escape from the Solar System, not even a bacteria or virus. All of us will become a part of this grand picture.” 白 Ice now looked calm and stoic.
“Stop accelerating,” said Vasilenko. “What difference does a few minutes make? Let’s at least breathe easier at the end.”
Revelation’s engine shut off. The plasma column at the stern of the ship disappeared, and the ship drifted, powerless, in space. In reality, the ship was still accelerating toward the two-dimensional patch of space, but since the ship moved along with the surrounding space, those inside could not feel any gravity from acceleration. They enjoyed the weightlessness and took deep breaths.
“You know what I’m thinking of? Needle-Eye’s pictures from Yun Tianming’s fairy tales,” 白 Ice said.
Only a few people aboard Revelation knew about Yun Tianming’s secret message. Now, in a flash, they all understood the meaning of this detail in the stories. It was a simple metaphor, and there were no bearing coordinates because it was so direct. Yun must have thought he was taking a great risk to put such an obvious metaphor into his stories, yet he had to try because the message was so important.
He probably thought that with the knowledge of Blue Space and Gravity’s discoveries, humanity would understand the metaphor. Unfortunately, he had overestimated their ability to comprehend.
The inability to decipher this key piece of information led humanity to place all their hopes in the Bunker Project.
It was true that both dark forest strikes humans had witnessed involved photoids, but they ignored a salient fact: Those two target planetary systems were structured differently from the Solar System. The star known as 187J3X1 had three giant Jupiter-like planets, but they all orbited extremely close to their sun. Their average distance from the sun was but 3 percent of the distance from Jupiter to the Sun, even closer than Mercury’s orbit. Since they almost brushed up against their sun, the solar explosion destroyed them completely, and they could not have been used as barriers. The Trisolaran system, on the other hand, had only one planet, Trisolaris.
The structure of the planetary system around a star was a characteristic observable from a distance. For a sufficiently advanced civilization, a quick glance was sufficient.
If humans could figure out the plan to use the gas giants as barriers, couldn’t observers from such advanced civilizations do so, as well?
Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.
Revelation was now no more than a thousand kilometers from the plane; it fell faster and faster.
“Thank you, everyone, for doing your duty. Although we haven’t been together long, we worked together well,” Vasilenko said.
“I also thank every member of the human race,” said 白 Ice. “Once, we lived together in the Solar System.”
Revelation fell into the two-dimensional space. In a few seconds, it was flattened. Light akin to fireworks once again lit up the darkness of space. This was a vast two-dimensional image that could be clearly seen from Alaska, a hundred thousand kilometers away. It was possible to distinguish every individual on Revelation: They were laid out side by side, holding hands, every single cell in their body exposed to space in two dimensions.
They were the first to be painted into this grand painting of annihilation.
* Translator’s Note: The surname “白” is pronounced “Bai.”
† Translator’s Note: This is the pinyin romanization of the original fully Chinese name: “白 艾思.”
Bunker Era, Year 68 Pluto
“Let’s head back to the Earth,” Cheng Xin said softly. This was the first idea that floated up through the chaos and darkness of her jumbled thoughts.
“The Earth is not a bad place to wait for the end. A falling leaf seeks to return to the root. But we hope Halo will go to Pluto,” Cao Bin said.
“Pluto?”
“Pluto is at its apogee, rather far from the two-dimensional space. The Federation Government is about to issue a formal attack alert to the world, and many ships will be headed there. Although the final result will be the same, at least there will be more time left.”
“How much longer?”
“The entire Solar System within the Kuiper Belt will collapse into two dimensions in eight to ten days.”
“That’s not long enough to be worth worrying about. Let’s go back to Earth,” said AA.
“The Federation Government would like to ask you to do something.”
“What can we possibly do now?”
“Not anything important. There’s nothing important now. But someone came up with the idea that theoretically, there might exist image-processing software that could process a two-dimensionalized image of a three-dimensional object and re-create the three-dimensional object. We hope that in the distant future, some intelligent civilization might re-create a three-dimensional representation of our world from its two-dimensionalized image. Though it would be nothing more than a dead representation, at least human civilization would not be forgotten.
“The Earth Civilization Museum is on Pluto. A large portion of humanity’s precious artifacts are stored there. The museum is buried under the surface, however, and we are concerned that during the process of falling into the plane, these artifacts would be mixed together with the strata of the crust and their structures would be damaged. We’d like to ask you to carry some of the artifacts away from Pluto on Halo and scatter them in space so that they can fall into two dimensions separately. This way, their structures would be preserved without harm in two dimensions. I guess this counts as a kind of rescue mission.... Of course, I admit that the idea is nearly science fiction, but doing something now is better than doing nothing.
“Also, Luo Ji is on Pluto. He wants to see you.”
“Luo Ji? He’s alive?!” AA cried out.
“Yes. He’s almost two hundred.”
“All right. Let’s go to Pluto,” Cheng Xin said. In the past, this would have been an extraordinary journey. But now, nothing mattered.
A pleasant male voice spoke up. “Do you wish to go to Pluto?”
“Who are you?” asked AA.
“I’m Halo, or Halo’s AI. Do you wish to go to Pluto?”
“Yes. What do we do?”
“You just have to confirm the request. There’s no need to do anything. I will complete the voyage for you.”
“Yes, we want to go to Pluto.”
“Authorization confirmed. Processing. Halo will accelerate at 1G in three minutes. Please pay attention to the direction of gravity.”
Cao Bin said, “Good. Better leave early. After the attack alert is issued, there might be total mayhem. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk again.” He closed the window link before AA and Cheng Xin could say good-bye. At this moment, AA, Cheng Xin, and Halo were not his top priorities.
Outside the porthole, they could see a few blue reflections appearing on the shell of the combined city—reflections of Halo’s nozzle lights. Cheng Xin and AA fell to one side of the spherical hall and felt their bodies grow heavier. The acceleration soon reached 1G. After the two of them—still weak from hibernation—struggled up and looked outside the porthole again, they saw the entirety of Jupiter. It was still immense, and shrinking at too slow a rate to be perceived.
The ship’s AI led AA and Cheng Xin on a tour of the ship to familiarize them with it. Like its predecessor, this new Halo was still a small stellar yacht with a maximum capacity of four. Most of the space on the ship was taken up by the ecological cycling system. By conventional measures, the ecological cycling system was extremely redundant—a volume of space that would have supported forty was used to provide for only f
our. The system was divided into four identical subsystems, linked together and acting as each other’s backups. If any of the four failed accidentally, the other three could bring it back to life. Halo’s other distinguishing characteristic was the ability to land directly on a medium-sized solid planet. This was a rare design choice among stellar ships—similar ships typically used shuttles to carry landing parties onto planets. Directly descending into a planet’s deep gravity well required the ship to have a very strong hull, which greatly increased the cost. Moreover, the need for atmospheric flight required a streamlined profile, which was also very rare among stellar ships. All of these design features meant that if Halo could find another Earthlike planet in outer space, it could act as a habitable base for the crew on the surface of the planet for a considerable amount of time. Maybe it was these characteristics of Halo that led to it being chosen for the artifact-rescuing mission to Pluto.
There were numerous other unusual features on the yacht. For instance, it had six small courtyards, each about twenty to thirty square meters in size. Each courtyard automatically adjusted to the direction of gravity under acceleration, and, during coasting, spun independently within the ship to generate artificial gravity. Each courtyard displayed a different natural scene: a green lawn with a babbling brook running through the grass; a small copse with a spring in the middle; a beach with waves of clear water throwing up surf.... These scenes were small but exquisite, like a string of pearls made of the best parts of the Earth. On a small stellar spaceship, such a design was extremely luxurious.
Cheng Xin felt both distressed and sorry for Halo. Such a perfect little world was soon going to be turned into a slice without thickness. She tried to avoid thinking about those other grander things facing imminent destruction—annihilation covered the sky of her thoughts like a giant pair of black wings, and she dared not look directly up at it.
Two hours after departure, Halo received the formal dark forest attack alert issued by the Solar System Federation Government. The president, a beautiful woman who looked very young, made the announcement. She stood in front of the blue flag of the Federation and spoke without expression. Cheng Xin noticed that the blue flag resembled the ancient UN flag, though a diagram of the Sun replaced the diagram of the Earth. This most important document, marking the end of human history, was very short:
Five hours ago, the advance warning system confirmed that a dark forest strike has been initiated against our world.
The attack takes the form of a dimensional strike, which will collapse the space around the Solar System from three dimensions to two dimensions. The result will be the complete destruction of all life.
The process is estimated to take eight to ten days. At this moment, the collapse is ongoing and the rate and extent of collapse are rapidly growing.
We have confirmed that the escape velocity for the collapsing region is the speed of light.
An hour ago, the Federation Government and Parliament have passed a new resolution that repeals all laws regarding Escapism. However, the government wishes to remind all citizens that the escape velocity far exceeds the maximum velocity of all human space vehicles. The probability of a successful escape is zero.
The Federation Government, Parliament, the Supreme Court, and Federation Fleet will carry out their duties until the end.
AA and Cheng Xin didn’t bother to watch more news. It was possible that, just like Cao Bin said, the Bunker World had approached paradise. They wanted to see what paradise looked like, but they didn’t dare look. If everything was heading toward ruination, the more beautiful it all was, the more pain they would suffer. In any event, it was a paradise that was collapsing in the terror of death.
Halo stopped accelerating. Behind it, Jupiter became a small yellow dot. The next few days of the voyage were spent in the uninterrupted slumber produced by the sleep-aid machine. In this lonely voyage through the night before the end, just the unstoppable mad imaginings were enough to make anyone fall apart.
Halo’s AI awakened AA and Cheng Xin from their dreamless sleep as the ship reached Pluto.
Out of the porthole and on the monitor they could see the entirety of Pluto. Their initial impression of the dwarf planet was one of darkness, like an eye that remained perpetually shut. This far from the Sun, the light was extremely dim. Only when Halo entered low orbit could they see the colors on the surface of the planet: Pluto’s crust appeared to be made of patches of blue and black. The black was rocks—not necessarily black in color, but the light was too dim to tell otherwise. The blue was solidified nitrogen and methane. Two centuries ago, when Pluto had been near its perigee and inside Neptune’s orbit, the surface would have looked completely different. The ice cover would have partially melted and produced a thin atmosphere. From the distance, it would have appeared a deep yellow.
Halo continued to descend. On Earth, this would have involved a soul-stirring atmospheric reentry, but Halo continued to fly through the silent vacuum, decelerating by the power of its own thrusters. On the blue-black ground below, an attention-grabbing line of white text appeared:
EARTH CIVILIZATION
The text was written in the modern script that mixed Latin and Chinese elements. After it, there were a few more lines of smaller text repeating the same thing in different scripts. Cheng Xin noticed that none of them said “museum.” The yacht was still about one hundred kilometers above the surface, which meant that the text was gigantic. Cheng Xin couldn’t make an exact estimate of the size of the characters, but she was certain that these were the largest written characters ever produced by humankind, each big enough to contain a city. By the time Halo was only about ten thousand meters above the surface, one of the large characters took up the entire field of view. Finally, Halo touched down on the broad landing field, which was the topmost dot in the Chinese character qiu (球), a part of the word Earth.
With the guidance of the ship’s AI, Cheng Xin and AA put on light space suits and exited Halo onto the surface of Pluto. Given the frigid surroundings, the heating systems in their space suits were operating at maximum power. The landing field was empty, white, and seemed to phosphoresce in the starlight. The numerous burn marks left on the ground indicated that many spacecraft had once landed and taken off here, but Halo was the only ship here now.
During the Bunker Era, Pluto was akin to Antarctica on ancient Earth. No one lived here permanently, and few came to visit.
In the sky, a black sphere moved rapidly among the stars. It was large, but the surface was shrouded in darkness: Charon, Pluto’s moon. Its mass was a tenth of Pluto’s, and the two almost formed a double-planet system, revolving around a common center of mass.
Halo turned on its searchlights. Due to the lack of atmosphere, there wasn’t a visible beam of light. It cast a circle of light on a distant rectangular object. This black monolith was the only protrusion above the white ground. It gave off an eerie sense of simplicity, as though it was an abstraction of the real world.
“That looks a bit familiar,” Cheng Xin said.
“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t have a good feeling about it.”
Cheng Xin and AA headed for the monolith. Pluto’s gravity was only one-tenth of the Earth’s, and so they proceeded by leaping. Along the way, they noticed a row of arrows pointing toward the monolith on the ground. Only when they reached the monolith did its immensity impress itself on their minds. When they looked up, it was as though a chunk had been taken out of the starry sky. They looked around and saw that there were rows of arrows coming from other directions, all pointing toward the monolith. At the foot of the monolith was another prominent protuberance: a metal wheel about a meter in diameter. To their surprise, they found the wheel to be hand-operated. Above the wheel was a diagram formed from white lines against the black surface of the monolith. Two curved arrows indicated the directions in which the wheel could be turned. Next to one of the arrows was a drawing of a half-open door, while the other bore a drawing of a shut
door. Cheng Xin turned to survey the arrows on the ground pointing to the monolith. All the simple, clear, wordless instructions gave her a strange feeling, which AA voiced.
“These things... I don’t think they’re intended for humans.”
They turned the wheel clockwise. The wheel was stiff, but eventually a door opened in the surface of the monolith. Some gas escaped, and the water vapor within quickly deposited into ice crystals that glinted in the searchlight. They entered the door and saw another door facing them, also operated by a wheel. This time, there were simple written instructions above the wheel, informing them that they were in an air lock and needed to close the first door before opening the second. This was unusual, since as early as the end of the Crisis Era, pressurized buildings could open their doors directly to vacuum without needing an air lock.
Cheng Xin and AA turned the wheel on the inside of the door they had entered to shut it. The searchlight was cut off. They were about to turn on the lights on their space suits to hold off the terror of darkness when they noticed a small lamp in the ceiling of the narrow air lock. This was the first sign they had seen of electricity. They began to turn the wheel to open the second door. Cheng Xin was certain that even if they hadn’t closed the first door, they would still have been able to open the second. The only thing that prevented air from leaking was following the instructions. In this low-technology environment, there was no automatic mechanism to prevent errors.
The rush of air almost toppled them, and the rapidly warming temperature fogged their visors. But the space suits told them that the external air pressure and composition was breathable; they could open their helmets.
