by Cixin Liu
“Do you see that?” she asked, pointing at the screen. “All the parameters, the luminosity, the pixel arrays, the pixel probability, the layer statistics — they are all exactly the same!”
I shook my head. “And what does that show? A toy telescope, a basic image processing program and you, an ignorant amateur.” I paused, but then continued. “Just forget about it; don't believe the rumors!”
“You're an idiot,” she shot back, taking back the telescope and turning the flying car around.
Only as she did so did I notice a number of other flying cars in the distance, both above and below us. They were hovering in the air, like we had been, a telescope extending from every car toward the Sun.
Several months later the terrible theory began spreading across the entire world like a wildfire. More and more people took it upon themselves to study the Sun with ever larger and more precise instruments. An NGO even came to launch a group of probes toward the Sun. After three months the probes hit the Sun. The data they sent back finally proved the fact: In the past 400 years, the Sun had not changed, not changed at all.
All around the world, the subterranean cities turned into bubbling volcanoes of unrest threatening to explode at any moment. In this atmosphere, Kayoko and I placed our son in a fostering center in accordance with the laws of the Unity Government. As we returned home, we both felt the undeniable truth that the only strand holding us together had been removed. As we passed the central plaza, we came upon a rally in full swing. We saw that some of the instigators were handing out weapons to the attending citizens.
“Citizens! The Earth as been betrayed! Humanity has been betrayed!” the leader of the rally shouted out. “Civilization has been betrayed! We are all the victims of a colossal hoax! A hoax so great and terrible that it would shock the gods! The Sun still is our old Sun; it will not explode! Past, present and future, it is the very symbol of eternity! What is explosive is the wild and insidious ambition of those in the Unity Government! They fabricated it all so that they could bring about their dictatorial empire! They have destroyed the Earth! They have destroyed human civilization! Citizens, you citizens of conscience, take up arms!” the speaker shouted out to the masses. “Rescue our planet! Rescue civilization! We will topple the Unity Government! We will take control of the Earth Engines! We will guide our planet back from the cold depths of space, home to its intended orbit! We will return to the warm embrace of our Sun!”
Kayoko quietly stepped forward, accepting an assault rifle from one of the men handing out the weapons. In silence she joined a column of armed citizens. She did not look back as she disappeared into the depths of the city together with that vast formation of like-minded citizens. I stood dumbfounded. In my pocket I tightly grasped the medal that had been given in exchange for my father's life and loyalty.
Its points dug into my hand and drew blood.
Three days later the fires of rebellion were ignited simultaneously across the world. Wherever the rebels went, the people rose to meet their call. At that time, very few people still doubted that they had been deceived. Nonetheless, I joined the army of the Unity Government. It was not that I had great faith in the Unity Government, but my family had served in the military for three generations and they had sown the seeds of loyalty deep in my heart. For me, rebellion against the Unity Government was unthinkable, no matter what the circumstances.
One after another, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica fell into rebel hands as the Unity Government drew defensive lines around the Earth Engines in Eastern and Central Asia, ready to defend them to the very last. The rebels quickly surrounded these lines. Their forces vastly outmatched the government troops. There was only one reason that their offensive stalled; it was all about the Earth Engines. The rebel forces had no desire to destroy the engines and so they avoided deploying heavy weapons in this vast theater of war. The government forces could thus cling to their positions, even as their situation worsened with every day.
The two sides remained locked in this stalemate for three months. But, when a succession of twelve Unity Government field armies defected in the midst of critical engagements, the government's defensive lines in East and Central Asia finally and completely collapsed. Two months later, the Unity Government, its situation bleak beyond hope, found itself encircled at the Earth Engine control center, its back to the frozen ocean. All that was left of its army was a contingent of less than 100,000 troops. I was a major in that remnant army.
The control center was the size of a city, built around the Earth Bridge. I found myself in its field hospital, my arm badly burnt by laser fire. It was there I learned that Kayoko had been killed in action in Australia. Like the others in the field hospital, I drank myself into a stupor virtually ever day. We lost all track of the war raging outside, and we could not have cared less.
I do not know how much time had passed when I heard someone shouting at the top of their lungs.
“Do you know how things came to this? You have only yourself to blame. In this war, you stood against humanity and so did I.”
As I turned my head to see, I discovered a general's star gleaming on the speaker's shoulder. He continued his speech. “Be that as it may, we have one more chance to save our souls. The Earth Bridge is only three blocks away. We can take it and hand it over to the sane humanity outside. We gave our all fulfilling our duty to the Unity Government; now we must do the same for our duty to humanity!”
Using my good arm I drew my pistol and together with this suddenly frenzied mass of able-bodied and wounded, I surged down the steel passageways toward the Earth Bridge. To our surprise, we encountered almost no resistance along the way. In fact, more and more people emerged from the maze of metal corridors to join our march. In the end we came upon a gigantic metal gate, rising above us as far as the eye could see. With a loud rumble it opened and we charged onto the Earth Bridge.
Even though we had seen it countless times on TV, we were all nonetheless shocked by the magnificence of the Earth Bridge. In was hard to judge the size of the bridge by just looking at it as its dimensions were hidden by the gigantic hologram that dominated the room. The hologram was a simulation of the solar system. Almost all of it was black space, stretching limitlessly in all directions.
Entering the bridge we seemed to float in the middle of this blackness. Because the model was designed to represent the actual proportions as accurately as possible, the Sun and planets were tiny. They were so tiny that they looked like mere fireflies glowing in the distance. Nonetheless, they remained clearly distinguishable. A conspicuous red spiral expanded out from the distant central dot of light that represented the Sun. It spread like red rings of water on a black ocean. It was the Earth's path. At a point far along the spiral, the line turned from red to bright green, representing the route the Earth had yet to travel.
The green line swept over the top of our heads and as we let our gaze follow it, we could see a splendid sea of stars. The line disappeared into the depth of that sea, its end beyond our purview. Many specks of glittering dust also floated in the middle of the vast blackness of the hologram. As some of these specks floated closer, I realized that they were virtual screens, revealing a scrolling procession of complex figures and curves.
I then saw the Earth Navigation Platform, the apple in the collective eye of humanity. It looked like a silver asteroid, floating in the blackness. Seeing the platform, it was hard to grasp its immense size; the Navigation Platform itself was a large forum, currently densely packed with more than 5,000 people. They included the leaders of the Unity Government and a large part of the Interstellar Migration Committee — which was responsible for implementing the plans for Earth's travels — as well as some last remaining loyalists. As we took all of this in, we heard the voice of the Supreme Executive Officer echo into the black around us.
“Of course we could fight to the end, but that could lead to us losing control of the Earth Engines. If that should happen, the excess fissile m
aterial could burn straight through the entire planet or evaporate all of Earth's oceans. And so we have decided to surrender. We understand the people. They have already endured forty generations of hardship and struggle and they have nothing to look forward to for a further one-hundred generations. It would certainly be unrealistic to expect them to remain reasonable throughout it all. But we ask that the people remember that we, the five thousand who stand here, from the Supreme Executive Officer to every last private, stood firm in our convictions to the very end. We know that we will not see the day that we are proven right, but if humanity should endure eternally, all will eventually come to shed tears before our graves. This sphere called Earth shall be an eternal monument in our memory!”
The giant doors of the control center opened with a deep rumble and those 5,000 people, the last of the Earth Faction, emerged. They were then marched to the coast by rebel forces. The road they took was lined with throng upon angry throng. The enraged masses spat at the prisoners and pelted them with rocks and pieces of ice. The visors of some thermal suits shattered, exposing the faces beneath to temperatures more than 150-degrees below freezing. But even as they were numbed by the terrible cold they trudged on, fighting for every step. I saw a small girl pick up a large chunk of ice. Exerting all the strength her small body could muster, she furiously smashed it against the body of an old government official, the unbridled rage in her eyes seeming to burn straight through her visor.
When I heard that every last one of these 5,000 had been sentenced to death, I could not help but feel that they were being treated too leniently. How could one death be enough? How could one death redress their crimes? How could they pay for the crime of perpetrating an insane hoax that destroyed both the Earth and human culture? They should die a thousand times over! I then recalled those astrophysicists who had forecast the explosion of the Sun and those engineers who had designed and built the Earth Engines. They might have all passed away a century ago, but I then truly thought that they should be exhumed and that they too should suffer a thousand deaths.
I was genuinely grateful when I learned that their executioners had come up with a good way to put them to death: They would remove the nuclear battery from the thermal suits of all those who had been sentenced to death. Then, they would leave them on the frozen surface of the ocean. Without the batteries to heat their suits they would succumb to the subzero temperatures, the cold slowly wresting all life from their bodies.
So the most treacherous, most disgraceful criminals of human history were gathered on the frozen ocean. As they stood there densely packed, more than a hundred thousand gathered on the shore to witness their demise. More than a hundred thousand jaws clenching in anger, more than a hundred thousand pairs of eyes burning with the same fury I had seen in that little girl.
All of the Earth Engines were shut down then. The stars hung majestically over the frozen ocean. As I looked up at them, I imagined the countless frozen pins and needles that the cold was driving into the bodies of the convicted. I imagined their blood freezing; the life slowly seeping from their bodies. A pleasant warmth flowed from my mind and over my entire body as I embraced those images. Seeing those people slowly die, tormented by the cold, cheered the spirits of everyone watching from the shore and they began to sing, “My Sun.”
I sang as well, my eyes gazing into that direction. There a slightly larger star shone, its round disk sending forth yellow light; the Sun.
Oh, my Sun, mother of life, father of all things; what could be more steady than you? What could be more eternal than you? We are so tiny, carbon-based bacteria, below the contempt of even dust, crowded on a pebble that revolves around you. We dared to prophesize your doom; how incredibly stupid we were!
An hour passed and those criminals, those enemies of humanity, still stood on the frozen ocean. But there was no more life in them, their blood having frozen in their veins.
Suddenly, I lost all sight. Seconds passed before my vision slowly began to recover. The ice fields, the seashore, and all the people standing on the ocean and at the shore gradually began to reform in front of my eyes. Finally everything was clear, even clearer than it had been before; clearer because the world was enveloped in an intense brightness. It was this sudden glare that had blinded me a moment ago.
The stars did not reemerge, their light drowned out by the intense glare. It was as if the entire universe had melted into brilliance. The light burst from a point in the sky, a point that was now the center of the universe. That point was in the direction that I had just stared into a moment before.
The helium flash had occurred.
The chorus of “My Sun” froze in mid-song. The many thousand on the shore were dumbfounded; they almost resembled the 5,000 on the ice beyond, standing frozen, rigid as rock.
The Sun's light and warmth blessed the Earth one last time. The dry ice on the surface was first to melt, rising into plumes of white steam; then the surface water of the ocean also began to thaw. A great rumble that shook the heavens and the Earth rose as the layers of ice were unevenly heated. Gradually, the light softened and a faint blue began to color the sky. Later, polar lights born by the intense solar wind began to play across the sky above. They waved across the firmament like giant colorful curtains.
The last of the Earth Faction stood firm in this sudden splendid sunlight; 5,000 dignified statues.
The solar eruption lasted only briefly, and after two hours the light rapidly weakened and then faded altogether.
Where the Sun had been, a dark red sphere now hung, gradually swelling. Seen from our wandering Earth, it slowly grew to the size of the Sun of old, a strange memory from Earth's original orbit. In fact, it was now so massive that it stretched beyond the orbit of Mars. Mercury, Mars, and Venus, Earth's three terrestrial fellows, had then already been burned to wisps of smoke, vaporized by radiation of almost 200 million degrees.
The red sphere in the sky was not our Sun anymore. No longer glowing with light and warmth, it looked like a cold piece of red paper glued to the firmament. Its dark red radiance seemed but a reflection of the surrounding starlight. The Sun had reached the final destination of all low-mass stars, transforming into a red giant.
Five billion years of majestic life now were no more than a passing dream. The Sun had died.
Fortunately, humanity remained.
CHAPTER
4
The Wandering Age
As I recall of this, half a century has come to pass. Twenty years ago our path crossed Pluto's orbit. Earth had left the solar system for good, continuing its journey in the cold vastness of outer space alone.
I last visited the surface more than a dozen years ago accompanied by my son and daughter-in-law, a blond haired, blue-eyed girl. She was heavily pregnant then.
After arriving on the surface, the first thing I noticed was that I could not see the Earth Engines' massive beams even though I knew they were all running at full power. The Earth's atmosphere had disappeared, leaving nothing for the plasma's glow to diffract against. I saw strange translucent yellow and green crystals scattered across the Earth's surface. They were made of solid oxygen and nitrogen; our frozen atmosphere.
Interestingly enough, the atmosphere had not frozen evenly across the Earth's surface. Instead, it had formed irregular bulges, like small translucent hills. On the frozen, once flat ocean they gave birth to a new and alien landscape. Above, the stars of the Milky Way stretched unmoving across the sky. They too seemed frozen. Their light, however, was bright enough to dazzle the eyes, if one looked long enough.
The Earth Engines will now run for 500 years without interruption, accelerating the Earth to 0.5 percent of the speed of light. The Earth will then cruise, shooting through space at this incredible speed for 1,300 years. Then, when the Earth has completed two-thirds of its journey, we will again turn the direction of the Earth Engines and the Earth will begin its 500-year deceleration. After 2,400 years of travel the Earth will finally reach its new home, Pr
oxima Centauri. Over the course of a century it will be docked into orbit around the star, becoming its planet.
In time, I will be gone,
So far our voyage wandering,
But call me at the dawn
When the East glows in light rising.
In time, I will be gone,
So long past the journey began,
But call me at the dawn
When the sky above shines blue again.
In time, I will be gone,
So distant our solar story,
But call me at the dawn
When the trees bloom with fresh glory…
Every time I hear that song, warmth flows through my stiff, aging body and my dry, old eyes moisten once more. Before my mind's eye the three suns of Alpha Centauri rise in procession, bathing life in their warm light. The solid atmosphere has melted, once again rising as blue sky. Two-thousand-year-old seeds are reborn from the thawed soil, covering the Earth in green. I see my great-grandchildren, a hundred generations removed, laugh and play in these green fields. Clear streams cross the grassland, giving home to small silver fishes… I see Kayoko, running towards me across the green Earth; she is young and beautiful, like an angel…
Oh, Earth, my wandering Earth…
Mountain
CHAPTER
1
Where There's a Mountain
“Today is the day I'm finally going to get you to tell me what is up with you never going on land,” the Captain declared, arching an eyebrow. “It's been five years and the Bluewater has docked in heaven knows how many ports in more countries than I can count, yet you have never gone ashore; not even when we docked back in China. And not even last year, back in Qingdao when we were in for overhauls. You're the last person I’d need to tell that the ship was a complete mess, and noisy, and still you stayed put, holed up in your cabin for two months,” the Captain continued, eying Feng Fan intensely he spoke.
