by Cixin Liu
>> Even though we came to an ever greater understanding of water vapor, we still lacked the sealing technology that would have allowed the core's scientists to protect our people and machinery from harm. Nonetheless, we had come to learn that that at an altitude above 2800 miles, the amorphous rock remained dead and inert, unable to boil. To study the strange new states, the World Government and the Explorer Alliance constructed a laboratory at an altitude of 2900 miles. They equipped this facility with a permanent drainpipe. Here experts began to study the amorphous rock in earnest.
“Only then could you begin to undertake the work of Archimedes,” Fan chimed in.
>> You are quite correct, but you should not forget that our earliest forbearers had already done the work of Faraday.
>> As a byproduct of their work in the Laboratory for Amorphous Rock Research, our scientists came to discover water pressure and buoyancy. They also managed to develop and perfect the sealant technology necessary to deal with liquids. Now we finally understood that sealing the amorphous rock would be an incredibly simple undertaking, much simpler in fact than drilling through layers of rock. All that would be required was a sufficiently sealed and pressure-resistant vessel. Without excavators, this ship would be able to rise at speeds that seemed almost incomprehensible to the People of the Core.
“You built a Bubble World rocket,” Fan noted with a smile.
>> More of a torpedo, really. This torpedo was a metallic, pressure-resistant, egg-shaped container with no drive or propeller whatsoever. It was designed for a crew of one. We shall call this pioneer ‘Gagarin’. The torpedo's launch pad was set up in a spacious hall excavated at an altitude of 3000 miles. One hour before the launch, Gagarin entered the torpedo and the entire vessel was hermetically sealed. After all instruments and life-support systems had been checked and determined to be functional, an automatic excavator began digging its way through the mere 30 feet of rock separating the launch hall from the seabed above. With an almighty roar, the ceiling collapsed under the pressure of the amorphous rock. The torpedo was immediately and completely submerged in a sea of liquid. As the chaos began to subside, Gagarin could finally catch a glimpse of the outside world through his transparent steel-rock porthole. With a start, he realized that the launch pad's two searchlights were casting beams of light through the amorphous rock. In the Bubble World without air, light could not scatter and emit beams. This was the first time any of us had ever seen light this way. Just then seismic waves communicated the launch order and Gagarin pulled the release lever.
>> The anchor hinges holding to the bottom of the torpedo to the rock sprung open and the torpedo slowly began to rise from the seabed. Engulfed by the amorphous rock, it soon began to accelerate, floating upward.
>> Given the pressure at seabed level, it was very easy for our scientists to calculate that roughly six miles of amorphous rock covered the ocean's floor. If nothing unexpected happened, the torpedo would float to the surface in roughly 15 minutes. What it would encounter there, no one could know.
>> The torpedo shot up in perfect tranquility. Through his porthole, Gagarin could see nothing but bottomless darkness. Only the occasional glimpse of dust zipping past in the lights outside his porthole gave him any indication of how rapidly he was ascending.
>> All too soon panic began to well in Gagarin's heart. He had lived all his life in a solid world. Now, as he entered a space filled with amorphous rock for the first time, a feeling of utterly helpless emptiness threatened to drown the very core of his being. Fifteen minutes seemed to stretch into infinity as Gagarin did his best to focus on the 100,000 years of exploration that had led to this moment …
>> And just as his spirit was about to break, his torpedo broke the surface of our planet's ocean.
>> The inertia of the ascent shot the torpedo a good 30 feet above the waters' surface, before it came crashing back down toward the sea. Looking through his porthole as he fell, Gagarin could see the boundless amorphous rock, stretching into forever, shimmering with strange sparkles. But he had no time to see where the light was coming from; the torpedo heavily hit the ocean with a great splash, sending amorphous rock splattering in all directions.
>> The torpedo came to a rest, floating on the ocean's surface like a boat, gently rocking with the waves.
>> Gagarin carefully opened the torpedo's hatch and slowly raised himself out of the vessel. Immediately he felt the gust of the ocean breeze and, after a few perplexed moments, came to realize that it was gas. Trembles of fear shook his body as he recalled a flow of water vapor he had once seen through a steel-rock pipe in the laboratory. Who could have ever foreseen that there could be this much gas anywhere in the universe? Gagarin soon understood that this gas was very different from the gas produced by boiling amorphous rock. Unlike the latter, it could not cause his body to short-circuit.
>> In his memoirs he later wrote the following description of these events:
>> I felt the gentle touch of a giant, invisible hand brush by my body. It seemed to have reached down from a vast, boundless, and completely unknown place; and that place was now before me, transforming me into something wholly new.
>> Gagarin lifted his head and then and there he finally embraced the reward of 100,000 years of our civilization's exploration: He saw the magnificent, sparkling wonder of the starlit sky.
CHAPTER
10
Of The Universality of Mountains
“It really wasn't easy for you. You had to explore for so many years, just to reach our starting point,” Fan exclaimed in admiration.
>> That is the reason why you should consider yourself a very lucky civilization.
Just then, the size of the ice crystal clouds formed by the escaping atmosphere dramatically increased. The heavens shone with sparkling light, a brilliant rainbow wreathe blooming as the alien vessel's glow scattered in the ice. Below, the titanic cyclonic well continued its rumbling turns. It made Fan think of an insanely massive machine pulverizing the planet bit by thundering bit. Here on top of the mountain, however, everything had become completely still. Even the tiny ripples had disappeared from the summit's surface. The ocean was mirror still. Again, Feng Fan was reminded of the mountain lakes of North Tibet …
With a jolt, he forced his mind back to reality.
“Why did you come here?” he asked the sphere above.
>> We are just passing by and we wanted to see if there was intelligent life here with which we could have a chat. We talk to whoever first climbs this mountain.
“Where there's a mountain, there will always be someone to climb it,” Fan intoned, nodding.
>> Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains. They all want to stand on ever higher ground to gaze ever farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival. Had you, for example, been only concerned with staying alive, you would have fled from this mountain as fast and far as you could. Instead, you chose to come and climb it. The reason evolution bestows all intelligent life with a desire to climb higher is far more profound than more base needs, even though we still do not understand its real purpose. Mountains are universal and we are all standing at the feet of mountains.
“I am on to top of the mountain,” Feng Fan interjected. He would not stand for anyone, not even aliens, challenging the glory of having climbed the world's tallest mountain.
>> You are standing at the foot of the mountain. We are all always at the foot. The speed of light is the foot of a mountain; the three dimensions of space are a foot of a mountain. You are imprisoned in the deep gorge of light-speed and three-dimensional space. Does it not feel … cramped?
“We were born this way. It is what we are familiar with,” Fan replied, clearly in thought.
>> Then the things that I will tell you next may be very unfamiliar. Look at the universe now. What do you feel?”
“It is vast, limitless; that kind of thing,” Fan answered.
>> Does it feel
cramped to you?
“How could it? The universe stretches out endlessly before my eyes; scientists can even peer as far as twenty billion light years into space,” Fan explained.
>> Then I shall tell you: It is no more than a bubble world 20 billion light years in radius.
Fan had no words.
>> Our universe is an empty bubble; a bubble in something more solid.
“How could that possibly be? Would this larger solid not immediately collapse in under its own gravity?” Fan asked, bewildered.
>> No; at least not yet. Our bubble is still expanding in this super-universal solid. Gravitational collapse is only an issue for a bounded solid space. If, however, the surrounding solid area is in fact limitless, then gravitational collapse would be a non-issue. This of course is no more than a guess. Who could know whether this solid super-universe has its own limits?
>> There is so much space for speculation. For example, one could consider that on its immense scale, gravity is offset by some other force, just like electromagnetism is largely offset by the nuclear forces on the microscopic scale. We are not aware of such a force, but when we were inside the Bubble World, we remained unaware of gravity. From the data we have gathered, we can see that the form of the universe's bubble is much like your scientists have surmised; it is just that you do not know what lies beyond yet.
“What is this solid? Is it…?” Fan hesitated for a moment. “Rock?” he finally asked.
>> We do not know, but we will discover that in 50,000 years when we reach our destination.
“Where exactly are you going?” Fan asked.
>> The edge of the universe. Our bubble ship is called Needle's Point. Do you remember the name?
“I remember,” Fan answered. “That was the ship that first discovered the law of decreasing density in the Bubble World.”
>> Right. We do not know what we will find.
“Does the super-universe have other bubbles in it?” Fan inquired.
>> You are already thinking very far ahead, indeed.
“How could I not?” Fan responded.
>> Think of the many small bubbles inside a very big rock. They are there, but they are very hard to find. Even so, we will go and look for them.
“You truly are amazing.” Fan smiled, holding a deep admiration for the adventurous aliens.
>> Very well, our little chat was most delightful, but we must make haste; 50,000 years is a very long time and we are burning daylight. It was a pleasure meeting you; and remember, mountains are universal.
The sheer density of the ice crystal clouds already made the last few words hard to read, blurred behind the clouds. And with those last words, the giant sphere, too, began to slowly dim, its form fading smaller and smaller in the heavens. Soon it had shrunk to a mere dot, just another star in an endless sky. It left much faster than it had arrived and within moments it had disappeared altogether across the Western horizon.
Everything between heaven and ocean was returned to deep black. Ice crystal clouds and the cyclonic well were swallowed by the darkness, leaving only a trace of swirling black chaos, barely visible in the skies above. Feng Fan could hear the roar of the encircling tempest rapidly diminish. Soon, it was no more than a soft whimper, and before long, even that had died. All that remained was the sound of the waves.
Feng Fan suddenly became aware of the sensation of falling. Looking around he could see the ocean slowly begin to change. The perfectly round summit of the water mountain had begun to flatten like a giant parasol being stretched ever farther open. He knew that the water mountain was dissolving, and that he was plummeting a good 30,000 feet. After only minutes the water that he was floating on stopped falling, having reached sea level; and he felt it. The inertia of his fall carried him down, deep below the surface.
Luckily he did not sink too far this time and so was quickly floating up to the surface.
As he surfaced, he realized that the water mountain had completely disappeared into the ocean, leaving not even the slightest trace, appearing just as if it had never been. The cyclone, too, had spun itself out of existence, even though he could still feel the hurricane force winds batter him as they whipped up large waves. Soon, the ocean's surface would be calm again.
As the ice crystal clouds scattered, the magnificent starry heavens again came to span the sky.
Feng Fan looked up at the stars, thinking of that distant world so very, very far away – so remote that even the light of that day must have reeled from exhaustion before reaching Earth. There, in that ocean long ago, Gagarin of the Bubble World had raised his head to the stars as Fan did now; and through the vast barrenness of space and the desolation of time, he felt a deep bond of kinship unite their spirits.
In a sudden a burst of nausea, Feng Fan felt himself retch. He could tell from the taste that it was blood. Miles above sea level, on the summit of the water mountain he had suffered mountain sickness. A pulmonary edema was hemorrhaging. Immediately he realized the severity of the situation. The sudden increase of gravity had left him too exhausted to move. Only his life jacket was keeping him afloat. He had no inkling as to the fate of the Bluewater, but he could be almost certain that there could be no boats within at least half a mile.
When he was atop the summit, Feng Fan had felt his life fulfilled. Up there he could have died in peace. Now suddenly, there was no one on the planet who could have been more afraid to die than he was. He had climbed to the rocky roof of our planet and now he had also climbed the highest watery peak the world had ever known.
What kind of mountain was left for him to climb?
He would have to survive; he had to find out. The primal fear of the Himalayan blizzard returned. Once, this fear had made him cut the rope connecting him to his companions and his lover. He had sealed their fate and left them dead to the world. Now he knew that he had done the right thing. If there had been anything left for him to betray to save his life, he would have betrayed it.
He had to live. There was a universe of mountains out there.
Of Ants and Dinosaurs
PREFACE
It was the dawn of a Late Cretaceous day some 65 million years ago – when exactly, no one could have known. It was a perfectly ordinary of day; just a day on Earth, passing in pristine tranquility.
In that distant past, the Earth looked very different than it does today; its lands were in unfamiliar shapes, spread across different continents. On two of these continents, Gondwana and Laurasia, dinosaurs were widespread. Many hundreds of millions of years ago, Gondwana had been the Earth's only continent. Now, it had almost split in two, but even so it remained the size of our age's Africa and South America put together. Having split from Gondwana, Laurasia was the continent that in the millions of years to come would form North America and most of Eurasia.
On this day, existence for all life on Earth on all continents meant the struggle to survive. In this dark world, none knew where they had come from, nor did they care where they were going. As the Sun slowly rose to the zenith of the Cretaceous sky, diminishing the shadows cast by the cycads' large leaves in its wake, no living thing on Earth had a worry deeper than what that day's lunch would be.
For its part, a tyrannosaurus had found its midday meal. Hunting the central reaches of Gondwana, the dinosaur had found its way into a sunlit clearing in the middle of a primeval cycad forest. The tyrannosaur's lunch was a freshly caught lizard, plump and tasty. Using its great talons, it tore the struggling creature into halves with a mighty rip. Then, with a swift twist of the neck, the tyrannosaurus threw the tail end of the lizard up in the air and straight into its gaping maw. Chewing with relish, the dinosaur was completely satisfied with this world and its place in it.
A yard or so from the tyrannosaur's left food stood a small ant city. Most of this city actually lay underground, providing a home for more than a thousand ants. This year's dry season had been very long, making life in the city more difficult with every passing day. By noon that day,
the ants had already been suffering two days of hunger.
After the tyrannosaurus had finished its meal, it took two steps back. Deeply content, it lay down for a midday nap. As it settled, the impact of the dinosaur's massive body caused the ant city to shake with the force of a powerful earthquake. Rushing to the surface, the ants saw the dinosaur's body lying in the distance like a towering range of mountains. Moments later another quake struck as that mountain range unexpectedly began rolling to and fro across the earth. As it rolled, the tyrannosaurus arched one of its massive claws toward its maw, vigorously attempting to poke the gaps between its teeth. The ants quickly understood why this dinosaur was not falling asleep: There was meat stuck between its teeth, obviously bothering it.
The mayor of the ant city had a sudden flash of inspiration. Climbing to the top of a small blade of grass, it emitted a stream of pheromone words to the ants below. The chemical signals spread far and wide. Every ant that smelled it immediately understood the mayor's idea and passed the message on, spreading its own pheromones. Antennae waving, the ant colony erupted into a tide of excitement. Following after their mayor, the ants made their way toward the tyrannosaurus. They formed several black marching streamlets, living flows from city to dinosaur.
Ten minutes later, the ants followed their mayor's lead, climbing up toward the dinosaur's humongous claws. The tyrannosaurus soon spotted the ants clambering up its forearm. Raising the other claw, it moved to brush them off its body. Its arm was like a vast bank of dark clouds, suddenly covering the sky and blocking out the midday sun. In the blink of an eye, the ants on the great plain of its forearm were covered by darkness. In shock, the ants stared up at the giant hand in the sky above, frenziedly waving their feelers. The mayor, however, climbed on, up the dinosaur's arm, over its claw, and right toward its huge mouth. The other ants timidly followed their mayor's example.
