Cixin Liu - Death's End

A pair of giant eyes stared down at them from space.

Two glowing ovals hung in space, looking exactly like eyes. The “whites” were white or light yellow, and the “irises” were dark.

“That’s Neptune, and the other one is Ura—oh, no, that’s Saturn!” AA said.

Both gas giants had been two-dimensionalized. Uranus’s orbit was outside Saturn’s, but since Uranus was currently on the other side of the Sun, Saturn had fallen into the two-dimensional plane first. The giant planets ought to look like circles after collapsing, but due to the angle of view from Pluto, they appeared as ovals. The two-dimensional planets showed up as clear, concentric rings. Neptune consisted mainly of three rings: the outermost was blue, bright and vivid, like lashes and eye shadow—that was the atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. The middle ring was white—that was the twenty-thousand-kilometer mantle, which astronomers thought of as a water-ammonia ocean. The dark center was the core, formed of rocks and ice, with a mass equal to the entire Earth. Saturn’s structure was similar, except it didn’t have the outer blue ring.

Each large ring was composed of many smaller rings, full of detailed structures. As they examined the planets further, the two giant eyes now more resembled the rings of a newly felled tree. Around each two-dimensional planet were a dozen or so small circles—moons that had also been flattened. Around Saturn was another faint large circle—its rings. They could still find the Sun in the sky, a small disk emitting faint yellow light. Since the two planets were still on the other side of the sun, their area after collapsing into two dimensions was breathtaking.

Both planets had no thickness anymore.

In the light emitted by these two-dimensional planets, Cheng Xin and AA carried the artifacts across the white landing field toward Halo . The ship’s smooth, streamlined body was like a funhouse mirror, and the reflections of the two-dimensional planets were stretched into long, flowing shapes. The yacht’s profile naturally made people think of droplets, and evinced a comforting strength and lightness. On the way to Pluto, AA had told Cheng Xin that she thought Halo ’s hull was probably made up in large part of strong-interaction materials.

As they approached, the door on the bottom of the ship slid open noiselessly. They carried the artifacts up the airstair and into the cabin, took off their helmets, and took a deep breath in their cozy little world. Relief filled their hearts—without consciously being aware of it, they already thought of the yacht as home .

Cheng Xin asked the ship’s AI whether it had received any transmissions from Neptune and Saturn. As soon as she made the request, information windows flooded forth like a colorful avalanche that threatened to bury them. The scene reminded them of the first false alarm of 118 years ago. Back then, most of the information had come from media reports, but now, the news media seemed to have disappeared. Most of the information windows contained no discernible images at all—some were blurred, others shook, and most showed meaningless close-ups. But a few of the windows were filled with patches of gorgeous color which, as they flowed and shifted, revealed complex, detailed structures. They probably showed the two-dimensional universe.

AA asked the AI to filter the images. The AI asked them what kind of information they wanted. Cheng Xin asked for information about the space cities. The flood of windows cleared and was replaced by about a dozen others arranged in order. One of the windows enlarged and moved before the others. The AI explained that this had been taken twelve hours ago at Europe VI in the Neptune cluster. The city had once been part of a combined city that had separated after the strike alert.

The image was stable, and the field of view wide. The camera was probably at one end of the city, and almost the entire city could be seen.

Electricity had gone out in Europe VI, and only a few searchlight beams projected unsteady circles of light onto the city’s far side. The three artificial fusion suns along the city’s axis had all turned into silvery moons, giving out only illumination, but no heat. This was a standard football-shaped city, but the buildings inside the city were very different from what Cheng Xin had seen half a century ago. The Bunker World had prospered, and the buildings inside the city were no longer monotonous and uniform. They were much taller, and each had a unique design. The tips of some of the skyscrapers almost touched the axis of the city. Buildings in the shapes of trees reappeared as well, and they looked about as large as the ones that had been built on Earth, though the leaves hung more densely. It was possible to imagine the city’s beauty and magnificence when lit up at night. But now, only cold moonlight illuminated it, and the tree-buildings cast wide shadows so that the rest of the city appeared as ruins nestled in the shade of a giant forest.

The city had stopped spinning and everything was weightless. Countless objects floated through the air—vehicles, miscellaneous goods, and even entire buildings.

A black belt of clouds appeared along the city’s axis, connecting the two poles. The ship’s AI outlined a rectangular region in the image and zoomed in, creating a new information window. Cheng Xin and AA were shocked to see that the black cloud was formed from people drifting in the middle of the city! Some of the weightless individuals had pulled together into a cluster; some had linked hands and formed a line; but most floated alone. Everyone wore helmets and clothes that covered all parts of their body—most likely space suits. Even during Cheng Xin’s last time out of hibernation, it was hard to tell everyday clothes apart from space suits. Everyone seemed to have a pack for life-support systems—some wore it on their back, while others held it in their hands. But most people had their visors open, and it was possible to see a light breeze blowing through the city, indicating that the city still retained a breathable atmosphere. Many had congregated around the suns, perhaps hoping for more light as well as a bit of warmth, but the light emitted by the fusion suns was cold light. The silvery light shone through cracks in the people-cloud and turned into dappled shadows in the surrounding city.

According to the ship’s AI, of the six million inhabitants of Europe VI, half had already left the city on space vehicles. Of the remaining three million, some had no way to get off the city, but most understood that any attempt at escape was hopeless. Even if some ships miraculously managed to escape the collapsing zone and reached outer space, most ships had no ecological cycling system to maintain life for long. Access to stellar ships that could survive indefinitely in outer space was still a privilege of the very few. These people chose to wait for the end in a place they were familiar with.

The transmission wasn’t muted, but Cheng Xin couldn’t hear anything. The people-cloud and the city were both eerily quiet. Everyone looked in one direction. That part of the city looked no different from any other, filled with crisscrossing streets and row upon row of buildings. Everyone waited. In the watery, cold moonlight, people’s faces appeared as white as ghosts. The sight reminded Cheng Xin of the bloody dawn in Australia 126 years ago. Like then, Cheng Xin felt as though she were looking down upon an ant colony, and the black people-cloud looked just like a drifting swarm of ants.

Someone in the people-cloud screamed. A glowing dot appeared at a spot on the city’s equator, the same spot where everyone had been gazing. It was like a small opening in the roof of a dark house letting in the sunlight.