Cixin Liu - Death's End

“If you put my brain on the Staircase Program probe and launched it at the star, it would take thirty thousand years to get there.”

Cheng Xin heard no response. When she turned around, she saw that Vadimov was no longer looking at the star with her, but leaning against the car and looking at nothing. She could see that his face was troubled.

“What’s wrong?”

Vadimov was silent for some time. “I’ve been avoiding my duty.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m the best candidate for the Staircase Program.”

After a momentary shock, Cheng Xin realized that Vadimov was right: He had extensive experience in spaceflight, diplomacy, and intelligence; he was steady and mature…. Even if they were able to expand the pool of candidates to include healthy individuals, Vadimov would still be the best choice.

“But you’re healthy.”

“Sure. But I’m still running from my responsibility.”

“Have you been pressured?” Cheng Xin was thinking of Wade.

“No, but I know what I must do; I just haven’t done it. I got married three years ago, and my daughter just turned one. I’m not afraid to die, but my family matters to me. I don’t want them to see me turned into something worse than a corpse.”

“You don’t have to do this. Neither the PIA nor your government has ordered you to do this, and they can’t!”

“Yes, but I wanted to tell you… in the end, I’m the best candidate.”

“Mikhail, humankind isn’t just some abstraction. To love humanity, you must start by loving individual persons, by fulfilling your responsibility to those you love. It would be absurd to blame yourself for it.”

“Thank you, Cheng Xin. You deserve your gift.” Vadimov looked up at Cheng Xin’s star. “I would love to give my wife and daughter a star.”

A bright point of light appeared in the sky, then another. Their glow cast shadows on the ground. They were testing nuclear pulse propulsion in space.

The process of selecting a subject for the Staircase Program was fully underway, but the effort imposed little direct pressure on Cheng Xin. She was asked to perform some basic tasks such as examining candidates’ knowledge of spaceflight, a primary requirement. Since the pool of candidates was limited to terminally ill patients, it was almost impossible to find someone with the requisite expertise. The PIA intensified efforts to identify more candidates through every available channel.

One of Cheng Xin’s college classmates came to New York to visit her. The talk turned to what had happened to others in their class, and her friend mentioned Yun Tianming. She had heard from Hu Wen that Tianming was in the late stages of lung cancer and didn’t have much time left. Right away, Cheng Xin went to Assistant Chief Yu to suggest Tianming as a candidate.

For the rest of her life, Cheng Xin would remember that moment. Every time, she had to admit to herself that she just didn’t think much about Tianming as a person.

Cheng Xin needed to return to China for business. Since she was Tianming’s classmate, Assistant Chief Yu asked her to represent the PIA and discuss the matter with Tianming. She agreed, still not thinking much of it.

After hearing Cheng Xin’s story, Tianming slowly sat up on the bed. Cheng Xin asked him to lie down, but he said he wanted to be by himself for a while.

Cheng Xin closed the door lightly behind her. Tianming began to laugh hysterically.

What a fucking idiot I am! Did I think that because I gave her a star out of love, she would return that love? Did I think that she had flown across the Pacific to save me with her saintly tears? What kind of fairy tale have I been telling myself?

No, Cheng Xin had come to ask him to die.

He made another logical deduction that made him laugh even harder, until it was hard to breathe. Based on Cheng Xin’s timing, she could not know that he had already chosen euthanasia. In other words, if Tianming hadn’t already chosen this path, she would try to convince him to take it. Maybe she would even entice him, or pressure him, until he agreed.

Euthanasia meant “good death,” but there was nothing good about the fate she had in mind for him.

His sister had wanted him to die because she thought money was being wasted. He could understand that—and he believed that she genuinely wanted him to die in peace. Cheng Xin, on the other hand, wanted him to suffer in eternity. Tianming was terrified of space. Like everyone who studied spaceflight for a living, he understood space’s sinister nature better than the general public. Hell was not on Earth, but in heaven.

Cheng Xin wanted a part of him, the part that carried his soul, to wander forever in that frigid, endless, lightless abyss.

Actually, that would be the best outcome.

If the Trisolarans were to really capture his brain as Cheng Xin wished, then his true nightmare would begin. Aliens who shared nothing with humanity would attach sensors to his brain and begin tests involving the senses. They would be most interested in the sensation of pain, of course, and so, by turn, he would experience hunger, thirst, whipping, burning, suffocation, electric shocks, medieval torture techniques, death by a thousand cuts….

Then they would search his memory to identify what forms of suffering he feared the most. They would discover a torture technique he had once read in a history book—first, the victim was whipped until not an inch of his skin remained intact; then the victim’s body was tightly wrapped in bandages; and after the victim had stopped bleeding, the bandages would be torn off, ripping open all the wounds at once—then send signals replicating such torture into his brain. The victim in his history book couldn’t live for long in those conditions, but Tianming’s brain would not be able to die. The most that could happen was that his brain could shut down from shock. In the eyes of Trisolarans, it would resemble a computer locking up. They’d just restart his brain and run another experiment, driven by curiosity, or merely the desire for entertainment….

He would have no escape. Without hands or body, he would have no way to commit suicide. His brain would resemble a battery, recharged again and again with pain.

There would be no end.

He howled with laughter.

Cheng Xin opened the door. “Tianming, what’s wrong?”

He choked off his laugh and turned still as a corpse.

“Tianming, on behalf of the UN-PDC Strategic Intelligence Agency, I ask you whether you’re willing to shoulder your responsibility as a member of the human race and accept this mission. This is entirely voluntary. You are free to say no.”

He gazed at her face, at her solemn but eager expression. She was fighting for humanity, for Earth…. But what was wrong with the scene all around him? The light of the setting sun coming through the window fell against the wall like a pool of blood; the lonesome oak tree outside the window appeared as skeletal arms rising out of the grave….

The hint of a smile—an agonized, melancholic smile—appeared at the corners of his mouth. Gradually, the smile spread to the rest of his face.

“Of course. I accept,” he said.

Mikhail Vadimov died. While crossing the Harlem River on I-95, his car slammed through the guardrails on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge and plunged into the water below. It took more than a day before the car could be retrieved. An autopsy revealed that Vadimov had been suffering from leukemia; the accident was the result of retinal hemorrhages.

Cheng Xin mourned Vadimov, who had cared for her like a big brother and helped her adjust to life in a foreign country. She missed his generosity most of all. Though Cheng Xin had attracted notice with her intelligence and seemed to shine brighter than Vadimov—despite the fact that she was supposed to be his aide—he had never shown any jealousy. He had always encouraged her to display her brilliance on bigger and bigger stages.