Cixin Liu - Death's End

To Cheng Xin, AA resembled a vivacious bird fluttering around her nonstop. AA told Cheng Xin that she was familiar with people like her, who had come from the past—known as “Common Era people” after the old calendar—since her own dissertation advisor was a physicist from back then. Her knowledge of Common Era people was why she had been appointed as Cheng Xin’s liaison from the UN Space Development Agency as her first job after her doctorate.

The request from the UN and the fleet to sell the star back to them put Cheng Xin in an awkward position. She felt guilty possessing a whole world, but the idea of selling a gift that had been given to her out of pure love made her ill. She suggested that she could give up all claim of ownership over DX3906 and keep the deed only as a memento, but she was told that was unacceptable. By law, the authorities could not accept such valuable real estate without compensating the original owner, so they insisted on buying it. Cheng Xin refused.

After much reflection, she came up with a new proposal: She would sell the two planets, but retain ownership of the star. At the same time, she would sign a covenant with the UN and the fleet granting humanity the right to use the energy produced by the star. The legal experts eventually concluded that this proposal was acceptable.

AA told Cheng Xin that since she was only selling the planets, the amount of compensation offered by the UN was much lower. But it was still an astronomical sum, and she would need to form a company to manage it properly.

“Would you like me to help you run this company?” AA asked.

Cheng Xin agreed, and AA immediately called the UN Space Development Agency to resign.

“I’m working for you now,” she said, “so let me speak for a minute about your interests. Are you nuts?! Of all the choices available to you, you picked the worst ! You could have sold the star along with the planets, and you would have become one of the richest people in the universe! Alternatively, you could have refused to sell, and kept the entire solar system for yourself. The law’s protection of private property is absolute, and no one could have taken it away from you. And then you could have entered hibernation and woken up only when it’s possible to fly to DX3906. Then you could go there! All that space! The ocean, the continents… you can do whatever you want, of course, but you should take me with you—”

“I’ve already made my decision,” Cheng Xin said. “There’s almost three centuries separating us. I don’t expect us to understand each other right away.”

“Fine.” AA sighed. “But you should reevaluate your conception of duty and conscience. Duty drove you to give up the planets, and conscience made you keep the star, but duty again made you give up the star’s energy output. You’re one of those people from the past, like my dissertation advisor, torn by conflict between two ideals. But, in our age, conscience and duty are not ideals: an excess of either is seen as a mental illness called social-pressure personality disorder. You should seek treatment.”

Even with the glow from the lights of the city below, Cheng Xin easily found DX3906. Compared to the twenty-first century, the air was far clearer. She turned from the night sky to the reality around her: She and AA stood like two ants on top of a glowing Christmas tree, and all around them stood a forest of Christmas trees. Buildings full of lights hung from branches like leaves. But this giant city was built on top of the earth, not below it. Thanks to the peace of the Deterrence Era, humanity’s second cave-dwelling phase had come to an end.

They walked along the bough toward the tip. Each branch of the tree was a busy avenue full of floating translucent windows filled with information. They made the street look like a varicolored river. From time to time, a window or two left the traffic in the road and followed them for a while, and drifted back into the current when AA and Cheng Xin showed no interest. All the buildings on this branch-street hung below. Since this was the highest branch, the starry sky was right above them. If they had been walking along one of the lower branches, they would be surrounded by the bright buildings hanging from the branch above, and they would have felt like tiny insects flying through a dream forest, in which every leaf and fruit sparkled and dazzled.

Cheng Xin looked at the pedestrians along the street: a woman, two women, a group of women, another woman, three women—all of them were women, all beautiful. Dressed in pretty, luminous clothes, they seemed like the nymphs of this magical forest. Once in a while, they passed some older individuals, also women, their beauty undiminished by age. As they reached the end of the branch and surveyed the sea of lights below them, Cheng Xin asked the question that had been puzzling her for days. “What happened to the men?” In the few days since she had been awakened, she had not seen a single man.

“What do you mean? They’re everywhere.” AA pointed at the people around them. “Over there: See the man leaning against the balustrade? And there are three over there. And two walking toward us.”

Cheng Xin stared. The individuals AA indicated had smooth, lovely faces; long hair that draped over their shoulders; slender, soft bodies—as if their bones were made of bananas. Their movements were graceful and gentle, and their voices, carried to her by the breeze, were sweet and tender…. Back in her century, these people would have been considered ultra-feminine.

Understanding dawned on her after a moment. The trend had been obvious even earlier. The decade of the 1980s was probably the last time when masculinity, as traditionally defined, was considered an ideal. After that, society and fashion preferred men who displayed traditionally feminine qualities. She recalled the Asian male pop stars of her own time who she had thought looked like pretty girls at first glance. The Great Ravine interrupted this tendency in the evolution of human society, but half a century of peace and ease brought about by the Deterrence Era accelerated the trend.

“It’s true that Common Era people usually have trouble telling men and women apart at first,” AA said. “But I’ll teach you a trick. Pay attention to the way they look at you. A classical beauty like you is very attractive to them.”

Cheng Xin looked at her, a bit flustered.

“No, no!” AA laughed. “I really am a woman, and I don’t like you that way. But, honestly, I can’t see what’s attractive about the men of your era. Rude, savage, dirty—it’s like they hadn’t fully evolved. You’ll adjust to and enjoy this age of beauty.”

Close to three centuries ago, when Cheng Xin had been preparing for hibernation, she had imagined all kinds of difficulties she would face in the future, but this was something she was unprepared for. She imagined what it would be like to live the rest of her life in this feminine world… and her mood turned melancholic. She looked up and searched for her star.

“You’re thinking of him again, aren’t you?” AA grabbed her by the shoulders. “Even if he hadn’t gone into space and had spent the rest of his life with you, the grandchildren of your grandchildren would be dead by now. This is a new age; a new life. Forget about the past!”

Cheng Xin tried to think as AA suggested and forced herself to return to the present. She had only been here for a few days, and had just grasped the broadest outline of the history of the past three centuries. The strategic balance between the humans and the Trisolarans as a result of dark forest deterrence had shocked her the most.

A thought popped into her mind. A world dedicated to femininity… but what does that mean for deterrence?