Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

FLEET COMMANDER: I’m listening.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I take full responsibility for Natural Selection ’s breakaway voyage.

FLEET COMMANDER: Is anyone else responsible?

ZHANG BEIHAI: No. Responsibility is mine alone. The situation has nothing at all to do with anyone else aboard Natural Selection .

FLEET COMMANDER: I want to talk to Captain Dongfang Yanxu.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Not now.

FLEET COMMANDER: What is the ship’s current status?

ZHANG BEIHAI: All is good. Every crew member is still in deep-sea state, apart from me. Power systems and life support are operating normally.

FLEET COMMANDER: And your reasons for this treason?

ZHANG BEIHAI: I may have deserted, but I am no traitor.

FLEET COMMANDER: Your reasons?

ZHANG BEIHAI: Humanity is certain to lose on the battlefield. I only want to save one of Earth’s stellar-class spaceships to preserve a seed of human civilization in the universe, a scrap of hope.

FLEET COMMANDER: That makes you an Escapist.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I’m just a soldier fulfilling his duty.

FLEET COMMANDER: Have you received the mental seal?

ZHANG BEIHAI: You know that’s not possible. That technology wasn’t around when I went into hibernation.

FLEET COMMANDER: Then your unusually resolute defeatist beliefs are baffling.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I don’t need the mental seal. I am the master of my beliefs. My faith is resolute because it doesn’t come from my own intelligence. At the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, my father and I began to seriously consider the most basic questions about this war. Gradually, a group of deep-thinking scholars, including scientists, politicians, and military strategists, gathered around him. They called themselves the Future Historians.

FLEET COMMANDER: Was it a secret organization?

ZHANG BEIHAI: No. They studied very basic questions, and their discussions were always conducted in the open. The government and military even came forward and held several academic conferences on Future History. And it was from their research that I arrived at the mind-set that humanity is doomed.

FLEET COMMANDER: But the theories of Future History have since been proven incorrect.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Sir, you underestimate them. They not only predicted the Great Ravine but the Second Enlightenment and Second Renaissance as well. What they predicted for today’s era of prosperity is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. And, finally, they predicted that humanity would be totally defeated, wiped out in the Doomsday Battle.

FLEET COMMANDER: Have you forgotten that you’re on a spaceship capable of traveling at fifteen percent of the speed of light?

ZHANG BEIHAI: Genghis Khan’s cavalry attacked with the speed of twentieth-century armored units. The mounted crossbow of the Song Dynasty had a range of up to fifteen hundred meters, comparable to twentieth-century assault rifles. But it’s impossible for ancient cavalry and crossbows to compete with modern forces. Fundamental theory determines everything. The Future Historians clearly saw this point. You, on the other hand, have been blinded by the dying radiance of low-level technology and are luxuriating in the nursery of modern civilization, without any mental preparation whatsoever for the coming ultimate battle that will determine the fate of humanity.

FLEET COMMANDER: You come from a great army, one that was victorious over an enemy with far more advanced equipment. It won victory in one of the largest land wars in the world, relying solely on seized weapons. Your behavior is a disgrace to that army.

ZHANG BEIHAI: My dear commander, I’m more qualified than you to speak of that army. Three generations of my family served in it. During the Korean War, my grandfather attacked a Pershing tank armed with a grenade. The grenade hit the tank and slid off before exploding. The target was barely scratched, but my grandfather was hit by machine-gun fire from the tank, had both legs broken under its treads, and spent the rest of his life an invalid. But compared to two of his comrades, who were crushed to a pulp, he was lucky…. It’s that army’s history that so clearly taught us the significance of a technological gap during wartime. The glory you know is what you’ve read in the history books, but our trauma was cemented by the blood of our fathers and grandfathers. We know more than you do what war means.

FLEET COMMANDER: When did you conceive of your treasonous plan?

ZHANG BEIHAI: I repeat: I may have deserted, but I am not a traitor. I conceived of the plan the last time I saw my father. I saw in his eyes what I needed to do, and it took me two centuries to realize my plan.

FLEET COMMANDER: And to do this you disguised yourself as a triumphalist. A very successful disguise.

ZHANG BEIHAI: General Chang Weisi almost saw through me.

FLEET COMMANDER: Yes. He was keenly aware that he had never worked out the foundation of your triumphalist faith, and his suspicions were only aggravated by your unusual enthusiasm for radiation propulsion systems capable of interstellar travel. He had always been opposed to you joining the Special Contingent of Future Reinforcements, but he couldn’t breach his superiors’ orders. He warned us in the letter he sent, but did so in your era’s subtle way, and we overlooked it.

ZHANG BEIHAI: In order to obtain a spacecraft capable of fleeing into space, I killed three people.

FLEET COMMANDER: We did not know that. Maybe no one did. But one thing is certain: The research direction chosen at that time was crucial for the subsequent development of spaceflight technology.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Thank you for saying so.

FLEET COMMANDER: I will also say that your plan will fail.

ZHANG BEIHAI: Perhaps. But it hasn’t yet.

FLEET COMMANDER: Natural Selection ’s fusion fuel is only at one-fifth capacity.

ZHANG BEIHAI: But I had to act immediately. There would be no other opportunity.

FLEET COMMANDER: What it means is that you’re only able to accelerate to one percent of light speed now. You can’t consume excess fuel, because the spaceship’s life-support systems still need power to maintain operations for a timespan that could be as short as a few decades or as long as a few centuries. But at that speed, the pursuing force will catch up to you quite soon.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I still control Natural Selection .

FLEET COMMANDER: True. And of course you know our concern: that pursuit will drive you to continue accelerating, expending fuel until life support fails and Natural Selection becomes a dead ship at near-absolute zero. That’s why the pursuit force won’t draw near Natural Selection for the time being. We have confidence that the commander and soldiers aboard will solve their own warship’s problems.

ZHANG BEIHAI: I’m also convinced that all problems will be resolved. I will shoulder my responsibility, but I still firmly believe that Natural Selection is headed in the right direction.

When Luo Ji jerked awake, he recognized something else that had endured from the past: firecrackers. It was dawn, and through the window the desert glowed white in the early light, illuminated by bursts of firecrackers and fireworks. Then came an urgent knock at the door. Without waiting for it to be answered, Shi Xiaoming opened it up and charged in, his face red with excitement as he urged Luo Ji to watch the news.

Luo Ji watched television only rarely. Since arriving in New Life Village #5, he had returned to a life in the past. After the post-awakening impact of the new era, this was a precious feeling for him, and, for the time being, he didn’t want to be disturbed by information about the present day. He spent most of his time immersed in memories of Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia. All of the paperwork had been filed for their reawakening, but government controls on hibernators meant that it would not happen for two months.