Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

Luo Ji felt like something had been drained out of him. He lay limply down on the sand, which was still warm from the sun. It was comfortable beneath him.

“Yes, Da Shi. We can go and live our lives now. Everything’s finished.”

“My boy, this is the last time I help you do Wallfacer stuff,” Shi Qiang said on the road back. “That occupation must cause mental problems, and you’ve just had another episode.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Luo Ji said. Outside, the stars that were visible yesterday had vanished, and the black desert and night sky joined into one at the horizon. A section of road illuminated by the headlights stretched out ahead of them. The world was like the state of Luo Ji’s mind: darkness everywhere, with one spot incredibly clear.

“You know, it’ll be easy for you to get back to normal. It’s time for Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia to reawaken. Although, with the recent chaos, I don’t know if they’ve suspended reawakening. But even if they have, it won’t be for very long. The situation will quickly stabilize, I think. After all, there’s still time left for several generations. Didn’t you say you can go and live your life?”

“I’ll go inquire at the Hibernation Immigration Bureau tomorrow.” Shi Qiang’s words reminded Luo Ji of the bit of color that existed in his dull mind. Maybe a reunion with his wife and child was his only chance for redemption.

But humanity was beyond hope.

As they neared New Life Village #5, Shi Qiang suddenly slowed the car. “Something’s not right,” he said, looking ahead. Following his gaze, Luo Ji saw a glow in the sky cast by a light on the ground, but the high embankments on the roadway meant they couldn’t see its source. The glow was in motion. It didn’t seem like the lights of a residential area.

When the car turned off the highway, a strange and spectacular sight met them: The desert between New Life Village #2 and the highway had been turned into a shining blanket dense with lights, like an ocean of fireflies. It took Luo Ji a moment to realize that it was a crowd of people. All of them were from the city, and the light came from their clothes.

As the car slowly approached the crowd, everyone ahead of them raised their hands to block the glare of the headlights, so Shi Qiang turned them off, leaving them facing a bizarre, gaudy human wall.

“Looks like they’re waiting for someone,” Shi Qiang said, looking at Luo Ji, who tensed up at his expression. The car stopped, and Shi Qiang went on, “You stay here and don’t move. I’ll go have a look.” He jumped out of the car and walked over to the crowd. Against the glowing human wall, Shi Qiang’s stocky body stood out as a black silhouette. Luo Ji watched him walk to the crowd, then exchange a few words with the people before turning and walking back.

“Turns out they’re waiting for you. Go,” he said, leaning on the door. Seeing Luo Ji’s face, he reassured him, “Relax. It’ll be okay.”

Luo Ji got out of the car and went over to the crowd. He had grown familiar with the wired clothing of modern people, but in the desolate desert, he still had the feeling that he was walking toward the Other. But when he drew closer and could make out their expressions, his heart began to beat faster.

The first thing he had learned when he awakened from hibernation was that the crowds of every age have their own unique expression. The differences across time to this far-off age were remarkable—you could easily distinguish between moderns and hibernators who had only just reawakened. But the expressions Luo Ji saw now weren’t modern, nor were they twenty-first century. He didn’t know what era they belonged to. Fear nearly rooted him to the spot, but his trust in Shi Qiang propelled his steps mechanically forward.

When he had gotten closer to the crowd, he finally stopped, because he saw the images they had on their clothes.

Their clothing displayed pictures of Luo Ji—some still photographs, some videos.

Luo Ji had rarely appeared before the media since becoming a Wallfacer, so he hadn’t left much of a visual record, but a fairly complete set of those videos and images was now on display on the people’s clothing. On some people, he even saw photographs of his pre-Wallfacer self. The clothing took its images from the Internet, which meant that these images must be circulating worldwide. He also noticed that the images were in their original state and had not been subjected to the artistic deformation that the moderns liked to do, which meant that they had just appeared online.

When they saw him stop, the crowd moved toward him. When they got as close as two or three meters, the people in front held back the rest of the crowd, and then knelt down. Those behind them knelt down successively in a wave of glowing people that receded along the sand.

“Lord, save us!” he heard someone say. The words buzzed in his ears.

“Oh god, save the world!”

“Great spokesman, uphold justice in the universe!”

“Angel of justice, save humankind!”

Two people came up to Luo Ji, and he recognized the one whose clothing wasn’t glowing as Hines. The other man was a soldier with glowing badges and ribbons.

Hines said to him gravely, “Dr. Luo, I’ve just been appointed your liaison to the UN Wallfacer Project Commission. It is my duty to inform you that the Wallfacer Project has been revived, and you have been named the sole Wallfacer.”

The soldier said, “I am special commissioner Ben Jonathan of the SFJC. We met when you had just been reawakened. I am also instructed to inform you that the Asian Fleet, the European Fleet, and the North American Fleet have agreed with the revalidation of the Wallfacer Act and have recognized your status as Wallfacer.”

Hines pointed to the crowd kneeling on the sand, and said, “In the eyes of the public, you now have two identities. For theists, you are the angel of justice. To atheists, you are the spokesperson for a just, superior civilization in the Milky Way.”

This was followed by silence, with all eyes focused on Luo Ji. He thought for a while, but came up with only one possibility: “The spell worked?” he ventured.

Hines and Jonathan nodded, and Hines said, “187J3X1 has been destroyed.”

“When?”

“Fifty-one years ago. It was observed a year ago, but no one was paying much attention to that star, so the observations were only discovered this afternoon. A few desperate people in the SFJC wanted to find inspiration in history, and they remembered the Wallfacer Project and your spell. So they looked at 187J3X1 and found that it wasn’t there anymore. In its place was a nebula of debris. They scanned through all observational records of the star until its destruction a year ago, then pulled all of the observational data of 187J3X1 at the time it exploded.”

“How do they know it was destroyed?”

“You’re aware that 187J3X1 was in a stable period, like the sun, so it would be impossible for it to go nova. And its destruction was observed: A body traveling close to the speed of light struck 187J3X1. The tiny object—they’re calling it a ‘photoid’—was observed the instant it passed into the periphery of the stellar atmosphere by the tracks it made. Even though it was small in volume, its near-light velocity meant that its vastly amplified relativistic mass had reached one-eighth of 187J3X1’s by the time it struck the target. It destroyed the star immediately. The star’s four planets were also vaporized in the blast.”

Luo Ji looked up at the night’s dark sky, where the stars were practically invisible. He walked forward, and the people stood up and silently made a path for him, closing back together immediately behind him. They were all trying to push closer to him, as if yearning for sunlight amid the cold, but they respectfully left him a circle of space, a dark spot in a fluorescent ocean, like the eye of a storm. A man pushed forward and fell to the ground in front of Luo Ji, compelling him to stop, and then the man kissed his feet. A few others entered the ring to repeat that act. Just when the situation seemed about to go out of control, there were critical shouts from the crowd, prompting the people to scramble and retreat back into the group.