Cixin Liu: The Dark Forest

The ant continued its climb and reached a round basin on the rock face, whose slick surface bore an extremely complicated image. It knew that its tiny neural net had no way to store such a thing, but after determining the overall shape of the image, its primitive one-cell aesthetic was as sparked as it had been by the sense of the “9.” And somehow it seemed to recognize part of the image, a pair of eyes. The ant was sensitive to eyes, because their gaze meant danger. Yet it felt no anxiety now, for it knew the eyes were lifeless. It had already forgotten that when the giant being named Luo Ji knelt down in silence before the formation, he had been looking at those eyes. The ant climbed out of the basin and up onto the formation’s peak. It felt no sense of towering above its surroundings, because it had no fear of falling. It had been blown off of places higher than this many times without any injury. Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places.

At the foot of the formation, the spider that Luo Ji had swept aside with the flowers was beginning to reconstruct its web. It drew a glistening strand from the rock face and swung itself like a pendulum to the ground. Three more swings and the skeleton of the web was complete. Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.

Luo Ji stood in silence for a while and then departed. When the vibrations in the ground had dissipated, the ant crawled a different way down the formation to hurry back to the nest and report on the location of a dead beetle. The stars had grown dense in the sky. When the ant passed the spider down at the foot of the formation, they felt each other’s presence, but did not communicate.

As that distant world held its breath to listen, neither ant nor spider was aware that they, out of all life on Earth, were the sole witnesses to the birth of the axioms of cosmic civilization.

Somewhat earlier, in the dead of night, Mike Evans was standing on the bow of Judgment Day as the Pacific Ocean slipped past like a swath of satin beneath the heavens. Evans enjoyed talking with the distant world at times like these because the text the sophon displayed on his retinas stood out wonderfully against the night sea and sky.

This is our twenty-second real-time conversation. We have come across some difficulties in our communication.

“Yes, Lord. I’ve learned that you can’t actually understand a significant amount of the reference materials on humanity we’ve given you.”

Yes. You’ve explained the parts very clearly, but we are unable to understand the whole. Something is different.

“Just one thing?”

Yes. But it sometimes seems as if your world is missing something, other times that it has something extra, and we don’t know which.

“What is the area of confusion?”

We’ve carefully studied your documents and have discovered that the key to understanding the problem lies in a pair of synonyms.

“Synonyms?”

There are many synonyms and near-synonyms in your languages. In the first language we received from you, Chinese, there were words that expressed the same meaning, like “cold” and “chill,” “heavy” and “weighty,” “long” and “far.”

“What pair of synonyms created the obstacle to understanding you’ve just mentioned?”

“Think” and “say.” We’ve just learned, to our surprise, that they are not, in fact, synonyms.

“They are not synonyms at all.”

In our understanding, they ought to be. “Think” means using thought organs to conduct mental activity. “Say” means communicating the content of thoughts to a counterpart. The latter, in your world, is accomplished through the modulation of vibrations in the air produced by the vocal cords. Are these definitions correct?

“They are. But doesn’t this demonstrate that ‘think’ and ‘say’ aren’t synonyms?”

In our understanding, this shows that they are synonyms.

“May I think about this for a moment?”

Very well. We both need to think about it.

For two minutes, Evans gazed in thought at the waves undulating beneath the starlight.

“My Lord, what are your organs of communication?”

We do not have organs of communication. Our brains can display our thoughts to the outside world, thereby achieving communication.

“Display thoughts? How is that done?”

The thoughts in our brains emit electromagnetic waves on all frequencies, including what is visible light to us. They can be displayed at a significant distance.

“So that means that to you, thinking is speaking?”

Hence they are synonyms.

“Oh… That is not the case for us, but even so, that shouldn’t present an obstacle to understanding those documents.”

True. In the areas of thought and communication, the differences between us are not large. We both have brains, and our brains produce intelligence through huge numbers of neural connections. The only difference is that our brain waves are stronger and can be directly received by our counterparts, eliminating the need for communication organs. That’s the only difference.

“No. I suspect a major difference might be getting lost. My Lord, let me think about it again.”

Very well.

Evans left the bow and strolled along the deck. Over the gunwale, the Pacific rose and fell silently in the night. He imagined it as a thinking brain.

“My Lord, let me tell you a story. To prepare for it, you need to understand the following elements: wolf, child, grandmother, and a house in the forest.”

These elements are all easy to understand, except for “grandmother.” I know that this is a blood relation among humans, and usually means a woman of advanced age. But her actual kinship status requires more explanation.

“Lord, that is not important. All you need to know is that she and the children have a close relationship. She is one of the only people the children trust.”

Understood.

“I’ll make it simple. Grandmother had to go out, so she left the children in the house, telling them they must make sure the door is shut and not to open it to anyone but her. On the road, Grandmother met a wolf, which ate her, and then put on her clothing and assumed her appearance. Then it went to the house and came up to the door, and said to the children, ‘I’m your grandmother. I’ve come back. Open the door for me.’ The children looked through the crack in the door and saw what looked like their grandmother, and so they opened the door, and the wolf came in the house and ate them. Do you understand this story, my Lord?”

Not the slightest bit.

“Then maybe I’ve guessed right.”

First of all, the wolf wanted all along to enter the house and eat the children, correct?

“Correct.”

It engaged in communication with the children, correct?

“Correct.”

This is what’s incomprehensible. In order to achieve its own aims, it shouldn’t have communicated with the children.

“Why?”

Isn’t it obvious? If there was communication between them, the children would have known that the wolf wanted to come in and eat them, and they wouldn’t have opened the door.

Evans stayed silent for a while. “I understand, my Lord. I understand.”

What do you understand? Isn’t what I said obvious?

“Your thoughts are completely exposed to the outside world. You can’t hide.”

How can thoughts hide? Your ideas are confusing.

“I mean, your thoughts and memories are transparent to the outside world, like a book placed out in public, or a film projected in a plaza, or a fish in a clear fishbowl. Totally exposed. Readable at a glance. Er, maybe some of the elements I just mentioned are…”