Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

“It’ll be hard, but I’d like to make it easier…. That’s all. Here endeth the truth. We now return to the Wallfacer state,” he said, as he restarted the engine.

They drove on in silence, until the trees grew sparse and the deep blue sky emerged overhead.

“Mr. Luo, look at that eagle!” Zhuang Yan shouted.

“And that over there looks like deer!” He pointed, fast enough to distract her attention, because he knew that the object in the sky wasn’t an eagle but a circling sentry drone. This reminded him of Shi Qiang. He took out his phone and dialed.

Shi Qiang answered. “Hey, brother Luo. So now you remember me, eh? First, tell me: How’s Yan Yan doing?”

“Fine. Excellent. Wonderful. Thank you!”

“That’s good. So it turns out I’ve completed my final mission.”

“Final mission? Where are you?”

“Back home. I’m getting ready for hibernation.”

“What?”

“I’ve got leukemia. I’m going to the future to cure it.”

Luo Ji slammed his foot down on the brakes and stopped short. Zhuang Yan yelped. He looked at her in concern, but, seeing that nothing was wrong, he resumed talking to Shi Qiang.

“Er… when did this happen?”

“I got irradiated on a previous mission and then got ill last year.”

“My god! I didn’t delay you, did I?”

“With this sort of thing, delay isn’t relevant. Who knows what medicine will be like in the future?”

“I’m truly sorry, Da Shi.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the job. I didn’t bother you about it because I figured we would be able to meet again sometime. But I’d like to tell you something in case we can’t.”

“Please.”

After a lengthy silence, Shi Qiang said, “‘Three things are unfilial, and having no issue is the greatest.’ [12] Translator’s Note: This famous quote about filial piety appears in Mencius , a collection of conversations and anecdotes related to the Confucian philosopher of the same name, who lived in the late fourth century BC. Brother Luo, the lineage of the Shi family four hundred years from now is in your hands.”

The call disconnected. Luo Ji looked up at the sky, where the drone had disappeared. The empty blue wash of the sky was his heart.

“You were talking to Uncle Shi?” Zhuang Yan asked.

“Yes. Did you meet him?”

“I met him. He’s a nice man. The day I left he accidentally broke the skin on his hand and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was pretty scary.”

“Oh… Did he say anything to you?”

“He said you were doing the most important thing in the world, and he asked me to help you.”

Now the forest had entirely disappeared, leaving only grassland between them and the mountain. In silver and green, the composition of the world had turned simple and pure, and, to Luo Ji’s mind, more and more like the girl sitting beside him. He noticed a hint of melancholy in her eyes, and he became aware that she was sighing softly.

“Yan Yan, what’s wrong?” he asked. It was the first time he had called her that, but he thought, If Da Shi can call her that, why can’t I?

“It’s such a beautiful world, but when you think about how someday there may be no one here to see it, it’s quite sad.”

“Won’t the aliens be here?”

“I don’t think they appreciate beauty.”

“Why?”

“My dad said that people who are sensitive to beauty are good by nature, and if they’re not good, then they can’t appreciate beauty.”

“Yan Yan, their approach to humans is a rational choice. It’s the responsible thing to do for the survival of their species, and has nothing to do with good or evil.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Mr. Luo, you’re going to see them, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“If they’re really like you say, and you defeat them in the Doomsday Battle, then, well, could you…” She tilted her head to look at him, and hesitated.

He was about to say that the possibility of that was practically nil, but he controlled himself, and said, “Could I what?”

“Why do you have to drive them out into space to die? Give them a plot of land, and let them coexist with us? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Luo Ji dealt silently with his emotions for a moment, then pointed up to the sky and said, “Yan Yan, I’m not the only one who heard what you just said.”

Zhuang Yan looked up nervously. “Oh, right. There must be tons of sophons around us.”

“It might have been the Trisolar High Consul himself who heard you.”

“And you’re all laughing at me, aren’t you?”

“No. Yan Yan, do you know what I’m thinking right now?” He had a strong impulse to take hold of her slender left hand, which was lying next to the steering wheel, but he controlled himself. “I’m thinking that the person who might actually have a chance of saving the world is you.”

“Me?” She burst out laughing.

“You, except that you’re not enough. Or, rather, there aren’t enough people like you. If a third of humanity was like you, then Trisolaris might negotiate with us about the possibility of coexisting on the world. But now…” He let out a long sigh.

Zhuang Yan flashed a helpless smile. “Mr. Luo, it hasn’t been easy for me. Going out into the world after graduation, I was like a fish swimming into the sea, where the water was muddy and I couldn’t see anything at all. I wanted to swim to clearer waters, but all that swimming got tiring….”

I wish I could help you swim to those waters, he said to himself.

The road began to climb the mountain, and as the altitude increased, the vegetation grew sparse, exposing the naked black rock. For one stretch of road, they seemed to be driving on the surface of the moon. But soon they crossed the snowline and were surrounded by white, and a crisp chill filled the air. He grabbed down jackets from the travel bag in the backseat, and they put them on and continued ahead.

Before long they reached a roadblock, a conspicuous sign in the middle of the road that warned, danger: avalanche season. road ahead closed. So they got out of the car and walked to the snow at the roadside.

The sun had started its descent, casting shadows around them on the snowy slope. The pure snow was pale blue in color, almost weakly fluorescent. The jagged peaks in the distance were still lit and shone silver in all directions, a light that seemed to issue from the snow itself, as if it was this mountain and not the sun that had been illuminating the world all along.

“Okay, now the painting’s entirely blank,” he said, sweeping his hands about him.

Zhang Yan drank in the white world around her. “Mr. Luo, I actually did do a painting like this once. From a distance, it was a white sheet of paper, almost entirely blank, but closer in you would see fine reeds in the lower left corner, and in the upper right the traces of a disappearing bird. In the blank center, two infinitesimally tiny people…. It’s the painting I’m proudest of.”

“I can imagine it. It must be magnificent…. So, Zhuang Yan, now that we’re in this blank world, are you interested in learning about your job?”

She nodded, but looked anxious.

“You know about the Wallfacer Project, and you know that its success relies on its incomprehensibility. At its highest level, no one on Earth or Trisolaris, apart from the Wallfacer himself, understands it. So, Zhuang Yan, no matter how inexplicable you find your work, it definitely has meaning. Don’t try to understand it. Just do it as best you can.”

She nodded nervously. “Yes, I understand.” Then she laughed and shook her head. “I mean, I get it.”

Looking at her amid the snow, the whiteness lost all dimension, and the world faded around her, leaving her its only presence. Two years before, when the literary image he had created had come to life in his imagination, he had tasted love. Now, in the blank space of this grand natural painting, he understood love’s ultimate mystery.