Cixin Liu: The Dark Forest

When Zhang Yuanchao thought about it, everything was completely satisfactory. He had to admit that as far as affairs of state were concerned, Lao Yang was right. Still, as he looked out from his eighth-story window at the clear sky over the city, he felt like there was no sunlight in his heart, much less a second childhood.

Lao Yang, first name Jinwen, was a retired middle school teacher who frequently advised Zhang Yuanchao that if he wanted to enjoy his waning years, he ought to be learning new things. For example: “The Internet. Even babies can learn it, so why don’t you?” He even pointed out that Zhang Yuanchao’s biggest failing was that he had absolutely no interest in the outside world: “Your old lady can at least brush aside her tears while sitting in front of the TV watching those trashy soaps. But you, you don’t even watch TV. You should pay attention to national and world affairs. That’s part of a full life.” Zhang Yuanchao may have been an old Beijinger, but he didn’t seem like one. A taxi driver could hold forth with cogent analyses of domestic and world situations, but even if Zhang Yuanchao knew the current president’s name, he certainly didn’t know the premier’s. This was actually a point of pride for him. He lived the steady-going life of a commoner, he said, and couldn’t be bothered to care about such irrelevant things. They had nothing to do with him, and ignoring them rid him of a significant number of headaches in life. Yang Jinwen paid attention to affairs of state and made a point of watching the evening news every day, arguing with online commenters till he was red in the face over national economic policy and the tide of international nuclear proliferation, but what had it gotten him? The government hadn’t increased his pension by even a cent. He said, “You’re being ridiculous. You think it’s irrelevant? That it’s got nothing to do with you? Listen, Lao Zhang. Every major national and international issue, every major national policy, and every UN resolution is connected to your life, through both direct and indirect channels. You think the US invasion of Venezuela is none of your concern? I say it’s got more than a penny’s worth of lasting implications for your pension.” At the time, Zhang had merely laughed at Lao Yang’s wonkish outburst. But now he knew that his neighbor was right.

Zhang Yuanchao rang Yang Jinwen’s doorbell, and Yang answered, looking like he had just gotten back home. He seemed particularly relaxed. Zhang Yuanchao looked at him like a man in the desert who has encountered a fellow traveler and won’t let him go.

“I was just looking for you. Where did you go off to?”

“I took a trip to the market. I saw your old lady shopping for food.”

“Why is our building so empty? It’s like a… mausoleum.”

“It’s not a holiday today. That’s all.” He laughed. “Your first day of retirement. That feeling is totally normal. At least you weren’t a leader. They’ve got it worse when they retire. You’ll soon get used to it. Come on, let’s check out the neighborhood activity center and see what we can do for fun.”

“No, no. It’s not because I’ve retired. It’s because… how should I put it? Because of the country, or rather, the world situation.”

Yang Jinwen pointed at him and laughed. “The world situation? I never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth….”

“That’s right, I didn’t use to care about the big issues, but they’ve gotten too huge. I never thought anything could get so big!”

“Lao Zhang, it’s actually really funny, but I’ve started to come around to your way of thinking. I don’t care about those irrelevant issues anymore. Believe it or not, I haven’t watched the news in two weeks. I used to care about the big issues because people matter. We could have an effect on the outcome of current events. But no one has the power to overcome this. What’s the point of troubling yourself about it?”

“But you can’t simply not care. Humanity will be gone in four hundred years!”

“Hmph. You and I will be gone in forty-odd years.”

“What about our descendants? They’ll be wiped out.”

“That doesn’t concern me as much as it does you. My son in America is married but doesn’t want children, so I don’t really care. But the Zhang family will last another dozen generations, right? Isn’t that enough?”

Zhang Yuanchao stared at Yang Jinwen for a few seconds, then looked at his watch. He turned on the television, where the news channel was airing the day’s major stories:

The AP reports that at 6:30 P.M. EST on the twenty-ninth, the US National Missile Defense System successfully completed the test destruction of a lower-dimensional unfolded sophon in near-Earth orbit. This is the third test of an NMD intercept since targets were shifted to outer space. The latest target was the reflective film discarded from the International Space Station last October. A Planetary Defense Council spokesman said that the warhead-equipped interceptor successfully destroyed the three-thousand-square-meter target. This means that well before the sophon’s three-dimensional unfolding reaches sufficient area, and before it presents a reflective surface that is a threat to human targets on the ground, the NMD system will be able to destroy it….

“What pointlessness. A sophon’s not going to unfold,” Yang said as he reached for the remote in Zhang’s hand. “Change the station. There might be a repeat of the European Cup semifinals. I fell asleep on the sofa last night….”

“Watch it at home.” Zhang Yuanchao gripped the remote and didn’t let him have it. The news continued:

The physician at 301 Military Hospital in charge of the treatment of academician Jia Weilin confirmed that Jia’s death was due to a hematological malignancy, also known as leukemia, the proximate cause of death being organ failure and loss of blood in the advanced stage of the disease. No abnormalities were present. Jia Weilin, a noted expert in superconductivity who made major contributions in the field of room-temperature superconductors, died on the tenth. Stories claiming that Jia died in a sophon strike are pure rumor. In a separate report, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health confirmed that several other deaths supposedly due to sophon strikes were in fact due to ordinary illnesses or accidents. The station spoke with noted physicist Ding Yi about the matter.

Reporter: What’s your take on the emerging panic over the sophons?

Ding Yi: It’s due to a lack of common knowledge about physics. Representatives of the government and the scientific community have explained this on numerous occasions: A sophon is just a microscopic particle which, despite possessing a high intelligence, has the potential for only a limited effect on the macroscopic world due to its microscopic scale. The primary threats they pose to humanity lie in their erroneous and random interference to high-energy physics experiments, and in the quantum entanglement network that monitors Earth. In its microscopic state, a sophon cannot kill, and it cannot engage in any other offensive attack. If a sophon wants to produce a larger effect on the macroscopic world, it can only do so in a lower-dimensional unfolded state. And even in that situation, its effects are highly limited, because a sophon unfolded in lower dimensions on a macroscopic scale is very weak. Now that humanity has established a defense system, sophons cannot do this without providing us with an excellent opportunity to destroy them. I believe that the mainstream media ought to do a better job of disseminating this scientific information to the public to rid it of a panic that has no basis in science.

Zhang Yuanchao heard someone enter the living room without knocking, calling “Lao Zhang” and “Master Zhang.” He knew who it was from the footsteps he’d heard hammering up the staircase just before. Miao Fuquan, another neighbor on their floor, came in. A Shanxi coal boss who ran a fair number of mines in that province, Miao Fuquan was a few years younger than Zhang Yuanchao. He owned a larger home in another part of Beijing and used this apartment as a place to keep a mistress from Sichuan who was about the same age as his daughter. When he had first moved in, the Zhang and Yang families had basically ignored him save for an argument over the stuff he left strewn about the hallway, but they eventually discovered that although he was a little vulgar, he was a decent, friendly man. Once building management had smoothed over a dispute or two, harmony was gradually established among the three families. Although Miao Fuquan said he had turned over his business affairs to his son, he was still a busy man and rarely spent any time at this “home,” so the three-bedroom place was usually only occupied by the Sichuan woman.