Death's End

The base informed the exploratory team that Tomorrow, a large science vessel, had left the Neptune city cluster and would meet the expedition in seven days’ time. Tomorrow possessed more advanced investigative instruments, and could study the slip in more depth.

As they became more used to the slip, the crew on Revelation became less guarded and were no longer so careful about keeping a respectful distance from it. They knew that the object did not interact with the real world and emitted no harmful radiation. They touched it casually, allowing it to pass through their bodies. Someone even let the plane pass through his eyes and brain, asking a friend to take a picture of the sight.

白 Ice was enraged when he saw this. “Stop it! This is not some joke,” he screamed. Having worked nonstop in the lab for more than twenty hours, he left the laboratory and returned to his own cabin.

白 Ice turned off the light in his cabin and tried to go to sleep. But in the darkness he felt uneasy; he imagined the paper slip would float into his cabin, glowing white, at any moment. So he turned on the light and drifted in the gentle light and memories.

—————

One hundred and ninety-two years had passed since he said good-bye to his teacher for the last time.

It was dusk, and he and Ding Yi and he had come to the surface from the underground city and taken a car into the desert. Ding Yi liked to stroll and think in the desert, and even to hold his lectures there sometimes. His students hated the experience, but he explained his eccentric habit this way: “I like desolate places. Life is a distraction for physics.”

The weather that day was good. There was no wind and no sandstorms, and the early spring air smelled fresh. The two of them, teacher and student, lay against a dune. The desert of Northern China was bathed in the light of the setting sun. Normally, Bai Aisi thought of these rolling dunes as a woman’s body—possibly a comparison that had originated with Ding Yi himself—but now he thought of them as an exposed brain. In the golden dusk, the brain revealed its profusion of grooves and folds. He looked up at the sky. Today, the dusty air managed to let through a bit of long-missed blue, like a mind about to be enlightened.

Ding Yi said, “Aisi, I want to tell you a few things that you should not repeat to others. Even if I don’t return, don’t tell others. There’s no special reason. I just don’t want to be laughed at.”

“Professor Ding, why not wait until you’re back to tell me?”

Bai Aisi wasn’t trying to comfort Ding Yi. He was sincere. He was still drunk with the ecstasy and vision of humanity’s imminent great victory over the Trisolaran fleet, and he did not think Ding Yi’s trip to the droplet would involve much danger.

“Answer a question first, please.” Ding Yi ignored Bai Aisi’s question and pointed at the desert lit by the westering sun. “Forget about the uncertainty principle for a minute and suppose everything is determinable. If you know the initial conditions, you can calculate and derive the conditions at any later point in time. Suppose an extraterrestrial scientist were given all data about the Earth several billion years ago. Do you think it could predict the existence of this desert solely through calculation?”

Bai Aisi pondered this. “No. This desert wasn’t the result of the Earth’s natural evolution, but the result of man-made forces. The behavior of civilizations can’t be grasped through the laws of physics.”

“Very good. Then why do we and our colleagues all want to try to explain the conditions of today’s cosmos, and to predict its future, solely through deductions based on the laws of physics?”

Ding Yi’s words surprised Bai Aisi. The man had never revealed such thoughts in the past.

Bai Aisi said, “I think that’s beyond physics. The goal of physics is to discover the fundamental laws of nature. Although the man-made desertification of the Earth could not be calculated directly from physics, it still follows laws. Universal laws are constant.”

“Heh heh heh heh.” Ding Yi’s laugh was not joyous at all. As he recalled it later, Bai Aisi thought it was the most sinister laughter he had ever heard. There was a hint of masochistic pleasure, an excitement at seeing everything falling into the abyss, an attempt to use joy as a cover for terror, until terror itself became an indulgence. “Your last sentence! I’ve often comforted myself this way. I’ve always forced myself to believe that there’s at least one table at this banquet filled with dishes that remain fucking untouched…. I tell myself that again and again. And I’m going to say it one more time before I die.”

Bai Aisi thought Ding Yi’s mind was elsewhere and that he talked as if he were dreaming. He didn’t know what to say.