Death's End

More objects appeared in three-dimensional space in the information window: the skiffs and dinghies that had left Europe VI earlier. Their fusion reactors were operating at maximum capacity, but they still fell inexorably toward the plane. For a moment, Cheng Xin thought the blue flame of the fusion drives penetrated that depthless plane, but the plasma had simply been two-dimensionalized. In those areas, the two-dimensional buildings were distorted and twisted by the two-dimensional flames. Next, the skiffs and dinghies became part of the giant drawing. Obeying the no-overlapping principle, the two-dimensionalized city expanded to give these new objects space, and the whole image resembled spreading ripples on the surface of a pond.

The camera continued to fall toward the plane. Cheng Xin stared at the approaching two-dimensional city, hoping to find signs of movement in the city. But no, other than the distortion caused by the plasma flames earlier, everything in the flat city was still. Similarly, the two-dimensional bodies did not move at all, and gave no signs of being alive.

This was a dead world. A dead picture.

The camera moved still closer to the plane, falling toward a two-dimensional body. The body’s limbs soon filled the whole image, and then came the complicated patterns of muscle fibers and blood vessels. Perhaps it was just an illusion, but Cheng Xin seemed to see red, two-dimensional blood flowing through two-dimensional blood vessels. In a flash, the picture was gone.

—————

Cheng Xin and AA began their second trip to retrieve more artifacts. They both felt the mission was likely to be meaningless. After observing the two-dimensionalized cities, they understood that the process preserved most of the information from the three-dimensional world. Any information loss would be at the atomic level. Due to the nonoverlapping principle used in projection, the flattened Pluto’s crust wouldn’t be commingled with the artifacts in the museum, and so the information in the artifacts should be preserved. But since they had accepted this mission, they would finish it. Like Cao Bin said, doing something was better than doing nothing.

They exited Halo and saw the two flattened planets still suspended overhead, but now they were much dimmer. This made the new long, glowing belt that appeared below the planets even more noticeable. The light belt went from one end of the sky to the other, like a necklace formed from numerous individual glowing spots.

“Is that the asteroid belt?” Cheng Xin asked.

“Yes. Mars will be next,” said AA.

“Mars is on this side of the Sun right now.”

The two fell silent. Without looking at the flattened asteroid belt, they walked toward the black monolith.

The Earth was next.

In the great hall of the museum, they saw that Luo Ji had already prepped a bunch of additional artifacts for them. Many of them were Chinese-brush-painting scrolls. AA unrolled one of them: Along the River During the Qingming Festival.

Cheng Xin and AA no longer had the initial awe and delight of seeing such precious works of art—compared to the grandeur of the destruction in process outside, this was nothing more than an old painting. When future explorers arrived at the great painting that was the flattened Solar System, they would have trouble imagining that this twenty-four-centimeter-by-five-meter rectangle was once very special.

Cheng Xin and AA asked Luo Ji to come onto Halo. Luo Ji said he would like to see it, and went to look for a space suit.

As the three of them carried the artifacts out of the monolith, the sight of a flattening Earth greeted them.

The Earth was the first solid planet to collapse into two dimensions. Compared to Neptune and Saturn, the “tree rings” in the two-dimensionalized Earth were even more replete with fine details—the yellow mantle gradually shifted over to the deep red nickel-iron core—but the overall area was much smaller than the gas giants.

Unlike in their imagination, they couldn’t see any hint of blue.

“What happened to our oceans?” Luo Ji asked.

“They should be near the outside… But two-dimensionalized water is transparent, so we can’t see it,” AA said.

The three carried the artifacts to Halo in silence. They couldn’t feel the grief yet, like one didn’t immediately feel the pain of a fresh wound cut by a sharp knife.

But the flattened Earth did show her own wonders. At her outermost rim, a white ring gradually appeared. At first it was barely visible, but soon it stood out sharply against the black backdrop of space. The white ring was pure, flawless, but seemed uneven in its makeup, like it was formed from countless small white grains.

“That’s our ocean!” Cheng Xin said.

“The water froze in two-dimensional space,” said AA. “It’s cold there.”

“Oh—” Luo Ji wanted to stroke his beard, but the visor got in the way of his hand.