Three bodies

From the "Bronze Age", the earth can be seen with the naked eye, and the stern of the ship is facing the direction of the earth when sailing at a reduced speed. People who can leave their posts have come to the square at the stern of the ship to watch the earth through the wide portholes.At this time, the earth is still just a star, and only a little blue can be seen.The final deceleration began. With the start of the interstellar engine, the people floating above the square in a weightless state slowly floated towards the porthole like fallen leaves, and finally stuck to the tall glass wall of the porthole.The overload gradually intensifies and stops at a G, which is the gravity of the earth. The porthole becomes the ground, and the people lying on it feel that the gravity is like the embrace of the mother planet ahead, and the glass wall transmits people's voices like an echoing wall:
"Go home!"

"Go home!"

"Going to see the baby."

"We can have children[62]!"

"She said she was still waiting for me."

"At that time, you will definitely look down on her. You are the hero of all mankind, and the girls chasing you will be like a flock of birds."

"How many years have you seen a flock of birds?"

"Thinking about the things ahead, it's really like a dream."

"It's just like a dream now."

"Space is scary."

"Yeah, I will retire when I go back, open a small farm, and live on the land forever."

……

It has been 14 years since the Earth Fleet was tragically destroyed. After the dark battle broke out at both ends of the solar system, the connection between the remaining fleet and the Earth was cut off, but in the following year and a half, the "Bronze Age" was still able to A large amount of information from the earth has been monitored, most of which are broadcasts and communications on the earth's surface, and there are also higher-definition space communications.But suddenly, within two days in the early November of 208 in the Era of Crisis, the electromagnetic waves with information spilled from the earth into space disappeared completely, and all wave bands fell into silence, and the earth was like a lamp that was suddenly turned off.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
dark forest phobia

When human beings learned of the dark forest state of the universe, the child shouting at the campfire immediately extinguished the fire, shivering in the dark, afraid of even a spark.

In the first few days, even civilian mobile communications were banned, and most communication base stations around the world were forcibly shut down.This measure, which would definitely cause great turmoil in the past, has now been widely understood and approved by the people.Although with the gradual recovery of sanity, mobile communication has also been restored, but the control of electromagnetic emissions is unprecedentedly strict, and wireless communication is limited to very low power, and emissions exceeding this power may be sentenced to crimes against humanity.

In fact, people also know in their hearts that this is a senseless overreaction.The peak of the spillover of Earth's electromagnetic information into space was in the age of analog signals, when television and radio broadcasts had high power.However, after entering the era of digital communication, on the one hand, a large amount of communication has been transferred to optical fiber and cable; on the other hand, the power of wireless digital communication is much smaller than that of analog communication. , Some scholars worry that the earth will become more and more difficult to be discovered by alien friends.

In fact, electromagnetic waves are the most primitive and least efficient way of transmitting information in the universe. The attenuation and distortion of electromagnetic signals in space are very fast. Most of the electromagnetic information spilled from the earth cannot be transmitted within two light years. Only Ye Wenjie created The emission of that kind of stellar power can be received by interstellar listeners.

Taking a step forward at the level of human technology, there are two efficient cosmic information transmission technologies: neutrinos and gravitational waves. The latter later became the main deterrent means for human beings against the Trisolaran world.

The impact of the dark forest theory on human civilization is extremely profound: the child by the embers of the bonfire has changed from outgoing and optimistic to withdrawn and autistic.

Regarding the reason for the sudden disappearance of the earth's electromagnetic information, most people on the "Bronze Age" think that the solar system has been occupied. advance.

But ten days later, the "Bronze Age" suddenly received a radio message from the Space Fleet Command.The information was simultaneously sent to the "Bronze Age" and the "Blue Space" at the other end of the solar system, explaining what just happened on the earth, telling them that the deterrence of human beings against the Trisolaran world has been successfully established, and the two ships immediately Return to the voyage, and explain that this message was sent out at a risk and will not be repeated.

Regarding this information, the "Bronze Age" did not dare to believe it, and could not rule out that it was a trap set by the occupants of the solar system.But considering the possibility of returning, the spacecraft stopped accelerating, and at the same time continuously asked the earth to generate electricity, but there was no reply, and the electromagnetic silence of the earth continued.

Just as the "Bronze Age" was about to start accelerating again, an incredible thing happened: a sophon from the Trisolaran world unfolded on the ship in low dimensions, establishing a quantum communication channel between the "Bronze Age" and the solar system.Thus, everything was finally confirmed.

The space soldiers on the "Bronze Age" learned that, as the surviving warships in the doomsday battle, they have become human heroes, and the whole earth world is looking forward to their return. All the officers and men of the team were collectively awarded the highest honor medal.

The "Bronze Age" returned immediately. At this time, it was located in the space of 11 astronomical units from the sun. It had already crossed the Kuiper belt, but it was still very far away from the Oort Nebula.Since it is close to the highest speed, the deceleration consumes a lot of fusion fuel, and finally it can only reach a lower speed in the direction of the solar system, and the voyage home took [-] years.

A small white dot appeared in front of it, and it quickly became clear that it was the battleship "Gravity" welcoming the "Bronze Century".

The "Gravity" is the first star-class warship built on Earth after the Battle of Doomsday.Now, the shape of the starship is becoming more and more irregular.The general giant spaceship is composed of several modules, which can be combined into various shapes, but the "Gravity" is the opposite. It is a white cylinder. This cylinder is so regular that it produces a sense of unreality, as if A basic shape drawn on the screen by some kind of super drawing software, as if it were an element in Plato's ideal world, rather than a real entity.If the people aboard the Bronze Age had ever seen a gravitational-wave antenna on Earth, they would have immediately discovered that the spacecraft was an almost perfect replica of it.In fact, the entire hull of the "Gravity" is a gravitational wave antenna, which is equivalent to a gravitational wave transmitter capable of interstellar navigation. Like the transmitter on the earth, it can broadcast gravitational wave information to all directions of the universe at any time ——These two giant gravitational wave launchers together constitute the dark forest deterrent for human beings to the Trisolaran world.

After sailing in formation for a day, the "Bronze Age" entered the geosynchronous orbit under the escort of the "Gravity" and slowly berthed into the spaceport.It can be seen from the "Bronze Age" that in the vast air area of ​​the space port, there are huge crowds of people. So many people from all over the world gather together. The only things I can think of are the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and the pilgrimage to Mecca.The battleship slowly entered into a mass of colorful snow, which was the flowers thrown at them by the sea of ​​people.The people on the ship looked out into the sea of ​​people on both sides, trying to find their relatives. They saw everyone from a distance with tears in their eyes and cheered uncontrollably.

The "Bronze Age" shook slightly, and finally stopped.The captain reported the situation of the spacecraft to the fleet headquarters, and explained that the personnel on duty would be left behind. The answer he got was: they should be reunited with their relatives as soon as possible, and there is no need to stay on the ship for duty.A colonel led a replacement duty team and quickly boarded the ship. They hugged everyone they encountered on board and shed tears of reunion together.It was impossible to tell which fleet they belonged to from their military uniforms. They told the people on board that the reconstructed solar system fleet would be a whole, and the elites who participated in the doomsday battle, including them, would become the backbone of the fleet.

"We will conquer the Trisolaran world in our lifetime and open up a second solar system for mankind!" said the colonel who boarded the ship to greet him.

Immediately someone replied that outer space is so scary that they would like to stay on Earth forever.The colonel replied that it was of course good, they were the heroes of all mankind and had the right to choose their future lives, but they would change their minds after a short rest, and he was eager to see this great warship set sail again.

The people on the "Bronze Age" began to leave the ship, and all the officers and soldiers entered the air area through a long passage, and their eyes suddenly opened up.Compared with the ship, the air here is extremely fresh, as sweet as the first rain after the rain. Against the background of the blue earth, the cheers from the sea of ​​people filled the vast space.

At the request of the colonel, the captain began roll call.The colonel insisted on ordering twice to confirm that all the crew members of the ship were here.

Suddenly, everything fell into silence, and the surrounding crowd was still boiling, but the sound wave completely disappeared.The Colonel's voice sounded, with a warm smile still on his face, but his voice was as sharp as a sharp sword in this eerie silence:
"Now declare: You have all been expelled from the military and no longer belong to the solar system fleet, but the shame you brought to the fleet will never be erased! You can't reunite with your relatives now, they don't want to see you. Your parents and You are ashamed, most of your spouses have left you. Although the society does not discriminate against your children, they have also grown up in shame for more than ten years, and they hate you! You have been handed over to the justice of Fleet International system."

After the colonel finished speaking, he left in a hurry with several accompanying officers.At the same time, the sea of ​​people disappeared, and the surroundings darkened.Several beams of searchlights shot back and forth, illuminating a large number of armed gendarmes surrounding them. They were distributed in the surrounding square and on the steps in the distance, and all their guns were aimed at this place.Some people looked back and saw that the bouquets around the "Bronze Age" were real. Among the floating flowers, their battleship looked like a huge coffin waiting to be buried.

The magnetic shoes under their feet all failed at the same time, and they lost their support in the weightlessness and floated up, like a group of immobile targets.An indifferent voice shouted to them from somewhere: "Everyone who carries weapons, please hand over your weapons! Please cooperate, otherwise your safety cannot be guaranteed. From now on, all of you will be charged with first degree murder and anti Crimes against humanity have been arrested!"

[The 13th year of the era of deterrence, trial]

The trial of the "Bronze Age" case was conducted by the Solar System Fleet Court Martial, located in the fleet base in geosynchronous orbit.The main body of Fleet International is located in the orbits of Mars, the asteroid belt and Jupiter, but because Earth International is very concerned about the case, the court is located near the earth.In order to accommodate the spectators from the ground, the base rotates to generate gravity. Outside the wide window of the courtroom, the blue earth, the dazzling sun and the brilliant sea of ​​stars of the Milky Way appear alternately, as if it is a grand display of different values. The case of the "Bronze Age" In this changing light and shadow court.The court hearing lasted for a month, and the following is part of the court hearing.

Neil Scott, male, 45 years old, with the rank of colonel, was the captain of the "Bronze Age" at that time.

……

Judge: We also need to go back to the decision-making process for the Quantum attack.

Scott: Then I repeat, the attack was independently decided and ordered by me. I have not discussed and communicated with any officer of the "Bronze Age" before.

Judge: You've been trying to take full responsibility, and that's not good for you, or even for those you're trying to protect.

Prosecutor: It has been proven that there was an all-ship vote prior to the attack.

Scott: I have explained the voting this time. There are 1775 people on board the ship, and only 59 people approved of the attack, which is not the reason or basis for the attack.

Judge: Can you give the list of these 59 people?
Scott: Voting is by secret ballot, on the ship's network, and it's recorded in the voyage and combat logs.

Prosecutor: You did not tell the truth.We have good evidence that the votes were registered, and more importantly, the results are completely different from what you said, you tampered with the log records.

JUDGE: We now need you to turn over your actual records of voting results.

Scott: I didn't, and now the results shown above are real.

Judge: Neil Scott, I remind you that if you continue to take this uncooperative attitude towards the court investigation, you may harm many innocent subordinates of yours, namely those who voted against the attack on the Quantum ticket people.Without the evidence you provided, we can only convict and sentence all junior officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the "Bronze Century" based on the existing evidence.

Scott: How can you do that? !Are we facing the law?Are you a judge?What about the presumption of innocence?
Judge: The principle of presumption of innocence does not apply to crimes against humanity, a norm of international law established in the crisis era to ensure that traitors to humanity are brought to justice.

Scott: We are not traitors to humanity!Where were you when we fought for the planet? !

Prosecutor: You are!The Trisolaran organization of the Earth two centuries ago betrayed the interests of mankind, and you today betray the most basic moral principles of mankind.

Scott: (silence)
Judge: I hope you know the consequences of falsifying evidence.In addition, you issued a statement on behalf of all the defendants in this case during the trial, expressing remorse for the 1847 victims of the "Quantum" and their relatives. Now is the time for you to show your sincerity.

Scott: (Long silence) Well, I hand over the real results, which you can get from an encrypted record in the log database on board the Bronze Age, where there are all voting records.

Prosecutor: Before that, can you explain the general situation?For example, how many people are in favor of attacking the "Quantum"?
Scott: 1670 people, accounting for 94% of the total number of people on board.

Judge: Please be quiet!

Scott: But even if it doesn't turn out that way, even if it's below 50%, I'm going to attack.

Prosecutor: Then let me remind you: The "Bronze Age" is different from the "Natural Selection" and other new ships on the other side of the solar system. The AI ​​intelligence is low. Without the cooperation of your subordinates, you cannot launch an attack alone.

……

Sebastian Snyder, male, 31 years old, rank of major, served as the target discrimination and attack mode control officer of the "Bronze Age" weapon system at the time.

……

Prosecutor: You are the only officer on the "Bronze Age" other than the captain who has the system authority to prevent or abort the attack.

Snyder: Yes.

Judge: You didn't do that.

Snyder: No.

Judge: What was your state of mind at the time?
Snyder: That moment, oh, not the moment of the attack, but the moment before I learned that the Bronze Age was never going to come back and that the ship was my whole world, I changed.There is no process, and it changes all of a sudden, becoming another person, just like——that legendary ideological stamp.

Judge: Do you think it is possible?I mean there are ideological stencils on board.

Snyder: Of course it’s impossible, I’m just a metaphor, space itself is a thought stamp... In short, at that moment, I gave up myself, became part of the collective, became a cell, a part of the collective—only the collective survives Only when you come down can your own existence be meaningful... That's it, I can't explain clearly, and I don't expect you to understand.Even if you, Mr. Judge, boarded the "Bronze Age" yourself and sailed tens of thousands of astronomical units out of the solar system along our route, or even farther than that, you would not understand it, because you know you will come back , Your soul hasn’t left even a single step, and you’re still on the earth—unless there’s nothing behind the spaceship, the sun and the earth disappear, turning into a void, then you can understand my kind of change.

I'm from California, and in 1967 A.D., in my hometown, a high school teacher named Ron Jones (oh please don't interrupt me for a moment, thank you) decided to make his Students have a thorough understanding of what totalitarianism is and what Nazism are, so they build a totalitarian society in a simulated way in the class.In just five days, Jones succeeded, and his class became a miniature Nazi Germany, where each student voluntarily gave up his ego and freedom to merge into the supreme collective and take a religious view of the collective's purpose. fanaticism.In the end, this pedagogical experiment that started with a game almost got out of hand.Later, this incident was made into a movie by the Germans, and the person concerned also wrote a book called "Totalitarianism in Five Days".Similarly, after the "Bronze Age" learned of its fate of wandering in space forever, it also established such a collective totalitarian society. Do you know how long it took us?
5 minutes.

It really only took 5 minutes, the plenary meeting only lasted 5 minutes, and the basic values ​​of this totalitarian society were recognized by the vast majority of people on the "Bronze Age".Therefore, when human beings are truly exiled in space, totalitarianism only takes 5 minutes.

……

Boris Lowinsky, male, 36 years old, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, was then the deputy captain of the "Bronze Age".

……

Judge: Were you the one who led the first squad into the attacked "Quantum"?
Lowinski: Yes.

Judge: Were there any living people inside at that time?
Lowinski: No.

Judge: What about the body?
Lowinski: Everyone died from the infrasound waves generated by the electromagnetic pulse of the hydrogen bomb acting on the hull, and the remains are all intact.

Judge: How did you dispose of the remains?
Lowinski: There is a monument to them, like Blue Space.

Judge: Are there any remains in the monument?
Lowinski: No, and I suspect it's not in the monument erected by Blue Space on the other side of the solar system.

Judge: Where did the body go?
Lowinski: Replenish the ship's food stock.

Judge: All?
Lowinski: All of them.

Judge: How was this matter decided?Who first decided to use dead bodies as food?

Lowinski: This... I really can't remember.At that time, I felt that this was a very natural thing. I was responsible for the logistics and distribution of the entire ship, and directed the storage and distribution of the remains.

Judge: How were the remains eaten?
Lowinski: That's it, mostly cooked with vegetables and meat from the eco-system.

Judge: Who are the eaters?

Lowinski: Everyone, everyone on the Bronze Age.This kind of food is served in the four restaurants on the ship, and I must have eaten it in all of them.

Judge: Do they know what they are eating?

Lowinski: Of course.

Judge: What about their reaction?
Lowensky: I think, some people must be uncomfortable, but there is no big reaction.Oh, and I overheard an officer next to me say, "Thanks, Joyner, once in the officers' mess.

Judge: What do you mean?
Lowinski: Lieutenant Karl Joyner was the communications officer on the Quantum, and he ate like a part of her.

Judge: How could he know who he was eating?
Lowinski: You know the ID unit, the size of a grain of rice, it's implanted in the left arm, it can withstand high temperatures, and occasionally you don't take it out when cooking, and the eater can use the portable communicator when they find it on the plate or something Read the information above.

Judge: Hush the courtroom!Please send the two fainted ladies out... You will know that this kind of behavior has broken the moral bottom line of human beings.

Lowinski: There was another moral line at the time. When the "Bronze Age" accelerated with superpower in the Doomsday Battle, due to the overload of the power system, the ship's ecological cycle system was cut off for nearly two hours, causing serious damage to the system and recovering very slowly; To accommodate more than 500 people, there are still more than 1000 people to eat. If there were no additional supplies, half of the people would starve to death.Even if that wasn't the case, considering the long voyage ahead, leaving so many precious protein resources unused in space is breaking the moral line... Of course, I am not defending myself, nor for "bronze In defense of anyone on the Century, it's not easy to say this when I've reverted to an Earthling mind, believe me, it's not easy.

Captain Neil Scott's final statement to the court:
I don't have much to say, except for one caveat: the landing of life from the sea on land was a milestone in the evolution of life on Earth, but those fish that landed were no longer fish; similarly, the people who actually went into space were no longer human .So, people, when you plan to fly into outer space and never look back, please be careful, the price to pay is much greater than you think.

……

The final verdict: Captain Neil Scott and six other senior military officers were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity and murder; of the remaining 1768 people, only 138 were acquitted, and the rest were all sentenced. Sentences ranged from 20 to 300 years.

Since Fleet International's prison is located in the desolate asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the prisoners had to fly away from Earth again. After the return of the "Bronze Age", although they came to a synchronous orbit that is close to the earth, the last 500 kilometers of the [-] billion kilometers will never be able to travel.When the escorting spacecraft accelerated, they all floated on the porthole at the stern like a pile of fallen leaves that could never return to their roots, watching the blue earth that had lingered countless times in their dreams gradually go away and change again. into a pale blue star.

Before leaving the base, more than a dozen people, including the former deputy captain Lovinsky and the original target screening officer Snyder, entered the "Bronze Century" for the last time under the escort of the military police, and discussed some details with the new troops that received the ship. Aspects of handover.In the past ten years, this has been their whole world. They have meticulously set up holographic images of grasslands, forests and coasts everywhere, cultivated real flowers and plants, built fountains and fish ponds, and made this place a real home. look.Now, all of these are gone, their traces have been completely erased, and the "Bronze Age" has become a cold star warship again.Every soldier encountered on the ship cast indifferent eyes on them, or simply ignored their existence.These soldiers paid special attention to their eyes when saluting, to show that the military salute was aimed at the military police officers who escorted them, and had nothing to do with these people in prison uniforms.

Snyder was taken into a spherical cabin and explained some technical details of the target discrimination system to three officers.The three officers were two men and one woman, and the female lieutenant was very beautiful, but the three of them faced Snyder as if they were facing a computer query interface. Not a word of extraneous words.

There are not too many problems to be solved, and it is completed in an hour.At this time, Snyder clicked a few times on the operation interface in mid-air, as if he was habitually closing the operation window before leaving, then he suddenly kicked the bulkhead and flew to the other end of the spherical cabin in weightlessness.Almost at the same time, the spherical cabin was divided into two. Three officers and a military policeman were locked in one cabin, and Snyder was alone in the other.

Snyder called up an operation interface in front of him, and clicked at a dizzying speed. It was a communication interface, and he was activating the high-power ultra-long-range interstellar communication system of the "Bronze Age".

With a muffled sound, a small hole was burned out in the bulkhead by the laser gun, and the cabin was filled with thick white smoke.The military police extended the barrel of the gun from the other side, pointed it at Snyder, and warned him to stop immediately and open the hatch.

"The 'Bronze Age' calls the 'Blue Space'! The 'Bronze Age' calls the 'Blue Space'!" Snyder's voice is not high, he knows that the distance of the call transmission has nothing to do with his pitch.

A beam of laser light penetrated Snyder's chest, and the blood turned into red steam, and he was shrouded in his own blood mist, and shouted hoarsely with the last of his life:

"Don't return, this is not home!"

For the return bait sent by the earth, the "Blue Space" was a little more hesitant and suspicious than the "Bronze Age". Positive velocity leaving the solar system.After receiving the alarm, it immediately switched from deceleration to full power acceleration, and continued to escape the solar system.

When Earth learned of the news through Trisolaran's sophon intelligence, the two civilizations had a common enemy for the first time.

To their relief, the "Blue Space" currently does not have the ability to threaten the two worlds with the dark forest. Even if it sends the coordinates of the two star systems to the universe at its maximum power, it is almost impossible for a third party to receive them. arrive.It will take 300 years to reach the nearest star, Barnard's Star, for stellar power cosmic broadcasting, with the navigation capabilities of the "Blue Space"; but its course has not changed to point to Barnard's Star, but It is still flying towards the previously determined target star NH558J2, and it will take more than 2000 years to reach it.

The "Gravity" immediately set sail to pursue the "Blue Space", which is currently the only spacecraft in the solar system capable of interstellar travel.Prior to this, Trisolaris had proposed that faster water droplets (formally known as strong-interaction space probes) should chase and destroy the target, but the earth world firmly rejected this proposal, believing that it was an internal matter of human beings.The doomsday battle is the greatest trauma to mankind. For more than ten years, the pain has not been relieved, but has become more intense.It is absolutely unacceptable politically to allow water droplets to attack humans again, and even though Blue Space is already an alien ship in most people's minds, law enforcement can only be enforced by humans.Perhaps considering the abundance of time, Trisolaran did not insist, but only emphasized that the "Gravity" has the ability to emit gravitational waves, and its absolute safety must be guaranteed, and the water droplets should go with it, so as to ensure an overwhelming advantage over the "Blue Space".

Therefore, the "Gravity" sailed in formation with the two water droplets, keeping the distance between them at a few kilometers.The size of the two is very different. When looking at the panorama of "Gravity", the water droplets are almost invisible, but the surface of the latter reflects the mirror image of "Gravity" completely and clearly.

The "Gravity" was only built ten years later than the "Blue Space", except for the launch of gravitational waves, there is no more advanced technology, and its propulsion capability is only slightly better than that of the "Blue Space", and it can catch up with the latter Completely rely on the fuel advantage.Even so, according to the current speed and acceleration of the two ships, it will take 50 years for the "Gravity" to catch up with the "Blue Space".

[The 61st year of the Era of Deterrence, the sword bearer]

At the top of a giant tree building, Cheng Xin looked up at her star, which was the reason she was awakened.

In the Stars Project that year, a total of 14 people bought [-] stars. Except for Cheng Xin, the other [-] people were lost in the vast history, and no descendants with legal inheritance rights could be found. The big trough is like a sieve. , filtering out too many things.Now, only Cheng Xin is the only one who legally owns a star.

Now, humans have not yet flown to any stars outside the solar system, but the rapid development of technology has made the stars within 300 light-years no longer only symbolic.The DX3906 owned by Cheng Xin has been proved not to be a naked star, but it has just been found to have two planets. Judging from the mass, orbit and atmospheric spectrum of one of the planets, it is very likely that it is an Earth-like planet very similar to the Earth. planet, and its value skyrocketed.People were surprised to find that this distant world actually had an owner.

The United Nations and the Solar System Fleet want to take back the ownership of this star, but according to the law, this can only be achieved if its owner agrees to sell it, so Cheng Xin, who has been hibernating for 260 years, was awakened.

After Cheng Xin woke up, she was the first to know: As expected, there was no news from the Staircase aircraft. The Trisolaran fleet did not intercept it, nor observed its existence. middle.But it was this man who had sunk into nothingness, who left a real world to his loved one, a world made up of a star and two planets.

The planet DX3906 was discovered by a doctoral student named Ai AA.She made the discovery while doing research for her Ph.D. dissertation, using a new observation method that uses one star as a gravitational lens to observe another star.

In Cheng Xin's eyes, Ai AA was a girl as light as a bird, flying around her full of vitality.She claimed to be familiar with AD people because her mentor was a physicist in the AD century.Perhaps it was for this reason that she got her first job after graduation and was appointed as the liaison between Cheng Xin and the United Nations Space Development Agency.

The demands of the United Nations and the fleet made Cheng Xin very difficult.Of course she can't occupy a world by herself, but she can't sell the gift from someone who loves her deeply.She proposed to give up the ownership of DX3906 without compensation and only keep the certificate as a souvenir, but she was told that she couldn't do it.According to the existing laws, the government, the United Nations, and the fleet could not accept such a large amount of personal assets for free. They could only buy DX3906 from her, which Cheng Xin could not accept no matter what.After painful thinking, she decided to transfer the ownership of the two planets and keep the star, but at the same time signed an additional agreement with the United Nations and the fleet to determine that humans can use the energy generated by the star for free.After research, the idea is legally feasible.

AA told Cheng Xin that if only the planets were sold, the UN's bid would be much lower, but it was still a huge fortune, and she needed to set up a company to operate it. AA then asked if Cheng Xin was willing to let her work if she established a company. After receiving Cheng Xin's affirmative answer, AA immediately called and resigned from the position of contact person of the Space Development Agency, and claimed that she had started working for Cheng Xin. , began to speak on her behalf.

"Are you stupid?!" AA yelled, "There are many choices, but you did the worst one! For example, you can transfer the stars together, and then you will become one of the richest people in the world! Or, don’t sell anything, and keep the entire galaxy for yourself, which is completely possible! In this era, the law absolutely protects personal property, and no one can take away your world! Then, and then you hibernate, Until the day you can fly to DX3906, you can fly to your own world, such a big place, with oceans and continents, you can play however you want! Of course, it is best to bring me..."

Cheng Xin said that she had already decided, "We are almost three centuries apart, and I don't expect to understand each other right away."

"Yes, yes." AA sighed, "but you should re-understand the two things of conscience and responsibility. Responsibility makes you sell the planet, conscience makes you keep the star; responsibility makes you give up the energy of the star. People who are kidnapped by these two things are like my mentor. However, in this era, conscience and responsibility are not commendable words. Too much of these two things will be regarded as a mental illness, called social personality obsessive-compulsive disorder, you have to accept it for treatment."

……

Even in the city lights, Cheng Xin found the DX3906 without too much effort.Compared with her time, the atmosphere is much clearer now.She looked away from the night sky and came back to a reality that surprised her: she and AA were like two little ants standing on a glowing Christmas tree, surrounded by a forest of Christmas trees, and the shining buildings hung like leaves on every corner. root branch.But this gigantic city was built on the ground, and with the peace that came with the deterrence, the second age of cave dwelling for man came to an end.

They walked along this branch, each branch was a street, and there were many information windows floating on the road, making the street like a colorful river.From time to time, a few windows floated out of the mainstream of the road, followed them for a short distance, and found that they were not interested in me, and then floated back into the mainstream.The buildings belonging to the street are hung below.This is the highest branch, above which is the starry sky. If you walk on the branch street below, you will be surrounded by the buildings hanging on the surrounding and upper branches. You are like a small insect, flying on the leaves and fruits with brilliant light. in the fantasy forest.

Cheng Xin looked at the passers-by on the street, one girl, two girls, a group of girls, and another...all girls, all beautiful, wearing sparkling clothes, like elves in this dreamy forest .Finally, there was a woman who looked a little older, and her beauty almost concealed her age.When they reached the end of the branch, facing the sea of ​​lights below, Cheng Xin asked the question she had long wanted to ask:
"Where are the men?"

She has been awake for four days and has never seen a man.

"It's everywhere." AA pointed to the nearby area, "Look at the one with his back against the railing, and the three over there, and those two who are walking over, all of them are men."

Cheng Xin looked at those people. She (he) had fair and beautiful faces, long hair shawls, and a slender and soft body, as if their bones were made of bananas. Sweet... In her time, these people were also the most feminine among women.

Cheng Xin quickly figured it out: In fact, this process had already started.The 20s may have been the last era of advocating masculinity. Since then, although men still exist, the men favored by society and fashion have become more and more feminine.She thought of some Japanese and Korean male stars at the beginning of the 80st century, who looked like beautiful girls at first glance. At that time, people called it the era of masculinity.The Great Trough interrupted the feminization of humanity, but it was accelerated by more than half a century of comfortable peace that followed the Age of Deterrence.

AA said: "It was indeed difficult for you AD people to distinguish them at first, but it may be easier for you. From the way those men look at you, you can tell that a classical beauty like you is very attractive to them."

Cheng Xin glanced at AA warily.

"What are you thinking, I'm an out-and-out woman! Huh, what's so good about the men of your time? Rude, brutal and dirty, like a species that hasn't fully evolved, you will adapt to this beautiful era."

When Cheng Xin was about to go into hibernation three centuries ago, she had made various assumptions about the predicament she would face in the future, but now this was something she couldn't have imagined.Thinking about what life would be like in the long run in this feminine world, Cheng Xin felt melancholy, and couldn't help but look up to the night sky to find her own star.

"I'm thinking about him again!" AA said, pulling Cheng Xin's shoulders, "Even if that man didn't fly into space to be with you, your grandson's grandson is now in his grave. This is a brand new era, a brand new era." Life has nothing to do with the past!"

Cheng Xin tried her best to make herself think this way, and tried her best to bring her thoughts back to reality.She has only been in this era for a few days, and she only has a general understanding of the history of the past three centuries. What shocked her most was the strategic balance established between humans and the Trisolaran world due to the threat of the dark forest. At this time, a problem suddenly appeared Come to mind.

Such a soft female world, deterrence? !
Cheng Xin and AA walked back, and there were several information windows floating around them on the road. One of them caught Cheng Xin's attention: firstly, it was because there was a man on the screen, obviously a man from the past era, with a haggard complexion. , with disheveled hair, standing beside a black tombstone.He and the tombstone were in the cold shadow, but his eyes seemed to reflect the morning light far away, and they looked bright.Below is a line of subtitles:
…In his time, murder was punishable by death.

Cheng Xin thought the man looked familiar, but when he looked closely, the picture disappeared and was replaced by a middle-aged woman who was giving a speech (Cheng Xin could only think it was a woman).Her dress was dull and formal, making her look like a politician, and the subtitles just now were what she said.Sensing Cheng Xin's attention, the window magnified a lot, and at the same time, it made a sound just enough for her to hear. The speaker's voice was very sweet. horrible:
"Why should the death penalty be imposed? The answer is because people were killed, but this is only one of the correct answers. There is another answer: because too few people were killed. Killing one person is punishable by death. Killing a few dozens This is even more so. If tens of millions of people are killed, then the crime deserves ten thousand deaths; but if more, how many 10 people are killed? Of course, the death penalty should also be sentenced, but for people with some historical knowledge, this The answer is not very certain; further, what if millions of people were killed? It is certain that this person will not be sentenced to death or even punished by law. If you don’t believe me, just look at history. Thousands of people seem to be called great men and heroes; further, if this person destroys a world and kills all life in it, then he becomes the savior!"

"She (he?) was talking about Luo Ji, and they wanted to try him," AA said.

"why?"

"It's very complicated. The direct reason is: that star system, the one where he broadcast the coordinates to the universe and caused it to be destroyed, does not know if there is life in it, but there is definitely a possibility, so he is accused of the crime of world extinction .It is the gravest crime in modern law."

"You are Cheng Xin, right?!" The voice surprised Cheng Xin, because it came from the window on the road. The speaker inside looked at Cheng Xin in surprise and pointed at her, as if meeting an old friend. . "You are the one who owns that distant world. Ah, you are really good, bringing us all the beauty of that era. You are the only one who owns a world and can save it. The public has high hopes for you! Oh ,I am……"

AA turned off the screen with one kick.Cheng Xin was deeply shocked by the information technology of this era. She didn't know how her image was transmitted to the speaker, let alone how she (he?) retrieved herself from the hundreds of millions of viewers.

AA rushed up to Cheng Xin, turned around and walked back to face her and asked, "Will you destroy a world to establish this kind of deterrence? Especially: if the enemy is not intimidated by your deterrence, then you will press the button to destroy it." Two worlds?"

"The question is meaningless, how could I possibly put myself in that position?"

AA stopped, grabbed Cheng Xin's shoulders, and looked directly into her eyes, "Really?"

"Of course, as far as I can think of, that's the scariest situation for a person, much scarier than death." Cheng Xin said, AA's seriousness surprised her a little.

AA nodded, "Then I'm relieved... I'll discuss it in detail tomorrow, go to rest early, you are very weak now, and it will take a week to fully recover."

Early the next morning, Cheng Xin received a call from AA. AA beamed on the screen and said that he would take her to a good place this morning and surprise her, and said that the car that would pick her up was on the roof of the building.When Cheng Xin came to the top of the building, she really saw the flying car with its doors open. When she entered the car, she found that AA was not inside.The car door slid silently, and the seat under Cheng Xin held her like a palm, and the flying car flew up lightly, merging into the torrent of flying cars in the urban forest.It was still early at this time, and the countless beams of light from the rising sun entering the urban forest were almost parallel to the ground, and the flying car was passing through the city in the beams of sunlight.The giant tree buildings gradually became thinner, and finally disappeared completely. The land under the blue sky was covered by forests and grasslands, and a piece of green that made Cheng Xin intoxicated rushed over.

After the beginning of the era of deterrence, almost all the earth's heavy industries have moved to space orbit, and the ecological environment has recovered rapidly, and it is now close to the level before the industrial revolution.As a result of population decline and the industrialization of food production, arable land is also disappearing, and the earth is turning into one big park.

This beautiful world that suddenly arrived gave Cheng Xin a sense of unreality. Ever since she woke up from hibernation, she had been in a dream.

Half an hour later, the flying car landed, the door slid open, Cheng Xin got out of the car, and it immediately flew away.After the strong wind blown up by the propeller subsided, silence enveloped everything, only the sound of birdsong came from afar.Cheng Xin looked around and found herself in an abandoned building.These buildings seem to be from the AD century, and they seem to be a residential area. The lower part of each building is covered with dense vines.Seeing the past covered in the green of the new era, Cheng Xin regained some sense of reality.

She called AA's name, but a man's voice answered her:

"Hello there!"

The voice came from a balcony on the second floor behind Cheng Xin. She turned around and saw the man standing on the vine-covered balcony. It wasn't a feminine man now, but a real man in the past.Cheng Xin seemed to be back in a dream again, but this time it was a continuation of her nightmare in the AD century: this man was Thomas Vader, and he was wearing the same black leather jacket as before, but he looked older, maybe He hibernated many years after Cheng Xin, or woke up earlier than Cheng Xin, maybe both.But Cheng Xin's gaze immediately focused on Wade's right hand, which was holding a pistol in the black leather glove.

"The bullets in this gun are specially made for underwater shooting. It is said that they can be stored for a long time, but it has been more than 270 years. I don't know if they can still be used." Wade said, with Cheng Xin's familiar ice-water smile on his face. , that kind of smile is unique to him when he appreciates the despair of others.

Bullets work.With a loud bang, Cheng Xin saw the flames from the muzzle of the gun, and felt as if she had been punched hard on her left shoulder, and the force of the impact pushed her against a broken wall behind her.The gunshots were absorbed by the dense vines and could not travel very far, and the chirping of birds continued outside.

"You can't use the current guns, they are automatically registered in the public safety database every time they are fired." Wade said, the tone is as flat as when Cheng Xin talked about his daily work three centuries ago.

"Why?!" Cheng Xin said the first words to him after three centuries. She didn't feel any pain, only a soft numbness in her left shoulder.

"For the sword bearer. I want to be the sword bearer, and you will compete with me, and you will succeed. I have no ill will towards you personally, and believe it or not, I am very sad at this moment."

"Did you kill Vadim?" Cheng Xin asked, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.

"Yes, the ladder plan needs him. But now, my new plan doesn't need you. You are all excellent, but the chess pieces in the way should be cleared. I can only move forward, by whatever means!"

After Wade finished speaking, he fired another shot. The bullet penetrated Cheng Xin's left abdomen. She still felt no pain, but her whole body lost support in the paralysis. She slowly slid down against the wall, leaving bright red spots on the vine leaves behind her. blood.Vader pulled the trigger again, and this time, nearly three centuries had finally paid off, and the gun didn't go off.Vidra pulled the breech to withdraw the stink bomb, and pointed the gun at Cheng Xin again.At this moment, his right arm holding the gun seemed to explode by itself. After a cloud of white smoke rose, Vader's right forearm disappeared, and the scorched flesh and bones splashed into the surrounding green leaves, but the pistol was intact. fell downstairs.Vader didn't move, as if looking thoughtfully at his missing right forearm, then looked up, in the direction he was looking, a flying police car was swooping down, before touching the ground, there were several people with guns The cops jumped down into the tall grass billowing in the draft below, and they too looked like slender girls, but they moved swiftly.

The last one to come down was AA. Her teary eyes were shaking in Cheng Xin's already blurred vision, and she could also hear her crying, to the effect that someone forged her phone number and so on.

Severe pain began to appear, and it was so fierce that Cheng Xin went into shock.Soon she woke up again, and found that she was already in the car, her body was completely wrapped by an unknown membrane, the pain disappeared, she couldn't even feel the existence of her body, and her consciousness was blurred again.She finally asked in a voice only she could hear:
"What is a sword bearer?"

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
The Ghost of the Wallfacer - The Sword Bearer
Luo Ji's deterrence of the dark forest against the Three-Body World is undoubtedly a great achievement, but the wall-facing project that finally produced this achievement is considered an extremely childish and absurd move.At that time, human beings were like children entering society for the first time, full of fear and confusion about the sinister external world, and the Wall Facing Project was the product of this mental shock.With Luo Ji handing over the control of deterrence to the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet, people thought that the historical saga of the Wallfacer Project was over forever.

People began to think deeply about deterrence itself, and a discipline was born from this: the game of deterrence.

The main elements that constitute deterrence are: the deterrent and the deterred, in the dark forest deterrence, they are human beings and the three-body world respectively; deterrence operation, launching the coordinates of the three-body world leads to the destruction of the two worlds; the deterrent controller, the person who controls the launch switch or organization; to deter the target, the Trisolaran world gives up its aggression and transfers technology to the human world.

Deterrence with the consequences of both the deterrent and the deterred is called ultimate deterrence.

Compared with other types of deterrence, the characteristic of ultimate deterrence is: once deterrence fails, it is meaningless for the deterrent to carry out deterrent operations.

The key to the success of ultimate deterrence is to convince the deterred that if it does not accept the deterrent target, there is a great possibility of triggering deterrent operations.What describes this factor is an important indicator in the game of deterrence: degree of deterrence.Only when the deterrence degree is higher than 80%, can the ultimate deterrence be successful.

People quickly discovered an extremely frustrating fact: if the control of the dark forest deterrence is in the hands of a large group of humans, the degree of deterrence is almost zero.

It is extremely difficult for human beings to collectively make the decision to destroy the two worlds. This decision is far beyond the moral and value bottom line of human society, and the situation of the dark forest deterrence itself further reduces the possibility of such a decision: if the deterrence fails , human beings still have at least one generation to survive. In a sense, this is all for the living; likely to come, an outcome far worse than abandoning deterrence operations.So, when deterrence fails, the human herd response is completely predictable.

But individual responses cannot be predicted.

The success of the dark forest deterrence was based on Luo Ji's individual unpredictability.When deterrence fails, his personality characteristics and psychological factors determine his behavior more. Even if it is based on reason, his personal interests may not coincide with the overall interests of mankind.At the beginning of the Deterrence Era, the two worlds conducted an extremely detailed study of Luo Ji’s personality traits, and established a corresponding mathematical model. Scholars of the deterrence game for humans and the three-body system came up with almost the same results: Luo Ji's deterrence degree fluctuated between 91.9% and 98.4%, and the three-body world would never dare to take this risk.

In a short time after the establishment of the deterrence, although the above-mentioned in-depth research had not yet been carried out, people quickly realized this fact, and the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet immediately returned the control of the deterrence to Luo Ji, just like throwing a piece of hot water. iron.There was only [-] hours between recovery and return of control, but this time was enough for the water droplets to destroy the chain of nuclear bombs around the sun to prevent humans from broadcasting coordinates, and the enemy did not act. The biggest mistake in the war, and the human breathed a sigh of relief.

Therefore, Luo Ji has always held the control of the dark forest deterrence.In his hand, he first held the detonation switch of the solar nuclear bomb chain, and later held the launch switch of the gravitational wave—the strategic balance of the two worlds, like an upside-down pyramid, palpitatingly supported by a needle-like body like his. On the origin.

The Dark Forest Deterrence is the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the two worlds, and Luo Ji is the hair of the hanging sword. He is called the sword bearer.

The Wallfacer project has not become history, and human beings cannot get rid of the ghosts of the Wallfacers.

If the Wallfacer Project is the first monster to appear in human history, then the Dark Forest Deterrence and the Sword Bearer have precedents in history.The cold war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO in the 20th century was a quasi-ultimate deterrent.In 1974 during the Cold War, the Soviet Union launched the Perimeter Project and established an early warning system that was later called the Doomsday System. Under such circumstances, it still has the ability to launch a nuclear counterattack.It uses the nuclear explosion monitoring system to monitor the signs of nuclear explosions in the Soviet Union, and all the data will be collected into the central computer, and after logical interpretation, it will be decided whether to launch a nuclear counterattack.The core of this system is a top-secret control room located deep in the formation. When the system makes a judgment on counterattack, a person on duty in the control room will initiate a nuclear counterattack.In 2009, an officer who had participated in Perimeter strategic duty disclosed to reporters that he was just a 25-year-old second lieutenant who had just graduated from the Frunze Military Academy!When the system makes a counterattack judgment, he is the last barrier of destruction.At this time, the entire Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were already in flames, and his relatives and friends on the ground were already dead. If he pressed the button to launch a counterattack, the North American continent would also become a hell of life in half an hour. The ensuing fallout and nuclear winter covering the entire globe will be the end of the entire human race.At that moment, the fate of human civilization rests in his hands.Later, people asked him the most: If that moment came, would you press the button?

The earliest sword bearer in history said: I don't know.

People's hope now is that the dark forest deterrence can have a happy ending like the nuclear deterrence of the 20th century.

Years passed in a strange balance. Deterrence has been established for 60 years, and Luo Ji, who is over [-] years old, is still in charge of the control of deterrence.His image in people's eyes is also slowly changing.

The hawks who advocate a tougher policy on Trisolaran don't like him.As early as when deterrence was first established, hardliners advocated harsher conditions for the Trisolaran world in an attempt to completely disarm the Trisolaran world.Some plans have reached the point of absurdity, such as the "naked immigration" plan, which proposes to dehydrate all the Trisolarans, and then send them to the Oort Nebula by a cargo spacecraft, and then transport them to the solar system by a human spacecraft, and store them in the moon or Mars. In the dry storage on the Internet, it is gradually thawed in small batches according to certain conditions.

Moderate doves also disliked Luo Ji.Their focus is on whether there is life and civilization in the 187J3X1 star system whose coordinates were leaked by Luo Ji.To this point, the astronomers of the two worlds cannot give a positive answer, neither can prove that there is, nor can they prove that there is no.But Luo Ji is definitely suspected of the crime of destroying the world.They believe that if humans and the Trisolaran civilizations want to build a world of peaceful coexistence, they must be based on the pan-universe human rights system, that is, to recognize that all civilized creatures in the universe have completely equal human rights.To make such a pan-universe human rights system a reality, Luo Ji must be put on trial.

Luo Ji ignored both.He just held the switch of gravitational wave emission, silently sticking to the post of sword-bearer for half a century.

It has been discovered that any human policy towards the Three-Body World cannot bypass the sword-bearer. Without the recognition of the sword-bearer, human policies will have no effect in the Three-Body World.In this way, the sword bearer becomes a dictator with great power like the Wallfacer.

As time passed, Luo Ji's image changed day by day from a savior to an unreasonable monster and a tyrant who destroyed the world.

People find that the era of deterrence is a very strange era. On the one hand, human society has reached an unprecedented level of civilization, and democracy and human rights have been respected unprecedentedly; on the other hand, the entire society is shrouded in the shadow of a dictator.Some scholars believe that science and technology were once one of the forces to eliminate totalitarianism, but when a crisis that threatens the survival of civilization arises, technology may become the soil for the birth of a new totalitarianism.In traditional totalitarianism, the dictator can only achieve rule through other people, which faces low efficiency and countless uncertain factors. Therefore, in human history, a [-]% dictatorship system has never appeared.But technology has made possible the realization of such a super-dictatorship. The Wallfacer and the sword bearer are worrying examples.The combination of super technology and super crisis may bring human society back to the dark age.

But most also concede that it is not time to stop deterrence.With the lifting of the sophon blockade and the input of knowledge from the Trisolaran world, human science has developed rapidly, but compared with the Trisolaran world, there is still a gap of two to three technological eras; only when the technological strength of the two worlds is equal, can we consider stopping deterrence.

There is one more option: handing over control of deterrence to AI.This option was seriously considered and extensively researched and tested, and its greatest advantage was a high degree of deterrence, but was ultimately rejected.To entrust the fate of two worlds to a machine is a terrifying thing in itself.Experiments have found that AI is much less likely than humans to make correct judgments about complex situations faced by deterrence, because this judgment itself requires more than logical reasoning ability.Plus, it doesn't make people feel better politically, it's just turning a human dictatorship into a machine dictatorship, which is worse politically.And the most important point: sophon interference with AI.While this never happened, the mere existence of that possibility made this option impossible.

The compromise option is to change the sword bearer.Even without considering the above factors, Luo Ji is already a centenarian, and his thinking and psychology may fluctuate abnormally at any time. It is difficult to rest assured that the fate of the two worlds is placed in his hands.

Cheng Xin recovered quickly.The doctors claimed that even if all the ten 7mm bullets in the pistol hit her, even if her heart was shattered, modern medicine could revive her and restore her to a state of health that is basically the same as that of a normal person. If the brain is hit, there is no salvation.

Vader almost succeeded, according to police.The last murder in the world was 28 years ago, and in a city that has been murder-free for almost 40 years, the police are rusty about preventing and detecting murders.It was another swordbearer candidate, one of Vader's rivals, who alerted the police, but he also had no evidence, just perceived Vader's intentions with a keenness not seen in this day and age.The dubious police delayed a lot of time until they found out that Vader had faked AA's phone number before taking action.

Many people came to visit Cheng Xin in the hospital, including officials from the government, the United Nations, and the fleet, people from all walks of life, and of course AA and her friends.Cheng Xin is now able to easily distinguish the gender of modern people, and at the same time gradually adapts to modern men with a completely feminine appearance. She feels that they have a kind of elegance that men of her era did not have, but they are still far from being able to treat her. Create opposite-sex attraction.

With the disappearance of the strangeness, Cheng Xin longed to learn more about this era, but for now she could only stay in the ward.

On this day, AA played a holographic film for her in the ward, saying that it was the best film of this year's Oscars. tail……".The film describes the love of a couple living in the estuary and the source of the Yangtze River in an ancient pastoral era with no specific year.Throughout the film, the distance between the hero and heroine cannot be crossed. They have never met, and even the imagined meeting scene has never appeared, but their longing is expressed in an extremely sad and moving way.The photography of the film is also very beautiful. The beauty and gracefulness of Jiangnan where the Yangtze River enters the sea and the majestic and magnificent Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at its source complement each other, making Cheng Xin intoxicated.The film does not see the commercial publicity of her era at all, and the story flows calmly like the Yangtze River, allowing her to blend into it.

Cheng Xin thought, she is now at the end of the river of time, but the head of the river is empty...

This movie aroused Cheng Xin's interest in New Era culture, and when she was able to walk around, AA took her to art exhibitions and concerts.Cheng Xin clearly remembered the perverted and weird things she saw in the 798 factory and the Shanghai Modern Art Biennale in the [-]s. It was hard to imagine what the art of that time would look like now.But the paintings she saw were all gentle and realistic, and the soft colors were full of vitality and emotion. She felt that the paintings were like hearts, beating gently for the beauty of nature and humanity.As for the music, she felt that what she heard was like a classical symphony, which reminded her of the Yangtze River in that movie. It wasn't the water that was flowing, but people were swimming upwards, so she was taken far, far away...

The culture and art of this era is completely different from what Cheng Xin imagined, but it is not a simple return to classics, it is more like a spiral sublimation after the post-modern era, completely based on a new aesthetic foundation, such as "Fairy Tale of the Yangtze River" Contains a profound metaphor for the time and space of the universe.But what excites Cheng Xin the most is that the gloomy, hopeless, mutated and noisy post-modern culture and art in the 21st century disappeared without a trace, replaced by a kind of warm tranquility and optimism that has never been seen before.

"I love this era, but it's quite surprising when you think about it," Cheng Xin said.

"If you know the authors of these films, paintings and music, you will be even more surprised. They are all Trisolarans four light years away." AA said, seeing Cheng Xin's dumbfounded expression, she laughed happily.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
cultural reflection
After the establishment of deterrence, in order to receive and digest the scientific and technological information transmitted from the Trisolaran world to the earth, the World Academy of Sciences was established, which is an international organization at the same level as the United Nations.It was initially predicted that human beings could only receive sporadic information from Trisolaris like squeezing toothpaste, and this information was full of deliberate fallacies and misleadings, and earth scientists could only gain real new knowledge from them by guessing.However, Trisolaran's attitude in this regard is beyond everyone's expectations. They have systematically transmitted a large amount of knowledge information in a short period of time, mainly basic scientific information, including mathematics, physics, cosmology, and molecular biology. Life in the Three-Body World) and so on, each category is a complete subject system.This huge amount of information made the earth science community at a loss for a while.Trisolaris also provided uninterrupted guidance to the people on Earth, and for a while, the Earth world almost became a university.After the sophon's blockade of the accelerator was lifted, the core content of the three-body physics was confirmed by experiments step by step, which made human beings have a preliminary confirmation of the authenticity of these knowledge.Trisolaris has even complained many times that the World Academy of Sciences is too slow to digest knowledge. They seem to be eager to bring humans up to the scientific level of their own world, at least in terms of basic science.

People put forward various explanations for this puzzling phenomenon, and the more credible one is: the Trisolaran world saw the advantages of the accelerated development of human science, and wanted to obtain new knowledge through the development of human science. A knowledge battery is used, trying to get higher power after charging it.

Trisolaris’ explanation for this is: such a generous transfer of knowledge is out of respect for the civilization of the earth, and Trisolaris has obtained more from the civilization of the earth.Human culture opened Trisolaris to a new pair of eyes, saw the deeper meaning of life and civilization, and experienced the beauty of nature and humanity that had never been noticed before.The widespread spread and penetration of human culture in the Trisolaran world is rapidly and profoundly changing the social form of the Trisolaran world, and has triggered many revolutions in half a century, making the social structure and political system of the Trisolaran world different from that of the earth. More and more similar, human values ​​are being recognized and respected in that distant society, and human culture is being fascinated by all Trisolarans.

At first, people were skeptical, but the ensuing wave of even more incredible cultural reflexes confirmed it all.

Ten years after the Era of Deterrence, in addition to massive amounts of knowledge and information, there are more and more cultural and artistic works that imitate human beings, including movies, novels, poems, music, paintings, etc., transmitted from the Trisolaran world.What is surprising is that the imitation of human culture by Three-Body World does not seem to have gone through the process of learning to walk in Handan, and has reached a very high level from the very beginning.This phenomenon is called cultural reflection by scholars.Human civilization has a mirror in the universe, allowing humans to re-understand themselves from a previously impossible perspective.In the next ten years, reflection culture became popular in the human world, replacing the earth's native culture that is becoming increasingly decadent and losing vitality, becoming the mainstream of culture, leading the fashion among the public, and becoming a search for new cultural ideas and aesthetic concepts among scholars. source.

Now, if a movie or novel is not stated in advance, it is generally impossible to see its source, and it is difficult to determine whether its author is a human being or a Trisolaran.Because in the works from Three-Body World, the characters are all earth humans, and the natural environment is also of the Earth type, and there is no shadow of another world at all. This is the most powerful proof that Three-Body World accepts human culture.Meanwhile, the Trisolaran world itself remains shrouded in mystery, and hardly any details about that world have been transmitted.The Trisolarans believe that their crude local culture is not worth showing to humans, especially the huge differences in biology and natural environment between the two sides. Once revealed, it may bring unexpected obstacles to the valuable exchanges that have been established.

People are relieved to see that everything is going in a good direction, and a ray of sunshine really shines into this corner of the dark forest.

On the day Cheng Xin was discharged from the hospital, AA said Sophon wanted to see her.

Cheng Xin already knew that the word Sophon does not refer to those powerful and weird intelligent microcosmic particles from the Trisolaran world, but a woman's name.The woman is a robot, manufactured by the most advanced AI and bionic technology of mankind, but controlled by intelligent particles formerly known as sophons.This woman named Sophon is the ambassador of the Trisolaran world on Earth. Compared with Sophon's low-dimensional development before, her appearance makes the communication between the two worlds more natural and smooth.

Sophon lives on a giant tree at the edge of the city. Looking from a distance from the flying car, the leaves of the giant tree are very sparse, as if it is dying in late autumn.Sophon's residence is located on the topmost branch, which has only one leaf. It is an elegant small villa with bamboo and wood structure, which appears and disappears in a cloud of white clouds.It is a cloudless and sunny day, and the white cloud is obviously generated by the villa.

Cheng Xin and AA walked along the long branches to the end. The road was paved with round stones, and there were green lawns on both sides.You can go down to the suspended villa along a spiral staircase, and Tomoko greets them at the gate of the villa.She is slender, wearing a gorgeous Japanese kimono, and her whole figure seems to be surrounded by flowers.When Cheng Xin saw her face clearly, the flowers turned pale. It was hard for Cheng Xin to imagine such a perfect female face, but what really made this beauty alive was controlling her soul.She smiled slightly, like a spring water wrinkled by the breeze, and the sunlight in the water rippled softly.Sophon bowed slowly to them, and Cheng Xin felt that her whole person was a Chinese character: soft—both appearance and connotation.

"Welcome, welcome, I was supposed to visit the house, but then I couldn't use the tea ceremony to entertain you, please forgive me. It's really nice to meet you." Tomoko bowed again, her voice was as soft and soft as her body, It was just audible, but there seemed to be a magic, as if when she spoke other voices stopped to make way for her whisper.

The two followed Tomoko into the courtyard, a small white flower in her bun quivered slightly in front of them, and she turned her head and smiled at them from time to time.At this time, Cheng Xin had already forgotten that she was in front of an alien invader, and that the powerful alien world that was controlling her four light years away was just a beautiful and docile woman in front of her.The special thing is that her femininity is too strong, like a drop of concentrated paint, if she is thrown into a big lake and melted, then the whole lake will be the color of a woman.

There are verdant bamboo forests on both sides of the path in the courtyard, and the white mist condenses into a thin layer in the bamboo forest, hanging slightly undulating in the forest at half a person's height.Walking across a small wooden bridge with a gurgling spring below, Tomoko stepped aside and bowed to let the two into the living room.The living room is in pure oriental style, very spacious and bright, with large hollows on the four walls, making it look like a big pavilion.There is only blue sky and white clouds outside, and the clouds are all gushing from nearby and drifting very fast.On the wall is a small ukiyo-e and a fan with a Chinese painting landscape, the decoration is simple and elegant, just right.

Sophon asked Cheng Xin and AA to sit down on the soft tatami mats, and then she sat down in an elegant posture, and arranged the exquisite tea sets in front of her in an orderly manner.

"You have to be patient, this tea may not be available until two hours later." AA whispered in Cheng Xin's ear.

Sophon took out a clean white handkerchief from the kimono, and began to gently wipe the already extremely clean tea set. First, he wiped a delicate bamboo ladle with a long and thin handle, and then lightly wiped the white porcelain and yellow tea sets in turn. Copper small bowl, use a bamboo ladle to scoop clear spring water from a clay pot into a small porcelain pot, put it on a delicate copper stove and burn it, and then pour thin green tea from a small white porcelain pot Finally, pour it into a small bowl and slowly swirl it with a bamboo brush... All of this is done very slowly, and some procedures are repeated. It took nearly 10 minutes to wipe the tea set. For Tomoko, these actions are extremely important. Function is not important, what is important is their sense of ritual.

But Cheng Xin wasn't bored. Sophon's soft and elegant movements had a hypnotic effect, fascinating her.From time to time, there is a cool breeze blowing from the outside air, Sophon's jade arm seems not to be moving by itself, but is blown and fluttered by the breeze, and what her slender hands are caressing is not the tea set, but something softer. Like veil, like white clouds, like... time, yes, she is caressing time, time becomes soft and winding in her hands, flowing slowly like the mist in the bamboo forest.This is another time. In this time, the history of blood and fire has disappeared, and the world has retreated to a place where it does not exist. There are only white clouds, bamboo forests and tea fragrance.

After an unknown amount of time, the tea was finally brewed, and after a series of complicated rituals, it was finally handed over to Cheng Xin and AA.Cheng Xin took a sip of the green tea juice, and a burst of bitter fragrance entered her heart, and something seemed to become clear and transparent in her mind.

"When we women are together, the world is beautiful, but our world is also very fragile. We women should cherish all of this." Tomoko said softly, then bowed deeply, and his tone became excited, "Please Please take care of me, please take care of me!"

Cheng Xin naturally understood the deep meaning in these words and the tea.

The next meeting brought Cheng Xin back to the heavy reality.

On the second day after meeting Sophon, six people from AD came to see Cheng Xin. They were all candidates for the second sword bearer, all male, aged between 34 and 68.Compared with the beginning of the Deterrence Era, the number of AD people awakened from hibernation in this era has been greatly reduced, but a specific social class is still formed.For them, integrating into modern society is more difficult than for those who wake up later in the era of crisis.The males in the AD class all consciously or unconsciously feminized their appearance and personality to adapt to this feminized society, but none of the six men in front of Cheng Xin did so, they all stubbornly stuck to their own masculine appearance and personality.If Cheng Xin had seen these people a few days ago, she would have felt a sense of comfort, but now she felt oppressed.

There is no sunshine in the eyes of these men, and the deep city makes them hide themselves under invisible masks.Cheng Xin felt that she was facing a city wall made of six icy rocks. The city wall revealed the hardness and roughness honed by the years, and there was a cold air in the heavy, with murderous intent hidden behind it.

Cheng Xin first expressed her gratitude to the candidate who reported to the police.She was sincere, and he saved her life anyway.The stern-faced 48-year-old man was Bi Yunfeng, who was once one of the designers of the largest particle accelerator in the world at that time.Like Cheng Xin, he is also the liaison officer of the large-scale project to the future, hoping that one day the accelerator will be reactivated after Sophon's blockade is lifted, but all the accelerators built in that era have not been preserved until the era of deterrence.

"I hope I didn't make a mistake." Bi Yunfeng said, he might want to be humorous, but neither Cheng Xin nor anyone else felt that way.

"We're here to dissuade you from running for sword bearer," another man said bluntly.His name is Cao Bin, he is 34 years old, and he is the youngest among all the candidates.He had been Ding Yi's colleague when the crisis began, a physicist.After the truth of Sophon's blockade of the accelerator was announced, he felt that theoretical physics had become an air-to-air mathematical game without an experimental basis, so he entered hibernation and waited for the blockade to be lifted.

"If I run for office, do you think it's possible to succeed?" Cheng Xin asked.The question had been on her mind since returning from Tomoko's visit, and it nearly kept her up at night.

"If you do that, you will almost certainly succeed," said Ivan Antonov, a handsome Russian who is the youngest candidate besides Cao Bin. He is 43 years old but has extraordinary qualifications.He was the youngest vice-admiral in the Russian Navy, from the position of deputy commander of the Baltic Fleet, to hibernation due to terminal illness.

"Do I have deterrent power?" Cheng Xin asked with a smile.

"Not at all. You used to be a member of PIA. In the past two centuries, PIA has carried out a large number of active reconnaissance operations against the Trisolaran world. On the eve of the doomsday battle, it even issued a warning to the solar system fleet about the attack of water droplets. Too bad it wasn't taken seriously. It's now a legendary institution, which gives you points for deterrence. Plus, you're the only one with another world, which can save this one too, no matter what Whether it is logical or not, this is how the public associates it now..."

"That's not the point, let me explain." Antonov was interrupted by a bald old man. His name was A. J. Hopkins, or he claimed to be, because when he woke up They were all lost, and he refused to provide any identifying information, even a random one, which made it difficult for him to obtain citizenship.But his mysterious life experience also added a lot of points to the campaign. Together with Antonov, he is considered to be the two most deterrent candidates. "In the eyes of the public, the most ideal swordsman is like this: they make the Trisolaran world afraid, but at the same time they want to make humans, that is, these pussies and fake pussies, not afraid. Of course, such people do not exist, so they tend to You let yourself not be afraid. You let them not be afraid because you are a woman, and because you are a beautiful woman in their eyes. These sissies are more innocent than our children at that time, and they only see things on the surface... …Now they all think that things are going in a good direction, and the great unity of the universe is coming, so deterrence is becoming less and less important, and the hand holding the sword should be more stable.”

"Isn't it?" Cheng Xin asked, she was disgusted by Hopkins' frivolous tone.

The six men did not answer her, but exchanged glances in silence, almost imperceptibly, and at the same time their eyes became darker.Among them, Cheng Xin felt as if she was at the bottom of a cold well, and she shivered in her heart.

"My child, you are not suitable to be a sword bearer." The oldest man spoke. He was 68 years old and was the highest-ranking person in hibernation. He was the vice minister of foreign affairs of South Korea at the time. "You have no political experience, you are young, you have limited experience, you don't have the ability to correctly judge the situation, and you don't have the psychological quality required by a swordsman. You have nothing but kindness and a sense of responsibility."

"I don't believe that you really want to live the life of a sword bearer. You should know what kind of sacrifice it is." The man who has been silent said, he was a senior lawyer.

The last sentence made Cheng Xin silent. She had just learned about Luo Ji's experience in the Deterrence Era.

After the six sword-wielding candidates left, AA said to Cheng Xin, "I don't think the life of a sword-wielding person is life, and you can't find such a bad position in hell. Why do these AD men chase after that?"

"With one finger, you can decide the fate of all mankind and another world. This feeling was very attractive to some men at that time, and it might also be their lifelong pursuit, which made them Obsessed."

"Shouldn't it make you be possessed too?"

Cheng Xin didn't answer. Now, things are really not that simple.

"That man, it's hard to imagine how dark, crazy, and perverted he is!" AA was clearly referring to Vader.

"He's not the most dangerous," Cheng Xin said.

Vader is indeed not the most dangerous, and his sinisterness is not hidden deeply.The depth of the city and the complexity of the personality of the AD people are hard for AA and other modern people to imagine.What are the remaining six men hiding behind their cold masks?Does anyone know if there is Ye Wenjie or Zhang Beihai among them?What's more frightening is, how many are there?
In front of Cheng Xin, this world showed her fragility, like a beautiful soap bubble floating among thorns, any slight touch would make everything burst in an instant.

A week later, Cheng Xin came to the United Nations headquarters to participate in the transfer ceremony of the two planets in the DX3906 star system.

After the ceremony, the chairman of the Planetary Defense Council talked to her, and on behalf of the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet, formally proposed that she run for sword bearer.He said that there are too many uncertainties in the six candidates already. If any of them is elected, it will be regarded as a huge danger and threat by a considerable part of the public, which will cause widespread panic. What happens next It's hard to predict.Another risk factor is that these six candidates all have strong distrust and aggressive tendencies toward the Trisolaran world, and the second sword-bearer from among them may cooperate with the hawks in Earth International and Fleet International to promote a tough The policy, using the dark forest deterrence to pose a higher threat to the Trisolaran world, may suddenly interrupt the well-developed peace process and scientific and cultural exchanges between the two worlds, and the consequences will be unimaginable... Her election can prevent all of this from happening.

After the cave age ended, the United Nations Headquarters moved back to its old location.Cheng Xin is no stranger to this place. The appearance of the building is not much different from that of three centuries ago. Even the sculptures on the square in front are well preserved, and the lawn has been restored to its original state.Standing here, Cheng Xin recalled that turbulent night 270 years ago, when the Wall Facing Plan was announced, Luo Ji was shot, the crowd was chaotic under the swaying searchlight beams, the airflow stirred up by the helicopter rotors blew her long hair, and the ambulance flashed. Going away whimpering at the red light... It all seems to have happened yesterday.With his back to the sea of ​​lights in New York, Vader's eyes gleamed coldly, and he said the words that changed her life: "Only the brain."

If there is no such sentence, everything will have nothing to do with her now, she is just an ordinary person who passed away two centuries ago, and everything about her has disappeared without a trace at the source of time.If she is lucky, her tenth generation of descendants may be waiting for the birth of the second sword bearer at this time.

But now, she is alive, facing the sea of ​​people in the square, and the image of the holographic slogan showing her portrait floats above the crowd like a colorful cloud.A young mother holding a baby came up and handed her a few-month-old baby in her arms. The cute little baby smiled sweetly at her.She hugged the warm little ball, and pressed the baby's wet little face to her own, her heart melted immediately, she felt like she was holding the whole world, this new world was as cute and fragile as the baby in her arms .

"Look, she's the Virgin Mary, she really is!" the young mother shouted to the crowd, then turned to Cheng Xin, clasped her hands together with tears in her eyes, "Beautiful and kind Virgin Mary, protect this world from those barbaric addicts." The bloody man will destroy all this beauty."

The crowd cheered in response, and the baby in Cheng Xin's arms was frightened and cried, and she quickly hugged him tightly.She kept asking herself one question: Are there other options?Now with the final answer: no.For three reasons:
First, a person being promoted as the savior has one thing in common with being pushed to the guillotine, that is, he (she) has no choice, first Luo Ji, then Cheng Xin.

Second, the young mother's words and the warm and soft baby in her arms made Cheng Xin suddenly understand one thing. She saw clearly the essence of her feelings for this new world: motherhood.It was the motherhood that she had never experienced in the AD century. In her subconscious mind, all the people in the new world were her own children, and it was impossible for her to watch them get hurt.Before, she mistook this for responsibility, but motherhood is not the same as responsibility. The former is an instinct that cannot be shaken off.

Thirdly, there is another fact, standing in front of Cheng Xin like an insurmountable wall, even if the previous two items are not true, this wall still stands there, this is Yun Tianming.

It's the same hell and the same abyss, Yun Tianming went in first for her, now she can't retreat, she can only accept this retribution.

Cheng Xin's childhood was bathed in the sunshine of maternal love, but only maternal love.She also asked her mother: Where is Dad?Unlike other single mothers, my mother responded calmly to this question, first calmly saying that she didn't know, and then sighing softly and saying that it would be great if she could know.Cheng Xin also asked where she came from, and her mother said she picked it up.Different from ordinary mother's lies, what mother told was the truth, Cheng Xin was indeed picked up by her.My mother had never been married. When she was dating her boyfriend one evening, she saw Cheng Xin, who was just three months old, abandoned on a park bench, with a bottle of milk, 1000 yuan in her swaddling baby, and a card that said child Small note with date of birth.Originally, the mother and her boyfriend planned to hand over the child to the police station, and then the police station would hand over the child to the Civil Affairs Bureau. Then, Cheng Xin, who had another name, would start her life as an orphan in a nursery.However, the mother later decided to send the child off the next morning, whether it was to experience the feeling of being a mother in advance or for other reasons.But when the sun rose again, it was already difficult for her to send the child away. The thought of this little life leaving its mother to wander off made her heart ache, so she decided to be Cheng Xin's mother.That boyfriend later left her because of it.In the next ten years, my mother made four or five more boyfriends, all because the child failed to negotiate.Cheng Xin later learned that most of those boyfriends did not explicitly object to their mother's adoption, but as long as the other party showed a little incomprehension or impatience, she broke up with him. She didn't want to bring any harm to the child.

When Cheng Xin was young, she didn't feel that there was anything incomplete in her family. On the contrary, she felt that a home should be like this, a small world of mother and daughter, where all the love and happiness are contained in this small world. There will be some redundancy.After growing up, Cheng Xin finally felt the lack of her father's love.At first this feeling was just a wisp, and then it gradually became stronger.At this time, her mother found a father for her. He was a very good man, caring and responsible. The reason why he fell in love with her mother was largely because of her mother's love for Cheng Xin.Thus, there was another sun in the sky where Cheng Xin lived.At this moment, Cheng Xin felt that this small world was complete, and another person was really redundant, so her parents never had any more children.

Later, Cheng Xin went to college and left her parents for the first time.After that, life is like a wild horse that has run free, carrying her farther and farther.Finally, she not only wants to stay away from them in space, but also travels far in time, she is going to the future.

The night of farewell was unforgettable. She told her parents that she would come back tomorrow, but she knew that she would not be able to come back. She couldn't face the moment of separation, so she had to leave without saying goodbye, but they seemed to see something.

Mom took her hand and said, "The three of us came together because of love..."

That night, she stood by their window until dawn.In her feeling, the night wind blowing and the stars twinkling were all repeating her mother's last words.

Three centuries later, she finally had the chance to do something for love.

"I will run for the sword bearer." Cheng Xin said to the baby's mother.

[62 Years of Deterrence Era, outside the Oort Nebula, "Gravity"]

Gravity, which has been chasing Blue Space for half a century, is now close to its target, within three AU of Blue Space.Compared with the long voyage of 1.5 light years that the two ships flew by, it can be said that they are very close at hand.

Ten years ago, "Gravity" passed through the Oort Nebula. This piece of comet-infested cold space 1 light-year away from the sun is considered to be the last frontier of the solar system. "Gravity" and "Blue Space" are the first time A human spaceship crossing this border.At that time, there was no feeling of passing through the nebula. Occasionally, a frozen comet without a tail passed by at close range, and it was also tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, which could not be seen with the naked eye.

After passing the Oort Nebula, "Gravity" entered the real outer space.At this time, the sun has become an ordinary star in the direction of the stern of the ship. Like other stars, it has lost its real sense of existence, as if it is an illusion in the distant void.All directions are a bottomless abyss, and the only physical existence that can be determined by the senses is the water droplets flying in formation with the "Gravity".The two water droplets are located 5000 meters away on both sides of the spacecraft, which can just be seen with the naked eye. The people on the Gravity like to use binoculars to look at the water droplets through the portholes. After all, it is a comfort in this infinite void.In fact, to look at the water drop is to look at yourself. It is like a mirror. The surface reflects the image of "Gravity". I can see myself in the porthole of the spaceship.

But most of the more than 100 officers and soldiers on the "Gravity" did not feel this kind of loneliness. They spent most of the 50 years in hibernation.There are only five to ten people on duty during the daily sailing of the spacecraft. During the rotation duty, each person's duty time is only three to five years.

The entire pursuit process is a complex accelerated game process between the two ships "Gravity" and "Blue Space".First of all, it is impossible for the "Blue Space" to carry out unlimited acceleration, otherwise it will run out of fuel and lose its maneuverability. Even if it gets rid of the pursuit, facing the vast space desert ahead is tantamount to suicide.The acceleration of "Gravity" is also limited. Although its fuel reserve is much larger than that of "Blue Space", it must consider returning to the voyage. In this way, if there is no accident, the fuel should be divided into four equal parts. It is: acceleration to the outside of the solar system, deceleration before returning, acceleration to the solar system on the return voyage, and deceleration before reaching the earth.Therefore, the fuel that can be used for pursuit acceleration only accounts for a quarter of the total reserve.Fortunately, through the calculation of previous voyage records and sophon information, "Gravity" can accurately grasp the fuel reserves of "Blue Space", while the latter knows nothing about the fuel situation of the former, so in this game , "Gravity" can see the cards in the hands of "Blue Space", but not vice versa.In the alternating acceleration of the two sides, the "Gravity" has always maintained a higher speed than the "Blue Space", but the final speed of the two ships is far from the maximum speed they can achieve.In No.20 five years after the pursuit began, perhaps the bottom line of fuel consumption had been reached, and the "Blue Space" stopped accelerating.

During the voyage of half a century, the "Gravity" has been calling the "Blue Space", telling them that there is no point in escaping, even if they escape the pursuit warships on the earth, the water droplets will definitely catch up and destroy them; , they will receive a fair trial and order them to slow down and return immediately.If this is realized, the pursuit time will be greatly shortened, but the "Blue Space" has been ignoring it.

Just a year ago, when the distance between "Gravity" and "Blue Space" was shortened to thirty astronomical units, a not too unexpected thing happened: "Gravity" and two accompanying water droplets Entering the sophon blind zone, the real-time communication with the earth is interrupted, and only electromagnetic waves and neutrinos can be used to communicate. It takes one year and three months for the information sent by the "Gravity" to reach the earth, and it will take the same long time to get it. reply.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
Another Indirect Evidence of Dark Forest - Sophon Blind Spot

At the beginning of the Crisis Era, while using the sophon system to detect the earth, Trisolaris also launched sophons close to the speed of light to other directions of the Milky Way, six of which were launched in the first batch.But these sophons soon entered the blind zone, and the farthest one only traveled 7 light-years.The same thing happened to the sophons launched later. The nearest blind spot was encountered by the sophons following the "Gravity", and the distance from the earth is only 1.3 light years.

The quantum connection between sophons is one-time, and once it is interrupted, it cannot be restored, and those sophons that enter the blind zone are lost in space forever.

Trisolaris has no idea what kind of disturbance the sophon has encountered. This disturbance may be natural or "man-made"; Trisolaris and Earth scientists both lean towards the latter.

The sophons flying to the Milky Way only had time to detect two nearby star systems with planets, neither of which was lifeless or civilized, before entering the blind zone.But both Trisolaris and Earth scholars agree that the desolation of those galaxies is why sophons are able to access them.

So, until late in the Deterrence Era, the universe remained a mystery to both worlds, but the existence of the Sophon Blind is likely circumstantial evidence of a dark forest state that does not allow the universe to become transparent.

Sophon's entry into the blind spot had no fatal effect on Gravity's mission, but it did complicate it considerably.Previously, the sophons who sneaked into the interior of the "Blue Space" enabled the "Gravity" to keep abreast of the situation inside the target spacecraft, and now the "Blue Space" began to present a black box status to the "Gravity".Secondly, the water drop has lost the real-time control of the three-body world, and its behavior is completely controlled by the built-in AI, and unexpected situations may occur.

The above situation prompted the duty captain of the "Gravity" to decide to speed up the progress of the mission, and the "Gravity" speeded up again to speed up its approach to the target.

With the rapid approach of the "Gravity", the "Blue Space" contacted the pursuit ship for the first time, and proposed a solution: send two-thirds of the ship's personnel, including the main suspect, to the space shuttle, After leaving the "Blue Space" and being received by the "Gravity", the remaining one-third of the people will drive the "Blue Space" and continue to fly to the target in the deep space.In this way, human beings keep an outpost and a seed in the interstellar space, and keep a chance of exploration.

This request was firmly rejected. "Gravity" declares: Everyone on the "Blue Space" is suspected of murder and must all be tried. They are people who have been alienated by space and are no longer considered a part of themselves by human society, let alone represent human beings. Explore the universe.

The "Blue Space" apparently finally realized that there was no point in escaping or resisting. If the pursuers were only solar system warships, they could still fight to the death, but the two water droplets accompanying them had already made the strength of both sides disproportionate.In front of the water droplets, the "Blue Space" is just a paper target with no possibility of escape.When the distance between the two sides was fifteen astronomical units, the "Blue Space" surrendered to the "Gravity", gave up escaping, and started to slow down at full power at the same time, which shortened the distance between the two ships sharply, and the long pursuit was about to come to an end.

The entire ship "Gravity" woke up from hibernation, and the battleship entered a combat state. The spaceship that had been deserted and silent for half a century was full of popularity again.

What the people who wake up face, besides the pursuit target that is right in front of them, is the fact that they have lost real-time communication with the earth.The latter did not bring them closer spiritually to the "Blue Space", on the contrary, just like a child temporarily lost from his parents, he was more fearful and distrustful of the wild children he encountered who had no parents at all. Everyone hopes that the "Blue Space" will be brought to justice as soon as possible, and then return.Although the two ships are in the same vast and cold outer space, sailing in the same direction at almost the same speed, spiritually, the "Gravity" and the "Blue Space" are conducting two completely different voyages. is active, the latter is passive.

Eight hours after No.90 woke up, the psychiatrist West on the "Gravity" received the first consultant.It was Lieutenant Colonel Devon who came, which surprised West. According to the doctor's records, he was the person with the highest psychological stability coefficient on the ship.Devon is the commander of the military police on board the ship, responsible for disarming the "Blue Space" and arresting all suspects after the "Gravity" catches up with the target. When the "Gravity" set sail, men on Earth were the last generation of men who looked like men, and Devon was the most masculine among them.He often made some tough remarks, arguing that the law should restore the death penalty in the case of the dark campaign.

"Doctor, I know you will keep everything you hear a secret, and I know it's ridiculous." Devon said cautiously, contrary to his usual sharp-edged style.

"Lieutenant Colonel, for my profession, nothing is ridiculous, everything is normal."

"Yesterday, the interstellar time was around 436950. I came out of the No. 17 meeting cabin and went back to my cabin along the No. [-] ship corridor. In the middle of the ship corridor, near the information center, a person walked towards me, a lieutenant. Or wearing the military uniform of a space lieutenant. At this time, except for those on duty, most of the people are asleep, but it is not surprising to meet someone there, but..." The lieutenant colonel shook his head, his eyes became dazed, as if recalling dreams.

"Is there anything wrong?"

"I passed by that person, he saluted me, and I glanced at him casually..."

The colonel stopped again, and the doctor nodded for him to continue.

"That person is—is the Marine Corps Commander Major Park Eui-jun on the 'Blue Space'."

"You mean 'Blue Space'?" West asked calmly, without showing the slightest sense of surprise.

Devon didn't answer this question directly, "Doctor, you know my job. I keep monitoring the interior of the 'Blue Space' through the real-time images sent by Sophon. It can be said that I am very grateful to everyone there. I am more familiar with the people here, of course I know Pu Yijun, the North Korean."

"Maybe just a lookalike on board."

"I am also familiar with the people on this ship. There is no such person. And...he walked past me after saluting, with a blank expression on his face. I stood there for a few seconds. When I looked back, the ship corridor was empty. Alone."

"Colonel, when did you wake up?"

"Three years ago, in order to monitor the internal situation of the target, I used to be the person on the ship who spent the longest time awake."

"Then you must have experienced the event of entering the sophon's blind zone."

"of course."

"You've been looking at the real-time images from the target ship before that, and I think you feel more like you're on Blue Space than Gravity."

"Yes, Doctor, it does feel that way a lot of the time."

"Then, the image suddenly disappeared, you couldn't see anything there, and you were tired at the same time... Colonel, it's that simple, believe me, don't worry, it's normal. I suggest you rest more, now after all, there are plenty of people .”

"Doctor, I am a survivor of the doomsday battle. I was thrown out by the explosion, curled up in a rescue capsule not much bigger than your table, and floated in the orbit of Neptune for a month. I was almost dead when I was rescued, but There are still no psychological problems, let alone hallucinations... I believe what I saw." Devon said as he got up to leave, and when he reached the hatch, he turned around again, "If you meet that bastard again, no matter where it is, I will kill him."

There was a small accident in the No. [-] ecological area, and a culture fluid pipe burst. This is a very strong carbon fiber pipe, and it is not pressure-resistant, so the possibility of rupture is very small.Maintenance engineer Ivan walked through the ecoregion's rainforest-like soilless plants and saw that the ruptured pipe had shut off the flow of liquid, and several people were cleaning up the yellow culture fluid that had leaked out.Ivan was stunned when he saw the break in the pipe, as if he had seen a ghost——

"This... this was broken by a micrometeorite!"

Someone laughed.Ivan was an old man at work, which made him even more ridiculous now.Several ecological zones are located in the middle of the hull, and specifically, Zone [-] is tens of meters away from the nearest outer wall of the hull.

"I have done extravehicular maintenance for more than ten years, and I can't make a mistake with my eyes closed! You see, the external explosion type breach has obvious high-temperature ablation at the edge, a typical micrometeorite strike!"

Ivan moved his eyes closer to the breach, carefully inspecting the inner wall of the pipe opposite the breach, and then asked a technician to use a cutting tool to cut off a round piece of the pipe wall and use it for microscopic magnification.When the image magnified a thousand times came, everyone fell silent in shock.There are a few small black particles inlaid on the tube wall, about a few microns in size. In the enlarged image, the crystal faces of the particles are shining, like a few malicious eyes staring at them.Of course these astronauts knew what it was. The diameter of this micrometeorite was about [-] microns. It also shattered when it penetrated the first tube wall. Fragments that had lost most of their kinetic energy were embedded in the tube wall opposite the breach. superior.

Everyone looked up at the breach in unison.

The bulkhead above is clean and undamaged.In fact, above this bulkhead, there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of bulkheads of various thicknesses separated from the outer space. Any such impact on any of these bulkheads will trigger a high-level alarm.

But this micrometeorite can only come from space, because judging from the state of the wound, the relative velocity of the micrometeorite and the pipeline is as high as [-] meters per second. It is impossible to accelerate it to such a high speed in the ship, let alone in the ecological environment. The district does this.

"Damn it," grumbled a lieutenant named Ike, turned and walked away.What he said had no meaning, because just a dozen hours ago, he had seen an even bigger ghost.

At that time, Ike was lying drowsy on the bed in his own cabin when he suddenly saw a circular opening in the opposite bulkhead with a diameter of about one meter. The part where the mouth overlapped disappeared.Originally, many bulkheads inside the spaceship were deformable, and hatches could appear automatically at any position, but such circular holes did not appear. Moreover, the bulkheads of the middle-level officer dormitory were all non-deformable metal walls.Ike took a closer look and found that the edge of the round hole was as smooth as a mirror.Although this incident was weird, it was also what Ike wished for, because Lieutenant Vera lived next door.

Vera is the AI ​​system maintenance engineer on the ship. The Russian beauty is the object of Ike's fanatical pursuit, but Vera seems to have no interest in him.Ike still remembers what happened two days ago. At that time, he and Vera had just finished their duty and returned to the officer cabin together. Ike wanted to sit in Vera's cabin, but she was just blocking the doorway and talking to him like every time. say.

"I just went in and sat around. Look, my dear, we are neighbors. I haven't even visited your door once. You have to take care of the dignity of a man." Ike said.

"The dignified men on this ship are melancholy, and they are not in the mood to go to the woman's door." Vera said, squinting at Ike.

"What is there to be melancholy about? After we catch up with the murderers, all threats in the world will disappear, and happy times will come."

"They are not murderers! If there is no deterrence, the 'Blue Space' is now the only hope for the continuation of mankind. But now we are teaming up with the enemy of mankind to pursue them. Don't you feel ashamed at all?"

"Oh, honey," Ike said, pointing to Vera's plump breasts, "how can you think like this..."

"How did you participate in this voyage, right? You can report me to the psychological officer and the captain. I will be forced to hibernate immediately, and I will be kicked out of the army after returning. I wish for it!" Vera finished, The door slams shut in Ike's face.

Now, Ike can logically enter Vera's cabin through this hole.He untied the weightless restraints, sat up from the bed, but stopped immediately.He saw that under the round hole, one-third of the bedside table also disappeared. It was the part in front of the round hole. The cross-section was the same as the edge of the round hole, and it was also a clean and bright mirror surface, like an invisible sharp knife. Same cut off.It was not only the bedside table that was cut off, but also the things inside. He saw that a pile of clothes had been cut neatly, and the stubble was also shiny.The entire section matches the edge of the round hole, and it can be seen that it is a spherical surface.Ike nudged the bed, rose a little in weightlessness, looked through the round hole to the next door, and was immediately scared out of his wits, almost sure that he was in a nightmare.On the other side of the hole, part of Vera's single bed next to the bulkhead was missing, and Vera's calf lying on the bed disappeared along with that part of the bed!The sections of the bed and legs are still mirror surfaces. Although the sections of the legs are extremely smooth, as if painted with mercury, the muscles and bones that have been severed can be clearly seen.However, the rest of Vera seemed to be safe and sound. She lay there sleeping soundly, her plump breasts rising and falling slowly with even breathing.Normally, Ike would have been intoxicated by it, but now he only felt a kind of supernatural horror.He took a closer look and found that the section of the bed and legs was also a spherical shape that matched the edge of the round hole.

It seems that this is a bubble-shaped space with a diameter of about one meter, and everything in the bubble has disappeared.

Ike picked up a violin bow from the bedside, and tremblingly stretched the bow towards the invisible space bubble.Sure enough, the part of the bow protruding into the bubble disappeared, but the bowstring was still taut.He drew the bow back and found it intact.But he was still glad that he didn't drill this hole, who knows if he can get out from the other side intact?
Ike forced himself to calm down, thought about the most likely reason for the current supernatural phenomenon, and then made a decision he thought was wise: put on a hypnosis cap and lie back on the bed.After tightening the restraint belt, he activated the hypnosis cap and set the sleep time to half an hour.

Half an hour later, Ike woke up on time and saw that the round hole was still there.

So he set the hypnosis time for another hour, and when he woke up, the round hole disappeared, the bulkhead was still there, and the landscape painting hung there intact, everything was the same as before.

But Ike was still worried about Vera.He rushed out of the door and came to Vera's door. He didn't ring the doorbell and slammed on the door vigorously. All he could think of was the horrible picture of Vera lying on the bed with a broken leg and dying.It took a long time for the door to open, and Vera asked him what was going on sleepily in front of the door.

"Let me take a look, are you... okay?" Ike said and looked down, and the two slender legs in Vera's nightdress were intact.

"Idiot!" Vera slammed the door shut.

After returning to his cabin, Ike put on the hypnosis cap again, and this time he set the sleep time to eight hours.Regarding what just happened, the only sensible choice is to let it rot in your stomach.Due to the special nature of the "Gravity", the psychological monitoring of the ship's personnel, especially officers at all levels, is very strict, and a psychological monitoring force has been deployed on the ship.Among the more than 100 personnel, there are more than a dozen psychological officers, so that some people questioned whether it was an interstellar spaceship or a mental hospital when it set sail.In addition, the non-military psychologist West, who is particularly annoying, attributes everything to mental disorders and mental illnesses, making people think that he can use psychological theories to analyze the toilet.The psychological screening standards on the ship are very strict, as long as they are found to have mild psychological disorders, they will be forced to hibernate.That was a terrible thing for Ike, and it would cause him to miss the historic moment of the rendezvous of the two ships. If so, when he returned to Earth half a century later, he would no longer be a hero in the eyes of the future girls .

But now Ike's dislike for West and other psychological officers has eased a little. Before, he always thought that they made a fuss out of a molehill, but he didn't expect that people could really have such realistic hallucinations.

Compared with Ike's hallucinations, the supernatural scene seen by Sergeant Liu Xiaoming can be called spectacular.

At that time, the sergeant performed an off-board inspection mission, which was to drive a small spaceship and conduct routine inspections of its exterior at a certain distance from the spacecraft, hoping to find abnormalities on the hull surface, such as meteorite impacts.This is an ancient and outdated operation, not necessary, and rarely performed, because the sensitive sensor monitoring system can detect abnormalities in the hull at any time, and this operation can only be performed when the spacecraft is sailing at a constant speed. It is very difficult to do.Recently, as it approached the "Blue Space", the "Gravity" made frequent acceleration and deceleration adjustments, and now it finally stopped accelerating and was sailing at a constant speed. inspection.

The sergeant drove the spaceship smoothly out of the "Gravity" from the middle of the hull, gliding in space to a distance where the entire spaceship could be seen.The huge hull is bathed in the starlight of the Milky Way. Unlike when sailing in hibernation, all the portholes and outer ship corridors are illuminated, forming a bright spot on the surface of the hull, making the "Gravity" look more majestic .

But the sergeant soon discovered something unbelievable: "Gravity" was a standard cylinder, but now, its tail turned out to be a slope!At the same time, the sergeant found that the length of the hull was much shorter, about one-fifth of it, as if the stern of the ship had been sliced ​​off by an invisible giant knife!
The sergeant closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opened them again, what he saw was still the "Gravity" with the tail cut off!Suddenly a cold air penetrated the spinal cord.This fear is not only due to the weirdness of the scene in front of me, but also more practical content: this giant starship is an organic whole, if the stern of the ship suddenly disappears, the energy circulation system will be completely destroyed, and the entire ship will be destroyed. big bang.But now nothing happened, and the spacecraft was still sailing smoothly, seemingly hanging in space absolutely still.There was not even the slightest abnormal alarm in the headset and on the system screen in front of him.

The sergeant turned on the call switch, intending to report to his superiors, but immediately turned off the call channel again.He remembered the words of an old astronaut who participated in the Doomsday Battle: "Intuition in space is unreliable. If you must rely on your intuition, you should first count from one to one hundred. If you don't have time, you should at least count to ten. "

He closed his eyes and started counting, and when he opened his eyes when he counted to ten, the stern of the "Gravity" was still missing; he closed his eyes and continued to count, his breathing became short of breath, but he still tried to recall the training he had undergone and forced himself to calm down Calm down again.When I counted to thirty, I opened my eyes and finally saw the intact "Gravity".The sergeant closed his eyes again and let out a long breath to stabilize his violent heartbeat, then steered the spaceship towards the stern, circled to the top of the cylinder, and saw the three huge nozzles of the fusion engine.The engine didn't start, the fusion reactor was running at the lowest power, and the nozzle only emitted a dim red light, reminding him of the sunset on Earth.

The sergeant was thankful that he did not report, and the officer could still receive psychological treatment. A non-commissioned officer of his level could only be forced to hibernate due to mental problems. Like Ike, Liu Xiaoming did not want to return to Earth as a waste product.

Doctor West went to the stern to find Guan Yifan. He was a scholar sailing with the ship and worked at the Cosmological Observatory at the stern.There is a living cabin allocated to Guan Yifan in the central living area, but he seldom lives there. Instead, he stays in the observation station for a long time, and even his meals are delivered by service robots. People call him the "hermit at the tail of the ship".

The observatory is just a narrow spherical cabin, and Guan Yifan works and lives in it. This man is unkempt, with long hair and beard, but he still looks very young.When West saw Guan Yifan, he was floating in the middle of the spherical cabin, looking restless, with sweat on his forehead, nervous eyes, one hand tugged at the neckline that was already wide open from time to time, as if out of breath.

"I'm working, so I don't have time to receive you. I told you on the phone." Guan Yifan said, obviously annoyed by the doctor's arrival.

"It was on the phone that I found out that you have symptoms of a mental disorder, so come and see."

"I'm not a soldier, as long as it doesn't threaten the safety of the spacecraft and others, you can't control me."

"Yes, according to the regulations, I can ignore it. I'm here for your own good." West turned and left, "I don't believe that a person suffering from claustrophobia can work normally in this kind of place."

West heard Guan Yifan tell him to wait, but he ignored it and continued to leave. As expected, Guan Yifan caught up from behind, grabbed him and said, "How do you know? I do have the one you said... …claustrophobic, I feel very claustrophobic, like being stuffed into a thin tube, and sometimes I feel like I’m being squeezed between two infinitely large pieces of iron, squashed..."

"It's not surprising, look at where you are." The doctor pointed to the observation station, which looked like a small egg stuck in the criss-crossing pipes and cables, "Your research object is the largest, the place to stay It's the youngest, and think about how long you've been here? You haven't hibernated for four years since you last woke up?"

"I'm not complaining. Gravity's mission is law enforcement, not exploration. It set sail in a hurry. It would be nice to be able to establish this station... The point is, my claustrophobia has nothing to do with this."

"Let's go to Square One to relax, it will definitely help you."

The doctor didn't say anything more, and pulled Guan Yifan to float towards the bow.If it is under acceleration, going from the stern to the bow is equivalent to climbing up from a well more than 1000 meters deep, but in the current weightless state of constant speed sailing, it is very easy to go there.Plaza No. [-] is located at the head of the cylindrical hull and is covered by a hemispherical transparent cover. Standing here, you can hardly feel the existence of the hemispherical cover, as if you are in space.Compared with the holographic image of the starry sky in the spherical cabin, you can experience the "dematerialization effect" of outer space navigation here.

"Dematerialization effect" is a concept in aerospace psychology.When people are in the earth world, they are surrounded by material entities, and the subconscious world image is material and physical; but in the outer space far away from the solar system, the stars are just distant points of light, and the Milky Way is just a glowing thin film. Fog, from the senses and psychology, the world has lost its sense of quality and substance, and space dominates everything. Therefore, the image of the world in the subconscious of the voyager has changed from material to empty. This mental model is the basic coordinate of aerospace psychology. .At this point, on a psychological level, the spaceship becomes the only physical entity in the universe.At sub-light speed, the movement of the spaceship is imperceptible, and the universe becomes an empty exhibition hall with no boundaries. The stars are all hallucinations, and the spaceship is the only exhibit.This kind of mental model may bring about a huge sense of loneliness, and it is easy to subconsciously produce the illusion of a super-observer of the "exhibit", which in turn brings about passivity and anxiety caused by complete exposure.

Therefore, most of the negative psychological factors in outer space and astronautics are based on the ultra-openness of the external environment. In this environment, Guan Yifan actually developed claustrophobia, which is very rare in West's rich professional experience.But there is an even stranger thing in front of him: West clearly saw that after Guan Yifan entered the plaza, being exposed to the vast space did not give him a comfortable sense of relief, and the restlessness caused by claustrophobia seemed to be completely absent from him. lighten.This perhaps vindicated what he had said, that his claustrophobia might really have nothing to do with that cramped observatory, making West even more interested in him.

"Don't you feel better?" the doctor asked.

"No, not at all, it's still very claustrophobic, here, all of this, very claustrophobic."

Guan Yifan just glanced at the starry sky, looking at the sailing direction of the "Gravity", the doctor knew that he wanted to see the "Blue Space".Now, the distance between the two ships is only 30 kilometers, and the speed is basically the same. They both stop accelerating and are sailing at a constant speed. The scale of outer space can be said to be sailing in formation.The command levels of the two ships are conducting final negotiations on the details of the handover.But at this distance, the naked eye still cannot see each other.The water droplets are no longer visible. According to the agreement with Trisolarans when they set sail half a century ago, they are now [-] kilometers away from both ships.The position of the three forms a slender isosceles triangle.

Guan Yifan withdrew his gaze, looked at West and said, "Yesterday I had a dream. In the dream, I went to a place. It was a very spacious place, so spacious that you can't imagine it. After waking up, I felt that reality was very narrow. It’s claustrophobic. It’s like, if you’ve been locked in a small box since birth, it’s fine, but once you’re released and locked back in again, it’s different.”

"Tell me about the place you went to in your dream."

Guan Yifan smiled mysteriously at the doctor, "I will tell the scientists on the ship, and I even want to tell the scientists on the 'Blue Space', but I won't tell you. Doctor, I have no prejudice against you personally, but really I can't understand the common virtue of your industry: as long as you believe that anyone has a mental disorder, everything that person says is his own pathological illusion."

"But you just said it was a dream."

Guan Yifan shook his head, trying to remember something, "I don't know if it was a dream, and I don't know if I was awake at that time. Sometimes, you will wake up in a dream, but find that you are still in a dream; sometimes , You were awake, but you seemed to be in a dream."

"The latter situation is rare. If it happens to you, it can be judged as a symptom of a mental disorder. Oh, I made you dissatisfied again by saying that."

"No, actually, think about it, we both have something in common: we both have our own observation objects, you observe mental patients, and I observe the universe; just like you, I also have a set of standards for judging whether the observation objects are healthy or not, and this standard is Harmony and beauty in the mathematical sense."

"Then your observation object is obviously healthy."

"You're wrong, doctor." Guan Yifan pointed to the brilliant Galaxy, but his eyes were fixed on West, as if pointing to him a huge monster that suddenly appeared, "It's a high paraplegic patient!"

"why?"

Guan Yifan hugged his knees and shrunk himself into a ball. At the same time, this action made him slowly rotate in weightlessness. He saw the magnificent Milky Way orbiting around him, and he became the center of the universe.

"Because of the speed of light, the scale of the known universe is 160 billion light-years, and it is still expanding, but the speed of light is only 30 kilometers per second, which is extremely slow. This means that light can never travel from one end of the universe to the other. , because nothing can exceed the speed of light, the information and force at one end of the universe can never be transmitted to the other. If the universe is a person, it means that he does not have a nerve signal that can spread throughout the body, and his brain does not know the existence of limbs , the limbs do not know the existence of the brain, and at the same time each limb does not know the existence of the other limbs, is this not what a paraplegic is? Actually I have a worse impression than this, the universe is nothing but an expanding dead body[63 ]."

"Interesting, Dr. Guan, very interesting!"

"In addition to the 30 kilometers per second speed of light, there is another 'three' symptom."

"what?"

"Three-dimensional, in string theory, time dimension is not counted. There are ten dimensions in the universe, but only three dimensions are released to the macrocosm to form our world, and the rest are curled up in the microcosm."

"String theory seems to explain that."

"Some people think that two types of strings meet and cancel each other to release the dimension to the macro, and there is no such opportunity for encounters in dimensions above three-dimensional... This explanation is very far-fetched, and in short, it is not beautiful in mathematics. With The aforementioned can be collectively referred to as the syndrome of Universe 30 and [-]."

"Then what's the cause?"

Guan Yifan laughed and put his arms around the doctor's shoulders, "Great question! To tell you the truth, no one really thinks so far! I believe there is a cause, and that may be the scariest truth that science can reveal. One. But...doctor, who do you think I am, I am just a small observer huddled on the tail of a spaceship, and I was just a young assistant researcher when I set sail." He let go of the doctor and looked at the Milky Way With a long sigh, "I am the person on the ship who has been hibernating for the longest time. I was only 26 years old when I set sail, and I am only 31 now. But in my eyes, the universe has changed from the sustenance of all beauty and beliefs to an expanding space. Corpses... I feel old, the stars don't draw me anymore, I just want to go home."

Unlike Guan Yifan, Dr. West's waking up time is very long.He has always believed that in order to maintain the psychological stability of others, he must first become a person who has the ability to control his emotions, but now, something hit his heart, and for the first time he looked back at the long voyage of half a century with emotion, His eyes were a little moist, "Friend, I'm getting old too."

As if to answer their words, the battle siren suddenly sounded shrilly, as if the entire starry sky was screaming.Large warning information windows also popped up over the square, and those windows emerged layer upon layer, quickly covering the Milky Way like colorful dark clouds.

"Water drop attack!" West said to the bewildered Guan Yifan, "They are all accelerating rapidly, one is aimed at the 'Blue Space', and the other is aimed at us."

Guan Yifan looked around, instinctively trying to grab something to prevent the spaceship from accelerating suddenly, but there was nothing around, so he could only grab the doctor in the end.

West held his hand and said, "Battleships can't maneuver, it's too late, we only have a dozen seconds left."

After a short panic, both felt a strange sense of gratitude that death had come so suddenly that there was no time to fear.Perhaps the discussion of the universe just now is the best preparation for death.They all thought of the same sentence, and Guan Yifan said it first:

"It seems that we don't have to worry about our patients anymore."

【威慑纪元62年11月28日16:00至16:17，威慑控制中心】

The high-speed elevator sank downwards, and the thicker and thicker strata above seemed to press down on Cheng Xin's heart.

Half a year ago, at the joint meeting of the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet, Cheng Xin was elected as the second controller of the gravitational wave deterrence system, that is, the Sword Holder. She received nearly twice as many votes as No.2.Now she is heading to the Deterrence Control Center where the handover of deterrence control will take place.

The Deterrence Control Center is the deepest structure built by human beings, it is located 45 kilometers underground, it has penetrated the crust of the earth, and penetrated deep into the mantle below the Moho discontinuity.The pressure and temperature here are much higher than that of the earth's crust, and the main component of the formation is solid peridotite.

The elevator took nearly 10 minutes to arrive. Cheng Xin walked out of the elevator and saw a black steel door. On the door was written the official name of the Dark Forest Deterrence Control Center in large white characters: Gravitational Wave Cosmic Broadcasting System No. [-] Control station, and inlaid with the logos of the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet.

This ultra-deep building is very complicated, with an independent closed air circulation system, rather than directly communicating with the ground atmosphere, otherwise, the high pressure generated at a depth of 45 kilometers will make people feel seriously uncomfortable; there is also a powerful cooling system , to resist the high temperature of the mantle near 500 ℃.But all Cheng Xin saw was emptiness.The white walls in the foyer obviously have a display function, but now they are all empty white, and there is nothing else, as if the place has just been built and has not been officially used.When Luo Ji was consulted half a century ago when designing the control center, he simply said:
As simple as a grave.

The deterrence control handover ceremony was very grand, but it was all carried out on the ground at an altitude of 45 kilometers, where all the heads of the Earth International and Fleet International gathered, and Cheng Xin walked in under the gaze of them representing all mankind. elevator.But there are only two people presiding over the final handover here: the President of the Planetary Defense Council and the Chief of Fleet General Staff, representing the two agencies that directly lead and operate the deterrence system.

The PDC chairman pointed to the empty lobby and told Cheng Xin that the control center would be rearranged according to her ideas. There could be lawns, plants, fountains, etc., and if she wanted, holographic images could be used to completely simulate the landscape on the ground.

"We don't want you to live like him, really," said the Fleet Chief of Staff.Maybe it's because he was wearing a military uniform, Cheng Xin saw some shadows of men in the past from him, and his words made her feel a little warm, but these couldn't get rid of the heaviness in her heart, this heaviness was like the stratum above, Has accumulated 45 kilometers thick.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
The Choice of the Swordsman - 10 Minutes of Survival and Destruction
The first system to establish the deterrence of the dark forest is more than 3000 nuclear bombs wrapped in oil film materials around the sun. The dust produced after the explosion of the nuclear bombs will cause the sun to flicker and broadcast the coordinate information of the Trisolaran world to the universe.Although this system is huge, it is extremely unstable and has poor reliability.After the water droplets lifted the blockade of the full frequency band of the sun's electromagnetic waves, the launch system that launched super-power radio waves to the sun was put into operation immediately, complementing the nuclear bomb chain deterrence system.

Both of the above systems use electromagnetic waves including visible light as the broadcast medium.It is now known that this is the most primitive means of interstellar communication, known as "space smoke".Due to the high attenuation and high distortion of electromagnetic waves in space, the range of broadcasting is very limited.

When the deterrence was established, human beings had preliminarily mastered the receiving technology of gravitational waves and neutrinos, and only lacked the technology of transmitting and modulating.The first batch of technical information that human beings requested from the Trisolaran world was related to this aspect, which enabled the earth world to quickly master the neutrino and gravitational wave communication technology.Although these two technologies are still behind compared with quantum communication, and the transmission speed of gravitational waves and neutrinos is limited to the speed of light, they are already a level higher than electromagnetic wave communication.

Both transmission media have extremely low attenuation and thus have extremely long transmission distances.In particular, neutrinos hardly interact with other substances. In theory, a beam of modulated neutrinos can transmit information to the known end of the universe, and the attenuation and distortion produced will not affect the reading of information.But neutrino beams can only be launched in a directional manner, but gravitational waves can be broadcast to all directions in the universe. Therefore, gravitational waves have become the main means of deterring the dark forest.

The basic principle of gravitational wave emission is the vibration of a long string with extremely high mass density. The most ideal transmitting antenna is a black hole. A large number of miniature black holes can be connected into a long chain to emit gravitational waves in the vibration.However, even the Three-Body Civilization cannot achieve this technology, and can only take the next best thing, using degenerate [64] matter to form vibrating strings.The diameter of this ultra-dense string is only a few nanometers, which accounts for only a very small part of the overall antenna. Most of the huge antenna is only used to support and wrap the material of this ultra-dense string, so the total mass of the antenna is not too large.

The degenerate matter that makes up the vibrating strings originally existed inside white dwarfs and neutron stars, and would decay into ordinary elements in a normal environment.At present, the half-life of the vibrating strings that humans can manufacture is about 50 years. Once the half-life is up, the antenna will completely fail. Therefore, the life of the gravitational wave antenna is half a century, and it needs to be replaced when the time comes.

The main strategic idea of ​​the first phase of gravitational wave deterrence is to ensure deterrence. It is planned to build one hundred gravitational wave launch pads and deploy them in different locations on all continents.But gravitational wave communication has a drawback: the launcher cannot be miniaturized.The gravitational wave antenna is huge in size and complex in structure, and the construction cost is high. In the end, only 23 gravitational wave transmitters were built.But it was another event that negated the idea of ​​"assured deterrence."

After the establishment of deterrence, the Earth Trisolarans organization gradually disappeared, but another type of extremist organization that believed in anthropocentrism and advocated the complete elimination of the Trisolaran world developed. "Children of the Earth" is one of the larger ones.In the 6th year of the Deterrence Era, the "Children of the Earth" launched an attack on a gravitational wave launch pad located on the Antarctic continent in an attempt to seize the launcher and then gain control over the deterrence. "Children of the Earth" dispatched more than 300 armed personnel and used advanced weapons including small infrasonic nuclear bombs. Coupled with the organization's internal response lurking inside the launch pad, the attack almost succeeded.If the guards hadn't blown up the transmitting antenna in time, the consequences would have been disastrous.

The "Children of the Earth" incident caused great panic in both worlds.People realize how dangerous a gravitational wave transmitter is.The Trisolarans also exerted tremendous pressure, which made the earth, while strictly controlling the propagation of gravitational wave technology, quickly reduce the 23 launch pads that have been built to four, three of which are located in Asia, North America, and Europe. The remaining one is the "Gravity" spacecraft in space.

All launchers are activated using positive triggers, and the negative trigger method used by the ring of nuclear bombs around the sun is meaningless, because the current situation is very different from when Luo Ji single-handedly established deterrence. Once the person holding the sword is eliminated, other people or Agencies can take over deterrence control.

Initially, bulky gravitational-wave antennas could only be built on the ground.But with the advancement of technology, 12 years after the deterrence was established, all three transmitting antennas and related equipment were moved deep into the earth.However, people know that the protection provided by the tens of kilometers thick formation to the launch pad and the control center is mainly against threats from human beings themselves, and it is of little significance to the possible attacks on the Trisolaran world.

For the water droplets constructed with strong interaction force, the tens of kilometers of strata covering the gravitational wave transmitter can easily penetrate like liquid.

After the deterrence was established, all the Trisolaran fleet heading to the solar system turned around, which can be confirmed by human observation technology.What people are most concerned about is the whereabouts of the ten water droplets that have reached the solar system—the space probe of strong interaction force.Trisolaris insists on leaving four water droplets in the solar system on the grounds that the gravitational wave transmitter may be hijacked by human extremist forces. Once this happens, Trisolaris should be able to take measures to protect the safety of the two worlds.The Earth authorities reluctantly agreed, but required that the position of the four water droplets should not exceed the Kuiper belt at the outer edge of the solar system. At the same time, each water droplet was followed by a human detector to keep track of its position and orbit.In this way, once there is a change, the earth can have an early warning time of about [-] hours.Two of these four droplets later followed Gravity in pursuit of Blue Space, leaving only two droplets remaining in the Kuiper belt.

But no one knows where the other six droplets are.

According to Trisolaran, those six water droplets had left the solar system to catch up with the Trisolaran fleet, but no one believed it.

To human beings, Trisolarans are no longer the transparent thinking creatures they were in the past.Over the past two centuries, they have learned quickly in deceit and cunning, which is probably the greatest thing they have learned from human culture.

It is believed that most or all of those six water droplets must be lurking in the solar system.However, due to the small size of the water droplets, their extremely fast speed, their super maneuverability, and their invisibility to electromagnetic radars, it is extremely difficult to search and track them.The earth uses the spreading of oil film material and other most advanced space monitoring methods, and the effective monitoring radius can only reach one-tenth of an astronomical unit, which is 500 million kilometers. If water droplets enter this range, the earth is sure to find it, but If it is outside this radius, it is basically the space for water droplets to move freely.

It only takes 500 minutes for water droplets to rush through the 10 million kilometers at the highest speed.

This is the decisive time that the sword bearer has once the ultimate moment arrives.

There was a low rumbling sound, and the heavy steel door more than one meter thick slowly moved away, Cheng Xin and his party walked into the heart of the dark forest deterrent system.

What greeted Cheng Xin was a wider blankness and emptiness.This is a semi-circular hall, facing a semi-curved white wall, the surface is somewhat translucent, like made of ice, the floor and ceiling are clean white.Cheng Xin's first impression here was: she was facing a pair of empty eyeballs without pupils, revealing a kind of desolate daze.

Then Cheng Xin saw Luo Ji.

Luo Ji sat cross-legged in the middle of the white hall, facing the curved white wall. His hair and beard were long, but not messy, and neatly combed. They were also pure white, almost blending in with the white wall. One piece, which makes the neat black tunic he is wearing very eye-catching.He sat there in a stable upside-down T-shape, like a lonely iron anchor on the beach, letting the wind of time blow past his head and the waves of time roaring in front of him, standing still, with incredible firmness A ship that never returns awaits.In his right hand he holds a red strip, which is the hilt of the sword bearer - the activation switch of the gravitational wave broadcast.His existence gave the empty eyeball a pupil. Although it was just a black spot compared to the hall, it made the desolation and daze disappear, and the eyes had a god.And Luo Ji himself couldn't see his eyes from this direction. He didn't react at all to the person coming, but just stared at the white wall in front of him.

If facing a wall for ten years can break it, then this white wall has already been broken five times.

The chairman of the PDC stopped Cheng Xin and the chief of staff, and said softly that there were still 10 minutes before the handover time.

In the last 54 minutes of 10 years, Luo Ji still persisted.

At the beginning of the establishment of Deterrence, Luo Ji had a good time. At that time, he was reunited with Zhuang Yan and the child, reliving the happiness of two centuries ago.But this period of time was very short. In less than two years, Zhuang Yan left Luo Ji with her child.There are different opinions on the reasons, but the more popular one is that when Luo Ji was still a savior in public, his image had changed in the eyes of those closest to him. A man in one world who held the fate of the other two worlds in his hands at the same time, he turned into a strange monster, scaring her and the children, so they left; another way of saying is that Luo Ji took the initiative to tell them to leave, so that they can have a normal life.Zhuang Yan and her children have disappeared since then, and they should all be alive now, living a peaceful life of ordinary people somewhere.

When Zhuang Yan and the child left, it was also the time when the earth's gravitational wave launcher replaced the nuclear chain around the sun as a deterrent weapon. From then on, Luo Ji began his long career as a sword bearer.

Luo Ji was placed in the duel arena of the universe. What he was facing was not the ostentatious Chinese swordsmanship, nor the Western swordsmanship that showed off his skills, but the Japanese swordsmanship that killed people with one move.In the real Japanese kendo, the fighting process is extremely short, often as short as half a second, and the longest is no more than two seconds. The moment the sharp swords strike each other, one party has already fallen in a pool of blood.But before this flashy duel, both sides have to stand still in a solid posture like a stone sculpture, staring at each other for a long time, and this process may last up to 10 minutes!At this time, the swordsman's sword is not in his hand but in his heart, and the heart sword turns into eyes and pierces the enemy's soul. The real duel is completed during this process. In the silent space between the two swordsmen, the soul The sword is like a silent thunderbolt hitting and fighting. Before the sword is released, the outcome is determined.

It was with this kind of gaze that Luo Ji stared at the white wall, at the world four light-years away.He knew that Sophon made the enemy see his gaze, which carried the coldness of hell and the heaviness of the boulder, and the determination to sacrifice everything, which made the enemy's heart palpitate and made them refrain from all rash actions.

There is always an end to the swordsman's stare, and the final duel will always come, but for Luo Ji, for this cosmic duel he is in, the moment to draw the sword may never happen forever.

But it could also be in the next second.

In this way, Luo Ji has been looking at the Three-Body World for 54 years. He has changed from a cynical person to a real Wallfacer who has faced the wall for 54 years, and a guardian of the earth civilization who has been holding a sword for 54 years.

For the past 54 years, Luo Ji has remained silent and never said a word.In fact, if a person does not speak for 15 to [-] years, he will lose his ability to speak, although he can understand but cannot speak.Luo Ji definitely couldn't speak anymore. Everything he wanted to say was in the piercing eyes on the wall. He had turned himself into a deterrent machine, a weapon that was on the verge of firing every second for half a century. Landmines, maintaining the terrifying balance of the two worlds.

"The time for the handover of the supreme control of the gravitational wave universe broadcasting system has arrived." The chairman of the PDC broke the silence and solemnly announced.

Luo Ji still kept his original posture, and the chief of staff walked over to help him stand up, but he raised his left hand and refused.Cheng Xin noticed that his movement of raising his hand was vigorous and vigorous, not at all slow like a centenarian.Then, Luo Ji stood up steadily by himself. To Cheng Xin's surprise, he went from sitting cross-legged to standing upright without touching the ground with his hands. It is very difficult for young people to do this.

"Mr. Luo Ji, this is Cheng Xin, the second master of the supreme control of the gravitational wave universe broadcasting system, please hand over the broadcasting switch to her."

Luo Ji stood tall and straight. He stared at the white wall he had been looking at for half a century for the last few seconds, and then bowed slightly to the wall.

He is paying tribute to the enemy. They have been looking at each other for half a century across the abyss of four light years, which is also a kind of fate.

Then he turned to face Cheng Xin, and the old and new sword bearers faced each other silently.Their eyes only met for a brief moment. At that moment, Cheng Xin felt a sharp light sweep across the dark night of her soul. In that gaze, she felt that she was as thin and light as paper, and even completely transparent.She couldn't imagine what the 54 years of facing the wall made this old man realize. His thoughts may have been as thick as the stratum above their heads, or as ethereal as the blue sky above the stratum.It's impossible for her to really know unless she herself has come to this day.Except for the bottomless profundity, she couldn't read his gaze.

Luo Ji handed the switch to Cheng Xin with both hands, and Cheng Xin also took over the heaviest thing in the history of the earth with both hands. Thus, the fulcrum of the two worlds shifted from a 29-year-old man to a [-]-year-old man. year old young woman.

The switch carried Luo Ji's body temperature.It really looks like a sword hilt, with four buttons on it, one of which is at the top. In order to prevent accidental activation, in addition to pressing the buttons with great force, they must be pressed in a certain order to take effect.

Luo Ji stepped back slightly, nodded slightly to the three of them, then turned around and walked towards the gate with steady steps.

Cheng Xin noticed that during the whole process, no one said a word of thanks to Luo Ji for his 54 years of work.She didn't know if the PDC chairman and the fleet chief of staff wanted to say; the handover process had been rehearsed many times without Luo Ji's participation, and there was no arrangement to express gratitude.

Human beings are not grateful to Luo Ji.

In the lobby, several people in black suits blocked Luo Ji, and one of them said, "Mr. Luo Ji, I inform you in the name of the Prosecutor of the International Court of Justice that you have been accused of committing the crime of genocide and are currently in custody of the International Court of Justice." , will be investigated."

Luo Ji didn't look at these people, and continued to walk towards the elevator door, and the prosecutors involuntarily gave way.In fact, Luo Ji might not have noticed their existence at all. The sharp light in his eyes was extinguished, replaced by a calmness like sunset.The long mission was at last done, and the heaviest responsibility now left him.In the future, no matter what kind of demon and monster he may be in the eyes of already feminized humans, people have to admit that throughout the history of civilization, his victory is unparalleled.

The steel door was left open, and Cheng Xin heard what the people in the hall said.She suddenly had an urge to rush over to say thank you to Luo Ji, but she restrained herself and watched sadly as his figure disappeared into the elevator.

Then, the PDC chairman and the fleet chief of staff also left silently.

When the steel door closed rumblingly, Cheng Xin felt that her previous life was leaking out of the increasingly narrow door like water in a funnel; when the steel door was completely closed, a new self was born.

She looked at the red switch in her hand again, it had become a part of her, and she could not separate from it in the future, she would put it next to her pillow even when she was sleeping.

There was a dead silence in the white semi-circular hall, as if time was also sealed here and no longer flowed, really like a tomb.From now on, this is her whole world.The first thing she has to do is to bring the breath of life back here.She doesn't want to be like Luo Ji, she is not a warrior or a duelist, she is a woman, after all, she will spend a long time here, maybe ten years or half a century, in fact, she has prepared her whole life for this mission, so standing here The starting point of the long road, she is very calm.

But fate once again showed its weirdness and impermanence. Cheng Xin had prepared her whole life as a sword bearer, and it only lasted 15 minutes since she took the red switch.

【威慑纪元最后10分钟，62年11月28日16:17:34至16:27:58，威慑控制中心】

The curved white wall suddenly turned red, as if burned through by hell's magma, the color of the highest alarm.A line of large white characters appeared on a red background, and each word was like a scream of horror:

Discovery of the Strong Interaction Cosmic Probe!There are six in total, one of which flies to the Lagrangian point between the earth and the sun, and the other five are divided into three formations of one, two and two, rushing towards the earth at a speed of 25000 km/s, and are expected to reach the ground in 10 minutes !
Beside Cheng Xin, five floating numbers 1 to 5 appeared, emitting a faint green light.These are five holographic buttons. Click any of them, and the corresponding information window will pop up in the air, displaying more detailed intelligence content to varying degrees.All the information comes from the early warning system that monitors the space of 500 million kilometers around the earth, and the general staff of the solar system fleet analyzes the early warning information and forwards it to the sword bearer.

It was later learned that the six water droplets were lurking not far from the 500 million-kilometer warning circle, in the space between 800 million and 2000 million kilometers from the earth, and three of them have been using the sun as the background for a long time. 65] to cover themselves; the other three were mixed among the piles of space junk floating in the region, mostly reactor waste from early fission nuclear power plants in Earth orbit.In fact, even if the water droplets do not take these concealment measures, it is difficult to find them outside the security circle.Previously, it had been thought that the most likely lurking location for the droplet was farther out in the asteroid belt.

Luo Ji had been waiting for half a century for the thunderbolt from the clear sky, and it fell on Cheng Xin 5 minutes after he left.

Cheng Xin didn't click those holographic buttons, she didn't need any more information.

Cheng Xin understood one thing first: she was wrong, she was all wrong.In the depths of her subconscious mind, her mission as a sword bearer has always presented a completely wrong picture.Of course, she was always preparing for the worst, or trying to make herself do so.With the help of fleet and PDC experts, she had a detailed understanding of the overall configuration of the deterrence system. She also discussed all possible extreme situations with the fleet's upper command system and PDC strategists all night, and even imagined that it would be worse than it is now. situation.But she made a fatal mistake that she didn't and could not be aware of. In fact, it was precisely because of this mistake that she was elected as the second sword bearer.

Subconsciously, she doesn't believe that things are going to happen now.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 1400 million kilometers, and the closest one is 1350 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 9 minutes!
In Cheng Xin's subconscious mind, she was a guardian, not a destroyer; she was a woman, not a warrior.She will spend her whole life protecting the balance of the two worlds, allowing the technology from Trisolaris to make the Earth more powerful, and the culture from Earth to make Trisolaris more and more civilized, until one day, a voice said to her: Let go Red switch, come to the ground, the world no longer needs the deterrence of the dark forest, no longer needs the swordman.

When she faced that distant world as a sword-bearer, unlike Luo Ji, she didn't feel that it was a life-and-death duel, only that it was a game of chess. She sat down calmly in front of the chessboard and thought about it. Various openings, assuming the opponent's various chess moves and thinking of ways to deal with them one by one, she is going to spend her whole life playing this game of chess.

But the opponent didn't move a chess piece, but grabbed the chessboard and threw it at her head and face.

The moment Cheng Xin took the red switch from Luo Ji's hand five minutes ago, the six water droplets started to accelerate towards the earth from the hiding place, and the enemy didn't delay for a second.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 1300 million kilometers, and the closest one is 1200 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 8 minutes!
blank.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 1150 million kilometers, and the closest one is 1050 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 7 minutes!
Blank, all blank, except for the white hall and large white characters, everything outside was also blank, Cheng Xin seemed to be suspended in the milk universe.This is a ball of milk with a diameter of 160 billion light years, and she can't find any support in this vast void.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 1000 million kilometers, and the closest one is 900 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 6 minutes!
How to do?
The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 900 million kilometers, and the closest one is 750 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 5 minutes!
The void began to dissipate, and the 45-kilometer-thick layer above showed a heavy presence again, and that was the time of deposition.The lowest layer, pressed against the Deterrence Control Center, may have been deposited 40 billion years ago, when the earth was just [-] million years old.That piece of turbid sea was the baby state of the sea, and the sea surface was struck by uninterrupted lightning; the sun at that time was a fluffy ball of light in the misty sky, reflecting a piece of blood red on the sea surface; From time to time, other light clusters appeared in the sky from time to time, dragging a long tail of fire to hit the sea surface. The tsunami caused by these meteorites would push huge waves to the continent where the magma flows across. ...Different from the tragedy of this hell, a small story is quietly brewing in the muddy sea.At this time, organic molecules are born in lightning and cosmic rays, they collide, fuse, and disintegrate.It was a long game of Jenga that lasted half a billion years.Finally, one molecular chain trembled and split, and another identical molecular chain was copied, and then they respectively adsorbed the surrounding small organic molecules, and copied themselves again... In this building block game, such a self-replicating molecular chain is produced The chances of this are so small, it's like a tornado picks up a pile of metal garbage and assembles it into a Mercedes-Benz after it falls.

But it happened, and the magnificent journey of 35 billion years began.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 750 million kilometers, and the closest one is 600 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 4 minutes!
Archaean 21 billion years, Proterozoic Sinian 18 billion years; then Paleozoic: Cambrian 3000 million years, Ordovician 7000 million years, Silurian 6000 million years, Devonian 4000 million years, Carboniferous 5000 million years, Permian 650 million years; then the Mesozoic began: Triassic 5500 million years, Jurassic 3500 million years, Cretaceous 5800 million years; then the Cenozoic: Tertiary 7000 million years, Quaternary 6450 million years.Then human beings appeared. Compared with the long years before, it was only a flick of a finger. Dynasties and times changed like fireworks. The bone stick thrown by the ancient ape into the air became a spaceship before it fell back to the ground.In the end, this 250 billion years of wind and rain marched to a halt in front of a small human being, just one of the 35 billion people who have lived on the earth, holding a red switch in her hand.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 600 million kilometers, and the closest one is 450 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 3 minutes!
Four billion years of time had accumulated above Cheng Xin, suffocating her, her subconscious was desperately trying to get up to the ground to catch her breath.The ground of the subconscious is teeming with creatures, most notably gigantic reptiles, including dinosaurs, packed in dense huddles that cover the land as far as the eye can see; in the gaps between the dinosaurs and between their legs Mammals, including humans, are crowded under the abdomen; further down, under countless feet, the ground is like a surging black water flow, which are countless trilobites and ants... In the sky, there are hundreds of billions of birds A vortex of dark clouds covering the entire sky is formed, and the huge shadow of the pterodactyl appears and disappears in it...

The most terrifying thing is those eyes, the eyes of dinosaurs, the eyes of trilobites and ants, the eyes of birds and butterflies, the eyes of bacteria... There are 1000 billion pairs of human eyes alone, which is exactly equal to the number of stars in the Milky Way. Numbers, including the eyes of all ordinary people, but also those of Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Einstein.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 450 million kilometers, and the nearest is 300 million kilometers, reaching the ground in 2 minutes!The two formations point to Asia and the North American continent respectively, and the one formation points to the European continent.

Flick a switch, and 35 billion years of progress will be suspended, and everything will disappear into the long night of the universe, as if it never existed.

The baby seemed to be back in her arms, soft and warm, with a wet little face, smiling sweetly, calling her mother.

The average distance between the three formations of strong interaction cosmic probes and the earth is 300 million kilometers, and the closest one is 150 million kilometers. They are rapidly decelerating and reach the ground in 1 minute and 30 seconds!
"No—" Cheng Xin screamed, threw the switch in her hand, and watched it slide into the distance like a devil.

The three formations of the strong-interaction space probes have approached the lunar orbit, continue to slow down, and speculate the attack targets according to the extension of their routes: North America, Europe and Asia gravitational wave launch stations, gravitational wave space broadcasting system No. 30 control station, estimated [-] seconds then touch the ground.

The last period of time was stretched infinitely like a spider's thread, but Cheng Xin didn't hesitate anymore, she insisted on the decision she had already made.This decision was not made with thought, but deeply embedded in her genes. This gene can be traced back to 40 billion years ago. The decision was made at that time, and it has been continuously strengthened in the vicissitudes of the past billions of years. , Right or wrong, she knew she had no choice.

Fortunately, liberation is coming.

There are strong earthquakes, which are produced when water droplets pass through the ground.Cheng Xin couldn't stand up, and fell to the ground. She felt that the surrounding solid rock formations disappeared, and the control center seemed to be placed on a huge eardrum.Cheng Xin closed her eyes, imagining the scene of water droplets passing through the stratum above, waiting for that smooth and shiny devil to hit here at cosmic speed, turning her and everything around into molten lava.

But the vibration stopped after a few violent beats, like a drummer's violent beating at the end of a song.

The red on the big screen disappeared and was replaced by the previous white, making the place look bright and empty in an instant.A few lines of large black characters appear on a white background:
The North American gravitational wave transmitter is destroyed.

The European gravitational wave launch pad is destroyed.

Asian gravitational wave launch pad destroyed.

The solar radio wave amplification function is suppressed by the whole frequency band.

Silence once again covered everything, only the faint patter of water coming from a cracked water pipe.

Now Cheng Xin knew that the shock just now was caused by water droplets attacking the Asian gravitational wave transmitting antenna. The transmitting station was only [-] kilometers away from here, and it was also underground at the same depth.

The water droplets did not attack the sword bearer.

Those few lines of black characters disappeared, and after a blank blank, the final display appeared:

The gravitational wave cosmic broadcast system cannot be restored, and the dark forest deterrence is terminated.

[One hour after deterrence, the lost world]

Cheng Xin took the elevator to the ground, and when she walked out the gate of the entrance station, she saw the open-air meeting place where the deterrence control handover ceremony had just been held an hour ago.The people who participated in the ceremony had already left, and the place was empty, only the row of flagpoles cast long shadows in the setting sun. The flags of the United Nations and the Solar System Fleet hung on the two tallest flagpoles, and behind them were the national flags of various countries. Fluttering peacefully in the breeze.Looking forward, you can see the endless Gobi. A few birds chirped and fell into a clump of red willows nearby. In the distance, you can see the continuous Qilian Mountains.

Everything remains the same, but this world no longer belongs to humans.

Cheng Xin didn't know what to do. After the deterrence ended, no one contacted her.Now, like deterrence, the sword bearer no longer exists.

She walked forward in a daze, and as she walked out of the gate of the base, two sentries saluted her.She was afraid to face people, but she found that there was nothing more in their eyes than a hint of curiosity, obviously they didn't know what just happened.According to the routine, the sword bearer can come to the ground for a short time. They may think that she came up because of the earthquake just now.Cheng Xin saw several officers next to a military flying vehicle by the gate. They didn't even look at her, they just focused on the direction her back was facing, and one of them pointed there.

Cheng Xin turned around and followed their gazes, and saw the mushroom cloud on the horizon. It was dust ejected from the ground, so dense that it looked solid.It suddenly appeared between the peaceful sky and the earth, as if it was superimposed randomly in a landscape painting with graphics software.Taking a closer look, Cheng Xin felt that the mushroom cloud looked like an ugly head, showing a strange expression in the setting sun.Mushroom clouds are ejected from where water droplets penetrate the formation.

When Cheng Xin heard someone calling her name, she turned around and saw Ai AA running towards her.She was wearing a white windbreaker, her long hair was blown by the wind, she gasped and said that she came to see Cheng Xin, but they wouldn't let her in.She pointed to her car in the distance and said that she had brought several pots of flowers to Cheng Xin's new residence, then she pointed to the mushroom cloud in the distance and asked, was that a volcanic eruption, and was it related to the earthquake just now?
Cheng Xin really wanted to hug AA and cry, but she restrained herself, she wanted this happy girl to know what had happened later, and also wanted to prolong the lingering sound of the just ended good times.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
Reflections on the failure of the dark forest deterrent

The most important factor leading to the failure is of course the wrong choice of the sword-wielder. This aspect will be discussed in another chapter. Here we will only re-examine the mistakes in the design of the deterrence system from a technical point of view.

After the failure of deterrence, people first thought that there were too few gravitational wave launchers. It was a mistake to dismantle 23 of the [-] launch pads that had been built.But this thinking misses the essence of the problem.According to monitoring data, it takes an average of ten seconds for water droplets to penetrate the ground to destroy a launch pad. Even if all the planned [-] launch pads are built and deployed, it will not take much time for water droplets to destroy the entire system.The point is that this system is destructible, and humans would have had the opportunity to build an indestructible gravitational wave cosmic broadcast system.

The problem is not the number of gravitational-wave transmitters, but where they are deployed.

Imagine that if the 23 launch pads that have been built are not located on the ground but in space, that is to say, 23 "Gravity" spacecraft are built, and the spacecraft are usually separated and scattered in different positions in the solar system. It is difficult to destroy them all, and one or more spaceships must escape pursuit and disappear in the depths of space.

In this way, the deterrence degree of the dark forest deterrence system will increase a lot, and the increased deterrence degree has nothing to do with the sword holder.When Trisolaris realizes that with their power in the solar system, it is impossible to completely destroy the deterrent system, they may be much more cautious about their own adventures.

Unfortunately, there is only one "Gravity".

There are two reasons why not many gravitational wave spacecraft have been built: one is the attack by the "children of the earth" on the gravitational wave launch pad in Antarctica.In this respect, for threats from humans, gravitational wave launching spacecraft are less safe than ground-based launching pads, and there are more uncertain factors.The second is economic reasons.Due to the huge size of the gravitational wave transmitting antenna, the antenna of the gravitational wave spacecraft can only be the hull itself. In this way, the antenna material must meet the requirements of spaceflight, and the cost will increase exponentially. The cost of building the "Gravity" is almost 23 launches sum of tables.At the same time, the hull of the spaceship cannot be renewed, so when the degenerate vibrating strings running through the hull reach the half-life of 50 years and become invalid, the launch function of the spaceship will disappear, and only new gravitational wave spaceships can be manufactured.

But a deeper reason lurks deep in people's consciousness, never spoken of or even probably realized: the gravitational wave spacecraft is so powerful that its builders themselves are afraid.If an accident, attack of water droplets or other reasons force the gravitational wave spacecraft to fly deep into space, and never return due to threats in the solar system, they become the new "Blue Space" and "Bronze Age", or What is more uncertain and terrifying, and at the same time, they have the ability to broadcast gravitational waves in the universe (although it will not exceed the half-life of the vibrating string), so they control the fate of the human world!That way, a terrifying uncertainty will perpetuate space.

In the final analysis, this kind of fear is the fear of the dark forest deterrence itself, which is the characteristic of ultimate deterrence: the deterrent and the deterred have the same fear of deterrence.

Cheng Xin walked towards the officers and asked them to go to the eruption site to have a look.One of the lieutenant colonels in charge of security at the base immediately sent her two flying vehicles, one to take her to the eruption point, and the other with several soldiers in charge of guarding.Cheng Xin asked Ai AA to wait for her where she was, but AA insisted on going with Cheng Xin, so she had to let her get into the car.

The flying car flew towards the dust cloud at a height close to the ground, at a very slow speed. AA asked the soldier who was driving what was going on, and the soldier said he didn't know, the volcano erupted twice, with a few minutes apart, and he said it might be the first active volcano in history in China.

He never dreamed that under the volcano was the strategic fulcrum of the world - the gravitational wave transmitting antenna.The first volcanic eruption was produced when water droplets penetrated the formation, which destroyed the antenna and followed the same path through the formation, triggering the second eruption.Since the eruptions are mainly caused by the huge kinetic energy released by water droplets in the formation, not the ejection of materials in the mantle, they are all short-lived.The water droplets travel so fast that they are invisible to the naked eye as they penetrate and fly off the surface.

On the Gobi that passed under the flying car, there were sporadically small smoking craters, which were made by the magma and hot rocks flying out of the eruption vent.As we moved forward, the small pits gradually became denser, and the Gobi was shrouded in a layer of smog. From time to time, we could see burning tamarisk bushes. There are few people here, but we can also see several old buildings that have been destroyed by the earthquake.This area looks like a battlefield that has just ended a battle.

The cloud of dust has been blown away a little by the wind, and it is no longer mushroom-shaped, but has become like a mess of hair, and the edges are blood-red by the setting sun that is about to set.When approaching the eruption point, the flying vehicle was stopped by an aerial cordon and had to land.At Cheng Xin's insistence, the cordon on the ground let her pass. These soldiers didn't know that the world had fallen, and Cheng Xin still had the authority of a sword bearer in front of them.But they blocked AA, no matter how much she shouted and struggled, she would not let her pass.

This direction is upwind, and there is not much dust falling, but the smoke and dust block the light of the setting sun, forming a continuously changing shadow.Cheng Xin walked more than 100 meters in the shadows and came to the edge of a huge pit.The pit was funnel-shaped, tens of meters deep in the center, and a large mass of thick white smoke was still gushing out of the pit. There was a dark red patch at the bottom of the pit, which was a depression of magma.

Just 45 kilometers below this crater, the gravitational wave antenna, the 500-meter-long, 50-meter-diameter cylinder suspended in the mantle cavity in a state of magnetic levitation, has been smashed into pieces and engulfed by hot magma.

This should have been her fate. For a swordsman who gave up the deterrence operation, it was the best ending.

The red light at the bottom of the pit had a strong temptation for Cheng Xin, as long as she took one step forward, she would be able to realize the liberation she longed for.In the heat wave that hit her face, she stared at the dark red magma pool, until she was awakened by a series of silver bell-like laughter behind her.

Cheng Xin turned around to follow the laughter, and saw a slender figure walking towards here in the changing light and shadow cast by the setting sun through the smoke and dust.Cheng Xin didn't recognize her as Sophon until the person walked up to her.

Apart from the still fair and pretty face, this robot is completely different from the one Cheng Xin saw last time.She was wearing desert camouflage, and the bun with flowers on her head was gone, replaced by short, lean hair, a ninja black scarf around her neck, and a long samurai sword stuck in her back, looking heroic Sassy.In fact, the extreme femininity on her body has not disappeared, and her posture and actions still show softness like water, but these are mixed with a beautiful and murderous aura, like a soft and deadly noose, gushing out of a huge pit. The heat wave can't dispel the cold air brought by her.

"You made the choice we predicted." Tomoko said with a sneer. "There is no need to blame yourself. The fact is: people chose you, and they chose this ending. Among all human beings, you are the only one who is innocent."

Sophon's words made Cheng Xin's heart skip a beat. She didn't feel comforted by it, but she had to admit that this beautiful devil had the power to penetrate the soul.

At this time, Cheng Xin saw AA walking over.She had obviously learned or guessed something, staring at Sophon with fiery eyes, picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at the back of Sophon's head.Sophon turned around and waved his hand, fending off the stone like chasing away a mosquito. AA yelled all the insults she could think of at Tomoko, and immediately picked up another stone.Sophon pulled out the samurai sword from his back, pushed Cheng Xin who was desperate to stop her with one hand, and swung the knife with the other. The knife whined in the air and disappeared like an electric fan.When Tomoko stopped, a strand of broken hair fell from AA's head. She shrank her neck in fright, and dared not move as if she was frozen.

Cheng Xin noticed the samurai sword in Sophon's hand. She had seen it in the oriental villa in the mist. In the sheath, it looks so harmless.

"Why is this all?" Cheng Xin murmured, more like asking herself.

"Because the universe is not a fairy tale."

Cheng Xin understands intellectually that if the balance of deterrence is maintained, the bright future will only belong to humans and not the Trisolaran world, but in her subconscious mind, the universe is still a fairy tale, a fairy tale of love.Her biggest mistake was that she didn't really look at the problem from the enemy's standpoint.

From the way Sophon looked at her, Cheng Xin understood why she wasn't attacked by the water droplets.

With the gravitational wave emission system destroyed and the solar radio wave amplification function suppressed, Cheng Xin can't do anything while alive; further speculation: if humans still have other means of cosmic broadcasting that Trisolaran does not know (the possibility is extremely small ), when the sword-bearer is eliminated, other people may start the broadcast, but this possibility is much smaller when the sword-bearer exists, because those people have reasons to rely on and evade.

But what are they relying on?Cheng Xin was not a deterrent, but instead became a security barrier, and the enemy saw through her.

She is a fairy.

"Don't be complacent, we still have 'Gravity'!" AA said, her courage recovered a little.

Sophon put the back of the knife on his shoulder and smiled contemptuously, "Little fool! 'Gravity' has been destroyed, just over an hour ago when the handover was completed. Unfortunately, if there is no blind spot, I could have shown it to you now of the wreckage a light-year away."

Now, an ingenious plan that has been planned for a long time has emerged: the specific time for the handover of deterrence control was determined five months ago. Order to destroy Gravity immediately after handover is complete.

Sophon swung the long knife back and inserted it accurately into the sheath on his back, "I'm leaving, please pay my respects to Dr. Luo Ji for Trisolaran, he is a powerful deterrent and a great warrior. Also, if you have the opportunity, please also express your regrets to Mr. Thomas Wade."

Sophon's last words made Cheng Xin look up in surprise.

"Do you know? In our personality analysis system, your deterrence degree fluctuates around 90.00%, like a crawling earthworm; Luo Ji's deterrence degree curve is like a ferocious cobra, fluctuating at a height of 62%; and Vader..." Sophon looked at the sunset behind the smoke and dust, with obvious fear in his eyes, then shook his head vigorously, as if trying to drive something out of his mind, "He has no curves at all, in all external His deterrence is at [-]% by environmental parameters, that devil! If he becomes the sword bearer, none of this will happen, peace will continue, we have waited [-] years, and we have to continue to wait Go on, maybe wait another half century or longer. At that time, the Trisolaran world can only fight or compromise with the earth civilization that is already evenly matched in strength... But we know that people will definitely choose you."

Sophon strode away, and when she was far away, she turned around again and shouted to Cheng Xin and AA who were silently looking at each other: "Poor worms, get ready to go to Australia!"

[Sixty days after deterrence, the lost world]

On No.30 eight days after the deterrence was terminated, the Ringer-Fitzroy Observatory operating outside the asteroid belt found that there were 410 five spacecraft tracks in the interstellar dust cloud near the Trisolaran galaxy in the direction of the solar system. Apparently, Trisolaris sent a second fleet to the solar system.

The fleet should have been dispatched five years ago and passed through the dust cloud four years ago.This is a very risky action for Trisolaran, because if the human dark forest deterrent system cannot be destroyed within five years after setting sail, the fleet may trigger a deterrent operation after it is discovered through the dust cloud.This shows that, as early as that time, Trisolaran had already made accurate predictions about the change of the human world's deterrent mentality towards the dark forest, and what kind of second sword-bearer it might choose.

History seems to have returned to the starting point, and a new cycle has begun.

After the suspension of deterrence, the future of the human world fell into darkness again, but just like when the first round of crisis began more than two centuries ago, people did not connect this darkness with their own destiny.From the analysis of the track in the dust cloud, the speed of the second Trisolaran fleet is not much different from the first one. Even if there will be a higher acceleration later, the fleet will reach the solar system after two or three centuries. People who are alive now can live their lives in peace.With the lessons of the Great Trough, human society will not sacrifice the present for the future again.

But this time humans were not so lucky.

Only three days after the Trisolaran Fleet sailed out of the dust cloud, the observation system actually discovered the track in the second dust cloud, also 410 five!It couldn't be another fleet sent earlier, it could only be the same fleet that was discovered a few days ago.It took five years for the first Trisolaran fleet to reach the second from the first cloud of dust, but it only took six days for the second fleet!
The Trisolaran fleet has reached the speed of light!
This is also confirmed by the analysis of the tracks in the second dust cloud.The five tracks of 410 extend at the speed of 30 kilometers per second. Under the impact of the light-speed spacecraft, those tracks are very eye-catching.

From the perspective of time, the fleet immediately entered the speed of light when it passed through the first dust cloud, and there was no acceleration process during it.

If so, Trisolaris Second Fleet should have reached the solar system.It can be said that they almost arrived.Now, using a medium-sized astronomical telescope, you can also see a bright spot in space at a distance of 410 AU from the sun, and there are 15.00 five.It was the flame of the propeller when the Trisolaran fleet slowed down, but it was a conventional propeller. At this moment, the fleet had already left the speed of light, and the speed dropped to [-]% of the speed of light.Obviously this is the highest speed that allows conventional propulsion to fully decelerate before reaching the solar system. Based on this speed and the deceleration rate of the fleet, it will take about a year for the Trisolaris Second Fleet to reach the solar system.

This is indeed a puzzling thing: the Trisolaran fleet is clearly capable of reaching or departing from the speed of light in a very short time, but they dare not do so in the Trisolaran galaxy or the vicinity of the solar system.After the fleet set sail, it took a whole year to sail at the conventional speed, and did not enter the speed of light until it was six thousand astronomical units away from the Trisolaran galaxy; at the same distance from the solar system, it left the speed of light and dropped to the speed of conventional propulsion, and traveled at the speed of light during this distance. It only takes one month, but the fleet is willing to spend another year sailing with conventional propulsion.In this way, the voyage time of the Second Fleet was two full years longer than the full speed of light voyage.

There is only one explanation that can be thought of: this is to avoid the impact on the two worlds when the five spaceships of 410 enter the speed of light.This safe distance is two hundred times the distance from the earth to Neptune. If the impact of the spacecraft on the planet can be avoided at this distance, it means that the energy generated by the engine is two orders of magnitude higher than that of the star!It's unimaginable.

"Once Upon a Time Beyond Time" (excerpt)
Tech Explosion in Three-Body World

It has always been a mystery when the technological development of the Trisolaran world changed from a constant speed to an explosive acceleration.Some scholars believe that this acceleration occurred before the beginning of the crisis era, and some people believe that the technology of the three-body world did not make a leap until the deterrence era.Regarding the motives for the three-body technology explosion, people’s views are quite consistent, and they believe that there are two main aspects:
First of all, the earth civilization has had a huge impact on the Trisolaran world, and the Trisolarans may not be lying on this point.Since the first sophon arrived on Earth, the influx of human culture has brought about profound changes in the Trisolaran world.Part of the values ​​of human beings are recognized: the totalitarian system created in response to the disaster of the chaotic era hinders science, the freedom of thought is encouraged, and the value of the individual is respected—all of these may trigger a renaissance in that distant world This must be a glorious history, but its specific process is unknown.

The other possibility is just speculation: the sophons flying to other directions in the universe did not find nothing, as the Trisolarans said. Before entering the blind zone, they probably detected at least one civilized world.If so, Trisolaris may have gained not only technical knowledge from this third-party civilization, but also important information about the state of the dark forest of the universe.In that case, Trisolaran would now know much more than Earth in every respect.

Sophon made her first appearance after the suspension of deterrence. She was still wearing the same camouflage uniform with a samurai sword on her back, announcing to the world that the second Trisolaran fleet would arrive in the solar system in four years and complete the complete occupation of this star system. .

Different from the first round of crisis, Trisolaran's policy towards humans has undergone major changes.Sophon claims that Trisolaris has no plan to destroy human civilization, but has set aside reservations for human beings in the solar system. The specific locations are: Australia on Earth and one-third of the territory of Mars. In this way, the most basic of human civilization is guaranteed. living space.

Tomoko said that in preparation for the occupation in four years, humans must immediately start immigrating to the reservation; in order to implement what she called "de-threatization" and completely eliminate the recurrence of the Dark Forest Deterrence and similar threats, humans must remove Armed and carry out "naked immigration", that is, no heavy equipment and facilities can be carried during the immigration process.Immigration must be completed within one year.

At present, the habitable space for humans on Mars and in space can only accommodate up to 300 million people. Therefore, the main destination of immigrants is Australia.

Until then, people still dreamed of a peaceful life for at least one generation, so after Tomoko’s speech was published, no country responded, and no one began to immigrate.

Five days after the speech known as the "Reservation Statement," one of five water droplets that have been cruising the Earth's atmosphere has attacked three major cities in North America, Europe and Asia.The purpose of the attack was not to destroy the city, but to intimidate.It went straight through the forest of giant trees in the city, hitting the buildings hanging from the branches along the way. The buildings that were hit were first burned, and then fell to the ground from a height of several hundred meters like rotten fruit, killing more than 30 people Death, the worst human casualty since the Doomsday campaign.

Now people realize that in front of water droplets, the human world is as fragile as an egg under a rock, and it is impossible for any city or large-scale facility to provide effective shelter.If the Trisolarans are willing, they can destroy all cities and gradually turn the surface of the earth into ruins.

In fact, human beings are gradually changing this disadvantage.It has long been recognized that the defense against water droplets can only be achieved with the help of Strong Interaction Materials (SIM) [66] themselves.Before the suspension of deterrence, the research institutes of the earth and the fleet were able to produce a small amount of this super material in the laboratory, but there is still a long way to go before mass production and practical application.Given another ten years, strong-interaction materials could be mass-produced.Although the propulsion system of the water droplet is far beyond the technical capabilities of human beings, it is possible to use the SIM to create conventional missiles, and with the advantage of numbers, it is possible to destroy the water droplet once it hits; or use the SIM to build a defensive barrier, even if the water droplet dares to attack this barrier, It also becomes a disposable shell.

But now, that's never going to be a reality.

Sophon made a speech again, claiming that Trisolaris changed its extinction policy towards human civilization entirely out of love and respect for Earth culture.After the immigration to Australia is completed, there will be a difficult period, but only for a short period of three or four years. When the Trisolaran Fleet arrives, it is fully capable of making Australia's 40 billion people live a comfortable life.At the same time, the occupiers will also help humans build living spaces on Mars and space. Large-scale immigration to Mars and space will be possible five years after the fleet arrives, and it will be basically completed in 15 years.At that time, human beings will have a relatively large enough living space, and the two civilizations will start a new peaceful life in the solar system.But all of this is premised on the smooth progress of the first immigration.Droplets will continue to attack cities if migration to Australia does not begin immediately.After the one-year period, any humans outside the reservation are to be exterminated as intruders into Trisolaran territory.Of course, as long as human beings leave the city and are in a state of evacuation, this cannot be done with just five water droplets. They cannot kill all the people scattered on the continents individually or in small groups, but in Four years later, the Trisolaran fleet that arrived in the solar system will undoubtedly be able to do this.

"It is the splendid earth culture that has won the chance for human beings to survive. I hope you will cherish it." Sophon finally said.

The migration of all mankind to Australia begins.

[The first year after deterrence, Australia]

Cheng Xin stood in front of Old Man Freys' house, looking at the scorching Victorian desert.As far as the eye can see, there are densely built simple houses. Under the midday sun, these houses made of composite panels and thin metal panels look brand new and fragile, like a large piece of origami toys just thrown on the desert.

When Captain Cook discovered Australia five centuries ago, he could never have dreamed that all of humanity would one day gather on this once-empty continent.

Cheng Xin and Ai AA came to Australia with the first batch of immigrants.Cheng Xin could have gone to a big city like Canberra or Sydney to live a more comfortable life, but she insisted on being an ordinary immigrant, and came to the immigrant area in the desert near Warburton, where the inland conditions were the worst.What moved her so much was that AA, who could also go to big cities, insisted on following her.

Life in the colony was hard, but in the early days, with the low numbers of immigrants arriving, it was bearable.Compared with the hardships of material life, what is worse is the harassment from people.Cheng Xin and AA initially lived in a simple room for two, but with the increase of immigrants, the number of people in the room gradually increased to eight.The other six women were all born in the heavenly era of deterrence, where they saw things for the first time in their lives: food and water rationing, rooms without information walls or even air conditioning, public toilets and communal facilities. Bathrooms, bunk beds... This is an absolutely average society, money is of no use and everyone gets exactly the same ration.They had only seen these things in historical movies before, and life in the immigration area was a hellish torture for them, so Cheng Xin naturally became the target of these people to vent.They swear at her at every turn, calling her a waste, failing to deter the Trisolaran world, the most damning thing is that they gave up the deterrence operation after receiving the attack alarm, otherwise the trisolarans would be scared away as soon as the gravitational wave broadcast was activated , At least there are still a few decades of good life, even if the earth is destroyed immediately after the broadcast is activated, it is better than suffering in this ghost place.At first they just scolded her, but later they developed into touching Cheng Xin and even snatching her rations.

But AA was desperate to protect her friend, she fought with those six women several times a day like a little shrew, once grabbed the hair of one of the fiercest women and slammed it on the bedpost of the bunk bed, knocking the man to blood With tears all over their faces, those women never dared to provoke her and Cheng Xin easily again.

But these few people were not the only ones who hated Cheng Xin. Immigrants around her often came to harass her. Sometimes they threw stones at the house, and sometimes a large group of people surrounded the house and yelled and cursed in unison.

Cheng Xin accepted all of these frankly—these were even a kind of comfort to her. As a failed swordsman, she felt that she should pay a greater price than this.

At this time, an old man named Freys came to her and asked her and AA to live in his house.Freys, an Australian Aboriginal man in his 80s, is still in good health, with a snow-white beard on his swarthy face.As a local, he was temporarily able to keep his house.He is a AD person who wakes up after hibernation. Before the Era of Crisis, he was the head of an indigenous cultural protection organization. He hibernated at the beginning of the Era of Crisis, with the purpose of continuing his career in the future.When he woke up, he found that, as he expected, the Australian aborigines, together with their culture, had almost disappeared.

Freys' house, built in the 21st century, is old but solid, on the edge of a grove of trees.After moving here, the lives of Cheng Xin and AA became much more stable, but what the old man gave them most was peace of mind.Different from most people's heart-piercing anger and deep-rooted hatred towards the Trisolaran world, Freys calmly faced everything in front of him. He seldom talked about this critical situation, and only said one sentence:

"Son, what man has done, God remembers."

Yes, let alone gods, people still remember what they have done.Five centuries ago, civilized earthlings landed on this continent (although most of them were European prisoners), shot and killed the natives in the jungle as wild beasts, and later found that they were human beings and not beasts, and they still killed them.Australian aborigines have lived in this vast land for tens of thousands of years. There were 50 aborigines in Australia when the white people came, but they were quickly killed and only [-] were left. They were not spared until they fled to the desolate desert in Western Australia Difficult... In fact, when Sophon made the reservation statement, people noticed that she used the word Reservation, which was the name for the Indian reservation back then. It was on another distant continent where civilized earthlings arrived. After that, the fate of the Indians was even more tragic than that of the Australian Aboriginals.

When he first arrived at Freys' house, AA was full of curiosity about everything in the old house.It seems to be a museum of Australian Aboriginal culture, decorated with ancient bark paintings and petroglyphs, musical instruments made of wood blocks and hollow tree trunks, straw skirts, boomerangs and spears, etc.What interested AA the most were pots of paint made of white clay, red and yellow ochre, she immediately knew what they were for, dipped her fingers in her face, and jumped up Where did she see the aboriginal dance, and she yelled haha, saying that this would scare the bitches in the room where she lived before.

Frass smiled and shook his head, saying that what she danced was not an Australian aboriginal dance, but a Maori dance. Foreigners often confuse the two, but they are very different. The former is docile, while the latter is a fierce warrior; Even the Maori dance was not right for her, she didn't catch the spirit of it.As he said that, the old man painted his face with paint, and quickly painted it into a vivid face, then took off his shirt, revealing the strong muscles on his dark chest that did not match his age, and took a genuine one from the corner Spears and a Maori warrior dance for them.His performance immediately fascinated them, Fraser's usual kindness and generosity disappeared without a trace, and he instantly turned into an aggressive and fierce god, full of majestic and aggressive attack power, Every growl and stomp of his foot made the window panes buzz and make one tremble.What shocked them most was his eyes, which were wide open, bursting out with scorching rage and icy murderous intent, condensing the power of thunder and hurricanes in Oceania, his eyes seemed to be shouting earth-shatteringly: Don't run!I am going to kill you! !I want to eat you! ! !
After dancing, Fraiss returned to his usual kindly appearance. He said: "The key to a Maori warrior is to keep the enemy in the eye, defeat him with the eyes, and kill him with the spear." In front of Cheng Xin, he looked at her meaningfully, "Son, you didn't keep your eyes on the enemy." He patted Cheng Xin on the shoulder lightly, "But, it's not your fault, it really isn't your fault."

The next day, Cheng Xin did something that even she couldn't understand: she went to see Wade.

Thomas Wade, who was sentenced to 30 years after the attempted murder, has just moved to Charleville, Australia.

When Cheng Xin saw Wade, he was working, sealing the windows of a simple room used as a warehouse with plywood.One of his sleeves was empty, and in this day and age it would have been easy to attach a prosthetic arm that functioned more or less like a normal arm, and for some reason he didn't do that.

Two male prisoners who were obviously also from the Yuan Dynasty whistled frivolously at Cheng Xin, but they immediately became honest when they saw the person Cheng Xin was looking for, and they all hurriedly lowered their heads to work, as if they were a little afraid of their actions just now.

After approaching Wade, Cheng Xin was a little surprised to find that even though he was serving his sentence, he was still in such a difficult place, but he was much neater than the last time she saw him. His beard was clean-shaven and his hair combed. Neat and tangible.Prisoners in this era no longer wear prison uniforms, but his white shirt is the cleanest here, even cleaner than those three prison guards.With a few nails in his mouth, he pressed a nail into the plywood with his left hand at a time, and then picked up the hammer to drive the nails in neatly and forcefully.He glanced at Cheng Xin, the indifference on his face remained unchanged, and he continued to work in silence.

Cheng Xin knew from the first time she saw this man that he hadn't given up, his ambitions and ideals, his insidiousness, and many other things that Cheng Xin had never known, and he hadn't given up on anything.

Cheng Xin stretched out a hand to Wade. He glanced at her, put down the hammer, and put the nail he was biting into her hand into her hand. Then she handed a nail, and he nailed it until it reached Cheng Xin's hand. All the nails were hammered before he broke the silence.

"Let's go." Wade said, and grabbed another handful of nails from the toolbox. This time, he didn't hand it to Cheng Xin, nor bit it in his mouth, but put it on the ground beside his feet.

"I, I just..." Cheng Xin didn't know what to say for a while.

"I'm talking about getting out of Australia and leaving before the immigration is complete." Wade whispered, his lips barely moving when he said this, his eyes were fixed on the plywood being nailed, and anyone who was a little further away would think he was concentrating on his work live.

Like so many times three centuries ago, Wade stunned Cheng Xin with a short sentence.Every time, he seemed to throw her a dense ball of thread, and she had to disassemble the thread piece by piece to understand the complex meaning.But this time, Vader's words made her shudder immediately, and she didn't even have the guts to untie the ball of thread.

"Let's go." Wade said without giving Cheng Xin time to ask questions, and then turned to her, briefly showing his characteristic icy smile, "This time I want you to leave here."

On the way back to Warburton, Cheng Xin saw the densely packed simple houses on the ground, and saw the dense crowd busy in the open space between the houses.Suddenly, she felt her perspective change, as if looking at all this from outside the world, and all this suddenly became like a bustling ant nest.This weird perspective put her in a kind of inexplicable fear. For a while, the bright sunshine in Australia also brought the gloom of cold rain.

In the third month of immigration, more than one billion people have migrated to Australia.At the same time, the governments of various countries have gradually moved to major cities in Australia, and the United Nations has moved to Sydney.Migration is led by national governments, and the United Nations Committee on Migration coordinates migration action around the world.In Australia, immigrants are gathered by country and region, so that Australia has become a miniature version of the earth world. Except for the big cities, the original place names have been abandoned and replaced by the names of various countries and the names of big cities in various countries. Now, New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai are nothing but refugee camps made up of simple houses.

Neither the United Nations nor the governments of various countries have any experience in such large-scale population migration and gathering, and various enormous difficulties and dangers soon emerged.

The first is the housing problem. Immigration leaders have found that even if all the existing building materials in the world are moved to Australia, it can only meet the housing needs of less than one-fifth of the final immigrants. At this time, the so-called housing is only One bed per person.When the number of immigrants reached [-] million, there were not enough materials to build simple houses. We could only build super-large tents, the size of a stadium, each of which could accommodate tens of thousands of people. However, under such extremely poor living environment and sanitary conditions , Large-scale infectious diseases may break out at any time.

Food shortages began to appear. Because the original agricultural factories in Australia were far from meeting the needs of immigrants, food had to be transported from all over the world. With the increase of the immigrant population, the process of food transportation and distribution to immigrants became more and more complicated. long.

But the most dangerous thing is the loss of control of the immigrant society.In the immigrant area, the hyper-information society has completely disappeared. People who have just arrived are still messing with the walls, small bedside tables, and even their own clothes, but they immediately find that these are dead things without IT, even basic things. Communication cannot be guaranteed, and people can only know what is happening in the world from extremely limited channels. For these people from the hyper-information society, it is like blindness.Under such circumstances, the previous leadership methods of modern governments have failed. They do not know how to maintain the operation of such an overcrowded society.

At the same time, human immigration in space is also going on.

There were approximately 150 million people in space when the deterrence was suspended.These people who have lived in space for a long time are divided into two parts, of which about 50 people belong to the Earth International, living in space cities, space stations and moon bases in Earth orbit; the other part belongs to the solar system fleet, distributed in Mars bases, Jupiter Base and roam the solar system in space battleships.

The vast majority of astronauts belonging to the Earth International are within the orbit of the moon and can only return to the ground, immigrating to Australia like everyone on the earth.

About 100 million people belonging to the solar system fleet all immigrated to the fleet's Mars base, which is the second reservation designated by Trisolaran for human beings.

Since the doomsday battle, the solar system fleet has never recovered to such a large scale. When the deterrence was suspended, the fleet only had more than 100 star-class warships.Although the technology is developing, the speed of the battleship has not increased, and it seems that nuclear fusion propulsion has reached its limit.Now, the overwhelming advantage of the Trisolaran Fleet is not only that they can reach the speed of light, but the most frightening thing is that they can jump to the speed of light without accelerating at all; and if human warships consider fuel consumption to ensure their return, they can accelerate to the speed of light. It may take a year for the highest 15.00% of the speed of light, which is as slow as a snail compared with the Trisolaran spacecraft.

When the deterrence was suspended, the more than 100 star-class warships of the solar system fleet would have had a chance to escape into outer space. If all the warships fled at full speed in different directions at that time, it would be difficult for the eight water droplets in the solar system to catch up to them.But none of the warships did this, and they all returned to Mars orbit according to Sophon’s order. The reason is simple: immigration to Mars is different from the migration to Australia on Earth, and 100 million people can still continue to be civilized and comfortable in the closed city of the Mars base. life, because the original design of the base can accommodate so many people to live for a long time.This is undoubtedly a better choice than wandering in outer space forever.

The Trisolaran world is very vigilant to the humans on Mars. Two water droplets returned from the Kuiper belt have been hovering over the cities of Mars for a long time, because unlike the immigrants on Earth, although the solar system fleet has been basically disarmed, the humans in the Mars base still control Modern technology, otherwise the city cannot survive.However, humans on Mars absolutely dare not take risks like building a gravitational wave transmitter. It is impossible to build such a huge thing without being noticed by Sophon. The horror of the doomsday battle half a century ago is vivid in my mind, and Martian cities are as fragile as eggshells , the decompression caused by a single impact of a water droplet may bring everyone into a catastrophe.

The colonization in space was completed in three months, half a million people in lunar orbit returned to Earth and entered Australia, and one million people in the solar system fleet emigrated to Mars.At this time, there is no one in the space of the solar system, only empty space cities and battleships floating in the orbits of the earth, Mars and Jupiter, floating in the desolate asteroid belt, like a silent metal tomb, burying human beings. Glory and dreams.

At Elder Freys' home, Cheng Xin could only learn about the situation outside from the TV.On this day, she saw a live broadcast of a food distribution scene on TV. This was a holographic broadcast, which gave her a sense of being there.Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer TV broadcasts that require ultra-high-speed bandwidth. They only appear during important news, and usually only receive 2D images.

The location of the broadcast was Carnegie on the edge of the desert. A giant tent appeared on the holographic screen, like a half dome lying flat in the desert, and the crowd coming out of it was like egg whites overflowing after the dome broke.People flocked out because of the food transport aircraft. This kind of transport aircraft with large lifting force and small volume generally transports food by hoisting, that is, the food packaged into a large cube is hoisted under the fuselage for transportation.There were two transport planes coming this time. The first transport plane had just put the hoisted food stacks on the ground, and the crowd rushed in like a flood that broke the embankment, and soon surrounded and submerged the food stacks. The cordon formed by ten soldiers was about to collapse, and the staff responsible for distributing food were scared and climbed back into the transport plane from a long ladder. The pile of food was like a snowball thrown into muddy water. The melt is gone.The camera zooms in on the ground, and it can be seen that the people who snatched the food are facing the scramble of the people around them. The bags of food are like rice grains in an ant colony, and they are quickly torn to pieces. ground stuff.Another transport plane placed the second food pile in a space a little farther away. This time, there were no soldiers on guard at all, and the personnel in charge of distribution did not dare to get off the plane. The crowd immediately swarmed like iron filings attracted by a magnet. , and soon surrounded the food stacks in the middle.

At this time, a green figure flew out of the transport plane, slender and vigorous, and landed lightly on the food stack from a height of more than ten meters.The surging crowd suddenly froze, and people saw Sophon standing on the top of the pile, she was still dressed in the same camouflage uniform, and the black scarf around her neck fluttered in the hot wind, which further brought out the whiteness of her face.

"Line up!" Sophon shouted to the crowd.

When the camera zooms in, you can clearly see Tomoko's beautiful eyes glaring at the crowd. Her voice is so loud that it can be heard clearly over the roar of the transport plane.But the crowd below were only stunned by her appearance for a short while, and soon became agitated again, and people near the food stacks began to cut the outer net bags to get food.Then the commotion intensified, and the crowd boiled up again, and a few bold ones began to climb to the top of the pile regardless of Sophon's existence.

"You trash! Why don't you maintain order?!" Sophon raised his head and shouted to the transport plane hovering above. At the open door of the transport plane, there were several officials of the United Nations Migration Commission with pale faces. "Where's your army?! Where's the police?! Where's the weapons you're allowed to bring in?! What's your duty?!"

One of the people at the cabin door was the chairman of the immigration committee. He held the door tightly with one hand, and spread the other hand at Tomoko. He shook his head in a panic, expressing his helplessness.

Sophon pulled out his samurai sword from behind, swiped it three times with a movement that was almost invisible, and cut the three people who had just climbed up to the top of the pile in half.The way the three people were cut was amazingly consistent. The knife went into the left shoulder and came out of the right rib, and they were split obliquely. The six and a half human bodies flew down the pile, still in midair, and the internal organs inside had already spilled out. , together with the flying blood waterfall, fell cracklingly among the crowd.Amidst the screams and wailing of fear, Sophon jumped from the top of the stack and fell into the crowd, hacking again like lightning, killing more than a dozen people in the blink of an eye.The crowd backed away in horror, quickly clearing a space around her like a drop of dishwashing liquid on a plate of grease.The dozens of corpses in the open space were all the same as the three people in front of them. They were split obliquely from the left shoulder to the right rib, which was the fastest way to let the blood and internal organs flow out.In front of the large expanse of blood red, a part of the crowd was so frightened that they fainted to the ground.Sophon walked forward, and people ran away in panic. Her body seemed to have an invisible force field, repelling the crowd, and always keeping a circle of open space around her.She took a few steps and stopped, and the crowd froze again.

"Line up," Sophon said, this time in a low voice.

The crowd quickly turned into a long queue, as if running an array sorting program.The queue stretched all the way to the giant tent in the distance, and circled around it.

Sophon jumped back to the top of the food stack, pointed at the queue below with a bloody long knife, and said, "The era of human freedom and depravity is over. If you want to survive here, you must learn collectivism again. Regain human dignity!"

That night, Cheng Xin suffered from insomnia, so she walked out of the room gently.It was late at night, and she saw a flicker of sparks on the hall steps, where Freys was smoking.On his lap was a didgerido, an aboriginal Australian instrument made of thick hollowed-out tree branches, more than a meter long.Every night he sits here and blows for a while. "Digerido" made a deep and thick whining sound, not like music, but like the snoring of the earth. Every night, Cheng Xin and AA fell asleep in this sound.

Cheng Xin went to sit next to Freys. She liked being with the old man very much. His detachment from the reality of suffering was like an analgesic to soothe her broken heart.The old man never watches TV and doesn't care about anything that's going on on Earth.Every night, he seldom went back to his room, just sat here and fell asleep against the wooden pillars of the porch, and didn't wake up until the morning sun shone on him, even on a rainy night, he said that sleeping here was more comfortable than sleeping on the bed.He once said that if one day the bastards from the government came to take the house away, he would not go to the immigration area, and build a small grass shed in the bushes to protect him from the rain. AA said that he can't do it at his age, he said that if his ancestors can do it, he can do it.As early as the Quaternary Ice Age, his ancestors came here by rowing a canoe across the Pacific Ocean from Asia. That was 4 years ago, before Greece, Egypt, or even the shadows.He said he was a wealthy doctor in the 21st century, had his own practice in Melbourne, and had been living a comfortable modern life since the wake of the Deterrence Era, but when immigration started, something in him revived, Suddenly I felt that I was actually an animal in the earth and the jungle. I realized that there are so few things I need in life, and I felt that sleeping in the open air is very good and comfortable.

Frese said he didn't know what the sign was.

Cheng Xin looked at the immigrant area in the distance. It was already late at night, the lights there were a little sparser, and the endless simple houses showed a rare tranquility under the starlight.Cheng Xin suddenly had a strange feeling, as if she was in another immigration era, which was the immigration era in Australia five centuries ago, and the people sleeping in that bungalow were rough cowboys and horse herders, and she even smelled The smell of horse manure and pasture.Cheng Xin told Freys about this feeling.

"It wasn't so crowded back then. It was said that a white man would buy a ranch from another white man for the price of a case of whiskey, and then the buyer would ride out on a fast horse at sunrise and come back at sunset. and the land will be his."

Most of Cheng Xin's previous impressions of Australia came from the movie with the same name as this country. In the movie, the hero and heroine drove a herd of horses across the magnificent continent of Northern Australia, but that was not the immigration era, it was World War II. The era of youth is not far away, but it is already a long history now-Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in the movie should have passed away for more than two centuries.It suddenly occurred to Cheng Xin that she saw Wade working in front of the simple house not long ago, very similar to the hero in that movie.

Thinking of Vader, Cheng Xin told Frass what Vader said to her a month ago. She wanted to tell him about it a long time ago, but she was afraid of disturbing his detached state of mind.

"I know the man," said Frass. "Son, I'm sure you should listen to him, but there's no way you're leaving Australia, so don't think about it. What's the use of thinking the impossible?"

What Freys said is true, it is very difficult to get out of Australia now.It is not only water droplets that block Australia, but also the sea power of the Earth Security Force recruited by Sophon.Aircraft and ships returning from Australia to continents are immediately attacked if they are found to be carrying migrants.At the same time, as the immigration deadline is approaching, very few people are willing to go back. Although Australia is difficult, it is better than going back and dying.Sporadic and small-scale smuggling has always existed, but it is impossible for a high-profile public figure like Cheng Xin to leave like this.

However, these were not what Cheng Xin considered, no matter what, she would not leave here.

Frass didn't seem to want to talk about this topic anymore, but seeing Cheng Xin was silent in the dark, as if expecting him to express more opinions, he continued: "I'm an orthopedic surgeon, as you probably know, broken bones grow longer. After recovering, the healed fracture grows thicker than before, which is called super recovery in medicine, which means that if the human body has the opportunity to make up for some things that were lacking before, then these things may recover to a healthier level than people who do not lack them. Many. Compared with humans, they—” He pointed at the starry sky, “You know what they lacked, have they recovered in excess? To what extent? No one knows.”

Cheng Xin was shocked by these words, but Freas seemed not interested in continuing the discussion. He looked up at the night sky and slowly recited:

"All the tribes have vanished,

All spears are broken.

it's here,
We used to drink dew and eat flowers,

and you,
But a piece of gravel was thrown. "

Cheng Xin's heart was touched by this poem, just like listening to Freys playing "Digerido".

"It's a poem by an Australian Aboriginal poet in the 20th century, his name is Jack Davies."

After the old man finished speaking, he leaned against the porch pillar and snored after a while.Cheng Xin sat in the night, under the stars who were indifferent to this changing world, until the east turned pale.

Six months after migration began, half the world's population, 21 billion people, had migrated to Australia.

The hidden crisis began to break out, and the Canberra tragedy that occurred in the seventh month after the immigration began became the symbol of the beginning of a series of nightmares.

Sophon requires human beings to emigrate naked, which is also the idea proposed by the hawks in the earth world in the era of deterrence for the Trisolaran world to immigrate to the solar system.In addition to building materials and large parts for the construction of new agricultural factories, as well as necessary daily necessities and medical equipment, immigrants are not allowed to carry any military or civilian heavy equipment, and the troops of various countries going to the immigration area can only be equipped with limited light weapons for maintaining order , humanity was completely disarmed.

Except for the Australian government, who kept everything, including all the equipment of the army, navy and air force.As a result, this country that has been on the edge of international affairs since its birth has become the hegemon of the human world.

In the early days of immigration, the Australian government was beyond reproach, and they and all Australians made great efforts to resettle immigrants.However, as immigrants from all continents poured into Australia like a flood, the psychology of this country, which was once the only continent on earth, began to become unbalanced. The Australian aboriginal society was full of resentment, and the new government began to pursue a tough policy on immigration.They quickly discovered that the current advantage of the Commonwealth of Australia over the rest of the countries is similar to that of the Trisolaris over the Earth world.Most of the later immigrants were resettled in the desolate interior. The rich coastal areas like New South Wales were designated as Australia's "reserved territories" and immigration was prohibited. Canberra and Sydney were designated as "reserved cities" and immigrants were prohibited from settling. Therefore, the only big city where immigrants can live for a long time is Melbourne.The Australian government has also begun to become domineering, calling itself the patriarch of human beings, and gradually overriding the United Nations and governments of various countries.

While immigration is banned in NSW, it is difficult to stop mainland migrants from traveling.Out of the yearning for the city life that had just been bid farewell, a large number of immigrants flocked to Sydney. Although they were not allowed to settle down, wandering on the streets was better than living in immigrant villages. At least people felt that they were still in the civilized world, which made the city overcrowded.The Australian government decided to expel immigrants from the city of Sydney, and later banned foreign immigrants from entering the city. This caused conflicts between immigrants stranded in the city and the military and police, resulting in some casualties.

The incident in Sydney triggered the smoldering anger of immigrants against the Australian government. Hundreds of millions of immigrants flocked to New South Wales and flocked to Sydney.Facing the overwhelming sea of ​​people in front of them, the Australian garrisons in the states and cities fled.Tens of millions of people poured into Sydney, ransacking the city, covering a fresh animal carcass like a giant ant colony, and quickly reducing it to a white skeleton.The city of Sydney is ablaze and crimes are rampant, and it has become a terrifying forest made up of giant trees and buildings. The living conditions are not as good as those in the immigration area.

After that, the immigrant army turned its target to Canberra, more than 200 kilometers away.Since Canberra is the capital of Australia, half of the governments of the countries have also moved here after the immigration began, and the United Nations has just moved here from Sydney, so the army had to defend it.This time the conflict caused heavy casualties, more than 50 people died, most of them were not killed by the firepower of the army, but by the stampede, hunger and thirst caused by the chaos of hundreds of millions of people; In the chaos, tens of millions of people were completely cut off from food and water supplies.

Immigrant societies are also undergoing profound changes.People found that in this crowded and hungry continent, democracy has become something more terrifying than autocracy. Everyone yearns for order and a strong government. The original social system is rapidly disintegrating, and the people only hope that the government can bring them Come food, water, living space for a bed, and nothing else.The human societies gathered on this continent are like the surface of a lake in a cold current, frozen piece by piece under the solid ice of totalitarian tyranny.The words that Sophon said after killing people became mainstream slogans, and all kinds of garbage, including fascism, rose to the surface from the deep graves where they were buried and became the mainstream.The power of religion is also rapidly recovering, and a large number of people gather under different beliefs and churches. As a result, a zombie that is older than totalitarian politics—a state regime that integrates theocracy begins to emerge.

As an inevitable product of totalitarian politics, war is inevitable. Conflicts between countries have become frequent. At first, it was just for food and water, and later it developed into a planned competition for living space.After the Canberra tragedy, the Australian army has a strong deterrent force. At the request of the United Nations, they began to use force to maintain the international order. If not, an Australian version of the world war has broken out, and as someone predicted in the early 20th century As we said, the war was fought with stones.Except for Australia, the armies of various countries cannot even have cold weapons. The most common weapons are sticks made of metal brackets for construction. Even ancient swords in museums have been taken out and reused.

During these gloomy days, countless people wake up in the morning not believing that they have really returned to reality.They found that in just half a year, human society has regressed such a long distance that one foot has even stepped into the Middle Ages.

At this time, there is only one thing that supports everyone and the entire society from total collapse: the Second Trisolaran Fleet.Now, the fleet has crossed the Kuiper belt, and on clear nights, sometimes the flames of the fleet's deceleration can be seen with the naked eye.Those 410 five faint light spots are the stars of hope for human beings in Australia.People keep Sophon's promise firmly in mind, and hope that the arrival of the fleet will bring a peaceful and comfortable life to everyone on this continent. The former demon has become a saving angel and the only spiritual pillar, and people hope that it will come soon.

As the migration proceeded, cities fell into darkness at night on all continents of the earth except Australia, turning into dead ghost towns, like the lights going out one after another in a luxurious restaurant at the end of the Last Supper.

In the ninth month of immigration, the number of Australians has reached 34 billion. Due to the further deterioration of the living environment, immigration has been forced to stop.At this time, the water droplets began to attack the inhabited cities outside Australia again, and Sophon also issued another threat, saying that once the one-year deadline came, the removal of humans outside the reserve would begin immediately.Now, Australia is like a prison car that is about to drive to the road of no return. The prisoners on it have almost squeezed the car to burst, but the remaining [-] million people are still forced into it.

Tomoko also considered the enormous difficulties faced by continued immigration. The solution she proposed was to use New Zealand and some island countries in Oceania as a buffer zone for immigration.The measure worked, and another 3000 million people migrated to Australia through the buffer zone in the remaining two and a half months.

Finally, three days before the deadline, the fleet and planes carrying the last batch of 300 million immigrants departed from New Zealand for Australia one after another, and the big immigration was completed.

At this time, Australia gathered the vast majority of human beings - 41 billion people. Outside Australia, there are only about 6000 million human beings. They are divided into three parts: 800 million people in the Mars base, 100 million Earth security forces and about There are 500 million members of the Earth Resistance Movement, and a small number of people scattered all over the country who have not emigrated due to various reasons. The number cannot be counted.

The Earth Security Force is a human army recruited by Sophon to supervise the earth immigration. She promises that those who join the army will not participate in Australian immigration, and they can live freely in the world occupied by the Trisolarans in the future.After the recruitment order was issued, the registration was extremely enthusiastic. According to later statistics, a total of more than one billion applications for enlistment appeared on the Internet, of which 2000 million people participated in interviews, and finally 500 million people were recruited.These last lucky ones don't care about people's spitting and contemptuous stares, because they know that quite a few of those who spit have submitted applications.

Some people compare the Earth Security Force with the Earth Trisolaris organization three centuries ago. In fact, the nature of the two is completely different: ETO members are fighters full of conviction, while those who join the Security Force are just to avoid immigrants and live a comfortable life. That's all.

The Earth Security Force is divided into three legions of Asia, North America, and Europe, and possesses excellent equipment left over from immigration by major powers.In the early days of immigration, the behavior of the security forces was relatively restrained. They only followed Tomoko's order to supervise the progress of immigration from various countries, and at the same time protected the infrastructure of cities and regions from being damaged.However, as Australia's difficulties intensified, the progress of immigration became more and more difficult to meet Tomoko's demands. Under her orders and threats, the public security forces became more and more crazy, and they did not hesitate to use force on a large scale to force immigrants, causing chaos all over the world. Millions of deaths.Finally, when the immigration deadline passed, Tomoko issued an order to wipe out all humans outside the reserved area, and the security forces completely turned into devils.They drove flying cars with laser sniper rifles, hovered like falcons in empty cities and fields, and killed everyone they saw.

In contrast to the Vigilante, the Earth Resistance Movement is the real gold that humanity has forged in this fire.They have many branches, and their number is difficult to count, but it is estimated to be between 150 million and 200 million individuals.They are scattered in the deep mountains and underground of the city, launching guerrilla warfare with the security forces, and waiting for the final battle with the three-body invaders who set foot on the earth.Among all the resistance organizations in the occupied areas in human history, the Earth Resistance Organization has paid the greatest sacrifice, because the Security Force has the assistance of Water Drop and Sophon, and every combat operation of the Resistance Organization is close to suicide, and it also makes it impossible for them to carry out Any large-scale assembly creates conditions for the security forces to defeat them individually.

The composition of the Earth Resistance Movement is very complex, including people from all walks of life, and a large proportion of them are AD people.The six sword-bearer candidates were all commanders of the resistance movement. At the end of the emigration, three of them had died in battle, leaving only the accelerator engineer Bi Yunfeng, the physicist Cao Bin, and the former Vice Admiral Antonov. .

All members of the resistance movement know that what they are fighting is a hopeless battle. When the Trisolaran fleet arrives on Earth in the future, their entire army will be wiped out.These ragged and hungry warriors in the deep mountains and sewers of cities are fighting for the last dignity of human beings. Their existence is the only bright color in this unbearable history of human beings.

In the early morning, Cheng Xin was awakened by a bang.I didn't sleep well that night, and there were constant voices outside, all of whom were new immigrants.Cheng Xin suddenly realized that it was no longer the season for thunder, and after the rumbling sound, the outside suddenly became quiet.She shivered involuntarily, sat up suddenly from the bed, put on her clothes and went to the door.Fraser, who was sleeping on the porch, nearly tripped her, and the old man looked up at her sleepily, then leaned back against the post and went back to sleep.

At this time, it was just dawn, and there were many people outside, all looking at Dongfang nervously, discussing something in a low voice.Cheng Xin followed their gazes and saw a column of smoke rising from the horizon, very black and thick, as if a hole had been torn open in the sky where the white morning light was shining.

Cheng Xin learned from people's mouths that the security forces started a large-scale air strike on Australia an hour ago, and the main targets were power systems, ports and large transportation equipment.That plume of smoke came from a nuclear fusion power plant that had just been destroyed five kilometers away.People looked up at the sky in horror again, and there were five snow-white tracks in the blue-black sky in the early morning, which were bombers of the security forces passing by.

Cheng Xin turned and went back to the room. AA was also up and was turning on the TV, trying to find out what happened from the news.Cheng Xin didn't watch TV, she didn't need any more information.For nearly a year, she kept praying that this moment would not happen, her nerves became extremely sensitive, and she could make an accurate judgment as long as there was a little sign; in fact, when she heard the bang from a distance in her sleep, she basically had already passed away. Determine what happened.

Vader was right again.

Cheng Xin realized that she was already prepared for this moment, knowing what to do without thinking.She told AA that she would go to the city hall, and then went out and pushed a bicycle from the yard, which is the most convenient means of transportation in the immigration area.At the same time, she also brought some food and water, knowing that most things could not be done, and she had to walk a longer distance.

Cheng Xin rode to the city hall along the crowded road.All countries have moved their administrative systems at all levels to the immigrant districts. The immigrants in Cheng Xin's district are mainly from a medium-sized city in Northwest China. The city is named and also led by the original municipal government.The town hall is just two kilometers away in a large tent, the white peak of which can be seen from here.

For two consecutive weeks of surprise immigration, newcomers kept pouring in. Immigrants were no longer allocated according to the original administrative districts as before, but were filled wherever they were free. More and more people from other urban areas came in. Those who come in are all from other provinces, even foreigners.In the last two months, Australia has received another [-] million people, and the immigration area is already overcrowded.

There are huge crowds of people on both sides of the road, and all kinds of items are in a mess.The newly arrived immigrants had no shelter and could only sleep outside. Most people were startled by the explosion just now, and looked anxiously at the direction of the smoke column.The morning light shrouded everything in a gloomy dark blue, and in this dark blue, people's faces were even paler.Cheng Xin had that weird feeling of looking at the ant's nest from a high place again. Walking through the vast expanse of pale faces, she subconsciously felt that the sun would never rise again.A burst of nausea and weakness hit her, she stopped the car, leaned against the side of the road and retched, vomiting until tears flowed out of her stomach before she calmed down.She heard a child crying nearby, looked up, and saw a mother sitting in a pile of blankets on the side of the road holding the child, her hair was disheveled and her face was haggard, she was scratched by the child, she was motionless, she looked at the east dully, the morning light made her His eyes were bright, but there was nothing but bewilderment and numbness.

Cheng Xin thought of another mother, beautiful, healthy, full of vitality, who put the lovely baby in her arms in front of the United Nations Building, and called herself the Holy Mother... Where are she and that child now?

When they got to the big tent of the city hall, Cheng Xin had to get out of the car and squeeze through the crowd.There are usually a lot of people here, and they all come to ask for accommodation and food, but now these gathered people may be here to confirm what happened.When passing through the military police cordon in front of the gate, Cheng Xin explained who she was and was allowed to pass through. The officer could not confirm her identity and let her pass after scanning her ID card.When he was sure who she was, his eyes made Cheng Xin unforgettable. Those eyes said:

Why did we choose you in the first place?

After entering the city hall, Cheng Xin regained some feeling of the super-information age. She saw many holographic information windows floating in the wide space of the big tent, floating above numerous officials and staff.These people had obviously been up all night, and they all looked exhausted, but they were also very busy.Many departments are concentrated here, which looks very crowded, reminding Cheng Xin of the stock trading hall on Wall Street in the [-]st century AD.People click and write on the information window floating in front of them, and then the window will automatically float to the next person who processes the program. These glowing windows are like a group of ghosts from the era that has just passed away, and this is their last gathering place.

In a small office partitioned off with plywood, Cheng Xin met the mayor.He is very young, and his feminine and delicate face is full of exhaustion like others, and there is also a hint of confusion and trance.The burden in front of them is obviously not something their fragile generation can bear.There is a large information window on the wall, which shows a photo of a city. Most of the buildings in that city are traditional ground shapes, with only a few tree-shaped hanging buildings, showing that the city is medium in size.Cheng Xin noticed that the picture was dynamic, there were vehicles flying by in mid-air from time to time, the time seemed to be early in the morning, everything seemed to be seen from the window of the office, it might be the city where he lived and worked before immigrating.Seeing Cheng Xin, he also showed that "why did we choose you" look, but still behaved very politely, asking Cheng Xin if he needed his help.

"I need to contact Sophon." Cheng Xin said bluntly.

The mayor shook his head, but the surprise at Cheng Xin's request dispelled some of his fatigue. He seemed to be more serious about the matter, "It's impossible. First of all, it's impossible for departments at our level to contact her directly. No, no one knows which continent she is in now. Besides, it is very difficult to communicate with the outside world now, our connection with the province has just been cut off, and the power here may soon be cut off. "

"Can you take me to Canberra?"

"I can't provide a plane, but I can send you a ground vehicle, but you know, it may be slower than walking. Ms. Cheng, I strongly advise you not to leave. It's very messy and dangerous everywhere. The city is being bombed. , we are relatively peaceful here."

Because there is no wireless power supply system, flying cars cannot be used in the immigration area, only ground vehicles and aircraft can be used, but now the ground roads are difficult to pass.

As soon as Cheng Xin walked out of the city hall, another explosion was heard, and a new column of smoke rose from another direction, and the crowd turned from restlessness to commotion.She squeezed through and found her bicycle.She decided to ride a bicycle to the provincial government more than 50 kilometers away, and contact Tomoko from there. If that didn't work, she would find a way to go to Canberra.

In any case, it was the last thing she could do, and whatever the outcome, she had to do it.

The crowd suddenly fell silent, and a wide information display window appeared above the city hall, almost as wide as the big tent.This window has also appeared before, and it is used by the city government to release important information.The window wobbled a bit due to voltage fluctuations, but the image it displayed was still clear against the dark sky background in the early hours of the morning.

The image shown in the air is of Canberra's Parliament House, which was completed in 1988 but is still known as the New Parliament Building until now.From a distance, the building looks like a huge bunker built against a mountain. Above it is a flagpole that may be the tallest flagpole on earth. The flagpole with a height of more than 80 meters is supported in the air by four giant steel beams that symbolize stability. , but now it looks like the skeleton of a big tent.The flagpole now flies the flag of the United Nations, which has been based in Canberra since the unrest in Sydney.

Cheng Xin's heart seemed to be grasped by a giant hand. She knew that the final judgment day had come.

The camera switches to the parliament hall inside the building, which is already full of people. All the heads of Earth International and Fleet International are gathered here. This is the United Nations General Assembly urgently called by Sophon.

Tomoko stood on the rostrum. She was still wearing a camouflage uniform and a black scarf, but she did not bring a samurai sword.Over the past year, the glamorous coldness on her face has disappeared, and she looks radiant.She bowed to the venue, and Cheng Xin saw the shadow of the gentle tea ceremony woman two years ago again.

"Immigration is over!" Sophon bowed again, "Thank you everyone, thank you all! This is a great feat, which can be compared with the departure of primitive humans from Africa tens of thousands of years ago. A new era of two civilizations has begun!"

At this time, everyone in the venue raised their heads nervously, and there was another explosion outside, and the three long chandeliers above the venue shook, and all the shadows also shook, as if the building was crumbling.Tomoko's voice continued:
"Before the great Trisolaran fleet brings you a wonderful new life, all of you will have to go through a difficult three months. I hope that humanity will perform as well as this emigration!"

"Now I declare: The Australian reservation is completely isolated from the outside world. The seven strong-interaction space probes and the Earth Security Force will impose a strict blockade on this continent. Anyone who attempts to leave Australia will be regarded as the territory of the Trisolaran world. and resolutely wipe out the invaders!"

"The de-threatization of the earth will continue. During these three months, the reserve must be in a state of low-tech agricultural society, and the use of any modern technology, including electricity, is prohibited. As you have seen, the security forces are systematically dismantle all power generating facilities in Australia."

People around Cheng Xin exchanged glances, and everyone hoped that others would help them grasp the meaning of Sophon's last sentence, because it was too unbelievable.

"This is a massacre!" Someone in the venue shouted hoarsely, and all the shadows were still shaking, like corpses on the gallows.

This is carnage.

Originally, it was not unimaginable for 42 billion people to live in Australia. After the immigration, the population density of Australia was more than 500 people per square kilometer, which was not much higher than the population density of Japan before immigration.

In the previous assumption, the existence of human beings in Australia was based on high-efficiency agricultural factories. During the process of immigration, a large number of agricultural factories also migrated to Australia, and some of them have been reassembled.In agricultural factories, genetically modified crops grow dozens of times faster than traditional crops, but natural light cannot provide enough energy for this growth, and only artificially generated super-strong light can be used, which requires Lots of electricity.

Once the power is cut off, in the cultivation tanks of these agricultural factories, those crops that can absorb ultraviolet rays and even X-rays for photosynthesis will rot within a day or two.

The existing grain reserves are only enough for 42 billion people to last for one month.

"Your understanding makes me unable to understand." Tomoko showed a sincerely bewildered expression to the person who shouted "slaughter".

"What about the food?! Where does the food come from?!" Someone shouted again, their fear of Sophon had disappeared, leaving only extreme despair.

Sophon looked around all the people in the hall, "Food? Isn't this all food? Everyone look around you, there are all food, living food."

Sophon said this very calmly, as if he was really reminding people of the forgotten granary.

No one spoke, a long-planned extermination plan has reached its final step, and it is too late to say anything now.

Tomoko continued: "In the coming competition for survival, most of the people will be eliminated. When the fleet arrives three months later, there will be 3000 to 5000 million people left on this continent. Start a civilized and free life on earth. The fire of earth civilization will not be extinguished, but it can only maintain a flame, like an ever-burning lamp in a mausoleum."

The Commonwealth of Australia Parliament Hall was built in imitation of the British Parliament Hall. The layout is a bit strange. There is a circle of high-rise auditoriums around it. The parliamentary seats where the heads of state are located in the middle seem to be placed in a big pit. Now, people there must feel that they are in the In a grave about to be filled.

"Survival is a kind of luck. It was like this on the earth in the past, and it's like this everywhere in this cold universe. But I don't know when, human beings have an illusion that survival has become something that is within easy reach. This is you The root cause of failure. The flag of evolution will once again be raised in this world and you will fight to survive. I hope everyone in this room is among those last 5000 million people. I hope you can eat food and not be Food eaten."

……

"Ah—" A woman's scream came from the crowd not far from Cheng Xin, piercing the morning sky like a sharp knife, but it was immediately swallowed up by a dead silence.

Cheng Xin felt dizzy, she didn't realize that she fell down, but saw the sky squeeze the big tent and the information display window down, occupying her entire field of vision, and then the ground touched her back, as if the earth was behind her Just like standing upright.The morning sky is like a dark ocean, and the thin clouds that are reflected red by the rising sun are like blood floating on the sea.Then a dark spot appeared in the center of her field of vision, expanding rapidly like a sheet of paper unrolled over a candle being charred, until finally blackness covered everything.She fainted for a short time, and quickly found the ground with her hands, which was soft sand.She propped herself up on the ground and grabbed her left arm with her right hand to make sure she regained her senses, but the world disappeared and there was only darkness.Cheng Xin opened her eyes wide, but she couldn't see anything except the darkness—she was blind.

All kinds of voices surround her, and she doesn't know which ones come from reality and which ones are hallucinations.There are footsteps like tides, screams and cries, and many strange howls that I can't distinguish, like a strong wind blowing through the dry forest.

Someone running past knocked her down, and she struggled to sit up again, in the darkness, there was still darkness in front of her eyes, darkness as thick as asphalt.She turned to what she believed to be the east, but even in her imagination she could not see the rising sun, but a great black wheel rising there, shedding black light on the world.

In this boundless darkness, she seemed to see a pair of eyes, those black eyes merged with the darkness, but she could feel its existence, and feel its gaze on her.Are those Yun Tianming's eyes?I have fallen into the abyss, and I should be able to see him.She heard Yun Tianming calling her name, and tried her best to drive this illusion out of her mind, but the voice persisted over and over again.She finally confirmed that the voice came from reality, a young man's voice, the feminine male voice of this era.

"Are you Dr. Cheng Xin?"

She nodded, or felt herself nodding.

"What happened to your eyes? Can't you see?"

"who are you?"

"I'm the commander of a special unit of the Security Forces. Tomoko sent us into Australia to pick you up."

"Where to go?"

"You can go wherever you want, and she will arrange your life. Of course, she said it's up to you to do it voluntarily."

At this moment, Cheng Xin noticed another voice, which she thought was also a hallucination.It was the roar of a helicopter.Humans have mastered anti-gravity, but they cannot be put into practical use due to the huge energy consumption. Most of the aircraft in the atmosphere are still of the traditional rotor type.She felt a rush of air, confirming that there was indeed a helicopter hovering nearby.

"Can I talk to Tomoko?"

Someone stuffed something into her hand, it was a mobile phone, she put the phone to her ear, and immediately heard Tomoko's voice:
"Hello, the sword bearer?"

"I'm Cheng Xin, I've been looking for you."

"Why do you want me? Do you still think you are the savior?"

Cheng Xin shook her head slowly, "No, I never thought that way...I just want to save two people, is this the head office?"

"Which two?"

"Ai AA and Freys."

"Is that your twittering little friend and that native old man? That's why you're looking for me?"

"Yes, let the people you send take them away, let them leave Australia and live in freedom."

"It's easy. What about you?"

"You don't have to worry about me."

"I think you see what's going on around you."

"No, my eyes can't see anything."

"You mean you're blind? You shouldn't be short of nourishment, are you?"

Cheng Xin was a little surprised just now, Sophon knew about AA, but how could he also know about Freys?The three of them have indeed been given enough rations throughout the year, Freys's house has not been commandeered like other locals' houses, and since she and AA have moved in, no one has been harassing here pass her.Cheng Xin always thought that it was the local government taking care of her, but only now did she realize that Sophon had been caring for her.Of course Cheng Xin knew that it must be a group controlling Sophon four light-years away, but like everyone else, she always regarded her as an individual, a woman.

This woman who is killing 42 billion people cares about her alone.

"If you stay there, someone else will eat you in the end," Sophon said.

"I know." Cheng Xin replied flatly.

There seemed to be a sigh, "Well, there is a Sophon who will always be near you, and if you change your mind or need any help, just say so and I'll hear you."

Cheng Xin was silent, and finally didn't say thank you.

Someone grabbed her arm, it was the security force commander, "I just received an order to take those two away, don't worry, Dr. Cheng Xin. You'd better leave, this is my personal request, here is very It's going to be hell on earth."

Cheng Xin shook her head, "Let's go. Do you know where they are? Thank you."

She listened intently to the sound of the helicopter, and her sense of hearing became so acute after she was blind, almost like a third eye.She heard the helicopter take off, hovering again at Freys' house two kilometers away, and lifted off again a few minutes later, fading away.

Cheng Xin closed her eyes in relief, but it was the same as opening them with only darkness.Now, her torn heart at last calmed in a pool of blood, the darkness became a kind of protection, because beyond this darkness was a more terrifying place, and there was emerging something that made the cold feel cold and made the darkness feel colder. feel black.

The surrounding commotion became violent, footsteps, collisions, gunshots, cursing, screaming, screaming, crying... Has it started to eat people?It shouldn't be so fast, Cheng Xin believes that even after three months, when food is completely cut off, most people won't eat people.

So most people will be eliminated.

It doesn't matter whether the remaining 5000 million people are still human or turned into something else, the human being as a concept is about to disappear.

Now, human history can be summed up in one sentence: out of Africa, walked for 7 years, and finally entered Australia.

Human beings have returned to the starting point in Australia, but it is impossible to start again, and the journey is over.

With the sound of the baby crying, Cheng Xin really wanted to hold that little life in her arms, and she thought of the baby she held in front of the United Nations Building two years ago, it was soft and warm, and the child's smile was so sweet.Maternal love broke Cheng Xin's heart, she was afraid that the children would be hungry.

【威慑纪元最后10分钟，62年11月28日16:17:34至16:27:58，奥尔特星云外，“万有引力”号和“蓝色空间”号】

When the alarm of the water droplet attack appeared, only one person on the "Gravity" was relieved. He was James Hunter, the oldest person on board, already 78 years old, and people called him Old Hunter.

Half a century ago, at Fleet Headquarters orbiting Jupiter, the 27-year-old Hunter accepted his mission from the Chief of Staff.

"Send you to 'Gravity' as a catering controller." The chief of staff said.

This position is actually the former cook, but now all the cooking work on the battleship is done by artificial intelligence, and the catering controller is only responsible for operating the cooking system, mainly inputting the recipes and staple foods for each meal.The highest rank in this position is sergeant, and Hunter has just been awarded the rank of colonel, the youngest person in the fleet to achieve this rank.But Hunter didn't feel surprised, he knew what he was going to do.

"You are a lurker, and your task is to monitor the gravitational wave launch pad. Once there is a danger that the battleship's high-level command system cannot control, destroy the launch controller. When you encounter an extraordinary situation, you can take whatever you think is appropriate."

The gravitational wave launch system of the "Gravity" includes an antenna and a launch controller. The antenna is the hull itself and cannot be destroyed, but as long as the launch controller is destroyed, the entire system will fail.According to the conditions on the "Gravity" and "Blue Space", it is impossible to refit a new launch controller.

Hunter knew that lurkers like himself had also existed in ancient nuclear submarines.At that time, whether it was in the strategic nuclear submarines of the Soviet Union or NATO, there were some soldiers and low-level officers in inconspicuous positions who shouldered such a mission, and were always ready when someone tried to control the launch of submarines and intercontinental missiles. direction to take decisive action to stop the conspiracy.

"You have to closely monitor all movements on the ship, and your mission also requires you to keep abreast of the situation of all duty cycles, so you cannot hibernate during the entire mission."

"I don't know if I can live to be more than 100 years old."

"You only need to live until you are more than 70 years old. At that time, the half-life of the degenerate vibrating strings in the hull will expire, and the gravitational wave emission system of the 'Gravity' will fail, so your mission will be completed. Calculated, You only need to stay awake for the first half of the voyage, and you can hibernate for the entire return voyage. However, this is still a very dedicated mission, which requires almost your whole life, and you can completely refuse."

"I accept."

The chief of the general staff asked a question that generals in bygone eras would not have asked: "Why?"

"During the Battle of Doomsday, I was an intelligence analysis officer of the Strategic Intelligence Bureau stationed on the 'Newton'. Before the battleship was destroyed by water droplets, I escaped in a lifeboat. It was the smallest lifeboat on the ship, but it could also sit on it. Five people, there was a group of people moving this way, but I drove it away alone..."

"I know this matter. The military court has already concluded that you were not at fault. The spaceship exploded less than ten seconds after your lifeboat sailed out. You don't have time to wait for others."

"Yes, but... I feel now that I was better off with the 'Newton'."

"Yeah, failure is so deep, we all feel that we should not have survived. But this time, you have the potential to save billions of people."

The two were silent for a long time, and outside the window, Jupiter's Great Red Spot stared at them like a giant eye.

"Before I explain the specific details of the mission, I first want you to understand one thing: the trigger of the action in the mission should be extremely sensitive. When the degree of danger cannot be judged, you should first choose to destroy the operation. Even if you misuse it, it is not your responsibility. .In operation, without regard to collateral damage, the destruction of the entire ship is acceptable if necessary."

After setting sail, Hunter was placed on the first round of duty for a period of five years.For five years, he had been secretly taking a small blue pill.At the end of his duty, he was diagnosed with cerebrovascular coagulation disorder, also known as hibernation disorder, during the physical examination before hibernation. Failure to do so can cause severe brain damage upon waking up, and it is the only condition found to affect hibernation so far.When Hunter was diagnosed, he noticed that the people around him seemed to be attending his funeral.

So Hunter stayed awake throughout the voyage, and everyone on the ship who woke up again found that he was a little older.He told every group of newly awakened people anecdotes about the ten years after their hibernation, and the cook became the most popular person on the ship, both officers and soldiers liked him.Gradually, he became a symbol of this long voyage.No one would have guessed that this generous and easy-going cook was an officer at the same level as the captain, and the only person other than the captain who had the authority and ability to destroy the entire ship when a crisis occurred.

Hunter had several girlfriends during his first 30 years, and he had the enviable advantage of hanging out with girls who were on duty at different times.But decades later, as he ages, the women who are still young see him as just a friend and a fun guy.

In this half century, the only woman Hunter loved was Reiko Akihara, but most of the time, the distance between him and her was greater than tens of millions of astronomical units, because Reiko Akihara was on the "Blue Space" Aboard, is a Captain Navigator.

The pursuit of Blue Space was the only enterprise between Trisolaris and Earth that truly shared a common purpose, since the lone ship heading deep into space was a common threat to both worlds.In the process of luring the two ships that survived the dark battle to return, the "Blue Space" knew the state of the dark forest in the universe. If one day they mastered the ability to broadcast in the universe, the consequences would be disastrous.The pursuit of the "Blue Space" received the full cooperation of Trisolarans. Before entering Sophon's blind spot, "Gravity" could receive real-time images of the interior of the pursuit target from Sophon.

In decades, Hunter was first promoted from sergeant to sergeant, and later promoted to officer in an exceptional manner, and successively promoted from warrant officer to captain. Color Space" image inside.However, he has the backdoor instructions of almost all systems on the ship, and often shrinks the images from the "Blue Space" to the size of a palm to watch in his cabin.He saw that it was a small society completely different from the "Gravity", highly militarized and centralized, with strict and cold discipline, and people were spiritually integrated into the collective.The first time he saw Reiko was the second year after setting sail, and Hunter was immediately fascinated by this beautiful oriental girl. He often watched her for hours on end, feeling that he was even more familiar with her life than his own.But only one year later, Reiko went into hibernation, and it was 30 years after she woke up to be on duty again. At this time, she was still young, and Hunter had changed from a young man to a man in his sixties.On that Christmas night, he returned to his cabin after the wild party and called up the real-time view of the "Blue Space".The first thing displayed was the complex overall structure diagram of the spaceship. He clicked on the position of the navigation control center, and Reiko who was on duty appeared on the displayed screen.She was facing the wide holographic star map, on which there was a striking red line marking the track of "Blue Space", and behind it was a white line that almost coincided with the red line, which was the track of "Gravity".Hunter noticed that there was a certain error between the white line and the real route of the "Gravity", and the distance between the two ships was still several thousand astronomical units. At such a distance, it was extremely difficult to locate such a small target as the spaceship. Difficult, that route may just be their guess, but the distance between the two ships is estimated very accurately.This time Hunter purposely zoomed in on the picture. At this moment, Reiko in the picture suddenly turned to face him, showing a moving smile and saying, "Merry Christmas!" Of course Hunter knew that Reiko wasn't talking to him, she She was congratulating all the pursuers, of course she knew that she was being watched by Tomoko, but she couldn't see this side.In any case, this was Hunter's happiest moment.Due to the large number of personnel on the "Blue Space", Reiko's duty time was not long, and she hibernated again after a year.Hunter looked forward to the day when he would meet Reiko directly, when Gravity caught up with Blue Space.He thought sadly that even if everything went well, he would be almost eighty by then.All he wanted was to say "I love you" to her and watch her go to trial.

During the half-century voyage, Hunter has been faithfully performing his duties. He has been observing possible abnormal situations on the ship all the time, constantly rehearsing action plans in various crises in his mind.But the task itself did not bring him any pressure, because he knew in his heart that there was still the most reliable insurance that always accompanied the "Gravity".Like many people on the ship, he often looks at the water droplets sailing in formation from the porthole, but the water droplets in space have more meaning in his eyes than others.He knew in his heart that once there was an abnormality on the "Universal Gravity", especially signs of rebellion and attempts to illegally control the gravitational wave emission system, the water droplets would immediately destroy the warship.Their movements are definitely faster than his. It takes no more than five seconds for the water droplets to accelerate from several thousand meters away to hit the target.

Now, Hunter's mission is nearly complete.The monitoring system shows that the main body of the gravitational wave transmitting antenna, the degenerate vibrating string that is less than ten nanometers thick but runs through the hull of the 500-meter ship is about to reach its half-life, and in less than two months, the vibration The density of the strings would drop below the baseline for normal emission of gravitational waves, and the antenna would fail completely.At that time, the "Gravity" will no longer be a gravitational wave radio station that poses a fatal threat to both worlds, but will become an ordinary interstellar spacecraft, and Hunter's mission will be completed.At that time, he will reveal his identity - he is curious whether he is facing admiration or condemnation, in any case, he will stop taking that blue pill, the cerebrovascular coagulation disorder will disappear, he will enter hibernation, wake up Live the rest of your life in a new era on Earth.But hibernation will come soon after meeting Reiko.

But the formation entered the sophon blind spot.During half a century of lurking, he had imagined hundreds of crises, and this was a relatively serious situation.The failure of the sophon makes the water drop and Trisolaris no longer able to grasp the situation inside the "Gravity" in real time, which means that once an unexpected situation occurs, the water drop cannot respond in time.This made the situation suddenly severe, and the responsibilities on Hunter's shoulders suddenly increased tenfold. The sudden pressure made him feel that his mission had just begun.

Hunter paid more attention to the various movements inside the ship. Since the "Gravity" was already in a state of full awakening, his surveillance was much more difficult.But Hunter is the only person on the ship that everyone is familiar with. He has good popularity and rich interpersonal relationships. At the same time, his easy-going personality and irrelevant position make most people dislike him. Wary, especially the soldiers and lower-level officers, told him everything he dared not say to the upper-level commanders and psychological officers, which gave Hunter an accurate grasp of the overall situation.

After entering the Sophon Blind Zone, the situation became more and more delicate. Abnormalities that rarely occurred during the half-century voyage suddenly appeared in large numbers: the ecological zone in the center of the hull was attacked by micrometeorites; more than one person claimed to have seen To the sudden opening of the bulkhead; some objects partially or completely disappeared, and then returned to their original shape after a period of time... Of all these visions, the one that impressed Hunter most was the adventure described by Lieutenant Colonel Devin, the military police commander.Devon belonged to the high-level command of the battleship. Hunter didn't have much contact with him at first, but when he saw Devon take the initiative to find the psychologist that everyone avoided, he immediately became alert.He approached Devon with a bottle of old whiskey, chatted with him, and learned about the strange thing.Of course, apart from the micrometeorite incident, the most reasonable explanation for all of this is people's hallucinations. The disappearance of sophons has induced psychological disorders in the group in some unknown way. Dr. West and those psychological officers are like this Said.Hunter's duty does not allow him to accept this statement easily. Although if psychological barriers and hallucinations are excluded, all strange things seem impossible, but Hunter's mission is to deal with the impossibility that may arise.

Compared with the huge size of the antenna, the control unit of the gravitational wave emission system is very small—it is located in a small spherical cabin at the stern of the ship. The system is completely independent and has no connection with other parts of the ship.The spherical cabin is like a reinforced safe, and no one on board, including the captain, has the password to enter. Only the sword-wielders on Earth can start the system launch.If the sword-wielder starts the gravitational wave broadcast on the earth, a beam of neutrino information will be sent to the "Gravity", and the broadcast on the spacecraft will also be launched. Of course, it takes a year for this signal to reach here from the earth.

But once the "Gravity" is hijacked, these protective measures will not be of much use.

There is a small button on Hunter's watch. When pressed, it will trigger a meltdown bomb in the spherical cabin where the launch control unit is located, which can melt all the equipment in the cabin at high temperature.What he has to do is to respond to all changes with the same, no matter what kind of crisis occurs, as long as the danger exceeds the threshold, he will press the small button to destroy the launch control unit, which will put the gravitational wave broadcasting system in an irrecoverable failure state ; Whether the situation exceeds the danger threshold is up to him to judge.

In this sense, Hunter is actually an "anti-sword holder".

But Hunter is not entirely convinced of the reliability of the button on the watch and the meltdown bomb he has never seen in the control unit compartment. He believes that the most ideal state is to guard outside the control unit compartment day and night, but doing so will Arouse suspicion, and identity concealment is one's greatest advantage.However, he still wanted to stay as close as possible to the control unit cabin, so he often went to the cosmology observatory, which was also located at the stern, so as not to arouse suspicion from others.When the whole ship is awake, Hunter’s cooking work has been done by someone, and he is very free. At the same time, because Dr. Guan Yifan is the only non-military scholar on the ship who is not subject to military discipline, it is very convenient for old Hunter to go there to meet him for a drink and chat. normal thing.Guan Yifan talked to Hunter about the universe's "Three and 30 Syndrome" while enjoying the fine wine that Hunter made with his privilege.Soon, Hunter spent most of his time in the observation station at the stern of the ship, and there was only a corridor of more than 20 meters away from the control unit cabin of the gravitational wave emission system.

Just now, Hunter came to the observation station again. On the way, he met Guan Yifan and the psychologist heading to the bow, so he decided to go directly to the control unit cabin to have a look.When it was less than ten meters away from there, the alarm of the water droplet attack appeared.Due to the limitation of his level, the information window that appeared in front of him only showed very rough content, but he knew that the water droplet was much farther away from the spaceship at this time than when it was sailing in formation, and there might be more than ten seconds left.During this last short period of time, old Hunter felt only relief and relief. No matter what the future world would be like, he had finally completed his mission. What awaited him was not death, but his own victory.

Because of this, when the alarm was lifted half a minute later, Hunter became the only person on the ship who fell into extreme fear.For his mission, the water drop attack was a relief, but the lifting of the alarm implied great danger, because it meant that in the unpredictable situation that had arisen, the gravitational wave emission system would remain intact.Without hesitation, he pressed the destroy button on the watch.

There was silence. Although the control unit compartment was tightly sealed, you should be able to feel the shock of the explosion of the internal incineration bomb. The small screen of the watch displayed: The destruction operation cannot be completed, and the destruction module has been removed.

Hunter wasn't even surprised. He had already instinctively predicted that the worst had already happened, and the luck that was only ten seconds away just now finally didn't come.

Neither of the two water droplets hit the target. They passed the "Gravity" and "Blue Space" at close range respectively, and the distance between the two spacecraft was only tens of meters.

Three minutes after the alarm was lifted, the captain of the "Gravity", Joseph Movovich, had time to gather with the senior commanders to the combat center.In the center is a huge simulated situation map. All the stars are hidden on the dark space background, and only the relative positions of the two ships and the attack route of the water droplets are marked.The two white lines with a length of 3 kilometers seem to be straight lines, but the data shows that the two long lines are actually parabolic curves, but the curvature is too small to be seen.Shortly after the two water droplets began to accelerate, their headings were constantly changing. This change was very small, but the accumulation eventually caused their respective tens of meters of error in attacking the target.Commanders recognized that this was not the course of the droplet at all.Many of them have participated in the doomsday battle, and the sharp sharp angle of the water droplets in the super-high-speed movement still makes them shudder when they think about it; but now this route looks like an external force perpendicular to the route is continuously acting on the water droplets , to push it out of the way of attack.

"Visible light video," said the captain.

The stars and the Milky Way appear, a true space image, with a time number jumping rapidly in one corner.Everyone was reliving the horror of a few minutes ago, when all they could do was wait for death, and there was no point in manoeuvring and intercepting shots.Soon the time numbers stopped, and the water droplets had already brushed the spacecraft, but were too fast to be seen by the naked eye.

Then play high-speed photography. It will take a long time to finish playing the whole process of more than ten seconds. Only the last segment is selected. Everyone can see the water droplets passing in front of the camera lens, flashing past like a dim meteor in front of the background of stars. .Then the image is replayed, and when the water drop moves to the center of the screen, it freezes, and then zooms in step by step until the water drop occupies more than half of the screen.Half a century of formation sailing made them very familiar with water droplets, which made them even more shocked by the scene in front of them: the shape of the water droplets in the picture is still the same, but the surface is no longer an absolutely smooth mirror surface, but a dull brass color. It looks rusty, as if a wizard's witchcraft to maintain youth suddenly fails, and all the traces left by three centuries of space time appear all at once. It is no longer a shiny elf, but a floating in space. old shells in the.In recent years, communication with the earth has allowed them to understand some basic principles of strong interaction materials, knowing that the surface of water droplets is in a force field generated by internal devices, which can cancel the electromagnetic force between particles, so that The strong interaction force overflows, and if the force field disappears, the strong interaction force material becomes an ordinary piece of metal.

Droplets are dead.

Next, the following monitoring records are displayed.The simulation diagram shows that after the water droplets brushed against the "Gravity", the course stopped changing slowly and turned into a straight line with a constant speed, and the mysterious external thrust disappeared.This state lasted only a few seconds, and then the water droplet began to decelerate. The calculations of the battlefield analysis system showed that the thrust that decelerated the water droplet was equal to the thrust that changed its course just now. It seemed that the same thrust source was transferred to the water droplet from perpendicular to the course. directly in front of.

In the visible light image taken by a high-power telescope, the back of the water droplet that is going away can be seen. Then, the water droplet itself is inverted by [-] degrees and begins to slow down in a state perpendicular to the course.At this moment, a mythical scene appeared—Dr. West is also present now, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he must have insisted that it was a psychological illusion—a triangular object appeared in front of the water drop, with a length of about It is twice the size, and everyone recognized it as the space shuttle on the "Blue Space" at a glance!In order to increase the thrust, a number of small fusion engines are mounted on the shuttle. Although the nozzles of the engines are facing away from the screen, you can still see the beams of light emitted by them when they are fully activated.The shuttle pressed against the water drop to slow it down, and it can be speculated that the thrust that changed the course of the water drop to save the "Gravity" just now is also the same source.After the shuttle appeared, two figures in spacesuits appeared on the other side of the water droplet. The overload caused by the deceleration made the bodies of the two people cling to the water droplet. One of them held some kind of instrument in his hand, which seemed to be Research the catch.In the past, in people's impression, the water droplet was a kind of divine thing, it seemed that it did not belong to this world, and it was impossible for people to get close to it. Before the doomsday battle, the only person who had zero-distance contact with the water droplet was wiped out.But in the immediate contact, the water drop has lost all divinity. After losing the mirror, it looks ordinary, older than the space shuttle and astronauts next to it, and has no aura. It looks like an antique or something collected by the latter. scrap.The shuttle and astronauts only appeared for a few seconds before disappearing, and the dead droplet was once again floating alone in space, but still slowing down, indicating that the shuttle was still there pushing it, just invisible.

"Can they destroy water droplets?!" someone exclaimed.

Captain Movovich only thought of one thing in his first reaction. Just like Hunter when the alarm was cleared, he did not hesitate for a moment and pressed a button on his watch, which was the same watch as Hunter's. This time, the error message is displayed in a red info window that pops up in the air:

The destroy operation could not be completed, the destroy module has been removed.

The captain turned around and rushed out of the combat center, and rushed to the stern of the ship, followed by other officers.

The first person on the "Gravity" to reach the gravitational wave emission control unit compartment was Old Hunter, and he did not have the authority to enter this compartment, so he planned to disconnect the control unit from the antenna hull first, so that the gravitational wave emission could be temporarily activated. If the system fails, try to destroy the control unit in the cabin.

But someone is already there.

Hunter drew his pistol and pointed it at the man—the man was wearing the Lieutenant's uniform from the Gravity, which was different from the Space Force uniform he was supposed to be wearing from the Battle of Armageddon, probably stolen from the ship.The other party was looking at the control unit cabin, and Hunter recognized him when he saw his back.

"I know Lieutenant Colonel Devon is right," Hunter said.

Major Pu Yijun, the commander of the Marine Corps of the "Blue Space", turned around. He was very young, he looked no more than 30 years old, but his face showed a sense of vicissitudes that the people on the "Gravity" did not have.He looked somewhat surprised, maybe he didn't expect someone to come so soon, maybe he didn't expect it to be Old Hunter, but he was still calm, raised his hands halfway and said, "Please listen to my explanation."

Old Hunter didn't want to listen to the explanation, he didn't want to know how this man got into the "Gravity", he didn't even want to know whether he was a man or a ghost, no matter what the truth was, the situation had reached the most critical moment, and now he just wanted to destroy the gravitational wave launch The control unit, which was his whole purpose in life, and now that this guy from the Blue Space was in his way, he fired without hesitation.

The bullet hit Park Eui-jun in the chest, and the force of the impact pushed him against the hatch behind him.Hunter's pistol fired special bullets for the interior of the spaceship, which would not cause damage to the bulkhead and internal equipment, but the lethality was obviously not as good as that of the laser gun.A few drops of blood splashed from the bullet hole in Pu Yijun's chest, but he still straightened up in weightlessness, reached into the blood-stained military uniform, and took out his gun from his right rib.Hunter fired again, still hitting the man in the chest, spattering more blood in the weightlessness.Hunter then aimed at the target's head but was unable to fire a third bullet in time.

The officers including the captain who had just arrived saw this scene: Hunter's pistol flew far away, his body was stiff, his eyes were turned upside down with only the whites of his eyes, his limbs twitched slightly; the blood in his mouth was like a fountain, The blood congealed into large and small balls scattered around in the weightlessness. Among these blood cells was a dark red object, the size of a fist, with two tail-like tubes trailing behind it—it was easy to distinguish from the blood cells due to its opacity. Come on, the thing beats rhythmically, and each beat squeezes some blood from the thin tube trailing behind, which creates a propulsion force, which makes it fly forward in weightlessness, like a swimming bird. small dark red jellyfish.

That was Hunter's heart.

During the struggle just now, Hunter's right hand slammed onto his chest first, and then desperately tore off the clothes on his chest, ripping off the coat. People could clearly see that his exposed chest was intact and without any scars.

"Immediate surgery may save him." Major Pu Yijun said with difficulty in a hoarse voice, the two bullet holes in his chest were still bleeding, "now the doctor can put the heart back without opening the chest...others Don't move around, or they'll take your heart or your brain as easily as an apple from a branch right in front of you. Gravity is occupied."

A group of heavily armed men rushed in from another corridor, most of them wearing the dark blue Marine Corps light space suits from before the Armageddon, obviously from the "Blue Space".The marines are all carrying laser submachine guns with great lethality.

The captain gestured to the surrounding officers, who silently threw their weapons. The number of people on the "Blue Space" is ten times that of the "Gravity", and there are more than 100 marines alone, who can easily control the entire ship of the "Gravity".

Nothing is unbelievable now, the "Blue Space" has become a supernatural magic warship, and the people on the "Gravity" are reliving the shock of the Doomsday battle.

There are more than 400 people suspended in the center of the spherical hall of the "Blue Space", most of them are the personnel on the "Blue Space", there are more than 200 people. More than 60 years ago, it was also here that the officers and soldiers on the "Blue Space" lined up to take an oath to accept Zhang Beihai's command, and they are basically the same people now.Due to the small number of people on duty in the waking state during regular navigation on the spacecraft, their average age is only three to five years old after more than 60 years, and most people do not feel the passage of time, the flames of the dark battle and the cold funeral in space All vividly.The rest are more than 100 people from "Gravity".In addition to the obvious difference in the colors of the military uniforms, the personnel of the two ships gathered into two groups, one large and one small, and they were wary of each other and opened a large distance.

Before the two groups of people, the senior commanders of the two ships were mixed together. The most striking of them was Colonel Chu Yan, the captain of the "Blue Space". He was 43 years old and looked younger. A scholar-type soldier, with a refined demeanor, calm and even shy in his words and deeds.But in the earth world, Chu Yan is already a legend.During the Dark Battle, it was he who ordered the air inside the "Blue Space" to be evacuated in advance, and was saved from destruction in the initial attack of the infrasonic nuclear bomb, so that in the public opinion of the earth, the "Blue Space" was the only one in the Dark Battle. Whether it was self-defense or murder is still debated.After the establishment of the Dark Forest Deterrence, he was the one who resisted all opinions and under the great pressure of the whole ship's homesickness, did not return to Earth at full speed, so that he had enough time to escape after receiving the alarm from the "Bronze Age".There are many legends about Chu Yan. For example, when the "Natural Selection" defected, he was the only captain who volunteered to set out to chase after him. There is evidence that this has ulterior motives. His real purpose is to hijack the "Blue Space " defected with the "Natural Selection", but this is only a legend.

Chu Yan said: "Most of the people on the two spacecraft are gathered here. Although there are still differences between us, we still regard everyone as a person in a common world. The world that Gravity makes together. Before we can plan the future of this world together, there is one urgent thing to accomplish."

A huge holographic display window appeared in the sky, showing a star-sparse area in space. There was a faint white mist in the center of the picture. There was a group of brush-like white straight lines in the mist, consisting of hundreds of parallel line segments. The enhancement of image processing is very eye-catching in the picture.The "brush in the fog" pattern has been familiar and even used as a trademark for more than two centuries.

"This is a track in the interstellar dust near the Trisolaran galaxy, which we observed eight days ago. Please pay attention to it."

People stared at the image, and soon discovered that the white lines had extensions that could be detected by the naked eye.

"How many times fast rewind is this?" an officer of the "Gravity" asked.

"There is no fast forward, it is the original speed."

The words caused a commotion in the crowd, like the first rainstorm falling into the bushes.

"A rough calculation, this...is close to the speed of light." The captain of the "Gravity" Movovich said, his voice was very calm, and there were too many unbelievable things in the past two days.

"Yes, the second Trisolaran fleet is sailing towards the earth at the speed of light and will arrive in four years." Chu Yan said, looking at the crowd on the "Gravity" with concern, he seemed very happy to tell them this information Uneasy, "After you set sail, the earth world fell into the dream of a prosperous world of great harmony day by day and couldn't extricate itself. It completely misjudged the situation. The Trisolaran world has been waiting, and now they have waited for their opportunity."

"Who can prove that this is not a fake?!" Someone shouted from the crowd on the "Gravity".

"I can prove it!" Guan Yifan said. He stood with the officers in front and was the only one among them not wearing military uniform. "My observation station also observed the same trajectory, but I mainly conduct large-scale cosmic I learned to observe, but I didn’t pay attention to it. After they reminded me, I called up the observation data related to this. We, the Trisolaran galaxy and the solar system form a scalene triangle, and the Trisolaran galaxy and the solar system are the longest sides. , the distance between us and the solar system is the shortest, and the length of the line between us and the Trisolaran galaxy is between the two, that is to say, the distance between us and the Trisolaran galaxy is a little closer than the solar system, and the earth will observe it in about forty days track."

Yan Yan said: "We believe that the incident on the earth has already happened. The specific time is the time when the water droplets attacked our two ships five hours ago. According to the information obtained from the 'Gravity', it is exactly the time when the two ships on the earth The handover time between the sword bearers has just been completed. This is the opportunity that Trisolarans has been waiting for for half a century. The two water droplets obviously received instructions before entering the blind zone. This is a long-planned overall plan. Now it is certain , the dark forest deterrent state no longer exists, and there are two possible outcomes: the gravitational wave cosmic broadcast has been activated, or it has not been activated. We believe—”

As Su Yan spoke, he called up Cheng Xin's photo in the air, which he had just obtained from the "Gravity" ship.On the screen, Cheng Xin is holding the baby in front of the United Nations Building. This screen is set to the same size as the screen of the flight track, forming a sharp contrast between the two.The primary colors of space are black and silver, which come from the abyss of space and the icy starlight respectively; and Cheng Xin is really like a beautiful Oriental Madonna. She and the baby in her arms are bathed in the soft golden sunlight, which makes people find their old love again. The feeling of being close to the sun that has not been seen for half a century.

"—We believe it is the latter." Su Yan continued.

"How did they choose such a sword-wielder?!" Someone from the crowd on the "Blue Space" asked.

Captain Movovich said: "It has been more than 60 years since the 'Gravity' set sail, and we have been flying for half a century. Everything in the earth society is changing. Deterrence is a comfortable cradle. Human beings lie in it. Became a child."

"Don't you know that there are no more men on Earth?" someone in the crowd on the "Gravity" shouted.

"Humans on Earth really have no ability to maintain the deterrence of the dark forest." Su Yan said, "According to the plan, we will occupy the 'Gravity' to rebuild the deterrence, but we just learned about the decay of the gravitational wave antenna. Our ability to emit gravitational waves is only It can be maintained for another two months. Please believe that this is a great blow to all of us, and now there is only one option left: immediately start the gravitational wave cosmic broadcast.”

The crowd was in chaos.Beside the cold space that showed the Trisolaran Fleet's light-speed track, Cheng Xin, who was holding a baby in her arms, looked at them lovingly.These two huge contrasting pictures highlight the two choices they face.

"Are you going to commit the crime of world extinction?!" Captain Movovich asked.

In the face of the chaos, Xuanyan remained calm. He ignored Captain Movovich and said to the crowd, "It doesn't mean anything to us to activate the broadcast. Now, whether it is the pursuit of the earth or the pursuit of the three bodies, we Both have escaped, and neither world is a threat to us anymore."

This is one thing everyone understands.The sophons lurking on the two ships cannot be recovered after entering the blind zone, their connection with the Trisolaran world is permanently cut off, and the water droplets are also destroyed. In this way, the two worlds lost track of the two ships.In the vast space beyond the Oort Nebula, even with the technological power of Trisolaran reaching the speed of light, it is impossible to re-search for the two dusty spaceships.

"This is revenge!" said an officer of the "Gravity".

"We have the right to take revenge on the Trisolaran world. They should be responsible for the crimes they have committed. This is war, and it is only natural to destroy the enemy. As for the human world, according to the above inference, all their gravitational wave emitters have been destroyed now, and the earth It has been controlled, and it is very possible that the overall extinction of mankind has already begun. The launch of the cosmic broadcast is to give the earth a last chance. After the coordinates of the solar system are exposed, there is no longer any value of occupation there, and destruction may come at any time. The Trisolaran powers of the solar system are driven away; their light speed fleet will no longer target the solar system, which allows mankind to at least avoid imminent extinction. In addition, our gravitational wave broadcast only announces the coordinates of the Trisolaran galaxy."

"This is also equivalent to publishing the coordinates of the solar system."

"Yes, but I hope that the earth can be given more time to allow as many humans as possible to escape the solar system. As for whether they escape or not, that is their own business."

"After all, this is an act of exterminating two worlds, one of which is our home planet. This decision is as important as the judgment on the Last Judgment Day, and it cannot be made so easily!" Movovich said.

"agree."

After Xiyan finished speaking, another holographic window appeared between the two display windows that had already appeared in the air. The displayed graphics were extremely simple. There was only a rectangular red button with a length of about one meter. There was a number below it, currently displayed as 0 .

"As I said, we are a complete world, and all people in this world are ordinary people, but fate has pushed us to the position of making the final judgment on the two worlds. The final decision must be made, but cannot By someone or some, it will be the decision of this world, we hold a referendum. Now, those who agree with the gravitational wave cosmic broadcast of the coordinates of the trisolaran system, please press this red button; against or abstain Don't do anything. Ladies and gentlemen, the total number of personnel on the 'Blue Space' and 'Gravity', including those present and on duty, is 1415. If the number of people in favor reaches or exceeds one-third of the total number of people, Two, that is, 944 people, the space broadcast will start immediately; otherwise, it will never start until the antenna fails. Next, the referendum begins."

After Xi Yan finished speaking, he turned around and pressed the huge red button suspended in the air. The button flashed red light once, indicating that the click took effect, and the number below changed from "0" to "1".Immediately afterwards, the two deputy captains of the "Blue Space" also pressed the button one after another, and the statistics jumped to "3"; The lower ranks of officers and enlisted men, they floated in a thin line over the red button, pressing it again and again.

As the red light of the button flashes again and again, the statistics below are constantly increasing. This is the last beating of the heart of history, the last step towards the end of everything, and it makes everyone thrilled.

When the number jumped to "795", Guan Yifan pressed the button. He was the first person on the "Gravity" to vote for it.After that, several officers and soldiers of the "Gravity" pressed the button.

Finally, the number jumped to "944", and a line of bold characters appeared above the button:
Click again and the gravitational wave cosmic broadcast will start.

At this time it happened to be the turn of a soldier in the queue, and there were many people behind him.He put his hand on the button, but didn't press it, and waited for a second lieutenant behind him to put his hand on his, and then many more hands came up, forming a high stack.

"Wait a minute, please," said Captain Movovich suddenly, floating over to put his hand on top of the stack in full view.

Then, these dozens of hands pressed together, and the button flashed a final red light.

At this time, five years have passed since Ye Wenjie pressed the red button that morning in the 20th century AD.

Gravitational wave emission is activated.Everyone felt a strong vibration, which didn't seem to come from outside, but from their own bodies, as if everyone had become a humming string.The violin of death played for only 12 seconds before it stopped, and then everything fell into silence.

Outside the spaceship, the thin film of space-time rippled in gravitational waves, like the wind wrinkling the surface of a lake in the dark night, and the death sentence on the two worlds was transmitted to the entire universe at the speed of light.

[The first year after deterrence, the morning of the sixth day after the completion of immigration, Australia]

Cheng Xin heard the noise around her suddenly subside, leaving only the voice from the information display window above the city hall in the distance.She could hear Sophon's voice and the voices of two other people, but she couldn't hear what they said because they were too far away. She just felt that their voices were like spells, making other voices around them less and less, and finally completely disappear.While they were talking, there was a dead silence all around, as if the world had been frozen.

A huge sound burst out suddenly, causing Cheng Xin to tremble uncontrollably.She has been blind for a while, and the images of the real world in her brain are being squeezed out by illusory imaginations little by little. This sound made her feel that the Pacific Ocean around her suddenly surged up, and the noisy huge waves engulfed Australia from all directions.It took a few seconds before she could tell it was cheers.What is there to cheer about?Could it be the beginning of a mass madness?The sound waves were difficult to calm down for a long time, but the cheers were gradually replaced by loud words, and the voices quickly became denser, as if after the mainland was submerged, another heavy rain fell on the uncalmable sea.In the rain of voices, she couldn't make out what people were saying for a moment.

But she heard the words "blue space" and "gravity" again and again.

Cheng Xin's hearing, which was disturbed by the sound waves, gradually became sensitive again. She noticed another faint sound, which was the sound of footsteps in front of her. She felt that someone was watching her in front of her.Sure enough, the man spoke:
"Dr. Cheng Xin, what's wrong with your eyes, can't you see?" Cheng Xin felt a faint air current, maybe the man was shaking his hands in front of her eyes, "The mayor sent me to look for you, we are going home gone."

"I don't have a home." Cheng Xin said weakly.The word home cut her heart like a knife, causing her heart, which had been numb in extreme pain, to twitch again.She thought of the winter night when she left home three centuries ago, and the dawn that greeted her outside the window at home... Both of her parents died before the trough, and they could never have imagined what time and fate had thrown their daughter into The place.

"No, everyone is ready to go home, leave Australia, and go back and forth from wherever."

These words made Cheng Xin raise her head suddenly, the darkness with her eyes wide open still made her very uncomfortable, she tried her best to see something clearly, "What??"

"'Gravity' launched a gravitational wave broadcast!"

How can this be? !
"The position of the Trisolaran galaxy is exposed, and of course the solar system is also exposed. The Trisolarans are about to run away! Their second fleet has turned around and left the solar system, and all the water droplets have also been withdrawn from the earth. In Sophon's words just now Said: The solar system no longer has to worry about invasion, this place, like the Trisolaran galaxy, has become a place of death that the entire universe can't avoid."

How can it be? !
"We are going home. Tomoko has ordered the Security Forces to evacuate the population of Australia with all their might. The speed of evacuation will be faster and faster, but it will take three to six months for all immigrants to leave Australia. You can go first, the mayor asked me to take you to the province."

"'Gravity'?"

"No one knows exactly what happened, and Sophon doesn't know, but Trisolaran must have received a gravitational wave broadcast, which was sent when the deterrence failed more than a year ago."

"Can I be alone for a while?"

"Okay, Dr. Cheng Xin, you should feel comforted that they have done things for you."

The man stopped talking, but Cheng Xin could feel that he was still by his side.The surrounding sound waves gradually subsided, followed by the chaotic footsteps like a torrential rain, and this sound also quickly faded away, as if people ran away from the city hall to do something.Cheng Xin felt that the sea water around her was receding, and the vast land was exposed, and she was sitting in the middle of this empty land, like the only survivor after a great flood.She felt a hint of warmth on her face, the sun had risen.

[From the first day to the fifth day after deterrence, outside the Oort Nebula, "Gravity" and "Blue Space"]

"The warping point can be seen with the naked eye, but the best way is to detect electromagnetic radiation. They emit a kind of electromagnetic wave, which is very weak, but the frequency spectrum has obvious characteristics. The conventional monitoring system on the spacecraft can detect and locate it. Generally Generally speaking, there will always be one or two warping points in a volume as large as a spaceship, and there are at most twelve warping points at a time. Look, there are three now." Su Yan said.He is floating in a long corridor on the "Blue Space" with Movovich and Guan Yifan. There is an information window in front of them, which shows the traffic map inside the spacecraft. There are three red dots in the picture Flashing, they were drifting towards where one of them was.

"It seems to be there!" Guan Yifan pointed to the front and said.

They saw a circular hole appeared on the smooth bulkhead ahead, with a diameter of more than one meter, and the edge was still that kind of smooth and bright mirror.Looking into the hole, you can see dense pipes of different thicknesses, and some of these pipes are broken, and a section in the middle of them disappears. There are six or seven broken pipes, and two of them are thicker. Something was sloshing inside, it was liquid flowing inside.There is liquid sloshing in the two opposite sections of the same pipe, and the liquid obviously flows through the missing section.The length of the disappearing section of each pipe is different, and all the cross-sections roughly outline a spherical shape. From this shape, the other half of this invisible space bubble is obviously on this side of the bulkhead, that is, in the corridor.Movovich and Guan Yifan carefully avoided this part of the space.

Xuan Yan didn't care, he stretched his hand forward, into the space where the invisible bubble was, half of his arm disappeared, and Guan Yifan saw the smooth section of the arm on the other side, just like on the "Gravity" Lieutenant Ike had seen Vera's legs.Su Yan withdrew his arm, showed the surprised Movovich and Guan Yifan that it was intact, and then encouraged them to try it too.So, the two of them also carefully put their hands into the invisible bubbles, watched them disappear, and then the arms disappeared, but they didn't feel anything.

"Let's go in." Su Yan said, and then got into that space like diving into the water.Movovich and Guan Yifan watched in horror as his body disappeared into the air from head to toe. On the invisible spherical surface of the space bubble, the cross-section of his body changed shape rapidly. The light and shadow that danced like water ripples reflected on it.Xuanyan disappeared completely soon, just as Movovich and Guan Yifan were looking at each other, suddenly stretched out two hands from that space, and those two hands and forearms were hanging in the air, reaching out to the two of them respectively, Movovich He and Guan Yifan grabbed a hand each, and were immediately pulled into the four-dimensional space.

Those who have experienced it all agree that the feeling of being in a four-dimensional space cannot be described in words. They even assert that the four-dimensional feeling is the only thing that human beings have encountered so far that is absolutely impossible to describe in words. .

People always like to use this analogy: Imagine a flat person living in a three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional flat painting. No matter how colorful the painting is, the two-dimensional person in it can only see the side of the world around him. In his eyes, the people and things around him are just line segments of different lengths.Only when a two-dimensional flat figure floats out of the painting, enters the three-dimensional space, and looks back at the painting, can the whole picture be seen.

This analogy is actually just a further description of the indescribability of the four-dimensional sensation.

The person who sees the three-dimensional world from the four-dimensional space for the first time realizes one thing: when he was in the three-dimensional world before, he never saw his own world at all. If the three-dimensional world is also compared to a painting, all he sees is the When the painting is placed perpendicular to the plane of his face, what you see is only the side of the painting, a line; only when viewed from four dimensions, can the painting lie flat to him.He would describe it like this: Nothing can block what is behind it, and the interior of any enclosure can be seen.This is just a simple rule, but if the world is really presented according to this rule, it will be extremely visually stunning.When all occlusions and closures do not exist and everything is exposed, the first thing witnesses face is the amount of information that is billions of times that of the three-dimensional world. The brain cannot grasp the massive information flooding into the vision for a while.

At this moment, in front of Movovich and Guan Yifan, the "Blue Space" spacecraft stretched out like a magnificent giant painting.They could see all the way to the stern and all the way to the bow.They can see the inside of each cabin, and also see the inside of each closed container in the cabin; they can see the liquid flowing in the intricate pipes, and see the nuclear fusion fireball in the nuclear reactor at the stern of the ship...Of course, the principle of perspective is still Works, can't see too far away, but can see everything.People who have not had such experience will have a false impression when listening to their descriptions, feeling that they are seeing everything "through" the hull, the fact is that they do not "see through" anything, everything is juxtaposed, Just like when we look at a circle drawn on a piece of paper, we can see the inside of the circle without "seeing through" anything.This kind of unfolding is on all levels, the most indescribable is the unfolding of solids, one can actually see the interior of solids, such as bulkheads or a piece of metal or a stone, and can see all their cross-sections!They are overwhelmed by the sea of ​​visual information, as if all the details of the entire universe are gathered around them and displayed in colorful juxtaposition.

At this time, they had to face a brand new visual phenomenon: infinite details.In the three-dimensional world, human vision is faced with limited details. No matter how complicated an environment or thing is, the details presented are limited. As long as enough time is spent to watch in turn, most of the details can always be seen.But when looking at three-dimensional from four-dimensional, because three-dimensional things are exposed in four-dimensional field of view at every level, everything that was closed and blocked is listed in parallel.For example, a closed container can first see the objects inside it, and the interior of these internal objects is also visible, and in this juxtaposition of infinite levels of exposure, infinite details are revealed.In the spaceship in front of Movovich and Guan Yifan, although everything is revealed in front of the eyes, but any small thing in a small area, such as a water glass or a pen, the details listed side by side are infinite, and the vision is also infinite. When receiving infinite information and looking at it with the eyes, it is impossible to see all of their shapes in the four-dimensional space in a lifetime.When an object is exposed to four dimensions at all levels, creating a dizzying sense of depth, like an infinitely nested Russian doll, "seeing infinity through the core" is no longer a metaphor.

Movovich and Guan Yifan also saw each other, and also saw the rock next to them.What they see is a human body with infinite details, they can see all the bones and internal organs, they can see the bone marrow in the bones, they can see the flow of blood between the ventricles of the heart and the opening and closing of valves, and they can look at each other The structure of the lens of the eyeball can also be seen clearly...but the word "juxtaposed" may also cause misunderstanding. The physical position of each part of the human body has not changed at all, and the skin still wraps the internal organs and bones. Everyone is in a three-dimensional world. The familiar image is still there, part of the detail, juxtaposed with an infinite number of other details.

"Be careful not to move your hands, you may touch other people's or your own internal organs if you are not careful." Su Yan said, "But as long as you don't use force, it's not a big problem. It may be a little painful or nauseous, and sometimes it will cause a slight infection. Also Don't mess with things around unless you know exactly what it is. Everything on the ship is exposed now, you may touch high-voltage cables or high-temperature steam or something, and you may touch integrated circuits, causing system failure. In short, For the three-dimensional world, you now have god-like power, but you have to go through a period of time to adapt to the four-dimensional world before you can use this power."

Movovich and Guan Yifan quickly learned how not to touch their internal organs.From one direction, they can hold other people's hands as in the three-dimensional world instead of grasping the bones inside; direction.

Next, Movovich and Guan Yifan discovered another thing that excited them: they could see the starry sky, and they could see it in all directions.They clearly saw that in the eternal night of the universe, the Milky Way is extending brilliantly.They knew that they were still in the spaceship at this time, and none of the three were wearing space suits, and they were all breathing the air in the spaceship, but in the fourth dimension, they were exposed to space.All three had gone on countless spacewalks as astronauts, but never felt so exposed in space.In the past, when they walked in space, they were at least wrapped in spacesuits, but now, there is nothing between them and the universe. Spaceships are also juxtaposed.

For the infinite information generated by infinite details, the brain, which is born to feel and think about three-dimensional space, cannot grasp it, and it is initially in a state of information overload.But the brain will quickly adapt to the four-dimensional environment, unconsciously ignoring most of the details, and only grasping the big picture of things.

When the initial vertigo passed, Movovich and Guan Yifan faced an even greater shock, a feeling that had just been diverted by the infinite details of the surrounding environment—that is, the sense of space itself, or the sense of things beyond three dimensions. The feeling of the fourth dimension was later called the sense of high-dimensional space.For those who have experienced the four-dimensional space, the sense of high-dimensional space is the most difficult to describe in words. They often try to explain this: what we call vastness and vastness in three-dimensional space will appear in the fourth dimension. It is infinitely repeated, and it is infinitely copied in the direction that does not exist in the three-dimensional world.They often use the analogy of two opposite mirrors: at this time, in any mirror, you can see countless mirrors that are replicated, a mirror gallery that extends infinitely deep into the depths, if as an analogy, every mirror in the gallery It's all three-dimensional space.Or to put it another way: the vastness that people see in the three-dimensional world is actually just a cross-section of the real vastness.The difficulty in describing the sense of high-dimensional space is that the space seen by people in the four-dimensional space is also uniform and empty, but there is an indescribable sense of depth, which cannot be described by distance. It includes at every point in space.Guan Yifan's later words became a classic:

"Between a square inch, there is no bottom."

Feeling the sense of high-dimensional space is a baptism of the soul. At that moment, concepts such as freedom, openness, profoundness, and infinity suddenly have a new meaning.

Yan Yan said: "We should go back. Warp points can only be stable for a period of time, and then they will drift or disappear. Finding new warp points requires moving in four dimensions, and there is a certain danger for those of you who come in for the first time. .”

"How do you see warped points in [-]D?" Movovich asked.

"It's very simple: the warping point is generally spherical, the light is refracted inside the sphere, and the objects inside are also deformed to a certain extent, resulting in discontinuity in the shape of the object. Of course, this is only caused by the optical effect in the four-dimensional space, not the real deformation. , you see—”

Su Yan pointed to the direction they came from, and Movovich and Guan Yifan saw those pipes again. They were also unfolded, and the liquid flowing inside could be clearly seen.Just where they had just entered the fourth-dimensional space, there was a transparent spherical area in which the pipes were bent and deformed. That area was like a dewdrop attached to a spider's web.This is different from the situation in three-dimensional space, where the warped point has no light refraction effect, is completely invisible, and can only perceive its existence through the disappearance of objects that have entered the fourth dimension inside it.

"If you come in again, you must wear spacesuits, because if you are looking for a new warping point to return, novices sometimes have inaccurate positioning, and may fall outside the spacecraft when returning to three-dimensional."

Xuan Yan signaled the two to follow him and enter the dewdrop-shaped bubble. In an instant, they returned to the three-dimensional world, back to the corridor of the spaceship, where they were when they entered the four-dimensional space 10 minutes ago.In fact, they didn't leave just now, it's just that the space they are in has an extra dimension.The round hole in the bulkhead is still there, and the broken pipes inside can still be seen.

But for Movovich and Guan Yifan, this is no longer the familiar world. In their current feeling, the three-dimensional world is so narrow and stuffy.Guan Yifan was a little better, after all, he experienced it once while half asleep and half awake; Movovich was completely claustrophobic, feeling a sense of suffocation.

"This feeling is normal, just experience it a few more times." Su Yan said with a smile, "You two are already people who really know the meaning of expanse. Now, if you put on a spacesuit and go for a walk in outer space, you will also feel the same. It will feel cramped."

"What's going on with all this?" Movovich asked pantingly, pulling off his collar.

"We have entered a space region, and the space dimension in this region is four. It's that simple, we call this region the four-dimensional fragment in the universe."

"But we're in three dimensions now!"

"Four-dimensional space contains three-dimensional space, just like three-dimensional space contains two-dimensional space. To make a metaphor, we are now on a three-dimensional piece of paper in four-dimensional space."

"Is it such a model——" Guan Yifan said excitedly, "Our three-dimensional universe is a large sheet of thin paper, a thin sheet of paper 160 billion light-years wide, and somewhere on this paper is a small four-dimensional Soap bubbles?"

"It's wonderful, Dr. Guan!" Su Yan patted Guan Yifan's shoulder excitedly, causing him to do a somersault in weightlessness, "I've been thinking of an image metaphor, and you found it right away! We need a universe Physician! Exactly, we are now on this large three-dimensional paper, crawling on the paper, and entered the area where the soap bubble intersects the paper. Just now we left the paper from the warping point, and entered the soap bubble in."

"Although we were in four dimensions just now, we ourselves are still three-dimensional." Movovich said.

"That's right, we are three-dimensional flat people floating in four dimensions."

"What the hell is a warp point?"

"The paper of the three-dimensional universe is not flat everywhere. Some places are curved and warped to four dimensions. These are the warping points. These are some low-dimensional passages leading to high-dimensional passages, and we can enter the fourth dimension from these points."

"Does it warp a lot?"

"There are many, everywhere. The reason why the 'Blue Space' was able to discover this four-dimensional secret earlier is because there are many people on our spacecraft, so there are more opportunities to contact the warping point; and the 'Gravity' There are few people, it is relatively open, and your psychological screening is very strict, so if someone encounters you, you dare not speak out."

"Are all warping points this big?"

"No, some of them are quite large. What I am puzzled about is that you once observed that the rear third of the 'Gravity' was warped to the fourth dimension for several minutes, but you didn't find anything?"

"There is usually no one in the back third of the spaceship, oh, he is usually the only one." Movovich turned to Guan Yifan and said, "You have experienced it once, right? I heard from West."

"I was half asleep and half awake at the time, but after hearing what that idiot said, I really thought it was my own psychological hallucination."

"You can't see the four-dimensional from the three-dimensional space, but you can see everything in the three-dimensional world and have an effect on it from the four-dimensional space. We ambushed the water drop at the height of the four-dimensional. No matter how powerful the strong interaction force detector is, it still It is a three-dimensional object. Now it seems that three-dimensional itself means fragility. From the four-dimensional view, it is just an unfolded blueprint. It has no defense capabilities. You can approach it from the four-dimensional without knowing its principle. It needs to be inside it, oh, for the fourth dimension, it’s all outside, just destroy it at will.”

"Three-body world doesn't know about the four-dimensional fragments?"

"Looking at it now, I probably don't know."

"Soap bubbles—how big is this four-dimensional crumb?"

"It doesn't make sense to talk about the size of the four-dimensional in three-dimensional space. We can only say how big the projection of the fragments is in three dimensions. Only a preliminary detection has been carried out. We guess that the three-dimensional projection of the fragments is spherical. If this is the case, calculate according to the current detection data. , and its radius may be between forty and fifty astronomical units."

"Roughly the size of the solar system."

At this time, the round hole on the bulkhead next to the three of them began to move slowly, shrinking at the same time, and completely disappeared when it moved more than ten meters away from them.But the information window floating near them showed that two new warping points had appeared on the "Blue Space".

"How can there be four-dimensional fragments in the three-dimensional universe?" Guan Yifan pondered.

"I don't know, no one knows. Doctor, this is your business."

Since the discovery of the existence of four-dimensional fragments, the "Blue Space" has carried out a lot of detection and research on this space, and now the addition of the "Gravity" has brought more advanced equipment and technology, making the detection range and The depth has been expanded a lot.

In three-dimensional space, this area of ​​space is very empty, and there seems to be nothing abnormal.Detection research is mainly carried out in four-dimensional space.It is very difficult to release detectors in four dimensions. Most of the detection research is mainly through astronomical telescopes, which are sent into four dimensions through warping points to observe the surrounding space.It takes a while to get used to manipulating a three-dimensional instrument in a four-dimensional space, but when the observations were carried out normally, a shocking discovery was immediately made.

The telescope found a ring-shaped object. Since the distance between it and the spacecraft cannot be determined, its volume cannot be measured. It is estimated that its three-dimensional diameter is about [-] to [-] kilometers, and the diameter of the hoop is about [-] kilometers. A space ring.Circuit-like complex structures can be seen on the hoop.Judging from the appearance, it is basically certain that this object was made by an intelligent body.

This is the first time that humans have directly observed a third-party cosmic civilization beyond the two worlds.

One of the most shocking facts is: "The Lord of the Rings" is closed!It is in [-]D space, but it does not show [-]D expansion, its interior is completely invisible, which means it is a [-]D object!After entering the four-dimensional space, this is the first time people see a four-dimensional entity.

The first thing people felt was the fear of being attacked, but there was no sign of any activity on the surface of the "Lord of the Rings", and no electromagnetic waves, neutrinos and gravitational wave signals from it were detected. The Lord of the Rings shows no sign of any acceleration other than its slow rotation.It is preliminarily judged that this may be a ruin, a space city or a spaceship that has been abandoned for a long time.

In the following observations, more unidentified objects were found in the depths of the four-dimensional fragments. They were of different sizes and shapes, but they all had obvious characteristics of intelligent manufacturing.There are pyramid-shaped, cross-shaped, polygonal frame structures, etc., and various irregular combinations, but they are obviously not natural celestial bodies.There are already more than a dozen objects of this type whose shapes can be distinguished by the telescope, and there are still a large number of objects that can only be seen in point shapes in the farther distance, and there are hundreds of them in total.Like The Lord of the Rings, they show no signs of activity, and emit no detectable signals; they also have one thing in common: they are all closed four-dimensional entities.

Guan Yifan proposed to Captain Su Yan that he wanted to drive a spaceship to inspect the "Lord of the Rings" at close range, and if possible, enter its interior.This request was firmly rejected.Navigating in four-dimensional space is full of dangers, four coordinates are required to determine the position, and equipment or visual inspection from the three-dimensional world can only determine three coordinates, so, for three-dimensional navigators, the position of any object in four-dimensional space is uncertain Yes, whether using instruments or visual inspection, explorers cannot determine the position and distance of the "Lord of the Rings", and they may bump into it suddenly.At the same time, it is more difficult to find the returning warped point in four-dimensional space.Because there is a dimensional coordinate that cannot be determined, if you find a warping point, you can only know its direction, but you cannot determine the distance. Sometimes the warping point may be far away from the spaceship. After returning to the three-dimensional space-time through it, it will also fall to Very far away from the spaceship.In addition, a considerable part of the radio waves for communication between spaceships and spaceships spills into the fourth dimension, resulting in very weak signals, making it difficult to communicate with each other.

Then, the insides of the two spacecraft were hit by micrometeorites six times within one day. Among them, the magnetic levitation control unit of the fusion reactor of the "Blue Space" was hit by a micrometeorite with a diameter of 140 nanometers and completely destroyed.This is the deadliest key system of the spacecraft. The small fireball of the nuclear fusion reaction has a temperature of up to one million degrees and can vaporize any material. It is suspended in the center of the wide reaction chamber by a magnetic field.Once the control unit fails, the fusion fireball will escape from the magnetic field and may burn through the hull in an instant.Fortunately, the redundant unit was put into operation in time to shut down the reactor operating at the lowest power state without causing a greater disaster.

As the interior of the four-dimensional fragments goes deeper, the density of micrometeorites increases significantly. At the same time, large meteorites visible to the naked eye are also observed passing near the spacecraft, and their relative speed to the spacecraft is several times that of the third cosmic velocity.In the three-dimensional space, the key parts of the spacecraft are protected layer by layer to withstand the impact of these meteorites, but now, they are completely exposed in the four-dimensional space without any protection.

Su Yan decided that the two spaceships would exit the four-dimensional fragment immediately.The fragments have a speed away from the solar system as a whole, which is in the same direction as the spacecraft’s sailing speed, so although the “Blue Space” and “Gravity” fly away from the solar system at a very fast speed, the relative distance between them and the four-dimensional fragments The speed is very small, the two ships are only slowly catching up to the fragment, and they have only penetrated a small distance so far, and it is also easy to slow down and exit it.

But Guan Yifan was furious at this decision: "The biggest secret of the universe is right in front of us, and the answers to all the questions of cosmology may be hidden here, how can we leave?!"

"You mean the 'three and 30 syndrome'? Four-dimensional fragments really made me think of it."

"Even considering reality, we may get unexpected things from the ruins of the ring!"

"But the premise of all this is to survive. Now, the two ships are facing destruction at any time."

Guan Yifan sighed and shook his head, "Okay then, let me take a spaceship to explore the 'Lord of the Rings' before leaving, aren't you talking about survival? Give me a chance, maybe our future survival depends on my discovery this time !"

"Consider launching an unmanned probe."

"In the four-dimensional world, you can only know what's going on if you see it with your own eyes. You should know better than me."

After a brief discussion between the two ship's command, Guan Yifan's proposal was approved, and formed a three-person expedition team, besides Guan Yifan, there were Captain Zhuo Wen and Doctor West.Zhuo Wen is a scientific officer on the "Blue Space" and has relatively rich experience in navigating in four-dimensional space; Dr. West insisted on joining, and was approved mainly because he had studied three-body linguistics before setting sail. experience.

The longest voyage humans have ever made in the four-dimensional space is the attack of the "Blue Space" on water droplets and the "Gravity".At that time, a spaceship was used to approach the "Gravity" in four dimensions. First, three people, including Major Park Yijun, were sent into the spacecraft through the warp point for reconnaissance, and then more than 60 marines were released into the spacecraft from four dimensions in three batches. .Attacks on water droplets use smaller space shuttles.But this time, the voyage of the "Lord of the Rings" expedition is much further.

The spaceship enters [-]D from a warped point located between two ships.Behind the three people who set off on the expedition, the nuclear fusion fireball of the spaceship's small engine was burning, and as the power increased, it changed from dark red to dark blue, and together with the two large fireballs in the fusion reactors of the two spacecraft, illuminated This infinite world that unfolds side by side.The parts of the world that belonged to Blue Space and Gravity are fast leaving.After gradually entering the depths of space, the sense of high-dimensional space becomes stronger.Although Dr. West has entered the fourth dimension twice, he still couldn't help admiring:
"What kind of mind can grasp such a world!"

Captain Zhuowen used eye-tracking mouse or voice controls while piloting the spaceship, and generally kept his hands free to avoid touching exposed sensitive parts.At this time, the "Lord of the Rings" was still a faintly visible dot to the naked eye, but he still cautiously kept the spaceship at a very low speed.Due to the unmeasurable extra dimension in space, the visual distance is completely unreliable. The "Lord of the Rings" may still be far away by one astronomical unit, or it may be close in front of us.

The voyage lasted for three hours, and the spaceship has surpassed the farthest voyage distance ever in four-dimensional space. The "Lord of the Rings" still looks like a point, but Zhuowen is more cautious, ready to slow down and make an emergency turn at any time preparation.Guan Yifan became a little impatient, and asked Zhuo Wen to increase his speed. At this moment, West screamed, and the "Lord of the Rings" showed a ring shape, which appeared suddenly, and changed from a dot to the size of a coin in an instant, without gradual change. The process of increasing.

"Remember at all times: we are blind in the fourth dimension," Zhuowen said, and slowed down again.

The voyage lasted for another two hours. In three dimensions, the spacecraft has traveled about 20 kilometers.

Suddenly, a coin-sized "Lord of the Rings" appeared in front of him.Zhuowen manipulated the spaceship to make an emergency turn with his eyes, so that the spaceship that hit the ring passed through the ring of the "Lord of the Rings".Seen from the boat, it seems to have passed through a huge arch in space.The spaceship slowed down at full speed, then returned, hovering not far from the center of the "Lord of the Rings".

This is the first time that humans have seen a four-dimensional object at close range. Similar to the sense of high-dimensional space, they feel the magnificence known as high-dimensional texture. The "Lord of the Rings" is fully enclosed, and you can't see the inside, but you can feel a huge sense of depth and inclusiveness.From the perspective of the three-dimensional world, the "Lord of the Rings" seen is not one "Lord of the Rings", but the superposition of countless "Lord of the Rings". realm.

The surface of the Lord of the Rings seen from this distance is quite different from what it would look like through a telescope from a spaceship.Its color changed from golden yellow to dark copper, and those fine circuit-like lines were actually scratches from collisions, and there was still no sign of activity, no light or other radiation.Looking at the old surface of the "Lord of the Rings", the three people on the spaceship felt familiar. They remembered the destroyed water droplets, and then imagined: If this huge four-dimensional ring once had a shiny mirror surface, then what would happen? What an astonishing sight.

按照计划，卓文用中频电波发送了一个问候语。这是一幅简单的点阵图，图中由六行不同数量的点组成了一个质数数列：2、3、5、7、11、13。

They didn't expect to get an answer, but the answer appeared immediately, so fast that the three couldn't believe their eyes.The information window floating in the cabin of the spaceship displays a simple dot matrix, similar to the one they sent, and six rows of dots are used to form six prime numbers, but the dot matrix in the picture is much larger. Down: 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37.

The meaning of the other party is very clear, answering their greetings.

在探险计划中，发送问候语只是一个随意的尝试，并没有准备在得到应答后如何进一步交流。正当三人不知所措时，太空艇的通信系统收到了“魔戒”发来的第二幅点阵图，是这样一个数列：2、3、5、7、11、13、1、4、2、1、5、9。很快又收到了第三幅点阵图：2、3、5、7、11、13、16、6、10、10、4、7。然后是第四幅点阵图：2、3、5、7、11、13、19、5、1、15、4、8。第五幅点阵图：2、3、5、7、11、13、7、2、16、4、1、14。点阵图形不断地发来，这些图形所表示的数列都有一个明显的共同点：头六个质数是他们发送的问候语。至于后面那六个数，卓文和韦斯特都把期待的目光投向身为科学家的关一帆。宇宙学家对着显示窗口中那不断出现的数列思考了半天，困惑地摇摇头。

"I don't see the pattern of the last six numbers."

"Then assume there is no pattern." West pointed to the display window and said, "The first six numbers were sent by us, and the most likely meaning is to represent us. The last six numbers are irregular and constantly appear in different combinations, which may represent 'Everything', our everything."

"'It' wants to know something about us?"

"It's more likely a sample of language so 'it' can decipher and learn before communicating with us further."

"Then send the Rosetta system to 'it'."

"This requires instructions."

The Rosetta system is a database developed for the earth language teaching in the Trisolaran world. The database contains about 200 million words of natural history of the earth and human history, as well as a large number of dynamic images and pictures. It is also equipped with a The software matches the text with the corresponding elements in the image, so as to facilitate the deciphering and learning of the earth's language.

The mother ship approved the expedition team's request, but there was no Rosetta system on the space ship, and at this time the communication signal between the space ship and the mother ship was already very weak, and it was impossible to transmit large-capacity information. Quit" sent.Of course, it is impossible to use electromagnetic waves. Fortunately, the "Gravity" is equipped with neutrino communication equipment, but it is not known whether the "Lord of the Rings" can receive neutrino signals.

Three minutes after the "Gravity" sent the Rosetta system with a neutrino signal, the spacecraft received a series of dot matrix images from the "Lord of the Rings", the first one is a very neat 3×8 dot matrix, There are 8 dots in total; one corner of the dot matrix in the second picture is missing one dot, leaving 64 dots; the third picture is a little less, leaving 63 dots...

"It's a countdown, it's also a progress bar, and it might mean that 'it' has received Rosetta and is deciphering it, so let's wait," West said.

"But why is it 64 points?"

"When using binary, it is a moderate number, which is about the same as one hundred in decimal."

Both Zhuo Wen and Guan Yifan were very lucky to bring West here. Psychologists are indeed very talented in establishing communication with unknown intelligent bodies.

When the countdown reached 57, something exciting happened: the next count was not represented by a dot matrix, and the human Arabic numeral 56 was impressively displayed on the picture sent by "Lord of the Rings"!

"Learning really fast!" Guan Yifan exclaimed.

The number continues to decrease, decreasing by 1 every ten or so seconds, and after a few minutes, the number decreases to 0.The latest picture shows four Chinese characters:

I am the cemetery.

The Rosetta system uses a mixture of Chinese and English, and "The Lord of the Rings" must also use this kind of language, but this sentence happens to be all Chinese characters.Guan Yifan entered a question into the communication window, and started a conversation between humans and the "Lord of the Rings":

whose cemetery?

The burial of the builder of this cemetery.

Is this a spaceship?

It used to be a spaceship, and after death it is a cemetery.

Who are you?Who is speaking to us?

I am the graveyard, the graveyard speaks to you, I am dead.

Are you saying that you are the ship itself whose crew has died, or the control system of the ship?

(no answer.)
There are many other objects in the nearby area, are they also graveyards?
Most of them are cemeteries, soon to be cemeteries, I don't know them.

Have you come from afar, or have you always been here?

I come from afar, and they also come from afar, from different distances.

Where do you come from?

sea.

Is this four-dimensional space built by you?
(no answer.)
You say you came from the sea, but did you build the sea?
So, is this four-dimensional space something like an ocean to you, or to your builders?

It's a puddle, the sea is dry.

Why are there so many spaceships, or graveyards, gathered in such a small space?

When the sea dries up, the fish will gather in the puddles, and the puddles will also dry up, and the fish will disappear.

Are all the fish here?

The fish that dried up the sea are absent.

Sorry, this is very confusing.

The fish that dried up the sea landed on land before the sea dried up, running from one dark forest to another.

The last two identical words in this sentence were like two thunderbolts, causing the three people on the spaceship and the people on the two distant mother ships who were listening through the weak signal to shudder.

What does dark forest... mean?
That's what you mean.

Then will you attack us?

I am the cemetery, I am dead, no one will attack.There is no dark forest between different dimensions, low-dimensionality cannot threaten high-dimensionality, and low-dimensional resources are useless to high-dimensionality.But those of the same dimension are all dark forests.

Can you give us some advice?

Get out of the puddles, you are thin paintings, you are fragile, you will soon become a graveyard in the puddles... ah, there seems to be fish in your boat.

Guan Yifan was stunned for a few seconds before realizing that there was really a fish on the spaceship. It was a small ecological ball he carried with him, slightly bigger than a fist.The glass ball looks like only a small fish and a few pieces of seaweed, but it is a well-designed closed small ecosystem.This is Guan Yifan's favorite thing, he specially took it with him before leaving, if he can't go back, this thing will be his funeral object.

I like fish, can you give it to me?

How to deliver?
Throw it over.

The three put on the helmets of the space suits, opened the hatch of the space capsule, Guan Yifan lifted the eco-ball to his eyes, carefully supported the glass outer wall from the three-dimensional direction in four dimensions, and took a last look.Viewed from four dimensions, the infinite details of the ecosphere are fully displayed, making this small living world appear extremely colorful.Guan Yifan waved his arm and threw the ecological ball towards the direction of "Lord of the Rings", watching the small transparent ball disappear into the four-dimensional space.Then they close the hatch and continue the conversation:

Is this the only puddle in the universe?

no answer.Afterwards, "The Lord of the Rings" was completely silent, and no matter how contacted, he would not respond.

At this time, a message came from the mothership that the "Blue Space" was attacked by a micrometeorite again, and various floating objects around the two ships also increased rapidly, and small four-dimensional objects appeared, which were suspected to be objects of spaceships or buildings. debris.Xuan Yan ordered them to return immediately, and the plan to board the "Lord of the Rings" was cancelled.

Because of the mastery of the distance, the speed of the spaceship more than doubled when returning, and it only took more than two hours to return to the vicinity of the mothership, and successfully found the warp point and returned to the "Blue Space".

The expedition was hailed as heroes, although what they found had no practical implications for the future of the two ships.

"Dr. Guan, what do you think of the last question to the 'Lord of the Rings'?" Su Yan asked with great interest.

"It is more intuitive to use our analogy: a small soap bubble with a diameter of only a few tens of astronomical units is stuck on a large piece of paper with a diameter of 160 billion light-years, but we just climbed into the bubble. This probability is so small that it can be ignored. Not counting. There are other suds stuck to the paper, for sure, probably a lot.”

"In other words, we will meet again in the future."

"There is a more fascinating question: has it been encountered before? For example, the earth has been orbiting in space for billions of years. Isn't it possible to enter a four-dimensional fragment?"

"It would be amazing if that happened, it could only have happened in the age of the dinosaurs or earlier, I don't think humans could have experienced it. The question is: could the dinosaurs find the warping point?"

"The key question now is: Why are there soap bubbles? Why are there so many four-dimensional fragments in the three-dimensional universe?"

"It's really a huge secret."

"Colonel, now I feel that this may still be a dark secret."

The "Blue Space" and "Gravity" began to exit the voyage of the four-dimensional fragments. With the start of the deceleration, the gravity from the stern to the bow appeared on the spaceship.Guan Yifan and the scientific officers of the two ships seized the last few days to observe and study the four-dimensional space. They stayed in the four-dimensional space almost all the time. It became more and more unbearable for them.

On the fifth day after the deceleration began, suddenly, all the people in the fourth dimension returned to the third dimension in an instant, and none of them came back through the warp point.According to the electromagnetic radiation detection system of the spacecraft, there is no warping point on the two ships.

The "Blue Space" and "Gravity" exited the four-dimensional fragment.

This is somewhat unexpected, because according to calculations, there should be more than 20 hours before exiting the four-dimensional fragments.There may be two reasons for the early exit. One is that the fragments accelerated in the opposite direction to the exit of the two ships, and the other is that the fragments themselves were shrinking.People believe it is the latter, and apart from observational data, they all remember the words of "Lord of the Rings":
When the sea dries up, the fish will gather in the puddles, and the puddles will also dry up, and the fish will disappear.

The two-ship formation finally parked near the junction of the four-dimensional and three-dimensional space, where it is safe.

The edges of the four-dimensional fragments are invisible, and the space in front of them is empty, as calm as the water surface in a deep pool.The sea of ​​stars in the Milky Way emits brilliant silver light as always, and there is no sign that there is a huge secret hidden in another dimension not far ahead.

But people soon observed a strange and spectacular phenomenon: In the space ahead, some long shiny lines often appeared. to thirty thousand kilometers.They all appeared suddenly, glowed blue at first, then gradually turned red, and the straight line began to bend and break into many small segments, and finally disappeared.After observation, it is found that these long lines appear on the edge of the four-dimensional fragments, as if there is an invisible giant pen, constantly marking the boundary line between four-dimensional and three-dimensional in space.

The unmanned probe flew to the space area where long lines appeared, and once was lucky enough to observe the appearance of long lines at close range.At that time, the detector was only more than 100 kilometers away from the long line, so close that the width of the line could be seen with an ordinary focal length.As soon as the long line appeared, the probe flew towards it at full speed, and the line had just bent away when it arrived.In that region, abundant hydrogen and helium elements were detected, as well as a lot of heavy element dust, mainly iron and silicon.

Through the study of observational data, Guan Yifan and the scientific officers quickly came to the conclusion: these long lines are four-dimensional matter that has entered three-dimensional space. Due to the shrinkage of the fragments, they entered three-dimensional space and instantly decayed into three-dimensional matter.The volume of these four-dimensional substances entering the three-dimensional space is very small in the four-dimensional space, but they become three-dimensional in the fourth-dimensional part, their volume suddenly increases, and they expand in a straight line.According to calculations, a piece of four-dimensional matter with a mass of only tens of grams in three-dimensional projection can form a long line of tens of thousands of kilometers after three-dimensional expansion.

Now, the two ships face the fact that according to the retreating speed of the edge of the four-dimensional fragments, the "Lord of the Rings" will enter the three-dimensional space in about 20 days!The two ships will be waiting to witness this cosmic spectacle, and now they have plenty of time anyway.Marked by the long line drawn ahead, the two ships moved forward cautiously, maintaining the same speed as the edge of the receding debris.

In the next ten days, Guan Yifan was immersed in thinking and calculations, and the science officers were also discussing enthusiastically.In the end, everyone agreed that according to the existing theoretical physics, it is impossible to conduct too many theoretical analyzes on four-dimensional fragments, but the theory developed after three centuries can at least make a prediction that is consistent with reality: high-altitude particles in a macroscopic state. Dimensions will fall down to lower dimensions, just like a waterfall flowing down a cliff, which is why the [-]D fragments keep shrinking: all [-]D spaces fall into [-]D.

That lost dimension does not disappear, it shrinks from the macro to the micro, and becomes one of the seven dimensions curled up in the micro.

The "Lord of the Rings" can be seen again with the naked eye, and this self-proclaimed cemetery is about to be destroyed in the three-dimensional universe.

At this time, the "Blue Space" and the "Gravity" stopped moving forward at the same time, and retreated 30 kilometers, because when the "Lord of the Rings" enters the three-dimensional space, it will release a huge amount of energy during the process of dimensionality drop. The reason for those long lines glowing.

After 22 days, the boundary of the four-dimensional fragment retreated past the "Lord of the Rings".At the moment it entered the three-dimensional space, the universe seemed to be cut in half, and the long fracture gave off a dazzling glare, just like a star being pulled into a line in an instant.When the light dimmed a bit, a long line across the entire space appeared, and its head and tail could not be seen from the spaceship, as if God had drawn a line from left to right on the drawing board of the universe using a T-square.According to measurements, the length of this line that divides the visible universe into two parts is close to one astronomical unit, about 3000 million kilometers, and can almost connect the earth and the sun.Unlike those long lines that have appeared before, this line can still be seen in its width even from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.The light emitted by the long line changed from blue and white to red, and then gradually dimmed. The line itself became wide and curved, from a straight long line to a dust belt, with no end to end.It no longer emits light by itself, but soaked in the light of the sea of ​​stars, it turns into a peaceful silver-gray.People watching on the two spaceships had a strange impression at this time, feeling that the dust belt looked very much like the Milky Way on the background of the universe. What happened just now seemed to be a grand photography of the Milky Way. Gradually appear in space.

Looking at this magnificent scene, Guan Yifan felt a little sad. He thought of the ecological ball he had given to "Lord of the Rings", and it only had that gift for a short time.At the moment of the three-dimensional unfolding, all the four-dimensional structures inside the "Lord of the Rings" are completely destroyed, which is the most complete destruction.The other spaceships that have died or are still alive in the four-dimensional fragments cannot escape this fate in the end. In this vast universe, they can only exist in the small corner of the four-dimensional fragments.

A great and dark secret.

The "Blue Space" and "Gravity" sent several spaceships to the dust belt. In addition to the investigation, they also wanted to see if they could collect some useful resources. After the "Lord of the Rings" is three-dimensionalized, it becomes very common elements, most of which are hydrogen and helium, from which it is possible to obtain nuclear fusion fuel.But both elements in the dust are gaseous and spread out quickly, so not much is collected.In addition, there are some heavy elements, some useful metals can be collected.

Now, it's time for the two ships to think about their futures.An ad hoc committee jointly made up of Blue Space and Gravity announced that anyone on board the two ships would have a choice: to continue sailing with the two ships or return to the solar system.The two ships will be equipped with a hibernation module independent of the two ships, and one of the seven fusion engines on the two ships will be used to propel it. Those who decide to return will take this temporarily assembled spaceship and return to the solar system in hibernation. The sailing time is expected to be 35 years.The two ships will use neutrino communications to inform Earth of the orbital parameters of the hibernating spacecraft so that it can respond when it reaches the solar system.In order to prevent Trisolaris from detecting the positions of the two ships, the contact with the earth will be made after the hibernating spacecraft sets sail for a period of time.If the earth can send a support spacecraft to assist in deceleration before the spacecraft reaches the solar system, more fuel will be used for propulsion during the acceleration phase, and the return journey can be shortened to more than ten years.

If there was still the solar system and the earth at that time.

Only more than 200 people chose to return, and the rest did not want to return to the world that was going to destruction, so they decided to continue sailing with the "Blue Space" and "Gravity" and fly into the unknown depths of space.

A month later, the two fleets and the hibernating spacecraft set sail at the same time, each flying in different directions: the hibernating spacecraft returned to the solar system along the way it came, while the "Blue Space" and "Gravity" planned to bypass the four-dimensional fragments, and then determined A new target galaxy.

The light of the fusion engine illuminates the already thin dust cloud belt, turning it into a golden red, like the warm sunset glow of the earth, and makes all the people, those who are returning home and those who are traveling far away, cry with tears in their eyes.The beautiful space sunset quickly disappeared, and the eternal night enveloped everything again.

The two seeds of human civilization continue to drift to the depths of the star sea, no matter what the fate is, everything finally starts again.