The Dark Forest

Five years later, Luo Ji walks with Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia, who have been reawakened. In the distance, they can see one of the new gravitation-wave antennas. As they’re walking, Luo Ji looks into Zhuang Yan’s eyes and remembers the day they spent together at the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa. A sophon appears and asks Luo Ji if this is love. Luo Ji says that yes, it probably is. Through the sophon, a Trisolaran brings up a speech that Luo Ji gave the night before in which Luo Ji said that Earth’s failure to recognize that the universe is a “dark forest” stemmed not from humanity’s primitive evolutionary state, but from humanity’s capacity for love.

The Trisolaran says that that part of the speech seems reasonable, but that Luo Ji was wrong to say that only humans are capable of love. The Trisolaran says that Trisolarans are also capable of love, but they snuffed out that capacity when it didn’t seem to help their civilization’s chance at survival. The Trisolaran says that love still stubbornly lives on among them, though. Luo Ji asks the Trisolaran who they are, and the Trisolaran says that they are the operator who sent a warning to Earth about 250 years ago, telling humanity not to contact the Trisolarans. The Trisolaran then says that maybe love is present elsewhere in the universe and that they should try to encourage love to thrive. Luo Ji says that he hopes that one day “brilliant sunlight” from love “will illuminate the dark forest.”