The Dark Forest

At the right angle where the foot of the formation met the ground, there was a spider web. This, the ant knew. It carefully detoured around the sticky hanging strands, passing by the spider lying in wait, its legs extended to feel for vibrations in the threads. Each knew of the other’s presence but—as it had been for eons—there was no communication.

The cosmic sculptor had felt compelled to dot pupils onto the universe, yet had a tremendous terror of granting it sight. This balance of fear and desire resulted in the tininess of the stars against the hugeness of space, a declaration of caution above all.

“It’s all fascinating, but what would the axioms of cosmic sociology be?”

“First: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

[…]

“To derive a basic picture of cosmic sociology from these two axioms, you need two other important concepts: chains of suspicion, and the technological explosion.”

“The government made a mistake in calling it a state of war so early on, putting people in a panic. Now people are only thinking of themselves. How many people are thinking about the defense of Earth four hundred years in the future?”

“I reject the position of Wallfacer, I reject all the powers granted it, and I will not undertake any responsibility you force upon me.”

“You may.”

The simple, immediate reply to his statement, light as a dragonfly touching on the water, shut down his brain’s ability to think and made his mind a total blank.

“So am I free to leave?” was all he could ask.

“You may, Dr. Luo. You are free to do anything.”

“Truth be told, Tyler, Rey Diaz, and Hines have left me disappointed. Looking at their strategizing over the past two days, you can tell immediately what they are up to with their grand strategic plans. You’re different from them. Your behavior is baffling. That’s what a Wallfacer should be like.”

Deeply exhausted, he lay in bed watching his IV drip, and an intense loneliness seized him. He knew that his recent leisure was merely the weightlessness of tumbling into the abyss of loneliness, and now he had reached the bottom. But he had anticipated this moment, and he had been prepared. He was waiting for someone, and then the next step of the plan would begin.

Rey Diaz wheezed […] while pulling his hand back to cover his eyes. When Allen drove over to him, he had fallen to the ground. With difficulty, Allen helped him into the backseat. “Sunglasses. I need sunglasses.…” He half-reclined into the backseat, his hands clawing at the air. Allen handed Rey Diaz a pair of sunglasses he found on the dashboard. After he put them on his breathing grew smoother. “I’m all right. Let’s get out of here. Quickly,” he said feebly.

“What on earth happened? What’s wrong?”

“It might be the sun.”

“Uh … when did you start having this sort of reaction?”

“Just now.”

The peculiar phobia for the sun that afflicted Rey Diaz pushed him to the edge of mental and physical breakdown whenever he saw it and kept him confined indoors from then on.

“Yan Yan, their approach to humans is a rational choice. It’s the responsible thing to do for the survival of their species, and has nothing to do with good or evil.”

[…]

“Why do you have to drive them out into space to die? Give them a plot of land, and let them coexist with us? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

[…]

“I’m thinking that the person who might actually have a chance of saving the world is you.”

“Me?” She burst out laughing.

“You, except that you’re not enough. Or, rather, there aren’t enough people like you. If a third of humanity was like you, then Trisolaris might negotiate with us about the possibility of coexisting on the world.”

“But will the Trisolarans preserve humanity’s cultural heritage? They have no regard for us at all.”

“Because they said we’re bugs? But that’s not what that means. Yan Yan, do you know what the greatest expression of regard for a race or civilization is?”

“No, what?”

“Annihilation. That’s the highest respect a civilization can receive. They would only feel threatened by a civilization they truly respect.”

“You politicians sound off about humanity at the drop of a hat, but I can’t see humanity. I can only see individuals. I’m just one individual, an ordinary person, and I can’t take on the responsibility of saving all of humanity. I just want to live my own life.”

“Very well. But Zhuang Yan and Xia Xia are two of those individuals. Don’t you want to fulfill your responsibility to them? Even if she hurt you, I can see you still love her. And there’s the child, too.”

The Wallfacers were subject to increasing scrutiny from the community. Whether they had asked for the role or not, they had been set up in the eyes of the masses as messiah figures. Accordingly, a Wallfacer cult sprang up. No matter how many explanations the UN and PDC issued, legends of their supernatural abilities circulated widely and grew increasingly fanciful. In science fiction movies, they were shown as superheroes, and, in the eyes of many, they were the sole hope for humanity. This gave the Wallfacers an enormous amount of popular and political capital that guaranteed things would go smoothly when they tapped huge amounts of resources.

Luo Ji was the exception. He remained in seclusion, never showing his face. No one knew where he was or what he was doing.

He stood on the ice, his teeth chattering in the cold, a cold that seemed to come not from the lake water or icy wind, but from a direct transmission from outer space. He kept his head down, knowing that from this moment on, the stars were not like they once were. He didn’t dare look up. As Rey Diaz feared the sun, Luo Ji had acquired a severe phobia of the stars. He bowed his head, and through chattering teeth, said to himself:

“Wallfacer Luo Ji, I am your Wallbreaker.”

“Wallfacer Luo Ji, according to the basic principles of the Wallfacer Project, you do not need to answer that question,” the chair said.

“It’s a spell,” he said. The rustling and murmuring in the auditorium stopped abruptly. Everyone looked up in the same direction, so that Luo Ji now knew the location of the screen displaying his feed.

“What?” asked the chair, with narrowed eyes.

“He said it’s a spell,” someone seated at the circular table said loudly. “A spell against whom?”

Luo Ji answered, “Against the planets of star 187J3X1. Of course, it could also work directly against the star itself.”

“What effect will it have?”

“That’s unknown right now. But one thing is certain: The effect of the spell will be catastrophic.”

“The birth of a new civilization is the formation of a new morality.” He removed the first safety lock on the H-bomb warheads. “When they look back in the future on everything we’ve done, it may seem entirely normal. So, we won’t go to hell, children.” The second safety lock was removed.

Suddenly, the alert sounded throughout the ship like the crying of ten thousand ghosts in the darkness of space. Display interfaces popped up in midair like snowflakes, showing a huge quantity of information that Natural Selection’s defense systems had received about the incoming missiles, but no one had time to read it.

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”