Shi Qiang watched Luo Ji’s flame in the darkness as he thought for a few seconds, then looked at his own cigarette. “So I have to keep quiet.”
“Do you think that will work?”
They smoked. The balls of flame brightened and their faces emerged from the darkness like the gods of this simple universe, deep in thought.
Shi Qiang said, “No, it won’t. If you’re stronger than me, then since I was able to find you, one day you’ll be able to find me. And then there will be a chain of suspicion between us. If you’re weaker than me, you could experience a technological explosion at any time, and that would take us back to the first case. To sum up: one, letting you know I exist, and two, letting you continue to exist, are both dangerous to me and violate the first axiom.”
“Da Shi, you’ve really got a clear mind.”
“My brain can keep up with yours so far, but we’re only getting started.”
Luo Ji was silent in the dark for a long time. His face emerged in the weak light of the ball of flame two or three times before he said, “Da Shi, this isn’t a start. Our reasoning has already reached a conclusion.”
“Conclusion? We haven’t figured anything out! Where’s the picture of cosmic civilization you promised?”
“If neither communication nor silence will work once you learn of my existence, you’re left with just one option.”
In the long silence that followed, the two flames went out. There was no wind, and the dark silence turned thick as asphalt, connecting sky and desert into a murky whole. At last Shi Qiang uttered one word in the darkness: “Fuck!”
“Extrapolate that option out to the billions upon billions of stars and hundreds of millions of civilizations, and there’s your picture,” Luo Ji said, nodding in the darkness.
“That’s… that’s really dark.”
“The real universe is just that black.” Luo Ji waved a hand, feeling the darkness as if stroking velvet. “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.”
Shi Qiang lit another cigarette, if only to have a bit of light.
“But in this dark forest, there’s a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’” Luo Ji said.
“Has anyone heard it?”
“That’s guaranteed. But those shouts alone can’t be used to determine the child’s location. Humanity has not yet transmitted information about the exact position of Earth and the Solar System into the universe. From the information that has been sent out, all that can be learned is the distance between Earth and Trisolaris, and their general heading in the Milky Way. The precise location of the two worlds is still a mystery. Since we’re located in the wilderness of the periphery of the galaxy, we’re a little safer.”
“So what’s the deal with the spell?”
“Using the sun, I transmitted three images to the cosmos. Each one consisted of thirty points representing the planar projection of a three-dimensional coordinate system containing the position of thirty stars. Combining the three images into three-dimensional coordinates forms a cubic space populated by those thirty points. That represents the relative positions of 187J3X1 and its twenty-nine surrounding stars. There’s also a label pointing out 187J3X1.
“Think about it carefully and you’ll get it. A hunter in a dark forest, stalking with bated breath, suddenly notices that a piece of bark has been stripped from a tree in front of him. On the eye-catching bit of white wood that’s been revealed is a position in the forest, written in characters all hunters can recognize. What will he think about that location? He’s certainly not going to imagine that someone has laid out supplies for him there. Out of all the possibilities, the most likely one is that the blaze is informing everyone that there’s live prey at that location that needs to be eliminated. It doesn’t matter what motivated someone to leave the mark. What’s important is that the dead hand has stretched the nerves of the dark forest to the breaking point, and it’s the most sensitive nerve that’s most liable to make a move. Suppose there are a million hunters in the forest—the number of civilizations on the billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way could be thousands of times that. Perhaps nine hundred thousand of them will disregard the marking. Of the remaining one hundred thousand, maybe ninety thousand of them will probe the location, and, after confirming that it has no life, disregard it. But one of the remaining ten thousand hunters will surely make a choice to fire on that position, because for civilizations at a certain level of technological development, attacking may be safer and less of a hassle than probing. If there’s really nothing at that location, then it’s no loss.
“Now,” Luo Ji concluded, “that hunter has appeared.”
“That spell of yours can’t be sent anymore, right?”
“That’s right, Da Shi. The spell needs to be broadcast to the entire galaxy, but the sun’s been locked down, so it can’t be sent anymore.”
“Was humanity just a step late?” Shi Qiang flicked aside his cigarette end. The flame drew an arc through the darkness as it fell, momentarily illuminating a small circle of sandy ground.
“No, no. Think about it: If the sun hadn’t been sealed off, and I had threatened Trisolaris with sending out a spell against them, what would have happened?”
“You would’ve been stoned to death like Rey Diaz. And then they would have enacted legislation to prohibit anyone else from thinking along those lines.”
“That’s right, Da Shi. Because we’ve already revealed the distance between the Solar System and Trisolaris as well as our general heading in the Milky Way, exposing the location of Trisolaris is tantamount to exposing the location of the Solar System. That’s a death strategy. Maybe we’re a step late, but it’s a step that humanity would never be able to take.”
“You should have threatened Trisolaris back then.”
“Things were too weird. I wasn’t certain about the idea at the time, so I needed to confirm it. After all, there was plenty of time. But the real reason was that, deep in my heart, I really didn’t have the mental strength. I don’t think anyone else would, either.”
“Thinking about it now, we shouldn’t have gone to see the mayor today. This situation—if the world learns about it, then it’s even more hopeless. Think about how the first two Wallfacers ended up.”
“You’re right. The same thing would happen to me, so I hope that neither of us says anything. But you still can, if you want. Like someone once told me: Either way, I’ve fulfilled my duty.”
“Don’t worry, my boy. I won’t say anything.”
“Regardless, there’s no longer any hope.”
They walked along the embankment and to the highway, where it was slightly less dark. The sparse lights of the residential area in the distance were enough to blind them.