Part 12 (1/2)
”And it looks like you have come at an opportune time. According to the model universe, a four-year-long Stable Era is about to begin. Emperor Wu of Han has just issued the order to rehydrate based on my prediction. Let's wait for sunrise!”
Mozi brought up the game's interface and slightly increased the rate of pa.s.sage of game time. A red sun rose above the horizon, and the numerous frozen lakes and ponds scattered over the plain began to melt. These lakes had been covered by dust and had merged into the dun ground, but now they turned into numerous mirrors, as though the earth had opened many eyes. From up so high, w.a.n.g couldn't see the details of rehydration, but he could see more and more people gathered on the sh.o.r.es of the lakes like swarms of ants coming out of their nests in spring. The world had once again been revived.
”Do you not want to join this wonderful life?” Mozi asked, pointing to the ground below. ”When women are first revived, they crave love. There is no reason for you to stay here any longer. The game is over. I am the winner.”
”As a piece of machinery, your model universe is indeed incomparable. But as for its predictions.... May I use your telescope to observe something?”
”Please.” Mozi gestured at the large telescope.
w.a.n.g walked up to the instrument and paused. ”How can I use it to observe the sun?”
Mozi retrieved a black, circular piece of gla.s.s. ”Use this smoked gla.s.s filter.” He inserted it in front of the eyepiece.
w.a.n.g aimed the telescope at the sun, now halfway up the sky. He was impressed by Mozi's imagination. The sun did indeed look like a hole through which a sea of fire could be seen, a small view into a much larger whole.
But as he examined the image in the telescope more closely, he realized that the sun was different from the sun he was used to in real life. The sun here had a small core. He imagined the sun as an eye. The core was like the eye's pupil, and though it was small, it was bright and dense. The layers surrounding it, by contrast, appeared insubstantial, wispy, gaseous. The fact that he could see through the outside layers to the core indicated that those layers were transparent or translucent, and the light from those layers was likely just scattered light from the core.
The details in the image of the sun stunned w.a.n.g. He was once again a.s.sured that the game designers had hidden a vast amount of data within the superficially simple images, just waiting to be revealed by players.
As w.a.n.g pondered the meaning of the sun's structure, he became excited. Because time in the game was now pa.s.sing quickly, the sun was already in the west. w.a.n.g stood, adjusted the telescope to aim at the sun again, and tracked it until it dipped below the horizon.
Night fell, and the bonfires across the plains mirrored the sky full of stars. w.a.n.g took off the smoked gla.s.s filter and continued to scan the skies. He was most interested in the flying stars, and shortly found two. He only had time to observe one of them briefly before it was dawn again. So he inserted the filter and continued to observe the sun....
In this manner w.a.n.g performed astronomical observations for more than ten days, enjoying the thrill of discovery. Indeed, the fact that time within the game had been sped up helped with the observations, as the motion of celestial bodies became more apparent.
On the seventeenth day of the Stable Era, five hours after the predicted time for sunrise, the world was still under cover of dark night. Mult.i.tudes thronged at the foot of the pyramid, their innumerable torches flickering in the chill wind.
”The sun will probably not rise again. It is like at the end of Civilization Number 137,” w.a.n.g said to Mozi.
Mozi stroked his beard and smiled confidently. ”Do not fret. The sun will rise soon, and the Stable Era will continue. I've already learned the secret of the motion of the universal machine. My predictions cannot be wrong.”
As though confirming Mozi's words, the sky over the horizon brightened with dawn's first light. The crowd around the pyramid shouted in joy.
The silvery light brightened far more rapidly than usual, as though the rising sun wanted to make up for lost time. Soon, the light covered half the sky, even though the sun was still below the horizon. The world was already as bright as midday.
w.a.n.g looked toward the horizon and saw it giving off a blinding glare. The glowing horizon arched upward and became a curve that spread from one edge of his visual field to the other. He soon realized that he wasn't seeing the horizon, but the edge of the rising sun, an incomparably immense sun.
After his eyes adjusted to the bright light, the horizon reappeared in its old place. w.a.n.g saw columns of black smoke rising in the distance, especially clear against the glowing background of the solar disk. A fast horse rushed toward the pyramid from the direction of the rising sun, the dust from its hooves forming a distinct line across the plains.
The crowd parted before the horse, and w.a.n.g heard the rider scream at the top of his lungs: ”Dehydrate! Dehydrate!”
Following the rider was a herd of cattle, horses, and other animals. Their bodies were on fire and they moved across the ground like a burning carpet.
Half of the gigantic sun's disk was now above the horizon, taking up much of the sky. The earth seemed to slowly sink down against a brilliant wall. w.a.n.g could clearly make out the fine structures on the surface of the sun: eddies and surging waves filling the sea of flames; sunspots floating along random paths like ghosts; the corona lazily spreading out like golden sleeves.
On the ground, both those who had already dehydrated and those who hadn't began to burn like countless logs thrown into the belly of a furnace. The flames that consumed them were even brighter than glowing charcoal in a furnace, but were quickly extinguished.
The giant sun continued to rise and soon filled most of the sky. w.a.n.g looked up and felt his perspective s.h.i.+ft. Suddenly he was no longer looking up, but down. The surface of the giant sun became a fiery earth, and he felt himself falling toward this brilliant h.e.l.l.
Lakes and ponds began to evaporate, and puffs of white steam rose up like mushroom clouds. They rose, spilled open, and dispersed, covering the ashes of the dead.
”The Stable Era will continue. The universe is a machine. I created this machine. The Stable Era will continue. The universe...”
w.a.n.g turned his head. The voice belonged to Mozi, who was already on fire. His body was encased within a column of tall, orange flame, and his skin crinkled and turned into charcoal. But his two eyes still shone with a light that was distinct from the fire consuming him. His two hands, already burning pieces of charcoal, held up the cloud of swirling ashes that had once been his calendar.
w.a.n.g was burning up as well. He lifted his two hands and saw two torches.
The sun briskly moved to the west, revealing the sky behind it. It soon fell below the horizon, and the ground seemed to rise against the brilliant wall this time. A dazzling sunset swiftly turned to night, as though a pair of giant hands had pulled a black cloth over a world that had turned to ash.
The earth glowed with a dim red light like a piece of charcoal just retrieved from a furnace. For a brief moment, w.a.n.g saw the stars, but soon steam and smoke hid the sky and covered everything on the red-glowing earth. The world sank into a dark chaos. A red line of text appeared: Civilization Number 141 fell into ruin in flames. This civilization had advanced to the Eastern Han Period.
The seed of civilization remains. It will germinate and again progress through the unpredictable world of Three Body. We invite you to log on in the future.
w.a.n.g took off the V-suit. After his mind had calmed down a bit, he again had the thought that Three Body was deliberately pretending to be merely illusory, while in fact possessing some deep reality. The real world in front of him, on the other hand, had begun to seem like the superficially complex, but in truth rather simple, Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
The next day, w.a.n.g went to the Nanotechnology Research Center. Other than some minor confusion due to his absence the day before, everything was normal. He found work to be an effective tranquilizer. As long as he was absorbed by it, he was no longer bothered by his nightmarish worries. He deliberately kept himself constantly busy the whole day and left the lab only after it was dark.
As soon as w.a.n.g left the Research Center building, the nightmarelike feeling caught up to him. He felt like the starry sky was a magnifying gla.s.s that covered the world, and he was a tiny insect below the lens with nowhere to hide.
He had to find something to occupy himself. Then he thought of Yang Dong's mother Ye Wenjie and drove to her home.
Ye was alone at home. When w.a.n.g entered, she was sitting on the sofa reading. w.a.n.g noticed that her eyes were both myopic and presbyopic, and she had to switch gla.s.ses both when she read and when she looked at something far away. She was very happy to see w.a.n.g, and said that he looked much better than the last time he had come to see her.
w.a.n.g chuckled. ”It's all because of your ginseng.”
Ye shook her head. ”What I gave you wasn't very good. We used to be able to find really high-quality wild ginseng around the base. I once found one about this long.... I wonder what it's like there now. I heard that it's deserted. Well, I guess I'm really getting old. These days, I'm always thinking about the past.”
”I heard that you suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution.”
”You heard it from Ruishan, didn't you?” Ye waved her hand, as though trying to wave away a strand of spider silk. ”In the past, it's all in the past.... Last night, Ruishan called me. He was in such a hurry that I had a hard time understanding him. All I got was that something seemed to have happened to you. Xiao w.a.n.g, let me tell you: By the time you're my age, you'll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”
”Thank you,” w.a.n.g said. He once again felt the warmth that he had missed. In his current state, his mental stability depended on two pillars: this old woman, who had weathered so many storms and become as gentle as water, and s.h.i.+ Qiang, the man who feared nothing because he knew nothing.
Ye continued. ”As far as the Cultural Revolution is concerned, I was pretty lucky. Just when I thought I had nowhere to go, I found a place where I could survive.”
”You mean Red Coast Base?”
Ye nodded.
”That was truly an incredible project. I used to think it was just made-up rumors.”
”Not rumors. If you want, I can tell you some of what I experienced.”
The offer made w.a.n.g a little worried. ”Professor Ye, I'm only curious. You don't need to tell me if it's not appropriate.”