Death’s End

Highlights

If one surveyed people about visions of the future, they might give different answers for how things would be in ten years, but few would doubt that in another hundred years, humanity would be living in paradise. It was easy to believe such a thing: They could just compare their own lives with the lives of their ancestors a hundred years earlier!

None of them said anything, but they made no effort to disguise the anger and frustration of professionals faced with ignorant zealots who were asking for the impossible.

Whenever others were happily absorbed by their work, Wade appeared gloomy; when others were forlorn, he became relaxed and jokey.

Tianming was terrified of space. Like everyone who studied spaceflight for a living, he understood space’s sinister nature better than the general public. Hell was not on Earth, but in heaven.

But, in our age, conscience and duty are not ideals: an excess of either is seen as a mental illness called social-pressure personality disorder. You should seek treatment.”

Dark forest deterrence hung over two worlds like the Sword of Damocles, and Luo Ji was the single hair from a horse’s tail that held up the sword. Thus, he came to be called the Swordholder.

All of them had some difficulty reintegrating into modern society. Most men from the Common Era tried to, consciously or otherwise, feminize their appearance and personality to adjust to the new feminine society. But the six men in front of Cheng Xin all stubbornly held on to their outdated masculine appearance and personality. If Cheng Xin had met them a few days ago, she would have found them comforting, but now, she felt only a sense of oppression. She could see no sunlight in their eyes; their expressions appeared as masks that disguised their true feelings.

The image in my mind is even worse: The universe is but a corpse puffing up.”

most people immediately pointed to the small number of gravitational wave transmitters as a cause, and blamed people from the early Deterrence Era for dismantling nineteen of the twenty-three completed transmitters.

The end of deterrence once again cast the future of humankind into darkness, but, just like in the first crisis over two centuries earlier, people did not connect this darkness with their individual fates.

After the lessons taught by the Great Ravine, modern men and women would never again sacrifice the present for the future.

Before meals and sleep, they all prayed for the same thing: Lord, please give us a hint; guide us to express our goodwill to the stars; let the cosmos know that we’re harmless.

Tianming’s stories had now acquired a status akin to the Bible. Without realizing it, people were no longer searching for real strategic intelligence, but reassurance that they were already on the right course.

The false alarm was the result of the explosive amplifying effects of a hyper-information society when fed sensitive news.

By now, the four smaller asteroid fragments simulating the terrestrial planets had been incinerated, and the four larger asteroid fragments simulating the gas giants behaved as four scoops of ice cream being heated on one side by a blowtorch.

and the four larger asteroid fragments simulating the gas giants behaved as four scoops of ice cream being heated on one side by a blowtorch.

In this age, most people no longer belonged to the leisure class, but had to work for a living.

Then the men, dressed in rags and with unshaven faces, drifted along with them, capturing the spheres with their mouths and swallowing. One of the drunken men vomited, and the vomit rushing out of his mouth propelled him back, sending him tumbling in midair….

After more than sixty years, people still could not be sure that the sophons had left the Solar System, and maybe they’d never be sure.

decision, but the core of this man was the utter madness and coldness brought about by extreme rationality.

but the core of this man was the utter madness and coldness brought about by extreme rationality.

They sat in silence, neither looking at the other. Time turned into a stagnant pool that drowned them. Then, the tremors

Singer understood that what he did wasn’t important—it just filled in the pieces. But it had to be done, and the task was enjoyable.

Their only choice was to shroud themselves in slow fog so that they would appear perfectly safe and no one would bother them.

As he continued to sing, Singer picked up the dual-vector foil with a force field feeler and carelessly tossed it at the Star-Pluckers.

Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance

Weakness and ignorance

Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.

The basic principles governing this drawing were that there could be no overlap and no hidden parts, and every single detail had to be laid out on the plane.

The largest snowflake previously on record was thirty-eight centimeters in diameter.

had fallen into the plane. “Oh, heavens! Starry sky!” AA cried out. Cheng Xin knew that

“Oh, heavens! Starry sky!” AA cried out. Cheng Xin knew that she was referring to Van Gogh’s painting. True, the universe really did look like the painting.

Cheng Xin said what he couldn’t bring himself to say. “There were thirty-five years between the Halo City Incident and the completion of the Mercury base. Thirty-five precious years were lost.” Luo Ji nodded. Cheng Xin thought the way he looked at her was no longer kind, but rather resembled the fires of the Last Judgment. His gaze seemed to say, Child, look at what you’ve done.

In the end, she had committed another grave error.

Twice, she had been placed in a position of authority second only to God, and both times she had pushed the world into the abyss in the name of love. This time, no one could fix her mistake for her.

Cheng Xin shook her head. In her life, moments of happiness were only gaps between mass catastrophes. She was now afraid of happiness.

If you think of the cosmos as a great battlefield, dark forest strikes are nothing more than snipers shooting at the careless—messengers, mess men, etc.

“The universal laws of physics,” Cheng Xin said. “That’s right. The universal laws of physics are the most terrifying weapons, and also the most effective defenses.

focus is on spatial dimensions and the speed of light. Typically, lowering spatial dimensions is a technique for attack, and lowering the speed of light is a technique for defense.

Typically, lowering spatial dimensions is a technique for attack, and lowering the speed of light is a technique for defense. Thus, the dimensional strike on the Solar System

—that during the wars after the Edenic Age, one dimension after another was imprisoned from the macroscopic into the microscopic, and the speed of light was reduced again and again…. ” “As I said, I’m not saying anything, just guessing.” Yifan’s voice grew softer. “But no one knows if the truth is even darker than our guesses…. We are certain of only one thing: The universe is dying.”

the universe as one. The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to become

And now we know that this is the journey that must be made by every civilization: awakening inside a cramped cradle, toddling out of it, taking flight, flying faster and farther, and, finally, merging with the fate of the universe as one. The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to become as grand as their thoughts.