Zhang Yuanchao heard someone enter the living room without knocking, calling “Lao Zhang” and “Master Zhang.” He knew who it was from the footsteps he’d heard hammering up the staircase just before. Miao Fuquan, another neighbor on their floor, came in. A Shanxi coal boss who ran a fair number of mines in that province, Miao Fuquan was a few years younger than Zhang Yuanchao. He owned a larger home in another part of Beijing and used this apartment as a place to keep a mistress from Sichuan who was about the same age as his daughter. When he had first moved in, the Zhang and Yang families had basically ignored him save for an argument over the stuff he left strewn about the hallway, but they eventually discovered that although he was a little vulgar, he was a decent, friendly man. Once building management had smoothed over a dispute or two, harmony was gradually established among the three families. Although Miao Fuquan said he had turned over his business affairs to his son, he was still a busy man and rarely spent any time at this “home,” so the three-bedroom place was usually only occupied by the Sichuan woman.
“Lao Miao, you haven’t been around for months. Where have you struck it rich this time?” asked Yang Jinwen.
Miao Fuquan casually picked up a glass, filled it halfway from the water dispenser, and gulped down the water. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “No one’s getting rich…. There’s trouble at the mine, and I’ve got to go clean it up. It’s practically war time. The government really means it this time. The laws on wildcat mining never used to work, but the mines aren’t going to be running for much longer now.”
“Bad days are here,” Yang Jinwen said, without taking his eyes from the game on television.
The man had been lying on the bed for several hours. The light shining through the basement window, the room’s only source of illumination, was moonlight now, and the cool rays cast bright spots on the floor. In the shadows, everything looked like it was carved from gray stone, as if the entire room was a tomb.
No one ever knew the man’s true name, but eventually, they called him the Second Wallbreaker.
The Second Wallbreaker had spent several hours looking back on his life. After confirming that there had been no omissions, he twisted the muscles of his numb body, reached under the pillow, and drew out a gun, which he slowly aimed at his temple. Just then, a sophon text appeared before his eyes.
Don’t do that. We need you.
“Lord? Every night for a year I dreamt that you called, but the dreams went away recently. I figured I’d stopped dreaming, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now.”
This is not a dream. I am in real-time communication with you.
The Wallbreaker gave a chilly laugh. “Good. It’s over, then. There definitely aren’t any dreams on the other side.”
You require proof?
“Proof that there aren’t dreams on that side?”
Proof that it’s really me.
“Fine. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Your goldfish are dead.
“Hah! That doesn’t matter. I’m about to meet them in a place where there’s no darkness.”
You should really take a look. This morning when you were distracted, you flicked away a half-smoked cigarette and it landed in the fishbowl. The nicotine that leached into the water was fatal to your fish.
The Second Wallbreaker opened his eyes, put down his gun, and rolled out of bed, his lethargy completely wiped away. He groped for the light and then went over to look at the fishbowl on the small table. Five dragon eye goldfish were floating in the water, their white bellies at the surface, and in their midst was a half-smoked cigarette.
I’ll perform an additional confirmation. Evans once gave you an encrypted letter, but the encryption has changed. He died before he was able to notify you of the new password, and you’ve never been able to read the letter. I’ll tell you the password: CAMEL, the brand of cigarette you poisoned your fish with.
The Second Wallbreaker scrambled to retrieve his laptop, and as he waited for it to start up, tears streamed down his face. “Lord, my Lord, is it really you? Is it really you?” he choked out through his sobs. After the computer booted up, he opened the e-mail attachment in the Earth-Trisolaris Organization’s proprietary dedicated reader. He entered the password into the pop-up box, and when the text was displayed he no longer had any mind to read it carefully. Throwing himself to his knees, he cried out, “Lord! It really is you, my Lord!” When he had calmed down, he raised his head and said, his eyes still wet, “We were never notified of the attack on the gathering the commander attended, or of the ambush at the Panama Canal. Why did you cast us aside?”
We were afraid of you.
“Is it because our thoughts aren’t transparent? That doesn’t matter, you know. All of the skills that you lack—deceit, trickery, disguise, and misdirection—we use in your service.”
We don’t know if that’s true. Even supposing it is true, the fear remains. Your Bible mentions an animal called the snake. If a snake crawled up to you and said it would serve you, would your fear and disgust cease?
“If it told the truth, then I would overcome my disgust and fear and accept it.”
That would be difficult.
“Of course. I know that you’ve already been bitten once by the snake. Once real-time notification became possible and you gave detailed answers to our questions, there was no reason for you to tell us quite a bit of that information, such as how you received the first signal from humanity, and how the sophons are constructed. It was hard for us to understand: We were not communicating via transparent display of thoughts, so why not be more selective in the information you sent?”
That option did exist, but it doesn’t cover up as much as you imagine it might. In fact, forms of communication do exist in our world that don’t require displays of thought, particularly in the age of technology. But transparent thought has become a cultural and social custom. This might be hard for you to understand, just like it’s hard for us to understand you.
“I can’t imagine that deceit and scheming are totally absent in your world.”
They exist, but they are far simpler than in yours. For example, in the wars on our world, opposing sides will adopt disguises, but an enemy who becomes suspicious about the disguise and inquires about it directly will usually obtain the truth.
“That’s unbelievable.”
You are equally unbelievable to us. You have a book on your bookshelf called A Story of Three Kingdoms.
“Romance of the Three Kingdoms.[3] You won’t understand that.”
I understand a small part, like how an ordinary person who has a hard time understanding a mathematics monograph can make out some of it through enormous mental effort, and by giving full play to the imagination.
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