After passing through the cosmic door, the spaceship found itself under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan, who had been anxiously anticipating a fall into two dimensions or the heart of a black hole, rubbed their eyes, unsure if what they saw was real.
It was no illusion. Under the blue sky lay a lavender field. At first, they thought they were looking at some alien vegetation, like the mobile plants found on Planet Blue, but a careful examination revealed the presence of Lavandula angustifolia, the common lavender flower of Earth. The brilliant blossoms formed a magnificent carpet that rippled in the breeze.
They looked to the left and found a towering mountain range tipped with snow. To their right was a lush tropical jungle. The lavender field ended, and before them lay the endless sea—a real, azure ocean familiar from their past life.
Everything was just like old Earth, familiar and welcoming. If there was any difference, it was that this place seemed even more beautiful, vibrant, and natural.
Still, these two had seen plenty of odd sights in their lives. After a few stunned moments, they turned to Sophon. “Where are we? And … when are we?”
“It’s 11.2 billion years after the two of you entered the mini-universe. As for location … given the intervening shifts in the positions of the galaxies, I don’t know a simple answer. Think of it as the end of the universe.”
“Are you suggesting that we just happened to emerge in the atmosphere of some random planet at the end of the universe, and the conditions on this planet just happen to be almost exactly the same as on Earth?” Guan Yifan was incredulous. He knew that the probability of what he said was about the same as his randomly choosing fifty kilograms of matter in the entire universe and ending up with Cheng Xin.
“Not a planet,” corrected Sophon. “What you’re looking at is a square-shaped plane one thousand kilometers on each side. The plane has a thickness of about twenty kilometers. This is an artificial world, and it signaled the mini-universe to dock here.”
“Who made this?” the pair asked.
“I’m sorry, but without that person’s permission, I can’t reveal the truth. But you’ll meet him soon.”
The pair stared at each other. Cheng Xin’s expression was a mixture of joy and anxiety, whereas Guan Yifan’s was far warier.
That person! Who has the power to control where the mini-universe would dock with the grand universe except the man with the highest authorization?
Can it really be him?
The pair sank into silence, each thinking different thoughts.
Directed by a signal beam, the spaceship landed on the beach. The three passengers emerged from the ship and saw a tiny white house. Above the door was a crooked sign: THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.
Cheng Xin chuckled. Guan Yifan, on the other hand, was a bit nervous. “He’s full of surprises. What sort of gift has he prepared for you this time?”
That person came out of the door. A shirtless Yun Tianming stood before them, his bronzed skin glinting under the bright beach light.
“Tianming!” Cheng Xin examined the man in wonder. He looked just as he had when he was eighteen, but seemed far healthier and more cheerful. If he had looked like this back then, perhaps I would have …
Tianming laughed heartily. “I’ve been waiting for all three of you for a while. Come in, please!”
Cheng Xin pushed her confused thoughts away and stepped into the “restaurant.”
The restaurant was tiny, with only enough space for five tables. Cheng Xin and her companions picked one at random and sat down. Tianming sat down opposite from her. Cheng Xin was about to get started with the long list of questions in her mind when Tianming turned around and shouted, “Our guests are here, dear!”
Who’s he talking to? Cheng Xin wondered. And then she heard a bright voice. “Perfect timing. The food is ready!”
The curtain to the kitchen lifted to reveal an aproned young woman. She walked up to the table with two serving dishes in her hands: stir-fried shredded potato and spiced beef.
“AA! What are you doing here?” Cheng Xin cried out.
Guan Yifan was equally surprised, and he felt a wave of relief.
*
The sun sank behind the snowy mountains in the west, and brilliant stars studded the sky. (Unlike the visual illusion on Earth, the sun here really did “sink” in the west. The “sun” was a satellite that orbited around the artificial plane.) The five human-shaped individuals left the small restaurant and sat down on the beach to admire the constellations.
“Tianming,” said Yifan, his voice slightly slurred with alcohol, “did you make these stars as well?”
“No,” said Tianming. “These are the real stars of this galaxy.”
“I don’t think so,” said Yifan. “Look, over there is the Great Dipper, and that ‘W’ there is Cassiopeia. And those stars over there—that’s the belt of Orion. How can the stars in this galaxy just happen to be arranged like the sky from Earth?”
“Oh, I’m used to the way the stars look from Earth, so I just rearranged them slightly.” Tianming spoke in the tone one would expect of someone talking about rearranging a few pieces of furniture.
After a whole afternoon of hearing about miracles Tianming had performed, Yifan and Cheng Xin were no longer capable of being astonished. Still, they sighed with admiration.
艾 AA emerged with a few bottles of home-brewed beer. They drank to the accompaniment of the surf.
“What do you call this world?” asked Yifan.
“Provence,” said Tianming.
“Like … the Provence in France?”
“That’s right. Helena named this world. Provence was her homeland.”
“Who was this Helena anyway? You told us she was also a Seeker, but who was she?”
“Sorry, I should have been better about explaining things in order,” said Tianming. “Helena was once a … prostitute in the Byzantine Empire. She was also a magician during the siege of Constantinople by the Ottomans, the guardian angel of the Galactic humans, and my best teacher and friend.”
Yifan and Cheng Xin were stunned by this solemn introduction.
“Helena was born from a poor family, and she became a prostitute in her youth. But in 1453, right before the fall of Constantinople, a high-dimensional fragment crossed paths with Earth and changed her fate …”
Yun Tianming recounted Helena’s failed attempt to assassinate the Ottoman sultan, and then added, “In fact, during her last trip into the high-dimensional fragment, she disappeared for a whole day and night, during which she had a chance to get close to the sultan. But a mysterious voice called her from four-dimensional space and led her into a mini-universe.”
“What, another mini-universe?” Cheng Xin asked.
“Yes, Universe 589, which was created during the four-dimensional stage of the universe. The four-dimensional intelligence inhabiting it, also a servant of the Master, was near death. Before his expiration, he injected ideabstractions into Helena’s brain, and asked her to carry out his mission.
“The four-dimensional intelligence’s ideabstractions were far weaker than the ones from the Master. But like me, Helena couldn’t deal with them at first, and fell into a coma. When she awoke, she babbled incoherently. After the Byzantine soldiers discovered her in this state, they killed her by impaling her body to the ground. But like me, she had already accepted the ideabstractions and was soon revived. Her body was remade to be incorruptible, and she was given a ring to become a Seeker. After that, she left Earth pursuant to the Master’s orders and searched for the Lurker everywhere in the universe until she met me. We worked and fought together through eons, and we watched over the Galactic humans.”
“What happened to her then?” Cheng Xin asked.
Tianming’s expression was sorrowful. “She died about nine years ago. When we finally found the Lurker, its power overwhelmed us. We were barely alive when we realized that one of us had to stay there to lead the Master to initiate vacuum decay. Helena sent me into the mini-universe to escape before activating the ring, and she died with the Lurker.”
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan were too stunned to speak.
Tianming’s expression grew distant as he mentally returned to the moment of the last battle. He was at the heart of the sky calyx, tossed by the Lurker’s surging energy tsunamis. He could no longer control himself, but still he strove to move forward. He knew that he could escape by climbing into the mini-universe, but he also knew that if he couldn’t destroy the Lurker this time, the universe would be completely two-dimensionalized before he got another chance.
And so Helena pushed him into the door of Universe 589 and ordered the mini-universe to immediately detach itself. Her authorization was the highest, and he could not countermand her order. As the door closed, she sent him an ideabstraction.
Let me stay, Yun. You know that I’ve always wanted to be a saint.
I’m not sacrificing myself for you. I just want to find a way to realize myself. The whole universe will return to the origin after the start of vacuum decay. You’ll live just a few decades longer than I. It’s not a big deal.
But you still have someone you love. I, on the other hand, am without anyone. If you stay ahead of the front of vacuum decay, go to the end of the universe, and clone your wife, you’ll still have decades of happiness together, right?
Treasure your life and time. Time enough for love.
Tianming had wanted to send her thousands of ideabstractions, but Helena had already shut off the channel.
“… and so, to commemorate her, you named this place Provence?” Guan Yifan asked.
Tianming pulled himself out of those emotional memories and nodded. “She had named Universe 589 that, and so I just borrowed the name.”
“So that’s why you never returned to Universe 647.” Yifan finally understood the puzzle that had been plaguing him. “You’ve been hopping across space in Universe 589.”
Cheng Xin’s heart skipped a beat. If Tianming had been able to return to Universe 647 and meet her, how would things have turned out differently? She didn’t want to go down that route; instead, she looked at AA and asked, “What happened with you? I thought you died while you were still on Planet Blue?”
“Let me answer that,” said Tianming, “since I was responsible. Dimension reversal is a process that takes some time. What the Lurker thinks of as 1.91 grand hours is about sixty of our Earth years. Where we sit will be the last region of the universe to succumb to dimension reversal. Helena wished for me to spend the rest of my days in tranquility next to my wife, and so I used the matter in Universe 589 to construct this land—Provence. Not bad, don’t you think?”
“It’s beautiful!” exclaimed Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan together.
“I’m old,” Tianming said. The words seemed incongruous coming from him, since his perpetually youthful eighteen-year-old face made him look even younger than the couple sitting opposite. “Don’t laugh. You spent only about a year in the mini-universe; I’ve been running around in the grand universe for more than ten billion years. I’m really tired. I crave the life that Luo Ji led back in the old days, a life secluded in nature.
“And so, before you left the mini-universe, I managed to get in touch with Universe 647 and asked Sophon to send me information about AA’s cells so that I could clone her.”
Cheng Xin glanced at AA. “But if you’re a clone of the AA I knew, you wouldn’t have her memories. How could you have chatted with me about our time on Earth just now?”
“Tianming’s ring had scanned my brain—the brain of the AA you knew,” replied AA. “And so the ring had all of her memories. It was easy for those memories to be implanted into my brain. In every way that matters, I am the same AA you knew.”
“However,” said Tianming, “the scan from my ring happened back when I first met AA on Planet Blue, and so the memories don’t include the four decades we spent together on that world. I had to work really hard to get her to fall in love with me again.”
Tianming and AA held hands and grinned at each other.
Cheng Xin looked at the couple and felt a twinge of jealousy. He should be mine! I should be the one next to him …
She almost glared at AA before catching herself. What’s wrong with me? I’m also married to a man I love. She sighed. She had lived an extraordinary life indeed.
She decided to change the topic. “Did you send the supermembrane broadcast we received?”
“I did.”
“Is the request to return matter to the grand universe really about the great crunch then?”
Tianming’s face turned solemn. “It’s true that the universe should end in a great crunch in the ordinary course of events. But given the interference by intelligent life, the collapse would be thwarted. Without dimension reversal, the universe, mired in the dark forest state, would continue its descent into lower dimensions until all matter and energy had been turned into an infinite axis of time. There would be nothing but time. In fact, our home, the Milky Way and its local supercluster, have all been two-dimensionalized already. Two-thirds of the universe has already lost the third dimension. The Master’s projection would lose its intelligence in that hypothetical, completely planar world, and that would be the true end of all hope, because the Master would no longer be able to initiate dimension reversal. We had to initiate the process right away, and that required returning all mass to the grand universe—otherwise our universe will never be restored.”
A chill seized two hearts as Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan locked gazes. They were remembering the message bottle and the ecological sphere, still drifting in the husk of their mini-universe.
“Did you say … all mass?” asked Cheng Xin timidly.
“Yes,” said Tianming. “As I was explaining, dimension reversal will bring about the rebirth of the universe. Our Earth will once again reappear. Not a single atom can be missing because butterfly effects will then lead to unpredictable changes, perhaps causing Earth to never reappear.”
“But given the existence of millions of mini-universes, surely you’re not expecting all of them will heed your call?” said Yifan.
“Not millions, just 647,” said Tianming. “All the mini-universes were made by the Master. The Master has the power to return all of them to the grand universe, but my message serves as an extra level of protection. There must be no error in this process. If any other civilization gained the power to create new mini-universes and they weren’t returned to the grand universe, everything would fail. That was why I had to broadcast in the millions of known languages to inform all mini-universes to return all matter and energy, just in case any such unknown mini-universes had been created.”
“But the Lurker had launched multiple transuniversal attacks and probes. Such efforts surely would have consumed energy.”
“Sophon told me that the grand universe and the supermembrane maintain an energy balance. Whatever amount of energy the grand universe outputs into the supermembrane, an identical amount of energy is absorbed from the supermembrane via universe expansion. The Lurker’s attacks don’t pose a problem for dimension reversal; the only potential weak link remains the mini-universes.”
Cheng Xin was now feeling terrified. “Um … what if … what if somehow five kilograms of matter didn’t get returned to the grand universe? What would happen then?”
“What if?” Tianming glanced at her suspiciously.
A woman laughed uproariously among them. It wasn’t AA or Cheng Xin, but Sophon, who had not spoken much until now. Her laugh twisted her face into a rather frightening grimace.
The laughter sent chills down Cheng Xin’s spine, reminding her of the night, eleven billion years ago, when the droplets had attacked Earth. In a volcanic caldera on Earth, Sophon, who had been dressed like a ninja, had laughed the exact same way.
A bolt of lightning lit up Cheng Xin’s mind. She understood everything now.
“You!” She turned to Sophon. “You lied to me to get me to leave that five-kilogram fish tank behind! And the message bottle! They were just parts of your plot, and I’ve been deceived again! Again!”
Tianming stared at them, too stunned to speak.
“You can only blame yourself for being stupid,” said Sophon contemptuously. “You need to take responsibility for your choices.”
She turned to Yun Tianming. “You foolish boy. Do you really think the Master is going to let this soiled world be reborn exactly the same? Do you really think the Master doesn’t want a fresh chance to reign over a tranquil kingdom at eternal rest? To cycle again and again in the exact same manner for eternity is nothing more than the dream of fantasists and mystics. The Master is the only one who should be eternal.
“Five kilograms of matter is the key. The Master can certainly let some mini-universes remain away from the grand universe and deprive the grand universe of much more matter. But if the amount of missing matter exceeded five kilograms, then dimension reversal would lead to a ten-dimensional universe very different from the original. Such a universe would be at rest, but no intelligence would ever emerge, which means no Master, either. But if the amount of missing matter were too small, then maybe the changes would be so insignificant that everything would happen pretty much the same again. We can’t obtain extra matter over the supermembrane from other universes, so our only choice is to discard five kilograms.
“This was an extremely difficult task. Each mini-universe was completely enclosed, and the Master could only manipulate mini-universes over the supermembrane without being able to directly control what happened inside. The Master could only direct a whole mini-universe to return, but couldn’t leave five kilograms of the matter inside behind on the supermembrane. The Master’s own mini-universe was indivisible, while most of the other mini-universes had long become uninhabited or only inhabited by primitive life. The Master had no choice but to toss them all back into the grand universe. The two inhabitants of Universe 589 were too cunning and probably would have seen through any tricks. Universe 647 was the only option. And fortunately, one of the inhabitants was Cheng Xin, who even treated me like a best friend! And so I hinted to her that it was possible to leave behind an ecological sphere, and I filled her with romantic notions of leaving a bit of life to light up that dark universe, to keep despair at bay. The silly girl actually believed me!” Sophon was now grinning from ear to ear. “That was how we got the five kilograms we wanted.”
“Damn you!” Tianming almost leapt up to strike at Sophon. But then he looked at Sophon’s challenging gaze, and stopped himself. She’s just a robot.
“You can’t blame me,” said Sophon. “You’re the one who assigned Universe 647 to Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan and directed me to obey them. I did obey them, in everything. My actions were a direct result of her orders, in fact. Don’t you agree, my dear Cheng Xin?”
Cheng Xin lowered her head, unable to dispute this. She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed. Guan Yifan and 艾 AA stood to the side, uncertain how to comfort her.
“But you manipulated her and got her to give those orders!” Tianming raged.
“That requires her to be manipulable in the first place,” countered Sophon. “I wanted to manipulate you, but it didn’t work nearly as well. In the end, I had to resort to an elaborate story about eternal recurrence to convince you. There was no way I could have gotten you to do what I got her to do. You should blame yourself for telling me to obey someone so easily deceived.”
Tianming’s body trembled with fury as he stared at Sophon.
“I won’t resist if you want to kill me,” said Sophon.
Tianming’s body stiffened, and then relaxed. “That would be meaningless. You’re nothing more than the Master’s shadow. Go away. I don’t want to see you again.”
Sophon bowed. “As you wish. But I will return to your side if you ever want me back. Just call me with your ring.”
She turned around to leave, but Cheng Xin screamed and jumped on her. The two fell to the ground with Cheng Xin on top, and she pounded the robot with her fists.
“I hate you! I hate you!” Cheng Xin punched and bit and kicked. Years, decades, centuries of rage poured out of her. She finally understood how she was but a mote of dust in a grand wind, a small leaf drifting over a broad river. She surrendered completely and allowed the chill wind of hatred to pass through her, allowed the sharp light of vengeance to pierce her soul.
Sophon didn’t hit back. She wasn’t going to engage in such meaningless human behavior. Cheng Xin couldn’t really injure her anyway. Sophon’s body was more pliant and stronger than rubber. No matter how hard Cheng Xin’s strikes landed, local deformations in her body quickly bounced back.
Guan Yifan tried to pull Cheng Xin off of Sophon, but she was too strong for him. Yun Tianming stood to the side, unable to react. He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that ten billion–plus years of effort had come to naught. AA held Tianming’s arm, terrified by the sight of her old friend’s outburst. Could this be the Cheng Xin she knew?
After a while, Sophon said coldly, “You don’t hate me, Cheng Xin. You hate yourself. Surely you realize that.”
Cheng Xin stopped. She got off Sophon and sat to the side, sobbing disconsolately. Guan Yifan held her to comfort her. Sophon got up, brushed off the sand, bowed to Tianming, and walked away.
“Wait!” Tianming called to Sophon. “What will happen now that the grand universe is missing five kilograms? Will the Master really build a ten-dimensional universe that lasts forever?”
Sophon stopped and turned to look at him. She shook her head solemnly. “Even the Master does not know. There are limits to what can be computed and predicted. But even the unpredictable unknown is better than an eternal recurrence of the same thing. It’s worth a try.”
Tianming felt pity for the Master at that moment. Even a god that once ruled the whole cosmos was subject to the whim of Ananke. The Master had to struggle for its own survival, not much different from him.
Tianming sighed. He realized that things weren’t as bad as they appeared at first. The future was supposed to be unknown. Everything was going to be reset and the universe would begin afresh, and all that had passed would be erased and forgotten. But the universe still existed, and he still existed. Every bit of matter that was in his body, every quark that contributed to his structure would still exist in some form in the new universe. Maybe they would form a new him, a completely different him. There was no reason to despair. Humanity, the Solar System … everything was made of matter, and matter was going to be reborn.
The Master had to try, and so did the universe. Opportunity and crisis were two faces of the same coin. Everything was subject to the infinite vagaries of change, and there was no need to be overly attached to the vanished world of the past. It was better to let go, to let himself become part of the vast current of transformation and merge into the new world. Wasn’t that the very meaning of time—freedom?
Slanting rain, gentle breeze, no need to return home.
There really isn’t the need to return home. It will be an adventure to go to a strange new world.
Sophon had explained that if the first time had meaning, then each subsequent repetition in an endless recurrence would also have meaning. Similarly, if the first time had meaning, then even if nothing would recur again and everything dissolved into nothing, that first and only time would still have meaning. The meaning of the universe and of existence didn’t depend on repetition, but neither did change and transformation deprive them of meaning.
The world of the past, even if it were never to recur, still existed. Even if it were never recalled, it would not be forgotten.
Eventually, Sophon left, a sobbing Cheng Xin walked away, and Guan Yifan followed her. Tianming didn’t hate Cheng Xin, but he didn’t try to stop her. He knew that Cheng Xin couldn’t face him. Although her actions would probably lead to a brand-new universe, she couldn’t accept her true self, which Sophon revealed by stripping away the pure and saintly exterior Cheng Xin presented to the universe. He didn’t know if he would see her again. The world of Provence was a million square kilometers in size, and Cheng Xin and Yifan would find a safe, comfortable place to live for the next fifty years.
His outlook had changed. Joie de vivre and love once again overflowed his heart—directed not at the remaining five decades in this universe, but at the unknown new world to come.
He thought of the last moment during the final battle, when he had left the region of space in which Helena gave her life. A fragmentary ideabstraction had come to him then, not from Helena, but from the dying Lurker.
I created time, and I will die in time. But I don’t regret it. If I could do it over again, I …
That was the end, but Tianming was sure now that what the Lurker had wanted to say was:
I would still let time begin again, so that everything would have another chance.
The Master, the Lurker, and he were enemies joined in lasting war, but in the end, all of their efforts had been in service of the same task: the birth of the new universe, another chance for life and love.
Tianming extended his hand over the sea of Provence, like Moses before the Red Sea. Under his direction, a bright red sun leapt out over the horizon and illuminated the heavens.
“This is sunrise for a new universe,” Tianming muttered as he pulled AA to him. “You and I, and Helena, Cheng Xin, Guan Yifan … all the people and creatures who have lived in this universe, no matter how things change, will bathe in the sunlight of a new universe.”
The rising sun’s brilliant rays glinted against them. Before them, the ocean sparkled and scintillated; behind them, blooming lavenders swayed in a dream.
A lovely morning.