Death's End

“Then let’s suppose that there is no pattern.” West pointed at the window. “The first six numbers were sent by us, so it’s possible that they mean ‘you.’ The next six numbers in the transmissions show no recognizable pattern, so maybe they mean ‘all’—‘everything about you.’”

“They—or it—want to know everything about us?”

“Or at least a linguistic sample. It wants to decode it, study it, and then communicate with us further.”

“Then we should send it the Rosetta System.”

“We have to ask for authorization.”

The Rosetta System was a database developed to teach Earth languages to Trisolarans. The database included about two million characters’ worth of documents concerning the natural and human histories of Earth with numerous videos and images. There was also software to draw connections between the linguistic symbols and the images so that an alien civilization could decode and study Earth languages.

The mother ship authorized the request from the exploration team. But the pinnace didn’t have the Rosetta System in its onboard computer memory, and due to the extremely tenuous communication link between the pinnace and the mother ship, it was impossible to transmit such a large volume of data. The only solution was to have the mother ship beam the information directly at the Ring. This couldn’t be done via radio, but luckily, Gravity was equipped with a neutrino communication system. They weren’t sure if the Ring could receive neutrino signals, however.

Three minutes after Gravity transmitted the Rosetta System via a neutrino beam to the Ring, the pinnace received a new series of bitmaps from the Ring. The first one was a perfect square of sixty-four dots arranged eight by eight; the second bitmap was missing one dot in a corner, leaving sixty-three; the third bitmap was missing two, leaving sixty-two….

“It’s a countdown, or a progress bar,” said West. “I think this is to show that it has received the Rosetta System and is in the process of decoding it. We should wait.”

“Why sixty-four dots?”

“It’s a reasonably big number if you’re in base two. It’s like how we use one hundred for lots of things in base ten.”

Lieutenant Zhuo and Guan were both glad to have West with them. The psychologist did seem to have some skills when it came to establishing communications with unknown intelligences.

When the countdown reached fifty-seven, something exciting happened: The next number didn’t come in the form of a bitmap of dots. The Ring transmitted the Arabic number 56.

“Wow, fast learner,” Guan said.

The number kept on decreasing by one every ten seconds or so. A few minutes later, the number reached 0. The last message consisted of four Chinese characters:

I am a tomb.

The Rosetta System was written in a language that mixed English with Chinese. It would make sense that the Ring would use the same language to communicate with them. It just happened that this message consisted entirely of Chinese characters. Guan Yifan typed a question into the floating window, and began the conversation between humanity and the Ring.

Whose tomb is this?

The tomb of those who created it.

Is this a spaceship?

It used to be a spaceship. But now it’s dead, and so it’s a tomb.

Who are you? Who is conversing with us?

I am the tomb. It is the tomb speaking to you. I’m dead.

You mean you’re a ship whose crew died? In other words, you’re the control system for the ship?

(There was no reply to this.)

We can see many other objects in this region of space. Are they also tombs?

Most of them are tombs. The others will be tombs soon. I don’t know them all.

Are you from far away? Or have you always been here?

I’m from far away; they’re also from far away, from different places far away.

Where?

(There was no answer.)

Did you build this four-dimensional fragment?

You told me that you came from the sea. Did you build the sea?

Are you saying that for you, or at least for your creators, this four-dimensional space is like the sea for us?

More like a puddle. The sea has gone dry.

Why are so many ships, or tombs, gathered in such a small space?