Death's End

He was referring to five black lines. One end of each line was connected to the surface of the planet, and the other end extended into space, like five black hairs growing out of Planet Gray. Each line stretched higher than Hunter’s orbit.

“What are they?”

“Trails left by curvature propulsion. Those lines are the result of extreme curvature manipulation. The speed of light within the trails is zero.”

On the next orbit, Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin entered the shuttle and descended toward the surface. Due to the low orbit and the lack of an atmosphere, the descent was smooth and fast. The shuttle landed about three kilometers from the death lines.

They leapt across the surface under 0.2G. A thin layer of dust covered the surface of Planet Gray, along with gravel of various sizes. Due to the lack of atmospheric scattering of sunlight, shadows and lit areas were sharply delineated. When they were about a hundred meters from the death lines, Yifan waved Cheng Xin to a stop. Each death line was about twenty or thirty meters in diameter, and from here, they resembled death columns.

“These are probably the darkest things in the universe,” Cheng Xin said. The death lines showed no details except an exceptional blackness showing the boundaries of the zero-lightspeed region, with no real surface. Looking up, the lines showed up clearly even against the dark backdrop of space.

“These are the deadest things in the universe as well,” said Guan Yifan. “Zero-lightspeed means absolute, one hundred percent death. Inside it, every fundamental particle, every quark is dead. There is no vibration. Even without a source of gravity inside, each death line is a black hole. A zero-gravity black hole. Anything that falls in cannot reemerge.”

Yifan picked up a rock and tossed it toward one of the death lines. The rock disappeared inside the absolute darkness.

“Can your lightspeed ships produce death lines?” Cheng Xin asked.

“Far from it.”

“So you’ve seen these before, then?”

“Yes, but only rarely.”

Cheng Xin gazed up at the giant black columns reaching into space. They lifted up the domed sky and seemed to turn the universe into a Palace of Death. Is this the ultimate end for everything?

In the sky, Cheng Xin could see the end of the columns. She pointed in that direction. “So the ships entered lightspeed at the end?”

“That’s right. These are only about a hundred kilometers high. We’ve seen columns even shorter than these, presumably left by ships that entered lightspeed almost instantaneously.”

“Are these the most advanced lightspeed ships?”

“Maybe. But this is a rarely seen technique. Death lines are usually the products of Zero-Homers.”

“Zero-Homers?”

“They’re also called Resetters. Maybe they’re a group of intelligent individuals, or a civilization, or a group of civilizations. We don’t know exactly who they are, but we’ve confirmed their existence. The Zero-Homers want to reset the universe and return it to the Garden of Eden.”

“How?”

“By moving the hour hand of the clock past twelve. Take spatial dimensions as an example. It’s practically impossible to drag a universe in lower dimensions back into higher dimensions, so maybe it’s better to work forward in the other direction. If the universe can be lowered into zero dimensions and then beyond, the clock might be reset and everything returned to the beginning. The universe might possess ten macroscopic dimensions again.”

“Zero dimensions! Have you seen such a thing done?”

“No. We’ve only witnessed two-dimensionalization. We’ve never even seen one-dimensionalization. But somewhere, some Zero-Homers must be trying. No one knows if they’ve ever succeeded. Comparatively, it’s easier to lower the speed of light to zero, so we’ve seen more evidence of such attempts to lower the speed of light past zero and return it to infinity.”

“Is that even theoretically possible?”

“We don’t know. Maybe the Zero-Homers have theories that say yes, but I don’t think so. Zero-lightspeed is an impassable wall. Zero-lightspeed is absolute death for all existence, the cessation of all motion. Under such conditions, the subjective cannot influence the objective in any way, so how can the ‘hour hand’ be shifted past it? I think the Zero-Homers are practicing a kind of religion, a kind of performance art.”

Cheng Xin stared at the death lines, her terror mixed with awe. “If these are trails, why don’t they spread?”

Guan Yifan clutched Cheng Xin’s arm. “I was just getting to that. We’ve got to get out of here. Leave not just Planet Gray, but the entire system. This is a very dangerous place. Death lines are not like regular trails. Without disturbance, they’ll stay like this, with a diameter equal to the effective surface of the curvature engine. But if they’re disturbed, they’ll spread very rapidly. A death line of this size can expand to cover a region the size of a solar system. Scientists call this phenomenon a death line rupture.”