Death's End

“Desubstantiation effect” was a concept from astronautic psychology. Humans on Earth were surrounded by objects, and the image of the world in their subconscious was thus material and substantial. But in deep space, away from the Solar System, the stars were only distant points of light and the galaxy was nothing more than a luminous mist. To the senses and the mind, the world lost its materiality, and empty space dominated. A space voyager’s subconscious image of the world thus became desubstantiated. This mental model was the baseline in astronautic psychology. Mentally, the ship became the only material entity in the universe. At sub-light speeds, the motion of the ship was undetectable, and the universe turned into one boundless, empty exhibition hall. Here, the stars were illusions, and the ship was the only object on display. This mental model brought with it a profound sense of loneliness, and it could cause the voyager to have subconscious delusions of being a “superobserver” toward the lone “object on display.” This feeling of being completely exposed could lead to passivity and anxiety.

Thus, many of the negative psychological effects of deep-space flight were due to the extreme openness of the external environment. In West’s extensive professional experience, it was extremely rare to develop claustrophobia the way Guan Yifan did. Even stranger to West was the fact that Guan did not seem relieved by the vast, open sky of Plaza #1; the restlessness caused by claustrophobia seemed to abate not one whit. This tended to support Guan’s assertion that his claustrophobia had nothing to do with the narrow confines of his observatory. West grew even more interested in his case.

“Don’t you feel better?”

“No, not at all. I feel trapped. Here, everything is so… enclosed.”

Guan glanced at the starry sky and then focused his gaze in the direction Gravity was heading. The doctor knew he was looking for Blue Space. The two ships were now only one hundred thousand kilometers apart, and coasting at approximately the same speed. At the scale of deep space, the two ships were practically flying in close formation. The leadership of both ships was in the process of negotiating the technical details of their docking. But Blue Space was still too far away to be seen with the naked eye. The droplets were invisible as well. Based on the agreement made with Trisolaris half a century ago, the droplets had shifted to a position about three hundred thousand kilometers from both Gravity and Blue Space. The two ships and the droplets formed a narrow isosceles triangle.

Guan Yifan turned his gaze back to West. “Last night, I had a dream. I went somewhere, somewhere really open, open in a way that you can’t even imagine. After I woke up, reality felt very enclosed and narrow, and that was how I came to be claustrophobic. It’s like… if, as soon as you were born, you were locked inside a small box, you wouldn’t care because that was all you’ve known. But once you’ve been let out and they put you back in, it feels completely different.”

“Tell me more about this place in your dream.”

Guan gave the doctor a mysterious smile. “I will describe it to the other scientists on the ship, maybe even the scientists on Blue Space. But I won’t tell you. I don’t have anything against you, Doctor, but I can’t stand the attitude shared by everyone in your profession: If you think someone has a mental disorder, you treat everything he says as merely the delusion of a diseased mind.”

“But you just told me it was a dream.”

Guan shook his head, struggling to remember. “I don’t know if it was a dream; I don’t know if I was awake. Sometimes, you can think you’re waking from a dream, only to find yourself still dreaming; other times, you’re awake, but it seems like you’re dreaming.”

“The second situation is extremely rare. If you experienced that, then it was almost certainly a symptom of some mental disorder. Oh, sorry, now you’re unhappy with me again.”

“No, no. I think we’re actually very similar. We both have our targets of observation. You observe the deranged, and I observe the universe. Like you, I also have some criteria for evaluating whether the observed objects are sound: harmony and beauty, in the mathematical sense.”

“Of course the objects you observe are sound.”

“But you’re wrong, Doctor.” Guan pointed at the glowing Milky Way, but his gaze remained on West, as though showing him some monster that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “Out there is a patient who may be mentally sound, but whose body suffers from paraplegia!”

“Why?”

Guan curled up and hugged his knees. The movement caused his body to slowly rotate in place. The magnificent Milky Way revolved around him, and he saw himself as the center of the universe.