Episode 1: The Staircase Program
In the besieged Constantinople, emperor Constantine XI meets with a prostitute named Helena who promises to kill his enemy the sultan who is attacking the city. Skeptical, he gives her a test to return with the head of a prisoner, which she seemingly magically achieves but only returns with his brain. Unfortunately for the emperor, she is unable to kill the sultan since the higher dimensional fragment she used had left the Earth behind.
We’re introduced to Yun Tianming, an aerospace graduate who has late-stage terminal lung cancer. He decides that rather than spend what little money he has left over, that he will utilize the newly passed euthanasia law to take his own life.
Even after receiving a large sum of money from his old college classmate as repayment for his drink idea that made his classmate rich, he is not able to use that money towards his treatment, so instead he decides to anonymously buy DX3906, a remote, planetless star for his college infatuation, Cheng Xin utilizing the UN’s newly created “Stars Our Destination” project.
At the start of the Crisis Era, Cheng Xin, a aerospace PhD, joins the newly formed and secretive branch of the PDC called the Strategic Intelligence Agency (PIA) where they research ways to defeat the Trisolarans.
Initially dismissed because of inherent sexism, she ultimately proposes a plan to fulfil the PIA’s mission to accelerate a spy probe to 1% the speed of light to intercept the Trisolaran fleet, gaining the trust of her boss Vadimov and PIA chief Thomas Wade.
Her plan, dubbed The Staircase Program, would use bombs detonated in precise succession in space to propel a probe using a sail to the desired speed. During the research phase that started out on sending a hibernating person, to a frozen dead person, ends up being only a frozen brain to lower the weight enough to be able to achieve 1% the speed of light.
While searching for a suitable candidate, her classmate tells her about the terminal condition of her former classmate Yun Tianming, whom she believes would be a good candidate. The PIA works in secret with world governments to pass the euthanasia laws so that a candidate’s brain can be harvested to send into space.
Tianming’s attempt to conduct euthanasia is interrupted by Cheng Xin at the last moment, but he realizes it is only in a professional capacity, not out of love because he had gifted her a star as he initially thought. All the while Cheng Xin had no idea who had given her the star, which has little value other than sentimental. Tianming accepts the mission, despite his fear of space and the thought of eternal torture at the hands of the Trisolarans.
It is only as Tianming is about to die that Wade tells Cheng Xin that it was Tianming who gave her the star, but she just misses him before he dies and his brain is preserved for his spaceflight.
She watches as the Staircase Program is executed, it succeeds in that it achieves 1% the speed of light, but due to a slight error in the direction of the 998th out of 1003 bombs’ explosion, the probe and Tianming’s brain veer off course into the vast expanse of space. With hope lost for the probe and despair for Tianming’s future, she accepts a mission to hibernate and hopes that she can help the future PIA in their future efforts to defeat the Trisolarans.
Episode 2: The Swordholders
Bronze Age, one of the surviving ships from the Battle of Darkness, returns back to Earth after being told that they would be welcomed back as heroes. This warm welcome is not meant to be and as soon after they dock the entire crew is put on trial for crimes against humanity.
During the trial, it’s revealed that over 94% of the crew voted to attack Quantum during the Battle of Darkness, and even more gruesomely, they filled their food storage with the remains of the crew that they killed. Nearly the entire crew is convicted, but one of the members manages to send a communication to the other surviving ship of the Battle of Darkness, Blue Space, to tell them not to come back. In response, Gravity, a new fleet ship equipped with a gravitational wave antenna, is sent to pursue Blue Space along with two Trisolaran droplets.
Cheng Xin awakens from hibernation after 264 years which is now 61 years into the Deterrence Era. She finds a much different world than the one that she left. The world is much more feminized, humans and Trisolarans are working together and sharing science and culture, and the star that she was gifted by Yun Tianming turns out to have planets after all.
The planets were discovered by an astronomy PhD named 艾 (Ai) AA. Cheng Xin comes to an arrangement with the UN to sell the planets and the license for the stars’ energy but retains the star itself, since she doesn’t want to sell what was a gift. With the large proceeds, she and AA form a new company.
In the years since Luo Ji first discovered and implemented deterrence, he now singularly holds the deterrence mechanism which is now a gravitational wave broadcast system, which he will activate in the event that Trisolarans break the peace. At over 100 years old, and suspected of mundicide for his spell, the public urges someone else to be elected to take over his position, referred to as Swordholder.
One person who very much wants the job is PIA chief Thomas Wade, who also hibernated to now. He fears that Cheng Xin would beat him out for the role, despite her not even being aware of what it is, and tricks her into a secluded area and shoots her with a common era gun, only to be stopped by AA and police before he can kill her.
Meanwhile, In the vicinity of the Oort Cloud, Gravity nearly catches up with Blue Space when the crew notices some strange phenomena. From holes in walls, micrometeorites, and large parts of the ship disappearing temporarily, the crew isn’t sure what to make of it. After Blue Space surrenders, Gravity receives an alert that the droplets are attacking.
Cheng Xin, who feels a maternal sense of protection for this new world, eventually wins election as the new Swordholder to succeed Luo Ji. She meets him in the bunker deep underground for the handover ceremony, where he has been literally wallfacing for over half a century to keep the Trisolarans at bay. However, her new position was only destined to last a mere 15 minutes.
Episode 3: Australia
Cheng Xin's time as Swordholder comes to a quick end as 6 Trisolaran probes speed their way to Earth. She has only 10 minutes to consider whether or not to activate the deterrence system. She realizes that she cannot erase the 3.5 billion year history of the Earth and throws away the button. Shortly after, the probes reach Earth and destroy all of the gravitational wave antennas on Earth, disable the dark forest deterrence, but leave Cheng Xin unharmed.
When Cheng Xin and AA go to examine the impact site, she is met by Sophon who tells her that Trisolaris predicted this outcome for years, Gravity has also been destroyed, and finally says “Get ready to go to Australia, you pitiful bugs.”
Over the course of the next year, the entirety of humanity is forced to relocate to Australia. Conditions quickly devolve into a fight for food and resources, even with humanity even turning to theocracy and dictatorship. An Earth Security Force is established to force people who are not willing to relocate, eventually turning to indiscriminate killing of people.The Earth Resistance Movement is also formed to fight the Trisolarans, despite the fact that all of their moves can be tracked by the Sophons.
Sophon announces their ultimate plan, to defang and force humanity to fight over resources to the point where they’re forced to eat each other and get the human population to about 50 million people. Upon hearing this, Cheng Xin finds herself going blind.
Aboard Gravity, James Hunter, who has been entrusted with destroying the gravitational wave antenna should anything happen, but once the droplet attack starts to happen, he finds that the system to destroy the antenna is not functioning. Soon after, the droplets change course and seem to die, and finally they’re boarded by the Blue Space.
The crew of the Blue Space lays out what they believe has happened: The Trisolarans had attacked Earth and coordinated the droplet attack to coincide with the Swordholder handover ceremony. After a long discussion, they vote as a combined crew to activate the universal broadcast system and send the gravitational waves into the dark forest of space.
Blue Space then reveals the secrets of how they disabled the droplets and what the strange phenomena they have been seeing. In this region of space, they had been encountering fourth dimensional “fragments”, which they are able to enter and experience interacting with the world in higher dimensions.
During further exploration of 4D space, they encounter beings that reside there. They are able to find a way to communicate with a ring shaped object, and it cryptically tells them that it is a tomb, and that they are fish in a puddle of a drying sea. After exiting the 4D space, they observe the fragments shrinking, and finally the ring itself losing its fourth dimension.
Meanwhile back on Earth, a year after the Great Resettlement had been completed, the news that the universal broadcast was received by Trisolaris was met with cheering from humanity and a retreat from the Trisolarans. Humanity would be returning home from Australia.
Episode 4: The Storyless Kingdom
Humanity tries to get back to normal after the events of the Great Resettlement, Cheng Xin hibernates for 5 years to give time to restore her vision. During that time AA rapidly builds up their business.
During the intervening years, humanity starts to question the validity of the Dark Forest theory itself, thinking that the Trisolarans might be suffering from “delusions of cosmic persecution.” This thinking is quickly reversed as Earth sees one of the stars of Trisolaris get hit with a photoid attack and destroys Trisolaris itself with only 1/1000 of the population able to survive.
Sophon invites Cheng Xin and Luo Ji to tea at her house again. During the now famous “Conversation of the Way of Tea” Sophon reveals that dark forest strikes are done in the most economical fashion, for example on Trisolaris no reconnaissance was done, the attacking civilization just used the power of the star against its own system. Escape is the only means of survival.
During the conversation, Sophon has to be careful about what information they’re willing to give out, but out of respect to Luo Ji, she agrees to answer one question entirely truthfully. Luo Ji asks if there’s a way to broadcast a “cosmic safety notice”, to which Sophon responds “Yes”
While humanity splits into factions on how to send such a safety message, Cheng Xin becomes despondent to the point where she contemplates suicide. Sophon has another message for her that will change the course of history, “Yun Tianming would like to see you.”
Cheng Xin travels to outer space for the first time for the meeting to be conducted over real-time video communication via sophon. She is warned that if there’s any “unacceptable” conversation topics or recording devices, the Trisolarans will destroy the ship that she is on.
When they finally meet, Cheng Xin is surprised to see Yun Tianming as a healthy looking farmer, thanks to the seeds that she sent along. Cheng Xin tries to extract what information she can, but the Trisolarans quickly warn her and realize that she is not going to get any actionable information. It is then that Yun Tianming suggests that they remember the fairy tales that they used to tell each other (despite the fact they only met in college)
Tianming then goes on to tell an elaborate story about the Storyless Kingdom, where a princess is set to take the throne, but her brother seizes power by having his painter paint his family into paintings that makes them disappear from the kingdom. The princess is protected by her Aunt and an army captain as they make their way to see her other brother stranded on an island that is separated by a sea filled with dangerous fish. They make their way to the island using the magical soap of the far away land of He’ershingenmosiken to mollify the fish. The prince and princess return to the castle, defeat their brother, and the princess takes the chance to travel the world while her brother rules the kingdom.
Of course, the fairy tale was wholly invented by Yun Tianming as a means to disclose information vital for the survival of humanity wrapped in the metaphors of a fairy tale to not raise the suspicions of the Trisolarans and protect both Chang Xin and Tianming. Humanity tries to decipher them, but ultimately cannot come to an agreement on their meaning, so instead embark on a new project to try to save humanity, the Bunker Project, whereby they intend to build city-sized ships behind Jupiter and beyond that will protect the people from a photoid attack towards our sun.
Episode 5: Fate's Choice
While the IDC all but gives up hope in deciphering further meaning from the fairy tales, Cheng Xin and AA make a breakthrough after seeing an origami boat driven by a small piece of soap: curvature propulsion, the means of accelerating a ship to lightspeed by “folding” space and pulling it ahead.
Newly inspired, the IDC gets back to work and the next chance discovery is the meaning of He'ershingenmosiken. It is thought to be a combination of places in Norway, the mountain Helseggen and island Mosken. They travel there and investigate a maelstrom that was written about centuries ago by Edgar Allen Poe. They theorize the almost inescapable nature of the maelstrom once you’ve crossed the threshold is meant to represent a black hole. This is coupled with the idea that the constant speed needed for the umbrella to work is supposed to represent the speed of light to come up with the idea for the Black Domain Project.
The Black Domain project would present a cosmic safety notice by enveloping the solar system in a reduced lightspeed black hole. This would present the solar system as non-dangerous since it could not be observed, however, others including Cheng Xin and AA consider it to be a prison from which humanity could never escape.
The other plan to be put under consideration is the development of lightspeed ships given the realization of curvature propulsion, but this plan quickly loses favor due to 2 major events:
The first incident is a false alarm that is triggered to alert the population of an incoming dark forest strike. Humanity is sent into wide-scale panic and those who have the means, without regard for the safety of others, launch their personal spacecrafts into space, killing thousands.
The second incident is what triggered the false alarm, the fact that trails are left from ships that utilize curvature propulsion, broadcasting the danger of the civilization even more.
The last plan is the continuation of the bunker project, a plan to develop large cities in space that would be shielded from the explosion of the sun. At a scale test of the bunker project, Cheng Xin encounters Thomas Wade once again. He urges her to give him control of her company to develop lightspeed ships, a task that Cheng Xin would not have the temperament to complete, given that it is banned. After consideration, she agrees under the condition that she has the option to re-assume control if there is any threat to humanity. Wade reluctantly agrees and Cheng Xin and AA enter hibernation.
60 years later Cheng Xin is awoken from hibernation by Cao Bin, a former swordholder candidate. Upon awakening she is astonished to realize she is aboard an enormous cylindrical space city. Cao Bin takes her on a tour of other cities in the area ranging from metropolitan, to extremely poor, and even an abandoned city that is built around a manufactured black hole.
She finally arrives at the space city run by her company and finds it under blockade. She meets back up with Wade to see a small-scale working experiment of curvature propulsion. Given the fact that the technology is outlawed, Wade has assembled a militarized force equipped with anti-matter bullets, capable of destroying a space city. Cheng Xin is horrified by the development and is almost surprised when Wade keeps his promise to her and hands control back over to her as she shuts it down and disarms the soldiers.
Wade is tried, convicted, and executed for crimes against humanity while Cheng Xin and AA take their ship, Halo to Jupiter and decide to re-enter hibernation once more until such time that the dark forest strike hits the sun so they are able to see humanity hopefully prosper and live in happiness in the era after sun has been destroyed and humanity emerges from its bunkers.
Episode 6: Singer
Somewhere in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, an alien worker, nicknamed Singer, is tasked with determining the sincerity of coordinates and cleansing them. Singer notices a series of interesting communications between two worlds, one of which has already been cleansed, and Singer theorizes that it’s because of nearby “slow fog.” Singer takes an interest in the world that originally sent the message, even giving them a nickname of the “star pluckers.” There isn’t much time for investigation as cleansing is just a routine task. Singer is about to use a “mass dot” to cleanse when it’s noticed the system has “blind corners” and instead decides to use a two-vector foil instead as Singer flicks it and continues on singing.
Cheng Xin and AA awake from hibernation only 60 years later and are greeted by Cao Bin over a video call. Since they had asked to be awoken in the event of a dark forest strike, they ask when the photoid is expected to hit the sun.. but Cao Bin tells them the means of the attack is instead a “slip of paper”
A year previous, workers aboard an advance warning station noticed an object traveling towards the solar system. They move to intercept it when they noticed it had slowed down, and observe that it is about the size of a credit card with no mass, perfectly flat, and emitting gravitational waves. They notice that it seems to not interact with their world at all as it easily passes through ships and even people. It is not until the gravitational waves stop that they realize the sinister nature of it as everything around starts falling into the object and becomes two-dimensionalized, the same fate that will become of the entire solar system.
With the knowledge that escape from the dimensional strike is impossible without the proper escape velocity of lightspeed, Cheng Xin and AA take a mission to visit Luo Ji, who is currently on Pluto as the caretaker of the Earth Civilization Museum, a repository of all the precious artifacts on Earth, a project conceived by UN Secretary Say centuries ago.
When they arrive, they see giant letters carved into the rock that say “Earth Civilization.” They meet with Luo Ji and tell him they are tasked with taking the artifacts and distributing them throughout space in the hopes that they might be recoverable by some civilization millions of years into the future after everything has been two-dimensionalized.
As they start gathering the artifacts, they see the solar system start to be two-dimensionalized, first Neptune and Saturn, followed by Earth, Mercury, the Sun, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Each one turned into an enormous 1:1 scale painting of the body, with each part laid flat, looking like a series of concentric circles.
As they start to make their final run, Luo Ji says that he wants to stay back on Pluto. Aboard Halo Cheng Xin and AA ask him if they can keep Starry Night with them, Luo Ji tells them the incredible news that not only did he help with lightspeed research that continued after the events that had caused it to get shut down, but one of the curvature propulsion drives they had made was installed on Halo, and they would be the only 2 people to escape two-dimensionalization.
Shocked at the revelation and ordered to not come back for Luo Ji, they try to think of a destination in the vastness of the universe. Cheng Xin decides to keep her date that she had made with Yun Tianming and sets course to DX3906, “Our Star.”
Episode 7: Our Star
AA tries to comfort Cheng Xin about her role in the destruction of the solar system as they make their 287 light-year journey to DX3906 that takes roughly 52 hours in their frame of reference.
Upon landing on the more habitable planet in the system, which they call Planet Blue, they are greeted by the civilian cosmologist who was aboard Gravity hundreds of years ago, Guan Yifan. He is not sure what happened to the Trisolaran fleets or Yun Tianming, but he received the broadcast from Halo and was there to meet them and take them back to one of the worlds that the galactic humans had founded.
Even though this part of space is dangerous, Cheng Xin insists on waiting for Yun Tianming, and when Yifan’s ship detects activity on a nearby planet, Cheng Xin accompanies him to investigate.
While en route, Yifan tells Cheng Xin more about the realities of the universe, including that civilizations routinely use the laws of physics as a means of attack, often using dimensional attacks. Some civilizations have even found ways to live in lower dimensions while attacking ones in higher dimensions, just as a means of survival at any cost. Finally, he tells her the theory that the universe was once ten-dimensional and light speed approaches infinity, but the endless dimensional attacks have brought the universe to its current state. They reach “Planet Grey” and see 5 black lines radiating from the planet, which Guan Yifan calls “death lines.” These lines are made from extremely advanced curvature propulsion engines and the speed of light inside them is 0 and they have a possibility of rupturing, especially if they come in contact with other curvature propulsion trails. He recommends that they get away from them as quickly as possible.
As they make their way back to Planet Blue, they receive a message from AA saying that Yun Tianming is there with her and he has brought her another even grander gift. Cheng Xin is awestruck and they make their way down to the planet, but the reunion is not meant to be as the death lines rupture and they find themselves traveling at the new, slower speed of light inside the black domain that was created by the rupture. Because his computers can’t work at reduced lightspeed, Guan Yifan needs to start the process of booting the slower, but heavily parallized neural computer to help them bring life support back online. This process takes over 12 days, so they will need to temporarily hibernate to preserve oxygen. This process is ultimately successful, but comes at a great cost, as they have traveled at the new lightspeed for almost 19 million years, meaning that Cheng Xin’s chance to meet with Yun Tianming has long since passed.
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan are able to reduce their speed and make their way down to the planet to search for any signs, when Cheng Xin remembers what Luo Ji had taught her and AA, that the only way to preserve a message over great spans of time was words carved into stone, and they eventually find a message left to them from AA and Yun Tianming:
- WE LIVED A HAPPY LIFE TOGETHER
- WE GIVE YOU A LITTLE
- SURVIVE THE COLLAPSE INSIDE
- GO TO THE NEW
They find a rectangular doorway on the planet and upon entering it, they are greeted by Sophon and their own pastoral, pocket universe. The hope is that they will be able to stay in the mini-universe outside of time until such time the universe has a chance to reset with another big bang and they’re able to experience the edenic, 10-dimensional universe. During their stay in the mini-universe they receive a broadcast from a faction called the Returners who say that the universe will not be able to reset due to the mass that has been taken into the pocket universes and the only way to allow it to happen is to return the mass to the main universe.
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan decide to dismantle their universe and return the mass with the hope that enough other inhabitants of pocket universes will do the same to save the universe from an eventual heat death. The three of them take a ship and set out to explore leaving behind only a databank of human and Trisolaran knowledge and a self-sustaining fish bowl that will travel outside to the new universe.