Chapter 531: Dimensional Strike of the Two-Dimensional Foil! Infinite Expansion into Flatness!
Suddenly, the Singer realized that since this civilization had already learned how to conceal its own presence, the usual photon strike might no longer be absolutely clean and decisive.
As a professional cleaner, it could never allow remnants or survivors of the civilization it was tasked to erase. To root out every last trace, a higher-level cleaning tool was required.
The Singer's first thought was to use a two-dimensional foil, but its authority was insufficient; such a tool required prior approval from the Elders.
"I need a piece of two-dimensional foil, for extermination purposes." The Singer submitted its request. Unexpectedly, the Elder granted permission almost immediately.
As the foil was transmitted and floated before it, the Singer felt uneasy. It probed cautiously: "Why grant it so readily this time?"
In the past, the Elder had never shown such willingness to provide access to this advanced tool.
"This isn't anything particularly precious." The Elder's tone remained cold, as though brushing aside some trivial matter.
"But using it too often… it isn't quite right."
The Singer's hesitancy only made the Elder more impatient. First begging for the foil, and now acting reluctant—what was wrong with this youngster today?
"Plenty of others across the universe are using it."
The Elder scrutinized the Singer up and down.
"Yes, it's used everywhere, but we used to be restrained—at least not like this."
At that, the Elder caught the true meaning in the Singer's words. It demanded whether the Singer had learned something it should not have, and began rummaging through its thought-body for traces.
Terrified, the Singer confessed at once.
In truth, it was hardly a crime. The Mother World had already made this not-so-secret secret public knowledge.
The war between the Mother World and the border civilization was going poorly, in fact reaching a state of crisis.
The border civilization possessed mathematical-rule weapons, able to alter physical constants directly—reshaping the very structure of the universe. In a three-dimensional cosmos, their advantage was overwhelming.
In addition, the border civilization controlled hyper-membrane broadcast technology, capable of transmitting the coordinates of targets across the entire universe—threatening the Singer civilization's rear bases.
Thus, the Mother World and the border civilization were locked in a struggle of life and death: either annihilate the other, or be annihilated.
And yet…
There remained one other road: a path of slow death, taken only in desperation.
"Mother World has already prepared for complete dimensional reduction, hasn't it? We're giving up on this war."
The Singer risked death by asking. If this were true, dying now or later made no difference.
It would all be the same.
The Elder gave no reply—its silence confirmed the Singer's fear.
A profound sorrow washed over the Singer. If the Mother World truly embraced total two-dimensionalization, then it would become a rootless wanderer, never again finding the doorway home.
Three-dimensional beings could not survive in a two-dimensional world.
But quickly the Singer purged these thoughts from its mind. This was not its concern. Dimensional reduction was a long process.
Perhaps, after completing its quota of assignments, it might still have a chance to return and see home one last time. With that in mind, it once again hummed its unknown tune. Then, with force-field tendrils, it grasped the foil and casually hurled it toward the Trisolaran system.
——
In the outer solar system, the Universal Megacorp's reconnaissance network monitoring the Trisolaran system detected an unidentified object.
It was streaking at light speed toward the far edge of the Oort Cloud.
The object was massive, and its collisions with interstellar dust at such velocity produced intense radiation.
What was more, during its flight it made a subtle course adjustment to avoid a dust belt ahead, before resuming its original trajectory.
From these details, it was almost certain: this was an alien starship.
Upon learning this, Li Ang personally entered the council chamber to deliberate with the other Megacorp executives.
None of them had expected a dark forest strike from another civilization to arrive so quickly. The situation was clearly shifting beyond their expectations.
"What's the status?"
Li Ang stepped up to the central console and addressed the transcendent AI, Europa.
"The detected vessel has departed," Europa reported. "But before leaving, it launched some kind of transparent object toward the Trisolaran system."
"Based on available data, it was not a photon. We detected neither the characteristic collision radiation nor the corresponding electromagnetic spectrum."
At that, Alt Cunningham added: "This object is continuously emitting faint gravitational waves—frequency and strength constant, without carrying any information."
"This strongly suggests it's a strike weapon. According to headquarters archives, we have reason to suspect it is a two-dimensional foil."
Li Ang grew thoughtful. It was too early to confirm. Until they were absolutely certain, it was possible that some other civilization—not the Singer civilization—had launched the attack.
He quickly ordered the deployment of Megacorp's AI probes and sophons stationed in the Trisolaran system.
Since absorbing the entire Trisolaran civilization, sophon technology had naturally become part of the Megacorp.
Through Sophon One, still active within the system, the Megacorp could directly observe the details of the imminent dark forest strike.
Meanwhile, auxiliary AI drones relayed data back to the sophon, which then transmitted it through the quantum induction array—achieving real-time communication and monitoring.
Together, Sophon One and the drones formed the eyes the Megacorp had left inside the Trisolaran system.
Soon enough, the AI Manticore drone locked onto the unidentified object entering the system.
Its velocity dropped abruptly from light speed to one-thousandth of light speed—clearly, this was its intended destination.
Several drones raced closer, sending back clear visuals to War Moon Headquarters.
And then everyone saw it.
A sheet of pristine, semi-transparent paper!
To the unknowing, it might have looked like some cosmic flyer delivered across light-years, advertising an alien civilization.
But in truth, this paper carried no readable information at all. It looked for all the world like a transparent peppermint strip.
As expected…
Li Ang recognized the origin of that thing at a glance.
It was a two-dimensional foil released by the Singer Civilization.
Out in deep space, the gravitational waves radiating from the sheet were steadily weakening. From the data relayed by the AI drones, Chisaji fox could confirm one thing:
"The outer layer of the two-dimensional foil is wrapped in a containment field. That field is evaporating away and won't hold for much longer!"
Newcomer Luo Ji still didn't fully understand the use of a two-dimensional foil. He asked curiously, but everyone around him only cast him a brief glance before turning their eyes back to the holographic display—
as if telling him: Don't worry. You'll see soon enough.
At the central console, Li Ang pondered why the Singer Civilization would drop a two-dimensional foil on the Trisolaran system. After all, cleaning up this star system would only require a single photon particle.
Yet they had chosen to use such a weapon—a bit of overkill.
This was not how things should have unfolded, but it had happened nonetheless.
The appearance of the two-dimensional foil had already sealed the fate of the Trisolaran system.
All the Universal Megacorp could do was observe carefully and gather as much data as possible.
The foil's containment field lasted for half an hour before finally evaporating completely. During that time, everyone kept their eyes wide open, waiting for the moment the weapon revealed its true power.
Soon, as the sugar coating of poison burned away, Death itself finally descended.
The two-dimensional foil revealed its true form—yet it appeared to be nothing at all. Inside was an empty expanse of space, seemingly no different from its surroundings.
But under close scrutiny, one could see it: the space within was no longer three-dimensional. It was flattening into layers of two dimensions. Everyone could see space itself flowing, collapsing, compressing into the thickness of paper.
The Trisolaran system's dimensional descent had begun.
Like a flat abyss of death suddenly opening out of nowhere, all the surrounding space was pulled toward it. This was the fall from three dimensions to two, the collapse of the solid world into images with no depth.
One AI drone, before being swallowed by the abyss, managed to transmit its last footage. But all Li Ang and the others could see was a thin glowing slit of light.
After that, no new images came back.
The drone was still recording, but in two dimensions, all its camera could capture was a single glowing line—nothing more.
Fortunately, Universal Megacorp had deployed far more than one drone. AI Europa quickly switched to feeds from other units and kept approaching the expanding two-dimensional zone.
They soon saw the spot where the previous drone had been. What remained was an uncanny pattern: the drone itself flattened into a plane, its intricate circuitry and electronic components tangled together into a dizzying diagram.
That was what a two-dimensional drone looked like. The reason its footage had been reduced to a single line was simple: a three-dimensional machine can capture nothing more than that in two dimensions.
Meanwhile, the flattened surface kept expanding outward. Everything that touched it was pressed down like dough on the bottom of a pan.
Wherever the two-dimensional foil spread, all became tracings without thickness or volume—mere surface images.
Before long, more and more drones were devoured. Dimensional descent spread like quicksand, swallowing masses of matter and reducing once-solid structures into bewildering planar mosaics.
This eerie method of Dark Forest warfare made the executives of Universal Megacorp break out in goosebumps.
"So this is a dimensional strike…"
Luo Ji murmured under his breath. For the first time, he experienced the true coldness and terror of the Dark Forest.
Neither the sophons nor the droplets of Trisolaris had ever weighed upon him so heavily. The two-dimensional foil did.
He was not alone. The other executives felt it too. Such an unorthodox form of slaughter—Universal Megacorp had never conceived of anything like it.
And now the scientists of the hub could witness firsthand the process by which a universe collapses in dimension.
Li Ang gave no order to recall the drones. With the two-dimensional expansion moving at the speed of light, they could never outrun it anyway.
Thus, one by one, the foil devoured the scattered planets, asteroids, and drones of the Trisolaran system, reducing every view to nothing but straight lines.
Only the sophons, capable of moving at light speed, could endure a while longer, bringing back precious fragments of information.
Soon one of the system's stars was caught by the foil and began its fall into two dimensions.
The collapse of an entire star was a longer process. Amid a sea of crimson fire, the celestial body gradually melted down into a plane, dissolving into a dazzling, intricate painting.
The star's descent lasted an entire hour. When it was over, what remained was a radiant, glowing ellipse.
Some art-loving staff could not help but cry out—it looked uncannily like Van Gogh's Starry Night.
Perhaps Van Gogh, in some half-dreaming, tear-blurred vision, had glimpsed the true face of the universe. A rare inspiration, captured on canvas, hinting at the cosmos' ultimate truth.
Only centuries later would people realize the truth:
they had already seen a two-dimensionalized universe.
With that star's demise, a third of the Trisolaran system had already been consumed, its blazing colors and fractal lines spreading outward like Van Gogh hurling bucketfuls of paint across a canvas.
Nothing could halt the dimensional strike. The spread of two-dimensional collapse was inexorable.
At last, the holographic display presented the final state of the Trisolaran system—fully flattened, sealed within two dimensions.
A work greater than Van Gogh's Starry Night had been born: the cosmic masterpiece of a star system reduced to a painting.
Every detail of the system was visible at atomic precision. Every Trisolaran atom now lay projected in perfect order onto the two-dimensional plane.
It was a picture of breathtaking beauty, yet so cold it suffocated.
The Singer Civilization had imprisoned an entire three-dimensional world within a still, lifeless painting.
When they looked upon it, the first reaction was disbelief. Yet the crushing weight of reality told them all too clearly: what they had just witnessed was truth.
This was the dimensional strike that recurred endlessly in the Three-Body universe.
Every moment, countless such paintings were being drawn by the power of two-dimensional foils—countless three-dimensional worlds sealed forever in flat images.
And the beings caught in them did not go on living elsewhere. They were reduced to still figures, lifeless marks on a frozen canvas.
This irreversible process spread on through the universe, without end.
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