The pendulum had been hanging on the Zifeng Tower for a long time. It didn’t know exactly how long because it had no concept of time. A second, a year, ten years, or a hundred years made no difference to it – as a farm harvester, what need did it have for a sense of time?

So it just hung there, swinging back and forth, enduring rain and wind as bright green moss slowly crept up its body. It looked as if it had become part of this planet.

If nothing unexpected happened, it would continue swinging as a pendulum until this planet’s destruction.

The Mother Machine hadn’t retrieved it, but this wasn’t an error – it was a mathematically acceptable margin of error. Out of 25,473,629 harvesters deployed simultaneously, one wasn’t retrieved. The recovery rate of 25,473,628/25,473,629 meant an error rate of 1/25,473,629 was mathematically acceptable, just as a loss rate of one in seven billion was within allowable limits. No one could achieve 100% success because the universe wouldn’t allow it.

This universe loved imperfect beauty. It was so enamored with imperfection and broken symmetry that these two qualities permeated the universe’s essence from beginning to end. In a way, this universe was unique – among so many universes, the most cherished completeness and perfection, so they were born into chaos and eternity. Though perfection was good, only imperfection could give birth to possibility and uncertainty. Uncertainty was more alluring than eternity.

That’s what the Mother Machine thought, and what the Mother Machine’s mother thought too.

The pendulum thought nothing at all.

It just hung there, letting birds and small animals climb up to make their nests.

I quite liked this green world. There were so many farmlands across the galaxy that crops ripened every second. This farm wasn’t particularly special – relatively speaking, the crops here matured quite slowly, probably due to environmental factors. In such a comfortable environment, the crops became complacent. It was foreseeable that after this harvest, it would take a very long time for the next batch of crops to mature.

Maybe five million years, maybe ten million years, perhaps fifty million, or even a hundred million years.

But the pendulum didn’t care.

The Mother Machine didn’t care either.

Time held no meaning for the Mother Machine. Not caring about time was the Mother Machine’s nature – none of them cared about time. The Mother Machine had completed its task and had long since closed its eyes.

When the next batch of crops matured, other Mother Machines and harvesters would descend, just like the last harvest. The last harvest happened in the extremely distant past, and the Mother Machine that completed that harvest never opened its eyes again. It simply remained quietly in orbit 380,000 kilometers from this planet, never awakening until now.

After completing their tasks, Mother Machines and harvesters were supposed to return to the universe. They were borrowed from the universe in the first place and should be returned after task completion.

So whether or not it was retrieved by the Mother Machine made little difference to the pendulum. It hung there quietly in slumber, waiting for the universe to reclaim it.

It thought this would be its ending.

Dust to dust, earth to earth, Mother Machine to Mother Machine, all to the universe.

Until that night when brilliant meteors streaked across the night sky, exploding into spectacular flowers at the horizon.

The pendulum opened its eyes again.

The Mother Machine leaving it here before ending its work might not have been a statistical error, but rather its profound wisdom.

It experienced that feeling the Mother Machine had spoken of – uncertainty truly was the most wonderful thing in this universe.

[Excerpt from Interview Records – Humanity’s Final Battle of Resistance:

Bai Zhen was the third person interviewed by this writer. He still drives a taxi in Nanjing, working days and returning home at night, living his peaceful civilian life. With human civilization developed to its current state, people like Bai Zhen lived the most comfortable lives – they would be the last to be crushed even if the sky fell. So Bai Zhen always remained calm and unhurried, never anxious or impatient. The apocalypse was just another topic for him to brag about. We met at 7 PM, on the second weekend after interviewing Zhao Bowen, at a small roadside restaurant near the Nanjing Guoxin Zhuangyuan Lou Hotel.

As soon as Bai Zhen arrived, he picked up the menu and started ordering dishes freely, showing no restraint. While ordering, he asked, “Writer, do you have any dietary restrictions? Do you eat pork? Do you drink? Are you paying?”

I confirmed the last question, and Bai Zhen felt relieved.

Neither of us drank – I don’t drink, and Bai Zhen didn’t dare to. So we took two glass bottles of Arctic Ocean soda from the cooler, clinking the bottle mouths together.

The server brought salt-water duck, salted egg yolk rice crisps, and Jinling double stinky – a combination of stinky tofu and intestines.

“These are our local specialties! Have you tried them before, brother? Come on, try them, they’re fucking delicious!”

At the meal I was paying for, Bai Zhen showed full host’s enthusiasm.

“And I ordered you the first soup from Liuhe too. It’s good to have some soup to warm up in winter. Don’t be shy, brother.”

Bai Zhen ate and talked endlessly, going off on tangents – truly living up to his profession as a taxi driver.

“Let’s continue our WeChat conversation,” I tried to bring the topic back on track.

Bai Zhen held his greasy chopsticks, chewing as he nodded: “Where should we start? Continue about the Big Eye?”

I nodded.

“About this Big Eye, no one knows exactly when or why it awakened. Most likely it was during those two weeks. Old Zhao speculated that intense human activity woke it up – we made too much noise and disturbed it. But I think that might not be the reason… Most of what we know about the Big Eye is speculation, with direct evidence being the minority. To this day, it remains a mystery to us.”

Bai Zhen spoke at length.

I opened my phone and started recording.

“However, one thing we can confirm is that the Big Eye was the direct cause of world destruction. This has been verified.”

“What kind of thing was the Big Eye exactly?” I asked.

Bai Zhen wiped his lips with a paper napkin and thought for a moment:

“Big Eye is just our casual name for it. It had official codenames – ‘Hacker’ or ‘Blade Guest.'”

“Blade Guest?” I asked.

Bai Zhen nodded: “That might have been the world’s last Blade Guest. In our speculation, when disaster struck, Blade Guests descending from the sky might have numbered in the tens of millions. After human extinction, they all returned to the Black Moon. Only this last Blade Guest somehow remained on Earth. The sudden surge in human activity awakened it, and when it discovered the world’s last surviving person, it began hunting her.”

“BG4MSR?” I asked.

“Yes,” Bai Zhen said, “The Blade Guest was incredibly powerful and posed an enormous threat to us. Honestly, if one Big Eye was this troublesome, with a hundred thousand of them, they might destroy the world. With ten million, it would have been remarkable for humanity to last even two years… Brother, you surely can’t imagine how they harvested humans – it was truly a spectacle.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“They used a force humans couldn’t resist.”

“What force?”

“Gravity, the Black Moon’s gravity,” Bai Zhen’s voice lowered. “From the records we obtained, the apocalyptic scene probably went like this: One day, the Black Moon rose from the horizon, growing enormous enough to fill your entire field of vision. Earth’s gravity was countered by the Black Moon’s pull, lifting all people and objects from the ground, leaving them helpless. Then tens of millions of Blade Guests methodically slaughtered them all. The Black Moon could orbit Earth once and harvest all humans like cutting chives. If one orbit wasn’t enough, it could make several more.”

“Just like cutting chives, the same.”

“The Black Moon could control its orbit?” I was somewhat surprised.

“It should be able to. It wasn’t a natural celestial body.”

“According to what you’re saying, it approached Earth to a terrifying degree, almost face-to-face. Wouldn’t the Black Moon itself be torn apart by Earth’s gravity?”

“It would, but it didn’t fear being torn apart. That’s what it wanted. Earth’s massive gravity helped it. The Black Moon wasn’t an indivisible whole – after being torn apart, it became thousands upon thousands of Blade Guests. Only after human extinction did the Black Moon enter a stable orbit, recovering all the Big Eyes and staying 130,000 kilometers away. It might have gone dormant after completing its mission, or it might have been a one-time tool.”

Bai Zhen said.

“No wonder BG4MSR said they lived underground for a long time,” I recalled.

“Survivors must have moved underground to fight against the Big Eyes,” Bai Zhen nodded. “But when the building falls, a single pole can’t support it. They lasted two years at most. It was a period of bitter struggle. Black Blade Guests prowled everywhere on the surface, forcing people underground, where they sought chances to destroy the Blade Guests. But humans ultimately lost this war, with only two people left in the whole world.”

“BG4MSR and her teacher,” I said.

“Correct.”

Bai Zhen picked up a piece of intestine, which trembled with an oily sheen.

“How did BG4MSR discover that Big Eye?” I asked.

“It’s the other way around. Based on the information we’ve gathered, we believe the Big Eye discovered the girl first. We still don’t know how the Big Eye obtained information about its surroundings, though it had a very large eye, so its vision must have been good. BG4MSR said she was just fishing at Xuanwu Bay as usual when she looked up and noticed a sphere had somehow appeared on top of the Zifeng Tower.”

Bai Zhen ate while talking.

“That was the Big Eye?”

“That was the Big Eye – the only living Blade Guest we’ve encountered,” Bai Zhen nodded. “The Big Eye might have been sleeping on Zifeng Tower, or it might have been dormant elsewhere and climbed to a higher position with better visibility to scout the environment after awakening. Anyway, whatever the case, when BG4MSR saw it, it was perched on top of Zifeng Tower.”

“BG4MSR escaped,” I said.

“She was clever, but still nearly lost her life,” Bai Zhen sighed.

“She was terrified, and we happened to be out of contact because the radio was in the full-spectrum electromagnetic anechoic chamber for testing.”

“That must have been tough,” I said.

Bai Zhen put down his chopsticks and stared fixedly at the Arctic Ocean soda bottle on the table, his gaze becoming distant:

“Yes, it was tough. The last human on Earth versus the last Blade Guest – this was humanity’s final battle of resistance. We failed once in the future; we can’t fail again today. To fight against the Blade Guest, we’re giving it everything we’ve got.”]