A1-03 The Conservative Plan

You hesitate. The idea about a human brain has been churning in your mind for days, but you cannot bring yourself to say it.

"The Staircase Project's payload is approximately 50 kilograms," you say. "I recommend we send a cluster of micro-probes — optical sensors, radiation detectors, a communications module. The capabilities would be limited, but at least we could obtain some baseline data as the probe approaches the Trisolaran Fleet."

The reaction in the conference room is tepid. A scientific advisor shakes his head: "A 50-kilogram unmanned probe, operating for decades at four light-years' distance? How do you solve the power problem? How do you handle communication delay? Any malfunction would be irreparable. This plan has a success rate of less than five percent."

The military representative is even more blunt: "Spending hundreds of nuclear warheads for a five-percent-chance unmanned probe? The cost-benefit ratio doesn't work."

You know they're right. Your conservative plan is technically almost unviable.

But you keep the bolder idea — the one about a human brain — buried deep inside.

The meeting ends. The Staircase Project is shelved for the time being.

Three days later.

You sit in your Beijing office on a winter day, the sky outside a haze of gray. You open your laptop, and on the screen are the Staircase Project's numbers — the figures you've calculated over and over. 50 kilograms. 860 grams of effective payload. Exactly the weight of a human brain.

Your mentor sends you a message: "The PDC is considering canceling the Staircase Project. If you have another plan, this is the last window."

You lean back in your chair and close your eyes. You think of the panic that swept the world when the Trisolaran Crisis was revealed. You think of the scientists who killed themselves out of despair. You think of the weight on the Wallfacers' shoulders.

If you don't propose that plan, the Staircase Project will be canceled. Humanity will lose its only chance to conduct close-range reconnaissance of the Trisolaran Fleet.

But if you do... you will personally push someone into the abyss of space.

Your hand hovers over the keyboard.