A1-07 Abandoning the Staircase Project

The Staircase Project is shelved.

No suitable candidate is willing to donate their brain. The ethics committee also issues harsh criticism of the entire plan. Ultimately, the PDC decides in a closed-door meeting to redirect resources to other projects.

Your proposal — or rather, the proposal you never fully voiced — sinks into the depths of the archives.

You continue your work as an aerospace engineer after that. But sometimes, during late nights at the office, you think of that number: 860 grams. The weight of a human brain. You think of Yun Tianming's name — that young man you knew, slowly dying in some hospital somewhere.

He passes away three months later. Quietly, unremarkably, in an ordinary ward of a city hospital.

You don't attend his funeral.

Two years later, you make a decision: to enter hibernation.

The Trisolaran Crisis suffocates you. Not with fear — you aren't afraid of aliens. It's a feeling of helplessness. The failure of the Staircase Project makes you feel that with the current era's technology and ethical framework, humanity is not yet ready to face a true test.

Perhaps the future will be different.

You step into the hibernation pod. The temperature slowly drops. Your last thoughts are of that gray Beijing sky, and Yun Tianming's quiet eyes in the hospital room.

You wake from the cold. The world has changed beyond recognition.

⟲ This is the path where you abandoned the Staircase Project. On this route, you never formed a deep connection with Yun Tianming. This will affect intelligence from the Trisolaran world in later chapters.

⟲ Return to the beginning of Act One