Character from dark-forest by
English neuroscientist, EU President, Third Wallfacer — collaborates with his wife Keiko on the Mental Seal, never realizing it is the lever for the most elegant betrayal of the project.
Hines is the gentle Wallfacer. He believes the human brain can be enhanced beyond the sophon-locked ceiling on physics, and he loves his wife with a fixed, quiet devotion. His public plan is brain-augmentation research; his private plan is the Mental Seal, an apparatus that imprints arbitrary beliefs as bedrock truths. He never imagines Keiko could be his Wallbreaker. After her revelation he keeps working — reborn as Luo Ji's most useful collaborator on the Snow Project, the supposed star-tracking program that doubles as the dark-forest broadcast antenna.
A thin, soft-spoken British man with a high forehead, wire-rim glasses, slightly stooped. Pale, scholarly hands. Always seems to be listening rather than speaking. Ages well — looks the same after hibernation, only a little more tired.
Also known as: 比尔·希恩斯, the Third Wallfacer