Item from deaths-end by
The end of the Solar System. The dual-vector foil unfolds and the planets fold flat from the rim inward — a death humanity watches in real time.
The Two-Dimensional Collapse is the event the entire trilogy has been building toward. It begins when Singer's dual-vector foil activates somewhere past the orbit of Neptune and proceeds at the speed of light through the Solar System. The Bunker World's gas-giant shielding is irrelevant — the shielding logic was for a photoid, not a dimensional weapon. Only ships already at lightspeed can outrun it. From Halo City, AA, Cheng Xin, and Luo Ji's lightspeed escape ship watches Jupiter, then Earth, then the Sun, fold flat. Luo Ji dies in his Pluto vault as the last shipments arrive. Behind, a vast lossless mosaic spreads outward into the universe.
Begins as a pale rectangular flicker at the orbit of Neptune, then a translucent membrane sweeping inward. Where it passes, three-dimensional matter slumps gracefully into a perfect two-dimensional silhouette — Neptune folded first, then Uranus, then Saturn, then Jupiter, then the inner worlds. The collapsing region viewed from a 3D platform looks like a vast painting unfurling toward the viewer.