The Three-Body Problem

4 The Frontiers of Science

Wang Miao thought the four people who came to find him made a rather odd combination: two cops and two men in military uniforms. If the latter two were armed police, that would be somewhat understandable, but they were actually PLA officers.

As soon as Wang saw the cops, he felt annoyed. The younger one was all right—at least he was polite. But the other one, in plainclothes, immediately grated on him. He was thickset and had a face full of bulging muscles. Wearing a dirty leather jacket, smelling of cigarettes, and speaking in a loud voice, he was exactly the sort of person Wang despised. “Wang Miao?”

The way the cop addressed him by name only, so direct and impolite, made Wang uncomfortable. Adding to the insult, the man lit a cigarette as he addressed him, without even lifting his head to show his face. Before Wang could answer, the man nodded at the younger cop, who showed Wang his badge.

Having lit the cigarette, the older cop moved to enter Wang’s apartment.

“Please don’t smoke in my home,” Wang said, blocking him.

“Oh, sorry, Professor Wang.” The young police officer smiled. “This is Captain Shi Qiang.” He gave Shi a pleading look.

“Fine, we can talk in the hallway,” Shi said. He took a deep drag. Almost half the cigarette had turned to ashes, and he didn’t blow out much smoke. He inclined his head toward the younger police officer. “You ask him, then.”

“Professor Wang, we want to know if you’ve had any recent contacts with members of the Frontiers of Science,” the young cop said.

“The Frontiers of Science is full of famous scholars, and very influential. Why can’t I have contact with a legal international academic group?”

“Look at the way you talk!” Shi said. “Did we say anything about it not being legal? Did we say anything about you not being allowed to contact them?” He finally blew out the lungful of smoke that he had sucked in earlier—right in Wang’s face.

“All right then. Please respect my privacy. I don’t need to answer your questions.”

“Your privacy? You’re a famous academic. You have a responsibility toward the public welfare.” Shi threw away the butt and took out another cigarette from a flattened pack.

“I have the right to not answer. Please leave.” Wang turned around to go back inside.

“Wait!” Shi shouted. He waved at the young cop next to him. “Give him the address and phone number. You can come by in the afternoon.”

“What are you really after?” Wang said, his voice now tinged with anger. The argument brought the neighbors, curious about what was happening, out into the hallway.

“Captain Shi! You said you—” The young cop pulled Shi aside and continued speaking to him in hushed, urgent tones. Apparently, Wang wasn’t the only one annoyed by his rough manners.

“Professor Wang, please don’t misunderstand.” One of the army officers, a major, stepped forward. “There’s an important meeting this afternoon, to which several scholars and specialists are invited. The general sent us to invite you.”

“I’m busy this afternoon.”

“We know. The general already spoke with the head of the Nanotechnology Research Center. We can’t have this meeting without you. If you can’t attend, we’ll have to reschedule.”

Shi and the young cop said nothing. Both turned and went down the stairs. The two army officers watched them leave and seemed to sigh with relief.

“What’s wrong with that guy?” the major whispered to the other officer.

“He’s got quite a record. During a hostage crisis a few years ago, he acted recklessly, without concern for the lives of the hostages. In the end, a family of three all died at the hands of the criminals. Rumor has it that he’s also friendly with elements of organized crime, using one gang to fight another. Last year, he used torture to obtain confessions, and permanently disabled one of the suspects. That’s why he was suspended from duty….”

Wang Miao suspected that he was meant to overhear the conversation between the officers. Maybe they intended to show him that they were different from that rude cop; or maybe they wanted to make him curious about their mission.

“How can a man like that be part of the Battle Command Center?” the major asked.

“The general specifically requested him. I guess he must have some special skills. In any case, his duties are quite restricted. Other than public safety matters, he’s not allowed to know much.”

Battle Command Center? Wang looked at the two officers, baffled.

The car they sent for Wang Miao took him to a large compound in the suburbs. Since the door had only a number and no sign, Wang deduced that this building belonged to the military, rather than the police.

Wang was surprised by the chaos as he entered the large meeting room. Around him were numerous computers in various states of disarray. They had run out of table space and put a few workstations directly on the floor, where power cords and networking wires formed a tangled mess. Instead of being installed in racks, a bunch of routers were left haphazardly on top of the servers. Printer paper was scattered everywhere. A few projector screens stood in various corners of the room, sticking out at odd angles like gypsy tents. A cloud of smoke hovered over the room…. Wang Miao wasn’t sure if this was the Battle Command Center, but he was sure of one thing: Whatever they were dealing with was too important for them to care about keeping up appearances.

The meeting table, formed by pushing several smaller tables together, was piled with documents and odds and ends. The attendees, their clothes wrinkled, looked exhausted. Those wearing ties had all pulled them loose. It seemed as if they had been up all night.

A major general named Chang Weisi presided over the meeting, and half the attendees were military officers. After a few quick introductions, Wang found out that many of the others were police. The rest were academics like him, with a few prominent scientists specializing in basic research in the mix.

He also found four foreigners in attendance. Their identities shocked him: a United States Air Force colonel and a British Army colonel, both NATO liaisons, as well as two CIA officers, apparently acting as observers.

On the faces of everyone around the table, Wang could read one sentiment: We’ve done all we can. Let’s fucking get it over with, already.

Wang Miao saw Shi Qiang sitting at the table. In contrast to his rudeness yesterday, Shi greeted Wang as “Professor.” But the smirk on Shi’s face annoyed Wang. He didn’t want to sit next to Shi, but he had no choice, as that was the only empty seat. The already thick cloud of cigarette smoke in the room became thicker.

As documents were distributed, Shi moved closer to Wang. “Professor Wang, I understand you’re researching some kind of… new material?”

“Nanomaterial,” Wang answered.

“I’ve heard of it. That stuff is really strong, right? Do you think it could be used to commit crimes?” As Shi’s face was still half smirking, Wang couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“What do you mean?”

“Heh. I heard that a strand of that stuff could be used to lift up a truck. If criminals steal some and make it into a knife, can’t they slice a car in half with one stroke?”

“There’s no need to even make it into a knife. That kind of material can be made into a line as thin as one-hundredth of a hair. If you string it across a road, a passing car would be sliced into two halves like cheese—but what can’t be used for criminal purposes? Even a dull knife for descaling a fish can!”

Shi pulled a document halfway out of the envelope in front of him and shoved it back in again, suddenly losing interest. “You’re right. Even a fish can be used to commit a crime. I handled a murder case once. Some bitch cut off her husband’s family jewels. You know what she used? A frozen tilapia she got out of the freezer! The spines along the back were like razors—”

“I’m not interested. Did you ask me to the meeting just to talk about this?”

“Fish? Nanomaterials? No, no, nothing to do with those.” Shi put his mouth next to Wang’s ear. “Don’t be nice to them. They’re prejudiced against us. All they want is to get information out of us, but never tell us anything. Look at me. I’ve been here for a month, and I still don’t know anything, just like you.”

“Comrades,” General Chang said, “let’s get started. Of all the combat zones around the globe, this one has become the focal point. We need to update the current situation for all the attending comrades.”

The unusual term “combat zone” gave Wang pause. He also noticed that the general did not seem to want to explain in detail the background of what they were dealing with to new people like him. This supported Shi’s point. Also, in General Chang’s short opening remarks, he used the word “comrades” twice. Wang looked at the NATO and CIA officers sitting across from him. The general had neglected to add “gentlemen.”

“They’re also comrades. Anyway, that’s how everyone addresses each other here,” Shi whispered to Wang, pointing at the four foreigners with his cigarette.

While he was baffled by how Shi knew what he was thinking, Wang was impressed with his powers of observation.

“Da Shi, put out your cigarette. There’s enough smoke here,” General Chang said as he flipped through some documents. He called Shi Qiang by a nickname, “Big Shi.”

Shi looked around but couldn’t find an ashtray. In the end, he dropped the cigarette into a teacup. He raised his hand, and before Chang could even acknowledge him, he spoke loudly. “General, I have a request which I’ve made before: I want information parity.”

General Chang lifted his head. “There’s never been a military operation in which there was information parity. I have to apologize to all the scholars, but we cannot give you any more background.”

“We are not the same as the eggheads,” Shi said. “The police have been part of the Battle Command Center from the start. But even now, we still don’t know what this is all about. You continue to push the police out. You learn from us what you need about our techniques, and then you send us away one by one.”

Several other police officers in attendance whispered to Shi to shut up. It surprised Wang that Shi dared to speak in this manner to a man of Chang’s rank. But Chang’s response surprised him even more.

“Da Shi, it seems that you still have the same problem you had back when you were in the army. You think you can speak for the police? Because of your poor record, you had already been suspended for several months, and you were about to be expelled from the force. I asked for you because I value your experience in city policing. You should treasure this opportunity.”

Shi continued to speak roughly. “So I’m working in the hope of redeeming myself by good service? I thought you told me that all my techniques were dishonest and crooked.”

“But useful.” Chang nodded at Shi. “All we care about is if they’re useful. In a time of war, we can’t afford to be too scrupulous.”

“We can’t be too fastidious,” a CIA officer said, in perfect Modern Standard Mandarin. “We can no longer rely on conventional thinking.”

The British colonel apparently also understood Chinese. He nodded. “To be, or not to be…” he added in English. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“What is he saying?” Shi asked Wang.

“Nothing,” Wang replied mechanically. The people before him seemed to be speaking out of a dream. Time of war? Where is this war? He twisted to look out one of the floor-length windows. Through the window he could see Beijing in the distance: Under the spring sun, cars filled the streets like a dense river; on a lawn someone was walking a dog; a few children were playing….

Which is more real? The world inside or outside these walls?

General Chang said, “Recently, the enemy has intensified the pattern of attacks. The targets remain elite scientists. Please begin by taking a look at the list of names in the document.”

Wang took out the first page of the document, printed in large font. The list seemed to have been generated in a hurry, containing both Chinese and English names.

“Professor Wang, as you look through these names, does anything strike you?” General Chang asked.

“I know three of the names. All of them are famous scholars working at the forefront of physics research.” Wang was a little distracted. His eyes locked onto the last name on the list. In his mind, the two characters took on a different tint than the names above it. How can her name appear here? What happened to her?

“You know her?” Shi pointed to the name with a thick finger, stained yellow from smoking. Wang did not reply. “Ha. Don’t know her. But want to know her?”

Now Wang Miao understood why it made sense for General Chang to have asked to have this man who was once a soldier under his command. Shi, who appeared so vulgar and careless, had eyes as sharp as knives. Maybe he wasn’t a good cop, but he was certainly a fearsome one.

A year earlier, Wang Miao had been in charge of the nanoscale components for the “Sinotron II” high-energy particle accelerator project. One afternoon, during a brief break at the Liangxiang construction site, Wang was struck by the scene before him. As a landscape photography enthusiast, Wang often saw the sights around him as artistic compositions.

The main component of the composition was the solenoid of the superconducting magnet they were still installing. About three stories high and only half completed, the magnet loomed like a monster made of giant blocks of metal and a confusing mess of cryogenic coolant pipes. Like a junk heap from the Industrial Revolution, the structure exuded inhuman technological grimness and steel-bound barbarity.

In front of this metal monster stood the slim figure of a young woman. The composition’s lighting was fantastic as well: The metal monster was buried in the shadow of a temporary construction shelter, further emphasizing its stern, rough quality. But a single ray of light from the westering sun coming through the central hole in the shelter fell right on the woman. The soft glow lit up her supple hair and highlighted her white neck above the collar of her overalls, as though a single flower was blooming in a metal ruin after a violent thunderstorm….

“What are you looking at? Get back to work!”

Wang was shocked out of his reverie, but then realized that the director of the Nanotechnology Research Center wasn’t talking to him, but to a young engineer who had also been staring at the woman. Having returned from art to reality, Wang saw that the young woman wasn’t an ordinary worker—the chief engineer stood next to her, explaining something respectfully.

“Who is she?” Wang asked the director.

“You should know her,” the director said, waving his hand around in a large circle. “The first experiment on this twenty-billion-yuan accelerator will probably be to test her superstring model. Now, seniority matters in theoretical physics, and normally, she wouldn’t have been senior enough to get the first shot. But those older academics didn’t dare to show up first, afraid that they might fail and lose face, so that’s why she got the chance.”

“What? Yang Dong is… a woman?”

“Indeed,” the director said. “We only found out when we finally met her two days ago.”

The young engineer asked, “Does she have some psychological issue? Why else wouldn’t she agree to be interviewed by the media? Maybe she’s like Qian Zhongshu,[11] who died without ever appearing on TV.”

“But at least we knew Qian’s gender. I bet Yang had some unusual experiences as a child. Maybe it made her somewhat autistic.” Wang’s words were tinged with a hint of self-mockery. He wasn’t even famous enough for the media to be interested in him, let alone to turn down interview requests.

Yang walked over with the chief engineer. As they passed, she smiled at Wang and the others, nodding lightly without saying anything. Wang remembered her limpid eyes.

That night, Wang sat in his study and admired the few landscape photographs, his works he was the most proud of, hanging on the wall. His eyes fell on a frontier scene: a desolate valley terminating in a snowcapped mountain. On the nearer end of the valley, half of a dead tree, eroded by the vicissitudes of many years, took up one-third of the picture. In his imagination, Wang placed the figure that lingered in his mind at the far end of the valley. Surprisingly, it made the entire scene come alive, as though the world in the photograph recognized that tiny figure and responded to it, as though the whole scene existed for her.

He then imagined her figure in each of his other photographs, sometimes pasting her two eyes into the empty sky over the landscapes. Those images also came alive, achieving a beauty that Wang had never imagined.

Wang had always thought that his photographs lacked some kind of soul. Now he understood that they were missing her.

“All the physicists on this list have committed suicide in the last two months,” General Chang said.

Wang was thunderstruck. Gradually, his black-and-white landscapes faded into blankness in his mind. The photographs no longer had her figure in the foreground, and her eyes were wiped from the skies. Those worlds were all dead.

“When… did this happen?” Wang asked mechanically.

“The last two months,” Chang repeated.

“You mean the last name, don’t you?” Shi responded with satisfaction. “She was the last to commit suicide—two nights ago, overdosed on sleeping pills. She died very peacefully. No pain.”

For a moment, Wang was grateful to Shi.

“Why?” Wang asked. The dead scenes in those landscape photographs continued to flicker through his mind.

General Chang replied, “The only thing we can be sure of is this: The same reason drove all of them to suicide. But it’s hard to articulate. Maybe it’s impossible for us nonspecialists to even understand the reason. The document contains excerpts from their suicide notes. Everyone can examine them after the meeting.”

Wang flipped through the notes: All of them seemed to be long essays.

“Dr. Ding, would you please show Yang Dong’s note to Professor Wang? Hers is the shortest and possibly the most representative.”

The man in question, Ding Yi, had been silent until now. After another pause, he finally took out a white envelope and handed it across the table to Wang.

Shi whispered, “He was Yang’s boyfriend.” Wang recalled that he had seen Ding at the particle accelerator construction site in Liangxiang. He was a theoretician who had became famous for his discovery of the macroatom while studying ball lightning.[12] Wang took from the envelope a thin, irregularly shaped sheet exuding a faint fragrance—not paper, but birch bark. A single line of graceful characters was written on it:

There wasn’t even a signature. She was gone.

“Physics… does not exist?” Wang had no idea what to think.

General Chang closed the folder. “The file also contains some specific information related to the experimental results obtained after the completion of the world’s three newest particle accelerators. It’s very technical, and we won’t be discussing it here. The first focus of our investigation is the Frontiers of Science. UNESCO designated 2005 the World Year of Physics, and that organization gradually developed out of the numerous academic conferences and exchanges that occurred among world physicists that year. Dr. Ding, since you’re a theoretical physicist, can you give us more background on it?”

Ding nodded. “I have no direct connection with the Frontiers of Science, but it is famous in academia. Its core goal is a response to the following: Since the second half of the twentieth century, physics has gradually lost the concision and simplicity of its classical theories. Modern theoretical models have become more and more complex, vague, and uncertain. Experimental verification has become more difficult as well. This is a sign that the forefront of physics research seems to be hitting a wall.

“Members of the Frontiers of Science want to attempt a new way of thinking. To put it simply, they want to use the methods of science to discover the limits of science, to try to find out if there is a limit to how deeply and precisely science can know nature—a boundary beyond which science cannot go. The development of modern physics seems to suggest that such a line has been touched.”

“Very good,” General Chang said. “According to our investigation, most of the scholars who committed suicide had some connection with the Frontiers of Science, and some were even members. But we’ve found no evidence of the use of illegal psychotropic drugs or techniques akin to the psychological manipulation of religious cults. In other words, even if the Frontiers of Science influenced them, it was only through legal academic exchanges. Professor Wang, since they recently contacted you, we’d like to ask you for some information.”

Shi added gruffly, “Including the names of your contacts, the times and locations of meetings, the content of your conversations, and if you exchanged letters or e-mails—”

“Shut up, Da Shi!” General Chang said.

Another police officer leaned over and whispered to Shi, “Do you think we’ll forget you have a mouth if you don’t use it all the time?” Shi picked up his teacup, saw the drowned cigarette butt inside, and put it back down.

Shi’s questions irritated Wang again, not unlike the feeling a man has upon finding out that he has swallowed a fly with his meal. The gratitude he had felt earlier was gone without a trace. But he restrained himself and answered, “My contact with the Frontiers of Science began with Shen Yufei. She’s a Japanese physicist of Chinese descent who currently works for a Japanese company here in Beijing. She once worked at a Mitsubishi lab, researching nanotech. We met at a technical conference at the beginning of this year. Through her, I met a few other physicist friends, all members of the Frontiers of Science, some Chinese, some foreign. When I talked with them, all the topics were… how do I put this? Very radical. They all involved the question that Dr. Ding just described: What is the limit of science?

“Initially, I didn’t have much interest in these topics. I thought of them as only an idle pastime. My work is in applied research, and I don’t know much about these theoretical matters. Mainly, I was interested in listening to their discussions and arguments. All of them were deep thinkers with novel points of view, and I felt that I was opening my mind through the exchanges. Gradually, I grew more interested. But all our talk was limited to pure theory and nothing else. They once invited me to join the Frontiers of Science. But if I had done so, attending the discussions would have turned into a duty. Since my time and energy were limited, I declined.”

“Professor Wang,” General Chang said, “we’d like you to accept the invitation and join the Frontiers of Science. This is the main reason we asked you here today. Through you, we’d like to learn more about the internal workings of the organization.”

“You want me to be a mole?” Wang was uneasy.

“A mole!” Shi laughed.

Chang gave Shi a reprimanding look. He turned back to Wang. “We just want you to give us some information. We have no other way in.”

Wang shook his head. “I’m sorry, General. I cannot do this.”

“Professor Wang, the Frontiers of Science is made up of elite international scholars. Investigating it is an extremely complex and sensitive matter. For us, it’s like walking across thin ice. Without someone from academia helping us, we cannot make any progress. This is why we’re making this request. But we’ll respect your wishes. If you won’t agree, we understand.”

“I am… very busy at work. I just don’t have the time.”

General Chang nodded. “All right, Professor Wang, we won’t waste any more of your time. Thank you for coming to this meeting.”

Wang waited a few more seconds before realizing that he had been dismissed.

General Chang politely accompanied Wang to the door. They could hear Shi’s loud voice behind them. “It’s better this way. I disagree with the plan anyway. So many bookworms have already killed themselves. If we send him, he’d be a meat dumpling thrown to the dogs.”

Wang turned around and walked back to Shi. Forcing his anger down, Wang said, “The way you speak is not appropriate for a good police officer.”

“Who said I’m a good cop?”

“We don’t know why these researchers killed themselves, but you shouldn’t speak of them so contemptuously. Their minds have made irreplaceable contributions to humanity.”

“You’re saying they’re better than me?” Still seated, Shi lifted his eyes to meet Wang’s. “At least I wouldn’t kill myself just because someone told me some bullshit.”

“You think I would?”

“I have to be concerned about your safety.” That trademark smirk again.

“I think I would be much safer than you in such situations. You must know that a person’s ability to discern the truth is directly proportional to his knowledge.”

“I’m not sure about that. Take someone like you—”

“Be quiet, Da Shi!” General Chang said. “One more sentence and you’re out of here!”

“It’s okay,” Wang said. “Let him speak.” He turned to General Chang. “I’ve changed my mind. I will join the Frontiers of Science as you wish.”

“Good!” Shi nodded vigorously. “Stay alert after you join. Gather intelligence whenever it’s convenient. For example, glance at their computer screens, memorize e-mail or Web addresses—”

“That’s enough! You misunderstand me. I don’t want to be a spy. I just want to prove you’re an idiot!”

“If you remain alive after you’ve joined them for a while, that would be the best proof. But I’m afraid for you…” Shi lifted his face, and the smirk turned into a wolfish grin.

“Of course I’ll stay alive! But I never want to see you again.”

They kept Wang out of the way while the others left so he wouldn’t have to deal with Shi Qiang again. Then General Chang walked Wang all the way down the stairs and called for a car to take him back.

He said to Wang, “Don’t worry about Shi Qiang. That’s just his personality. He’s actually a very experienced beat officer and antiterrorism expert. Twenty years ago, he was a soldier in my company.”

As they approached the car, Chang added, “Professor Wang, you must have many questions.”

“What did everything you talked about in there have to do with the military?”

“War has everything to do with the army.”

Wang looked around in the spring sun, baffled. “But where is this war? This is probably the most peaceful period in history.”

Chang gave him an inscrutable smile. “You will know more soon. Everyone will know. Professor Wang, have you ever had anything happen to you that changed your life completely? Some event where afterward the world became a totally different place for you?”

“No.”

“Then your life has been fortunate. The world is full of unpredictable factors, yet you have never faced a crisis.”

Wang turned over the words in his mind, still not understanding. “I think that’s true of most lives.”

“Then most people have lived fortunately.”

“But… many generations have lived in this plain manner.”

“All fortunate.”

Wang laughed, shaking his head. “I have to confess that I’m not feeling very sharp today. Are you suggesting that—”

“Yes, the entire history of humankind has been fortunate. From the Stone Age till now, no real crisis has occurred. We’ve been very lucky. But if it’s all luck, then it has to end one day. Let me tell you: It’s ended. Prepare for the worst.”

Wang wanted to ask more, but Chang shook his head and said good-bye, preventing any more questions.

After Wang got into the car, the driver asked for his address. Wang gave it and asked, “Oh, were you the one who took me here? I thought it was the same type of car.”

“No, it wasn’t me. I took Dr. Ding here.”

Wang had a new idea. He asked the driver to take him to Ding’s address instead.

5 A Game of Pool

As soon as he opened the door to Ding Yi’s brand-new three-bedroom apartment, Wang smelled alcohol. Ding was lying on the sofa with the TV on, staring at the ceiling. The apartment was unfinished, with only a few pieces of furniture and little decoration, and the huge living room seemed very empty. The most eye-catching object was the pool table in the corner.

Ding didn’t seem annoyed by Wang’s unannounced visit. He was clearly in the mood to talk to someone.

“I bought the apartment about three months ago,” Ding said. “Why did I buy it? Did I really think she was going to become interested in starting a family?” His laugh sounded drunk.

“You two…” Wang wanted to know the details of Yang Dong’s life, but didn’t know how to ask the questions.

“She was like a star, always so distant. Even the light she shone on me was always cold.” Ding walked to one of the windows and looked up at the night sky.

Wang said nothing. All he wanted now was to hear her voice. But a year ago, as the sun sank in the west, when she and he had locked eyes for a moment, they had not spoken to each other. He had never heard her voice.

Ding waved his hand as though trying to flick something away. “Professor Wang, you were right. Don’t get involved with the police or the military. They’re all idiots. The deaths of those physicists had nothing to do with the Frontiers of Science. I’ve explained it to them many times, but I can’t get them to understand.”

“They seem to have conducted some independent investigation.”

“Yes, and the investigation’s scope was global. They should already know that two of the dead never had any contact with the Frontiers of Science, including… Yang Dong.” Ding seemed to have trouble saying her name.

“Ding Yi, you know that I am already involved. So… as far as why Yang made the choice that… she did, I’d like to know. I think you must know some of it.” Wang thought he must sound very foolish as he tried hard to disguise his real intent.

“If you know more, you’ll only get pulled in deeper. Right now you’re just superficially involved, but with more knowledge your spirit will be drawn in as well, and then it will mean real trouble.”

“I work in applied research. I’m not as sensitive as you theoreticians.”

“All right, then. Do you play pool?” Ding walked to the pool table.

“I used to play a little in college.”

“She and I loved to play. It reminded us of particles colliding in the accelerator.” Ding picked up two balls: one black and one white. He set the black ball next to one of the pockets, and placed the white ball about ten centimeters from the black ball. “Can you pocket the black ball?”

“This close? Anyone can do it.”

“Try.”

Wang picked up the cue, struck the white ball lightly, and drove the black ball into the pocket.

“Good. Come, now let’s move the table to a different location.” Ding directed the confused Wang to pick up the heavy table. Together they moved it to another corner of the living room, next to a window. Then Ding scooped out the black ball, set it next to the pocket, and again picked up the white ball and set it down about ten centimeters away. “Think you can do it again?”

“Of course.”

“Go for it.”

Again, Wang easily made the shot.

Ding waved his hands. “Let’s move it again.” They lifted the table and set it down in a third corner of the living room. Ding set up the two balls as before. “Go.”

“Listen, we—”

“Go!”

Wang shrugged helplessly. He managed to pocket the black ball a third time.

They moved the table two more times: once next to the door of the living room, and finally back to the original location. Ding set up the two balls twice more, and Wang twice more made his shot. By now both were slightly winded.

“Good, that’s the conclusion of the experiment. Let’s analyze the results.” Ding lit a cigarette before continuing, “We ran the same experiment five times. Four of the experiments differed in both location and time. Two of the experiments were at the same location but different times. Aren’t you shocked by the results?” He opened his arms exaggeratedly. “Five times! Every colliding experiment yielded the exact same result!”

“What are you trying to say?” Wang asked, gasping.

“Can you explain this incredible result? Please use the language of physics.”

“All right… During these five experiments, the mass of the two balls never changed. In terms of their locations, as long as we’re using the frame of reference of the tabletop, there was also no change. The velocity of the white ball striking the black ball also remained basically the same throughout. Thus, the transfer of momentum between the two balls didn’t change. Therefore, in all five experiments, the result was the black ball being driven into the pocket.”

Ding picked up a bottle of brandy and two dirty glasses from the floor. He filled both and handed one to Wang. Wang declined.

“Come on, let’s celebrate. We’ve discovered a great principle of nature: The laws of physics are invariant across space and time. All the physical laws of human history, from Archimedes’ principle to string theory, and all the scientific discoveries and intellectual fruits of our species are the by-products of this great law. Compared to us two theoreticians, Einstein and Hawking are mere applied engineers.”

“I still don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“Imagine another set of results. The first time, the white ball drove the black ball into the pocket. The second time, the black ball bounced away. The third time, the black ball flew onto the ceiling. The fourth time, the black ball shot around the room like a frightened sparrow, finally taking refuge in your jacket pocket. The fifth time, the black ball flew away at nearly the speed of light, breaking the edge of the pool table, shooting through the wall, and leaving the Earth and the Solar System, just like Asimov once described.[13] What would you think then?”

Ding watched Wang. After a long silence, Wang finally said, “This actually happened. Am I right?”

Ding drained both glasses in his hands. He stared at the pool table as though looking at a demon. “Yes. It happened. In the last few years, we finally obtained the necessary equipment for experimentally testing fundamental theories. Three expensive ‘pool tables’ have been constructed: one in North America, another in Europe, and the third you are familiar with, in Liangxiang. Your Nanotechnology Research Center earned a lot of money from it.

“These high-energy particle accelerators raised the amount of energy available for colliding particles by an order of magnitude, to a level never before achieved by the human race. Yet, with the new equipment, the same particles, the same energy levels, and the same experimental parameters would yield different results. Not only would the results vary if different accelerators were used, but even with the same accelerator, experiments performed at different times would give different results. Physicists panicked. They repeated the ultra-high-energy collision experiments again and again using the same conditions, but every time the result was different, and there seemed to be no pattern.”

“What does this mean?” Wang asked. When he saw Ding staring at him without speaking, he added, “Oh, I’m in nanotech, and I also work with microscale structures. But that’s orders of magnitude larger than the scale at which you do your work. Please educate me.”

“It means that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think you can deduce the rest. Even General Chang figured it out. He’s really a smart man.”

Wang looked outside the window thoughtfully. The lights of the city were so bright that the stars of the night sky were drowned out.

“It means that laws of physics that could be applied anywhere in the universe do not exist, which means that physics… also does not exist.” Wang turned back from the window.

“‘I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice,’” Ding said. “That was the second half of her note. You just stumbled on the first half. Now can you understand her? At least a little?”

Wang picked up the white ball. He caressed it for a bit and put it back down. “For someone exploring the forefront of theory, that would indeed be a catastrophe.”

“To accomplish something in theoretical physics requires one to have almost religious faith. It’s easy to be led to the abyss.”

As they said their farewells, Ding gave Wang an address. “If you have the time, please visit Yang Dong’s mother. She and her mother always lived together, and she was the entirety of her mother’s life. Now the old woman is all alone.”

“Ding, you clearly know a lot more than I do. Can you tell me more? You really believe that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space?”

“I don’t know anything.” Ding stared into Wang’s eyes for a long time. Finally, he said, “But that is the question.”

Wang knew that he was only finishing what the British colonel had begun to say: To be, or not to be: that is the question.

6 The Shooter and the Farmer

The next day was the start of the weekend. Wang got up early and left on his bicycle. As a hobby photographer, his favorite subjects were wildernesses free of human presence. But now that he was middle-aged, he no longer had the energy to engage in such indulgent travel and only shot city scenes.

Consciously or subconsciously, he usually chose corners of the city that held some aspect of the wild: a dried lakebed in a park, the freshly turned soil of a construction site, a weed struggling out of cracks in cement. In order to eliminate the busy colors of the city in the background, he only used black-and-white film. Unexpectedly, he had developed his own style and had gained some notice. His works had been selected for two exhibitions, and he was a member of the Photographers Association. Every time he went out to take pictures, he would ride his bike and wander around the city in search of inspiration and compositions that caught his fancy. Often he would be out all day.

Today, Wang felt strange. His photography style tended toward the classical, calm and dignified. But today he could not seem to get in the mood necessary for such compositions. In his mind, the city, as it awoke from its slumber, seemed to be built on quicksand. The stability was illusory. All night long, he had dreamt of those two billiard balls. They flew around a dark space without any pattern, the black one disappearing against the black background and only revealing its existence occasionally when it obscured the white ball.

Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?

Without realizing it, he found himself at the foot of the newly completed China Central Television building. He stopped at the side of the road and lifted his head to gaze up at this gigantic A-shaped tower, trying to recapture the feeling of stability. His gaze followed the sharp tip of the building, gleaming in the morning sunlight, pointing toward the blue, bottomless depths of the sky. Two words suddenly floated into his consciousness: “shooter” and “farmer.”

When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe.

In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.

The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

Wang felt the road beneath his feet shift like quicksand. The A-shaped building seemed to wobble and sway. He quickly brought his gaze back to the street.

To get rid of the anxiety, Wang forced himself to finish a roll of film. He returned home before lunch. His wife had taken their son out and wouldn’t be back for a while. Usually, Wang would rush to develop the film, but today he wasn’t in the mood. After a quick and simple lunch, he went to take a nap. Because he hadn’t slept well the night before, by the time he woke up it was almost five. Finally remembering the roll of film he had shot, he went into the cramped darkroom he had converted from a closet.

The film developed. Wang began to look through the negatives to see if any shots were worth printing, but he saw something strange in the very first image. The shot was of a small lawn outside a large shopping center. The center of the negative held a line of tiny white marks, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be numbers: 1200:00:00.

The second picture also had numbers: 1199:49:33, as did the third: 1199:40:18.

In fact, every picture in the roll had such numbers, until the thirty-sixth (and last) image: 1194:16:37.

Wang’s first thought was that something was wrong with the film. The camera he had used was a 1988 Leica M2—entirely mechanical, which made it impossible for it to add a date stamp. Given the excellent lens and refined mechanical operation, it was considered a great professional camera even in this digital age.

After reexamining the negatives, Wang discovered another strange thing about the numbers: They seemed to adapt to the background. If the background was black, the numbers were white, and vice versa. The shift seemed designed to maximize the numbers’ contrast for visibility. By the time Wang saw the sixteenth negative, his heart was beating faster, and a chill crept up his spine.

This shot was of a dead tree against an old wall. The wall was mottled, showing a pattern of alternating black and white patches on the negative. Given this background, either white or black numbers would have been hard to read. But in the picture, the numbers arranged themselves vertically to fit along the curve of the tree trunk, allowing the white numbers to show up against the dark coloring of the dead tree like a crawling snake.

Wang began to analyze the mathematical pattern in the numbers. At first he thought it was some kind of assigned numbering, but the difference between the numbers wasn’t constant. He then guessed that the numbers represented time in the form of hours, minutes, and seconds. He took out his shooting diary, in which he recorded the exact time he took each picture down to the minute, and discovered the difference between two successive numbers on the photographs corresponded to the difference in time between when they were taken.

A countdown.

The countdown began with 1,200 hours. And now there were about 1,194 hours left, just under 50 days.

Now? No, at the moment I took the last photograph. Is the countdown still proceeding?

Wang walked out of the darkroom, loaded a new roll of film in the Leica, and began to snap random shots. He even walked onto the balcony for a few outdoor shots. Afterward, he took out the film and went back into the darkroom. In the developed roll, the numbers again appeared on every negative like ghosts. The first one was marked 1187:27:39. The difference matched the passage of time between the last shot of the last roll and the first shot of this roll. After that, the number decreased by three or four seconds in each image: 1187:27:35, 1187:27:31, 1187:27:27, 1187:27:24… just like the intervals between the quick shots he had taken.

The countdown continued.

Wang again loaded a new roll of film. He snapped off the shots rapidly, even taking a few with the lens cap on. As he took out the roll of film, his wife and son returned. Before he went into the darkroom to develop the film, he loaded another roll of film in the Leica and handed it to his wife. “Here, finish the roll for me.”

“What am I supposed to shoot?” His wife looked at him, amazed. He never allowed anyone to touch his camera, though she and their son had no interest in doing so either. In their eyes, it was a boring antique that cost more than twenty thousand yuan.

“Doesn’t matter. Just shoot whatever you want.” Wang stuffed the camera into her hands and ducked into the darkroom.

“All right. Dou Dou, why don’t I take some pictures of you?” His wife aimed the camera at their son.

Wang’s mind suddenly filled with the imagined sight of the ghostlike figures appearing over his son’s face like a hangman’s noose. He shuddered. “No, don’t do that. Shoot something else.”

The shutter clicked, and his wife had taken her first shot. “Why can’t I press it again?” she asked. Wang taught her how to wind the film to advance it. “Like that. You have to do it after every shot.” Then he ducked back into the darkroom.

“So complicated!” His wife, a doctor, couldn’t understand why anyone would use such expensive but outdated equipment when ten- or even twenty-megapixel digital cameras were common. And he even used black-and-white film.

After the third roll of film developed, Wang held it up against the red light. He saw that the ghostlike countdown continued. The numbers showed up clearly on every randomly shot picture, including the few he had taken with the lens cap on: 1187:19:06, 1187:19:03, 1187:18:59, 1187:18:56…

His wife knocked on the darkroom door and told him she was finished with the roll. Wang opened the door and took the camera from her. As he took out the roll, his hands trembled. Ignoring his wife’s concerned look, he took the film back into the darkroom and shut the door. He worked fast and clumsily, spilling developer and fixer all over the ground. Soon the images were developed. He closed his eyes, silently praying, Please don’t appear. No matter what, please don’t appear now. Don’t make it my turn….

He examined the wet film with a magnifying glass. There was no countdown. The negatives held only the interior shots his wife had taken. She had used a slow shutter speed, and her amateurish operation left all the scenes blurry. But Wang thought these were the most enjoyable pictures he had ever seen.

Wang came out of the darkroom and let out a held breath. He was covered in sweat. His wife was in the kitchen cooking, and his son was playing in his room. He sat on the sofa and thought the matter over more rationally.

First, the numbers, which precisely recorded the passage of time between shots and which showed signs of intelligence, could not possibly have been preprinted on the film. Something exposed them onto the film. But what? Did the camera have a malfunction? Had some mechanism been installed in the camera without his knowledge? He took off the lens and disassembled the camera. He examined the interior with a magnifying glass and checked every dustless component without discovering anything out of place. Then, considering that the numbers showed up even in the shots taken with the lens cap on, he realized the most likely light source was some kind of penetrating ray. But how was this technologically possible? Where was the source of the rays? How could they have been aimed?

At least given current technology, such power would be supernatural.

In order to see if the ghostly countdown had disappeared, Wang loaded another roll into the Leica, and again began to shoot randomly. When this roll was developed, Wang’s short-lived calm was again shattered. He felt himself pushed to the precipice of madness. The countdown had returned. Based on the numbers, it had never stopped, just failed to display on the roll shot by his wife.

1186:34:13, 1186:34:02, 1186:33:46, 1186:33:35…

Wang rushed out of the darkroom and continued through the door of the apartment. He knocked loudly on the door of his neighbor, retired Professor Zhang.

“Professor Zhang, do you have a camera? Not a digital one, but one that takes film!”

“A professional photographer like you wants to borrow my camera? What happened to your expensive one? I have only digital point-and-shoots. Are you okay? Your face looks so pale.”

“Please, let me borrow it.”

Zhang returned with a common Kodak digital camera. “Here you go. You can just delete the few pictures already on there.”

“Thank you!” Wang seized the camera and rushed back home. He actually had three more film cameras and a digital one, but Wang thought it better to borrow a camera from someone else. He looked at his own camera lying on the sofa and the few rolls of film, paused in thought, and decided to reload the Leica with new film. He handed the borrowed digital camera to his wife, who was setting out dinner.

“Quick! Shoot another few pictures, like before.”

“What are you doing? Look at your face! What’s happening?”

“Don’t worry about it. Shoot!”

She put down the dishes and came over to him, her eyes filled with both worry and fright.

Wang stuffed the Kodak into the hands of his six-year-old son, who was about to start eating dinner. “Dou Dou, come help Daddy. Push this button. Right, like that. That’s one shot. Push it again. That’s another shot. Keep on shooting like that. You can take pictures of anything you want.”

The boy learned quickly. He was very interested and made rapid shots. Wang turned around and picked up the Leica from the couch, and began to shoot as well. The father and son kept on pressing the shutters as though they were mad. His wife, not knowing what to do as the flashes went off around her, began to cry.

“Wang Miao, I know that you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, but please, I hope you haven’t…?”

Wang finished the roll in the Leica and grabbed the digital from his son. He thought for a moment, and then, in order to avoid his wife, went into the bedroom and took a few more shots with the digital. He used the optical finder instead of the LCD because he was afraid to see the results, though he was going to have to face them soon enough.

Wang took out the film from the Leica and went back into the darkroom. He shut the door and worked. After the film was developed, he examined the images carefully. Because his hands were shaking, he had to hold the magnifying glass with both hands. On the negatives, the countdown continued.

Wang rushed out of the darkroom and began to look through the digital images on the Kodak. On the LCD, he saw that the pictures his son had taken did not have the numbers, but in the pictures that he took, the countdown showed clearly and was synchronized with the numbers on the film.

By using different cameras, Wang was trying to eliminate problems with the camera or the film as possible explanations. But by allowing his son and his wife to take some pictures, he discovered an even stranger result: The countdown only appeared on the pictures he took!

Desperate, Wang picked up the pile of film rolls, like a tangled nest of snakes, like a bunch of ropes tied into an impossible knot.

He knew that he could not solve the mystery on his own. Who could he turn to? His old classmates from college and his colleagues at the Research Center were hopeless. Like him, they were all people with technical minds. Intuitively, he knew that this went beyond a technical problem. He thought of Ding Yi, but that man was now in a spiritual crisis of his own. Finally, he thought of the Frontiers of Science. These were deep thinkers who remained open-minded. So he dialed Shen Yufei’s number.

“Dr. Shen, I have a problem. I must see you.”

“Come over,” Shen said, and hung up.

Wang was surprised. Shen was a woman of few words. Some in the Frontiers of Science jokingly called her the Female Hemingway. But the fact that she didn’t even ask him what was wrong made Wang uncertain whether he should be comforted or even more anxious.

He stuffed the mess of film into a bag, and, taking the digital camera, rushed out of the apartment as his wife watched him anxiously. He could have driven, but even with the city being full of lights, he wanted to be with people. He called for a cab.

Shen lived in a luxury housing development reachable by one of the newer commuter rails. Here, the lights were much dimmer. The houses were set around a small artificial lake stocked with fish for the residents, and at night the place felt like a village.

Shen was clearly well off, but Wang could never figure out the source of her wealth. Neither her old research position nor her current job with a private company could earn that much income. But her house didn’t show signs of luxury on the inside. It was used as a gathering place for the Frontiers of Science, and Wang always thought it resembled a small library with a meeting room.

In the living room, Wang saw Wei Cheng, Shen’s husband. Wei was about forty years old and had the look of a staid, honest intellectual. Wang knew little about him other than his name. Shen hadn’t said much when she introduced him. He didn’t seem to have a job, since he stayed home all day. He never showed any interest in the Frontiers of Science discussions, but seemed used to the sight of so many scholars coming to their house.

But he wasn’t idle. He appeared to be conducting some kind of research at home, always deep in thought. Whenever he met any visitor, he would greet them absentmindedly and then return to his room upstairs. Most of his day was spent there. One time, Wang glanced into his room through the half-open door and saw an astonishing sight: a powerful HP workstation. He was sure of what he saw because the workstation was the same model as the one he used at the Research Center: slate-gray chassis, model RX8620, four years old. It seemed very strange to own a machine costing more than a million yuan just for personal use. What was Wei Cheng doing with it all day?

“Yufei is a bit busy right now. Why don’t you wait a while?” Wei Cheng walked upstairs. Wang tried to wait, but he found that he couldn’t be still, so he followed Wei Cheng. Wei was about to enter his room with the workstation when he saw Wang behind him, but he didn’t seem annoyed. He pointed to the room across from his. “She’s in there.”

Wang knocked on the door. It wasn’t locked, and it opened a crack. Shen was seated in front of a computer, playing a game. He was surprised to see that she wore a V-suit.

The V-suit was a very popular piece of equipment among gamers, made up of a panoramic viewing helmet and a haptic feedback suit. The suit allowed the player to experience the sensations of the game: being struck by a fist, being stabbed by a knife, being burned by flames, and so on. It was also capable of generating feelings of extreme heat and cold, even simulating the sensation of being exposed in a snowstorm.

Wang walked behind her. As the game was displayed only on the inside of the panoramic viewing helmet, there were no colorful images on the computer monitor. Wang suddenly remembered Shi Qiang’s comment about memorizing Web and e-mail addresses. He glanced at the monitor. The game site’s URL caught his attention: www.3body.net.

Shen took off the helmet and stripped off the haptic feedback suit. She put on her glasses, which appeared extra large against her thin face. Without any expression, she nodded at Wang and said nothing. Wang took out the mess of film rolls and began to explain his strange experience. Shen paid full attention to his story, picking up the rolls of film and only casually looking at them. This surprised Wang, but further confirmed for him that Shen wasn’t completely ignorant about what he was going through. He almost stopped speaking, but Shen kept on nodding at him, indicating that he should continue.

When he finished, Shen spoke for the first time. “How’s the nanomaterial project you’re leading proceeding?”

This non sequitur disoriented Wang. “The nanomaterial project? What does that have to do with this?” He pointed at the rolls of film.

Shen didn’t answer, but continued to stare at him, waiting for him to answer her question. This was always her style, never wasting a single word.

“Stop your research,” she said.

“What?” Wang wasn’t sure he heard right. “What are you talking about?”

Shen remained silent.

“Stop? That’s a key national project!”

Shen still said nothing, only looking at him calmly.

“You have to give me a reason.”

“Just stop. Try it.”

“What do you know? Tell me!”

“I’ve told you all I can.”

“I can’t stop the project. It’s impossible!”

“Just stop. Try it.”

That was the end of the conversation about the countdown. After that, no matter how hard Wang tried, Shen only repeated, “Just stop. Try it.”

“I understand now,” Wang said. “The Frontiers of Science isn’t just a discussion group about fundamental theory, like you claimed. Its connection to reality is far more complicated than I had imagined.”

“No. It’s the opposite. Your impression is due to the fact that the Frontiers of Science concerns matters far more fundamental than you imagine.”

Desperate, Wang got up to leave without saying good-bye. Mutely, Shen accompanied him to the door and watched as he got into the taxi.

Just then, another car drove up and braked to a hard stop in front of the door. A man got out. By the faint light leaking from the house, Wang recognized him immediately.

The man was Pan Han, one of the most prominent members of the Frontiers of Science. A biologist, he had successfully predicted the birth defects associated with long-term consumption of genetically modified foods. He had also predicted the ecological disasters that would come with cultivation of genetically modified crops. Unlike the prophets of doom who regularly warned of catastrophes without any particulars, Pan made predictions that always gave many specific details that later turned out to be correct. His accuracy was such that there were rumors that he came from the future.

The other cause for his fame was that he had created China’s first experimental community. Unlike the “return to nature” utopian groups in the West, his “Pastoral China” wasn’t located in the wilderness, but in the midst of one of its largest cities. The community had no property of its own. Everything needed for daily life, including food, came from urban trash. Contrary to the predictions of many, Pastoral China not only survived, but thrived. Currently, it had more than three thousand permanent members, and countless others had joined for short stints to experience the lifestyle.

Based on these two successes, Pan’s opinions on social issues had grown more and more influential. He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body. He advocated abolishing crude technologies such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy and keeping gentler technologies such as solar power and small-scale hydroelectric power. He believed in the gradual de-urbanization of modern metropolises by distributing the population more evenly in self-sufficient small towns and villages. Relying on the gentler technologies, he would build a new agricultural society.

“Is he in?” Pan asked Shen, pointing to the house.

Shen didn’t answer, but blocked his progress.

“I have to warn him and also warn you. Do not force our hand.” Pan’s voice was cold.

Shen called to the taxi driver, “You can go now.” After the taxi started, Wang couldn’t hear any more of the conversation between Shen and Pan, but he glanced back and saw that Shen did not let Pan into the house.

By the time Wang arrived home, it was already after midnight. As Wang got out of the taxi, a black Volkswagen Santana braked to a stop next to him. The window rolled down and a cloud of smoke emerged. Shi Qiang’s thick body filled the driver’s seat.

“Professor Wang! Academician Wang![14] How’ve you been the last couple of days?”

“Are you following me? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Now, don’t misunderstand me. I could have just driven past you, but instead, I chose to be polite and stop to greet you. You’re making being nice a thankless task.” Shi revealed his trademark roguish smirk. “Well? Did you find out any useful information over there?”

“I’ve told you already, I don’t want anything to do with you. Please leave me alone from now on.”

“Fine.” Shi started the car. “It’s not like I’m going to starve without the overtime for doing this. I’d rather not have missed my soccer match.”

Wang entered the apartment. His wife was already asleep. He could hear her tossing and turning in bed, mumbling anxiously. Her husband’s strange behavior during the day was surely giving her bad dreams. Wang swallowed a few sleeping pills, lay down on the bed, and, after a long wait, fell asleep.

His dreams were chaotic, but there was one constant: the ghostly countdown, suspended in midair. Even before he fell asleep, he had known he would dream of it. In his dreams, he attacked the countdown. Crazed, he tore at it, bit it, but every attempt failed to leave a mark. It continued to hang in the middle of his dream, steadily ticking away. Finally, just as the frustration became almost intolerable, he woke up.

Opening his eyes, he saw the ceiling, indistinct above him. The city lights outside the window cast a dim glow against it through the curtains. But one thing did follow him from dream into reality: the countdown. It was still hovering before his eyes. The numbers were thin, but very bright with a burning, white glow.

1180:05:00, 1180:04:59, 1180:04:58, 1180:04:57…

Wang looked around, taking in the blurry shadows around the bedroom. He was now certain that he was awake, but the countdown did not disappear. He shut his eyes, and the countdown remained in the darkness of his vision, looking like mercury flowing against a black swan’s feathers. He opened his eyes, rubbed them, and still the countdown did not go away. No matter how he moved his gaze, the numbers stayed at the center of it.

A nameless terror made Wang sit up. The countdown clung to him. He jumped off the bed, tore the curtains apart, and pushed the window open. The city, deep in sleep, was still brightly lit. The countdown hovered before this grand background like subtitles on a movie screen.

Wang felt he was suffocating. He let out a stifled scream. His wife, frightened awake, questioned him anxiously. He tried to force himself to be calm and comforted her, telling her that it was nothing. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes, and spent the rest of his difficult night under the constant glow of the countdown.

In the morning, he tried to act normal in front of his family, but he could not fool his wife. She asked him whether his eyes were all right, whether he could see clearly.

After breakfast, Wang called the Research Center and asked for the day off. He drove to the hospital. Along the way, the countdown mercilessly hovered in front of the real world. It was able to adjust its brightness so that, no matter what the background, it showed up distinctly. Wang even tried to temporarily overwhelm the display by staring into the rising sun. But it was useless. The infernal numbers turned black and showed up against the orb of the sun like projected shadows, which made them even more frightening.

Tongren Hospital was very busy, but Wang was able to see a famous ophthalmologist who had gone to school with his wife. He asked the doctor to test him, without describing the symptoms. After careful examination of both eyes, the doctor told him they were functioning normally with no signs of any disease.

“There’s something stuck in my vision. No matter where I look, it’s always there.” As Wang said this, the numbers hovered in front of the doctor’s face.

1175:11:34, 1175:11:33, 1175:11:32, 1175:11:31…

“Oh, you’re talking about floaters.” The doctor took out a prescription pad and began to write. “They’re common at our age, the result of clouding in the lens. They’re not easy to cure, but they’re also not a big deal. I’ll give you some iodine drops and vitamin D—it’s possible that they’ll go away, but don’t get your hopes up too much. Really, they’re nothing to worry about, as they don’t affect your vision. You just have to get used to ignoring them.”

“Floaters… Can you tell me what they look like?”

“There’s no real pattern. It differs by person. For some, they appear as tiny black dots; for others, like tadpoles.”

“What if someone sees a series of numbers?”

The doctor’s pen stopped. “You see numbers?”

“Yes, right in the middle of the visual field.”

The doctor pushed his pen and paper away, and looked at him sympathetically. “As soon as you came in, I could tell you’d been working too much. At the last class reunion, Li Yao told me you were under a lot of pressure at work. We have to be careful at our age. Our health is no longer what it used to be.”

“You are saying this is due to psychological factors?”

The doctor nodded. “If it was anyone else, I’d suggest you go see a psychiatrist. But it’s nothing serious, just exhaustion. Why don’t you rest for a few days? Take a vacation. Go be with Yao and your kid—what’s his name… Dou Dou, right? No worries. They’ll go away soon.”

1175:10:02, 1175:10:01, 1175:10:00, 1175:09:59…

“Let me tell you what I see. It’s a countdown! One second after another, it keeps on ticking precisely. Are you saying this is all in my head?”

The doctor gave him a tolerant smile. “You know how much the mind can affect vision? Last month we had a patient—a girl, maybe fifteen, sixteen. She was in class when she suddenly lost the ability to see, went completely blind. But all the tests showed that there was nothing wrong with her eyes physiologically. Finally, someone from the Department of Psychiatry treated her with psychotherapy for a month. All of a sudden, her vision returned.”

Wang knew that he was wasting his time here. He got up. “All right, let’s not talk about my eyes anymore. I have one last question: Do you know of any physical phenomenon that can operate from a distance and make people see visions?”

The doctor gave this some thought. “Yes, I do. A while ago I was part of the medical team for the Shenzhou 19 spacecraft. Some taikonauts engaged in extravehicular activities reported seeing flashes that didn’t exist. The astronauts on the International Space Station reported similar experiences. It was because during periods of intense solar activity, high-energy particles struck against the retina, causing them to see flashes. But you’re talking about numbers—a countdown, even. Solar activity can’t possibly cause that.”

Wang walked out of the hospital in a daze. The countdown continued to hover in his eyes, and he seemed to be following the numbers, following a ghost that would not leave him. He bought a pair of sunglasses and put them on so that others would not see his eyes wandering around as though he were sleepwalking.

Before entering the main lab at the Nanotechnology Research Center, Wang took off his sunglasses. Even so, his colleagues noticed his apparent mental state and gave him concerned looks.

Wang saw that the main reaction chamber in the middle of the lab was still in operation. The main compartment of the gigantic apparatus was a sphere with many pipes connected to it.

They had made small quantities of a new, ultrastrong nanomaterial that they’d given the code name “Flying Blade.” But the samples so far were all made with molecular construction techniques—that is, using a nanoscale molecular probe to stack the molecules one by one, like laying out bricks for a wall. This method was very resource-intensive, and the results might as well have been the world’s most precious jewels. It was impractical to produce large quantities this way.

At the moment, the lab was attempting to develop a catalytic reaction as a substitute for molecular construction so that large numbers of molecules would stack themselves into the right arrangement. The main reaction chamber could rapidly run through a large number of reactions using different molecular combinations. There were so many combinations that normal manual testing methods would have taken more than a hundred years. In addition, the apparatus augmented actual reactions with mathematical simulations. When the reaction reached a certain stage, the computer would build a mathematical model of it based on intermediate products and finish the remainder of the reaction via simulation. This greatly boosted the experimental efficiency.

When the lab director saw Wang, he hurried over and began to report a series of malfunctions with the main reaction chamber—a recent ritual whenever Wang arrived at work. By now the main reaction chamber had been in continuous operation for more than a year, and many sensors had lost sensitivity, resulting in measurement errors that required shutting down the apparatus for maintenance. But as the lead scientist on the project, Wang insisted that the machine would not be shut down until the third set of molecular combinations was finished. The technicians had no choice but to jury-rig more and more kludges onto the main reaction chamber to compensate. And now those kludges required their own kludges, a state of affairs that exhausted the project staff.

But the lab director carefully avoided the topic of shutting down the machine and temporarily halting the experiment, as he knew that such discussions tended to enrage Wang Miao. He just laid out the difficulties before Wang, though his unspoken desire was clear.

Engineers rushed around the main reaction chamber like doctors around a critical patient, trying to keep it going for a little longer. In front of the whole scene, the countdown appeared.

1174:21:11, 1174:21:10, 1174:21:09, 1174:21:08…

Just stop. Try it. Shen’s words came to Wang.

“How long would it take to completely overhaul the sensors?” Wang asked.

“Four or five days.” Now that the lab director saw a ray of hope, he quickly added, “If we work fast, it will take only three days. I guarantee it, Chief Wang!”

I’m not giving in, Wang thought. The equipment really needs maintenance, so the experiment must be temporarily stopped. This has nothing to do with anything else. He turned to the lab director and focused on him through the hovering countdown. “Shut down the experiment and perform the maintenance. Follow the schedule you gave me.”

“Absolutely, Chief Wang. I’ll give you an updated schedule right away. We can stop the reaction this afternoon!”

“You can stop it right now.”

The lab director stared at him in disbelief, but soon he was excited again, as if afraid to lose this opportunity. He picked up the phone and issued the order to stop the reaction. All the exhausted researchers and technicians grew excited, too. They immediately began the procedures to shut down the main reaction chamber, flipping a hundred complex switches. The various control screens became dark one after another, until finally, the main screen reflected the main reaction chamber’s halted status.

Almost simultaneously, the countdown before Wang’s eyes also stopped. The final number was 1174:10:07. A few seconds later, the numbers flickered and disappeared.

As the world reemerged, free of the ghostly numbers, Wang let out a long breath, as though he had just struggled up from underwater. He sat down, drained, and realized that others were still watching him.

He turned to the lab director. “System maintenance is the responsibility of the Equipment Division. Why don’t all of you in the research group take a break for a few days? I know everyone’s been working hard.”

“Chief Wang, you’re tired, too. Chief Engineer Zhang can take care of things here. Why don’t you go home and rest as well?”

“Yes, I am tired,” Wang said.

After the lab director left, he picked up the phone and dialed Shen Yufei’s number. She picked up after one ring.

“Who or what is behind this?” Wang asked. He tried to make his voice calm, but failed.

Silence.

“What will happen at the end of the countdown?”

More silence.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Why nanomaterials? This is not a particle accelerator. It’s just applied research. Is it worth your attention?”

“Whether something is worth the attention is not for us to decide.”

“That’s enough!” Wang shouted into the phone. The terror and desperation of the last few days suddenly turned into uncontrollable rage. “Do you think these cheap tricks can fool me? Can stop technological progress? I admit that I can’t, for now, explain how you’re doing it. But that’s only because I haven’t been able to peek behind the curtain of your shameful illusionist.”

“You’re saying you want to see the countdown on an even greater scale?”

Shen’s question stunned Wang for a moment. He forced himself to be calm so he wouldn’t fall into a trap. “Put away your set of tricks. So what if you show it at a bigger scale? It’s still only an illusion. You can project a hologram into the sky, like what NATO did during the last war. With a powerful enough laser you can project an image onto the surface of the moon! The shooter and the farmer should be able to manipulate matters at a scale that humans cannot. For example, can you make the countdown appear on the surface of the sun?” Wang’s mouth hung open. He had shocked himself with his own words. Unconsciously, he had named the two hypotheses that he ought to have avoided. He felt on the verge of falling into the same mental trap that had claimed the other victims.

Trying to seize the initiative, he continued, “I can’t anticipate all your tricks, but even with the sun, perhaps your despicable illusionist can still somehow make the deception seem real. To give a demonstration that will really be convincing, you have to display it at an even larger scale.”

“The question is whether you can take it,” Shen said. “We’re friends. I want to help you avoid Yang Dong’s fate.”

The mention of Yang’s name made Wang shudder. But another surge of anger made him reckless. “Will you take up my challenge?”

“Of course.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do you have a computer connected to the Internet? Okay, enter the following Web address: http://www.qsl.net/bg3tt/zl/mesdm.htm. You got it open? Now, print it out and keep it with you.”

Wang saw that the page was nothing more than a Morse code chart.

“I don’t understand. This—”

“During the next two days, please find a place where you can observe the cosmic microwave background. For specifics, please check the e-mail I’ll send you.”

“What… are you going to do?”

“I know that your nanomaterial project has been stopped. Do you plan on restarting it?”

“Of course. Three days from now.”

“Then the countdown will continue.”

“At what scale will I see it?”

A long silence followed. This woman, who was acting as the spokesperson for some force beyond human understanding, blocked every exit Wang had.

“Three days from now—that’s the fourteenth—between one and five in the morning, the entire universe will flicker for you.”

7 Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night

Wang dialed Ding Yi’s number. Only when Ding picked up did he realize that it was already one in the morning.

“This is Wang Miao. I’m sorry to be calling so late.”

“No problem. I can’t sleep anyway.”

“I have… seen something, and I’d like your help. Do you know if there are any facilities in China that are observing the cosmic microwave background?” Wang had the urge to talk to someone about what was going on, but he thought it best to not let too many people know about the countdown that only he could see.

“The cosmic microwave background? What made you interested in that? I guess you really have run into some problems…. Have you been to see Yang Dong’s mother yet?”

“Ah—I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“No worries. Right now, many scientists have… seen something, like you. Everyone’s distracted. But I think it’s still best if you go visit her. She’s getting on in years, and she won’t hire a caretaker. If there’s some task around the home that she needs help with, please help her…. Oh, right, the cosmic microwave background. You can ask Yang’s mother. Before she retired, she was an astrophysicist. She’s very familiar with such facilities in China.”

“Good! I’ll go after work today.”

“Then I’ll thank you in advance. I really can’t face anything that reminds me of Yang Dong again.”

After hanging up, Wang sat in front of his computer and printed out the simple Morse code chart. By now he was calm enough to turn his thoughts away from the countdown. He pondered the Frontiers of Science, Shen Yufei, and the computer game she had been playing. The only thing he knew for certain about Shen was that she wasn’t the type to enjoy computer games. She spoke like a telegraph and gave him the impression that she was always extremely cold. It wasn’t the kind of coldness that some people put on like a mask—hers suffused her all the way through.

Wang subconsciously thought of her as the long-obsolete DOS operating system: a blank, black screen, a bare “C:\>” prompt, a blinking cursor. Whatever you entered, it echoed back. Not one extra letter and not a single change. But now he knew that behind the “C:\>” was a bottomless abyss.

She’s actually interested in a game? A game that requires a V-suit? She has no kids, which means she bought the V-suit for herself. The very idea is preposterous.

Wang entered the address for the game into the browser. It had been easy to memorize: www.3body.net. The site indicated that the game only supported access via V-suit. Wang remembered that the employee lounge at the Nanotechnology Research Center had a V-suit. He left the now-empty main lab and went to the security office to get the key. In the lounge, he passed the pool tables and the exercise machines and found the V-suit next to a computer. He struggled into the haptic feedback suit, put on the panoramic viewing helmet, and turned on the computer.

After entering the game, Wang found himself in the middle of a desolate plain at dawn. The plain was dun-colored, blurry, its details hard to make out. In the distance, there was a sliver of white light on the horizon. Twinkling stars covered the rest of the sky.

There was a loud explosion, and two red-glowing mountains crashed against the earth in the distance. The whole plain was bathed in red light. When the dust finally cleared from the sky, Wang saw two giant words erected between the sky and the earth: THREE BODY.

Next came a registration screen. Wang created the ID “Hairen,” and logged in.[15]

The plain remained desolate, but now the compressors in the V-suit whirred to life, and Wang could feel gusts of cold air against his body. Before him appeared two walking figures, forming dark silhouettes against the dawn light. Wang ran after them.

He saw that both figures were male. They were dressed in long robes full of holes, covered by dirty animal hides. Each carried a short, wide bronze sword. One of them carried a narrow wooden trunk that was as long as half his height. He turned around to look at Wang. The man’s face was as dirty and wrinkled as the hide he wore, but his eyes were sharp and lively, the pupils glinting in the early-morning glow.

“It’s cold,” he said.

“Yes, very cold.”

“This is the Warring States Period,” the man with the trunk on his back said. “I am King Wen of Zhou.”

“I don’t think King Wen belongs to the Warring States Period,” Wang said.[16]

“He’s survived until now,” the other man said. “King Zhou of Shang is alive, too. I am a follower of King Wen. Indeed, that’s my log-in ID: ‘Follower of King Wen of Zhou.’ He’s a genius, you know?”[17]

“My log-in ID is ‘Hairen.’ What are you carrying on your back?”

King Wen put down the rectangular trunk and stood it up vertically. He opened one of the sides like a door and revealed five compartments within. By the faint light, Wang could see that every layer held a small mound of sand. Every compartment seemed to have sand falling into it from the compartment above, through a small hole.

“A type of sandglass. Every eight hours all the sand flows to the bottom. Flip it three times and you can measure a day. But often I forget to flip it, and I need Follower here to remind me.”

“You seem to be on a very long journey. Is it necessary to carry such a bulky clock?”

“How else would we measure time?”

“A portable sundial would be much more convenient. Or else you could just look at the sun and know the approximate time.”

King Wen and Follower stared at each other, and then turned as one to gaze at Wang, as though he was an idiot. “The sun? How can the sun tell us the time? We’re in the midst of a Chaotic Era.”

Wang was about to ask for the meaning of the strange term when Follower cried out piteously, “It’s so cold! I’m going to die of the cold!”

Wang felt very cold as well. But in most games, taking off his V-suit would immediately cause his ID to be deleted by the system. He couldn’t do that. He said, “When the sun comes out it will be warmer.”

“Are you pretending to be some kind of oracle? Even King Wen cannot predict the future.” Follower shook his head contemptuously.

“What does what I said have to do with predicting the future? Everyone can see that the sun will rise in about another hour or two.” Wang pointed to the sliver of light above the horizon.

“This is a Chaotic Era!”

“What is a Chaotic Era?”

“Other than Stable Eras, all times are Chaotic Eras.” King Wen answered the way he would have spoken to an ignorant child.

Indeed, the light over the horizon dimmed and soon disappeared. Night covered everything. The stars overhead shone even more brightly.

“So that was dusk instead of dawn?” Wang asked.

“It is morning. But the sun doesn’t always rise in the morning. That’s what a Chaotic Era is like.”

Wang found the cold hard to take. “It looks like the sun won’t rise for a long time.” He shivered and pointed to the blurry horizon.

“What makes you think that? There’s no way to be certain. I told you, this is a Chaotic Era.” Follower turned to King Wen. “May I have some dried fish?”

“Absolutely not.” King Wen’s tone brooked no disagreement. “I barely have enough for myself. We must guarantee that I make it to Zhao Ge, not you.”[18]

As they spoke, Wang noticed the sky brightening over another part of the horizon. He couldn’t be sure of the compass directions, but he was sure the direction this time was different from last time. The sky grew brighter, and soon, the sun of this world rose. It was small and bluish in color, like a very bright moon. Wang still felt a bit of warmth, and could now see the landscape around him more clearly. But the day didn’t last long. The sun traversed a shallow arc over the horizon and soon set. Night and the bone-chilling cold once more settled over everything.

The three travelers stopped in front of a dead tree. King Wen and Follower took out their bronze swords to chop the tree into firewood, and Wang gathered the firewood into a pile. Follower took out a piece of flint and struck it against a blade until the sparks caught. The fire soon warmed the front of Wang’s V-suit, but his back remained cold.

“We should burn some of the dehydrated bodies,” Follower said. “Then we’ll have a roaring fire!”

“Put that thought out of your mind. Only the tyrant King Zhou would engage in that kind of behavior.”

“We’ve seen so many dehydrated bodies scattered along the road here. They’ve been torn, and won’t be revivable even when rehydrated. If your theory really works, what does it matter if we burn a few of them? We can even eat some. How can a few lives compare to the importance of your theory?”

“Stop with that nonsense! We’re scholars!”

After the fire burnt out, the three continued their journey. Since they were not speaking to each other much, the system sped up the passage of in-game time. King Wen flipped the sandglass on his back six times rapidly, indicating the lapse of two days. The sun never rose once, not even a hint of dawn over the horizon.

“It seems that the sun will never rise again,” Wang said. He brought up the game menu to take a look at his health bar. Due to the extreme cold, it was steadily decreasing.

“Again, you’re pretending you’re some kind of oracle,” Follower said. But this time he and Wang finished the thought together. “This is a Chaotic Era!”

Soon after this, however, dawn did appear over the horizon. The sky brightened rapidly, and the sun rose. Wang noticed that this time, the sun was gigantic. After just half of it rose, it took up at least one-fifth of the visible horizon. Waves of heat bathed them, and Wang felt refreshed. But when he glanced over at King Wen and Follower, he saw that both had terror on their faces as though they had seen a demon.

“Quick! Find shade!” Follower shouted. Wang ran after them. They ducked behind a large rock. The shadow cast by the rock gradually grew shorter and shorter. The earth around them glowed as though on fire. The permafrost beneath them soon melted, the steel-like hard surface turning into a sea of mud, roiled by waves of heat. Wang sweated profusely.

When the sun was directly overhead, the three covered their heads with the animal hides, but the bright light still shot through the holes and gaps like arrows. The three shifted around the rock until they were able to hide inside the new shadow that had just appeared on the other side.

After the sun set, the air remained hot and damp. The three sweat-drenched travelers sat on the rock. Follower spoke with dismay. “Traveling during a Chaotic Era is like walking through hell. I can’t stand it anymore. Also, I haven’t had anything to eat because you won’t give me any dried fish and you won’t let me eat the dehydrated bodies. What—”

“The only choice is to dehydrate you,” King Wen said, fanning himself with a piece of hide.

“You won’t abandon me afterwards, will you?”

“Of course not. I promise to bring you to Zhao Ge.”

Follower stripped off his sweat-soaked robe and lay down nude on the muddy earth. In the last glow from the sun, already below the horizon, Wang saw water oozing out of Follower’s body. He knew that it was no longer sweat. All the water in his body was being discharged and squeezed out. The water coalesced into a few small rivulets in the mud. His body turned soft and lost its shape like a melting candle.

Ten minutes later, all the water had been eliminated from his body. Follower was now a man-shaped piece of leather stretched out on the ground. His facial features had flattened and become indistinct.

“Is he dead?” Wang asked. He remembered seeing such man-shaped pieces of hide scattered along the road. Some were torn and incomplete. He supposed they were the dehydrated bodies Follower spoke of earlier as potential kindling.

“No,” King Wen answered. He picked up Follower’s skin, brushed the mud and dust off, laid him out on the rock, and rolled him up like a balloon with its air let out. “He’ll recover soon enough, when we soak him in water. It’s just like soaking dried mushrooms.”

“Even his bones have turned soft?”

“Yes. His skeleton has turned into dried fibers. This makes him easy to carry.”

“In this world, can everyone be dehydrated and rehydrated?”

“Of course. You can, too. Otherwise we could not survive the Chaotic Eras.” King Wen handed the rolled-up Follower to Wang. “Carry him. If you abandon him on the road, he’ll be burned or eaten.”

Wang accepted the skin, a light roll. He held it under his arm, and it didn’t feel too strange.

With Wang carrying the dehydrated Follower and King Wen carrying the sandglass, the two continued their arduous journey. Like the previous few days, the progress of the sun in this world followed no pattern. After a long, frigid night lasting several days’ worth of time, a brief but scorching day might follow, and vice versa. The two relied on each other for survival. They lit fires to hold off the cold, and ducked into lakes to avoid the heat.

At least the game sped up the progress of time. A month in game time might pass in half an hour. This made the journey through the Chaotic Era at least tolerable for Wang.

One day, after a long night that lasted almost a week (as measured by the sandglass), King Wen suddenly shouted joyously as he pointed to the night sky.

“Flying stars! Two flying stars!”

Actually, Wang had already noticed the strange celestial bodies. They were bigger than stars, and showed up as disks about the size of ping-pong balls. They moved through the sky at a pace quick enough for the naked eye to detect the motion. But it was the first time two of them had appeared together.

King Wen explained, “When two flying stars appear, it means a Stable Era is about to begin.”

“We’ve seen flying stars before.”

“Yes, but only one at a time.”

“Is two the most we’ll see at once?”

“No. Sometimes three will appear, but no more than that.”

“If three flying stars appear, does that herald an even better era?”

King Wen gave Wang a frightened look. “What are you talking about? Three flying stars… pray that such a thing never happens.”

King Wen turned out to be right. The yearned-for Stable Era soon began. Sunrise and sunset began to follow a pattern. A day-night cycle began to stabilize around eighteen hours. The orderly alternation of day and night made the weather warm and mild.

“How long does a Stable Era last?” Wang asked.

“As short as a day or as long as a century. No one can predict how long one will last.” King Wen sat on the sandglass, lifting his head to gaze at the noonday sun. “According to historical records, the Western Zhou Dynasty experienced a Stable Era lasting two centuries. How lucky to be born during such a time!”

“Then how long does a Chaotic Era last?”

“I already told you. Other than Stable Eras, all other times belong to Chaotic Eras. Each of them takes up the time not occupied by the other.”

“So, this is a world in which there are no patterns?”

“Yes. Civilization can only develop in the mild climate of Stable Eras. Most of the time, humankind must collectively dehydrate and be stored. When a long Stable Era arrives, they collectively revive through rehydration. Then they proceed to build and produce.”

“How can you predict the arrival and duration of each Stable Era?”

“Such a thing has never been done. When a Stable Era arrives, the king makes a decision based on intuition as to whether to engage in mass rehydration. Often, the people are revived, crops are planted, cities begin construction, life has just started—and then the Stable Era ends. Extreme cold and heat then destroy everything.” King Wen now pointed at Wang, his eyes sparkling. “Now you know the goal of this game: to use our intellect and understanding to analyze all phenomena until we can know the pattern of the sun’s movement. The survival of civilization depends on it.”

“Based on my observations, there is no pattern to the sun’s movement at all.”

“That’s because you do not understand the fundamental nature of the world.”

“And you do?”

“Yes. This is why I’m going to Zhao Ge. I will present King Zhou with an accurate calendar.”

“But I’ve seen no evidence on this trip that you can do such a thing.”

“Predicting the sun’s motion is only possible in Zhao Ge, for that is where yin and yang meet. Only the lots cast there are accurate.”

The two continued on through the harsh conditions of another Chaotic Era, interrupted briefly by a short Stable Era, until they finally arrived in Zhao Ge.

Wang heard an unceasing roar that sounded like thunder. The sound was generated by the numerous giant pendulums that could be seen all over Zhao Ge, each tens of meters in height. The weight of each pendulum was a giant rock, suspended from a thick rope tied to a bridge that stretched between the tops of two slender stone towers.

All the pendulums were swinging as groups of soldiers in armor kept them in motion. Chanting incomprehensibly, they rhythmically pulled ropes attached to the giant stone weights, adding to the pendulums’ arcs as they slowed. Wang noticed that all the pendulums swung in step. From far away, the sight was awe-inducing: It was as though numerous giant clocks had been erected over the earth, or colossal, abstract symbols had fallen from the sky.

The giant pendulums surrounded an even more enormous pyramid, standing like a tall mountain in the dark night. This was King Zhou’s palace. Wang followed King Wen into a low door at the base of the pyramid, before which a few soldiers patrolled in the darkness, noiseless as ghosts. The door led to a long, narrow, dark tunnel going deep into the pyramid, with a few torches along the way.

As they walked, King Wen spoke to Wang. “During a Chaotic Era, the entire country is dehydrated. But King Zhou remains awake, a companion to the lifeless land. In order to survive during a Chaotic Era, one must live in thick-walled buildings like this one, as though one were living underground. It’s the only way to avoid the extreme heat and cold.”

After a long time in the tunnel, they finally arrived at the Great Hall at the center of the pyramid. Actually, the hall was not that big and reminded Wang of a cave. The man sitting on a dais and draped with a particolored hide was undoubtedly King Zhou. But what drew Wang’s attention was a man dressed all in black. The black robe blended with the thick shadows in the Great Hall, and the pale white face seemed to float in air.

“This is Fu Xi.”[19] King Zhou introduced the man in black to Wang and King Wen. He spoke as though Wang and King Wen had always been there, while the man in black was the newcomer. “He thinks that the sun is a temperamental god. When the god is awake, his moods are unpredictable, and thus we have a Chaotic Era. But when he’s asleep, his breathing evens out, and thus we have a Stable Era. Fu Xi suggested that I build those pendulums you see out there and keep them in constant motion. He claims that the pendulums can have a hypnotic effect on the sun god and cause him to sink into a long slumber. But we can all see that so far, the sun god remains awake, though from time to time he seems to nap briefly.”

King Zhou waved his hands, and servants brought over a clay pot and set it down on the small stone table before Fu Xi. Later, Wang found out that it was a pot of seasoned broth. Fu Xi sighed, lifted the pot, and drank in great gulps, the sound of his swallows echoing like the beating of a giant heart in the darkness. After he was halfway done with the contents, he poured the rest over his body. Then he threw down the pot and walked toward a large bronze cauldron suspended over a fire in the corner of the Great Hall. He climbed onto the edge of the cauldron and jumped in, stirring up a cloud of vapor.

“Ji Chang, sit down,”[20] King Zhou said. “We’ll eat in just a little while.” He pointed to the cauldron.

“Foolish witchcraft,” King Wen said, glancing contemptuously at the cauldron.

“What have you learned about the sun?” King Zhou asked. Firelight flickered in his eyes.

“The sun is not a god. The sun is yang, and the night is yin. The world proceeds on the balance between yin and yang. Though we cannot control the process, we can predict it.” King Wen took out his bronze sword and drew a yin-yang symbol on the floor, dimly lit by the fire. Then, he carved the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching around the symbol, the whole composition resembling a calendar wheel. “My king, this is the code of the universe. With it, I can present your dynasty with an accurate calendar.”

“Ji Chang, I need to know when the next long Stable Era will come.”

“I will forecast it for you right now,” King Wen said. He sat down in the middle of the yin-yang symbol, his legs curled under him. He raised his head to look up at the ceiling of the Great Hall, his gaze seeming to penetrate the thick stones of the pyramid, until it reached the stars. The fingers of his two hands began a series of rapid, complex movements, like components of a calculating machine. In the silence, only the soup in the cauldron in the corner made any noise, boiling and bubbling as though the shaman being cooked within was dream-talking in his sleep.

King Wen stood up in the middle of the yin-yang symbol. With his face still lifted to the ceiling, he said, “Next will be a Chaotic Era lasting forty-one days. Then comes a five-day Stable Era. Thereafter, there will be a twenty-three-day Chaotic Era followed by an eighteen-day Stable Era. Then we’ll have an eight-day Chaotic Era. But when this Chaotic Era is over, my king, the long Stable Era you’ve been waiting for will begin. That Stable Era will last three years and nine months. The climate will be so mild that it will be a golden age.”

“We have to verify your initial predictions first,” King Zhou said, his face expressionless.

Wang heard a loud rumbling from above. A stone slab in the ceiling of the Great Hall slid open, revealing a square opening. Wang shifted his position and saw that the opening led to another tunnel going up through the center of the pyramid. At the end of the tunnel he could see a few twinkling stars.

Game time sped up. Every few seconds in real time, two soldiers flipped over the sandglass brought by King Wen, indicating the passing of eight hours in game time. The opening through the ceiling flickered with random lights, and once in a while a ray of sunlight from the Chaotic Era shot into the Great Hall. Sometimes the light was weak, like moonlight. Sometimes the light was very strong, and the incandescent white square cast against the ground glowed so brightly that the torches in the Great Hall paled in comparison.

Wang continued to count the flipping of the sandglass. By the time it had been flipped 120 times or so, the appearance of the sunlight through the square opening became regular. The first of the predicted Stable Eras had arrived.

After fifteen more flips of the sandglass, the flickering light through the opening became patternless again, the start of another Chaotic Era. Another Stable Era followed, and another Chaotic Era. The starting times and durations of the various eras were not exactly as King Wen had predicted, but they were close. After the conclusion of yet another eight-day Chaotic Era, the long Stable Era he predicted began.

Wang kept counting the flips of the sandglass. Twenty days passed, and the sunlight falling into the Great Hall maintained the precise rhythm. Game time slowed down to normal.

King Zhou nodded at King Wen. “I shall erect a monument for you, one even greater than this palace.”

King Wen bowed deeply. “My king, awaken your dynasty and let it prosper!”

King Zhou stood up on the dais and opened his arms, as though he wanted to embrace the whole world. In a strange, otherworldly voice, he began to chant, “Re-hy-drate…”

As soon as the order was given, everyone in the Great Hall rushed to the door. Wang followed King Wen closely, and they exited the pyramid through the long tunnel they’d entered by. When they emerged, Wang saw the noonday sun bathing the land in warmth. In a passing breeze he seemed to smell the fragrances of spring. Together, King Wen and Wang walked to a nearby lake. The ice over the lake had melted, and sunlight danced between the gentle waves.

A column of soldiers shouted, “Rehydrate! Rehydrate!” as they ran toward a large stone building, shaped like a granary, next to the lake. On the road to Zhao Ge, Wang had seen many buildings like it, and King Wen had told him that these buildings were called dehydratories, warehouses where the dehydrated bodies could be stored. The soldiers opened the heavy stone doors of the dehydratory and carried out rolls of dusty skins. Each soldier walked to the lakeshore, and tossed them into the water. As soon as the skins touched the water, they began to unfurl and stretch out. Soon, the lake was covered by a layer of man-shaped floating skins, each rapidly absorbing the water and expanding. Gradually, all the man-shaped skin cutouts became fleshy bodies that gradually began to display signs of life. One by one, they struggled up out of the waist-deep water and stood up. Looking around at the sunny world with wide-open eyes, they appeared to have just awoken from a dream.

“Rehydrate!” one man cried out.

“Rehydrate! Rehydrate!” Other voices joyously echoed his.

Everyone climbed out of the lake and ran naked toward the dehydratory. They carried out more skins and tossed them into the water, and even more of the revived climbed out of the lake. The same scene repeated itself around every lake and pool. The entire world was coming back to life.

“Oh, heavens! My finger!”

Wang saw a man who had just been revived standing in the middle of the lake, holding up one hand and crying. The hand was missing its middle finger, and blood flowed from the wound into the water. Others, who had also just been revived, passed by him as they happily waded ashore, ignoring him.

“Count yourself lucky,” one of them said to the man. “Some lost a whole arm or leg. Others had their heads chewed through by rats. If we hadn’t been rehydrated in time, maybe all of us would have been eaten by the Chaotic Era rats.”

“How long have we been dehydrated?” one of the revived asked.

“You can tell by looking at the thickness of the dust covering the palace. I just heard that the king is no longer the king from before. But I don’t know if he’s the old king’s son or grandson.”

It took eight days to complete the work of rehydration. All of the stored dehydrated bodies had been revived, and the world was given a new life. During these eight days, everyone enjoyed regular cycles of sunset and sunrise, each cycle precisely twenty hours long. Enjoying the springlike climate, everyone gave heartfelt praise to the sun and the gods who guided the world.

On the night of the eighth day, the bonfires scattered over the ground seemed even more numerous and denser than the stars in the sky. The ruins of cities and towns abandoned during the Chaotic Eras once again filled with noise and light. Like every mass rehydration in the past, the people were going to celebrate all night to welcome their new life after the next sunrise.

But the sun did not rise again.

Every kind of timepiece indicated that the time for sunrise had passed, but the horizon remained dark in every direction. Ten hours later, there was still no sign of the sun, not even the slightest hint of dawn. The endless night lasted through a whole day, then two days. Coldness now pressed toward the earth like a giant hand.

Inside the pyramid, King Wen knelt before King Zhou, pleading, “My king, please continue to have faith in me. This is but temporary. I have seen the yang of the universe gathering, and the sun will rise soon. The Stable Era and spring will continue!”

“Let’s begin to heat the cauldron,” King Zhou said, and sighed.

“Oh, King!” A minister stumbled through the cavelike entrance into the Great Hall. “There… there are three flying stars in the sky!”

Those in the Great Hall were stunned. The air seemed frozen. Only King Zhou remained impassive. He turned to Wang, to whom he had never deigned to speak before. “You still don’t understand what the appearance of three flying stars means, do you? Ji Chang, why don’t you tell him?”

“It indicates the arrival of a long period of extreme cold, cold enough to turn stone into dust.” King Wen sighed.

“De-hy-drate…” King Zhou again chanted in that strange, otherworldly voice. Outside, people had already begun the process. They turned themselves back into dehydrated bodies to survive the long night that was coming. The lucky ones had time to be stacked in the dehydratories, but many were abandoned in the empty fields.

King Wen stood up slowly and walked toward the cauldron over the roaring fire in the corner of the Great Hall. He climbed up the side and paused for a few seconds before jumping in. Perhaps he had seen the thoroughly cooked face of Fu Xi laughing at him from the soup.

“Keep the fire low,” King Zhou ordered, his voice weak. Then he turned to the others. “You may exit if you wish. The game is no longer fun after it gets to this point.”

A red EXIT sign showed up above the Great Hall’s cavelike entrance. Players in the Great Hall streamed toward it, and Wang followed the crowd. Through the long tunnel, they finally emerged outside the pyramid. Heavy snow falling through the night air greeted them. The bone-chilling cold caused Wang to shiver, and a display in a corner of the sky indicated that game time had sped up again.

The snow continued without pause for ten days. By now the snowflakes were large and heavy, like pieces of solidified darkness. Someone whispered next to Wang, “The snow is now composed of frozen carbon dioxide, dry ice.” Wang turned around and saw that the speaker was Follower.

After another ten days, the snowflakes turned thin and translucent. By the weak light from a few torches within the entrance to the long tunnel, the snowflakes gave off a faint blue glow, like pieces of dancing mica.

“Those snowflakes are now composed of solidified oxygen and nitrogen. The atmosphere is disappearing through deposition, which means it’s near absolute zero above.”

Snow gradually buried the pyramid. The lowest layers were composed of water snow, then dry ice, and finally, on top, snow made of oxygen and nitrogen. The night sky became especially clear, and the stars glowed like a field of silver bonfires. A line of text appeared against the starry background:

Before exiting the game, Wang noticed the three flying stars in the sky. Revolving closely around each other, they seemed to perform a strange dance against the abyss of space.

8 Ye Wenjie

Wang took off the V-suit and panoramic viewing helmet. His shirt was soaked with sweat, as if he had just awoken from a nightmare. He left the Research Center, got into his car, and drove to the address given to him by Ding Yi: the house of Yang Dong’s mother.

Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era…

The thought turned and turned in Wang’s head. Why would the path of the sun through the world of Three Body be devoid of regularity and pattern? Whether a planet’s orbit is more circular or more elliptical, its motion around its sun must be periodic. Total irregularity in planetary motion is impossible….

Wang grew angry with himself. He shook his head, trying to chase away these thoughts. It’s only a game!

But I lost.

Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era…

Damn it! Stop! Why am I thinking about this? Why?

Soon, Wang found the answer. He had not played any computer games for years, and the hardware for gaming had clearly advanced greatly in the interim. The virtual reality and multisensory feedback were all effects he had not experienced as a young student. But Wang also knew that the sense of realism in Three Body wasn’t due to the interface technology.

He remembered taking a class in information theory as a third-year student in college. The professor had put up two pictures: One was the famous Song Dynasty painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival, full of fine, rich details; the other was a photograph of the sky on a sunny day, the deep blue expanse broken only by a wisp of cloud that one couldn’t even be sure was there. The professor asked the class which picture contained more information. The answer was that the photograph’s information content—its entropy—exceeded the painting’s by one or two orders of magnitude.

Three Body was the same. Its enormous information content was hidden deep. Wang could feel it, but he could not articulate it. He suddenly understood that the makers of Three Body took the exact opposite of the approach taken by designers of other games. Normally, game designers tried to display as much information as possible to increase the sense of realism. But Three Body’s designers worked to compress the information content to disguise a more complex reality, just like that seemingly empty photograph of the sky.

Wang let his mind wander back to the world of Three Body.

Flying stars! The key must be in the flying stars. One flying star, two flying stars, three flying stars… what did they mean?

As he had that thought, he found himself at his destination.

At the foot of the apartment building, Wang saw a graying, thin woman, about sixty years old. She wore glasses and was struggling to go up the stairs with a basket of groceries. He guessed that this was the woman he had come to see.

A quick greeting confirmed his guess. She was Yang Dong’s mother, Ye Wenjie. After hearing the purpose of Wang Miao’s visit, she was grateful and appreciative. Wang was familiar with old intellectuals like her: The long years had ground away all the hardness and fierceness in their personalities, until all that was left was a gentleness like that of water.

Wang carried the grocery basket up the stairs for her. When they got to her apartment, it turned out to be not as quiet as he had expected: Three children were playing, the oldest about five, and the youngest barely walking. Ye told Wang that they were all the neighbors’ kids.

“They like to play at my place. Today is Sunday, and their parents need to work overtime, so they left them to me…. Oh, Nan Nan, have you finished your picture? Oh, it looks great! Shall we give it a title? ‘Ducklings in the Sun’? Sounds good. Let Granny write it for you. Then I’ll put down the date: ‘June 9th, by Nan Nan.’ And what do you want to eat for lunch? Yang Yang, you want fried eggplant? Sure! Nan Nan, you want the snow peas like you had yesterday? No problem. How about you, Mi Mi? You want some meat-meat? Oh, no, your mom told me that you shouldn’t eat so much meat-meat, not easy to digest. How about some fishie instead? Look at this big fishie Granny bought….”

Wang observed Ye and the children, absorbed in their conversation. She must want grandkids. But even if Yang Dong were alive, would she have had children?

Ye took the groceries into the kitchen. When she reemerged, she said, “Xiao Wang, I’m going to soak the vegetables for a while.” She had slipped effortlessly into addressing him by an affectionate diminutive. “These days, they use so much pesticide that when I feed the children, I have to soak the vegetables for at least two hours— Why don’t you take a look in Dong Dong’s room first?”

Her suggestion, tagged on at the end as though it was the most natural thing in the world, made Wang anxious. Clearly, she had figured out the real purpose of his visit. She turned around and went back into the kitchen without giving Wang another glance, and so avoided seeing his embarrassment. Wang was grateful that she was so considerate of his feelings.

Wang walked past the three happily playing children and entered the room that Ye had indicated. He paused in front of the door, seized by a strange feeling. It was as if he had returned to his dream-filled youth. From the depths of his memory arose a tingling sadness, fragile and pure like morning dew, tinged with a rosy hue.

Gently, he pushed the door open. The faint fragrance that filled the room was unexpected, the smell of the forest. He seemed to have entered the hut of a ranger: The walls were covered by strips of bark; the three stools were unadorned tree stumps; the desk was made from three bigger tree stumps pushed together. And then there was the bed, apparently lined with ura sedge from Northeast China, which the locals stuffed into their shoes to stay warm in the cold climate. Everything was rough-hewn and seemingly careless, without signs of aesthetic design. Yang Dong’s job had earned her a high income, and she could have bought a home in some luxury development, but she chose to live here with her mother instead.

Wang walked up to the tree-stump desk. It was plainly furnished, and nothing on it betrayed a hint of femininity or scholarly interest. Maybe all such objects had been taken away, or maybe they had never been there. He noticed a black-and-white photograph in a wooden frame, a portrait of mother and daughter. In the picture, Yang Dong was just a little girl, and Ye Wenjie was crouching down so that they were the same height. A strong wind tangled the pair’s long hair together.

The background of the photograph was unusual: The sky seemed to be seen through a large net held up by thick steel supporting structures. Wang deduced that it was some kind of parabolic antenna, so large that its edges were beyond the frame of the photograph.

In the picture, little Yang Dong’s eyes gave off a fright that made Wang’s heart ache. She seemed terrified by the world outside the picture.

Next, Wang noticed a thick notebook at the corner of the desk. He was baffled by the material the notebook was made of until he saw a line of childish writing scrawled across the cover: Yang Dong’s Birch-bark Notebook. “Birch” was written in pinyin letters instead of using the character for it. The years had turned the silvery bark into a dull yellow. He reached out to touch the notebook, hesitated, and retracted his hand.

“It’s okay,” Ye said from the door. “Those are pictures Dong Dong drew when she was little.”

Wang picked up the birch-bark notebook and gently flipped through it. Ye had dated each picture for her daughter, just like she had been doing for Nan Nan in the living room.

Wang saw that, based on the dates on the pictures, Yang Dong was three when she drew them. Normally, children of that age are able to draw humans and objects with clear shapes, but Yang Dong’s pictures remained only messes of random lines. They seemed to express a kind of passionate anger and desperation born out of a frustrated desire to express something—not the sort of feeling one would expect in a child that young.

Ye slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes staring at the notebook, lost in thought. Her daughter had died here, ended her life while she slept. Wang sat next to her. He had never felt such a strong desire to share the burden of another’s pain.

Ye took the birch-bark notebook from him and held it to her chest. In a low voice, she said, “I wasn’t good at teaching Dong Dong in an age-appropriate manner. I exposed her too early to some very abstract, very extreme topics. When she first expressed an interest in abstract theory, I told her that field wasn’t easy for women. She said, what about Madame Curie? I told her, Madame Curie was never really accepted as part of that field. Her success was seen as a matter of persistence and hard work, but without her, someone else would have completed her work. As a matter of fact, Wu Chien-Shiung went even further than Madame Curie.[21] But it really isn’t a woman’s field.

“Dong Dong didn’t argue with me, but I later discovered that she really was different. For example, let’s say I explained a formula to her. Other children might say, ‘What a clever formula!’ But she would say, ‘This formula is so elegant, so beautiful.’ The expression on her face was the same as when she saw a pretty wildflower.

“Her father left behind some records. She listened to all of them and finally picked something by Bach as her favorite, listening to it over and over. That was the kind of music that shouldn’t have mesmerized a kid. At first I thought she picked it on a whim, but when I asked her how she felt about the music, she said that she could see in the music a giant building, a large, complex house. Bit by bit, the giant added to the structure, and when the music was over, the house was done….”

“You were a great teacher for your daughter,” Wang said.

“No. I failed. Her world was too simple, and all she had were ethereal theories. When they collapsed, she had nothing to lean on to keep on living.”

“Professor Ye, I can’t say that I agree with you. Right now, events are happening that are beyond our imagination. It’s an unprecedented challenge to our theories about the world, and she’s not the only scientist to have stumbled down that path.”

“But she was a woman. A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.”

As Wang was about to leave, he remembered the other purpose for his visit. He mentioned to Ye his wish to observe the cosmic microwave background.

“Oh, that. There are two places in China that work on it. One is an observatory in Ürümqi—I think it’s a project by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Space Environment Observation Center. The other is very close by, a radio astronomy observatory located in the suburbs of Beijing, which is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University’s Joint Center for Astrophysics. The one in Ürümqi does ground observation, and the one here just receives data from satellites, though the satellite data is more accurate and complete. I have a former student working there, and I can make a call for you.” Ye found the phone number and dialed it. The ensuing conversation seemed to go smoothly.

“You’re all set,” Ye said as she hung up. “Let me give you the address. You can go over anytime. My student’s name is Sha Ruishan, and he’s going to be working the night shift tomorrow…. I don’t think this is your field of research, right?”

“I work in nanotech. This is for… something else.” Wang was afraid that Ye was going to ask more questions about why he sought this information, but she did not.

“Xiao Wang, you look a bit pale. How’s your health?” she asked, her face full of concern.

“It’s nothing. Please don’t worry.”

“Wait a moment.” Ye took a small wooden box out of a cabinet. Wang saw from the label that it was ginseng. “An old friend from the base, a soldier, came to visit me a few days ago and brought this—take it, take it! It’s cultivated, not very precious. I have high blood pressure and can’t use it anyway. You can slice it thinly and make it into a tea. You look so pale that I’m sure you can use the enrichment. You’re still young, but you have to watch your health.”

Wang accepted the box, warmth filling his chest. His eyes moistened. It was as though his heart, stressed almost beyond the breaking point by the last few days, had been placed onto a pile of soft down feathers. “Professor Ye, I will come visit you often.”

9 The Universe Flickers

Wang Miao drove along Jingmi Road until he was in Miyun County. From there he headed to Heilongtan, climbed up the mountain along a winding road, and arrived at the radio astronomy observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Astronomical Center. He saw a line of twenty-eight parabolic antenna dishes, each with a diameter of nine meters, like a row of spectacular steel plants. At the end were two tall radio telescopes with dishes fifty meters in diameter, built in 2006. As he drove closer, Wang could not help but think of the background in the picture of Ye and her daughter.

But the work of Sha Ruishan, Ye’s student, had nothing to do with these radio telescopes. Dr. Sha’s lab was mainly responsible for receiving the data transmitted from three satellites: the Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, launched in November of 1989 and about to be retired; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, WMAP, launched in 2003; and Planck, the space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.

Cosmic microwave background radiation very precisely matched the thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.7255 K and was highly isotropic—meaning nearly uniform in every direction—with only tiny temperature fluctuations at the parts per million range. Sha Ruishan’s job was to create a more detailed map of the cosmic microwave background using observational data.

The lab wasn’t very big. Equipment for receiving satellite data was squeezed into the main computer room, and three terminals displayed the information sent by the three satellites.

Sha was excited to see Wang. Clearly bored with his long isolation and happy to have a visitor, he asked Wang what kind of data he wanted to see.

“I want to see the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background.”

“Can you… be more specific?”

“What I mean is… I want to see the isotropic fluctuation in the overall cosmic microwave background, between one and five percent,” he said, quoting from Shen’s email.

Sha grinned. Starting at the turn of the century, the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory had opened itself to visitors. In order to earn some extra income, Sha often played the role of tour guide or gave lectures. This was the grin he reserved for tourists, as he had grown used to their astounding scientific illiteracy. “Mr. Wang, I take it you’re not a specialist in the field?”

“I work in nanotech.”

“Ah, makes sense. But you must have some basic understanding of the cosmic microwave background?”

“I don’t know much. I know that as the universe cooled after the big bang, the leftover ‘embers’ became the cosmic microwave background. The radiation fills the entire universe and can be observed in the centimeter wavelength range. I think it was back in the sixties when two Americans accidentally discovered the radiation when they were testing a supersensitive satellite reception antenna—”

“That’s more than enough,” Sha interrupted, waving his hands. “Then you must know that unlike the local variations we observe in different parts of the universe, the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background is correlated with the expansion of the universe. It’s a very slow change measured at the scale of the age of the universe. Even with the sensitivity of the Planck satellite, continuous observation for a million years might not detect any such shift. But you want to see a five percent fluctuation tonight? Do you realize what that would mean? The universe would flicker like a fluorescent tube that’s about to burn out!”

And it will be flickering for me, Wang thought.

“This must be some joke from Professor Ye,” Sha said.

“Nothing would please me more than to discover that it was a joke,” Wang said. He was about to tell Sha that Ye didn’t know the details of his request, but he was afraid that Sha would then refuse to help him.

“Well, since Professor Ye asked me to help you, let’s do the observation. It’s not a big deal. If you just need one percent precision, data from the antique COBE is sufficient.” As he spoke, Sha typed quickly at the terminal. Soon a flat green line appeared on the screen. “This curve is the real-time measurement of the overall cosmic microwave background—oh, calling it a straight line would be more accurate. The temperature is 2.725±0.002K. The error range is due to the Doppler effect from the motion of the Milky Way, which has already been filtered out. If the kind of fluctuation you anticipate—in excess of one percent—occurs, this line would turn red and become a waveform. I would bet that it’s going to stay a flat green line until the end of the world, though. If you want to see it show the kind of fluctuation observable by the naked eye, you might have to wait until long after the death of the sun.”

“I’m not interfering in your work, am I?”

“No. Since you need such low precision, we can just use some basic data from COBE. Okay, it’s all set. From now on, if such great fluctuations occur, the data will be automatically saved to disk.”

“I think it might happen around one o’clock A.M.”

“Wow, so precise! No problem, since I’m working the night shift, anyway. Have you had dinner yet? Good, then I’ll take you on a tour.”

The night was moonless. They walked along the row of antenna dishes, and Sha pointed to them. “Breathtaking, aren’t they? It’s too bad that they are all like the ears of a deaf man.”

“Why?”

“Ever since construction was completed, interference has been unceasing in the observational bands. First, there were the paging stations during the eighties. Now, it’s the scramble to develop mobile communications networks and cell towers. These telescopes are capable of many scientific tasks—surveying the sky, detecting variable radio sources, observing the remains of supernovae—but we can’t perform most of them. We’ve complained to the State Regulatory Radio Commission many times, never with any results. How can we get more attention than China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom? Without money, the secrets of the universe are worth shit. At least my project only depends on satellite data and has nothing to do with these ‘tourist attractions.’”

“In recent years, commercial operation of basic research has been fairly successful, like in high-energy physics. Maybe it would be better if the observatories were built in places farther away from cities?”

“It all comes down to money. Right now, our only choice is to find technical means to shield against interference. Well, it would be much better if Professor Ye were here. She accomplished a lot in this field.”

So the topic of conversation turned to Ye Wenjie. And from her student, Wang finally learned about her life. He listened as Sha told of how she witnessed the death of her father during the Cultural Revolution, how she was falsely accused at the Production and Construction Corps, how she then seemed to disappear until her return to Beijing at the beginning of the nineties, when she began teaching astrophysics at Tsinghua, where her father had also taught, until her retirement.

“It was only recently revealed that she had spent more than twenty years at Red Coast Base.”

Wang was stunned. “You mean, those rumors—”

“Most turned out to be true. One of the researchers who developed the deciphering system for the Red Coast Project emigrated to Europe and wrote a book last year. Most of the rumors you hear came out of that book. Many who participated in Red Coast are still alive.”

“That is… a fantastical legend.”

“Especially for it to happen during those years—absolutely incredible.”

They continued to speak for a while. Sha asked the purpose behind Wang’s strange request. Wang avoided giving a straight answer, and Sha didn’t press. The dignity of a specialist did not allow Sha to express too much interest in a request that clearly went against his professional knowledge.

Then they went to an all-night bar for tourists and sat for two hours. As Sha finished one beer after another, his tongue loosened even more. But Wang became anxious, and his mind kept returning to that green line on the terminal in Sha’s office. It was only at ten to one in the morning that Sha finally gave in to Wang’s repeated pleas to go back to the lab.

The spotlights that had lit up the row of radio antennas had been turned off, and the antennas now formed a simple two-dimensional picture against the night sky like a series of abstract symbols. All of them gazed up at the sky at the same angle, as though waiting expectantly for something. The scene made Wang shudder despite the warmth of the spring evening. He was reminded of the giant pendulums in Three Body.

They arrived back at the lab at one. As they looked at the terminal, the fluctuation was just getting started. The flat line turned into a wave, the distance between one peak and the next inconstant. The line’s color became red, like a snake awakening after hibernation, wriggling as its skin refilled with blood.

“It must be a malfunction in COBE!” Sha stared at the waveform, terrified.

“It’s not a malfunction.” Wang’s tone was exceedingly calm. He had learned to control himself when faced with such sights.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Sha said. He went to the other two terminals and typed rapidly to bring up the data gathered by the other two satellites, WMAP and Planck.

Now three waveforms moved in sync across the three terminals, exactly alike.

Sha took out a notebook computer and rushed to turn it on. He plugged in a network cable and picked up the phone. Wang could tell from the one-sided conversation that he was trying to get in touch with the Ürümqi radio astronomy observatory. He didn’t explain to Wang what he was doing, his eyes locked onto the browser window on the notebook. Wang could hear his rapid breathing.

A few minutes later, a red waveform appeared in the browser window, moving in step with the other three.

The three satellites and the ground-based observatory confirmed one fact: The universe was flickering.

“Can you print out the waveform?” Wang asked.

Sha wiped away the cold sweat on his forehead and nodded. He moved his mouse and clicked “Print.” Wang grabbed the first page as soon as it came out of the laser printer, and, with a pencil, began to match the distance between the peaks with the Morse code chart he took out of his pocket.

short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-long-short-short-short.

That’s 1108:21:37, Wang thought.

short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-short-short-short-short—that’s 1108:21:36.

The countdown continued at the scale of the universe. Ninety-two hours had already elapsed, and only 1,108 hours remained.

Sha paced back and forth anxiously, pausing from time to time to look at the sequence of numbers Wang was writing down. “Can’t you tell me what’s going on?” he shouted.

“I can’t possibly explain this to you, Dr. Sha. Trust me.” Wang pushed away the pile of papers filled with waveforms. As he stared at the sequence of numbers, he said, “Maybe the three satellites and the observatory are all malfunctioning.”

“You know that’s impossible!”

“What if it’s sabotage?”

“Also impossible! To simultaneously alter the data from three satellites and an observatory on Earth? You’re talking about a supernatural saboteur.”

Wang nodded. Compared to the idea of the universe flickering, he would prefer a supernatural saboteur. But Sha then deprived him of this last glimmer of hope. “It’s easy to confirm this. If the cosmic microwave background is fluctuating this much, we should be able to see it with our own eyes.”

“What are you talking about? The wavelength of the cosmic microwave background is seven centimeters. That’s five orders of magnitude longer than the wavelength of visible light. How can we possibly see it?”

“Using 3K glasses.”

“Three-K glasses?”

“It’s a sort of science toy we made for the Capital Planetarium. With our current level of technology, we could take the six-meter horn antenna used by Penzias and Wilson almost half a century ago to discover the cosmic microwave background and miniaturize it to the size of a pair of glasses. Then we added a converter in the glasses to compress the detected radiation by five orders of magnitude so that seven-centimeter waves are turned into visible red light. This way, visitors can put on the glasses at night and observe the cosmic microwave background on their own. And now, we can use it to see the universe flicker.”

“Where can I find these glasses?”

“At the Capital Planetarium. We made more than twenty pairs.”

“I must get my hands on a pair before five.”

Sha picked up the phone. The other side picked up only after a long while. Sha had to expend a lot of energy to convince the person awakened in the middle of the night to go to the planetarium and wait for Wang’s arrival in an hour.

As Wang left, Sha said, “I won’t go with you. What I’ve seen is enough, and I don’t need any more confirmation. But I hope that you will explain the truth to me when you feel the time is right. If this phenomenon should lead to some research result, I won’t forget you.”

Wang opened the car door and said, “The flickering will stop at five in the morning. I’d suggest you not pursue it after this. Believe me, you won’t get anywhere.”

Sha stared at Wang for a long time and then nodded. “I understand. Strange things have been happening to scientists lately….”

“Yes.” Wang ducked into the car. He didn’t want to discuss the subject any further.

“Is it our turn?”

“It’s my turn, at least.” Wang started the engine.

An hour later, Wang arrived at the new planetarium and got out of the car. The bright lights of the city penetrated the translucent walls of the immense glass building and dimly revealed its internal structure. Wang thought that if the architect had intended to express a feeling about the universe, the design was a success: The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed. The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked. But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.

The sleepy-eyed planetarium staffer was waiting by the door for Wang. He handed him a small suitcase and said, “There are five pairs of 3K glasses in here, all fully charged. The left button switches it on. The right dial is for adjusting brightness. I have a dozen more pairs upstairs. You can look as much as you like, but I’m going to take a nap now in the room over there. This Dr. Sha must be mental.” He went into the dim interior of the planetarium.

Wang opened the suitcase on the backseat of his car and took out a pair of 3K glasses. It resembled the display inside the panoramic viewing helmet of the V-suit. He put the glasses on and looked around. The city looked the same as before, only dimmer. Then he remembered that he had to switch them on.

The city turned into many hazy glowing halos. Most were fixed, but a few flickered or moved. He realized that these were sources of radiation in the centimeter range, all now converted to visible light. At the heart of each halo was a radiation source. Because the original wavelengths were so long, it was impossible to see their shapes clearly.

He lifted his head and saw a sky glowing with a faint red light. Just like that, he was seeing the cosmic microwave background.

The red light had come from more than ten billion years ago. It was the remnants of the big bang, the still-warm embers of Creation. He could not see any stars. Normally, since visible light would be compressed to invisible by the glasses, each star should appear as a black dot. But the diffraction of centimeter-wave radiation overwhelmed all other shapes and details.

Once his eyes had grown used to the sight, Wang could see that the faint red background was indeed pulsing. The entire sky flickered, as if the universe was but a quivering lamp in the wind.

Standing under the flashing dome of the night sky, Wang suddenly felt the universe shrink until it was so small that only he was imprisoned in it. The universe was a cramped heart, and the red light that suffused everything was the translucent blood that filled the organ. Suspended in the blood, he saw that the flickering of the red light was not periodic—the pulsing was irregular. He felt a strange, perverse, immense presence that could never be understood by human intellect.

Wang took off the 3K glasses and sat down weakly on the ground, leaning against the wheel of his car. The city at night gradually recovered the reality of visible light. But his eyes roamed, trying to capture other sights. By the entrance of the zoo across the street, there was a row of neon lights. One of the lights was about to burn out and flickered irregularly. Nearby, a small tree’s leaves trembled in the night breeze, twinkling without pattern as they reflected streetlight. In the distance, the red star atop the Beijing Exhibition Center’s Russian-style spire reflected the light from the cars passing below, also twinkling randomly….

Wang tried to interpret the flickers as Morse code. He even felt that the wrinkles in the flags flapping next to him and the ripples in the puddle on the side of the road might be sending him messages. He struggled to understand all the messages, and felt the passing of the countdown, second by second.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there. The planetarium staffer finally emerged and asked him whether he was done. But when he saw Wang’s face, sleep disappeared from the staffer’s eyes and was replaced by fear. He packed up the 3K glasses, stared at Wang for a few seconds, and quickly left with the suitcase.

Wang took out his mobile and dialed Shen Yufei’s number. She picked up right away. Perhaps she was also suffering from insomnia.

“What happens at the end of the countdown?” Wang asked.

“I don’t know.” She hung up.

What can it be? Maybe my own death, like Yang Dong’s.

Or maybe it will be a disaster like the great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean more than a decade ago. No one will connect it to my nanotech research. Could it be that every previous great disaster, including the two World Wars, was also the result of reaching the end of ghostly countdowns? Could it be that every time there was someone like me, who no one thought of, who bore the ultimate responsibility?

Or maybe it signals the end of the whole world. In this perverse world, that would be a relief.

One thing was certain. No matter what was at the end of the countdown, in the remaining one thousand or so hours, the possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons, until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.

Wang ducked back into the car and left the planetarium. Just before dawn, the roads were relatively empty. But he didn’t dare to drive too fast, feeling that the faster the car moved, the faster the countdown would go. When a glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky, he parked and walked around aimlessly. His mind was empty of thoughts: Only the countdown pulsed against the dim red background of cosmic radiation. He seemed to have turned into nothing but a simple timer, a bell that tolled for he knew not whom.

The sky brightened. He was tired, so he sat down on a bench.

When he lifted his head to see where his subconscious had brought him, he shivered.

He sat in front of St. Joseph’s Church at Wangfujing. In the pale white light of dawn, the church’s Romanesque vaults appeared as three giant fingers pointing out something in space for him.

As Wang got up to leave, he was held back by a snippet of hymnal music. It wasn’t Sunday, so it was likely a choir rehearsal. The song was “Come, Gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove.” As he listened to the solemn, sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe had shrunk until it was the size of an empty church. The domed ceiling was hidden by the flashing red light of the background radiation, and he was an ant crawling through the cracks in the floor. He felt a giant, invisible hand caressing his trembling heart, and he was once again a helpless babe. Something deep in his mind that had once held him up softened like wax and collapsed. He covered his eyes and began to cry.

Wang’s cries were interrupted by laughter. “Hahaha, another one bites the dust!”

He turned around.

Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.

10 Da Shi

Shi sat down next to Wang and handed him his car keys. “You parked right at the intersection at Dongdan. If I had arrived just a minute later, the traffic cops would have had it towed.”

Da Shi, if I had known you were following me, I would have been comforted, Wang thought, switching to Shi Qiang’s familiar nickname in his mind, though self-respect made him hold back the words. He accepted a cigarette from Da Shi, lit it, and took his first drag since he quit several years ago.

“So how’s it going, buddy? Finding it hard to bear? I said you couldn’t handle it. And you insisted on playing the tough guy.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Wang took several more deep puffs.

“Your problem is, you understand too well…. Fine, let’s go grab a bite.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then we’ll go drinking! My treat.”

Wang got into Da Shi’s car and they drove to a small restaurant nearby. It was still early, and the place was deserted.

“Two orders of quick-fried tripe, and a bottle of er guo tou!”[22] Da Shi shouted, without even looking up. He was obviously a regular here.

As he stared at the two plates filled with black slices of tripe, Wang’s empty stomach began to churn, and he thought he was going to be sick. Da Shi ordered him some warm soymilk and fried pancakes, and Wang forced himself to eat some.

Then they drank shots of er guo tou. He began to feel lightheaded, and his tongue loosened. Gradually, he recounted the events of the last three days to Da Shi, even though he knew that Da Shi probably knew everything already—maybe Da Shi even knew more than he did.

“You’re saying that the universe was… winking at you?” Da Shi asked, as he slurped down strips of tripe like noodles.

“That’s a very appropriate metaphor.”

“Bullshit.”

“Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.”

“More bullshit. Come, drink!”

Wang finished another shot. Now the world was spinning around him, and only the tripe-chomping Shi Qiang across from him remained stable. He said, “Da Shi, have you ever… considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does the universe go? Et cetera.”

“Nope.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“You must see the stars. Aren’t you awed and curious?”

“I never look at the sky at night.”

“How is that possible? I thought you often worked the night shift?”

“Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape.”

“We really have nothing to say to each other. All right. Drink!”

“To be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in the sky, I wouldn’t be thinking about your philosophical questions. I have too much to worry about! I gotta pay the mortgage, save for the kid’s college, and handle the endless stream of cases…. I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass. Naturally, I don’t know how to make my bosses like me. Years after being discharged from the army, my career is going nowhere. If I weren’t pretty good at my job, I would have been kicked out a long time ago…. You think that’s not enough for me to worry about? You think I’ve got the energy to gaze at stars and philosophize?”

“You’re right. All right, drink up!”

“But, I did indeed invent an ultimate rule.”

“Tell me.”

“Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”

“What… what kind of crappy rule is that?”

“I’m saying that there’s always someone behind things that don’t seem to have an explanation.”

“If you had even basic knowledge of science, you’d know it’s impossible for any force to accomplish the things I experienced. Especially that last one. To manipulate things at the scale of the universe—not only can you not explain it with our current science, I couldn’t even imagine how to explain it outside of science. It’s more than supernatural. It’s super-I-don’t-know-what….”

“I’m telling you, that’s bullshit. I’ve seen plenty of weird things.”

“Then tell me what I should do next.”

“Keep on drinking. And then sleep.”

“Fine.”

Wang Miao had no idea how he got back into his car. He tumbled into the backseat and fell into a dreamless slumber. He didn’t think that he was asleep for long, but when he opened his eyes, the sun was already near the horizon in the west.

He got out of the car. Even though the alcohol that morning had made him weak, he did feel better. He saw that he was at one corner of the Forbidden City. The setting sun shone on the ancient palace and turned into bright gold ripples in the moat. In his eyes, the world became once again classical and stable.

Wang sat until it got dark, enjoying the peace that had been missing from his life. The black Volkswagen Santana that he was now so familiar with pulled out of the traffic streaming through the street and braked to a stop right in front of him. Shi Qiang got out of the car.

“Slept well?” Da Shi growled.

“Yes. What next?”

“Who? You? Go have dinner. Then drink a little more. Then sleep again.”

“Then what?”

“Then? Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?”

“But the countdown… there’s only 1,091 hours left.”

“Fuck the countdown. Your first priority right now is to make sure you can stand straight and not collapse into a heap. Then we can talk about other things.”

“Da Shi, can you tell me something about what’s really going on? I’m begging you.”

Da Shi stared at Wang a while. Then he laughed. “I’ve said the very same thing to General Chang several times. We’re in the same boat, you and I. I’ll be honest: I know fucking shit. My pay grade is too low, and they tell me nothing. Sometimes I think this is a nightmare.”

“But you must know more than I.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you what little I know.” Da Shi pointed to the shore of the moat around the Forbidden City. The two found a spot and sat down.

It was now night, and traffic flowed ceaselessly behind them like a river. They watched their shadows lengthening and shortening over the moat.

“In my line of work, it’s all about putting together many apparently unconnected things. When you piece them together the right way, you get the truth. For a while now, strange things have been happening.

“For example, there’s been an unprecedented wave of crimes against academia and science research institutions. Of course you know about the explosion at the Liangxiang accelerator construction site. There was also the murder of that Nobel laureate… the crimes were all unusual: not for money, not for revenge. No political background, just pure destruction.

“Other strange things didn’t involve crimes. For example, the Frontiers of Science and the suicides of those academics. Environmental activists have also become extra bold: protest mobs at construction sites to stop nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams, experimental communities ‘returning to nature,’ and other apparently trivial matters…. Do you go to the movies?”

“No, not really.”

“Recent big-budget films all have rustic themes. The setting is always green mountains and clear water, with handsome men and pretty women of some indeterminate era living in harmony with nature. To use the words of the directors, they ‘represent the beautiful life before science spoiled nature.’ Take Peach Blossom Spring: it’s clearly the sort of film that no one wants to see. But they spent hundreds of millions to make it. There was also this science fiction contest with a top reward of five million for the person who imagined the most disgusting possible future. They spent another few hundred million to turn the winning stories into movies. And then you’ve got all these strange cults popping up everywhere, where every cult leader seems to have a lot of money….”

“What does that last bit have to do with everything you mentioned before?”

“You have to connect all the dots. Of course I didn’t need to busy myself with such concerns before, but after I was transferred from the crime unit to the Battle Command Center, it became part of my job. Even General Chang is impressed by my talent for connecting the dots.”

“And your conclusion?”

“Everything that’s happening is coordinated by someone behind the scenes with one goal: to completely ruin scientific research.”

“Who?”

“I have no idea. But I can sense the plan, a very comprehensive, intricate plan: damage scientific research installations, kill scientists, drive scientists like you crazy and make you commit suicide—but the main goal is to misdirect your thoughts until you’re even more foolish than ordinary people.”

“Your last statement is really perceptive.”

“At the same time, they want to ruin science’s reputation in society. Of course some people have always engaged in anti-science activities, but now it’s coordinated.”

“I believe it.”

“Now you believe me. So many of you scientific elites couldn’t figure it out, and I, having gone only to vocational school, had the answer? Ha! After I explained my theory, the scholars and my bosses all ridiculed it.”

“If you had told me your theory back then, I’m sure I wouldn’t have laughed at you. Take those frauds who practice pseudoscience—do you know who they’re most afraid of?”

“Scientists, of course.”

“No. Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. In fact, many pseudoscientific hoaxes were exposed by stage magicians. Compared to the bookworms of the scientific world, your experience as a cop makes you far more likely to perceive such a large-scale conspiracy.”

“Well, there’re plenty of people smarter than me. People in positions of power are well aware of the plot. When they ridiculed me at first, it was only because I wasn’t explaining my theory to the right people. Later on, my old company commander—General Chang—had me transferred. But I’m still not doing anything other than running errands…. That’s it. Now you know as much as I do.”

“Another question: What does this have to do with the military?”

“I was baffled, too. I asked them, and they said that now that there’s a war, of course the military would be involved. I was like you, thinking that they were talking nonsense. But no, they weren’t joking. The army really is on high alert. There are twenty-some Battle Command Centers like ours around the globe. And above them there’s another level of command structure. But no one knows the details.”

“Who’s the enemy?”

“No idea. NATO officers are now stationed in the war room of the PLA General Staff Department, and a bunch of PLA officers are working out of the Pentagon. Who the fuck knows who we’re fighting?”

“This is all so bizarre. Are you sure it’s all true?”

“A bunch of my old buddies from the army are now generals, so I know a few things.”

“The media has no idea about any of this?”

“Ah, that’s another thing. All the countries are keeping a tight lid on this, and they’ve been successful so far. I can guarantee you that the enemy is incredibly powerful. Those in charge are terrified! I know General Chang very well. He’s the sort who’s afraid of nothing, not even the sky falling, but I can tell that he’s worried about something much worse right now. They’re all scared out of their wits, and they have no confidence that we’ll win.”

“If what you say is true, then we should all be frightened.”

“Everyone is afraid of something. The enemy must be, too. The more powerful they are, the more they have to lose to their fears.”

“What do you think the enemy is afraid of?”

“You! Scientists! The odd thing is that the less practical your research is, the more they’re afraid of you—like abstract theories, the kind of thing Yang Dong worked on. They are more frightened of such work than you are of the universe winking at you. That’s why they’re so ruthless. If killing you would solve the problem, you’d all be dead by now. But the most effective technique remains disrupting your thoughts. When a scientist dies, another will take his place. But if his thoughts are confused, then science is over.”

“You’re saying they’re afraid of fundamental science?”

“Yes, fundamental science.”

“But my research is very different in nature from Yang Dong’s. The nanomaterial I work on isn’t fundamental science. It’s just a very strong material. What’s the threat to them?”

“You’re a special case. Usually, they don’t bother those engaged in applied research. Maybe the material you’re developing really scares them.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Go to work and keep up your research. That’s the best way to strike back at them. Don’t worry about that shitty countdown. If you want to relax a bit after work, play that game. If you can beat it, that might help.”

“That game? Three Body? You think it’s connected to all this?”

“Definitely connected. I know that several specialists at the Battle Command Center are playing it, too. It’s no ordinary game. Someone like me, fearless out of ignorance, can’t play it. It has to be someone knowledgeable like you.”

“Anything else?”

“No. But if I find out more I’ll let you know. Keep your phone on, buddy. Keep your head screwed on straight, and if you get scared again, just remember my ultimate rule.”

Da Shi drove away before Wang had a chance to thank him.

11 Three Body: Mozi and Fiery Flames

Wang Miao returned home, stopping on the way to buy a V-suit. His wife told him that people from work had been trying to get ahold of him all day.

Wang turned on his phone, checked his messages, and returned a few calls. He promised he’d be at work tomorrow. At dinner, he followed Da Shi’s advice and drank some more.

But he didn’t feel sleepy. After his wife went to bed, he sat in front of the computer, put on his new V-suit, and logged into Three Body.

Desolate plain at dawn.

Wang stood in front of King Zhou’s pyramid. The snow that had once covered it was gone, and the blocks of stone were pockmarked by erosion. The ground was now a different color. In the distance were a few massive buildings that Wang guessed were dehydratories, but they were of a different design than the ones he had seen last time.

Everything told him that eons had passed.

By the faint dawn light, Wang looked for the entrance. When he found it, he saw that the opening had been sealed by blocks of stone. But next to it, there was now a staircase carved into the pyramid leading all the way to the apex. He looked up and saw that the top had been flattened into a platform. The pyramid, once Egyptian in style, now resembled an Aztec one.

Wang climbed up the stairs and reached the apex. The platform looked like an ancient astronomical observatory. In one corner was a telescope several meters high, and next to it were a few smaller telescopes. In another corner were a few strange instruments that reminded him of ancient Chinese armillary spheres, models of objects in the sky.

His attention was drawn to the large copper sphere in the center of the platform. Two meters in diameter, it was set on top of a complex machine. Propelled by countless gears, the sphere slowly rotated. Wang noticed that the direction and speed of its rotation constantly shifted. Below the machine was a large square cavity. By the faint torchlight within, Wang saw a few slavelike figures pushing a spoked, horizontal wheel, which provided the power to the machine above.

A man walked toward Wang. Like King Wen when Wang had first encountered him, the man had his back against the sliver of light on the horizon, and he appeared to Wang as a pair of bright eyes floating in the darkness. He was slender and tall, dressed in a flowing black robe, his hair carelessly knotted on top of his head with a few strands waving in the wind.

“Hello,” the man said. “I’m Mozi.”[23]

“Hello, I’m Hairen.”

“Ah, I know you!” Mozi grew excited. “You were a follower of King Wen back in Civilization Number 137.”

“I did follow him here. But I never believed his theories.”

“You’re right.” Mozi nodded at Wang solemnly. Then he moved closer. “During the three hundred and sixty-two thousand years you’ve been away, civilization has been reborn four more times. These civilizations struggled to develop through the irregular alternation of Chaotic Eras and Stable Eras. The shortest-lived one got only halfway through the Stone Age, but Civilization Number 139 broke a record and developed all the way to the Steam Age.”

“You’re saying that people from that civilization found the laws governing the sun’s motion?”

Mozi laughed and shook his head. “Not at all. They were just lucky.”

“But the effort to do so has never ceased?”

“Of course not. Come, let us see the efforts of the last civilization.” Mozi led Wang to a corner of the observatory platform. The ground spread out beneath them like an ancient piece of leather. Mozi aimed one of the smaller telescopes at a target on the ground and gestured for Wang to look. Wang looked through the eyepiece and saw a strange sight: a skeleton. In the dawn light it gave off a snow-white glint and appeared to be very refined.

Astonishingly, the skeleton stood on its own. Its posture was graceful and elegant. One hand was held below the chin, as though stroking a long-missing beard. Its head tilted slightly up, as though questioning sky and earth.

“That’s Confucius,” Mozi said. “He believed that everything had to fit li, the Confucian conception of order and propriety, and nothing in the universe could be exempt from it. He created a system of rites and hoped to predict the motion of the sun with it.”

“I can imagine the result.”

“Right you are. He calculated how the sun would follow the rites, and predicted a five-year Stable Era. And you know what? There was indeed a Stable Era… lasting a month.”

“And then one day the sun just didn’t come out?”

“No, the sun rose that day as well. It rose to the middle of the sky, and then went out.”

“What? Went out?”

“Yes. It gradually dimmed, became smaller, and then went out all of a sudden. Night fell. Oh, the cold. Confucius stood there and froze into a column of ice. And there he remains.”

“Was there anything remaining in the sky after the sun went out?”

“A flying star appeared in that location, like a soul left behind after the sun died.”

“You’re sure that the sun really disappeared suddenly, and the flying star appeared just as suddenly?”

“Yes, absolutely. You can check the historical annals. It was clearly recorded.”

“Hmmm…” Wang thought hard about this information. He had already formed some vague ideas about the workings of the world of Three Body. But this bit of news from Mozi overturned all his theories. “How can it be… sudden?” he muttered in annoyance.

“We’re now in the Han Dynasty—I’m not sure if it’s the Western Han or the Eastern Han.”

“You’ve stayed alive until now?”

“I have a mission: observing the precise movements of the sun. Those shamans, metaphysicians, and Daoists are all useless. Like those proverbial bookish men who could not even tell types of grains apart, they do not labor with their hands, and know nothing practical. They have no ability to do experiments, and they’re immersed in their mysticism all day long. But I’m different. I know how to make things.” He pointed to the numerous instruments on the platform.

“Do you think these can lead you to your goal?” Wang nodded specifically at the giant copper sphere.

“I have theories, too, but they’re not mystical. They’re derived from a large number of observations. First, do you know what the universe is? It’s a machine.”

“That’s not very insightful.”

“Let me be more specific: The universe is a hollow sphere floating in the middle of a sea of fire. There are numerous tiny holes in the surface of the sphere, as well as a large one. The light from the sea of flames shines through these holes. The tiny ones are stars, and the large one is the sun.”

“That’s a very interesting model.” Wang looked at the giant copper sphere again and guessed at its purpose. “But there’s a problem with your theory. When the sun rises or sets, we can see its motion against the background of fixed stars. But in your hollow sphere, all the holes remain in fixed positions relative to each other.”

“Correct! That’s why I’ve modified my model. The universal sphere is made of two spheres, one inside the other. The sky we can see is the surface of the inner sphere. The outer sphere has one large hole while the inner sphere has many small holes. The light coming through the hole in the outer sphere is reflected and scattered many times in the space between the two spheres, filling it with light. Then the light comes in through the tiny holes in the inner sphere, and that’s how we see the stars.”

“What about the sun?”

“The sun is the result of the large hole in the outer sphere being projected onto the inner one. The projection is so bright that it penetrates the inner sphere like the shell of an egg, and that is how we see the sun. Around the spot of light, the scattered light rays are also very bright, and can be seen through the inner shell. That is why we can see a clear sky during the day.”

“What is the force that propels the two spheres in their irregular motion?”

“It’s the force of the sea of fire outside the two spheres.”

“But the sun’s brightness and size change over time. In your double-shell model, the sun’s size and brightness ought to be fixed. Even if the brightness of the flames in the sea of fire is inconstant, the size of the hole would not be.”

“Your conception of this model is too simplistic. As conditions in the sea of fire shift and change, the two shells will expand and shrink. This leads to changes in the size and brightness of the sun.”

“What about the flying stars?”

“Flying stars? Why do you care about them? They’re not important. Maybe just some random dust flying about the inside of the universal spheres.”

“No, I think the flying stars are extremely important. Otherwise, how does your model explain the sudden extinguishing of the sun during the time of Confucius?”

“That’s a rare exception. Maybe it was because a dark spot or cloud in the sea of fire just happened to pass over the big hole in the outer shell.”

Wang pointed to the large copper sphere. “This must be your model, then?”

“Yes. I built a machine to replicate the universe. The complex gears that move the sphere simulate the forces from the sea of fire. The laws governing such motion are based on the distribution of flames in the sea of fire and the currents within it. I deduced them from hundreds of years of observations.”

“Can this sphere contract and expand?”

“Of course. Right now it’s slowly contracting.”

Wang used the handrail at the edge of the platform as a fixed visual reference. He found Mozi’s assertion to be true.

“And there’s an inner shell inside this sphere?”

“Of course. The inner shell moves within the outer shell through another complex set of mechanisms.”

“Truly a skillfully designed machine!” Wang’s praise was heartfelt. “But I don’t see a large hole in the outer shell to cast the sun’s light onto the inner shell.”

“There is no hole. On the inner surface of the outer shell I have installed a source of light to simulate the hole. The light source is made of the luminescent material gathered from hundreds of thousands of fireflies. I used a cool light because the inner shell is made of translucent plaster, which is not a good heat conductor. This way, I can avoid the problem of too much heat accumulating inside the sphere that we would have with a regular source of light. The observer can then stay inside for a long time.”

“There’s a person inside the sphere?”

“Yes. A clerk stands on top of a shelf with a wheeled base that is kept at the center of the sphere. After we set up the model universe to correspond to the current state of the real universe, the motion of the model thereafter should be an accurate simulation of the future, including the motion of the sun. After the clerk records the movements of the sun, we will have a precise calendar. This is the dream of hundreds of civilizations before us.

“And it looks like you have come at an opportune time. According to the model universe, a four-year-long Stable Era is about to begin. Emperor Wu of Han has just issued the order to rehydrate based on my prediction. Let’s wait for sunrise!”

Mozi brought up the game’s interface and slightly increased the rate of passage of game time. A red sun rose above the horizon, and the numerous frozen lakes and ponds scattered over the plain began to melt. These lakes had been covered by dust and had merged into the dun ground, but now they turned into numerous mirrors, as though the earth had opened many eyes. From up so high, Wang couldn’t see the details of rehydration, but he could see more and more people gathered on the shores of the lakes like swarms of ants coming out of their nests in spring. The world had once again been revived.

“Do you not want to join this wonderful life?” Mozi asked, pointing to the ground below. “When women are first revived, they crave love. There is no reason for you to stay here any longer. The game is over. I am the winner.”

“As a piece of machinery, your model universe is indeed incomparable. But as for its predictions…. May I use your telescope to observe something?”

“Please.” Mozi gestured at the large telescope.

Wang walked up to the instrument and paused. “How can I use it to observe the sun?”

Mozi retrieved a black, circular piece of glass. “Use this smoked glass filter.” He inserted it in front of the eyepiece.

Wang aimed the telescope at the sun, now halfway up the sky. He was impressed by Mozi’s imagination. The sun did indeed look like a hole through which a sea of fire could be seen, a small view into a much larger whole.

But as he examined the image in the telescope more closely, he realized that the sun was different from the sun he was used to in real life. The sun here had a small core. He imagined the sun as an eye. The core was like the eye’s pupil, and though it was small, it was bright and dense. The layers surrounding it, by contrast, appeared insubstantial, wispy, gaseous. The fact that he could see through the outside layers to the core indicated that those layers were transparent or translucent, and the light from those layers was likely just scattered light from the core.

The details in the image of the sun stunned Wang. He was once again assured that the game designers had hidden a vast amount of data within the superficially simple images, just waiting to be revealed by players.

As Wang pondered the meaning of the sun’s structure, he became excited. Because time in the game was now passing quickly, the sun was already in the west. Wang stood, adjusted the telescope to aim at the sun again, and tracked it until it dipped below the horizon.

Night fell, and the bonfires across the plains mirrored the sky full of stars. Wang took off the smoked glass filter and continued to scan the skies. He was most interested in the flying stars, and shortly found two. He only had time to observe one of them briefly before it was dawn again. So he inserted the filter and continued to observe the sun….

In this manner Wang performed astronomical observations for more than ten days, enjoying the thrill of discovery. Indeed, the fact that time within the game had been sped up helped with the observations, as the motion of celestial bodies became more apparent.

On the seventeenth day of the Stable Era, five hours after the predicted time for sunrise, the world was still under cover of dark night. Multitudes thronged at the foot of the pyramid, their innumerable torches flickering in the chill wind.

“The sun will probably not rise again. It is like at the end of Civilization Number 137,” Wang said to Mozi.

Mozi stroked his beard and smiled confidently. “Do not fret. The sun will rise soon, and the Stable Era will continue. I’ve already learned the secret of the motion of the universal machine. My predictions cannot be wrong.”

As though confirming Mozi’s words, the sky over the horizon brightened with dawn’s first light. The crowd around the pyramid shouted in joy.

The silvery light brightened far more rapidly than usual, as though the rising sun wanted to make up for lost time. Soon, the light covered half the sky, even though the sun was still below the horizon. The world was already as bright as midday.

Wang looked toward the horizon and saw it giving off a blinding glare. The glowing horizon arched upward and became a curve that spread from one edge of his visual field to the other. He soon realized that he wasn’t seeing the horizon, but the edge of the rising sun, an incomparably immense sun.

After his eyes adjusted to the bright light, the horizon reappeared in its old place. Wang saw columns of black smoke rising in the distance, especially clear against the glowing background of the solar disk. A fast horse rushed toward the pyramid from the direction of the rising sun, the dust from its hooves forming a distinct line across the plains.

The crowd parted before the horse, and Wang heard the rider scream at the top of his lungs: “Dehydrate! Dehydrate!”

Following the rider was a herd of cattle, horses, and other animals. Their bodies were on fire and they moved across the ground like a burning carpet.

Half of the gigantic sun’s disk was now above the horizon, taking up much of the sky. The earth seemed to slowly sink down against a brilliant wall. Wang could clearly make out the fine structures on the surface of the sun: eddies and surging waves filling the sea of flames; sunspots floating along random paths like ghosts; the corona lazily spreading out like golden sleeves.

On the ground, both those who had already dehydrated and those who hadn’t began to burn like countless logs thrown into the belly of a furnace. The flames that consumed them were even brighter than glowing charcoal in a furnace, but were quickly extinguished.

The giant sun continued to rise and soon filled most of the sky. Wang looked up and felt his perspective shift. Suddenly he was no longer looking up, but down. The surface of the giant sun became a fiery earth, and he felt himself falling toward this brilliant hell.

Lakes and ponds began to evaporate, and puffs of white steam rose up like mushroom clouds. They rose, spilled open, and dispersed, covering the ashes of the dead.

“The Stable Era will continue. The universe is a machine. I created this machine. The Stable Era will continue. The universe…”

Wang turned his head. The voice belonged to Mozi, who was already on fire. His body was encased within a column of tall, orange flame, and his skin crinkled and turned into charcoal. But his two eyes still shone with a light that was distinct from the fire consuming him. His two hands, already burning pieces of charcoal, held up the cloud of swirling ashes that had once been his calendar.

Wang was burning up as well. He lifted his two hands and saw two torches.

The sun briskly moved to the west, revealing the sky behind it. It soon fell below the horizon, and the ground seemed to rise against the brilliant wall this time. A dazzling sunset swiftly turned to night, as though a pair of giant hands had pulled a black cloth over a world that had turned to ash.

The earth glowed with a dim red light like a piece of charcoal just retrieved from a furnace. For a brief moment, Wang saw the stars, but soon steam and smoke hid the sky and covered everything on the red-glowing earth. The world sank into a dark chaos. A red line of text appeared:

Civilization Number 141 fell into ruin in flames. This civilization had advanced to the Eastern Han Period.

The seed of civilization remains. It will germinate and again progress through the unpredictable world of Three Body. We invite you to log on in the future.

Wang took off the V-suit. After his mind had calmed down a bit, he again had the thought that Three Body was deliberately pretending to be merely illusory, while in fact possessing some deep reality. The real world in front of him, on the other hand, had begun to seem like the superficially complex, but in truth rather simple, Along the River During the Qingming Festival.

The next day, Wang went to the Nanotechnology Research Center. Other than some minor confusion due to his absence the day before, everything was normal. He found work to be an effective tranquilizer. As long as he was absorbed by it, he was no longer bothered by his nightmarish worries. He deliberately kept himself constantly busy the whole day and left the lab only after it was dark.

As soon as Wang left the Research Center building, the nightmarelike feeling caught up to him. He felt like the starry sky was a magnifying glass that covered the world, and he was a tiny insect below the lens with nowhere to hide.

He had to find something to occupy himself. Then he thought of Yang Dong’s mother Ye Wenjie and drove to her home.

Ye was alone at home. When Wang entered, she was sitting on the sofa reading. Wang noticed that her eyes were both myopic and presbyopic, and she had to switch glasses both when she read and when she looked at something far away. She was very happy to see Wang, and said that he looked much better than the last time he had come to see her.

Wang chuckled. “It’s all because of your ginseng.”

Ye shook her head. “What I gave you wasn’t very good. We used to be able to find really high-quality wild ginseng around the base. I once found one about this long…. I wonder what it’s like there now. I heard that it’s deserted. Well, I guess I’m really getting old. These days, I’m always thinking about the past.”

“I heard that you suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution.”

“You heard it from Ruishan, didn’t you?” Ye waved her hand, as though trying to wave away a strand of spider silk. “In the past, it’s all in the past…. Last night, Ruishan called me. He was in such a hurry that I had a hard time understanding him. All I got was that something seemed to have happened to you. Xiao Wang, let me tell you: By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”

“Thank you,” Wang said. He once again felt the warmth that he had missed. In his current state, his mental stability depended on two pillars: this old woman, who had weathered so many storms and become as gentle as water, and Shi Qiang, the man who feared nothing because he knew nothing.

Ye continued. “As far as the Cultural Revolution is concerned, I was pretty lucky. Just when I thought I had nowhere to go, I found a place where I could survive.”

“You mean Red Coast Base?”

Ye nodded.

“That was truly an incredible project. I used to think it was just made-up rumors.”

“Not rumors. If you want, I can tell you some of what I experienced.”

The offer made Wang a little worried. “Professor Ye, I’m only curious. You don’t need to tell me if it’s not appropriate.”

“It’s no big deal. Let’s just imagine that I’m looking for someone to hear me talk.”

“You could go visit the senior center. You wouldn’t be lonely if you went there occasionally.”

“Many of those retirees were my colleagues back at the university, but somehow I just can’t mix with them. Everyone likes to reminisce, but no one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story. You’re the only one who’s interested in Red Coast.”

“But for you to tell me about those things… isn’t that prohibited?”

“That’s true—it’s still classified. But after that book was published, many others who were there also began to tell their stories, so they’re like open secrets. The person who wrote that book was very irresponsible. Even if we put aside his agenda, the content of that book was often inaccurate. I should at least correct those errors.”

Then Ye Wenjie began to tell Wang about what happened to her during her years at Red Coast.

12 Red Coast II

Ye wasn’t given a real job immediately after entering Red Coast Base. Under the watchful eyes of a security guard, she was only allowed to perform a few technical tasks.

Back when she was still a second-year in college, Ye had already known the professor who would end up being her thesis advisor. He had told Ye that to do astrophysics research, it was useless to excel at theory without knowledge of experimental methods and observational skills—at least, that was true in China. This was very different from her father’s view, but Ye tended to agree with her professor. She had always felt that her father was too theoretical.

Her advisor was one of the pioneers of Chinese radio astronomy. Under his influence, Ye developed a great interest in radio astronomy as well. Thus, she taught herself electrical engineering and computer science, the foundation for experiments and observations in the field. During the two years when she was a graduate student, the two of them had tested China’s first small-scale radio telescope and had accumulated a great deal of experience in the area.

She hadn’t expected the knowledge would one day be useful at Red Coast Base.

Eventually, Ye was assigned to the Transmission Department to maintain and repair equipment. She quickly became an indispensable part of their operations.

Initially, this confused her a bit. She was the only person at the base who wasn’t in a military uniform. And given her political status, everyone kept their distance. She had no way to ward off the loneliness other than devoting herself to work. However, this wasn’t enough to explain why they relied on her so much. This was, after all, a key defense project. How could the technical staff here be so mediocre that she, who had not majored in engineering and who had no real working experience, easily took over their jobs?

She learned the reason soon enough. Contrary to appearances, the base’s staff was composed of the best technical officers from the Second Artillery Corps. She could study all her life and have no hope of catching up to those excellent electrical and computer engineers. But the base was remote, the conditions were poor, and the main research work of the Red Coast Project was already completed. All that was left was maintenance and operation, so there was little opportunity for achieving any interesting technical results. Most people did not want to be indispensable, because they understood that in highly classified projects like this, once someone was put into a core technical position, it would be very difficult for him to be transferred out. Thus, all of them tried to deliberately hide their technical competence as they went about their jobs.

Yet, they couldn’t appear too incompetent. So if the supervisor said to go east, they would work hard to move west, purposely playing the fool. Their hope was to put the following thought into the supervisor’s head: This man is working hard, but he’s limited in his skills. There’s no point in keeping him, because he’ll only get in the way. Many really did successfully obtain transfers through this method.

Under such conditions, Ye gradually became a key technician at the base. But the other reason that she could achieve this position puzzled her, and for that she could find no explanation: Red Coast Base—at least the parts that she had contact with—had no real advanced technology at all.

Over time, as Ye continued to work at the Transmission Department, the restrictions on her were gradually relaxed, and even the security guard assigned to watch her was called off. She was allowed to touch most components of Red Coast’s systems, and could read the relevant technical documents. Of course, there were still areas forbidden to her. For example, she wasn’t allowed near the computer control systems. However, Ye discovered that the impact of those systems on Red Coast was far smaller than she had imagined. For instance, the Transmission Department’s computers consisted of three machines even more primitive than DJS130.[24] They used cumbersome magnetic core memory and paper input tape, and their longest uptime did not exceed fifteen hours. She also saw that the precision of Red Coast’s targeting system was very low, probably not even on par with that of an artillery cannon.

One day, Commissar Lei came to speak with Ye. By this time, Yang Weining and Lei Zhicheng had swapped places in her eyes. During those years, Yang, as the highest-ranked technical officer, did not enjoy a high political status, and outside of technical matters he had little authority. He had to be careful with his subordinates, and had to speak politely even to the sentries, lest he be deemed to have an intellectual’s resistant attitude toward thought reform and collaboration with the masses. Thus, whenever he encountered difficulties in his work, Ye became his punching bag. But as Ye gained importance as a technical staff member, Commissar Lei gradually shed his initial rudeness and coldness and became kind toward her.

Commissar Lei said, “Wenjie, by now you’re pretty familiar with the transmission system. This is also Red Coast’s offensive component, its principal part. Can you give me your views of the system as a whole?”

They were sitting at the lip of the steep cliff on Radar Peak, the most secluded spot on the base. The cliff seemed to drop straight off into a bottomless abyss. At first, the spot had frightened Ye, but now she liked to come here by herself.

Ye wasn’t sure how to answer Commissar Lei’s question. She was only responsible for maintaining and repairing equipment and knew nothing about Red Coast as a whole, including its operation, targets, and so on. Indeed, she wasn’t allowed to know. She wasn’t even permitted to be present at the transmission. She pondered the question, began to speak, and stopped herself.

“Go ahead, speak your mind,” Commissar Lei said. He ripped out a blade of grass next to him and played with it absent-mindedly.

“It… is just a radio transmitter.”

“That’s right, just a radio transmitter.” The commissar nodded, satisfied. “Do you know about microwave ovens?”

Ye shook her head.

“They are a luxury plaything of the capitalist West. Food is heated by the energy generated from absorbing microwave radiation. At my previous research station, in order to precisely test the high-temperature aging of certain components, we imported one. After work, we would use it to warm mantou bread, bake a potato, that sort of thing. It’s very interesting: The inside heats up first while the outside remains cold.”

Commissar Lei stood up and paced back and forth. He was so close to the edge of the cliff that it made Ye nervous.

“Red Coast is a microwave oven, and its heating targets are the enemy’s space vessels. If we can apply microwave radiation at a specific power level of one-tenth of a watt to one watt per square centimeter, we’ll be able to disable or destroy many electronic components of satellite communications, radar, and navigation systems.”

Ye finally understood. Even though Red Coast was only a radio transmitter, that didn’t mean it was conventional. The most surprising aspect was its transmission power: as high as twenty-five megawatts! This wasn’t just more powerful than all communication transmissions, but also all radar transmissions. Red Coast relied on a set of gigantic capacitors. Because the power requirements were so high, the transmission circuits were also different from conventional designs. Ye now understood the purpose of such ultrahigh power in the system, but something seemed wrong right away. “The emission from the system seems to be modulated.”

“That’s right. However, the modulation is unlike that used in conventional radio communications. The purpose isn’t to add information, but to use shifting frequencies and amplitudes to penetrate possible shielding by the enemy. Of course, those are still experimental.”

Ye nodded. Many of her questions had now been answered.

“Recently, two target satellites were launched from Jiuquan. The test attacks by Red Coast were completely successful. Temperature inside the satellites reached nearly a thousand degrees, and all instruments and photographic equipment onboard were destroyed. In future wars, Red Coast can effectively strike at the enemy’s communication and reconnaissance satellites, like the KH-8 spy satellites on which the American Imperialists rely, as well as the KH-9, which are about to be launched. The lower-orbit spy satellites of the Soviet Revisionists are even more vulnerable. If necessary, we even have the capacity to destroy the Salyut space station of the Soviet Revisionists and the Skylab station that American Imperialists plan on launching next year.”

“Commissar! What are you telling her?” Someone spoke behind Ye. She turned and saw that it was Yang Weining, who stared at Commissar Lei severely.

“This is for work,” Commissar Lei said, and then left. Yang glanced at Ye without saying anything and followed Lei. Ye was left all by herself.

He’s the one who brought me here, but he still doesn’t trust me, a disconsolate Ye thought. She was worried about Commissar Lei. At the base, Lei had more authority than Yang, since the commissar had the final vote on most important matters, but the way he rushed away with Yang seemed to indicate that he felt the chief engineer had caught him doing something wrong. This convinced Ye that Lei had made a personal decision to tell her about the true purpose of the Red Coast Project.

What will happen to him as a result of this decision? As she gazed at Commissar Lei’s burly back, Ye felt a wave of gratitude. For her, trust was a luxury that she dared not wish for. Compared to Yang, Lei was closer to her image of a real military officer, possessing a soldier’s frank and forthright manners. Yang, on the other hand, was nothing more than a typical intellectual of the period: cautious, timid, seeking only to protect himself. Even though Ye understood him, the wide gulf already between them grew wider.

The next day, Ye was transferred out of the Transmission Department and assigned to the Monitoring Department. At first, she thought this was related to the events of the day before, an attempt to move her away from the core of Red Coast. But after arriving at the Monitoring Department, she realized that this was more like the heart of Red Coast. Even though the two departments shared some resources, such as the antenna, the technology level of the Monitoring Department was far more advanced.

The Monitoring Department had a very sophisticated and sensitive radio receiver. A ruby-based traveling-wave maser[25] amplified the signals received by the gigantic antenna, and in order to minimize interference, the core of the reception system was immersed in liquid helium at -269 degrees Celsius. Periodically, a helicopter came to replenish the supply of liquid helium. The reception system was thus capable of picking up very faint signals. Ye couldn’t help but imagine how wonderful it would be to use the equipment for radio astronomy research.

The Monitoring Department’s computer system was also much bigger and more complex than the one at the Transmission Department. The first time she entered the main computer room, Ye saw a row of cathode ray tube displays. She was stunned to see programming code scrolling across each of them, and the operators were free to edit and test the code using the keyboard. When she learned programming in college, the source code was always written on the grids of special programming paper, then transferred to paper tape using a typewriter. She had heard of input using a keyboard and screen, but this was the first time she had seen it.

The software available astonished her even more. She learned about something called FORTRAN, which allowed you to program using a language close to natural language. You could even type mathematical equations directly into the code! Programming in it was several times more efficient than programming in machine code. And then there was something called a database, which allowed for easy storage and manipulation of vast amounts of data.

Two days later, Commissar Lei sought Ye out for another talk. This time, they were in the main computer room of the Monitoring Department, in front of the row of green-glowing screens. Yang Weining sat close by, not part of their conversation, but also not willing to leave, which made Ye very uncomfortable.

“Wenjie,” Commissar Lei began, “let me explain the work of the Monitoring Department to you. Simply put, the goal is to keep an eye on enemy activities in space, including intercepting communications between enemy space vessels and the ground, and between the space vessels themselves; collaborating with our telemetry, tracking, and command centers to determine the orbits of enemy space vessels and provide data for Red Coast’s combat systems. In other words, the eyes of Red Coast are here.”

Yang interrupted, “Commissar Lei, I don’t think what you’re doing is a good idea. There’s no need to tell her these things.”

Ye glanced at Yang and anxiously said, “Commissar, if it’s not appropriate for me to know, then—”

“No, no, Wenjie.” The commissar held up a hand to stop Ye from speaking. He turned to Yang. “Chief Yang, I’m going to tell you the same thing I did before. This is for work. For Wenjie to perform her duties better, she must be told the purpose of her work.”

Yang stood up. “I will report this to our superiors.”

“That is your right, of course. But do not fret, Chief Yang. I will assume responsibility for all consequences.”

Yang got up and left with a bitter expression.

“Don’t mind him. That’s just the way Chief Yang is.” Commissar Lei chuckled and shook his head. Then he stared at Ye and his tone became solemn. “Wenjie, when we first brought you to the base, the goal was simple. Red Coast’s monitoring systems often had interference caused by electromagnetic radiation from solar flares and sunspots. Fortuitously, we saw your paper and realized that you had researched solar activity. Among Chinese scholars, your predictive model turned out to be the most accurate, so we wanted to ask for your help in solving this problem.

“But after you came, you showed very strong abilities, so we decided to give you more responsibilities. My thought was this: assign you first to the Transmission Department, then the Monitoring Department. This way, you’d gain a comprehensive understanding of Red Coast as a whole and we could wait and see where to assign you after that.

“Of course, as you can see, this plan has met with some resistance. But I have trust in you, Wenjie. Let me be clear: Until now, the trust placed in you has been mine, personally. I hope that you can continue to work hard and earn the trust of the organization as a whole.”

Commissar Lei placed a hand on Ye’s shoulder. She felt the warmth and strength conveyed through it. “Wenjie, let me tell you my sincere hope: One day, I’d like to call you Comrade Ye.”

Lei stood up and strode away in the confident manner of a soldier. Ye’s eyes were filled with tears. Seen through them, the code on the screen became flickering flames. This was the first time she had cried since the death of her father.

As Ye familiarized herself with the work of the Monitoring Department, she discovered that she was far less successful here than at the Transmission Department. The computer science knowledge she had was outdated, and she had to learn the software techniques from scratch. Even though Commissar Lei trusted her, the restrictions on her were severe. She was allowed to view the software source code, for example, but was forbidden from touching the database.

On a day-to-day basis, Ye was mainly supervised by Yang. He became even ruder to her, and would get angry at her for the smallest things. Commissar Lei talked to him about it multiple times without effect. It seemed that Yang became filled with a nameless anxiety as soon as he saw Ye.

Gradually, as Ye encountered more and more unexplainable matters in her work, she came to realize that the Red Coast Project was far more complex than she had imagined.

One day, the monitoring system intercepted a transmission that, after being deciphered by the computer, turned out to be a few satellite photographs. The blurry images were sent to the General Staff Department’s Surveying and Mapping Bureau for interpretation. They turned out to be images of important military targets in China, including the naval harbor at Qingdao and several key factories of the Third Front program.[26] Analysis confirmed that these images came from the KH-9 American reconnaissance system.

The first KH-9 satellite had just been launched. Although it mainly relied on recoverable film capsules for intelligence gathering, it was also being used to test out the more advanced technique of radio transmission of digital images. Due to the technology’s immaturity, the satellite transmitted at a low frequency, which increased its range of reception sufficiently for it to be intercepted by Red Coast. And because it was only a test, the encryption was not very secure and could be broken.

The KH-9 was without a doubt an important monitoring target, as it presented a rare opportunity to gather more information about American satellite reconnaissance systems. Yet, after the third day, Yang Weining ordered a change in the frequency and direction of monitoring and abandoned the target. Ye found the decision incomprehensible.

Another event also shocked her. Even though she was now in the Monitoring Department, sometimes the Transmission Department still needed her. One time, she accidentally saw the frequency settings for a few upcoming transmissions. She discovered that the designated frequencies for transmissions 304, 318, and 325 were lower than microwave range and could not result in any heating effect in the target.

One day, an officer summoned Ye to the main base administrative office out of the blue. From the officer’s tone and expression, Ye knew that something had gone wrong.

As she walked into the office, the scene before her seemed familiar: All the senior officers of the base were present, along with two officers she didn’t know. However, she could tell at a glance that they were from higher up in the chain of command.

Everyone’s icy stares focused on her, but the sensitivity she had developed over the stormy years informed her that she wasn’t the one in big trouble today. She was at most a sideshow. She saw Commissar Lei sitting in a corner with a dejected look.

He’s finally going to pay for trusting me, she thought. At once, she decided that she would do whatever she could to save him. She would take responsibility for everything, even lie if necessary.

But Commissar Lei was the first to speak, and what he said was completely unexpected. “Ye Wenjie, I must make it clear at the start that I do not agree with what is about to be done. The decision was made by Chief Engineer Yang after requesting instructions from our superiors. He alone will be responsible for all consequences.”

Commissar Lei turned to look at Yang, who nodded solemnly. Lei continued, “In order to better utilize your skills at Red Coast Base, Chief Engineer Yang repeatedly requested permission from our superiors to abandon the cover story we’ve been using with you. Our comrades from the Army Political Department”—he indicated the two officers Ye didn’t know—“were sent to investigate your work situation. Finally, with the approval of our superiors, we’ve decided to inform you of the true nature of the Red Coast Project.”

Only after a long pause did Ye finally understand Commissar Lei’s meaning: He had been lying to her all along.

“I hope you will treasure this opportunity and work hard to redeem your sins. After this, you must behave with the utmost propriety. Any reactionary behavior will be severely punished!” Commissar Lei stared at Ye. He was a completely different person from the image Ye had formed of him. “Are we clear? Good. Now Chief Yang can explain.”

The others left, leaving only Yang and Ye.

“If you don’t want this, there’s still time.”

Ye discerned the weight behind these words. She now understood Yang’s anxiety whenever he had seen her the last few weeks. To make full use of her skills, it was necessary for her to know the truth about Red Coast. However, this choice would extinguish the last ray of hope she had of ever leaving Radar Peak. Once she said yes, she really would spend the rest of her life at Red Coast Base.

“I agree,” Ye said, softly, but resolutely.

Thus, on this early summer evening, as the wind howled through the giant parabolic antenna, and as the forest rustled over the Greater Khingan Mountains in the distance, Yang Weining explained to Ye Wenjie the true nature of Red Coast.

It was a fairy tale for the ages, even more incredible than the commissar’s lies.

13 Red Coast III

These documents were declassified three years after Ye Wenjie told Wang Miao the inside story of Red Coast and provide background information for what she told him.

A Question Largely Ignored by Trends in Fundamental World Scientific Research

(Originally published in Internal Reference, XX/XX/196X)

[Abstract] Based on modern and contemporary history, there are two ways in which the results of fundamental scientific research can be converted into practical applications: gradualistic mode and saltatory mode.

Gradualistic mode: theoretical, fundamental results are gradually applied to technology; advances accumulate until they reach a breakthrough. Recent examples include the development of space technology.

Saltatory mode: theoretical, fundamental results rapidly become applied technology, leading to a technological leap. Recent examples include the appearance of atomic weapons. Until the forties, some of the foremost physicists still thought it would never be possible to release the energy of the atom. But atomic weapons then appeared within a very short period. We define a technology leap to occur when fundamental science is converted to applied technology across a great span in an extremely brief time interval.

Currently, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact are intensely active in fundamental research and investing heavily in it. One or more technological leaps can occur at any time. Such an occurrence will pose a major threat to our strategic planning.

This article argues that our focus is currently on the gradualistic mode of technology development and insufficient attention is paid to the possibility of technology leaps. Starting from a higher vantage point, we should develop a comprehensive strategy and set of principles so that we can respond appropriately when technological leaps occur.

Fields where technological leaps are most likely:

Physics: [omitted]

Biology: [omitted]

Computer Science: [omitted]

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Of all fields, this is the one in which the possibility for a technology leap is greatest. If a leap occurs in this field, the impact will exceed the sum of technology leaps in the other three fields.

[Full Text][omitted]

[Instructions from Central Leadership] Distribute this article to appropriate personnel and organize discussion groups. The article’s views will not be to the liking of some, but let’s not rush to label the author. The key is to appreciate the author’s long-term thinking. Some comrades cannot see beyond the ends of their noses, possibly because of the greater political environment, possibly because of their arrogance. This is not good. Strategic blind spots are extremely dangerous.

In my view, of the four fields where technology leaps may occur, we have given the least thought to the last one. It’s worth some attention, and we should systematically analyze the matter in depth.

Signed: XXX Date: XX/XX/196X

Research Report on the Possibility of Technology Leap Due to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

1. Current International Research Trends [Summary]

(1) The United States and other NATO states: The scientific case and the necessity for SETI are generally accepted, and strong academic support exists.

Project Ozma: In 1960, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, searched for extraterrestrial intelligence with a radio telescope 26 meters in diameter. The project examined the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani for 200 hours using ranges near the 1.420 gigahertz frequency. Project Ozma II, which will involve more targets and a broader frequency range, is planned for 1972.

Probes: The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes, each of which will carry a metal plaque containing information about civilization on Earth, are scheduled for launch in 1972. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, each of which will carry a metal audio record, are scheduled for launch in 1977.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico: Constructed in 1963, this is an important instrument for SETI. Its effective energy collection area is about 20 acres, which is greater than the sum of the collecting areas of all other radio telescopes in the world. When combined with its computer system, it can simultaneously monitor 65,000 channels and is also capable of ultrahigh-energy transmissions.

(2) The Soviet Union: Few sources of intelligence are available, but there are indications that large investments have been made in the field. Compared to NATO countries, the research seems to be more systematic and long term. Based on certain isolated information channels, plans are currently under way to build a global-scale very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) aperture-synthesis radio telescope system. Once the system is completed, it will possess the world’s most powerful deep-space exploration capabilities.

2. Preliminary Analysis of Social Patterns of Extraterrestrial Civilizations Using a Materialist Conception of History [omitted]

3. Preliminary Analysis of the Influence of Extraterrestrial Civilizations on Human Social and Political Trends [omitted]

4. Preliminary Analysis of the Influence on Current International Patterns Due to Possible Contact with Extraterrestrial Civilizations

(1) Unidirectional contact (only receiving messages sent by extraterrestrial intelligence): [omitted]

(2) Bidirectional contact (exchange of messages with extraterrestrial intelligence and direct contact): [omitted]

5. The Danger and Consequences of Superpowers Making Initial Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Monopolizing Such Contact

(1) Analysis of consequences of American Imperialists and NATO making initial contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and monopolizing such contact: [still classified]

(2) Analysis of consequences of Soviet Revisionists and Warsaw Pact making initial contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and monopolizing such contact: [still classified]

[Instructions from Central Leadership] Others have already sent their messages out into space. It’s dangerous if extraterrestrials only hear their voices. We should speak up as well. Only then will they get a complete picture of human society. It’s not possible to get the truth by only listening to one side. We must make this happen, and quickly.

Signed: XXX Date: XX/XX/196X

Research Report on the Initial Phase of the Red Coast Project (XX/XX/196X)

TOP SECRET

Number of Copies: 2

Summary Document: Central Document Number XXXXXX, forwarded to the Commission for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Central Planning Commission, Department of National Defense; disseminated at the XXXXXX Conference and the XXXXXX Conference; partially disseminated at the XXXXXX Conference.

Topic Serial Number: 3760

Code Name: “Red Coast”

1. Goal [Summary]

To search for the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and to attempt contact and exchange.

2. Theoretical Study of the Red Coast Project

(1) Searching and Monitoring

Monitoring frequency range: 1,000 MHz to 40,000 MHz

Monitoring channels: 15,000

Key frequencies to monitor:

Hydrogen atom frequency at 1,420 MHz

Hydroxyl radical radiation frequency at 1,667 MHz

Water molecule radiation frequency at 22,000 MHz

Monitoring target range: a sphere centered around Earth with a radius of 1,000 light-years, containing approximately 20 million stars. For a list of targets, please see Appendix 1.

(2) Message Transmission

Transmission frequencies: 2,800 MHz, 12,000 MHz, 22,000 MHz

Transmission power: 10–25 megawatts

Transmission targets: a sphere centered around Earth with a radius of 200 light-years, containing approximately 100,000 stars. For a list of targets, please see Appendix 2.

(3) Development of the Red Coast Self-Interpreting Code System

Guiding principle: using universal, basic mathematical and physical laws, construct an elemental linguistic code that can be understood by any civilization that has mastered basic algebra, Euclidean geometry, and the laws of classical mechanics (nonrelativistic physics).

Using the elemental code above and supplemented with low-resolution images, gradually build up to a full linguistic system. Languages supported: Chinese and Esperanto.

The entire system’s information content should be 680 KB. Transmission times at the 2,800 MHz, 12,000 MHz, and 22,000 MHz channels are 1,183 minutes, 224 minutes, and 132 minutes respectively.

3. Implementation Plan for the Red Coast Project

(1) Preliminary Design for the Red Coast Monitoring and Searching System [still classified]

(2) Preliminary Design for the Red Coast Transmission System [still classified]

(3) Preliminary Site-Selection Plan for Red Coast Base [omitted]

(4) Preliminary Thoughts on the Formation of Red Coast Force from within the Second Artillery Corps [still classified]

4. Content of Message Transmitted by Red Coast [Summary]

Overview of Earth (3.1 KB), overview of life on Earth (4.4 KB), overview of human society (4.6 KB), basic world history (5.4 KB).

Total information content: 17.5 KB.

The entire message will be sent after transmitting the self-interpreting code system. Transmission times of message at the 2,800 MHz, 12,000 MHz, and 22,000 MHz channels are 31 minutes, 7.5 minutes, and 3.5 minutes, respectively.

The message will be carefully vetted by a multidisciplinary review to ensure that it will not give away the Earth’s coordinates relative to the Milky Way. Among the three channels, transmission at the higher-frequency 12,000 MHz and 22,000 MHz channels should be minimized to reduce the likelihood that the source of transmission may be precisely ascertained.

Message to Extraterrestrial Civilizations

First Draft [Complete Text]

Attention, you who have received this message! This message was sent out by a country that represents revolutionary justice on Earth! Before this, you may have already received other messages sent from the same direction. Those messages were sent by an imperialist superpower on this planet. That superpower is struggling against another superpower for world domination so that it can drag human history backwards. We hope you will not listen to their lies. Stand with justice, stand with the revolution!

[Instructions from Central Leadership] This is utter crap! It’s enough to put up big-character posters[27] everywhere on the ground, but we should not send them into space. The Cultural Revolution leadership should no longer have any involvement with Red Coast. Such an important message must be composed carefully. It’s probably best to have it drafted by a special committee and then discussed and approved by a meeting of the Politburo.

Signed: XXX Date: XX/XX/196X

Second Draft [omitted]

Third Draft [omitted]

Fourth Draft [Complete Text]

We extend our best wishes to you, inhabitants of another world.

After reading the following message, you should have a basic understanding of civilization on Earth. By dint of long toil and creativity, the human race has built a splendid civilization, blossoming with a multitude of diverse cultures. We have also begun to understand the laws governing the natural world and the development of human societies. We cherish all that we have accomplished.

But our world is still flawed. Hate exists, as does prejudice and war. Because of conflicts between the forces of production and the relations of production, wealth distribution is extremely uneven, and large portions of humanity live in poverty and misery.

Human societies are working hard to resolve the difficulties and problems they face, striving to create a better future for Earth civilization. The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort. We are dedicated to building an ideal society, where the labor and value of every member of the human race are fully respected, where everyone’s material and spiritual needs are fully met, so that civilization on Earth may become more perfect.

With the best of intentions, we look forward to establishing contact with other civilized societies in the universe. We look forward to working together with you to build a better life in this vast universe.

Related Policies and Strategies

1. Consideration of Policies and Strategies After Reception of Message from Extraterrestrial Intelligence [omitted]

2. Consideration of Policies and Strategies After Establishing Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence [omitted]

[Instructions from Central Leadership] It’s important to take the time out of our busy schedules to do something entirely unrelated to our immediate needs. This project has allowed us to give some thought to issues we have never had time for. Indeed, we can think through them only when we take a sufficiently high vantage point. This alone is enough to justify the Red Coast Project.

How wonderful it will be if the universe really contains other intelligences and other societies! Bystanders have the clearest view. Someone truly neutral will then be able to comment on whether we’re the heroes or villains of history.

Signed: XXX Date: XX/XX/196X

14 Red Coast IV

“Professor Ye,” Wang Miao said, “I have a question. Back then, SETI was marginalized research. Why did the Red Coast Project have such a high security rating?”

“That question was asked during the very first phases of the Red Coast Project, and continued to be asked until the end. But now you should know the answer. We can only be impressed by the foresight of the top decision-maker responsible for the Red Coast Project.”

“Yes, he thought far ahead.” Wang nodded gravely.

Wang knew that it was only within the last couple of years that serious and systematic consideration had been given to the question of how and to what degree human societies would be influenced by establishing contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, but the research had rapidly gained interest, and the conclusions were shocking.

Naïve, idealistic hopes had been shattered. Scholars found that, contrary to the happy wishes of most people, it was not a good idea for the human race as a whole to make contact with extraterrestrials. The impact of such contact on human society would be divisive rather than uniting, and would exacerbate rather than mitigate the conflicts between different cultures. In summary, if contact were to occur, the internal divisions within Earth civilization would be magnified and likely lead to disaster. The most shocking conclusion of all was that the impact would have nothing at all to do with the degree and type of contact (unidirectional or bidirectional), or the form and degree of advancement of the alien civilization.

This was the theory of “contact as symbol” proposed by sociologist Bill Mathers of RAND Corporation in his book, The 100,000-Light-Year Iron Curtain: SETI Sociology. Mathers believed that contact with an alien civilization is only a symbol or a switch. Regardless of the content of the encounter, the results would be the same.

Suppose that the nature of the contact is such that only the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is confirmed, with no other substantive information—what Mathers called elementary contact. The impact would be magnified by the lens of human mass psychology and culture until it resulted in huge, substantive influences on the progress of civilization. If such contact were monopolized by one country or political force, the significance would be comparable to an overwhelming advantage in economic and military power.

“How did Red Coast end?”

“You can probably guess.”

Wang nodded again. Of course he understood that, had Red Coast succeeded, the world today would be very different. To comfort Ye, he said, “It’s still too early to tell if it succeeded or not. The radio waves sent out by Red Coast haven’t gone very far in the universe yet.”

Ye shook her head. “The farther the signals travel, the weaker they become, and the less likely that any extraterrestrial civilization will receive them. Of course, if aliens have already detected the Earth’s existence and its oxygen-rich atmosphere and decided to focus powerful equipment specifically at us, the story would be different. But, in general, research shows that in order for extraterrestrials to detect our signals, we must broadcast at a power level equal to the energy output of a midsized star.

“Soviet astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev once proposed that civilizations can be divided into three types based on the power they can command—for communication purposes, let’s say. A Type I civilization can muster an amount of energy equivalent to the total energy output of the Earth. Based on his estimates, the energy output of the Earth is about 1015 to 1016 watts. A Type II civilization can marshal the energy equivalent to the output of a typical star—1026 watts. A Type III civilization’s communication energy can reach 1036 watts, approximately equal to the energy output of a galaxy. Civilization on Earth is currently about a Type 0.7, not even a full Type I. And the transmissions from Red Coast used only about one ten-millionth of the amount of power the Earth could muster. Our call was like the buzzing of a mosquito in the sky. No one could hear it.”

“But if Kardashev’s Type II and Type III civilizations really exist, we should be able to hear them.”

“We never heard anything during the twenty years that Red Coast was in operation.”

“Indeed. Given Red Coast and SETI, could all our efforts ultimately have proven only one thing: In the entire universe, only the Earth has intelligent life?”

Ye gave a light sigh. “Theoretically, there may never be a definitive answer to that question. But my sense, and the sense of everyone who went through Red Coast, is that that is the case.”

“It’s too bad that Red Coast was decommissioned. Once it was built, it should have been kept running. It was a truly great enterprise.”

“Red Coast’s decline was gradual. At the beginning of the eighties, there was a large-scale renovation. Mainly, the transmission and monitoring computer systems were partially upgraded. The transmission system was automated, and the monitoring system incorporated two IBM minicomputers. The data processing capability became far more advanced, and it was able to simultaneously monitor forty thousand channels.

“But later, as people gained perspective, they had a better appreciation of the difficulty of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the leadership lost interest in Red Coast. The first change was reducing the base’s security rating. The consensus was that the extreme secrecy around Red Coast was unnecessary, and the security detail at the base was reduced from a company to a squad, until eventually only a group of five security guards were left. Also, after that renovation, although Red Coast remained administratively within the Second Artillery Corps, management of its scientific activities was turned over to the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Astronomy Institute, and it took on some research projects that had nothing to do with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or the military.”

“I believe you achieved most of your scientific accomplishments during that time.”

“Initially, Red Coast also took on some radio astronomy projects. At the time, it was the largest radio telescope in the country. Later, as other radio astronomy observatories were built, Red Coast’s research turned to the observation and analysis of solar electromagnetic activity. For this, they added a solar telescope. The mathematical model we built for solar electromagnetic activity was at the forefront of the field back then, and had many practical applications. With these later research results, the large amount invested in Red Coast had at least a little return.

“Actually, much of the credit should be given to Commissar Lei. Of course he had his own agenda. He realized that as a political officer in a technical unit, his future wasn’t bright. Before joining the army, he had studied astrophysics as well, so he wanted to return to doing science. The research projects that Red Coast took on outside of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence were all due to his efforts.”

“I doubt that he could have returned to technical work so easily after spending so much time as a political commissar. Back then, you still hadn’t been politically rehabilitated. It looks to me like all he did was to put his name on your research results.”

Ye smiled forgivingly. “Without Lei, Red Coast Base would have been finished even earlier. After Red Coast was designated for conversion to civilian use, the military basically abandoned it. Eventually, the Chinese Academy of Sciences couldn’t maintain the funds necessary for Red Coast’s operation, and it was shut down.”

Ye didn’t talk much about her daily life at Red Coast Base, and Wang didn’t ask. Four years after entering the base, she married Yang Weining. Everything just happened naturally, without any drama. Later, an accident at the base killed both Yang and Lei, and Yang Dong was born after her father’s death. The mother and daughter only left Radar Peak in the mid-eighties, when Red Coast Base was finally decommissioned. Ye later returned to Tsinghua, her alma mater, to teach astrophysics until retirement. All this Wang had heard from Sha Ruishan at the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory.

“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a unique discipline. It has a profound influence on the researcher’s perspective on life.” Ye spoke in a drawn-out voice, as though telling stories to a child. “In the dead of the night, I could hear in my headphones the lifeless noise of the universe. The noise was faint but constant, more eternal than the stars. Sometimes I thought it sounded like the endless winter winds of the Greater Khingan Mountains. I felt so cold then, and the loneliness was indescribable.

“From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert…. I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old….”

Wang wanted to comfort this old woman who had devoted her life to a lonely but great enterprise, but Ye’s last speech caused him to sink into the same sorrowful mood. He found that he had nothing to say except, “Professor Ye, someday I’ll go with you to visit the ruins of Red Coast Base.”

Ye slowly shook her head. “Xiao Wang, I’m not like you. I’m getting on in years, and my health isn’t what it used to be. It’s hard to predict the future. I live my life day to day.”

Looking at the silvery head of hair on Ye Wenjie, Wang knew she was thinking of her daughter again.

15 Three Body: Copernicus, Universal Football, and Tri-Solar Day

After leaving Ye’s home, Wang Miao couldn’t calm down. The events of the last two days and the history of Red Coast, two seemingly unconnected strands, now twisted together, made the world unfamiliar overnight.

Once he was home, in order to escape this mood, Wang turned on the computer, put on the V-suit, and logged on to Three Body for the third time.

The attempt to adjust his state of mind worked. By the time the log-in screen appeared, Wang seemed like a different person, one filled with an unexplainable excitement. Unlike the first two times, this time Wang came with a purpose: He was going to reveal the secret of the world of Three Body.

He created a new log-in ID appropriate for his new role: Copernicus.

Once logged in, Wang again stood on that broad, desolate plain, facing the strange dawn of the world of Three Body. A colossal pyramid appeared in the east, but right away Wang knew it was no longer the pyramid of King Zhou of Shang or Mozi. It had a Gothic-style apex, stabbing straight into the morning sky, recalling St. Joseph’s Church at Wangfujing. But if that church were placed next to this pyramid, it would be nothing more than an entrance booth. He saw many buildings in the distance that were apparently dehydratories, but also now built in the Gothic style, with tall, sharp steeples, as though the ground had grown numerous spikes.

Wang saw a door on the side of the pyramid, lit from within by flickering lights. He walked over. Inside the tunnel was a row of statues of the gods of Olympus holding up torches, their surfaces blackened by smoke. He entered the Great Hall and saw that it was even dimmer than the entrance tunnel. Two silver candelabra on top of a long marble table provided a drowsy light.

Several men were seated around the table. The dim light allowed Wang to see only the outlines of their faces. Their eyes were hidden in the shadows of their deep eye sockets, but Wang could still feel their gazes focusing on him. The men seemed to be dressed in medieval robes. On closer examination, one or two of them had simpler robes, more like Classical Greek chitons. At one end of the table was a thin, tall man. The golden crown on top of his head was the only thing that glittered in the Great Hall other than the candles. With some effort, Wang saw by the dim candlelight that his robe was different from the others’: it was red.

Wang realized that the game displayed a distinct world for each player. This world, based on the European High Middle Ages, was chosen by the software based on his ID.

“You’re late. The meeting has been going on for a while,” the gold-crowned, red-robed man said. “I’m Pope Gregory.”

Wang tried to recall what little he knew of European history in the Middle Ages so that he could deduce the level of advancement of this civilization based on the name. But then he remembered how wildly anachronistic historical references could be in the world of Three Body and decided the effort wasn’t worth it.

“I’m Aristotle. You changed your ID, but we all recognize you. In the previous two civilizations, you traveled to the East.” The speaker was the man with the Greek chiton. He had a head of white curls.

“Yes.” Wang nodded. “There, I witnessed the destruction of two civilizations, one by extreme cold, another by a blazing sun. I also saw the great efforts the scholars of the East expended in trying to master the laws governing the sun’s motion.”

“Ha!” The sound came from a man with a goatee that curled upward. He was even thinner than the pope. “Eastern scholars tried to understand the secrets of the sun’s motion through meditation, epiphany, or even dreams. Utterly laughable!”

“This is Galileo,” said Aristotle. “He advocates understanding the world through observation and experiment. He is an unimaginative thinker, but his results demand our attention.”

“Mozi also conducted experiments and observation,” Wang said.

Galileo snorted. “Mozi’s way of thinking was still Eastern. He was nothing more than a mystic dressed as a scientist. He never took his own observation data seriously, and he constructed his model based on subjective speculation. Ridiculous! I feel sorry for his refined equipment. We’re different. Based on large amounts of observational data and experiments, we make strict, logical deductions to build a model of the universe. Then we go back to experimentation and observation to test it.”

“That’s correct.” Wang nodded. “That’s also my way of thinking.”

“Have you brought a calendar as well, then?” The pope’s tone was mocking.

“I don’t have a calendar. I only brought a model built upon observation data. But I must make it clear that even if the model is correct, it’s not certain that by using it one can master the precise details of the sun’s motion and create a calendar. However, it’s a necessary step.”

A few lonely claps echoed throughout the Great Hall. The applause came from Galileo. “Excellent, Copernicus, excellent. Your pragmatic way of thinking, adapted to the experimental, scientific approach, is lacking in most scholars. Based on this alone, your theory is worth listening to.”

The pope nodded at Wang. “Go ahead.”

After calming himself and walking to the other end of the long table, Wang said, “It’s actually pretty simple. The reason why the sun’s motion seems patternless is because our world has three suns. Under the influence of their mutually perturbing gravitational attraction, their movements are unpredictable—the three-body problem. When our planet revolves around one of the suns in a stable orbit, that’s a Stable Era. When one or more of the other suns move within a certain distance, their gravitational pull will snatch the planet away from the sun it’s orbiting, causing it to wander unstably through the gravitational fields of the three suns. That’s a Chaotic Era. After an uncertain amount of time, our planet is once again pulled into a temporary orbit and another Stable Era begins. This is a football game at the scale of the universe. The players are the three suns, and our planet is the football.”

A few hollow laughs rang out in the Great Hall. “Burn him to death,” the pope said impassively. The two soldiers standing at the door in rusty armor started toward Wang like two clumsy robots.

“Burn him.” Galileo sighed. “I had hopes for you, but you’re nothing more than another mystic or warlock.”

“Such men are a public nuisance,” Aristotle agreed.

“At least let me finish!” Wang shoved away the iron gauntlets of the two soldiers.

“Have you seen three suns? Or know anyone who has?” Galileo asked.

“Everyone has seen them.”

“Then, other than the sun that appears during Chaotic Eras and Stable Eras, where are the other two?”

“The sun that we see at different times may not be the same: It’s only one of the three suns. When the other two are far away, they look like flying stars.”

“You lack basic scientific training,” Galileo said, shaking his head. “The sun must move continuously to a distant spot. It cannot jump over the intervening space. According to your hypothesis, there should be another observable situation: The sun must get smaller than it usually appears but bigger than a flying star, and gradually shrink into a flying star as it moves farther away. But we’ve never seen the sun behave that way.”

“Since you have scientific training, you ought to have some knowledge of the sun’s structure.”

“That’s my proudest discovery. The sun is made of a sparse but expansive gaseous outer layer and a dense and hot inner core.”

“Very true,” said Wang. “But you apparently haven’t discovered the special optical interaction between the sun’s gaseous outer layer and our planet’s atmosphere. It’s a phenomenon akin to polarization or destructive interference. As a result, when we view the sun from within our atmosphere and it gets a certain distance from us, the gaseous outer layer suddenly becomes completely transparent and invisible, and all we can see is its bright inner core. The sun then appears to be only the size of the inner core, a flying star.

“This phenomenon has confused every researcher in every civilization throughout history, and prevented them from discovering the existence of the three suns. Now you understand why the appearance of three flying stars heralds a long period of extreme cold: because all three suns are far away.”

A brief silence followed as everyone pondered this. Aristotle was the first to speak. “You lack basic training in logic. It’s true that we can sometimes see three flying stars, and that’s always accompanied by destructive periods of extreme cold. But based on your theory, we should also sometimes see three normal-sized suns in the sky. This has never happened. In all the records of all the civilizations, this has never occurred!”

“Wait!” A man wearing a strangely shaped hat and a long beard stood up and spoke for the first time. “I’m Leonardo da Vinci. There may be such historical records. One civilization saw two suns and was immediately destroyed by their combined heat, but the record was very vague.”

“We’re talking about three suns, not two!” Galileo shouted. “According to his theory, three suns must appear sometime, just like three flying stars.”

“Three suns have appeared,” Wang said, utterly calm. “And people have seen them. But those who saw such a great sight could not leave behind any information about them because seeing three suns would mean that they had at most a few seconds left to live. They had no chance to escape or survive. Tri-solar days are the most terrifying catastrophes for our world. On such days, the surface of the planet would turn into a smelting furnace in a second, and the heat would be enough to melt rocks. After the destruction caused by a tri-solar day, an eon would pass before the reappearance of life and civilization. This is yet another reason why there’s no historical record of them.”

Silence. Everyone stared at the pope.

“Burn him,” the pope said, gently. The smile on his face was a little familiar to Wang: the smile of King Zhou of Shang.

The Great Hall came alive, and everyone seemed to be preparing for a celebration. Galileo and some others joyfully carried a stake out of a dark corner. They pulled off the charcoal-black body still tied to the stake and cast it aside before fastening it in an upright position. Another group happily piled firewood around the stake. Only Leonardo ignored the commotion. He sat at the table, pondering, and occasionally using a pen to calculate something on the table.

“Giordano Bruno,” Aristotle said, pointing at the blackened body. “Like you, he came here and spewed nonsense.”

“Use a low fire,” the pope said, his voice weak.

Two soldiers started to tie Wang Miao to the stake using asbestos ropes. Wang used the hand that was still free to point at the pope. “You are nothing more than a program. As for the rest of you, you’re either programs or idiots. I will log back on!”

“You cannot return. You will disappear forever from the world of Three Body.” Galileo cackled.

“Then you must be a program. A normal person would certainly understand the basics of the Internet. The most the game can do is record my MAC address. I can just switch computers and create a new ID. I’ll announce myself when I’m back.”

“The system has recorded your retinal scan through the V-suit,” Leonardo said, looking up at Wang. Then he returned to his calculations.

Wang Miao was seized by a nameless terror. He shouted, “Don’t do this! Let me go! I’m telling the truth!”

“If you’re telling the truth, then you won’t be burnt to death. The game rewards those who are on the right path.” As Aristotle grinned, he took out a silver Zippo lighter, flipped it in his hand in a complicated fashion, and then flicked it on.

As he was about to light the firewood piled around Wang, a bright red light filled the entrance tunnel, followed by a wave of heat and smoke. A horse dashed out of the light and into the Great Hall. Its body was already on fire, and as it galloped, the wind whipped it into a ball of flames. The rider, a knight in heavy armor that glowed red from the heat, dragged a line of white smoke behind him.

“The world has ended! The world has ended! Dehydrate! Dehydrate!” As the knight shouted, the animal under him fell down and turned into a bonfire. The knight was thrown some distance and rolled all the way to the stake, where he stopped moving. White smoke continued to pour out of openings in the armor. The sizzling grease from the dead man inside oozed out on the ground and caught fire, giving the armor a pair of burning wings.

Everyone in the Great Hall streamed toward the entrance tunnel and squeezed into it, disappearing in the red light from outside. Wang Miao struggled with all his strength until he was freed from the ropes. He dodged the burning knight and horse, dashed through the empty Great Hall, and ran down the sweltering tunnel until he emerged outside.

The ground glowed red like a piece of iron in a blacksmith’s furnace. Bright rivulets of lava snaked across the dim red earth, forming a net of fire that stretched to the horizon. Countless thin pillars of flame erupted toward the sky: The dehydratories were burning. The dehydrated bodies inside gave the fire a strange bluish glow.

Not far from him, Wang saw a dozen or so small pillars of flame of the same color. These were the people who had just run out of the pyramid: the pope, Galileo, Aristotle, and Leonardo. The fiery pillars around them were translucent blue, and he could see their faces and bodies slowly deforming in the flame. They focused their gazes on Wang, who had just emerged. Holding the same pose and lifting their arms toward the sky, they chanted in unison, “Tri-solar day—”

Wang looked up and saw three gigantic suns slowly spinning around an invisible origin, like an immense three-bladed fan blowing a deadly wind toward the world below. The three suns took up almost the entire sky, and as they drifted toward the west, half of the formation sank below the horizon. The giant fan continued to spin, a bright blade occasionally shooting above the horizon to give the dying world another brief sunrise and sunset. After a sunset, the ground glowed dim red, and the sunrise a moment later flooded everything with its glaring, parallel rays.

Once the three suns had completely set, the thick clouds that had formed from all the evaporated water still reflected their glow. The sky burned, displaying a hellish, maddening beauty.

After the last light of destruction finally disappeared and the clouds only glowed with a faint red luminescence reflected from the hellish fire on the ground, a few lines of giant text appeared:

16 The Three-Body Problem

As soon as Wang logged out of the game, the phone rang.

It was Shi Qiang, who said it was urgent that he come down to Shi’s office at the Criminal Division. Wang glanced at his watch: It was three in the morning.

Wang arrived at Da Shi’s chaotic office and saw that it was already filled with a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. A young woman police officer who shared the office fanned the smoke away from her nose with a notebook. Da Shi introduced her as Xu Bingbing, a computer specialist from the Information Security Division.

The third person in the office surprised Wang. It was Wei Cheng, the reclusive, mysterious husband of Shen Yufei from the Frontiers of Science. Wei’s hair was a mess. He looked up at Wang, but seemed to have forgotten they had met.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but at least it looks like you weren’t asleep,” Da Shi said. “I have to deal with something that I haven’t told the Battle Command Center yet, and I need your advice.” He turned to Wei Cheng. “Tell him what you told me.”

“My life is in danger,” Wei said, his face wooden.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Fine. I will. Don’t complain about me being long-winded. Actually, I’ve often thought about talking to someone lately….” Wei turned to look at Xu Bingbing. “Don’t you need to take notes or something?”

“Not right now,” Da Shi said, not missing a beat. “You didn’t have anyone to talk to before?”

“No, that’s not it. I was too lazy to talk. I’ve always been lazy.”

“Didn’t you know about Henri Poincaré?” Wang Miao interrupted Wei to ask.[29]

“It’s an evolutionary algorithm,” Wang said.

“It’s a good thing I invited you along.” Shi Qiang nodded at Wang.

“Do you know what else Shen has been up to?” Shi Qiang asked.

“Just the Frontiers of Science. She’s busy with it all the time. Lots of people show up every day.”

“She didn’t ask you to join?”

“Never. She never even talks to me about it. I don’t care, either. That’s just the way I am. I don’t want to care about anything. She knows it, and says I’m an indolent man without any sense of purpose. The organization doesn’t suit me and would interfere with my research.”

“Have you made any progress with the three-body problem?” Wang asked.

“This is the crime you’re reporting?” Shi Qiang asked.

“Yes. A man called yesterday and told me that if I didn’t cease my research, I would be killed.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Phone number?”

“Don’t know. Caller ID showed nothing.”

“Anything related to report?”

“Don’t know.”

Da Shi laughed and tossed his cigarette butt into an ashtray. “You went on and on forever, and in the end all you have to report is one line and a few ‘I don’t know’s?”

“If I hadn’t gone on like that, would you have understood the import of that call? Also, if that were all, I wouldn’t have come here. I’m lazy, remember? But there was another thing: It was the middle of the night—I don’t know if it was today or yesterday—and I was in bed. As I was drifting halfway between sleep and wakefulness, I felt something cold moving on my face. I opened my eyes and saw Shen Yufei, and I almost died of fright.”

“What’s so frightening about seeing your wife in the middle of the night?”

“She stared at me in a way that I had never seen. The light from outside fell on her face, and she looked like a ghost. She held something in her hand: a gun! Moving the barrel over my face, she told me that I had to continue working on the three-body problem. Otherwise she’d kill me.”

“Oh, now this is getting interesting.” Da Shi gave a satisfied nod. He lit another cigarette.

“Interesting? Look, I’ve nowhere to go. That’s why I came to you.”

“Tell us exactly what she said.”

“She said: ‘If you succeed in solving the three-body problem, you will be the savior of the world. If you stop now, you’ll be a sinner. If someone were to save or destroy the human race, then your possible contribution or sin would be exactly twice as much as his.’”

Da Shi blew out a thick cloud of smoke and stared at Wei Cheng until he squirmed. He pulled a notepad out of the mess on his desk and picked up a pen. “You wanted us to take notes, right? Repeat what you just said.”

Wei did.

Wang said, “What she said is indeed strange. What does she mean by exactly twice as much?”

Wei blinked. “This seems pretty serious. When I came, the officer on duty immediately sent me to see you. It looks like you’ve already been paying attention to Shen and me.”

Da Shi nodded. “Let me ask you something else: Do you think the gun your wife held was real?” He saw that Wei didn’t know how to answer. “Could you smell gun oil?”

“Yes, there was definitely an oily smell.”

“Good.” Da Shi, who had been sitting on his desk, jumped off. “Finally we have an opening. Suspected illegal possession of firearms is enough to justify a search. I’ll leave the paperwork until tomorrow, because we have to move right away.”

He turned to Wang. “No rest for the weary. I have to ask you to come and advise me some more.” Then he turned to Xu Bingbing, who’d been silent the whole time. “Bingbing, right now I have only two men on duty, and that’s not enough. I know the Information Security Division isn’t used to fieldwork, but I need you to come along.”

Xu nodded, glad to leave the smoke-filled office.

In addition to Da Shi and Xu, the team for conducting the search consisted of Wang Miao, Wei Cheng, and two other officers from the Criminal Division. The six of them rode through the predawn darkness in two police cars, heading toward Wei’s neighborhood at the edge of the city.

Xu and Wang were in the backseat. As soon as the car started, she whispered to Wang, “Professor Wang, your reputation in Three Body is very high.”

Somebody mentioned Three Body in the real world! Wang was excited, right away feeling close to this young woman in a police uniform. “Do you play?”

“I’m responsible for monitoring and tracking it. An unpleasant task.”

Wang anxiously asked, “Can you tell me its background? I really want to know.”

In the faint light coming through the car window, Wang saw Xu give a mysterious smile. “We want to know as well. But all its servers are outside the country. The system and firewall are very secure and hard to penetrate. We don’t know much, but we can be sure it’s not operated for profit. The software quality is uncommonly high, and the amount of information contained in it even more unusual. It doesn’t even seem like a game.”

“Have there been any…” Wang carefully picked the right words. “… supernatural signs?” Wang’s night had been filled with coincidences: He had been called in to discuss the three-body problem with Wei Cheng immediately after he solved the Three Body game. And now Xu was telling him she was monitoring the game. Something didn’t seem right.

“We don’t think so. Many from all around the world participate in the game’s development. Their collaboration method seems similar to popular open-source practices, like the kind used to make the Linux operating system. But they’re definitely using some very advanced development tools. As for the content of the game, who knows where they’re getting it? It does seem a bit… supernatural, like you said. However, we still believe in Captain Shi’s famous rule: All this must be the work of people. Our tracking efforts are effective, and we’ll have results soon.”

The young woman was not experienced in lying, and her last remark made Wang realize that she was hiding much of the truth from him. “His ‘rule’ is famous now?” Wang looked at Da Shi, who was in the driver’s seat.

When they reached the house, the sun had not yet risen. It was about the same time of night that Wang had seen Shen playing Three Body. A second-story window was lit, but all the other windows were dark.

As soon as Wang got out of the car, he heard noises coming from upstairs. It sounded like something was slapping against the wall. Da Shi, who had just gotten out of the car himself, immediately became alert. He kicked open the yard gate and rushed into the house with an agility surprising for his burly frame, his three colleagues close behind.

Wang and Wei followed them into the house. They went upstairs and entered the room with a light on, their shoes splashing in a pool of blood. Shen lay in the middle of the room, blood still oozing from two bullet wounds in her chest. A third bullet had gone through her left brow, causing her whole face to be covered in red. Not far from her, a gun lay in a crimson pool.

As Wang entered, Da Shi and one of the other officers rushed out and entered the dark room across the hall. The window there was open, and Wang heard the sound of a car starting outside. A male police officer began to make a phone call. Xu Bingbing stood a little ways apart, watching anxiously. She, like Wang and the others, had probably never seen a scene like this.

A moment later, Da Shi returned. He put his gun back in its holster and said to the officer holding the phone, “A black Volkswagen Santana with only one man. I couldn’t get the license plate number. Tell them to block all entrances to the fifth ring road. Shit. He might actually get away.”

Da Shi looked around and saw the bullet holes in the wall. He glanced at the shell casings scattered on the ground and added, “The man got off five shots, and three hit her. She shot twice—both misses.” Then he crouched down to examine the body with the other officer. Xu stood farther away, stealing a glance at Wei Cheng next to her. Da Shi also looked up at him.

On Wei’s face was a trace of shock and a trace of sorrow, but only a trace. His usual wooden expression didn’t break. He was far calmer than Wang.

“You don’t seem bothered by this,” Da Shi said to Wei. “They probably came to kill you.”

Wei gave a ghastly grin. “What can I do? Even now, I still don’t know anything about her. I’ve told her many times to keep life simple. I’m thinking of the abbot’s counsel to me that night. But… eh.”

Da Shi stood up and walked over to stand in front of Wei. He took out a cigarette and lit it. “I think you still have some things you haven’t told us.”

“Some things I was too lazy to talk about.”

“Then you’d better work harder now!”

Wei thought for a moment and said, “Today—no, yesterday afternoon—she argued with a man in the living room. It’s that Pan Han, the famous environmentalist. They had argued a few times before, in Japanese, as though afraid to have me listen in. But yesterday they didn’t care at all and argued in Chinese. I overheard a few snatches.”

“Try to tell us exactly what you heard.”

“Fine. Pan Han said, ‘Although we seem like fellow travelers on the surface, in reality we’re irreconcilable enemies.’ Shen said, ‘Yes, you’re trying to use our Lord’s power against the human race.’ Pan said, ‘Your understanding is not completely unreasonable. We want our Lord to come to this world, to punish those who have long deserved it. However, you’re working to prevent our Lord’s coming, and that’s why we can’t tolerate you. If you don’t stop, we’ll make you stop!’ Shen said, ‘The commander was blind to allow you to join the organization!’ Pan said, ‘Speaking of, can you tell whether the commander sides with the Adventists or the Redemptionists? Does the commander want humanity eliminated or saved?’ Pan’s words briefly silenced Shen, and the two didn’t argue so loudly anymore. I couldn’t hear anything else.”

“What did the man who threatened you on the phone sound like?”

“You’re asking if he sounded like Pan Han? I don’t know. He was speaking very softly, and I couldn’t tell.”

Several more police cars arrived, sirens blaring. A group of white-gloved policemen came upstairs with cameras, and the house hummed with activity. Da Shi told Wang to go back and get some rest.

Instead, Wang walked into the room with the minicomputer to find Wei. “Can you give me an outline of your three-body evolutionary algorithm? I want to… introduce it to some people. I know my request is abrupt. If you can’t, don’t worry about it.”

Wei took out a CD and handed it to Wang. “It’s all on here: the whole model and additional documentation. Do me a favor and publish it under your own name. That would be a big help.”

“No, no! How could I do that?”

Wei pointed at the disk in Wang’s hand and said, “Professor Wang, I noticed you the first time you came here. You’re a good man, a man with a sense of responsibility. That’s why I’m counseling you to stay away from this. The world is about to change. Everyone should try to live out the rest of their lives in peace. That would be best. Don’t worry too much about other matters. It’s all useless anyway.”

“You seem to know even more than you let on.”

“I spent every day with her. It’s impossible to have no inkling.”

“Then why not tell the police?”

Wei smiled contemptuously. “The police are worthless. Even if God were here, it wouldn’t do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.”

Wei was standing next to an east-facing window. Through the glass, beyond the distant cityscape, the sky was brightening with the first light of dawn. For some reason, the light reminded Wang of the strange dawn he saw each time he logged on to Three Body.

“In reality, I’m not so detached. I haven’t been able to sleep the last few nights. Every morning when I see the sunrise, it feels like sunset.” He turned to Wang, and after a long pause, added, “And it’s all because God, or the Lord she talked about, can’t even protect Himself anymore.”

17 Three Body: Newton, Von Neumann, the First Emperor, and Tri-Solar Syzygy

The start of the second level of Three Body wasn’t too different than the first: still the strange, cold dawn, still that colossal pyramid. But this time, the pyramid was back in the Egyptian style.

Wang heard the crisp sound of metal striking against metal. The clashing only highlighted the silence of the chilly dawn. Searching for the source, he saw two dark shadows flickering at the foot of the pyramid. In the dim light, metallic glints flashed between the shadows: a swordfight.

Once his eyes had adjusted, Wang saw the figures more clearly. Based on the shape of the pyramid, this should be someplace in Three Body’s version of the East, but the two fighters were Europeans dressed in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century style. The shorter one ducked below a swinging sword and his silvery wig fell to the ground. After a few more thrusts and parries, another man appeared around the corner of the pyramid and ran toward the fighters. He tried to get the two to stop, but the swinging blades whistling through the air prevented him from getting close.

He shouted, “Stop! Don’t you two have anything better to do? Where’s your sense of responsibility? If civilization has no future, what good is this supposed bit of glory you’re fighting over?”

Both swordfighters ignored him, concentrating on the duel. The taller one suddenly cried out in pain, and his sword fell to the ground with a clang. He turned and ran, holding his wounded arm. The other gave chase for a few steps and spat in the direction of the loser.

“Shameless!” He bent down to pick up his wig. As he straightened up, he saw Wang. Pointing in the direction of the escapee, he said, “He dared to claim that he invented calculus!” He put on his wig, put a hand over his heart, and bowed courteously to Wang. “Isaac Newton, at your service.”

“Then the one who ran away must be Leibniz?” Wang asked.

“Indeed, an unscrupulous man. I don’t really care about this little claim to fame. Inventing the three laws of mechanics has already made me the greatest, God excepted. From planetary motion to cell division, everything follows the three great laws. Now, with the powerful mathematical tool that is calculus, it will only be a matter of time before we master the pattern of the motion of the three suns.”

“It’s not that simple,” said the man who had tried to stop the fight. “Have you considered the amount of calculation that’s needed? I saw the differential equations you listed, and I don’t think an analytical solution is possible, only a numerical one. However, the calculating capacity required is such that even if all of the world’s mathematicians worked without pause, they’d still not be able to complete them by the time the world ended. Of course, if we can’t figure out the pattern of the suns’ movements soon, the end of the world will not be too far away.” He bowed at Wang as well, a more modern bow. “Von Neumann.”

“Didn’t you bring us thousands of miles to the East specifically to solve the problem of calculating these equations?” Newton asked. Then he turned to Wang. “Norbert Wiener and that degenerate who just ran away also came with us. We encountered some pirates near Madagascar. Wiener fought the pirates by himself so that the rest of us could escape, and he died valiantly.”

“Why did you have to come to the East to build a computer?” Wang asked Von Neumann.

Von Neumann and Newton looked at each other, puzzled. “A computer? A computing machine! Such a thing exists?”

“You don’t know about computers? Then what did you have in mind for completing the vast amount of calculations?”

Von Neumann stared at Wang with wide-open eyes, as though his question made no sense. “Using people, of course. Other than people, what else in the world is capable of performing calculations?”

“But you just said that all the mathematicians in the world wouldn’t be enough.”

“Instead of mathematicians, we’ll use common laborers. But we need many of them, at least thirty million. We’ll do mathematics using human wave tactics.”

“Common laborers? Thirty million?” Wang was amazed. “But if I recall correctly, this is an age when ninety percent of the population are illiterate. Yet you want to find thirty million people who understand calculus?”

“Have you heard the joke about the Army of Sichuan?” Von Neumann took out a thick cigar, bit off the end, and lit it. “Some soldiers were being drilled, but because they had no education, they couldn’t even follow the drill instructor’s simple orders to march LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT. So the instructor came up with a solution: He had every soldier wear a straw shoe on the left foot and a cloth shoe on the right. When they marched, he shouted”—here he switched to a Sichuan accent—“STRAW-CLOTH-STRAW-CLOTH…. That’s the kind of soldier we need. Except we need thirty million of them.”

Hearing this modern joke, Wang knew that the man before him wasn’t a program but a real person, and almost certainly Chinese.

“It’s hard to imagine such a large army,” Wang said, shaking his head.

“That’s why we’ve come to see Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor.” Newton pointed at the pyramid.

“He’s still in charge?” Wang looked around. He saw that the soldiers guarding the entrance to the pyramid really were equipped with the simple leather armor and ji-style halberds of the Qin Dynasty. The anachronistic mix of historical elements in Three Body no longer surprised him.

“The whole world is going to be under his rule because he has an army of more than thirty million preparing to conquer Europe. All right, let’s go see him.” Von Neumann turned to Newton. “Drop the sword.” Newton obeyed.

The three of them entered the pyramid, and just as they were about to emerge from the tunnel into the Great Hall, a guard insisted that they strip off all their clothes. Newton objected. “We’re famous scholars. No one of our stature would carry hidden weapons!”

As the two sides explored this stalemate, a deep, male voice came from the Great Hall. “Is it the foreigner who discovered the three laws of motion? Let him and his companions in.”

They entered the Great Hall. The First Emperor was pacing back and forth, his robe and his famous long sword both dragging along the ground. As he turned to gaze at the three scholars, Wang realized that his eyes were the same as the eyes of King Zhou of Shang and Pope Gregory.

“I already know the purpose of your visit. You’re Europeans. Why not go find Caesar? His empire is vast. Surely he can find you thirty million men.”

“But my most honored Emperor, do you know what kind of army he has? Do you know what shape his empire is in? In the magnificent eternal city of Rome, even the river that flows through the city has been heavily polluted. Do you know the cause?”

“Military industrial production?”

“No, Great Emperor, it’s the vomit from Romans after their binge and purge feasts. When the nobles attend the feasts, stretchers have already been prepared for them under the tables. When they’ve eaten so much that they can no longer move, the servants carry them home. The entire empire has sunk into a quagmire of extravagance from which they cannot extricate themselves. Even if Caesar could organize an army of thirty million, it would not have the quality and strength necessary to perform this great calculation.”

“I am aware of that,” Qin Shi Huang said. “But Caesar is waking up and reinvigorating his army. The wisdom of Westerners is terrifying. You are not more intelligent than the men of the East, but you can see the right path. For example, Copernicus could figure out that there are three suns, and you could come up with your three laws. These are very impressive accomplishments. We here in the East cannot, for now, match them. I don’t possess the ability to conquer Europe. My ships are not good enough, and the supply lines cannot be maintained for long enough to go over land.”

“That’s why your empire must continue to develop, Great Emperor!” Von Neumann seized the opportunity. “If you can master the pattern of the suns’ movements, you will be able to make the most of each Stable Era, and also avoid the damage brought by each Chaotic Era. This way, your progress will be much faster than Europe’s. Believe us, we’re scholars. As long as we can use the three laws of motion and calculus to accurately forecast the movements of the suns, we do not care who conquers the world.”

“Of course I need to predict the suns’ movements. But if you want me to gather thirty million men, you must at least demonstrate for me how such calculations would be conducted.”

“Your Imperial Majesty, please give me three soldiers. I will demonstrate.” Von Neumann grew excited.

“Three? Only three? I can easily give you three thousand.” Qin Shi Huang glanced at Von Neumann, distrustful.

“Your Imperial Majesty, you mentioned just now the defect in the Eastern mind when it comes to scientific thinking. This is because you have not realized that even the complicated objects of the universe are made from the simplest elements. I only need three.”

Qin Shi Huang waved his hand and three soldiers came forward. They were all very young. Like other Qin soldiers, they moved like order-obeying machines.

“I don’t know your names,” Von Neumann said, tapping the shoulders of two of the soldiers. “The two of you will be responsible for signal input, so I’ll call you ‘Input 1’ and ‘Input 2.’” He pointed to the last soldier. “You will be responsible for signal output, so I’ll call you ‘Output.’” He shoved the soldiers to where he wanted them to stand. “Form a triangle. Like this. Output is the apex. Input 1 and Input 2 form the base.”

“You could have just told them to stand in the Wedge Attack Formation,” Qin Shi Huang said, glancing at Von Neumann contemptuously.

Newton took out six small flags: three white, three black. Von Neumann handed them out to the three soldiers so that each held a black flag and a white flag. “White represents 0; black represents 1. Good. Now, listen to me. Output, you turn around and look at Input 1 and Input 2. If they both raise black flags, you raise a black flag as well. Under all other circumstances, you raise the white flag.”

“I think you should use some other color,” Qin Shi Huang said. “White means surrender.”

The excited Von Neumann ignored him. He shouted orders at the three soldiers. “Begin operation! Input 1 and Input 2, you can raise whichever flag you want. Good. Raise! Good. Raise again! Raise!”

Input 1 and Input 2 raised their flags three times. The first time they were black-black, the second time white-black, and the third time black-white. Output reacted correctly each time, raising the black flag once and the white one twice.

“Very good. Your Imperial Majesty, your soldiers are very smart.”

“Even an idiot would be capable of that. Tell me, what are they really doing?” Qin Shi Huang looked baffled.

“The three soldiers form a computing component. It’s a type of gate, an AND gate.” Von Neumann paused to let the emperor digest this information.

Qin Shi Huang said impassively, “I’m not impressed. Continue.”

Von Neumann turned to the three soldiers again. “Let’s form another component. You, Output: if you see either Input 1 or Input 2 raise a black flag, you raise the black flag. There are three situations where that will be true: black-black, white-black, black-white. When it’s white-white, you raise the white flag. Understand? Good lad, you’re really clever. You’re the key to the correct functioning of the gate. Work hard, and the emperor will reward you! Let’s begin operation. Raise! Good, raise again! Raise again! Perfect. Your Imperial Majesty, this component is called an OR gate.”

Then, Von Neumann used the three soldiers to form a NAND gate, a NOR gate, an XOR-gate, an XNOR-gate, and a tristate gate. Finally, using only two soldiers, he made the simplest gate, a NOT gate, or an inverter: Output always raised the flag that was opposite in color from the one raised by Input.

Von Neumann bowed to the emperor. “Now, Your Imperial Majesty, all the gate components have been demonstrated. Aren’t they simple? Any three soldiers can master the skills after one hour of training.”

“Don’t they need to learn more?” Qin Shi Huang asked.

“No. We can form ten million of these gates, and then put the components together into a system. This system will then be able to carry out the calculations we need and work out those differential equations for predicting the suns’ movements. We could call the system… um…”

“A computer,” Wang said.

“Ah, good!” Von Neumann gave Wang a thumbs-up. “Computer—that’s a great name. The entire system is a large machine, the most complex machine in the history of the world.”

The passage of in-game time sped up. Three months went by.

Qin Shi Huang, Newton, Von Neumann, and Wang all stood on the platform at the apex of the pyramid. This platform was similar to the one where Wang had met Mozi. It was filled with astronomical instruments, some of which were of recent European design. Below them, a magnificent phalanx of thirty million Qin soldiers was arrayed on the ground. The entire formation fit inside a square six kilometers on each side. As the sun rose, the phalanx remained still like a giant carpet made of thirty million terra-cotta warriors. But when a flock of birds wandered above the phalanx, the birds immediately felt the potential for death from below and scattered anxiously in chaos.

Wang performed some computations in his head and realized that even if the entire population of Earth were arranged into such a phalanx, the whole formation would fit inside the Huangpu District of Shanghai. Though it was powerful, the phalanx also revealed the fragility of civilization.

Von Neumann said, “Your Imperial Majesty, your army is truly matchless. In an extremely short time, we have completed such complex training.”

Qin Shi Huang held on to the hilt of his long sword. “Even though the whole is complex, what each soldier must do is very simple. Compared to the training they went through to learn how to break the Macedonian Phalanx, this is nothing.”

Newton added, “And God blessed us with two consecutive Stable Eras to get them trained and ready.”

“Even in a Chaotic Era, my army continues to train. They will finish your calculations even if it’s a Chaotic Era.” Qin Shi Huang glanced over the phalanx with pride in his eyes.

“Then, Your Imperial Majesty, please give the great order!” Von Neumann’s voice trembled with excitement.

Qin Shi Huang nodded. A guard ran over, grabbed the hilt of the emperor’s sword, and stepped backwards. The bronze sword was so long that it was impossible for the emperor himself to pull it out of the scabbard. The guard knelt and handed the sword to the emperor. Qin Shi Huang lifted the sword to the sky, and shouted: “Computer Formation!”

Four giant bronze cauldrons at the corners of the platform came to life simultaneously with roaring flames. A group of soldiers standing on the sloping side of the pyramid facing the phalanx chanted in unison: “Computer Formation!”

On the ground below, colors in the phalanx began to shift and move. Complicated and detailed circuit patterns appeared and gradually filled the entire formation. Ten minutes later, the army had made a thirty-six kilometer square computer motherboard.

Von Neumann pointed to the gigantic human circuit below the pyramid and began to explain, “Your Imperial Majesty, we have named this computer Qin I. Look, there in the center is the CPU, the core computing component, formed from your five best divisions. By referencing this diagram, you can locate the adders, registers, and stack memory. The part around it that looks highly regular is the memory. When we built that part, we found that we didn’t have enough soldiers. But luckily, the work done by the elements in this component is the simplest, so we trained each soldier to hold more colored flags. Each man can now complete the work that initially required twenty men. This allowed us to increase the memory capacity to meet the minimum requirements for running the Qin 1.0 operating system. Observe also the open passage that runs through the entire formation, and the light cavalry waiting for orders in that passage: That’s the system bus, responsible for transmitting information between the components of the whole system.

“The bus architecture is a great invention. New plug-in components, which can be made from up to ten divisions, can quickly be added to the main operation bus. This allows Qin I’s hardware to be easily expanded and upgraded. Look further still—you might have to use the telescope for this—and there’s the external storage, which we call the ‘hard drive’ at Copernicus’s suggestion. It’s formed by three million soldiers with more education than most. When you buried all those scholars alive after you unified China, it’s a good thing you saved these ones! Each of them holds a pen and a notepad, and they’re responsible for recording the results of the calculations. Of course, the bulk of their work is to act as virtual memory and store intermediate calculation results. They’re the bottleneck for the speed of computation. And, finally, the part that’s closest to us is the display. It’s capable of showing us in real time the most important parameters of the computation.”

Von Neumann and Newton carried over a large scroll, tall as a man, and spread it open before Qin Shi Huang. When they reached the scroll’s end, Wang’s chest tightened, remembering the legend of the assassin who hid a dagger in a map scroll that he then displayed to the emperor. But the imaginary dagger did not appear. Before them was only a large sheet of paper filled with symbols, each the size of a fly’s head. Packed so densely, the symbols were as dazzling to behold as the computer formation on the ground below.

“Your Imperial Majesty, this is the Qin 1.0 operating system we developed. The software for doing the calculations will run on top of it. That below”—Von Neumann pointed to the human-formation computer—“is the hardware. What’s on this paper is the software. The relationship between hardware and software is like that between the guqin zither and sheet music.”

He and Newton then spread open another scroll, just as large. “Your Imperial Majesty, this is the software for using numerical methods to solve those differential equations. After entering the motion vectors of the three suns at a particular moment obtained by astronomical observation, the software’s operation will give us a prediction for the suns’ subsequent motion at any moment in the future. Our first computation will calculate all the suns’ positions for the next two years. Each set of output values will be one hundred and twenty hours apart.”

Qin Shi Huang nodded. “Good. Begin.”

Von Neumann lifted both hands above his head and solemnly chanted: “As ordered by the great emperor, turn on the computer! System self-test!”

A row of soldiers standing halfway down the face of the pyramid repeated the order using flag signals. In a moment, the motherboard made of thirty million men seemed to turn into a lake filled with sparkling lights. Tens of millions of tiny flags waved. In the display formation closest to the base of the pyramid, a progress bar made of numerous green flags slowly advanced, indicating the percentage of the self-test that had been completed. Ten minutes later, the progress bar reached its end.

“Self-test complete! Begin boot sequence! Load operating system!”

Below, the light cavalry on the main bus that passed through the entire human-formation computer began to move swiftly. The main bus soon turned into a turbulent river. Along the way, the river fed into numerous thin tributaries, infiltrating all the modular subformations. Soon, the ripple of black and white flags coalesced into surging waves that filled the entire motherboard. The central CPU area was the most tumultuous, like gunpowder on fire.

But suddenly, as though the powder had been exhausted, the movements in the CPU slackened and eventually stopped. Starting with the CPU in the center, the stillness spread in every direction, like a sea being frozen over. Finally, the entire motherboard came to a stop, with only a few scattered components flashing lifelessly in infinite loops. The center of the display formation blinked red.

“System lockup!” a signal officer called out. Shortly after, the reason for the malfunction was determined: There was an error with the operation of one of the gates in the CPU status register.

“Restart system!” Von Neumann ordered confidently.

“Wait!” Newton stopped the signal officer. He turned with an insidious expression and said to Qin Shi Huang, “Your Imperial Majesty, in order to improve system stability, you should take certain maintenance measures with respect to faulty components.”

Qin Shi Huang grasped his sword and said, “Replace the malfunctioning component and behead all the soldiers who made up that gate. In the future, any malfunctions will be dealt with the same way!”

Von Neumann glanced at Newton, disgusted. They watched as a few riders dashed into the motherboard with their swords unsheathed. After they “repaired” the faulty component, the order to restart was given. This time, the operation went very smoothly. Twenty minutes later, Three Body’s Von Neumann architecture human-formation computer had begun full operations under the Qin 1.0 operating system.

“Run solar orbit computation software ‘Three Body 1.0’!” Newton screamed at the top of his lungs. “Start the master computing module! Load the differential calculus module! Load the finite element analysis module! Load the spectral method module! Enter initial condition parameters… and begin calculation!”

The motherboard sparkled as the display formation flashed with indicators in every color. The human-formation computer began the long computation.

“This is really interesting,” Qin Shi Huang said, pointing to the spectacular sight. “Each individual’s behavior is so simple, yet together, they can produce such a complex, great whole! Europeans criticize me for my tyrannical rule, claiming that I suppress creativity. But in reality, a large number of men yoked by severe discipline can also produce great wisdom when bound together as one.”

“Great First Emperor, this is just the mechanical operation of a machine, not wisdom. Each of these lowly individuals is just a zero. Only when someone like you is added to the front as a one can the whole have any meaning.” Newton’s smile was ingratiating.

“Disgusting philosophy!” Von Neumann said as he glanced at Newton. “If, in the end, the results computed in accordance with your theory and mathematical model don’t match reality, then you and I aren’t even zeroes.”

“Indeed. If that turns out to be the case, you will be nothing!” Qin Shi Huang turned and left the scene.

Time passed quickly. The human-formation computer operated for a year and four months. Subtracting out the time spent to adjust the programming, the actual processing time was approximately a year and two months. During this time, processing had to be stopped twice due to extremely bad weather in Chaotic Eras. But the computer stored the data at the time of each shutdown, and was able to resume calculations successfully after the pauses. By the time Qin Shi Huang and the European scholars ascended the pyramid again, the first phase of the computation was complete. The results precisely described the orbits of the three suns for the next two years.

It was a chilly dawn. The torches that had kept the motherboard lit through the night were extinguished. After the final calculation, Qin I entered standby mode. The turbulent waves over the motherboard settled into light ripples.

Von Neumann and Newton presented the scroll with the results of the computation to Qin Shi Huang. Newton said, “Great First Emperor, the calculations were completed three days ago. We waited until now to present the results to you because they show that the long night is about to be over. We’ll soon welcome the first sunrise of a long Stable Era, which will last more than a year. Judging by the orbital parameters, the climate will be extremely mild and comfortable. Please revive your empire and order everyone to be rehydrated.”

“Ever since the start of this computation, my empire has never been dehydrated,” Qin Shi Huang said in a huff, grabbing the scroll. “I’ve devoted all the resources of the Qin Empire to maintain the operation of the computer, and we’ve run out of stored supplies. For this computer, countless people have died of hunger, cold, and heat.” Qin pointed into the distance with the scroll. By the dim dawn light, they could see tens of white lines radiating from the edges of the motherboard in every direction, disappearing over the horizon. These were the supply routes from every corner of the empire.

“Your Imperial Majesty, you will find that the sacrifices are worth it,” Von Neumann said. “After mastering the orbits of the suns, Qin will develop by leaps and bounds, and will grow many times more powerful than before.”

“According to the calculations, the sun is about to rise. Great First Emperor, prepare to receive your glory!”

As if in response to Newton’s words, a sliver of red sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the pyramid and the human-formation computer in a golden light. A wave of joyous cries rose from the motherboard.

A man hurried toward them. He was running so fast that, as he knelt down, he couldn’t catch his breath. He was the emperor’s astronomy minister.

“Sire, the calculations were in error. Disaster is about to befall us!”

“What are you babbling about?” Without even waiting for the emperor to speak, Newton kicked the man. “Don’t you see that the sun is rising at the exact moment predicted by our precise calculations?”

“But…” The minister half straightened, one hand pointing at the sun. “How many suns do you see?”

Everyone gazed at the rising sun, confused. “Minister, you received a proper Western education and obtained a doctorate from the University of Cambridge,” Von Neumann said. “You must at least know how to count. Of course there’s only one sun in the sky. And the temperature is very comfortable.”

“No. There are three!” The minister cried, tears flowing from his face. “The other two are behind that one!”

Everyone stared at the sun again, still confused.

“The Imperial Observatory has confirmed that right now we are experiencing the extremely rare phenomenon of a tri-solar syzygy. The three suns are in a straight line, moving around our planet at the same angular speed! Thus, our planet and the three suns are in a straight line with our world at the end!”

“You’re certain that the observation is not in error?” Newton grabbed the collar of the astronomy minister.

“Absolutely certain. The observation was conducted by the Western astronomers of the Imperial Observatory, including Kepler and Herschel. They’re using the largest telescope in the world, imported from Europe.”

Newton let go of the minister and stood up. Wang saw that his face was pale, but his expression was one of pure joy. He clasped his two hands in front of his chest and said to Qin Shi Huang, “Oh Greatest, Most Honorable Emperor, this is the most propitious sign of them all! Now that the three suns are orbiting around our planet, your empire is the center of the universe. This is God’s reward for our efforts. Let me check the calculations one more time. I will prove this!”

While the rest remained stunned, Newton slipped away. Later, others would report that Sir Isaac had stolen a horse and left for parts unknown.

An anxiety-filled moment of silence later, Wang suddenly said, “Your Imperial Majesty, please unsheathe your sword.”

“What do you want?” Qin Shi Huang asked, baffled. But he gestured at the soldier by his side, and the soldier pulled the sword out of its scabbard.

Wang said, “Please try to swing it.”

Qin Shi Huang held the sword and waved it around. His expression turned to one of surprise. “Oh, why is it so light?”

“The game’s V-suit cannot simulate the feeling of diminished gravity. Otherwise we’d feel that we’re much lighter as well.”

“Look! Down there! Look at the horses, and the men!” Someone cried out. Everyone looked down and saw a column of cavalry moving at the foot of the pyramid. All the horses seemed to be floating. Each horse drifted over a long distance before the four hooves struck ground again. They also saw several running men. With each step, the men leapt a dozen meters, falling slowly back to the ground. On top of the pyramid, a soldier tried to jump up, and easily reached the height of three meters.

“What is going on?” Qin Shi Huang looked at the soldier slowly falling back down.

“Sire, the three suns are over our planet in a straight line, so their gravitational forces are added together….” The astronomy minister tried to explain, but discovered that his two feet had already left the ground and he was now horizontal. The others were also floating in the air, leaning at different angles. Like a bunch of men who had fallen into water without knowing how to swim, they clumsily waved their limbs, trying to stabilize themselves but colliding into each other instead.

The ground they had just left now cracked open like a spiderweb. The cracks grew fast, and, accompanied by thunderous crashes and sky-obscuring dust, the pyramid below them broke into its constituent blocks. Through the slowly drifting gigantic blocks, Wang saw the Great Hall below come apart. The large cauldron that had once cooked Fu Xi and the iron stake to which he had once been bound were both adrift.

The sun rose to the middle of the sky. Everything that floated—men, colossal blocks of stone, astronomical instruments, bronze cauldrons—began to rise slowly, then accelerated. Wang glanced at the human-formation computer and saw a nightmarish sight: The thirty million men who had formed the motherboard were floating away from the earth and rising, like a swarm of ants sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. The ground they left behind clearly displayed the marks of the motherboard circuits. The set of intricate, complex markings that could only be taken in from a great height would become an archaeological site that would confuse the next Three Body civilization, in the distant future.

Wang looked up. The sky was obscured by a strangely mottled layer of clouds. The clouds were made of dust, stones, humans, and other odds and ends. The sun sparkled behind them. In the far distance, Wang saw a long range of transparent mountains also rising up. The mountains were crystal clear, and changed shapes as they sparkled—they were formed from the ocean, which was also being attracted into space.

Everything on the surface of the Three Body world rose toward the sun.

Wang looked around and saw Von Neumann and Qin Shi Huang. As he drifted, Von Neumann shouted at Qin Shi Huang, but there was no sound. A small set of subtitles appeared: I figured it out! Electronic elements! We can use electronic elements to make gate circuits and combine them into computers! Such computers will be many times faster and take up much less space. I estimate that a small building will be sufficient…. Your Imperial Majesty, are you listening?

Qin Shi Huang swung his long sword at Von Neumann. The latter kicked at a giant block of stone drifting nearby and dodged out of the way. The long sword struck the stone, causing sparks to fly, and broke itself into two pieces. Right after, the giant block of stone collided with another, with Qin Shi Huang in the middle. Stone chips and flesh and blood scattered everywhere, an appalling sight.

But Wang did not hear the noise made by colliding stones. Around him it was completely silent. Because the atmosphere was gone, there was no more sound. As the bodies drifted, their blood boiled in the vacuum and their inner organs were vomited out, until they turned into strange blobs surrounded by crystalline clouds made from the liquid they exuded. Also, due to the lack of an atmosphere, the sky turned pitch black. Everything that had floated into space from the Three Body world reflected the sunlight and formed a brilliant, starry cloud in space. The cloud then turned into a giant vortex, spiraling toward its final resting place: the sun.

Wang now saw the sun changing shape. He understood that he was actually seeing the other two suns, both peeking out from behind the first sun. From this perspective, the three stacked suns formed a bright eye in the universe.

Against the background of the three suns in syzygy, text appeared:

Just as Wang logged out of the game, a stranger called. The voice on the phone was that of a very charismatic man. “Hello! First, we thank you for giving us your real number. I’m a system administrator for the Three Body game.”

Wang was both excited and anxious.

“Please tell us your age, education, employer, and position. You didn’t fill those out when you registered.”

“What do they have to do with the game?”

“When you’ve reached this level, you must provide these pieces of information. If you refuse, Three Body will be permanently closed to you.”

Wang answered the administrator’s questions truthfully.

“Very good, Professor Wang. You satisfy the conditions for continuing in Three Body.”

“Thank you. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“You may not. But tomorrow night there will be a meet-up for Three Body players. We welcome you to attend.” The administrator gave Wang an address.

18 Meet-up

The location for the Three Body players’ meet-up was a small, out-of-the-way coffee shop. Wang had always imagined game meet-ups would be lively events full of people, but this meet-up consisted of only seven players, including himself. Like Wang, the other six did not look like gaming enthusiasts. Only two were relatively young. Another three, including a woman, were middle-aged. There was also an old man who appeared to be in his sixties or seventies.

Wang had originally thought that as soon as they met they’d begin a lively discussion of Three Body, but he was wrong. The profound but strange content of Three Body had had a psychological impact on the participants. All the players, including Wang himself, couldn’t bring it up easily. They only made simple self-introductions. The old man took out a refined pipe, filled it with tobacco, and smoked as he strolled around, admiring the paintings on the walls. The others sat silently, waiting for the meet-up organizer to show up. They had all come early.

Actually, of the six, Wang already knew two. The old man was a famous scholar who had made his name by imbuing Eastern philosophy with the content of modern science. The strangely dressed woman was a famous writer, one of those rare novelists who wrote in an avant-garde style but still had many readers. You could start one of her books on any page.

Of the two middle-aged men, one was a vice president at China’s largest software company, plainly and casually dressed so that his status wasn’t obvious at all; and the other was a high-level executive at the State Power Corporation. Of the two young men, one was a reporter with a major media outlet, and the other was a doctoral student in the sciences. Wang now realized that a considerable number of Three Body players were probably social elites like them.

The meet-up organizer showed up not long after. Wang’s heart began to beat faster as soon as he saw the man: it was Pan Han, prime suspect for the murder of Shen Yufei. He took out his phone when no one was looking and texted Shi Qiang.

“Haha, everyone got here early!” Pan greeted them in a relaxed manner, as though nothing was wrong. Appearing in the media, he usually looked disheveled, like a vagrant, but today, he was dressed sharply in a suit and dress shoes. “You’re just like I imagined. Three Body is intended for people in your class because the common crowd cannot appreciate its meaning and mood. To play it well requires knowledge and understanding that ordinary people do not possess.”

Wang sent out his text: Spotted Pan Han. At Yunhe Coffee Shop in Xicheng District.

Pan continued. “Everyone here is an excellent Three Body player. You have the best scores and are devoted to it. I believe that Three Body is already an important part of your lives.”

“It’s part of what keeps me alive,” the young doctoral student said.

“I saw it by accident on my grandson’s computer,” the old philosopher said, lifting his pipe stem. “The young man abandoned it after a few tries, saying it was too abstruse. But I was attracted to it. I find it strange, terrible, but also beautiful. So much information is hidden beneath a simple representation.”

A few players nodded at this description, including Wang himself.

Wang received Da Shi’s reply text: We also see him. No worries. Carry on. Play the fanatic in front of them, but not so much that you can’t pull it off.

“Yes,” the author agreed, and nodded. “I like the literary elements of Three Body. The rises and falls of two hundred and three civilizations evoke the qualities of epics in a new form.”

She mentioned 203 civilizations, but Wang had only experienced 184. This told Wang that Three Body progressed independently for each player, possibly with different worlds.

“I’m a bit sick of the real world,” the young reporter said. “Three Body is already my second reality.”

“Really?” Pan asked, interested.

“Me too,” the software company vice president said. “Compared to Three Body, reality is so vulgar and unexciting.”

“It’s too bad that it’s only a game,” said the power company executive.

“Very good,” Pan said. Wang noticed his eyes sparkling with excitement.

“I have a question that I think everyone wants to know the answer to,” Wang said.

“I know what it is. But you might as well ask.”

“Is Three Body only a game?”

The other players nodded. Clearly the question was also on their minds.

Pan stood up and said solemnly, “The world of Three Body, or Trisolaris, really does exist.”

“Where is it?” several players asked in unison.

After looking at each of them in turn, Pan sat down and spoke. “Some questions I can answer. Others I cannot. But if you are meant to be with Trisolaris, all your questions will be answered someday.”

“Then… does the game really portray Trisolaris accurately?” the reporter asked.

“First, the ability of Trisolarans to dehydrate through its many cycles of civilization is real. In order to adapt to the unpredictable natural environment and avoid extreme environmental conditions unsuitable for life, they can completely expel the water in their bodies and turn into dry, fibrous objects.”

“What do Trisolarans look like?”

Pan shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t. In every cycle of civilization, the appearance of Trisolarans is different. However, the game does portray something else that really existed on Trisolaris: the Trisolaran-formation computer.”

“Ha! I thought that was the most unrealistic aspect,” the software company vice president said. “I conducted a test with more than a hundred employees at my company. Even if the idea worked, a computer made of people would probably operate at a speed slower than manual computation.”

Pan gave a mysterious smile. “You’re right. But suppose that of the thirty million soldiers forming the computer, each one is capable of raising and lowering the black and white flags a hundred thousand times per second, and suppose also that the light cavalry soldiers on the main bus can run at several times the speed of sound, or even faster. Then the result would be very different.

“You asked about the appearance of the Trisolarans just now. According to some signs, the bodies of the Trisolarans who formed the computer were covered by a purely reflective surface, which probably evolved as a response to survival under extreme conditions of sunlight. The mirrorlike surface could be deformed into any shape, and they communicated with each other by focusing light with their bodies. This kind of light-speech could transmit information extremely rapidly and was the foundation of the Trisolaran-formation computer. Of course, this was still a very inefficient machine, but it was capable of completing calculations that were too difficult to be performed manually. The computer did in fact make its first appearance in Trisolaris as formations of people, before becoming mechanical and then electronic.”

Pan stood up and paced behind the players. “As a game, Three Body only borrows the background of human society to simulate the development of Trisolaris. This is done to give players a familiar environment. The real Trisolaris is very different from the world of the game, but the existence of the three suns is real. They’re the foundation of the Trisolaran environment.”

“Developing this game must have cost an enormous amount of effort,” the vice president said. “But the goal is clearly not profit.”

“The goal of Three Body is very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals,” Pan said.

“What ideals do we have in common, exactly?” Wang immediately regretted the question. He wondered whether asking it sounded hostile.

Pan studied everyone meaningfully, and then added in a soft voice, “How would you feel if Trisolaran civilization were to enter our world?”

“I would be happy.” The young reporter was the first to break the silence. “I’ve lost hope in the human race after what I’ve seen in recent years. Human society is incapable of self-improvement, and we need the intervention of an outside force.”

“I agree!” the author shouted. She was very excited, as though finally finding an outlet for pent-up feelings. “The human race is hideous. I’ve spent the first half of my life unveiling this ugliness with the scalpel of literature, but now I’m even sick of the work of dissection. I yearn for Trisolaran civilization to bring real beauty to this world.”

Pan said nothing. That glint of excitement appeared in his eyes again.

The old philosopher waved his pipe, which had gone out. He spoke with a serious mien. “Let’s discuss this question with a bit more depth: What is your impression of the Aztecs?”

“Dark and bloody,” the author said. “Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests. Those are my impressions.”

The philosopher nodded. “Very good. Then try to imagine: If the Spanish Conquistadors did not intervene, what would have been the influence of that civilization on human history?”

“You’re calling black white and white black,” the software company vice president said. “The Conquistadors who invaded the Americas were nothing more than murderers and robbers.”

“Even so, at least they prevented the Aztecs from developing without bound, turning the Americas into a bloody, dark great empire. Then civilization as we know it wouldn’t have appeared in the Americas, and democracy wouldn’t have thrived until much later. Indeed, maybe they wouldn’t have appeared at all. This is the key to the question: No matter what the Trisolarans are like, their arrival will be good news for the terminally ill human race.”

“But have you thought through the fact that the Aztecs were completely destroyed by the Western invaders?” the power company executive asked. He looked around, as though seeing these people for the first time. “Your thoughts are very dangerous.”

“You mean profound!” the doctoral student said, raising a finger. He nodded vigorously at the philosopher. “I had the same thought, but I didn’t know how to express it. You said it so well!”

After a moment of silence, Pan turned to Wang. “The other six have all given their views. What about you?”

“I stand with them,” Wang said, pointing to the reporter and the philosopher. He kept his answer simple. The less said the better.

“Very good,” Pan said. He turned to the software company vice president and the power company executive. “The two of you are no longer welcome at this meet-up, and you are no longer appropriate players for Three Body. Your IDs will be deleted. Please leave now. Thank you.”

The two stood up and looked at each other; then glanced around, confused, and left.

Pan held out his hand to the remaining five, shaking each person’s hand in turn. Then he said, solemnly, “We are comrades now.”

19 Three Body: Einstein, the Pendulum Monument, and the Great Rip

The fifth time Wang Miao logged on to Three Body, it was dawn as usual, but the world was unrecognizable.

The great pyramid that had appeared the first four times had been destroyed by the tri-solar syzygy. In its place was a tall, modern building, whose dark gray shape was familiar to Wang: the United Nations Headquarters.

In the distance were many more tall buildings, apparently dehydratories. All had completely reflective mirror surfaces. In the dawn light they appeared as giant crystal plants growing out of the ground.

Wang heard a violin playing something by Mozart. The playing wasn’t very practiced, but there was a special charm to it, as though saying: I play for myself. The violinist was a homeless old man sitting on the steps in front of the UN Headquarters, his fluffy silver hair fluttering in the wind. Next to his feet was an old top hat containing some scattered change.

Wang suddenly noticed the sun. But it rose in the opposite direction from the dawn light, and the patch of the sky around it was still completely dark.

The sun was very large, its half-risen disk taking up a third of the horizon. Wang’s heart beat faster: Such a large sun could only mean another great catastrophe. But when Wang turned around, the old man continued to play as though nothing odd was happening. His silver hair shone brilliantly in the sun, as though it was on fire.

The sun was silvery, just like the old man’s hair. It cast a pale white light over the ground, but Wang couldn’t feel any warmth from the light. He gazed at the sun, which had now completely risen. On the giant silver disk he could pick out lines like wood grains: mountain ranges.

Wang realized that the disk did not emit light. It only reflected the light from the real sun, which was on the other side of the sky, below the horizon. What had risen wasn’t a sun at all, but a giant moon. The giant moon moved briskly up the sky at a pace that could be detected by the naked eye. In the process, it gradually waned from a full to a half moon, and then a crescent. The old man’s soothing violin strains drifted on the cold morning breeze. The majestic sight of the universe was like the music made material. Wang was intoxicated.

The giant crescent now fell into the dawn light and grew much brighter. When only two glowing tips remained above the horizon, Wang imagined them as the tips of the horns of a titanic bull rushing toward the sun.

“Honored Copernicus, rest your busy feet here a while,” the old man said, after the giant moon had set. “Then after you’ve appreciated some Mozart, perhaps I can have some lunch.”

“If I’m not mistaken…” Wang looked at the face full of wrinkles. The wrinkles were long and their curves gentle, as though they were trying to create a kind of harmony.

“You’re not. I’m Einstein, a pitiful man full of faith in God, though abandoned by Him.”

“What is that giant moon? I’ve never seen it the previous times I was here.”

“It’s already cooled off.”

“What?”

“The big moon. When I was little it was still hot. When it rose to the middle of the sky, I could see the red glow from the central plains. But now it’s cold…. Haven’t you heard about the great rip?”

“No. What’s that?”

Einstein sighed and shook his head. “Let’s not speak of it. Forget the past. My past, civilization’s past, the universe’s past—all of it too painful to recall.”

“How did you get to be like this?” Wang searched in his pocket and found some change. He bent over and dropped the money into the hat.

“Thank you, Mr. Copernicus. Let’s hope that God doesn’t abandon you, though I don’t have much faith in that. I feel that the model you and Newton and the others created in the East with the help of the human-formation computer was very close to being correct. But the little bit of error left was like an uncrossable chasm for Newton and the others.

“I’ve always believed that without me, others would have discovered special relativity eventually. But general relativity is different. The bit that Newton lacked was the effect on planetary orbit from the gravitationally induced curvature of space-time described by general relativity. Though the error caused by it was small, its impact on the results of the computation was fatal. Adding the correction factor for perturbation from space-time curvature to the classical equations would yield the right mathematical model. The amount of computational power required far exceeds what you accomplished in the East, but is easily provided by modern computers.”

“Have the results of the computation been confirmed by astronomical observations?”

“If that had occurred, do you think I’d be here? But from the perspective of aesthetics, I must be right and the universe must be wrong. God abandoned me, then others abandoned me as well. I’m wanted nowhere. Princeton dismissed me as a professor. UNESCO wouldn’t even have me as a science consultant. Before, even if they had begged on their knees, I wouldn’t have wanted the position. I even thought of going to Israel to be president, but they changed their minds and said I was nothing but a fraud….”

Einstein began playing again, picking up right where he had stopped. After listening to him for a while, Wang strode toward the UN building.

“There’s no one in there,” Einstein said, still playing. “All the members of the General Assembly session are behind the building attending the Pendulum Initiation Ceremony.”

Wang walked around the building and was greeted by a breathtaking sight: a colossal pendulum that seemed to stretch between the sky and the earth. In fact, Wang had seen it peeking out from behind the building, but he didn’t know what he was seeing.

The pendulum resembled those constructed by Fu Xi to hypnotize the sun god during the Warring States Period, back when Wang Miao first logged on to Three Body. But the pendulum before him had been completely modernized. The two pillars holding up the pendulum were made of metal, each as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The weight was also made of metal, streamlined, with a smooth, mirrorlike, electroplated surface. The pendulum line, made of some ultrastrong material, was so thin as to be almost invisible, and the weight seemed to float in the air between the two towers.

Below the pendulum was a crowd of people dressed in suits, probably the leaders of the various countries attending the General Assembly session. They gathered in small cliques and talked amongst themselves quietly, as though waiting for something.

“Ah, Copernicus, the man who crossed five eras!” someone shouted. The others welcomed him.

“You’re one of those who saw the pendulums of the Warring States Period with your own eyes!” A friendly man shook and held Wang’s hand. Someone introduced the man as the secretary general of the UN, from Africa.

“Yes, I did see them,” Wang said. “But why are we building another one now?”

“It’s a monument for Trisolaris, as well as a tombstone.” The secretary general looked up at the pendulum. From down here, it appeared as big as a submarine.

“A tombstone? For who?”

“For an aspiration, a striving that lasted through almost two hundred civilizations: the effort to solve the three-body problem, to find the pattern in the suns’ movements.”

“Is the effort over?”

“Yes. As of now, it’s completely over.”

Wang hesitated for a moment before taking out a stack of papers, Wei Cheng’s three-body mathematical model. “I… I came here for this. I brought a mathematical model that solves the three-body problem. I have reason to believe it will likely work.”

As soon as Wang said this, the crowd around him lost interest. They returned to their cliques to continue their conversations. He noticed that a few even shook their heads and laughed as they left him. The secretary general took the document and, without even glancing at it, handed it to a slender man wearing glasses standing next to him. “Out of respect for your famed reputation, I’ll have my science advisor take a look. Indeed, everyone here has shown you respect. If anyone else had said what you said, they’d be laughing at him.”

The science advisor flipped through the document. “Evolutionary algorithm? Copernicus, you’re a genius. Anyone who can come up with such an algorithm is a genius. This requires not only superior math skills, but also imagination.”

“You seem to be suggesting that someone has already created such a mathematical model?”

“Yes. There are dozens of other mathematical models. Of those, more than half are more advanced than yours. They’ve all been implemented and run on computers. During the past two centuries, such massive computation became the principal activity of this world. Everyone waited for the results as if waiting for Judgment Day.”

“And?”

“We have definitively proven that the three-body problem has no solution.”

Wang gazed up at the massive pendulum overhead. In the dawn light, it was crystal bright. Its deformed mirrorlike surface reflected everything around it like the eye of the world. In this place, in a distant age separated from the here and now by many civilizations, he and King Wen had passed through a forest of giant pendulums on their way to the palace of King Zhou. Just like that, history had made a long circuit and returned to its starting place.

The science advisor said, “It’s just like we guessed long ago: The three-body system is a chaotic system. Tiny perturbations can be endlessly amplified. Its patterns of movement essentially cannot be mathematically predicted.”

Wang felt his scientific knowledge and system of thought become a blur in a single moment. In their place was unprecedented confusion. “If even an extremely simple arrangement like the three-body system is unpredictable chaos, how can we have any faith in discovering the laws of the complicated universe?”

“God is a shameless old gambler. He has abandoned us!” The speaker was Einstein, waving his violin. Wang didn’t know when he had shown up.

The secretary general slowly nodded. “Yes, God is a gambler. The only hope for Trisolaran civilization is to gamble as well.”

By now, the giant moon was rising again from the dark side of the horizon. Its large, silvery image was reflected by the surface of the pendulum weight. The light wriggled strangely, as though the weight and the moon had developed a mysterious sympathy together.

“This civilization seems to have developed to a very advanced state,” Wang said.

“Yes. We’ve mastered the energy of the atom and reached the Information Age.” The secretary general didn’t seem to be too impressed by his own words.

“Then there is hope: Even if it’s impossible to know the pattern of the suns’ movements, civilization can continue to develop until it reaches a stage where it can survive the Chaotic Eras by protecting itself against the devastating catastrophes of those eras.”

“People once thought as you do. That was one of the motivating forces pushing Trisolaran civilization to tenaciously come back again and again. But the moon made us realize the naïveté of such an idea.” The secretary general pointed to the rising giant moon. “This is probably the first time you’ve seen this moon. Actually, since it’s about a quarter of the size of our planet, it’s no longer a moon, but a companion to our world in a double planet system. It resulted from the great rip.”

“The great rip?”

“The disaster that destroyed the last civilization. Compared to the civilizations before it, they had ample warning of the disaster. Based on surviving records, the astronomers of Civilization 191 detected a frozen flying star early on.”

Wang’s heart clenched as he heard the last phrase. A frozen flying star was a terrible omen for Trisolaris. When a flying star, or a distant sun, seems to come to a complete stop against the background starfield, then the sun’s and the planet’s motion vectors are aligned. This has three possible interpretations: the sun and the planet are moving in the same direction at the same speed; the sun and the planet are moving apart from each other; and the sun and the planet are moving toward each other. Before Civilization 191, this last possibility was purely theoretical, a disaster that had never occurred. But the population’s fear of it and their vigilance did not diminish, so much so that “frozen flying star” became an extremely unlucky phrase in many Trisolaran civilizations. A single flying star remaining still was sufficient to terrify everyone.

“And then three flying stars froze simultaneously. The people of Civilization 191 stood on the ground, gazing up helplessly at the three frozen flying stars, at the three suns falling directly toward their world. A few days later, one of the suns moved to a distance where its outer gaseous layer became visible. In the middle of a tranquil night, the star suddenly turned into a blazing sun. Separated by intervals of thirty hours or so, the other two suns also appeared in quick succession. This was not a normal kind of tri-solar day. By the time the last flying star turned into a sun, the first sun had already swept past the planet at extremely close range. Right after that, the other two suns swept past Trisolaris at even closer ranges, well within the planet’s Roche limit,[31] such that the tidal forces imposed on Trisolaris by the three suns exceeded the force of the planet’s gravitational self-attraction. The first sun shook the deepest geological structure of the planet; the second sun tore open a great rift in the planet that went straight to the core; and the third sun ripped the planet into two pieces.”

The secretary general pointed at the giant moon overhead. “That’s the smaller piece. There are still ruins from Civilization 191 on it, but it’s a lifeless world. It was the most terrible disaster in the entire history of Trisolaris. After the planet was torn apart, the two irregularly shaped pieces each returned to spherical form under self-gravitation. The dense, searing planetary core material gushed to the surface, and the oceans boiled over the lava. The continents drifted over the magma like icebergs. As they collided, the ground became as soft as the ocean. Massive mountain ranges tens of thousands of meters high rose in an hour and disappeared just as quickly.

“For a while, the two ripped-apart pieces were still connected by streams of molten lava that coalesced into a space-spanning river. Then the lava cooled and turned into rings around the planets, but because of perturbations from the planets, the rings were unstable. The rocks that formed them fell back to the surface in a rain of giant stones that lasted several centuries…. Can you imagine what kind of hell that was? The ecological destruction caused by this catastrophe was the most severe in all of history. All life on the companion planet went extinct, and the mother planet almost became a lifeless waste as well. But in the end, the seeds of life managed to germinate here, and as the geology of the mother planet settled down, evolution began its tottering steps in new oceans and on new continents, until civilization reappeared for the one hundred and ninety-second time. The entire process took ninety million years.

“Trisolaris’s place in the universe is even more grim than we had imagined. What will happen the next time frozen flying stars occur? Very likely, our planet will not just skim past the edge of the sun, but will plunge into the fiery sea of the sun itself. Given enough time, this possibility will become certainty.

“This was originally just a frightening speculation, but a recent astronomical discovery has caused us to lose all hope for the fate of Trisolaris. The researchers had intended to recover the history of the formation of the stars and the planets based on signs in this stellar system. Instead, they discovered that, in the distant past, the Trisolaran stellar system had twelve planets. Yet, now only this one remains.

“There is only one explanation: The other eleven planets have all been consumed by the three suns! Our world is nothing more than the sole survivor of a Great Hunt. The fact that civilization has been reincarnated a hundred and ninety-two times is only a kind of luck. Also, after further study, we discovered the phenomenon of ‘breathing’ by the three stars.”

“The stars breathe?”

“It’s only a metaphor. You discovered the gaseous outer layer of the suns, but you didn’t know that this gaseous layer expands and contracts over cycles lasting eons, like breathing. When the gaseous layer expands, its thickness can grow by more than a dozen times. This greatly increases the diameter of the sun, like a giant mitt that can catch planets more easily. When a planet passes by a sun at close range, it will enter the sun’s gaseous layer. Friction will cause it to lose speed, and finally, like a meteor, it will fall into the blazing sea of the sun, dragging a long, fiery tail.

“The study results show that in the long history of the Trisolaran stellar system, every time the suns’ gaseous layers expanded, one or two planets were consumed. The other eleven planets all fell into a fiery sea during times when the gaseous layers were at their greatest. Right now, the gaseous layers of the three suns are in a contracted stage—otherwise our planet would have already fallen into one of them the last time they skimmed past. But scholars predict that the next expansion will occur in one thousand years.”

“We can’t stay in this terrible place anymore,” Einstein said, crouched down on the ground like an old beggar.

The secretary general nodded. “We can’t stay here any longer. The only path left for Trisolaran civilization is to gamble with the universe.”

“How?” Wang asked.

“We must leave the Trisolaran stellar system and fly into the wide open sea of stars. We must find in the galaxy a new world to emigrate to.”

Wang heard a grinding noise. He saw that the giant weight of the pendulum was being pulled up by a thin cable whose other end was attached to an elevated winch. As it rose to its highest point, a great waning crescent moon descended slowly in the sky behind it.

The secretary general solemnly announced, “Start the pendulum.”

The elevated winch released the cable tied to the pendulum, and the weight noiselessly fell along a smooth arc. Initially, it fell slowly, but then it accelerated, reaching maximum speed at the bottom of the arc. As it sliced through the air, the sound of the wind was deep and resonant. By the time the noise disappeared, the pendulum had followed the arc to its highest point on the other side, and, after pausing for a moment, began its backward swing.

Wang felt the great force generated by the movement of the pendulum, as though the ground was shaken by its swings. Unlike a pendulum in the real world, this giant pendulum’s period was not stable, but changed constantly. This was due to the continually shifting gravitational attraction of the giant moon. When the giant moon was on this side of the planet, its gravity partially canceled out the gravity of the planet, causing the pendulum to lose weight. When it was on the other side of the planet, its gravity was added to the gravity of the planet, causing the pendulum’s weight to increase, almost to the level it would have had before the great rip.

As he gazed up at the awe-inspiring swings of the Trisolaran Pendulum Monument, Wang asked himself, Does it represent the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos? Wang also thought of the pendulum as a gigantic metal fist, swinging eternally against the unfeeling universe, noiselessly shouting out Trisolaran civilization’s indomitable battle cry….

As Wang Miao’s eyes blurred with tears, he saw a line of text appear against the background of the swinging pendulum:

After logging out of Three Body, Wang felt exhausted, the same way he did after each previous session. But this time, he only rested half an hour before logging in again.

This time, against the pitch-black background, an unexpected line of text appeared:

20 Three Body: Expedition

The chilly dawn revealed a bare landscape. There was no pyramid, no United Nations Headquarters, no sign of the Pendulum Monument. Only a dark desert extended to the horizon, just as Wang had seen the first time he had logged in.

But Wang soon realized that he was wrong. What he thought were numerous stones arrayed across the desert were not stones at all, but human heads. The ground was filled with a densely packed crowd.

From where he stood on a small hill, Wang could see no end to the sea of people. He estimated the number of individuals within his view alone to be in the hundreds of millions. All the Trisolarans on the planet were probably gathered here.

The silence of hundreds of millions created a suffocating sense of strangeness. What are they waiting for? Wang looked around and noticed everyone was gazing up at the sky.

Wang lifted his face and found the starry sky had been transformed to an astonishing sight: The stars were arrayed in a square formation! However, Wang soon realized that the stars in the formation were in a synchronous orbit above the planet, moving together against the dimmer, more distant background of the Milky Way.

The stars in the formation closest to the direction of dawn were also the brightest, shining with a silver light that cast shadows on the ground. The brightness decreased as one moved away from that edge. Wang counted more than thirty stars along each edge of the formation, which meant a total of more than a thousand stars. The slow movement of the obviously artificial formation against the starry universe exuded a solemn power.

A man standing next to him nudged him lightly and spoke in a low voice, “Ah, Great Copernicus, why have you come so late? Three cycles of civilizations have passed, and you’ve missed many great enterprises.”

“What is that?” Wang asked, pointing at the formation in the sky.

“The Trisolaran Interstellar Fleet. It’s about to begin its expedition.”

“Trisolaran civilization has already achieved the capacity for interstellar flight?”

“Yes. All those magnificent ships can reach one-tenth the speed of light.”

“That is a great accomplishment, as far as I understand it, but it still seems too slow for interstellar flight.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. The key is finding the right target.”

“What’s the fleet’s destination?”

“A star with planets about four light-years away—the closest star to the Trisolaran system.”

Wang was surprised. “The closest star to us is also about four light-years away.”

“You?”

“The Earth.”

“Oh, that’s not very surprising. In most regions of the Milky Way, the distribution of stars is fairly even. It’s the result of star clusters acting under the influence of gravity. The distance between most stars is between three and six light-years.”

A loud, joyous cry erupted from the crowd. Wang looked up and saw that every star in the square formation was rapidly growing brighter. This was due to the light emitted by the ships themselves. Their combined illumination soon overwhelmed the dawn, and one thousand stars became one thousand little suns. Trisolaris was bathed in glorious daylight, and the crowd raised their hands and formed an endless prairie of uplifted arms.

The Trisolaran Fleet began to accelerate, solemnly gliding across the dome of the sky, skimming past the giant, just-risen moon’s tip, casting a dim blue glow against the moon’s mountains and plains.

The joyous cry subsided. The people of Trisolaris mutely gazed as their hope gradually shrunk in the western sky. They would not know the outcome of the launch in their lifetimes, but four or five hundred years from now, their descendants would receive the news from a new world, the beginning of a new life for Trisolaran civilization. Wang stood with them, silently gazing, until the phalanx of a thousand stars shrank into a single star, and until that star disappeared in the western night sky. Then the following text appeared: