The Three-Body Problem

by Liu Cixin

  One winter, Ye received an invitation from a not-very-prominent university in Western Europe to be a visiting scholar for half a year. After she landed at Heathrow for her interview, a young man came to meet her. They didn’t leave the airport, but instead turned back to the landing strip. There, he escorted her onto a helicopter.

  As the helicopter roared into the foggy air over England, time seemed to rewind and Ye experienced déjà vu. Many years ago, when she first rode in a helicopter, her life was transformed. Where would fate bring her now?

  “We’re going to the Second Red Coast Base.”

  The helicopter passed the coastline and continued toward the heart of the Atlantic. After half an hour, the helicopter descended toward a huge ship in the ocean. As soon as Ye saw the ship, she thought of Radar Peak. Only now did she realize that the shape of the peak did resemble a giant ship. The Atlantic appeared like the forest of the Greater Khingan Mountains, but the thing that reminded her most of Red Coast Base was the huge parabolic antenna erected in the middle of the ship, which resembled a round sail. The ship was modified from a sixty-thousand-ton oil tanker, like a floating steel island. Evans had built his base on a ship—maybe it was so that it would always be at the best position for transmission and reception, or maybe it was to hide from detection. Later, she learned that the ship was called Judgment Day.

  Ye stepped off the helicopter and heard a familiar howl. It was caused by the giant antenna slicing through the wind over the sea. The sound again drew her thoughts to the past. On the broad deck below the antenna, about two thousand people stood in a dense crowd.

  Evans walked up to her and solemnly said, “Using the frequency and coordinates you provided, we received a message from Trisolaris. We’ve confirmed everything you told me.”

  Ye nodded calmly.

  “The great Trisolaran Fleet has already set sail. Their target is this solar system, and they will arrive in four hundred and fifty years.”

  Ye remained calm. Nothing could surprise her anymore.

  Evans pointed to the crowd behind him. “You’re looking at the first members of the Earth-Trisolaris Organization. Our ideal is to invite Trisolaran civilization to reform human civilization, to curb human madness and evil, so that the Earth can once again become a harmonious, prosperous, sinless world. More and more people identify with our ideal, and our organization is growing rapidly. We have members all over the world.”

  “What can I do?” Ye asked in a soft voice.

  “You will become the commander in chief of the Earth-Trisolaris Movement. This is the wish of all ETO fighters.”

  Ye remained silent for a few seconds. Then she nodded slowly. “I’ll do my best.”

  Evans raised a fist and shouted at the crowd, “Eliminate human tyranny!”

  Accompanied by the sound of crashing waves and the wind howling against the antenna, the ETO fighters shouted as one, “The world belongs to Trisolaris!”

  This was the day that the Earth-Trisolaris Movement formally began.

  29

  The Earth-Trisolaris Movement

  The most surprising aspect of the Earth-Trisolaris Movement was that so many people had abandoned all hope in human civilization, hated and were willing to betray their own species, and even cherished as their highest ideal the elimination of the entire human race, including themselves and their children.

  The ETO was called an organization of spiritual nobles. Most members came from the highly educated classes, and many were elites of the political and financial spheres. The ETO had once tried to develop membership among the common people, but these efforts all failed. The ETO concluded that the common people did not seem to have the comprehensive and deep understanding of the highly educated about the dark side of humanity. More importantly, because their thoughts were not as deeply influenced by modern science and philosophy, they still felt an overwhelming, instinctual identification with their own species. To betray the human race as a whole was unimaginable for them. But intellectual elites were different: Most of them had already begun to consider issues from a perspective outside the human race. Human civilization had finally given birth to a strong force of alienation.

  As astounding as the speed of the ETO’s growth had been, the number of members did not tell the whole story of the ETO’s strength. Because most of its members had high social status, they held a lot of power and influence.

  As commander in chief of the ETO rebels, Ye was only their spiritual leader. She did not participate in the details of the organization’s operation, didn’t know how the ETO grew so large, and wasn’t even aware of the exact number of members.

  In order to grow fast, the organization operated semi-openly, but the governments of the world never paid much attention to the ETO. The ETO knew that they would be protected by the governments’ conservatism and lack of imagination. In those organs wielding the powers of the state, no one took the ETO’s proclamations seriously, thinking that they were like other extremists who spewed nonsense. And because of its members’ social status, governments always treated it carefully. By the time it was recognized as a threat, the rebels were already everywhere. It was only when the ETO began to develop an armed force that some national security organs began to notice it and realized how unusual it was. Consequently, it was only within the last two years that they had begun to attack the ETO effectively.

  The members of the ETO were not of a single mind. Within the organization were complicated factions and divisions of opinion. Mainly, they fell into two factions.

  The Adventist group was the purest, most fundamentalist strand of the ETO, comprised mainly of believers in Evans’s Pan-Species Communism. They had completely given up hope in human nature. This despair began with the mass extinctions of the Earth’s species caused by modern civilization. Later, other Adventists based their hatred of the human race on other foundations, not limited to issues such as the environment or warfare. Some raised their hatred to very abstract, philosophical levels. Unlike how they would be imagined later, most of them were realists, and did not place too much hope in the alien civilization they served either. Their betrayal was based only on their despair and hatred of the human race. Mike Evans gave the Adventists their motto: We don’t know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.

  The Redemptionists didn’t appear until long after the ETO’s founding. This group’s nature was a religious organization, and the members were believers in the Trisolaran faith.

  A civilization outside the human race would doubtlessly greatly attract the highly educated classes, and it was easy for them to develop many beautiful fantasies about such a civilization. The human race was a naïve species, and the attraction posed by a more advanced alien civilization was almost irresistible. To make an imperfect analogy: Human civilization was like a young, unworldly person walking alone across the desert of the universe, who has found out about the existence of a potential lover. Though the person could not see the potential lover’s face or figure, the knowledge that the other person existed somewhere in the distance created lovely fantasies about the potential lover that spread like wildfire. Gradually, as fantasies about that distant civilization grew more and more elaborate, the Redemptionists developed spiritual feelings toward Trisolaran civilization. Alpha Centauri became Mount Olympus in space, the dwelling place of the gods; and so the Trisolaran religion—which really had nothing to do with religion on Trisolaris—was born. Unlike other human religions, they worshipped something that truly existed. Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer.

  The main path of spreading Trisolaran culture to society was the Three Body game. The ETO invested enormous effort to develop this massive piece of software. The initial goals were twofold: one, to proselytize the Trisolaran religion; and two, to allow the tentacles of the ETO to spread from the highly educated intelligentsia to the lower social strata, and recruit younger ETO m
embers from the middle and lower classes.

  Using a shell that drew elements from human society and history, the game explained the culture and history of Trisolaris, thus avoiding alienating beginners. Once a player had advanced to a certain level and had begun to appreciate Trisolaran civilization, the ETO would establish contact, examine the player’s sympathies, and finally recruit those who passed the tests to be members of the ETO. But Three Body didn’t attract much notice, because the game required too much background knowledge and in-depth thinking, and most young players didn’t have the patience or skill to discover the shocking truth beneath its apparently common surface. Those who were attracted by it were still mostly intellectuals.

  Most of those who became Redemptionists got to know Trisolaran civilization through the Three Body game, and so Three Body could be said to be the cradle of the Redemptionists.

  While the Redemptionists developed religious feelings toward Trisolaran civilization, they were also not as extreme as the Adventists in their attitude toward human civilization. Their ultimate ideal was to save the Lord. In order to allow the Lord to continue to exist, they were willing to sacrifice the human world to some degree. But most of them believed that the ideal solution would be to find a way to allow the Lord to continue to live in the Trisolaris stellar system and avoid the invasion of the Earth. Naïvely, they believed that solving the three-body problem would achieve this goal, saving both Trisolaris and the Earth. Admittedly, perhaps this thought wasn’t all that naïve. Trisolaran civilization itself had thought so through many eons. The effort to solve the three-body problem was a thread that ran through several hundreds of cycles of Trisolaran civilization. Most Redemptionists with some in-depth math and physics knowledge had attempted the three-body problem, and even after knowing that the problem was mathematically unsolvable as posed, the effort did not cease, because solving the three-body problem had become a religious ritual of their faith. Even though the Redemptionists had many first-class physicists and mathematicians, research in this area never yielded any important results. It took someone like Wei Cheng, a prodigy who had no connection to the ETO or the Trisolaran faith, to accidentally come up with a breakthrough in which the Redemptionists placed much hope.

  The Adventists and the Redemptionists were always in sharp conflict. The Adventists believed that the Redemptionists were the greatest threat to the ETO. This view wasn’t without reason: It was only through some Redemptionists who had a sense of duty that the governments of the world gradually came to understand the shocking background of the ETO rebels. The two factions were of approximately equal strength within the organization, and the armed forces of both had developed to the point of starting a civil war. Ye Wenjie used her authority and reputation to try to patch over the division between the two, but the result was never ideal.

  As the ETO movement continued to develop, a third faction appeared: the Survivors. After confirming the existence of the alien invasion fleet, surviving that war became a most natural human desire. Of course, that war wouldn’t occur for another 450 years, and had nothing to do with those living today, but many people hoped that if humans did lose, at least their descendants who were alive in four and a half centuries could live on. Serving the Trisolaran invaders would clearly help with this goal. Compared to the other two factions, the Survivors tended to come from the lower social classes, and most were from the East, and especially from China. Their numbers were still small, but they were growing rapidly. As Trisolaran culture continued to spread, they would become a force that could not be ignored in the future.

  The ETO members’ alienation developed variously from the faults of human civilization itself, the yearning and adoration for a more advanced civilization, and the strong desire for one’s descendants to survive that final war. These three powerful motives propelled the ETO movement to develop rapidly.

  By then, the extraterrestrial civilization was still in the depths of space, more than four light-years away, separated from the human world by a long journey of four and a half centuries. The only thing they had sent to the Earth was a radio transmission.

  Bill Mathers’s “contact as symbol” theory thus received chillingly perfect confirmation.

  30

  Two Protons

  INTERROGATOR: We will now begin today’s investigation. We hope you’ll cooperate again as you did last time.

  YE WENJIE: You already know everything I know. In fact, by now there are many things that I’d like to learn from you.

  INTERROGATOR: I don’t think you’ve told us everything. First, we want to know this: Among the messages that Trisolaris sent to Earth, what were the contents of those portions that the Adventists intercepted and withheld?

  YE: I can’t tell you. They have a tight organization. I only know that they did withhold some messages.

  INTERROGATOR: Change of subject. After the Adventists monopolized communications with Trisolaris, did you build a third Red Coast Base?

  YE: I did have such a plan. But we only built a receiver, and then construction stopped. The equipment and the base were all dismantled.

  INTERROGATOR: Why?

  YE: Because there were no more messages coming from Alpha Centauri. There was nothing on any frequency. I think you’ve already confirmed this.

  INTERROGATOR: Yes. In other words—at least as of four years ago—Trisolaris decided to terminate all communications with Earth. This makes the messages intercepted by the Adventists even more important.

  YE: True. But there’s really nothing more I can tell you about them.

  INTERROGATOR: (pausing a few seconds) Then let’s find some topic where you can tell me more. Mike Evans lied to you, is that right?

  YE: You could put it that way. He never revealed to me the thoughts buried deep in his heart, and only expressed his sense of duty toward the other species on this planet. I never realized that this sense of duty had caused his hatred of human civilization to develop to such extremes that he could make the destruction of the human race his ultimate ideal.

  INTERROGATOR: Let’s look at the current composition of the ETO. The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival. None of these is in line with your original ideal of using the alien civilization as a way to reform humanity.

  YE: I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.

  INTERROGATOR: You had a plan to eliminate the Adventists from within the ETO, and you even began to implement this plan. But Judgment Day is the core base and command center for the Adventists, and Mike Evans and other Adventist leaders usually reside there. Why didn’t you attack the ship first? Most of the armed forces of the Redemptionists are loyal to you, and you should have enough firepower to sink it or capture it.

  YE: It’s because of the messages from the Lord that they intercepted. All those messages are stored in the Second Red Coast Base, on some computer on Judgment Day. If we attacked that ship, the Adventists could erase all the messages when they realized that loss was imminent. Those messages are too important for us to risk losing them. For Redemptionists, losing those messages would be as if Christians lost the Bible or Muslims lost the Koran. I think you are faced with the same problem. The Adventists are holding the Lord’s messages hostage, and that is why Judgment Day has remained unmolested so far.

  INTERROGATOR: Do you have any advice for us?

  YE: No.

  INTERROGATOR: You also call Trisolaris your “Lord.” Does this mean that you’ve also developed religious feelings for Trisolaris like the Redemptionists? Are you already a follower of the Trisolaran faith?

  YE: Not at all. It’s just a habit.… I do not wish to discuss it further.

  INTERROGATOR: Let’s get back to those intercepted messages. Maybe you don’t know the exact contents, but surely you must have heard rumors of some of the details?

  YE: Probably only basele
ss rumors.

  INTERROGATOR: Such as?

  YE:…

  INTERROGATOR: Did Trisolaris transfer certain technologies to the Adventists, technologies more advanced than current human technology?

  YE: Not likely. Because such technology would risk falling into your hands.

  INTERROGATOR: One last question, and also the most important: Until now, has Trisolaris sent only radio waves to the Earth?

  YE: Almost true.

  INTERROGATOR: Almost?

  YE: The current Trisolaran civilization is capable of space travel at one-tenth the speed of light. This technology leap occurred a few decades ago in Earth years. Before that point, their maximum speed had hovered around one-thousandth the speed of light. The tiny probes that they sent to the Earth have not even completed one-hundredth of the journey between there and here.

  INTERROGATOR: Then I have a question. If the Trisolaran Fleet that had been launched is capable of flight at one-tenth the speed of light, it should take only forty years to reach the solar system. So why do you say that it would take more than four hundred years?

  YE: Here’s the thing. The Trisolaran Interstellar Fleet is composed of incredibly massive spaceships. Accelerating them is a slow process. One-tenth the speed of light is only their maximum speed, but they cannot cruise at this speed for long before decelerating as they approach the Earth. Also, the source of propulsion for the Trisolaran ships is matter-antimatter annihilation. In front of each ship is a large magnetic field shaped like a funnel to collect antimatter particles from space. This collection process is slow, and only after a long wait can it gather enough antimatter to allow the ship to accelerate for a brief period. Thus, the fleet’s acceleration occurs in spurts, interspersed by long periods of coasting to collect fuel. This is why the time it takes the Trisolaran Fleet to reach the solar system is ten times longer than the flight time of a small probe.