The Three-Body Problem

Wang logs in to the game again, but this time, it looks totally different. Instead of the great palace, Wang sees what looks like the grey United Nations (UN) building; instead of stone dehydratories, the dehydratories are now all made of mirrors. Weirdest of all, there is a giant sun in the sky, yet the earth is not burning and no one is panicked. Wang realizes that what appears to be a sun is actually a moon, reflecting the light of one of the real suns. As he approaches the UN building, Wang sees an old man playing violin.

Wang realizes that the violinist is actually Einstein, and the two men begin to talk. Einstein hints at an event called “the great rip” in which the moon was created, but he cannot elaborate because it is “too painful to recall.” Einstein expresses his belief that his theory of relativity could have perfected earlier attempts to solve the three-body problem, but no one would listen to him—so now he sits here, hopelessly playing Mozart.

Wang tries to enter the UN building, but Einstein tells him that no one is inside. Instead, Wang realizes that everyone is gathered behind the building, looking out at a modernized version of the giant pendulums from King Zhou’s time. Upon his arrival, everyone greets Wang as “Copernicus, the man who crossed five eras.” But when Wang enquires about these more modern pendulums, he is upset to learn that they are actually a “tombstone” for Trisolaris.

Desperate to restore hope, Wang presents his evolutionary algorithm to the crowd—but they all laugh him off, explaining that many people have arrived at more sophisticated predictions of the suns’ movements. A scientist explains that all these predictions have proved is that the three-body problem has no useful solution, because it is endless chaos. Wang is struck by the sense that “history had made a long circuit and returned to its starting place.”

Wang notes that this civilization has evolved to such an advanced state that it should be able to protect itself against Chaotic Eras; after all, this version of Trisolaris has computers and knowledge of the atomic bomb. But the scientist explains that the moon dashed any hopes of Trisolaran survival. Civilization 191 had seen a frozen flying star early on. Though they did not know it yet, that star would herald a terrifying fact: the suns were about to collide into the planet. And indeed, soon after, the suns tore the planet in two. Though life on the mother planet of Trisolaris did eventually recover, the whole process took 90 million years. 

Worse still, scientists have realized that the Trisolaran stellar system once had 12 planets, 11 of which had been destroyed by the crashing suns. In less than 1,000 years, then, scientists calculated that Trisolaris was doomed to be swallowed by the gaseous layer of a sun. The Trisolarans feel that God has gambled with them, and that in order to survive, they too must “gamble.”

Someone starts the giant pendulum, and Wang is shocked to see that unlike on earth, this pendulum does not move regularly—the gravity of the moon pulls it every which way. Wang wonders if this movement represents “the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos.” As Wang begins to cry, a pop-up message announces that the goal of the game has changed—“the new goal is: Head for the stars; find a new home.” Wang logs off, but then he logs on again—only to find another message. This message tells him that the situation is urgent, and that the game is about to shut down forever. Even more strangely, the message announces that “Three Body will now go directly to the final scene.”