The Three-Body Problem

An interrogator asks Ye Wenjie a series of questions about some murders she is said to have committed. Ye confesses to the crimes, which happened on October 21, 1979; she explains that she was motivated to kill Commissar Lei and her husband Yang Weining upon realizing that Lei, too, had gotten the message from the Trisolarans.

Though Lei had read the aliens’ message—and had discovered Ye’s attempt to keep the message secret—he did not know that Ye had already replied to it. Lei told Ye that he wanted to protect his friend Yang and the child Ye was pregnant with, so he did not want to prosecute her. But Ye saw through this ruse—really, Lei just wanted to be the first person to discover extraterrestrial life.

Ye was determined to keep her secret safe. To do so, she decided to tamper with one of the wires for Radar Peak’s signal receiver. When the receiver stopped working, the base technician assumed incorrectly that it was an issue with the part of the wire hanging over Radar Peak. The base technician reported the error to his superiors. As Ye had predicted, Lei, wanting to prove himself a good comrade, volunteered to take a look at the part of the wire that dangled dangerously over the cliff.

Just before Lei could check the dangling wire for defects, Yang showed up and offered to help him. Yang and Lei put on their harnesses and, using the base’s rope, climbed over the edge of the cliff. Seeing no way to save Yang while killing Lei, Ye cut the rope, sending both men to their deaths. Ye tells the investigator that in the moment of the murders, she felt only calm, even when she saw the water beneath Radar Peak turn red with her husband’s blood.