The Three-Body Problem

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? […] 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.”

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 to that change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: every morning at 11, food arrives. On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at 11, food doesn't arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

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.”

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 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 […] 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.

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?

Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape. […] To be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in this 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 kids’ college, and handle the endless stream of cases […] You think that's not enough for me to worry about? You think I've got the energy to gaze at stars and philosophize?

“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.

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 […] 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. It's hard to predict the future. I live my life day to day.

“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 observations,” 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!”

Below them, a magnificent phalanx of thirty million Qin shoulders 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 30 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.

“What is your impression of the Aztecs?”

“Dark and bloody,” the author said. “Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fire 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 are 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 would be good news for the terminally ill human race.”

“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.”

“Who was that young woman’s mother?” Wang asked.

Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”

If I tell you more, you really won't be able to sleep. Forget it. What's the point of worrying? We should learn to be as philosophical as Wei Cheng and Shi Qiang. Just do the best within your responsibility. Let's go drinking and then go back to sleep like good bugs.

The second time I came to Panama was in 1999, to attend the ceremony for the handover of the canal to Panama. Oddly, by the time we got to the Authority’s building, the Stars and Stripes were already gone. Supposedly the US government had requested that the flag be lowered a day early to avoid the embarrassment of lowering the flag in front of a crowd…Back then, I thought I was witnessing history. But now that seems so insignificant.

Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it…this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They so proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans.