The Three-Body Problem Read online

  “Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.”

  I didn’t understand religion and had no interest in any of them, but I really couldn’t think of any prayer odder than this one. “What are you saying?” I blurted.

  Shen ignored me. She kept her eyes barely closed, her hands clasped together in front of her, as though watching her prayer rise with the incense smoke toward the Buddha. After a long while, she finally opened her eyes and turned toward me. “Go to sleep. We have to get up early.” She didn’t even look at me.

  “This ‘Lord’ you mentioned, is he part of Buddhism?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then…?”

  Shen said nothing, just hurried away. I didn’t get a chance to ask anything else. I repeated the prayer to myself over and over, and it seemed to grow even stranger. Eventually, I became frightened. I rushed over to the abbot’s room and knocked on his door.

  “What does it mean if someone prays to the Buddha to help another Lord?” I then told him the details of what I saw.

  The abbot silently looked at the book in his hand, but he was thinking about what I said, not reading. Then he said, “Please leave me for a bit. Let me think.”

  I turned and left, knowing that it was unusual. The abbot was very learned. Usually, he could answer any question about religion, history, and culture without having to think. I waited outside the door for about the time it took to smoke a cigarette, and the abbot called for me.

  “I think there’s only one possibility.” His expression was grim.

  “What? What could it be? Could there be some religion whose god needs worshippers to pray to the gods of other religions to save it?”

  “Her Lord really exists.”

  This response confused me. “Then … the Buddha doesn’t exist?” As soon as I said it I realized how rude it sounded. I apologized.

  The abbot slowly waved his hand at me. “I told you, the two of us can’t talk about Buddhism. The existence of the Buddha is a kind of existence that you cannot comprehend. But the Lord she’s talking about exists in a way that you can understand.… I can say no more concerning this matter. All I can do is counsel you against leaving with her.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just a feeling. I feel that behind her are things that you and I cannot imagine.”

  I left the abbot’s room and walked through the temple toward my room. The night had a full moon. I looked up at it and thought it a silvery, strange eye that gazed down at me, the light suffused with an eerie chill.

  The next day, I did leave with Shen—I couldn’t stay in the temple the rest of my life, after all. But I didn’t think that over the next few years, I would live the life of my dreams. Shen fulfilled her promise. I had a minicomputer and a comfortable environment. I even left the country several times to use supercomputers—not time-sharing, but having the whole CPU to myself. She had a lot of money, though I didn’t know where it came from.

  Later, we got married. There wasn’t much love or passion, just mutual convenience. We both had things we wanted to get done. As for me, the few years after that could be described as a single day. My time passed peacefully. In her house, I was taken care of and did not have to worry about food or clothing, so that I could devote myself to the study of the three-body problem. Shen never interfered with my life. The garage had a car that I could drive anywhere. I’m sure she wouldn’t even have minded if I brought another woman home. She only paid attention to my research, and the only thing we talked about day to day was the three-body problem.

  “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.

  Compared with the general state of the field, my progress could be said to be a breakthrough. Some years ago, Richard Montgomery of UCSC and Alain Chenciner of Université Paris Diderot discovered another stable, periodic solution to the three-body problem.30 Under appropriate initial conditions, the three bodies will chase each other around a fixed figure-eight curve. After that, everyone was keen to find such special stable configurations, and every discovery was greeted with joy. Only three or four such configurations have been found so far.

  But my evolutionary algorithm has already discovered more than a hundred stable configurations. Drawings of their orbits would fill a gallery with postmodern art, but that’s not my goal. The real solution to the three-body problem is to build a mathematical model so that, given any initial configuration with known vectors, the model can predict all subsequent motion of the three-body system. This is also what Shen Yufei craves.

  But my peaceful life ended yesterday.

  * * *

  “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 h
as 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.