The Three-Body Problem Read online

  “Go!”

  Wang shrugged helplessly. He managed to pocket the black ball a third time.

  They moved the table two more times: once next to the door of the living room, and finally back to the original location. Ding set up the two balls twice more, and Wang twice more made his shot. By now both were slightly winded.

  “Good, that’s the conclusion of the experiment. Let’s analyze the results.” Ding lit a cigarette before continuing, “We ran the same experiment five times. Four of the experiments differed in both location and time. Two of the experiments were at the same location but different times. Aren’t you shocked by the results?” He opened his arms exaggeratedly. “Five times! Every colliding experiment yielded the exact same result!”

  “What are you trying to say?” Wang asked, gasping.

  “Can you explain this incredible result? Please use the language of physics.”

  “All right … During these five experiments, the mass of the two balls never changed. In terms of their locations, as long as we’re using the frame of reference of the tabletop, there was also no change. The velocity of the white ball striking the black ball also remained basically the same throughout. Thus, the transfer of momentum between the two balls didn’t change. Therefore, in all five experiments, the result was the black ball being driven into the pocket.”

  Ding picked up a bottle of brandy and two dirty glasses from the floor. He filled both and handed one to Wang. Wang declined.

  “Come on, let’s celebrate. We’ve discovered a great principle of nature: The laws of physics are invariant across space and time. All the physical laws of human history, from Archimedes’ principle to string theory, and all the scientific discoveries and intellectual fruits of our species are the by-products of this great law. Compared to us two theoreticians, Einstein and Hawking are mere applied engineers.”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “Imagine another set of results. The first time, the white ball drove the black ball into the pocket. The second time, the black ball bounced away. The third time, the black ball flew onto the ceiling. The fourth time, the black ball shot around the room like a frightened sparrow, finally taking refuge in your jacket pocket. The fifth time, the black ball flew away at nearly the speed of light, breaking the edge of the pool table, shooting through the wall, and leaving the Earth and the Solar System, just like Asimov once described.13 What would you think then?”

  Ding watched Wang. After a long silence, Wang finally said, “This actually happened. Am I right?”

  Ding drained both glasses in his hands. He stared at the pool table as though looking at a demon. “Yes. It happened. In the last few years, we finally obtained the necessary equipment for experimentally testing fundamental theories. Three expensive ‘pool tables’ have been constructed: one in North America, another in Europe, and the third you are familiar with, in Liangxiang. Your Nanotechnology Research Center earned a lot of money from it.

  “These high-energy particle accelerators raised the amount of energy available for colliding particles by an order of magnitude, to a level never before achieved by the human race. Yet, with the new equipment, the same particles, the same energy levels, and the same experimental parameters would yield different results. Not only would the results vary if different accelerators were used, but even with the same accelerator, experiments performed at different times would give different results. Physicists panicked. They repeated the ultra-high-energy collision experiments again and again using the same conditions, but every time the result was different, and there seemed to be no pattern.”

  “What does this mean?” Wang asked. When he saw Ding staring at him without speaking, he added, “Oh, I’m in nanotech, and I also work with microscale structures. But that’s orders of magnitude larger than the scale at which you do your work. Please educate me.”

  “It means that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think you can deduce the rest. Even General Chang figured it out. He’s really a smart man.”

  Wang looked outside the window thoughtfully. The lights of the city were so bright that the stars of the night sky were drowned out.

  “It means that laws of physics that could be applied anywhere in the universe do not exist, which means that physics … also does not exist.” Wang turned back from the window.

  “‘I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice,’” Ding said. “That was the second half of her note. You just stumbled on the first half. Now can you understand her? At least a little?”

  Wang picked up the white ball. He caressed it for a bit and put it back down. “For someone exploring the forefront of theory, that would indeed be a catastrophe.”

  “To accomplish something in theoretical physics requires one to have almost religious faith. It’s easy to be led to the abyss.”

  As they said their farewells, Ding gave Wang an address. “If you have the time, please visit Yang Dong’s mother. She and her mother always lived together, and she was the entirety of her mother’s life. Now the old woman is all alone.”

  “Ding, you clearly know a lot more than I do. Can you tell me more? You really believe that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space?”

  “I don’t know anything.” Ding stared into Wang’s eyes for a long time. Finally, he said, “But that is the question.”

  Wang knew that he was only finishing what the British colonel had begun to say: To be, or not to be: that is the question.

  6

  The Shooter and the Farmer

  The next day was the start of the weekend. Wang got up early and left on his bicycle. As a hobby photographer, his favorite subjects were wildernesses free of human presence. But now that he was middle-aged, he no longer had the energy to engage in such indulgent travel and only shot city scenes.

  Consciously or subconsciously, he usually chose corners of the city that held some aspect of the wild: a dried lakebed in a park, the freshly turned soil of a construction site, a weed struggling out of cracks in cement. In order to eliminate the busy colors of the city in the background, he only used black-and-white film. Unexpectedly, he had developed his own style and had gained some notice. His works had been selected for two exhibitions, and he was a member of the Photographers Association. Every time he went out to take pictures, he would ride his bike and wander around the city in search of inspiration and compositions that caught his fancy. Often he would be out all day.

  Today, Wang felt strange. His photography style tended toward the classical, calm and dignified. But today he could not seem to get in the mood necessary for such compositions. In his mind, the city, as it awoke from its slumber, seemed to be built on quicksand. The stability was illusory. All night long, he had dreamt of those two billiard balls. They flew around a dark space without any pattern, the black one disappearing against the black background and only revealing its existence occasionally when it obscured the white ball.

  Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?

  Without realizing it, he found himself at the foot of the newly completed China Central Television building. He stopped at the side of the road and lifted his head to gaze up at this gigantic A-shaped tower, trying to recapture the feeling of stability. His gaze followed the sharp tip of the building, gleaming in the morning sunlight, pointing toward the blue, bottomless depths of the sky. Two words suddenly floated into his consciousness: “shooter” and “farmer.”

  When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe.
<
br />   In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.

  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 without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

  Wang felt the road beneath his feet shift like quicksand. The A-shaped building seemed to wobble and sway. He quickly brought his gaze back to the street.

  * * *

  To get rid of the anxiety, Wang forced himself to finish a roll of film. He returned home before lunch. His wife had taken their son out and wouldn’t be back for a while. Usually, Wang would rush to develop the film, but today he wasn’t in the mood. After a quick and simple lunch, he went to take a nap. Because he hadn’t slept well the night before, by the time he woke up it was almost five. Finally remembering the roll of film he had shot, he went into the cramped darkroom he had converted from a closet.

  The film developed. Wang began to look through the negatives to see if any shots were worth printing, but he saw something strange in the very first image. The shot was of a small lawn outside a large shopping center. The center of the negative held a line of tiny white marks, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be numbers: 1200:00:00.

  The second picture also had numbers: 1199:49:33, as did the third: 1199:40:18.

  In fact, every picture in the roll had such numbers, until the thirty-sixth (and last) image: 1194:16:37.

  Wang’s first thought was that something was wrong with the film. The camera he had used was a 1988 Leica M2—entirely mechanical, which made it impossible for it to add a date stamp. Given the excellent lens and refined mechanical operation, it was considered a great professional camera even in this digital age.

  After reexamining the negatives, Wang discovered another strange thing about the numbers: They seemed to adapt to the background. If the background was black, the numbers were white, and vice versa. The shift seemed designed to maximize the numbers’ contrast for visibility. By the time Wang saw the sixteenth negative, his heart was beating faster, and a chill crept up his spine.

  This shot was of a dead tree against an old wall. The wall was mottled, showing a pattern of alternating black and white patches on the negative. Given this background, either white or black numbers would have been hard to read. But in the picture, the numbers arranged themselves vertically to fit along the curve of the tree trunk, allowing the white numbers to show up against the dark coloring of the dead tree like a crawling snake.

  Wang began to analyze the mathematical pattern in the numbers. At first he thought it was some kind of assigned numbering, but the difference between the numbers wasn’t constant. He then guessed that the numbers represented time in the form of hours, minutes, and seconds. He took out his shooting diary, in which he recorded the exact time he took each picture down to the minute, and discovered the difference between two successive numbers on the photographs corresponded to the difference in time between when they were taken.

  A countdown.

  The countdown began with 1,200 hours. And now there were about 1,194 hours left, just under 50 days.

  Now? No, at the moment I took the last photograph. Is the countdown still proceeding?

  Wang walked out of the darkroom, loaded a new roll of film in the Leica, and began to snap random shots. He even walked onto the balcony for a few outdoor shots. Afterward, he took out the film and went back into the darkroom. In the developed roll, the numbers again appeared on every negative like ghosts. The first one was marked 1187:27:39. The difference matched the passage of time between the last shot of the last roll and the first shot of this roll. After that, the number decreased by three or four seconds in each image: 1187:27:35, 1187:27:31, 1187:27:27, 1187:27:24 … just like the intervals between the quick shots he had taken.

  The countdown continued.

  Wang again loaded a new roll of film. He snapped off the shots rapidly, even taking a few with the lens cap on. As he took out the roll of film, his wife and son returned. Before he went into the darkroom to develop the film, he loaded another roll of film in the Leica and handed it to his wife. “Here, finish the roll for me.”

  “What am I supposed to shoot?” His wife looked at him, amazed. He never allowed anyone to touch his camera, though she and their son had no interest in doing so either. In their eyes, it was a boring antique that cost more than twenty thousand yuan.

  “Doesn’t matter. Just shoot whatever you want.” Wang stuffed the camera into her hands and ducked into the darkroom.

  “All right. Dou Dou, why don’t I take some pictures of you?” His wife aimed the camera at their son.

  Wang’s mind suddenly filled with the imagined sight of the ghostlike figures appearing over his son’s face like a hangman’s noose. He shuddered. “No, don’t do that. Shoot something else.”

  The shutter clicked, and his wife had taken her first shot. “Why can’t I press it again?” she asked. Wang taught her how to wind the film to advance it. “Like that. You have to do it after every shot.” Then he ducked back into the darkroom.

  “So complicated!” His wife, a doctor, couldn’t understand why anyone would use such expensive but outdated equipment when ten- or even twenty-megapixel digital cameras were common. And he even used black-and-white film.

  After the third roll of film developed, Wang held it up against the red light. He saw that the ghostlike countdown continued. The numbers showed up clearly on every randomly shot picture, including the few he had taken with the lens cap on: 1187:19:06, 1187:19:03, 1187:18:59, 1187:18:56 …

  His wife knocked on the darkroom door and told him she was finished with the roll. Wang opened the door and took the camera from her. As he took out the roll, his hands trembled. Ignoring his wife’s concerned look, he took the film back into the darkroom and shut the door. He worked fast and clumsily, spilling developer and fixer all over the ground. Soon the images were developed. He closed his eyes, silently praying, Please don’t appear. No matter what, please don’t appear now. Don’t make it my turn.…

  He examined the wet film with a magnifying glass. There was no countdown. The negatives held only the interior shots his wife had taken. She had used a slow shutter speed, and her amateurish operation left all the scenes blurry. But Wang thought these were the most enjoyable pictures he had ever seen.

  Wang came out of the darkroom and let out a held breath. He was covered in sweat. His wife was in the kitchen cooking, and his son was playing in his room. He sat on the sofa and thought the matter over more rationally.

  First, the numbers, which precisely recorded the passage of time between shots and which showed signs of intelligence, could not possibly have been preprinted on the film. Something exposed them onto the film. But what? Did the camera have a malfunction? Had some mechanism been installed in the camera without his knowledge? He took off the lens and disassembled the camera. He examined the interior with a magnifying glass and checked every dustless component without discovering anything out of place. Then, considering that the numbers showed up even in the shots taken with the lens cap on, he realized the most likely light source was some kind of penetrating ray. But how was this technologically possible? Where was the source of the rays? How could they have been aimed?

  At least given current technology, such power would be supernatural.

  In order to see if the ghostly countdown had
disappeared, Wang loaded another roll into the Leica, and again began to shoot randomly. When this roll was developed, Wang’s short-lived calm was again shattered. He felt himself pushed to the precipice of madness. The countdown had returned. Based on the numbers, it had never stopped, just failed to display on the roll shot by his wife.

  1186:34:13, 1186:34:02, 1186:33:46, 1186:33:35 …

  Wang rushed out of the darkroom and continued through the door of the apartment. He knocked loudly on the door of his neighbor, retired Professor Zhang.

  “Professor Zhang, do you have a camera? Not a digital one, but one that takes film!”

  “A professional photographer like you wants to borrow my camera? What happened to your expensive one? I have only digital point-and-shoots. Are you okay? Your face looks so pale.”

  “Please, let me borrow it.”

  Zhang returned with a common Kodak digital camera. “Here you go. You can just delete the few pictures already on there.”

  “Thank you!” Wang seized the camera and rushed back home. He actually had three more film cameras and a digital one, but Wang thought it better to borrow a camera from someone else. He looked at his own camera lying on the sofa and the few rolls of film, paused in thought, and decided to reload the Leica with new film. He handed the borrowed digital camera to his wife, who was setting out dinner.

  “Quick! Shoot another few pictures, like before.”

  “What are you doing? Look at your face! What’s happening?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Shoot!”

  She put down the dishes and came over to him, her eyes filled with both worry and fright.

  Wang stuffed the Kodak into the hands of his six-year-old son, who was about to start eating dinner. “Dou Dou, come help Daddy. Push this button. Right, like that. That’s one shot. Push it again. That’s another shot. Keep on shooting like that. You can take pictures of anything you want.”

  The boy learned quickly. He was very interested and made rapid shots. Wang turned around and picked up the Leica from the couch, and began to shoot as well. The father and son kept on pressing the shutters as though they were mad. His wife, not knowing what to do as the flashes went off around her, began to cry.