Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem

“What happens at the end of the countdown?” Wang asked.

“I don’t know.” She hung up.

What can it be? Maybe my own death, like Yang Dong’s.

Or maybe it will be a disaster like the great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean more than a decade ago. No one will connect it to my nanotech research. 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?

Or maybe it signals the end of the whole world. In this perverse world, that would be a relief.

One thing was certain. No matter what was at the end of the countdown, in the remaining one thousand or so hours, the possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons, until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.

Wang ducked back into the car and left the planetarium. Just before dawn, the roads were relatively empty. But he didn’t dare to drive too fast, feeling that the faster the car moved, the faster the countdown would go. When a glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky, he parked and walked around aimlessly. His mind was empty of thoughts: Only the countdown pulsed against the dim red background of cosmic radiation. He seemed to have turned into nothing but a simple timer, a bell that tolled for he knew not whom.

The sky brightened. He was tired, so he sat down on a bench.

When he lifted his head to see where his subconscious had brought him, he shivered.

He sat in front of St. Joseph’s Church at Wangfujing. In the pale white light of dawn, the church’s Romanesque vaults appeared as three giant fingers pointing out something in space for him.

As Wang got up to leave, he was held back by a snippet of hymnal music. It wasn’t Sunday, so it was likely a choir rehearsal. The song was “Come, Gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove.” As he listened to the solemn, sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe had shrunk until it was the size of an empty church. The domed ceiling was hidden by the flashing red light of the background radiation, and he was an ant crawling through the cracks in the floor. He felt a giant, invisible hand caressing his trembling heart, and he was once again a helpless babe. Something deep in his mind that had once held him up softened like wax and collapsed. He covered his eyes and began to cry.

Wang’s cries were interrupted by laughter. “Hahaha, another one bites the dust!”

He turned around.

Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.

Shi sat down next to Wang and handed him his car keys. “You parked right at the intersection at Dongdan. If I had arrived just a minute later, the traffic cops would have had it towed.”

Da Shi, if I had known you were following me, I would have been comforted, Wang thought, switching to Shi Qiang’s familiar nickname in his mind, though self-respect made him hold back the words. He accepted a cigarette from Da Shi, lit it, and took his first drag since he quit several years ago.

“So how’s it going, buddy? Finding it hard to bear? I said you couldn’t handle it. And you insisted on playing the tough guy.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Wang took several more deep puffs.

“Your problem is, you understand too well…. Fine, let’s go grab a bite.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then we’ll go drinking! My treat.”

Wang got into Da Shi’s car and they drove to a small restaurant nearby. It was still early, and the place was deserted.

“Two orders of quick-fried tripe, and a bottle of er guo tou !” [22] Translator’s Note: Er guo tou is a distilled liquor made from sorghum, sometimes called “Chinese vodka.” Da Shi shouted, without even looking up. He was obviously a regular here.

As he stared at the two plates filled with black slices of tripe, Wang’s empty stomach began to churn, and he thought he was going to be sick. Da Shi ordered him some warm soymilk and fried pancakes, and Wang forced himself to eat some.

Then they drank shots of er guo tou . He began to feel lightheaded, and his tongue loosened. Gradually, he recounted the events of the last three days to Da Shi, even though he knew that Da Shi probably knew everything already—maybe Da Shi even knew more than he did.

“You’re saying that the universe was… winking at you?” Da Shi asked, as he slurped down strips of tripe like noodles.

“That’s a very appropriate metaphor.”

“Bullshit.”

“Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.”

“More bullshit. Come, drink!”

Wang finished another shot. Now the world was spinning around him, and only the tripe-chomping Shi Qiang across from him remained stable. He said, “Da Shi, have you ever… considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does the universe go? Et cetera.”

“Nope.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“You must see the stars. Aren’t you awed and curious?”

“I never look at the sky at night.”

“How is that possible? I thought you often worked the night shift?”

“Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape.”

“We really have nothing to say to each other. All right. Drink!”

“To be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in the 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 kid’s college, and handle the endless stream of cases…. I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass. Naturally, I don’t know how to make my bosses like me. Years after being discharged from the army, my career is going nowhere. If I weren’t pretty good at my job, I would have been kicked out a long time ago…. You think that’s not enough for me to worry about? You think I’ve got the energy to gaze at stars and philosophize?”

“You’re right. All right, drink up!”

“But, I did indeed invent an ultimate rule.”

“Tell me.”

“Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”

“What… what kind of crappy rule is that?”

“I’m saying that there’s always someone behind things that don’t seem to have an explanation.”

“If you had even basic knowledge of science, you’d know it’s impossible for any force to accomplish the things I experienced. Especially that last one. To manipulate things at the scale of the universe—not only can you not explain it with our current science, I couldn’t even imagine how to explain it outside of science. It’s more than supernatural. It’s super-I-don’t-know-what….”

“I’m telling you, that’s bullshit. I’ve seen plenty of weird things.”

“Then tell me what I should do next.”

“Keep on drinking. And then sleep.”

“Fine.”

Wang Miao had no idea how he got back into his car. He tumbled into the backseat and fell into a dreamless slumber. He didn’t think that he was asleep for long, but when he opened his eyes, the sun was already near the horizon in the west.

He got out of the car. Even though the alcohol that morning had made him weak, he did feel better. He saw that he was at one corner of the Forbidden City. The setting sun shone on the ancient palace and turned into bright gold ripples in the moat. In his eyes, the world became once again classical and stable.

Wang sat until it got dark, enjoying the peace that had been missing from his life. The black Volkswagen Santana that he was now so familiar with pulled out of the traffic streaming through the street and braked to a stop right in front of him. Shi Qiang got out of the car.