Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem

“This phenomenon has confused every researcher in every civilization throughout history, and prevented them from discovering the existence of the three suns. Now you understand why the appearance of three flying stars heralds a long period of extreme cold: because all three suns are far away.”

A brief silence followed as everyone pondered this. Aristotle was the first to speak. “You lack basic training in logic. It’s true that we can sometimes see three flying stars, and that’s always accompanied by destructive periods of extreme cold. But based on your theory, we should also sometimes see three normal-sized suns in the sky. This has never happened. In all the records of all the civilizations, this has never occurred!”

“Wait!” A man wearing a strangely shaped hat and a long beard stood up and spoke for the first time. “I’m Leonardo da Vinci. There may be such historical records. One civilization saw two suns and was immediately destroyed by their combined heat, but the record was very vague.”

“We’re talking about three suns, not two!” Galileo shouted. “According to his theory, three suns must appear sometime, just like three flying stars.”

“Three suns have appeared,” Wang said, utterly calm. “And people have seen them. But those who saw such a great sight could not leave behind any information about them because seeing three suns would mean that they had at most a few seconds left to live. They had no chance to escape or survive. Tri-solar days are the most terrifying catastrophes for our world. On such days, the surface of the planet would turn into a smelting furnace in a second, and the heat would be enough to melt rocks. After the destruction caused by a tri-solar day, an eon would pass before the reappearance of life and civilization. This is yet another reason why there’s no historical record of them.”

Silence. Everyone stared at the pope.

“Burn him,” the pope said, gently. The smile on his face was a little familiar to Wang: the smile of King Zhou of Shang.

The Great Hall came alive, and everyone seemed to be preparing for a celebration. Galileo and some others joyfully carried a stake out of a dark corner. They pulled off the charcoal-black body still tied to the stake and cast it aside before fastening it in an upright position. Another group happily piled firewood around the stake. Only Leonardo ignored the commotion. He sat at the table, pondering, and occasionally using a pen to calculate something on the table.

“Giordano Bruno,” Aristotle said, pointing at the blackened body. “Like you, he came here and spewed nonsense.”

“Use a low fire,” the pope said, his voice weak.

Two soldiers started to tie Wang Miao to the stake using asbestos ropes. Wang used the hand that was still free to point at the pope. “You are nothing more than a program. As for the rest of you, you’re either programs or idiots. I will log back on!”

“You cannot return. You will disappear forever from the world of Three Body .” Galileo cackled.

“Then you must be a program. A normal person would certainly understand the basics of the Internet. The most the game can do is record my MAC address. I can just switch computers and create a new ID. I’ll announce myself when I’m back.”

“The system has recorded your retinal scan through the V-suit,” Leonardo said, looking up at Wang. Then he returned to his calculations.

Wang Miao was seized by a nameless terror. He shouted, “Don’t do this! Let me go! I’m telling the truth!”

“If you’re telling the truth, then you won’t be burnt to death. The game rewards those who are on the right path.” As Aristotle grinned, he took out a silver Zippo lighter, flipped it in his hand in a complicated fashion, and then flicked it on.

As he was about to light the firewood piled around Wang, a bright red light filled the entrance tunnel, followed by a wave of heat and smoke. A horse dashed out of the light and into the Great Hall. Its body was already on fire, and as it galloped, the wind whipped it into a ball of flames. The rider, a knight in heavy armor that glowed red from the heat, dragged a line of white smoke behind him.

“The world has ended! The world has ended! Dehydrate! Dehydrate!” As the knight shouted, the animal under him fell down and turned into a bonfire. The knight was thrown some distance and rolled all the way to the stake, where he stopped moving. White smoke continued to pour out of openings in the armor. The sizzling grease from the dead man inside oozed out on the ground and caught fire, giving the armor a pair of burning wings.

Everyone in the Great Hall streamed toward the entrance tunnel and squeezed into it, disappearing in the red light from outside. Wang Miao struggled with all his strength until he was freed from the ropes. He dodged the burning knight and horse, dashed through the empty Great Hall, and ran down the sweltering tunnel until he emerged outside.

The ground glowed red like a piece of iron in a blacksmith’s furnace. Bright rivulets of lava snaked across the dim red earth, forming a net of fire that stretched to the horizon. Countless thin pillars of flame erupted toward the sky: The dehydratories were burning. The dehydrated bodies inside gave the fire a strange bluish glow.

Not far from him, Wang saw a dozen or so small pillars of flame of the same color. These were the people who had just run out of the pyramid: the pope, Galileo, Aristotle, and Leonardo. The fiery pillars around them were translucent blue, and he could see their faces and bodies slowly deforming in the flame. They focused their gazes on Wang, who had just emerged. Holding the same pose and lifting their arms toward the sky, they chanted in unison, “Tri-solar day—”

Wang looked up and saw three gigantic suns slowly spinning around an invisible origin, like an immense three-bladed fan blowing a deadly wind toward the world below. The three suns took up almost the entire sky, and as they drifted toward the west, half of the formation sank below the horizon. The giant fan continued to spin, a bright blade occasionally shooting above the horizon to give the dying world another brief sunrise and sunset. After a sunset, the ground glowed dim red, and the sunrise a moment later flooded everything with its glaring, parallel rays.

Once the three suns had completely set, the thick clouds that had formed from all the evaporated water still reflected their glow. The sky burned, displaying a hellish, maddening beauty.

After the last light of destruction finally disappeared and the clouds only glowed with a faint red luminescence reflected from the hellish fire on the ground, a few lines of giant text appeared:

Civilization Number 183 was destroyed by a tri-solar day. This civilization had advanced to the Middle Ages.

After a long time, life and civilization will begin again, and progress once more through the unpredictable world of Three Body .

But in this civilization, Copernicus successfully revealed the basic structure of the universe. The civilization of Three Body will take its first leap. The game has now entered the second level.

We invite you to log on to the second level of Three Body.

As soon as Wang logged out of the game, the phone rang.

It was Shi Qiang, who said it was urgent that he come down to Shi’s office at the Criminal Division. Wang glanced at his watch: It was three in the morning.

Wang arrived at Da Shi’s chaotic office and saw that it was already filled with a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. A young woman police officer who shared the office fanned the smoke away from her nose with a notebook. Da Shi introduced her as Xu Bingbing, a computer specialist from the Information Security Division.