The Three-Body Problem Part 14

2. Consideration of Policies and Strategies After Establishing Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence [omitted]

[Instructions from Central Leadership] It's important to take the time out of our busy schedules to do something entirely unrelated to our immediate needs. This project has allowed us to give some thought to issues we have never had time for. Indeed, we can think through them only when we take a sufficiently high vantage point. This alone is enough to justify the Red Coast Project.

How wonderful it will be if the universe really contains other intelligences and other societies! Bystanders have the clearest view. Someone truly neutral will then be able to comment on whether we're the heroes or villains of history.

Signed: x.x.x Date: XX/XX/196X

14.

Red Coast IV "Professor Ye," w.a.n.g Miao said, "I have a question. Back then, SETI was marginalized research. Why did the Red Coast Project have such a high security rating?"

"That question was asked during the very first phases of the Red Coast Project, and continued to be asked until the end. But now you should know the answer. We can only be impressed by the foresight of the top decision-maker responsible for the Red Coast Project."

"Yes, he thought far ahead." w.a.n.g nodded gravely.

w.a.n.g knew that it was only within the last couple of years that serious and systematic consideration had been given to the question of how and to what degree human societies would be influenced by establishing contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, but the research had rapidly gained interest, and the conclusions were shocking.

Nave, idealistic hopes had been shattered. Scholars found that, contrary to the happy wishes of most people, it was not a good idea for the human race as a whole to make contact with extraterrestrials. The impact of such contact on human society would be divisive rather than uniting, and would exacerbate rather than mitigate the conflicts between different cultures. In summary, if contact were to occur, the internal divisions within Earth civilization would be magnified and likely lead to disaster. The most shocking conclusion of all was that the impact would have nothing at all to do with the degree and type of contact (unidirectional or bidirectional), or the form and degree of advancement of the alien civilization.

This was the theory of "contact as symbol" proposed by sociologist Bill Mathers of RAND Corporation in his book, The 100,000-Light-Year Iron Curtain: SETI Sociology. Mathers believed that contact with an alien civilization is only a symbol or a switch. Regardless of the content of the encounter, the results would be the same.

Suppose that the nature of the contact is such that only the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is confirmed, with no other substantive information-what Mathers called elementary contact. The impact would be magnified by the lens of human ma.s.s psychology and culture until it resulted in huge, substantive influences on the progress of civilization. If such contact were monopolized by one country or political force, the significance would be comparable to an overwhelming advantage in economic and military power.

"How did Red Coast end?"

"You can probably guess."

w.a.n.g nodded again. Of course he understood that, had Red Coast succeeded, the world today would be very different. To comfort Ye, he said, "It's still too early to tell if it succeeded or not. The radio waves sent out by Red Coast haven't gone very far in the universe yet."

Ye shook her head. "The farther the signals travel, the weaker they become, and the less likely that any extraterrestrial civilization will receive them. Of course, if aliens have already detected the Earth's existence and its oxygen-rich atmosphere and decided to focus powerful equipment specifically at us, the story would be different. But, in general, research shows that in order for extraterrestrials to detect our signals, we must broadcast at a power level equal to the energy output of a midsized star.

"Soviet astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev once proposed that civilizations can be divided into three types based on the power they can command-for communication purposes, let's say. A Type I civilization can muster an amount of energy equivalent to the total energy output of the Earth. Based on his estimates, the energy output of the Earth is about 1015 to 1016 watts. A Type II civilization can marshal the energy equivalent to the output of a typical star-1026 watts. A Type III civilization's communication energy can reach 1036 watts, approximately equal to the energy output of a galaxy. Civilization on Earth is currently about a Type 0.7, not even a full Type I. And the transmissions from Red Coast used only about one ten-millionth of the amount of power the Earth could muster. Our call was like the buzzing of a mosquito in the sky. No one could hear it."

"But if Kardashev's Type II and Type III civilizations really exist, we should be able to hear them."

"We never heard anything during the twenty years that Red Coast was in operation."

"Indeed. Given Red Coast and SETI, could all our efforts ultimately have proven only one thing: In the entire universe, only the Earth has intelligent life?"

Ye gave a light sigh. "Theoretically, there may never be a definitive answer to that question. But my sense, and the sense of everyone who went through Red Coast, is that that is the case."

"It's too bad that Red Coast was decommissioned. Once it was built, it should have been kept running. It was a truly great enterprise."

"Red Coast's decline was gradual. At the beginning of the eighties, there was a large-scale renovation. Mainly, the transmission and monitoring computer systems were partially upgraded. The transmission system was automated, and the monitoring system incorporated two IBM minicomputers. The data processing capability became far more advanced, and it was able to simultaneously monitor forty thousand channels.

"But later, as people gained perspective, they had a better appreciation of the difficulty of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the leadership lost interest in Red Coast. The first change was reducing the base's security rating. The consensus was that the extreme secrecy around Red Coast was unnecessary, and the security detail at the base was reduced from a company to a squad, until eventually only a group of five security guards were left. Also, after that renovation, although Red Coast remained administratively within the Second Artillery Corps, management of its scientific activities was turned over to the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Astronomy Inst.i.tute, and it took on some research projects that had nothing to do with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or the military."

"I believe you achieved most of your scientific accomplishments during that time."

"Initially, Red Coast also took on some radio astronomy projects. At the time, it was the largest radio telescope in the country. Later, as other radio astronomy observatories were built, Red Coast's research turned to the observation and a.n.a.lysis of solar electromagnetic activity. For this, they added a solar telescope. The mathematical model we built for solar electromagnetic activity was at the forefront of the field back then, and had many practical applications. With these later research results, the large amount invested in Red Coast had at least a little return.

"Actually, much of the credit should be given to Commissar Lei. Of course he had his own agenda. He realized that as a political officer in a technical unit, his future wasn't bright. Before joining the army, he had studied astrophysics as well, so he wanted to return to doing science. The research projects that Red Coast took on outside of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence were all due to his efforts."

"I doubt that he could have returned to technical work so easily after spending so much time as a political commissar. Back then, you still hadn't been politically rehabilitated. It looks to me like all he did was to put his name on your research results."

Ye smiled forgivingly. "Without Lei, Red Coast Base would have been finished even earlier. After Red Coast was designated for conversion to civilian use, the military basically abandoned it. Eventually, the Chinese Academy of Sciences couldn't maintain the funds necessary for Red Coast's operation, and it was shut down."

Ye didn't talk much about her daily life at Red Coast Base, and w.a.n.g didn't ask. Four years after entering the base, she married Yang Weining. Everything just happened naturally, without any drama. Later, an accident at the base killed both Yang and Lei, and Yang Dong was born after her father's death. The mother and daughter only left Radar Peak in the mid-eighties, when Red Coast Base was finally decommissioned. Ye later returned to Tsinghua, her alma mater, to teach astrophysics until retirement. All this w.a.n.g had heard from Sha Ruishan at the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory.

"The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a unique discipline. It has a profound influence on the researcher's perspective on life." Ye spoke in a drawn-out voice, as though telling stories to a child. "In the dead of the night, I could hear in my headphones the lifeless noise of the universe. The noise was faint but constant, more eternal than the stars. Sometimes I thought it sounded like the endless winter winds of the Greater Khingan Mountains. I felt so cold then, and the loneliness was indescribable.

"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.... I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: 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 pa.s.sed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old...."

w.a.n.g wanted to comfort this old woman who had devoted her life to a lonely but great enterprise, but Ye's last speech caused him to sink into the same sorrowful mood. He found that he had nothing to say except, "Professor Ye, someday I'll go with you to visit the ruins of Red Coast Base."

Ye slowly shook her head. "Xiao w.a.n.g, I'm not like you. I'm getting on in years, and my health isn't what it used to be. It's hard to predict the future. I live my life day to day."

Looking at the silvery head of hair on Ye Wenjie, w.a.n.g knew she was thinking of her daughter again.

15.

Three Body: Copernicus, Universal Football, and Tri-Solar Day After leaving Ye's home, w.a.n.g Miao couldn't calm down. The events of the last two days and the history of Red Coast, two seemingly unconnected strands, now twisted together, made the world unfamiliar overnight.

Once he was home, in order to escape this mood, w.a.n.g turned on the computer, put on the V-suit, and logged on to Three Body for the third time.

The attempt to adjust his state of mind worked. By the time the log-in screen appeared, w.a.n.g seemed like a different person, one filled with an unexplainable excitement. Unlike the first two times, this time w.a.n.g came with a purpose: He was going to reveal the secret of the world of Three Body.

He created a new log-in ID appropriate for his new role: Copernicus.

Once logged in, w.a.n.g again stood on that broad, desolate plain, facing the strange dawn of the world of Three Body. A colossal pyramid appeared in the east, but right away w.a.n.g knew it was no longer the pyramid of King Zhou of Shang or Mozi. It had a Gothic-style apex, stabbing straight into the morning sky, recalling St. Joseph's Church at w.a.n.gfujing. But if that church were placed next to this pyramid, it would be nothing more than an entrance booth. He saw many buildings in the distance that were apparently dehydratories, but also now built in the Gothic style, with tall, sharp steeples, as though the ground had grown numerous spikes.

w.a.n.g saw a door on the side of the pyramid, lit from within by flickering lights. He walked over. Inside the tunnel was a row of statues of the G.o.ds of Olympus holding up torches, their surfaces blackened by smoke. He entered the Great Hall and saw that it was even dimmer than the entrance tunnel. Two silver candelabra on top of a long marble table provided a drowsy light.

Several men were seated around the table. The dim light allowed w.a.n.g to see only the outlines of their faces. Their eyes were hidden in the shadows of their deep eye sockets, but w.a.n.g could still feel their gazes focusing on him. The men seemed to be dressed in medieval robes. On closer examination, one or two of them had simpler robes, more like Cla.s.sical Greek chitons. At one end of the table was a thin, tall man. The golden crown on top of his head was the only thing that glittered in the Great Hall other than the candles. With some effort, w.a.n.g saw by the dim candlelight that his robe was different from the others': it was red.

w.a.n.g realized that the game displayed a distinct world for each player. This world, based on the European High Middle Ages, was chosen by the software based on his ID.

"You're late. The meeting has been going on for a while," the gold-crowned, red-robed man said. "I'm Pope Gregory."

w.a.n.g tried to recall what little he knew of European history in the Middle Ages so that he could deduce the level of advancement of this civilization based on the name. But then he remembered how wildly anachronistic historical references could be in the world of Three Body and decided the effort wasn't worth it.

"I'm Aristotle. You changed your ID, but we all recognize you. In the previous two civilizations, you traveled to the East." The speaker was the man with the Greek chiton. He had a head of white curls.

"Yes." w.a.n.g nodded. "There, I witnessed the destruction of two civilizations, one by extreme cold, another by a blazing sun. I also saw the great efforts the scholars of the East expended in trying to master the laws governing the sun's motion."

"Ha!" The sound came from a man with a goatee that curled upward. He was even thinner than the pope. "Eastern scholars tried to understand the secrets of the sun's motion through meditation, epiphany, or even dreams. Utterly laughable!"

"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 observation," w.a.n.g 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! I feel sorry for his refined equipment. We're different. Based on large amounts of observational data and experiments, we make strict, logical deductions to build a model of the universe. Then we go back to experimentation and observation to test it."

"That's correct." w.a.n.g nodded. "That's also my way of thinking."

"Have you brought a calendar as well, then?" The pope's tone was mocking.

"I don't have a calendar. I only brought a model built upon observation data. But I must make it clear that even if the model is correct, it's not certain that by using it one can master the precise details of the sun's motion and create a calendar. However, it's a necessary step."

A few lonely claps echoed throughout the Great Hall. The applause came from Galileo. "Excellent, Copernicus, excellent. Your pragmatic way of thinking, adapted to the experimental, scientific approach, is lacking in most scholars. Based on this alone, your theory is worth listening to."

The pope nodded at w.a.n.g. "Go ahead."

After calming himself and walking to the other end of the long table, w.a.n.g said, "It's actually pretty simple. The reason why the sun's motion seems patternless is because our world has three suns. Under the influence of their mutually perturbing gravitational attraction, their movements are unpredictable-the three-body problem. When our planet revolves around one of the suns in a stable orbit, that's a Stable Era. When one or more of the other suns move within a certain distance, their gravitational pull will s.n.a.t.c.h the planet away from the sun it's...o...b..ting, causing it to wander unstably through the gravitational fields of the three suns. That's a Chaotic Era. After an uncertain amount of time, our planet is once again pulled into a temporary orbit and another Stable Era begins. This is a football game at the scale of the universe. The players are the three suns, and our planet is the football."

A few hollow laughs rang out in the Great Hall. "Burn him to death," the pope said impa.s.sively. The two soldiers standing at the door in rusty armor started toward w.a.n.g like two clumsy robots.

"Burn him." Galileo sighed. "I had hopes for you, but you're nothing more than another mystic or warlock."

"Such men are a public nuisance," Aristotle agreed.

"At least let me finish!" w.a.n.g shoved away the iron gauntlets of the two soldiers.

"Have you seen three suns? Or know anyone who has?" Galileo asked.

"Everyone has seen them."

"Then, other than the sun that appears during Chaotic Eras and Stable Eras, where are the other two?"

"The sun that we see at different times may not be the same: It's only one of the three suns. When the other two are far away, they look like flying stars."

"You lack basic scientific training," Galileo said, shaking his head. "The sun must move continuously to a distant spot. It cannot jump over the intervening s.p.a.ce. According to your hypothesis, there should be another observable situation: The sun must get smaller than it usually appears but bigger than a flying star, and gradually shrink into a flying star as it moves farther away. But we've never seen the sun behave that way."

"Since you have scientific training, you ought to have some knowledge of the sun's structure."

"That's my proudest discovery. The sun is made of a spa.r.s.e but expansive gaseous outer layer and a dense and hot inner core."

"Very true," said w.a.n.g. "But you apparently haven't discovered the special optical interaction between the sun's gaseous outer layer and our planet's atmosphere. It's a phenomenon akin to polarization or destructive interference. As a result, when we view the sun from within our atmosphere and it gets a certain distance from us, the gaseous outer layer suddenly becomes completely transparent and invisible, and all we can see is its bright inner core. The sun then appears to be only the size of the inner core, a flying star.

"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," w.a.n.g 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 pa.s.s 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 w.a.n.g: 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 w.a.n.g Miao to the stake using asbestos ropes. w.a.n.g 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 w.a.n.g. Then he returned to his calculations.

w.a.n.g 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 w.a.n.g, 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. w.a.n.g 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, w.a.n.g 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 w.a.n.g, who had just emerged. Holding the same pose and lifting their arms toward the sky, they chanted in unison, "Tri-solar day-"