The Three-Body Problem

Ye became devoted to the Red Coast mission once she learned about the project’s “real purpose.” She was tasked with reducing solar interference. During her research, she discovered that the sun’s surface would become intermittently calm and all radio activity on the sun would stop for a moment. She couldn’t explain this phenomenon but was intrigued. Although she made little progress on her research, she didn’t stop. She enjoyed the access to banned “foreign-language materials” (280), which the project granted to her. She read late at night in the base’s expansive library. In one journal, she found an article about electromagnetic radiation on Jupiter. Cross-checking the dates of two particular instances of radiation flux on Jupiter against the base’s own records, she found a pattern in the data, noticing that flares on Jupiter preceded flares on Earth by 16 minutes and 42 seconds. The sun reflected and amplified radio waves, she theorized, which meant that she could use the sun to boost the messages sent from the antenna at the Red Coast Base. Such a powerful messaging capability would move humanity to the level of “a Type II Civilization” (285).

Ye petitioned her bosses to allow her to test her theory. She needed research materials from the US that were censored or banned. Commissar Lei worried that Ye’s research was becoming too removed from political theory—and he didn’t appreciate the imagery of pointing the antenna directly at the “red sun.” In late 1971, Ye gave up on asking for permission. She waited until no one was watching and programmed the antenna to transmit directly at the sun. Then, she ran to Yang’s office to ensure that any return signals were being closely monitored. Yang quickly understood what Ye had done. For a brief moment, genuine tenderness entered into their relationship. After 20 minutes passed without a response, however, Ye began to give up. She sat down outside and ate leftovers, tears forming in her eyes. Although she didn’t know it yet, her message had “already crossed the orbit of Jupiter” (291).

Ye spent eight years working normally at the Red Coast Base. During this time, she reflected on the traumatic events of her life. The “horror” she witnessed imbued her with a burning hatred of humanity. News from the outside world deepened this hatred, as she read about the threat of nuclear war and witnessed the “deranged logging” around Radar Peak. Yang proposed to Ye despite the political damage this did to his reputation. Ye accepted, more out of a sense of “gratitude” than love. After the wedding, however, she sank into a deep depression. Each night, she sat and listened to the sounds in the monitoring room. This was the “loneliest” period of her life. On one such lonely night, however, the shape of the radio waves changed ever so slightly. Running this new signal through the computer, she deciphered a communication from a distant world. The message said “Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!” (296). Ye continued to read. A pacifist on the distant world was warning any potential recipient not to respond, as the creatures on the pacifist’s planet would surely invade and conquer the world of anyone who replied.

Ye was shocked. Intelligent extraterrestrial life not only existed but was only four light-years away. Gradually, more messages filtered through. In this way, Ye learned about the planet Trisolaris and how it was continually founded and destroyed because of the three suns. Ye downloaded all the messages and placed them in a secret file. She wrote a message to send through the base’s antenna. Ye pointed the antenna at the rising sun, the fate of humanity resting on her fingers. She sent a message inviting the Trisolarans to Earth, claiming that humanity needed an outside force to correct its many problems and that she’d help them “conquer this world” (300). Then, Ye woke up in a hospital. She realized that she’d fainted. Yang was beside her, a concerned expression on his face. As the sun shone through the window, the doctor informed Ye that she was pregnant.

The group is enthralled by Ye’s story. She explains that the Trisolarans have communicated to her that Wang should stop his research because nanomaterials have the potential to help humanity “escape gravity and engage in space construction at a much larger scale” (301), allowing humans to build large defenses against the Trisolarans. Wang is angry. He demands an answer from Ye about how her daughter actually died. Ye ignores him. She insists that everyone’s actions are “meaningless” compared to the Lord.

Soldiers and police officers—organized by Shi Qiang—burst into the room. Shi announces that he intends to stop the group that has taken aim at the whole of humanity. The same woman who broke Pan’s neck rushes to the middle of the room. The large spheres, she explains, are “three nuclear bombs” (303) that will detonate if anyone harms or impedes Ye. Shi can’t figure out a way to disarm the woman without damaging or detonating the bombs. He distracts her and shoots at the bomb; the fissile materials don’t react, causing only a “muffled explosion.” As chaos breaks out, both sides fire weapons. Many people are hit. After the gun fight, Wang takes Shi to the hospital. Shi jokes about his method of distracting the young woman, noting that he’s “pretty good at reading people” (306).

Ye is interrogated about her role in a series of murders. Ye admits to killing several people in October 1979. She decided to “kill two people” (307), Yang and Commissar Lei when she discovered that Lei had also received the Trisolarans’ message. Lei uncovered Ye’s actions but didn’t know that Ye had responded. Instead, he wanted to protect Yang, Ye, and the unborn child. He claimed to have covered up the crime but, Ye believed, he actually hoped “to become the first man to discover extraterrestrial intelligence” (310). Ye went along with Lei, as she was happy to keep the message secret. She sabotaged the base’s signal receiver and, when Lei and Yang volunteered to fix it, Ye cut their safety ropes and sent them falling to their deaths over the cliff edge. Ye could see no way to kill Lei without killing Yang as well, so she made the sacrifice that she deemed necessary. When she killed both men, Ye tells the interrogator, she felt “calm.”

After Ye murdered Yang and Lei, “no one suspected her” (313). She continued with her life. As the birth of her child approached, the base lowered the level of security. Children were now permitted, and a group of children asked Ye to help with their National College Entrance Exam, as they’d heard that she’s a “real, bona fide scientist” (315). After Ye helped the first group, more children sought out her help. These impromptu teaching sessions helped Ye overcome her loneliness. Her students brought her gifts such as food. Because of complications involved in her pregnancy, Ye was taken to an off-base hospital to give birth. During her labor, she fell into a coma and hallucinated suns and stars. Although she lost a dangerous amount of blood, many local volunteers donated blood to save her life. Without their help, she “would certainly have died” (317). Yang Dong was born, but Ye was still too weak to survive afterward. She needed help and found it in Hunter Qi, a local man who took her into his family home. Ye and her baby lived there for six months. She became close with Feng, Hunter Qi’s daughter-in-law, who helped her with the baby. Ye gradually discovered how much she had in common with the local women, and the men, she was surprised to find, treated her with “respect.” Ye wasn’t accustomed to feeling happy and at home.

Feng gave birth around this time too. She and Ye spent many nights together, watching their children. Ye occasionally dreamt of being a child and woke up crying. She answered Feng’s questions about stars in vague, soothing ways. Gradually, her heart “thawed.” Several years later, Ye received a letter, telling her that the political aspersions cast on her and her father had been wiped clean. Now “politically rehabilitated,” Ye wanted to ensure that Yang Dong received a good education. She took a teaching job at Tsinghua University and moved to Beijing. The changes in the city surprised her, signaling that the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution might finally be over. During this time, however, she couldn’t forget that she’d sent a message to the Trisolarans. The person who sent that message seemed to Ye to be from an entirely different era. She realized that she’d allowed herself to be distracted.

During this time, Ye reunited with her mother. Shao Lin was now remarried and her husband worked for the Education Ministry. She was vice president of a famous university. When introducing Yang Dong to her mother, Ye couldn’t help but feel an “invisible wall” between herself and her mother. Shao Lin’s new husband warned Ye not to pursue her father’s “historical debts.” Ye knew that her mother encouraged her husband to say this to Ye. She never returned to her mother’s house. Instead, she tracked down the students who murdered her father. They were still dressed in the same uniforms but had grown very old and had also lost “something else.” When they recognized Ye, they refused to apologize for their actions. They claimed to have also suffered during the Cultural Revolution; one of the girls died in a labor camp, the surviving girls explain, and now they have “no jobs, no money, no future” (328). The meeting helped Ye reaffirm her “unshakeable ideal” that Earth needed the Trisolarans.

Ye was involved in the construction of a radio astronomy observatory for the Tsinghua University. She chose “a remote, hilly area in the Northwest” (330). The small, quiet village nearby was once beautiful but had been made ugly and bare by deforestation. A local man had come to the area, “planting trees up in the hills” (331) all by himself. He was named Bethune and he hoped to bring birds back to the region. Ye was surprised to meet Bethune and learn that he was a white American man named Mike Evans, who claimed to be saving vulnerable animals by planting trees. In this particular area, he explained, deforestation threatened the existence of a particular breed of swallow. Since swallows are “not as crowd-pleasing as giant pandas” (333), he said, few people worry about them. Evans spent several months planting trees, but his project ran out of money. Even though his father was a billionaire, he refused to fund any more of his son’s environmentalism. Evans explained to Ye that his father made billions through oil. During an oil spill, Evans witnessed the true cost of the oil industry for himself. He hoped for guidance and help from his father, who replied that nothing really mattered because so many animals were already heading toward extinction. If this is true, his father said, then the first rule of civilization should be to protect the existence of humanity in all its comfort. Every other species should be considered “secondary.” Evans rejected his father’s ideology. He developed the idea of Pan-Species Communism to bring together all life on Earth with equal rights.

After not speaking for several years, Evans contacted Ye and they met again on the same hill where they first talked. During this time, the trees planted by Evans had grown. However, the deforestation continued at too fast a rate and the region was largely barren. There was too much money to be made from logging contracts, Evans explained. Since their first meeting, Evans had inherited all his dead father’s money. The money offered him no comfort as pollution and ecological devastation continued. Whether east or west, Evans said, people across the world are too similar to save it. Ye agreed. She told Evans of her belief in the need for an outside force to intervene to save humanity. She told him about her message to the Trisolarans. Evans promised that he would use his billions to further her cause. They shook hands, describing each other as “comrades.”