The Three-Body Problem (45 page)

“Why have they transformed into eyes to look at us?” The princeps looked up at the eyes in space, beautiful, lifelike sculptures, all of them gazing upon the planet below strangely.

“Maybe they just want to demonstrate their presence.”

“Can they fall down here?”

“Not at all. You may rest easy, Princeps. Even if they were to fall, the mass of all these huge structures added together is only that of a proton. Just like the one-dimensional string from last time, they won’t have any effect on our world. People just have to get used to the strange sight.”

But this time, the science consul was wrong.

People noticed the eyes moved faster than the other solids filling the sky, and they were gathering into one spot. Soon, two eyes met and merged into one bigger eye. More and more eyes joined this big eye, and its volume grew. Finally, all the eyes melded into one. It was so large that it seemed to represent the gaze of the universe upon Trisolaris. The iris was clear and bright, and at the center was the image of a sun. Over the broad surface of the eyeball, various colors cascaded in a flood. Soon, the details over the giant eye faded and gradually disappeared, until it became a pupil-less blind eye. Then it began to deform until it finally lost the shape of an eye and became a perfect circle. When the circle began to slowly rotate, people realized that it was not flat, but parabolic, like a slice cut from a giant sphere.

As the military consul stared at the slowly spinning colossal object in space, he suddenly understood and shouted, “Princeps and others, please go into the underground bunker right away.” He pointed upward. “That is—”

“A parabolic mirror,” the princeps said calmly. “Direct the space defense forces to destroy it. We will stay right here.”

The parabolic mirror focused the sun’s beams onto the surface of Trisolaris. Initially, the spot of light was very large, and the heat at the focal point wasn’t yet lethal. This spot moved across the ground, searching for its target. The mirror discovered the capital, the largest city of Trisolaris, and the light spot began to move toward it. Soon, the beam was over the city.

Those standing under the Pendulum Monument only saw a great brightness in space. It overwhelmed everything else, accompanied by a wave of extreme heat. Then the light spot over the capital shrank as the parabolic mirror began to focus the light more tightly. The brightness from space grew stronger until no one could lift up his head, and those standing within the spot felt the temperature rise rapidly. Just as the heat became unbearable, the edge of the light spot swept past the Pendulum Monument and everything dimmed. It took a while before the crowd’s sight readjusted to normal light.

When they looked up, the first sight that greeted them was a pillar of light between the sky and earth, shaped like an inverted cone. The mirror in space formed the base of the cone, and the tip stabbed into the heart of the capital, turning everything there incandescent at once. Waves of smoke began to rise. Tornadoes caused by the uneven heat of the light cone formed several other pillars made of dust that connected to the sky, twisting and dancing around the light cone.…

Several brilliant fireballs appeared in different parts of the mirror, their blue color distinct from the light reflected from the mirror. These were the exploding nuclear warheads launched by the Trisolaran space defense corps. Because the explosions were happening outside the atmosphere, there was no sound. By the time the fireballs disappeared, several large holes appeared in the mirror, and then the entire surface of the mirror began to tear and crack, until it had broken into more than a dozen pieces.

The deadly light cone disappeared and the world returned to a normal level of illumination. For a moment, the sky was as dim as a moonlit night. Those broken pieces of the mirror, now devoid of intelligence, continued to deform and soon could not be distinguished from the other geometric solids in space.

“What will happen with the next experiment?” The princeps’s expression was derisive as he spoke to the science consul. “Will you unfold a proton into four dimensions?”

“Princeps, even if that were to occur, it’s nothing to worry about. A proton unfolded into four dimensions will be much smaller. If the space defense corps is prepared to attack its projection in three-dimensional space, it can be destroyed just the same.”

“You’re deceiving the princeps!” said a furious military consul. “You have not mentioned the real danger. What if the proton is unfolded into zero dimensions?”

“Zero dimensions?” The princeps was interested. “Wouldn’t that be a point with no size?”

“Yes, a singularity! Even a proton would be infinitely big compared to it. The entire mass of the proton will be contained in this singularity, and its density will be infinite. Princeps, I’m sure you can imagine what that would be.”

“A black hole?”

“Yes.”

“Princeps, let me explain,” the science consul broke in. “The reason we picked a proton instead of a neutron to unfold into two dimensions is precisely to avoid this kind of risk. If we really were to unfold into zero dimensions, the charge of a proton would also be carried over into the unfolded black hole. We can then capture and control it using electromagnetism.”

“What if you can’t find it or control it?” the military consul asked. “It can then land on the ground, suck in everything it encounters, and increase its mass. Then it will sink into the core of this planet and eventually suck down all of Trisolaris.”

“That will never happen. I guarantee it! Why are you always making things difficult for me? Like I said, this is a scientific experiment—”

“That’s enough!” the princeps said. “What is the probability of success next time?”

“Almost one hundred percent! Princeps, please believe in me. Through these two failures, we have already mastered the principles governing unfolding subatomic structures into low-dimensional macro space.”

“All right. To ensure the survival of Trisolaran civilization, we must take this risk.”

“Thank you!”

“But if you fail again, you and all the scientists working on Project Sophon will be guilty.”

“Yes, of course, all guilty.” If Trisolarans could perspire, the science consul must have been soaked in cold sweat.

It was much easier to clean up the three-dimensional remnants of the unfolded proton in synchronous orbit than it was to clean up the one-dimensional string. Small spaceships were able to drag the pieces of proton matter away from Trisolaris and prevent them from entering the atmosphere. Those objects, some as large as mountains, had almost no mass. They were like immense silver illusions; even a baby could have moved them easily.

Afterwards, the princeps asked the science consul, “Did we destroy a civilization in the microcosmos in this experiment?”

“It was at least an intelligent body. Also, Princeps, we destroyed the entire microcosmos. That miniature universe is immense in higher dimensions, and it probably contained more than one intelligence or civilization that never had a chance to express themselves in macro space. Of course, in higher dimensional space at such micro scales, the form that intelligence or civilization may take is beyond our imagination. They’re something else entirely. And such destruction has probably occurred many times before.”

“Oh?”

“In the long history of scientific progress, how many protons have been smashed apart in accelerators by physicists? How many neutrons and electrons? Probably no fewer than a hundred million. Every collision was probably the end of the civilizations and intelligences in a microcosmos. In fact, even in nature, the destruction of universes must be happening at every second—for example, through the decay of neutrons. Also, a high-energy cosmic ray entering the atmosphere may destroy thousands of such miniature universes.… You’re not feeling sentimental because of this, are you?”

“You amuse me. I will immediately notify the propaganda consul and direct him to repeatedly publicize this scientific fact to the world. The people of Trisolaris must understand that the destruction of civilizations is a common occurrence that happens every second of every hour.”

“Why? Do you wish to encourage the people to face the possible destruction of Trisolaran civilization with equanimity?”

“No. It’s to encourage them to face the destruction of Earth civilization with equanimity. You know very well that after we publicized our policy toward the Earth civilization, there was a wave of extremely dangerous pacifism. We have only now discovered that there are many like the listener of Post 1379. We must control and eliminate these weak sentiments.”

“Princeps, this is mainly the result of recent messages received from the Earth. Your prediction has come true: The alienated forces on Earth really are growing. They have built a new transmission site completely under their control, and have begun to send us large amounts of information about Earth civilization. I must admit that their civilization has great appeal on Trisolaris. For our people, it sounds like sacred music from Heaven. The humanism of Earth will lead many Trisolarans onto the wrong path. Just as Trisolaran civilization has already become a religion on Earth, Earth civilization has this potential on Trisolaris.”

“You’ve pointed out a great danger. We must strictly control the flow of information from the Earth to the populace, especially cultural information.”

*   *   *

The third attempt to unfold a proton into two dimensions began thirty Trisolaran hours later. This time, it was at night. From the ground, it was impossible to see the ring of the accelerator in space. Only the red glow from the heat sinks of the fusion reactors around it marked its location. Shortly after the accelerator was started, the science consul announced success.

People gazed up at the night sky. Initially, there was nothing to see. But soon, they saw a miraculous sight: The heavens separated into two pieces. Between the two, the pattern of the stars did not match, as though two photographs of the sky had been stacked together, with the smaller one overlaid on top of the big one. The Milky Way broke at the border between the two. The smaller portion of the star-studded firmament was circular, and it rapidly expanded against the normal night sky.

“That constellation in there belongs to the southern hemisphere!” the culture and education consul said, pointing at the expanding, circular patch of the sky.

As people exercised their imaginations to understand how stars that could be seen only from the other side of the planet were now superimposed over the northern hemisphere’s view, an even more astonishing sight appeared: At the edge of the expanding patch of the night sky from the southern hemisphere, a part of a giant globe appeared. The globe was brownish, and it was being revealed a stripe at a time, as though on a display with a very slow refresh rate. Everyone recognized the globe: On it were the clear outlines of familiar continents. By the time the entire globe came into view, it already occupied one-third of the sky. More details on the globe could be made out: the wrinkles of mountain ranges covering the brownish continents, the scattered cloud cover like patches of snow over the continents …

Someone finally blurted out, “That’s our planet!”

Yes, another Trisolaris had appeared in the sky.

Next, the sky brightened. Next to the second Trisolaris in space, the expanding circle of the night sky from the southern hemisphere revealed another sun. This was clearly the same sun that currently was shining over the southern hemisphere, but it appeared at only half the size.

Finally, someone figured it out. “It’s a mirror.”

The immense mirror that appeared over Trisolaris was the proton being unfolded, a geometric plane without any meaningful depth.

By the time the unfolding was complete, the entire sky had been replaced by the reflection of the night sky of the southern hemisphere. Directly overhead, the sky was dominated by the reflection of Trisolaris and the sun. And then the sky began to deform just above the horizon all around, and the reflections of the stars stretched and twisted as though they were melting. The deformation began at the edges of the mirror, but climbed up toward the center.

“Princeps, the proton plane is being bent by our planet’s gravity,” the science consul said. He pointed to the numerous spots of light in the starry sky. They looked as though people were waving flashlights up at the domed vault. “Those are electromagnetic beams being sent up from the ground to adjust the curvature of the plane under gravity. The goal is to eventually wrap the unfolded proton completely around Trisolaris. Afterwards, the electromagnetic beams will continue to hold up and stabilize this enormous sphere, like so many spokes. Thus, Trisolaris will be the workbench to secure the two-dimensional proton, and the work to etch electronic circuits on the surface of the proton plane can begin.”

The process of wrapping the two-dimensional proton plane around Trisolaris took a long time. By the time the deformation of the reflection reached the image of Trisolaris at the plane’s zenith, the stars had all disappeared because the proton plane, now curved around the other side of the planet, blocked them completely. Some sunlight continued to leak inside the curved proton plane, and the image of Trisolaris in this fun-house mirror in space was distorted beyond recognition. But, finally, after the last ray of sunlight was blocked, everything sank into the darkest night in the history of Trisolaris. As gravity and the electromagnetic beams balanced each other, the proton plane formed a gigantic shell in synchronous orbit around Trisolaris.

Bitter cold followed. The completely reflective proton plane deflected all sunlight back into space. The temperature on Trisolaris dropped precipitously, reaching levels comparable to the appearance of three flying stars, which had ruined many cycles of civilization in the past. Most of the population of Trisolaris dehydrated and were stored. A deathly silence fell over much of the darkness-enclosed surface. In the sky, only the faint light spots from the beams that held up the proton membrane flickered. Occasionally, a few other tiny, sharp lights could be seen in synchronous orbit: the spaceships etching circuits into the gigantic membrane.