The Three-Body Problem

Ye opened the resulting document, and, for the first time, a human read a message from another world.

The content was not what anyone had imagined. It was a warning repeated three times.

Do not answer!

Do not answer!!

Do not answer!!!

Still caught up by the dizzying excitement and confusion, Ye deciphered a second message.

This world has received your message.

I am a pacifist in this world. It is the luck of your civilization that I am the first to receive your message. I am warning you: Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!

There are tens of millions of stars in your direction. As long as you do not answer, this world will not be able to ascertain the source of your transmission.

But if you do answer, the source will be located right away. Your planet will be invaded. Your world will be conquered!

Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!

As she read the flashing green text on the display, Ye was no longer capable of thinking clearly. Her mind, inhibited by shock and excitement, could only understand this: No more than nine years had passed since the time she had sent the message to the sun. Then the source of this transmission must be around four light-years away. It could only have come from the closest extra-solar stellar system: Alpha Centauri.34

The universe was not desolate. The universe was not empty. The universe was full of life! Humankind had cast their gaze to the end of the universe, but they had no idea that intelligent life already existed around the stars closest to them!

Ye stared at the waveform display: The signal continued to stream from the universe into the Red Coast antenna. She opened up another interface and began real-time deciphering. The messages began to show up immediately on the screen.

During the next four hours, Ye learned of the existence of Trisolaris, learned of the civilization that had been reborn again and again, and learned of their plan to migrate to the stars.

At four in the morning, the transmission from Alpha Centauri ended. The deciphering system continued to run uselessly and emitted an unceasing string of failure codes. The Red Coast monitoring system was once again only hearing the noise of the universe.

But Ye was certain that what she had just experienced was not a dream.

The sun really was an amplifying antenna. But why had her experiment eight years ago not received any echoes? Why had the waveforms of Jupiter’s radio outbursts not matched the later radiation from the sun? Later, Ye came up with many reasons. It was possible that the base communication office couldn’t receive radio waves at that frequency, or maybe the office did receive the echo but it sounded like noise and so the operator thought it was nothing. As for the waveforms, it was possible that when the sun amplified the radio waves, it also added another wave to it. It would likely be a periodic wave that could be easily filtered out by the alien deciphering system, but to her unaided eye, the waveform from Jupiter and from the sun would appear very different. Years later, after Ye had left Red Coast, she would manage to confirm her last guess: The sun had added a sine wave.

She looked around alertly. There were three others in the main computer room. Two of the three were chatting in a corner, while the last was napping before a terminal. In the data analysis section of the monitoring system, only the two terminals in front of her could view the recognizability rating of a signal and access the deciphering system.

Maintaining her composure, she worked quickly and moved all of the received messages to a multiply-encrypted, invisible subdirectory. Then she copied over a segment of noise received a year ago as a substitute for the transmission received during the last five hours.

Finally, from the terminal, she placed a short message into the Red Coast transmission buffer.

Ye got up and left the monitoring main control room. A chilly wind blew against her feverish face. Dawn had just brightened the eastern sky, and she followed the dimly lit pebble-paved path to the transmission main control room. Above her, the Red Coast antenna lay open, silently, like a giant palm toward the universe. The dawn turned the guard at the door into a silhouette, and as usual, he did not pay attention to Ye as she entered.