The Three-Body Problem

He examined the wet film with a magnifying glass. There was no countdown. The negatives held only the interior shots his wife had taken. She had used a slow shutter speed, and her amateurish operation left all the scenes blurry. But Wang thought these were the most enjoyable pictures he had ever seen.

Wang came out of the darkroom and let out a held breath. He was covered in sweat. His wife was in the kitchen cooking, and his son was playing in his room. He sat on the sofa and thought the matter over more rationally.

First, the numbers, which precisely recorded the passage of time between shots and which showed signs of intelligence, could not possibly have been preprinted on the film. Something exposed them onto the film. But what? Did the camera have a malfunction? Had some mechanism been installed in the camera without his knowledge? He took off the lens and disassembled the camera. He examined the interior with a magnifying glass and checked every dustless component without discovering anything out of place. Then, considering that the numbers showed up even in the shots taken with the lens cap on, he realized the most likely light source was some kind of penetrating ray. But how was this technologically possible? Where was the source of the rays? How could they have been aimed?

At least given current technology, such power would be supernatural.

In order to see if the ghostly countdown had disappeared, Wang loaded another roll into the Leica, and again began to shoot randomly. When this roll was developed, Wang’s short-lived calm was again shattered. He felt himself pushed to the precipice of madness. The countdown had returned. Based on the numbers, it had never stopped, just failed to display on the roll shot by his wife.

1186:34:13, 1186:34:02, 1186:33:46, 1186:33:35 …

Wang rushed out of the darkroom and continued through the door of the apartment. He knocked loudly on the door of his neighbor, retired Professor Zhang.

“Professor Zhang, do you have a camera? Not a digital one, but one that takes film!”

“A professional photographer like you wants to borrow my camera? What happened to your expensive one? I have only digital point-and-shoots. Are you okay? Your face looks so pale.”

“Please, let me borrow it.”

Zhang returned with a common Kodak digital camera. “Here you go. You can just delete the few pictures already on there.”

“Thank you!” Wang seized the camera and rushed back home. He actually had three more film cameras and a digital one, but Wang thought it better to borrow a camera from someone else. He looked at his own camera lying on the sofa and the few rolls of film, paused in thought, and decided to reload the Leica with new film. He handed the borrowed digital camera to his wife, who was setting out dinner.

“Quick! Shoot another few pictures, like before.”

“What are you doing? Look at your face! What’s happening?”

“Don’t worry about it. Shoot!”

She put down the dishes and came over to him, her eyes filled with both worry and fright.

Wang stuffed the Kodak into the hands of his six-year-old son, who was about to start eating dinner. “Dou Dou, come help Daddy. Push this button. Right, like that. That’s one shot. Push it again. That’s another shot. Keep on shooting like that. You can take pictures of anything you want.”

The boy learned quickly. He was very interested and made rapid shots. Wang turned around and picked up the Leica from the couch, and began to shoot as well. The father and son kept on pressing the shutters as though they were mad. His wife, not knowing what to do as the flashes went off around her, began to cry.

“Wang Miao, I know that you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, but please, I hope you haven’t…?”

Wang finished the roll in the Leica and grabbed the digital from his son. He thought for a moment, and then, in order to avoid his wife, went into the bedroom and took a few more shots with the digital. He used the optical finder instead of the LCD because he was afraid to see the results, though he was going to have to face them soon enough.

Wang took out the film from the Leica and went back into the darkroom. He shut the door and worked. After the film was developed, he examined the images carefully. Because his hands were shaking, he had to hold the magnifying glass with both hands. On the negatives, the countdown continued.

Wang rushed out of the darkroom and began to look through the digital images on the Kodak. On the LCD, he saw that the pictures his son had taken did not have the numbers, but in the pictures that he took, the countdown showed clearly and was synchronized with the numbers on the film.

By using different cameras, Wang was trying to eliminate problems with the camera or the film as possible explanations. But by allowing his son and his wife to take some pictures, he discovered an even stranger result: The countdown only appeared on the pictures he took!