The Three-Body Problem

Back then, in the temple, I didn’t even have a calculator. I had to go to the accounting office to get a blank ledger and a pencil. I began to build the math model on paper. This required a lot of work, and in no time at all I went through more than a dozen ledgers. The monks in charge of accounts were angry with me, but because the abbot wished it, they found me more paper and pen. I hid the completed calculations under my pillow, and threw the scratch paper into the incense burner in the yard.

One evening, a young woman suddenly dashed into my room. This was the first time a woman had shown up at my place. She clutched a few pieces of paper with burnt edges, the scratch paper I had thrown out.

“They tell me these are yours. Are you studying the three-body problem?” Behind her wide glasses, her eyes seemed to be on fire.

The woman surprised me. The math I used was unconventional, and my derivations took large leaps. But the fact that she could tell the subject of my study from a few pieces of scratch paper showed that she had unusual math talent and that she, like me, was very devoted to the three-body problem.

I didn’t have a good impression of the tourists and pilgrims. The tourists had no idea what they were looking at, only running around to snap pictures. As for the pilgrims, they looked much poorer than the tourists, and all seemed to be in a state of numbness, their intellect inhibited. But this woman was different. She looked like an academic. Later I found out that she had come with a group of Japanese tourists.

Without waiting for my answer, she added, “Your approach is brilliant. We’ve been searching for a method like this that could turn the difficulty of the three-body problem into a matter of massive computation. Of course, it would require a very powerful computer.”

I told her the truth. “Even if we were to use all the computers in the world, it wouldn’t be enough.”

“But you must have an adequate research environment, and there’s nothing like that here. I can give you the use of a supercomputer. I can also give you a minicomputer. Let’s leave together tomorrow morning.”

The woman, of course, was Shen Yufei. Like now, she was concise and authoritarian, but she was more attractive then. I’m naturally a cold person. I had less interest in women than the monks around me. This woman who didn’t adhere to conventional ideas about femininity was different, though. She attracted me. Since I had nothing to do anyway, I agreed right away.