Three Body II: Dark Forest
Encyclopedia
Three Body II: Dark Forest is the second part of the Three Body trilogy, published in 2008.
due to the intelon lock-down. Despite skepticism
and defeatism
in the general populace, world governments started efforts to counter the incoming trisolaran invasion. The UN
set up the Planetary Defense Council (PDC). Major countries also began to build their own space fleets and astroforces.
At the end of her free life, in a flicker of repentance
, Ye Wenjie had an unusual meeting with her one-time student Luo Gee where she suggested that large numbers of civilizations might exist in the universe, and that Luo should consider studying the sociological behaviors of these civilizations. She proposed the Two axioms of Astrociology: 1. Survival is the first need for any civilization. 2. Civilizations grow and expand, but the total quantity of matter in the universe never changes. In addition to these axioms, Ye also hinted at two intriguing concepts: Chain of Suspicions and Technological Explosion. The conversation was witnessed only by a brown ant and maybe an intelon. After the meeting, Luo Gee found himself mysteriously involved in a murdering attempt.
Over long periods of evolution, the trisolaran life form had lost the need for organs dedicated to communication
. Instead, all their thinking was exposed to each other, and instantaneous communication was enabled by strong brain wave
interactions. One consequence of this biological feature is, they are incapable of conspiring and deception. Based on this captured knowledge, the PDC conceived the strategic Enclosure Initiative to take advantage of the imbalance between human and trisolaran ways of thinking. The design of Enclosure is such that a small group of individuals (called Dwellers) were selected from all over the world, and bestowed the responsibility for independently devising a plan to defeat the trisolaran invasion. Although the whole world had become an open book under the constant surveillance
of intelons, the human mind remained impenetrable. By principles of Enclosure, a dweller was given authority to use all the world's resources, but he must not reveal the true intentions of his action to anybody. It was hoped the dwellers would help create a labyrinth of logical traps that would ensnare the trisolarans.
Much to his surprise and dismay, Luo Gee was picked as one of the four dwellers. A careless, philandering scholar, Luo knew nothing about his destiny and tried hard to get out of this scheme. But he found it impossible to do so once being put in that position. "How do we know this is not part of your work?" Resigned, Luo decided to put his newly acquired privilege to use. With help from Captain Shi, he was able to find his dream lover in real life; the two lived a luxurious life in an isolated, unnamed place under stringent security.
In response to Enclosure, the trisolarans sought help from their collaborators on earth, the escaped members of the ETO. The latter chose amongst themselves the counterparts for dwellers, the debunkers, whose mission was to reveal and invalidate their opponents' secret plans. Each of the three dwellers was assigned a debunker, except for Luo Gee, who was said to be his own debunker, and would "directly face the lord."
The first dweller, a former US Secretary of Defence, was quickly disclosed by his debunker and subsequently killed himself
after a visit with Luo Gee in his home. In public, Taylor had been seeking to turn macroscopic nuclei and sphere lightnings into weapons that could be used by the earth's space fleets in the doomsday battle with the trisolarans. Apparently, he was also looking for ways to cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice, modern day kamikaze
, amongst the astroforces. But the true purpose of his plan was to use the weapons in the first moment of the encounter to annihilate the Earth Space Fleet to turn them into quantum ghosts who would willingly continue the fight.
The other two dwellers included Manuel Rodriguez, a Chavez
-like former president from South America
famous for his successful deterrence of an US invasion through guerrilla warfare
aided by creative weaponry produced with publicly available technology; and Hiance, a scientist turned politician from Britain. Hiance had been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize
s in physics
and physiology
due to his ground-breaking work in brain research in collaboration with his wife Keiko. Both dwellers' plans reached the limits of human technologies (in nuclear fusion
and computing
) and they chose to go into hibernation until the required technologies become available.
After living in Eden for five years, Luo Gee was forced out of seclusion to conduct his work as a dweller. His wife and daughter had been taken away to be put in hibernation, leaving only a note behind that reads, "Beloved, we'll be waiting for you at the end of the world.". Prior to this, the traces left by the trisolaran fleet in stardust had been directly observed for the first time with Hubble Telescope II. The last skepticism was put to rest.
When Luo Gee finally got down to work, he found himself already half way from finding out the reason for his being chosen as a dweller. Everything must have started from that fateful conversation with Ye Wenjie. After months of concentrated meditation
, Luo had a revelation one night, and discovered the dark truth about civilizations of the universe. To verify his hypothesis, Luo requested the broadcasting of a "curse", i.e., the positioning information about 87J3X1, a distant star system, using the Sun as a magnifier. Shortly after this was done, Luo was hit by a targeted release of an influenza
virus, and was subsequently put to hibernation until such a day "when the effect of the curse becomes known."
In the Twelfth year of the Crisis Era, four years after Luo Gee went in hibernation, the trisolaran fleet was observed a second time as it sailed past another belt of stardust. In addition to the 1000 ships, 10 small probes were also observed to sail at accelerated speeds towards the Earth. The date when these probes were launched coincided with the date of the curse.
It only took 8 years before the technologies required by Rodriguez and Hiance arrived, and the two were waked up at the same time. But Rodriguez was debunked soon after. His plan was to deploy hydrogen bombs on Mercury
and use the explosions to slow down the planet and cause it to plunge onto the Sun, eventually destroying the whole solar system
.
Hiance went on to invent a Mind Seal machine. Those who chose to be mind-sealed would firmly believe in whatever they were programmed to believe. In the astroforces, this group of people were called the Mind Sealers. Unbeknown to the world, Hiance himself was a defeatist deep-down.
Luo Gee woke up in Year 205 of the Crisis Era to a changed world. After a half-century of serious setback (the Great Recession, where two third of world population perished), the humankind was back on its feet again. Surprising technological breakthroughs (controlled nuclear fusion in particular) helped create a world of inexhaustible food supply and energy, three astroforce fleets of 2000 great battleships, and a complacent, humanistic society filled with optimism
. The crisis was over, the trisolaran Invasion would surely be defeated. Luo Gee was waken up because the Enclosure Initiative was no longer needed. His mission as a dweller was terminated.
Zhang Beihai was an astroforce political officer who had been "sent to the future" from the beginning of the crisis to reinforce the astroforces in their battle with the trisolarans. On waking up, he was appointed executive CO on the giant cruiser Natural Selection. It was feared that hidden remnants of defeatist mind sealers in the space fleets might seek to escape before the trisolaran encounter. His job was to assume control of the ship and stop any such attempt. With the first of the trisolaran probes approaching, the three space fleets (Asian, European, and North American) got into a political fight for the first engagement with the alien spacecraft. As a compromise all 2000 ships were summoned back to their home base around Jupiter
.
The droplet shaped trisolaran probe was met by a team consisting of a pre-crisis era physicist and 2 fleet officers. After its perfectly smooth surface formed by strong interaction was examined, the droplet came to life and started attacking at dazzling speeds. In less than 20 minutes, all but a few of the 2000 battleships were pierced by the Droplet and destroyed. This came to be known as the Doomsday Battle. Among the survivors was Natural Selection.
The whole world watched the battle in real time and was on the brink of total collapse. Even more terrifying were the ensuing Battles of Darkness which broke off in the two groups of escaped spaceships
, each fleeing away from the solar system from an opposite direction. The space ships succumbed to a chain of suspicions in search for limited fuel and spare parts and started fighting each other.
Luo Gee's dweller status was reinstated after one-year-old astronomical data showed 87J3X1 had been destroyed. The Battles of Darkness further exemplified his theory: the universe is like a dark forest where every civilization is a hiding hunter; anyone exposed will be attacked and destroyed.
But the Droplet had already stationed itself between the sun and the earth and started full spectrum jamming. In the pretense of a false project to deploy hydrogen bombs on a solar orbit for spreading Oil Membrane used for the detection of the incoming trisolaran fleet, Luo finished a setup for cosmic broadcast using synchronized explosions of the bombs to create solar flare
s that encoded the position of the Three Body world.
In his final confrontation (via an intelon) with the trisolarans in front of Ye Wenjie's tomb, Luo successfully negotiated an honorable peace for the Earth. Droplets left the solar system, and the invading fleet changed its course. Thus ended the Crisis Era and began the Era of Deterrence.
Synopsis
The world now entered the Crisis Era. Save for a few significant technological developments such as human hibernation, no further progress could be expected from basic sciences like fundamental particle physicsParticle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
due to the intelon lock-down. Despite skepticism
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
and defeatism
Defeatism
Defeatism is acceptance of defeat without struggle. In everyday use, defeatism has negative connotation and is often linked to treason and pessimism, or even a hopeless situation such as a Catch-22...
in the general populace, world governments started efforts to counter the incoming trisolaran invasion. The UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
set up the Planetary Defense Council (PDC). Major countries also began to build their own space fleets and astroforces.
At the end of her free life, in a flicker of repentance
Repentance
Repentance is a change of thought to correct a wrong and gain forgiveness from a person who is wronged. In religious contexts it usually refers to confession to God, ceasing sin against God, and resolving to live according to religious law...
, Ye Wenjie had an unusual meeting with her one-time student Luo Gee where she suggested that large numbers of civilizations might exist in the universe, and that Luo should consider studying the sociological behaviors of these civilizations. She proposed the Two axioms of Astrociology: 1. Survival is the first need for any civilization. 2. Civilizations grow and expand, but the total quantity of matter in the universe never changes. In addition to these axioms, Ye also hinted at two intriguing concepts: Chain of Suspicions and Technological Explosion. The conversation was witnessed only by a brown ant and maybe an intelon. After the meeting, Luo Gee found himself mysteriously involved in a murdering attempt.
Over long periods of evolution, the trisolaran life form had lost the need for organs dedicated to communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
. Instead, all their thinking was exposed to each other, and instantaneous communication was enabled by strong brain wave
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
interactions. One consequence of this biological feature is, they are incapable of conspiring and deception. Based on this captured knowledge, the PDC conceived the strategic Enclosure Initiative to take advantage of the imbalance between human and trisolaran ways of thinking. The design of Enclosure is such that a small group of individuals (called Dwellers) were selected from all over the world, and bestowed the responsibility for independently devising a plan to defeat the trisolaran invasion. Although the whole world had become an open book under the constant surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
of intelons, the human mind remained impenetrable. By principles of Enclosure, a dweller was given authority to use all the world's resources, but he must not reveal the true intentions of his action to anybody. It was hoped the dwellers would help create a labyrinth of logical traps that would ensnare the trisolarans.
Much to his surprise and dismay, Luo Gee was picked as one of the four dwellers. A careless, philandering scholar, Luo knew nothing about his destiny and tried hard to get out of this scheme. But he found it impossible to do so once being put in that position. "How do we know this is not part of your work?" Resigned, Luo decided to put his newly acquired privilege to use. With help from Captain Shi, he was able to find his dream lover in real life; the two lived a luxurious life in an isolated, unnamed place under stringent security.
In response to Enclosure, the trisolarans sought help from their collaborators on earth, the escaped members of the ETO. The latter chose amongst themselves the counterparts for dwellers, the debunkers, whose mission was to reveal and invalidate their opponents' secret plans. Each of the three dwellers was assigned a debunker, except for Luo Gee, who was said to be his own debunker, and would "directly face the lord."
The first dweller, a former US Secretary of Defence, was quickly disclosed by his debunker and subsequently killed himself
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
after a visit with Luo Gee in his home. In public, Taylor had been seeking to turn macroscopic nuclei and sphere lightnings into weapons that could be used by the earth's space fleets in the doomsday battle with the trisolarans. Apparently, he was also looking for ways to cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice, modern day kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
, amongst the astroforces. But the true purpose of his plan was to use the weapons in the first moment of the encounter to annihilate the Earth Space Fleet to turn them into quantum ghosts who would willingly continue the fight.
The other two dwellers included Manuel Rodriguez, a Chavez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
-like former president from South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
famous for his successful deterrence of an US invasion through guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
aided by creative weaponry produced with publicly available technology; and Hiance, a scientist turned politician from Britain. Hiance had been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
due to his ground-breaking work in brain research in collaboration with his wife Keiko. Both dwellers' plans reached the limits of human technologies (in nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...
and computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
) and they chose to go into hibernation until the required technologies become available.
After living in Eden for five years, Luo Gee was forced out of seclusion to conduct his work as a dweller. His wife and daughter had been taken away to be put in hibernation, leaving only a note behind that reads, "Beloved, we'll be waiting for you at the end of the world.". Prior to this, the traces left by the trisolaran fleet in stardust had been directly observed for the first time with Hubble Telescope II. The last skepticism was put to rest.
When Luo Gee finally got down to work, he found himself already half way from finding out the reason for his being chosen as a dweller. Everything must have started from that fateful conversation with Ye Wenjie. After months of concentrated meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, Luo had a revelation one night, and discovered the dark truth about civilizations of the universe. To verify his hypothesis, Luo requested the broadcasting of a "curse", i.e., the positioning information about 87J3X1, a distant star system, using the Sun as a magnifier. Shortly after this was done, Luo was hit by a targeted release of an influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
virus, and was subsequently put to hibernation until such a day "when the effect of the curse becomes known."
In the Twelfth year of the Crisis Era, four years after Luo Gee went in hibernation, the trisolaran fleet was observed a second time as it sailed past another belt of stardust. In addition to the 1000 ships, 10 small probes were also observed to sail at accelerated speeds towards the Earth. The date when these probes were launched coincided with the date of the curse.
It only took 8 years before the technologies required by Rodriguez and Hiance arrived, and the two were waked up at the same time. But Rodriguez was debunked soon after. His plan was to deploy hydrogen bombs on Mercury
Mercury (planet)
Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
and use the explosions to slow down the planet and cause it to plunge onto the Sun, eventually destroying the whole solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
.
Hiance went on to invent a Mind Seal machine. Those who chose to be mind-sealed would firmly believe in whatever they were programmed to believe. In the astroforces, this group of people were called the Mind Sealers. Unbeknown to the world, Hiance himself was a defeatist deep-down.
Luo Gee woke up in Year 205 of the Crisis Era to a changed world. After a half-century of serious setback (the Great Recession, where two third of world population perished), the humankind was back on its feet again. Surprising technological breakthroughs (controlled nuclear fusion in particular) helped create a world of inexhaustible food supply and energy, three astroforce fleets of 2000 great battleships, and a complacent, humanistic society filled with optimism
Optimism
The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...
. The crisis was over, the trisolaran Invasion would surely be defeated. Luo Gee was waken up because the Enclosure Initiative was no longer needed. His mission as a dweller was terminated.
Zhang Beihai was an astroforce political officer who had been "sent to the future" from the beginning of the crisis to reinforce the astroforces in their battle with the trisolarans. On waking up, he was appointed executive CO on the giant cruiser Natural Selection. It was feared that hidden remnants of defeatist mind sealers in the space fleets might seek to escape before the trisolaran encounter. His job was to assume control of the ship and stop any such attempt. With the first of the trisolaran probes approaching, the three space fleets (Asian, European, and North American) got into a political fight for the first engagement with the alien spacecraft. As a compromise all 2000 ships were summoned back to their home base around Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
.
The droplet shaped trisolaran probe was met by a team consisting of a pre-crisis era physicist and 2 fleet officers. After its perfectly smooth surface formed by strong interaction was examined, the droplet came to life and started attacking at dazzling speeds. In less than 20 minutes, all but a few of the 2000 battleships were pierced by the Droplet and destroyed. This came to be known as the Doomsday Battle. Among the survivors was Natural Selection.
The whole world watched the battle in real time and was on the brink of total collapse. Even more terrifying were the ensuing Battles of Darkness which broke off in the two groups of escaped spaceships
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
, each fleeing away from the solar system from an opposite direction. The space ships succumbed to a chain of suspicions in search for limited fuel and spare parts and started fighting each other.
Luo Gee's dweller status was reinstated after one-year-old astronomical data showed 87J3X1 had been destroyed. The Battles of Darkness further exemplified his theory: the universe is like a dark forest where every civilization is a hiding hunter; anyone exposed will be attacked and destroyed.
But the Droplet had already stationed itself between the sun and the earth and started full spectrum jamming. In the pretense of a false project to deploy hydrogen bombs on a solar orbit for spreading Oil Membrane used for the detection of the incoming trisolaran fleet, Luo finished a setup for cosmic broadcast using synchronized explosions of the bombs to create solar flare
Solar flare
A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 1025 joules of energy . The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions, and atoms through the corona into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day...
s that encoded the position of the Three Body world.
In his final confrontation (via an intelon) with the trisolarans in front of Ye Wenjie's tomb, Luo successfully negotiated an honorable peace for the Earth. Droplets left the solar system, and the invading fleet changed its course. Thus ended the Crisis Era and began the Era of Deterrence.