Three Body 1: Earth's Past

Chapter 17 The Three-Body Copernican Cosmic Rugby Three-Day Volley
After leaving Ye Wenjie's home, Wang Miao's mood was disturbed. The experience of the past two days and Hong An's story, these two irrelevant things were intertwined, making the world strange overnight.

After returning home, in order to get rid of this state of mind, he turned on the computer, put on the V suit, and entered "Three-Body Problem" for the third time.His mentality was adjusted successfully. When the login interface appeared, Wang Miao seemed to be a different person, and his heart was immediately filled with inexplicable excitement.Different from the previous two times, Wang Miao came in with a mission this time. He wanted to reveal the secrets of this virtual world. He re-registered a commensurate ID: Copernicus.

After logging into "Three-Body Problem", Wang Miao stood on the vast plain again, facing the strange dawn of the Three-Body Problem.A huge pyramid appeared in the east, but Wang Miao immediately realized that it was not the pyramid of King Zhou and Mozi. It had a gothic top, and it pierced into the early morning sky, reminding him of the one he saw at Wangfujing yesterday morning. There is a Romanesque church here, but if that church is placed next to the pyramid, it is just a small pavilion of it.He also saw many buildings in the distance that were obviously dry warehouses, but their shapes had also changed into Gothic buildings, with slender spires, like many thorns growing out of the earth.

Wang Miao saw a cave door on the pyramid with a faint fire, and walked in.On the walls of the cave, a row of statues of the gods of Olympus, which have been blackened by smoke, hold torches.Walking into the main hall, he found that the place was even darker than the doorway, only the candles on two silver candlesticks on a long marble table were drowsily lit, and there were several people sitting beside the table, the dim light made Wang feel sleepy. Miao could only see the outlines of their faces, and their eyes were hidden in the shadows of deep eye sockets, but Wang Miao could feel the eyes focused on him.These people seem to be wearing medieval robes. If you look closely, there are one or two people whose robes are more concise and ancient Greek.Sitting at one end of the long table was a tall and thin man. The golden crown on his head was the only shining thing in the hall other than the candle. Wang Miao struggled to see in the light of the candle that the robe on his body was different from other things. People are different, they are red.

At this point, Wang Miao confirmed his own judgment: this game opens a separate process for each player, and the current European Medieval copy is selected by the software based on his ID.

"You're late, the meeting has been on for a long time." said the man in the golden crown and the red robe, "I am Pope Gregory."

Wang Miao tried hard to recall the history of the European Middle Ages, which he was not familiar with, and wanted to infer the degree of evolution of this civilization from the name, but when he thought of the historical chaos in the Trisolaran world, he felt that such efforts were meaningless.

"You changed your ID, but we all know you. In the previous two civilizations, you seem to have traveled to the East. Oh, I am Aristotle." Said the man in the ancient Greek robe with white hair curly hair.

"Yes," Wang Miao nodded, "I witnessed the destruction of civilization twice, one by the severe cold and one by the scorching sun. I also saw the great efforts of scholars in the East to understand the laws of the sun's movement. .”

"Hey!" A man with an upturned goatee and thinner than the Pope made a voice in the shadows, "Oriental scholars, trying to understand the secrets of the sun's movement through meditation, epiphany, and even sleepwalking are extremely ridiculous!"

"This is Galileo." Aristotle said, "He advocated that we should understand the world from experiments and observations. He is a craftsman-like thinker, but we still have to face up to the achievements he has made."

"Mozi also conducted experiments and observations." Wang Miao said.

Galileo snorted again, "Mozi's thinking is still Eastern. He is just a metaphysician in a scientific cloak. He has never taken his own observation results seriously, and he builds a full simulation model of the universe based on subjective conjectures. Ridiculous! It’s a pity for those sophisticated equipment. We are different. Based on a large number of observations and experiments, we conduct rigorous inferences, establish a model of the universe, and then return to experiments and observations to test it.”

"That's right," Wang Miao nodded, "this is exactly my way of thinking."

"Did you also bring a perpetual calendar?" the Pope said sarcastically.

"I don't have a perpetual calendar. I only brought a cosmic model based on observational data. However, even if this model is correct, it may not be possible to use it to grasp the precise laws of the sun's movement and compile a perpetual calendar. But after all, It’s the first step that must be taken.”

A few lonely applause echoed in the cold hall, and this applause belonged to Galileo. "Very good, Copernicus, very good. Most scholars do not possess your realistic and experimental scientific thinking. Based on this alone, your theory is worth listening to."

The Pope nodded to Wang Miao, "Tell me about it."

Wang Miao walked to the other end of the long table, calmed himself down, and said, "It's actually very simple: the reason why the sun moves irregularly is because there are three suns in our world. Unpredictable three-body motion. When our planet orbits one of the suns in a stable orbit, it is a constant epoch; when the other or two suns orbit within a certain distance, its gravity will pull the planet away from it Our planet is taken away from the edge of the sun, making it wander in the gravitational range of the three suns, which is the chaotic era; after an indeterminate period of time, our planet is captured by a certain sun again, temporarily establishing a stable orbit, the constant era It starts again. This is a cosmic rugby game, the players are the three suns, and our world is the ball!"

A few dry laughs sounded in the dark hall. "Burn him to death." The Pope said expressionlessly, and the two soldiers in rusty full-body armor standing in front of the door immediately walked towards Wang Miao like two clumsy robots.

"Burn it." Galileo sighed and waved his hand, "I had hope for you, but it turned out to be just another metaphysician or wizard."

"This kind of person has become a public nuisance now." Aristotle nodded in agreement.

"Let me finish my sentence!" Wang Miao pushed aside the iron gloves of the two soldiers who were grabbing him.

"Have you seen three suns? Or has anyone else seen them?" Galileo asked, tilting his head.

"Everyone has seen it."

"So, apart from this sun that appeared in Chaos Era and Constant Era, where are the other two?"

"The first thing to say is that we may not be seeing the same sun at different times, but one of three. The other two suns are flying stars, and when they travel far away, they look like stars."

"You lack basic scientific training." Galileo shook his head disapprovingly, "The sun moves continuously to a long distance, and it is impossible to jump over, so according to your assumption, there should be a third situation: the sun is smaller than normal, But bigger than a flying star, it should gradually become the size of a flying star on the fly, but we've never seen a sun like that."

"Since you are scientifically trained, you should have some understanding of the structure of the sun in your observations."

"This is the discovery I'm most proud of: the sun is made of a deep but thin gaseous outer layer and a dense, hot inner core."

"True, but you apparently did not notice the strange optical interaction between the gaseous outer layers of the sun and our planet's atmosphere. It is a phenomenon similar to polarization, which makes the observation from our atmosphere, when the sun exceeds a certain distance, The gaseous outer layer of the sun suddenly becomes transparent and invisible, and only its luminous core can be seen. At this time, the sun suddenly shrinks to the size of the core in our field of vision and becomes a flying star. It is this phenomenon that confuses us. The researchers of various civilizations in history made them unaware of the existence of the three suns. Now you understand why the appearance of the three flying stars indicates a long and severe cold, because at this time the three suns are all in the distance."

There was a brief silence, and everyone was thinking.Aristotle was the first to speak: "You lack basic logical training. Yes, it is possible for us to see three flying stars, and their appearance is always accompanied by devastating cold. But according to your theory, we still have It should be possible to see three suns of normal size, which has never happened, never happened in the records left by all civilizations!"

"Wait!" A man wearing a strangely shaped hat and a long beard stood up and spoke for the first time, "It seems that there is a record in history that a civilization saw two suns, and that civilization was immediately destroyed on Double Sun In the flames, but the record is vague. Oh, I'm Da Vinci."

"We are talking about three suns, not two!" cried Galileo. "According to his theory, three suns must appear, just like three flying stars!"

"The three suns have appeared," Wang Miao said calmly, "and others have seen them, but it is impossible for those who saw them to pass on the information, because when they saw this great sight, at most they could only live again." In a few seconds, it is impossible to escape and survive. "Three-day volley" is the most terrifying disaster in the Trisolaran world. At that time, the surface of the planet will become a smelting furnace in an instant, and the high temperature can melt rocks. In "Three-day volley" It will take a long time for life and civilization to reappear in a destroyed world, which is why there are no historical records.”

In silence, everyone looked at the Pope.

"Burn him to death." The Pope said gently, the smile on Wang Miao's face was familiar to Wang, it was King Zhou's smile.

The hall immediately became active, and everyone seemed to have encountered some happy event.Galileo and the others happily moved out a burning cross from a dark corner. They took down a charred corpse and threw it aside, and erected the burning rack. Others piled firewood excitedly.Only Da Vinci was indifferent to all this, sitting at the table thinking, and calculating something on the table with a pen from time to time.

"Bruno," said Aristotle, pointing to the charred corpse, "was talking as much nonsense as you here."

"Slow fire," the Pope said feebly.

Two soldiers tied Wang Miao to the stake with a refractory asbestos rope. Wang Miao pointed at the Pope with his free hand and said, "You must be a program. As for the rest of you, they are either programs or idiots. I will log in again." Come back!"

"You can't come back, you will disappear forever in the three-body world." Galileo said with a strange smile.

"Then you must be a program. It is impossible for a normal person to not even have this bit of network knowledge. At most, I can write down my MAC number here. Just change the computer and change the ID on it. I will announce who I am at that time." .”

"The system has recorded your retinal features through the V-suit." Da Vinci looked up at Wang Miao and said, then buried himself in his calculations.

Wang Miao suddenly felt an inexplicable fear and shouted: "Don't do this! Let me go! What I said is the truth!!"

"If what you say is the truth, you won't be burned to death. The game is released all the way to those who walk the right way." Aristotle grinned, took out a silver Zippo lighter, and played a complicated trick. The trick ignited with a clang.

Just as he was reaching out to light the fire on the pyre, a strong red light shot in from the door opening, followed by a heat wave with smoke and dust. A horse ran into the hall through the strong light, and the horse's body was burning. , has become a ball of fire, the flames whistling when running.Riding a horse is a medieval knight in heavy armor. His armor has been burned red, and he drags a puff of white smoke as he runs.

"The world has just been destroyed!! The world has just been destroyed!! Dehydration!! Dehydration!!" The knight yelled wildly, and the burning mount fell to the ground with a plop, turning into a large bonfire.The knight was thrown far away and rolled all the way to the stake. His red-hot armor remained motionless, only thick white smoke kept coming out.The human oil flowing out of the armor burned and spread on the ground, as if the armor had grown a pair of wings of fire.

The people in the hall rushed to the cave door, rushed out, and quickly disappeared in the red light from outside the door.Wang Miao struggled to break free from the rope, bypassed the burning knights and horses, passed through the empty hall, and ran through the hot porch to the outside.

The earth has been burned red like an iron plate in a furnace, and there are streams of bright magma flowing on the dark red ground, weaving into a bright fire net stretching to the sky.Countless slender pillars of fire rose high on the red-hot ground. This was the burning of dry warehouses, and the dehydrated people in the warehouses dyed the pillars of fire a strange blue-green color.Wang Miao saw more than a dozen small fire pillars of the same color not far away. They were a dozen people who had just run out of the pyramid: the Pope, Galileo, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci... the blue flames that wrapped them. The green pillar of fire is transparent, and you can see their faces and bodies slowly deforming in the fire. They focused their eyes on Wang Miao who just came out, and they all maintained the same posture, raising their flaming arms towards the sky , singing in unison with singing voices:
"Three days of volleys—"

Wang Miao looked up and saw three huge suns slowly rotating around an invisible origin in the sky, like a huge fan blowing the wind of death to the earth.The three suns that took up almost all of the sky were moving westward, and soon half of them were sinking below the horizon. The "fan" is still spinning, and a brilliant blade draws the horizon from time to time, bringing short sunrises and sunsets to this ruined world. And flooded everything with flat light.After the three days had completely fallen, the dense clouds formed by the rising water vapor still scattered its light, and the sky was burning, presenting a crazy beauty of hell.When the destructive sunset glow finally disappeared, and only a layer of blood red smeared by the hellfire of the earth remained in the clouds, a few large characters appeared:

Civilization No. 183 was destroyed in the "Three Days Volley", and the civilization evolved to the medieval level.

After a long time, life and civilization will restart, beginning the unpredictable evolution of the Trisolaran world again.

But in this civilization, Copernicus successfully revealed the basic structure of the universe, the Trisolaran civilization will make its first leap, and the game will enter the second level.

Welcome to the second level "Three-Body Problem".

(End of this chapter)