The Three-Body Problem

In front of this metal monster stood the slim figure of a young woman. The composition’s lighting was fantastic as well: The metal monster was buried in the shadow of a temporary construction shelter, further emphasizing its stern, rough quality. But a single ray of light from the westering sun coming through the central hole in the shelter fell right on the woman. The soft glow lit up her supple hair and highlighted her white neck above the collar of her overalls, as though a single flower was blooming in a metal ruin after a violent thunderstorm.…

“What are you looking at? Get back to work!”

Wang was shocked out of his reverie, but then realized that the director of the Nanotechnology Research Center wasn’t talking to him, but to a young engineer who had also been staring at the woman. Having returned from art to reality, Wang saw that the young woman wasn’t an ordinary worker—the chief engineer stood next to her, explaining something respectfully.

“Who is she?” Wang asked the director.

“You should know her,” the director said, waving his hand around in a large circle. “The first experiment on this twenty-billion-yuan accelerator will probably be to test her superstring model. Now, seniority matters in theoretical physics, and normally, she wouldn’t have been senior enough to get the first shot. But those older academics didn’t dare to show up first, afraid that they might fail and lose face, so that’s why she got the chance.”

“What? Yang Dong is … a woman?”

“Indeed,” the director said. “We only found out when we finally met her two days ago.”

The young engineer asked, “Does she have some psychological issue? Why else wouldn’t she agree to be interviewed by the media? Maybe she’s like Qian Zhongshu,11 who died without ever appearing on TV.”

“But at least we knew Qian’s gender. I bet Yang had some unusual experiences as a child. Maybe it made her somewhat autistic.” Wang’s words were tinged with a hint of self-mockery. He wasn’t even famous enough for the media to be interested in him, let alone to turn down interview requests.

Yang walked over with the chief engineer. As they passed, she smiled at Wang and the others, nodding lightly without saying anything. Wang remembered her limpid eyes.

That night, Wang sat in his study and admired the few landscape photographs, his works he was the most proud of, hanging on the wall. His eyes fell on a frontier scene: a desolate valley terminating in a snowcapped mountain. On the nearer end of the valley, half of a dead tree, eroded by the vicissitudes of many years, took up one-third of the picture. In his imagination, Wang placed the figure that lingered in his mind at the far end of the valley. Surprisingly, it made the entire scene come alive, as though the world in the photograph recognized that tiny figure and responded to it, as though the whole scene existed for her.

He then imagined her figure in each of his other photographs, sometimes pasting her two eyes into the empty sky over the landscapes. Those images also came alive, achieving a beauty that Wang had never imagined.

Wang had always thought that his photographs lacked some kind of soul. Now he understood that they were missing her.

*   *   *

“All the physicists on this list have committed suicide in the last two months,” General Chang said.

Wang was thunderstruck. Gradually, his black-and-white landscapes faded into blankness in his mind. The photographs no longer had her figure in the foreground, and her eyes were wiped from the skies. Those worlds were all dead.

“When … did this happen?” Wang asked mechanically.

“The last two months,” Chang repeated.

“You mean the last name, don’t you?” Shi responded with satisfaction. “She was the last to commit suicide—two nights ago, overdosed on sleeping pills. She died very peacefully. No pain.”

For a moment, Wang was grateful to Shi.

“Why?” Wang asked. The dead scenes in those landscape photographs continued to flicker through his mind.

General Chang replied, “The only thing we can be sure of is this: The same reason drove all of them to suicide. But it’s hard to articulate. Maybe it’s impossible for us nonspecialists to even understand the reason. The document contains excerpts from their suicide notes. Everyone can examine them after the meeting.”

Wang flipped through the notes: All of them seemed to be long essays.

“Dr. Ding, would you please show Yang Dong’s note to Professor Wang? Hers is the shortest and possibly the most representative.”

The man in question, Ding Yi, had been silent until now. After another pause, he finally took out a white envelope and handed it across the table to Wang.