Three bodies

The next eight years were the most peaceful period in Ye Wenjie's life. The panic caused by the experience of the "Cultural Revolution" gradually subsided, and she was finally able to relax a little bit.The Red Coast project has completed the experiment and running-in period, and everything has gradually turned into a routine. There are fewer and fewer technical problems to be solved, and work and life have become more regular.

After calming down, the memory that had been suppressed by tension and fear began to wake up, and Ye Wenjie found that the real pain had just begun.The nightmarish memory was like a resurgent fire, burning more and more vigorously, burning her heart.For ordinary women, perhaps time can gradually heal these wounds. After all, there are too many women who suffered like her during the "Cultural Revolution". Compared with many of them, she is considered lucky.But Ye Wenjie is a scientific woman, she refuses to forget, and looks directly at the madness and paranoia that hurt her with rational eyes.

In fact, Ye Wenjie's rational thinking about the evil side of human beings started from the day she saw "Silent Spring".As her relationship with Yang Weining became increasingly close, Ye Wenjie purchased many philosophical and historical classics in foreign languages ​​through him in the name of collecting technical materials. The human history decorated with blood stains made her shudder, and those thinkers' outstanding thinking, It leads her to the most essential and most hidden place of human nature.

In fact, it is on Radar Peak, which is almost a paradise, that the irrationality and madness of human beings are still vividly seen every day.Ye Wenjie saw that the forest below the mountain was being felled by her former comrades-in-arms every day, and the area of ​​the wasteland was expanding day by day, as if it was a part of the Greater Khingan Mountains that had been stripped of its skin. Not normal anymore.The wildfire ignited on the bare mountain, and Radar Peak became a refuge for the birds that escaped from the sea of ​​fire. When the fire started, the birds in the base screamed miserably, and their feathers were scorched. .

In the farther outer world, human madness has reached its peak in the history of civilization.At that time, it was the most intense period of the hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the countless silos distributed on the two continents, on the strategic nuclear submarines that sneaked under the deep sea like ghosts, nuclear weapons that could destroy the earth dozens of times were on the verge of firing. In fact, only one missile-guided nuclear warhead on a "Polaris" or "Typhoon" class submarine is enough to destroy hundreds of cities and kill hundreds of millions of people.But ordinary people still laugh it off, as if it has nothing to do with them.

As an astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie is very sensitive to nuclear weapons. She knows that this is the power that only stars have.She knows better that there are more terrifying forces in the universe, such as black holes and antimatter, etc. Compared with those forces, thermonuclear bombs are just a gentle candle.If human beings get one of those powers, the world may be vaporized in an instant, and reason is powerless in the face of madness.

Four years after entering the Red Bank Base, Ye Wenjie and Yang Weining formed a family.Yang Weining really loves Ye Wenjie, for love, he gave up his own future.At this time, the most intense period of the "Cultural Revolution" had passed, and the political environment was relatively mild. Yang Weining was not persecuted because of his marriage, but because he married a wife who wore a counter-revolutionary hat, he was regarded as politically immature and thrown away. took the position of chief engineer.He and his wife were able to stay in the base as ordinary technicians only because they were technically inseparable from them.For Ye Wenjie, accepting Yang Weining's love was mainly out of a kind of gratitude. At the most critical moment, if he hadn't brought her into this isolated safe haven, she might have passed away long ago.Yang Weining is very talented, with excellent demeanor and self-cultivation. She is not a person she hates, but she herself is ashamed, and it is difficult to ignite the flame of love again.

Thinking about the essence of human beings plunged Ye Wenjie into a deep spiritual crisis.The first thing she faced was the lack of a dedicated goal. She was an idealist and needed to contribute her talents to a great goal, but now she found that everything she had done before was meaningless and impossible in the future What meaningful pursuits.With the development of this mentality, she gradually felt that the world was so strange that she did not belong here. This kind of mental wandering tortured her cruelly. After forming a family, her heart became homeless instead.

Ye Wenjie was on the night shift that day, and this was the loneliest moment. In the silent midnight, the universe showed its vast desolation to its listeners.The last thing Ye Wenjie wants to see is the slowly moving curve on the monitor, which is the waveform of the cosmic radio waves received by Hong An, meaningless noise.Ye Wenjie feels that this infinitely long curve is the abstraction of the universe. One end is connected to the infinite past, and the other end is connected to the infinite future. There are only irregular and lifeless random ups and downs in the middle. Unequal sand, the whole curve is like a one-dimensional desert formed by all the sand grains lined up, desolate and lonely, and the length is unbearable.You can go infinitely far forward and backward along it, but you will never find your destination.

But today, when Ye Wenjie glanced at the waveform monitor, she found something strange.Even for professionals, it is difficult to tell whether the waveform carries information with the naked eye, but Ye Wenjie is too familiar with the waveform of cosmic noise. The line seemed to have a soul, she was sure that the radio waves in front of her were modulated by intelligence!Ye Wenjie rushed to another host terminal, checked the computer's identification of the recognition degree of the currently received content, and found that the recognition degree was AAAAA! !Before this, the cosmic radio waves received by Hong An have never exceeded C. If it reaches A, the possibility of the band containing intelligent information is greater than 90.00%. Five consecutive A is an extreme case, which means that the received The message uses the language of Red Bank's launch message!Ye Wenjie turned on the Red Bank deciphering system. This software can try to decode information with a recognition degree greater than B. During the entire monitoring process of Red Bank, it has never been officially used.According to the situation in the software test operation, it may take days or even months of computing time to translate a possible intelligent code, and the result is mostly a failure to decipher.But this time, the original document had just been submitted, and there was almost no time interval before the screen showed that the deciphering was complete.Ye Wenjie opened the result file, and for the first time, humans read information from another world in the universe. The content was beyond everyone's imagination. It was three repeated warnings:
Don't answer!

Don't answer! !
Don't answer! ! !

In the excitement and confusion that made her dizzy, Ye Wenjie then deciphered the second message:

The world has received your message.

I'm a pacifist in this world, it's the luck of your civilization that I got the message first, warning you: don't answer!Don't answer! !Don't answer! ! !

There are tens of millions of stars in your direction, as long as you don't answer, this world will not be able to locate the source of the emission.

If answered, the source of the emission will be located, your planetary system will be invaded, and your world will be occupied!

Don't answer!Don't answer! !Don't answer! ! !
Looking at the flashing green letters on the screen, Ye Wenjie could no longer think calmly. Her intelligence suppressed by excitement and shock could only comprehend the following facts: It has been less than nine years since she last sent a message to the sun, so these The source of the information is only about four light-years away from the earth, and it can only come from the nearest star system to us: the Centaurus!

The universe is not desolate, the universe is not empty, the universe is full of vitality!Human beings set their sights on the end of the universe, but who would have thought that intelligent life exists in the stars closest to them!

Ye Wenjie looked at the waveform display, and the information was still pouring into the Red Coast antenna from space. She opened another interface, started the real-time interpretation, and the received information was displayed immediately.In the next four hours or so, Ye Wenjie knew about the existence of Trisolaran, that civilization that was reborn again and again, and also knew about their attempt to emigrate to the stars.

At around four o'clock in the morning, the information from Centaur ended, and the decoding system began to run fruitlessly, continuously sending out failure messages. What the Red Coast monitoring system heard was the desolate noise of the universe again.

But Ye Wenjie can be sure that what happened just now was not a dream.

The sun is indeed a super antenna, but why didn't the echo be received in the experiment eight years ago, and why did the radiation waveform of Jupiter not match the later solar radiation?Ye Wenjie later came up with many reasons. The radio station at the base may not be able to receive the radio waves of that frequency band at all, or after receiving it, it is just a mass of noise, and they think they have not received anything.As for the latter, it is probably because the sun superimposed a waveform while amplifying the radio waves. This waveform is regular and can be easily eliminated in the deciphering system of alien civilizations, but in her naked eyes, Jupiter It is very different from the radiation waveform of the sun.This was later confirmed by superimposing a sine wave.

She looked around vigilantly, and there were three other people on duty in the main computer room, two of whom were chatting in a corner, and one was dozing off in front of the terminal; while in the information processing part of the monitoring system, it was possible to check the recognition degree of the received content and access interpretation. The system's terminals are only the two in front of her.She operated quickly and calmly, dumping all the received information into a multi-encrypted invisible subdirectory, replacing the five hours of content with a piece of noise received a year ago.

Then, from the terminal, she entered a brief message into the buffer of the Red Coast launch system.

Ye Wenjie got up and walked out the door of the monitor control room. A gust of cold wind blew on her burning face. The eastern morning light was just emerging. She walked along the gravel road slightly illuminated by the morning light to the launch control room. , the giant palm of the Red Bank Antenna silently opened to the universe.The morning light revealed the black silhouette of the sentry at the door, as usual, Ye Wenjie ignored him when he entered.The launch control room was much darker than the monitor control room. Ye Wenjie walked through rows of cabinets, walked straight to the console, flipped more than a dozen switches skillfully, and activated the preheating of the launch system.The two watchmen sitting next to the console looked up at her with sleepy eyes, one of them turned his head to look at the clock on the wall, and then one continued to doze off, while the other flipped through the clocks that he might have seen a lot. newspapers all over the place.In the base, Ye Wenjie naturally has no status in politics, but she has some technical freedom. She often checks the equipment before the launch. Although today is too early, there are still three hours before the launch operation, but the warm-up in advance is also necessary. Not surprising.

A long half an hour passed, during which Ye Wenjie reset the transmission frequency, placed it at the optimal value of solar energy specular reflection, set the transmission power to the maximum value, and then moved her eyes closer to the optical positioning system. Eyepiece, see the sun rising above the horizon.She activated the antenna positioning system and slowly turned the steering column to point it at the sun.The rumbling vibration produced by the rotation of the giant antenna was transmitted to the main control room, and an officer on duty gave Ye Wenjie another look, but said nothing.

The sun has completely risen above the continuous ridge in the sky, and the center of the reticle of the Red Bank Antenna Locator is aligned with its upper edge. This is considering the advance of the radio wave operation, and the transmitting system is already in a ready state.The launch button is rectangular, much like the space bar on a computer keyboard, but red.At this time, Ye Wenjie's finger was hanging two centimeters above it.

The fate of human civilization is tied to these slender fingers.

Without hesitation, Ye Wenjie pressed the launch button.

"What are you doing?" a watchman asked sleepily.

Ye Wenjie smiled at him, did not speak, then pressed another yellow button to stop the transmission, turned the direction stick to change the direction of the antenna, and then left the console and walked outside.

The watchman looked at his watch, and it was time to get off work. He picked up the journal and wanted to write down Ye Wenjie's operation of activating the launch system just now. After less than three seconds, he threw the log back to its original position, yawned, put on his military cap and left.The message that is flying to the sun is:
Come here, I will help you get this world, my civilization is unable to solve its own problems, and needs your power to intervene.

The rising sun made Ye Wenjie dizzy, and she passed out on the grass within a short distance after going out.

After waking up, she found herself lying in the infirmary, Yang Weining looked at her with concern at the side of the bed, just like he did on the plane many years ago.The doctor told Ye Wenjie to take rest in the future because she was pregnant.