In 3 Body Problem, humanity faces the arrival of beings from a nearby system, who are targeting Earth’s best scientists. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Clarence Shi, an investigator working for the Strategic Intelligence Agency of London, is investigating the strange suicides of successful scientists all over the world.
One of the crime scenes has a countdown written with blood on the walls. This countdown has been mentioned in cases such as these before. There is also a helmet that looks like a VR headset in the possession of these scientists.
At Oxford University Particle Accelerator, another scientist named Vera Ye kills herself, bringing her colleagues and friends together.
Before dying, Vera asked her lab assistant, Saul Durand, if he believes in God. Vera had also shut down a recent project of hers, which was very dear to her.
Vera Ye’s friends, apart from Saul, also include Jin Cheng, Augustina Salazar, also known as Auggie, Will Downing, and Jack Rooney.
Each one of them is a noble academic, except for Jack Rooney, who quit and has a snack brand of his own now. Clarence keeps a keen eye on all of them.
Auggie, among them, is a scientist who has been having visions of a countdown ticking. She sees it all the time, everywhere she goes.
Mike Evans, the CEO of Evans Energy, is one of those who attend Vera’s funeral. Evans has rarely been seen since 1984, and there has been next to nothing written about him for 42 years. Clarence reports all of this to his boss, Thomas Wade.
Jin visits Vera’s mother and is told that Vera was playing a video game before her death, using a helmet, which is exactly like the ones found on dead scientists being investigated by Clarence.
Jin plays the game and is transported to another world in ancient times. Auggie, on the other hand, crosses paths with a strange woman, whose name is later revealed to Tatiana Haas.
She knows about the countdown that Auggie is seeing. She instructs Auggie to stop her work if she wants the countdown to stop.
She also tells Auggie to go outside tomorrow at exactly midnight and look up in the sky. The universe is going to blink at her.
Tatiana’s predictions come true as the stars in the sky blink in what looks like a code. The whole world watches the phenomenon take place. The code is the countdown that Auggie is seeing.
In an attempt to save herself, Auggie puts a stop to the development of the world’s finest nanofiber that she invented, resulting in her not seeing the countdown anymore.
Jin, on the other hand, keeps playing the game she has discovered at Vera’s. The AI work and immersive experience of the game seem to be from 100 years in the future.
Jin gets Jack to join her in the game. In this game, Jin and Jack are required to save a particular civilization from a chaotic era and lead them into a stable era.
Jin and Jack fail time and again, but they keep learning the motive of the game step-by-step. Hence, the game allows them to go to the next level.
Jin and Jack eventually determine their true purpose in this game. They are in a three-star system and can’t predict the motions of the three bodies in space.
However, their goal is not to solve the three-body problem. They are supposed to save the people on the planet they are on.
With that, the game allows the two to move forward. Entering level four, Jin and Jack meet Tatiana in real life.
They wear their helmets, and the characters in the game introduce Jack and Jin to a race living far away in space. The followers of this race on Earth call them San-Ti. San ti ren reads “three-body people” in Chinese.
The people of San-Ti are doomed, as their planet exists in a three-star system. Many of their civilizations have met their end, and so will they.
Since there is no solution to the three-body problem, their only hope for survival is to flee the planet.
It turns out that humans contacted San-Ti years ago and invited them to their planet. An interstellar fleet of 1000 ships is now headed towards Earth.
The question remains: will the humans welcome them? While Jin is still interested in this, Jack isn’t buying any of San-Ti’s stories.
Jack is allowed to walk away if he wishes. However, when he does, he is killed back home by Tatiana.
Thomas Wade and Clarence meet Jack’s friends. Wade intends to have Jin play along with the San-Ti. Hence, she attends the meeting that will welcome Jin into the organization that worships San-Ti.
There, Jin meets the founder of their organization, Vera’s mother, Dr. Ye Wenjie. Years ago, in the 1960s, Ye Wenjie saw her father get killed at the hands of the Red Guards in China.
Ye Wenjie was later recruited by Red Coast Base, which had been attempting to contact those who were outside in space.
Ye Wenjie not only made contact with the San-Ti against her senior’s wishes, but she also welcomed them to their planet because she felt this world is hopeless and the San-Ti will restore the much-needed order.
Mike Evans was in China in those days. He and Ye Wenjie held similar perspectives. Mike Evans perceived humanity as a species driven by greed.
Ye Wenjie and Mike Evans together gave birth to Vera. They worked together on bringing the San-Ti to Earth.
In the present, San-Ti will arrive on Earth 400 years from now. The cops raid the place where San-Ti’s followers are gathering and arrest Ye Wenjie.
Wade and Clarence also suspect that Mike Evans has been in constant touch with the San-Ti, which is true.
Evans and San-Ti communicate on a daily basis until San-Ti learn that humans lie, and Evans admits that he has lied too.
This results in San-Ti stopping all communications with their people on Earth. Wade assembles a team of naval officers to take down Judgement Day, the vessel Evans is on.
Wade is successful, but the attempt causes a lot of casualties, as innocents die. However, they kill Evans and retrieve the storage device that may have records of Evans’ communication with San-Ti.
It may take millions of years to access the files on the storage, but San-Ti let Wade’s team in, which means San-Ti want humans to see this. In the records, Wade and his team come across a large file named Sophon, which is 100 petabytes in size.
Ending explained:
San-Ti’s goals
Jin is invited to look into the file. Jin and Wade wear the helmets and enter San-Ti’s game to figure out what the aliens have to offer.
The character in the game explains that the San-Ti are doomed. They may have been more advanced than humans, but they have always perished due to their three-star system.
Humans, on the other hand, have faced calamities, but they have never needed to restart from the beginning because their planet is stable.
San-Ti fear that by the time they come to Earth, humans will be far more advanced than them. Hence, they have been killing successful scientists and manipulating people into seeing them as their Lords.
San-Ti plan to kill their science. They have already started working on it using Sophon, a proton that they have turned into a sentient computer.
Two Sophons surround the earth and keep an eye on it, while the other two are with San-Ti. The San-Ti have been listening to and observing humans for months.
Hence, no matter what plan the humans come up with, the San-Ti will be a step ahead of them. They make their presence known by hacking into systems all around the world and calling humans bugs.
They create an illusion in the sky that mirrors Earth. An eye appears, suggesting that San-Ti are watching all the time.
Wade’s plan
Wade gathers the best of his people. The San-Ti have declared war on humans, and he intends to fight back.
Even though San-Ti can see and hear everything, their technology moves slow compared to the technology of humans.
San-Ti have sent Sophons to Earth. Wade is going to do the same by sending a probe to them to understand the enemy they are facing.
The San-Ti are traveling at 1% light speed, and that should be their goal too. Jin devises a plan to get a probe to 1% light speed using the nuclear weapons that they have.
With this plan in motion, humans may reach San-Ti in the next 200 years. This new program is called Staircase.
The candidate heading into space
Dr. Demikhov has been working on keeping things alive under extreme conditions. He has invented a hibernation rig that can allow a person to survive for the next 200 years.
However, there are certain complications since Wade plans to infiltrate the San-Tis before they can reach Earth.
Staircase needs 1000 bombs, but Wade has secured only 300. The smallest hibernation rig they can have weighs over a ton, and the heaviest payload it can carry is under two kilograms.
Hence, Wade plans to send the brain of a person to the San-Ti fleet; San-Tis can build the rest. Wade’s agency needs someone who is willing to die and become the candidate.
They find that person in the form of Will Downing, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has not many days left to live.
Days heading into the launch
The San-Ti had given up on Evans and Ye Wenjie, but not everyone. They contact Tatiana, who kills Ye Wenjie, who had been let go.
The San-Ti are targeting certain people, including Saul Durand, who is invited by the United Nations to become one of the Wallfacers.
The Sophons may see and hear humans, but they cannot read their minds. The Wallfacer project is about that.
Three chosen people will formulate and direct strategic plans entirely in their own minds, sharing them with no one until the time is right to execute them.
Saul is forced into becoming a Wallfacer, even though he doesn’t care about becoming one. He rejects the offer, but the security around him is kept tight.
Will Downing is sent into space. A minor complication results in the Staircase plan failing, resulting in Will getting lost in space.
After the failure of the Staircase project, the San-Ti talk to Wade. They see Wade as a strong leader and claim that they will have a place for him when they arrive; he is a part of their plan. They will always be with him until the day he dies.
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