The Three-Body Problem (46 page)

The principles governing micro-scale integrated circuits were completely different from those of conventional circuits, as the base material wasn’t made of atoms, but matter from a single proton. The “p-n junctions” of the circuits were formed by twisting the strong nuclear forces locally on the surface of the proton plane, and the conducting lines were made of mesons that could transmit the nuclear force. Because the surface area for the circuit was extremely large, the circuits were also very large. The circuit lines were as thick as hairs, and an observer close enough could see them with the naked eye. Flying close to the proton membrane, it could be seen as a vast plane made of complex, elaborate integrated circuits. The total area covered by the circuits was dozens of times the area of the continents on Trisolaris.

Etching the proton circuits was a huge engineering feat, and thousands of spaceships worked for more than fifteen thousand Trisolaran hours to complete it. The software debugging process took another five thousand Trisolaran hours. But finally, it was time to test the sophon for the first time.

The big screen at the sophon control center deep underground showed the progress of the long self-test sequence. Next came the loading of the operating system. Finally, the blank blue screen showed a line of large-font text:
Micro-Intelligence 2.10 loaded. Sophon One ready to accept commands.

The science consul said, “A sophon has been born. We have endowed a proton with wisdom. This is the smallest artificial intelligence that we can make.”

“But right now, it appears as the largest artificial intelligence,” said the princeps.

“As soon as we increase the dimensionality of this proton, it will become very small.”

The science consul entered a query at the terminal:

>
Sophon One, are the spatial dimensionality controls operational?

Affirmative. Sophon One is capable of initiating spatial dimensionality adjustments at any moment.

>
Adjust dimensionality to three.

After this command was issued, the two-dimensional proton membrane that had wrapped itself around Trisolaris began to shrink rapidly, as though a giant’s hand was pulling away a curtain over the world. In a moment, sunlight bathed the ground. The proton folded from two dimensions into three and became a gargantuan sphere in synchronous orbit, about the size of the giant moon. The sophon was over the dark side of the planet, but the sunlight reflected from its mirror surface turned the night into day. The surface of Trisolaris was still extremely cold, so the crowd inside the control center could only observe these changes through a screen.

Dimensionality adjustment successful. Sophon One is ready to accept commands.

>
Adjust dimensionality to four.

In space, the gargantuan sphere shrank until it eventually looked to be the size of a flying star. Night again descended over this side of the planet.

“Princeps, the sphere we see now is not the complete sophon. It’s only the projection of the sophon’s body into three-dimensional space. It is, in fact, a giant in four-space, and our world is like a thin, three-dimensional sheet of paper. The giant stands on this sheet of paper, and we can only see the trace where its feet touch the paper.”

Dimensionality adjustment successful. Sophon One is ready to accept commands.

>
Adjust dimensionality to six.

The sphere in the sky disappeared.

“How big is a six-dimensional proton?” the princeps asked.

“About fifty centimeters in radius,” the science consul replied.

Dimensionality adjustment successful. Sophon One is ready to accept commands.

>
Sophon One, can you see us?

Yes. I can see the control center, everyone inside, and the organs inside everyone, even the organs inside your organs.

“What is it saying?” The princeps was stunned.

“A sophon observing three-space from six-space is akin to us looking at a picture on a two-dimensional plane. Of course it can see inside us.”

>
Sophon One, enter the control center.

“Can it go through the ground?” the princeps asked.

“It’s not exactly going ‘through.’ Rather, it’s entering from a higher dimension. It can enter any enclosed space within our world. This is again similar to the relationship between us, existing in three-space, and a two-dimensional plane. We can easily enter any circle drawn on the plane by coming in from above. But no two-dimensional creature on the plane can do such a thing without breaking the circle.”

Just as the science consul finished, a mirror-surfaced sphere appeared in the middle of the control center, floating in air. The princeps walked over and gazed at his own distorted reflection. “This is a proton?” He was amazed.

“This is the six-dimensional body of the proton projected into three-space.”

The princeps extended a hand. When he saw that the science consul did not object, he touched the surface of the sophon. A very light touch pushed the sophon a considerable distance.

“It’s very smooth. Even though it has only the mass of a proton, I could feel some resistance against my hand.” The princeps was puzzled.

“That’s due to air resistance against the surface of the sphere.”

“Can you increase its dimensionality to eleven, and make it as small as a regular proton?”

As soon as the princeps said this, the science consul shouted to the sophon, his voice tinged with fear, “Attention! This is
not
a command!”

Sophon One understands.

“Princeps, if we increased the dimensionality to eleven, we would lose it forever. When the sophon shrinks to the size of a regular subatomic particle, the internal sensors and I/O ports will be smaller than the wavelength of any electromagnetic radiation. That means it would not be able to sense the macro world, and would not be able to receive our commands.”

“But we must eventually make it shrink back to a subatomic particle.”

“Yes, but that must await the completion of Sophon Two, Sophon Three, and Sophon Four. Multiple sophons may be able to form a system to sense the macro world through quantum effects. For example, suppose a nucleus has two protons. The two of them will interact and follow certain patterns of motion. Take spin: Maybe the direction of spin of the two protons must be opposite from each other. When these two protons are taken out of the nucleus, no matter how far apart they are, this pattern will remain in effect. When both protons are made into sophons, they will, based on this effect, create a mutual-sensing system. More sophons can then form a mutual-sensing formation. This formation’s scale can be adjusted to any size, and can thus receive electromagnetic waves to sense the macro world at any frequency. Of course, the actual quantum effects necessary to create such a sophon formation are very complicated. My explanation is only an analogy.”

*   *   *

The unfolding of the next three protons into two dimensions succeeded on the first try. The construction of each sophon also took only half as long as Sophon One. After the construction of Sophon Two, Sophon Three, and Sophon Four, the quantum sensing formation was also created successfully.

The princeps and all the consuls once again came to the Pendulum Monument. Above them hovered four sophons shrunk to six-space. In the crystalline mirrored surface of each was an image of the rising sun, recalling the three-dimensional eyes that had once appeared in space.

>
Sophon formation, adjust dimensionality to eleven.

After the command was issued, the four mirrored spheres disappeared. The science consul said, “Princeps, now Sophon One and Sophon Two will be launched toward the Earth. Using the large knowledge base stored in the micro circuits, the sophons understand the nature of space. They can draw energy from the vacuum and become high-energy particles in a moment, and navigate through space at nearly the speed of light. This might appear to violate the law of conservation of energy, but in fact the sophons are only ‘borrowing’ energy from the structure of vacuum. However, the time for returning such energy is far in the future, when the proton decays. By then, the end of the universe will not be far.

“After the two sophons arrive on Earth, their first mission is to locate the high-energy particle accelerators used by humans for physics research and hide within them. At the level of science development on the Earth, the basic method for exploring the deep structure of matter is to use accelerated high-energy particles to collide with target particles. After the target particles have been smashed, they analyze the results to try to find information reflecting the deep structure of matter. In actual experiments, they use the substance containing the target particles as the bull’s-eye for the accelerated bullets.

“But the inside of the substance being struck is almost all vacuum. Suppose an atom is the size of a theater; the nucleus is like a walnut hovering in the center of the theater. Thus, successful collisions are very rare. Often large quantities of high-energy particles must be directed against the target substance for a sustained period of time before a collision occurs. This kind of experiment is akin to looking for a raindrop of a slightly different color in a summer thunderstorm.

“This gives the sophons an opening. A sophon can take the place of a target particle and accept the collision. Because they’re highly intelligent, they can precisely determine through the quantum sensing formation the paths that the accelerated particles will follow within a very short period of time and move to the appropriate location. Thus, the likelihood that a sophon will be struck will be billions of times greater than the actual target particle. After a sophon is struck, it can deliberately give out wrong and chaotic results. Thus, even if the actual target particle is occasionally struck, Earth physicists will not be able to tell the correct result from the numerous erroneous results.”

“Wouldn’t this destroy the sophon as well?” asked the military consul.

“No. When a sophon is smashed into several pieces, several new sophons are born. And they continue to have secure quantum entanglements between them, just like how, if you break a magnet in half, you would get two magnets. Even though each partial sophon’s capabilities will be much lower than the original, whole sophon, under the direction of the self-healing software, the pieces will move together and reassemble into the original sophon. This process only requires a microsecond and will occur after the collision in the accelerator, and after the pieces of the sophon have left the wrong results in the bubble chamber or on sensitive film.”

Someone asked, “Would it be possible for Earth scientists to find a way to detect sophons and then use a strong magnetic field to imprison them? Protons have positive charge.”

“That’s impossible. To detect sophons requires humans to make breakthroughs in the study of the deep structure of matter. But their high-energy accelerators will all have been turned into heaps of junk. How can they make progress in such research? The hunter’s eyes have already been blinded by the prey he intends to catch.”

“Humans may still resort to a brute-force method,” the industry consul said. “They can build a large number of accelerators, faster than the rate at which we can build sophons. Then, at least some accelerators on Earth will not be infiltrated by sophons and can yield the correct results.”

“This is one of the most interesting aspects of Project Sophon!” The science consul was visibly excited by the question. “Mister Industry Consul, do not worry that creating large numbers of sophons will cause the collapse of the Trisolaran economy. We will not need to resort to that. We might build a few more, but not too many. Indeed, just these two are more than enough, because each sophon is capable of multitasking.”

“Multitasking?”

“This is a bit of jargon related to ancient serial computers. Back then, a computer’s central processing unit could only carry out a single instruction at a time. But, because it was so fast, and aided by interrupt scheduling, from our low-speed perspective, the computer was carrying out multiple programs at the same time. As you know, the sophons move at close to the speed of light. The surface of the Earth is a tiny space for sophons. If sophons patrol around the accelerators on Earth at this speed, then, from the perspective of humans, it is as if they simultaneously exist in all the accelerators and can almost simultaneously create erroneous results in all the accelerators.

“By our calculations, each sophon is capable of controlling more than ten thousand high-energy accelerators. It takes about four to five years for humans to build each of these accelerators, and it seems unlikely that they can be mass produced based on their economy and available resources. Of course, they can increase the distance between the accelerators, for example, by building accelerators on the different planets in their planetary system. That would indeed destroy the multitasking operation of the sophons. But in the time it would take to do that, it would not be difficult for Trisolaris to build ten or more sophons.

“More and more sophons will wander in that planetary system. Added all together, they still won’t add up to the mass of even one-billionth of a bacterium. But they will cause the physicists on Earth to never be able to glimpse the secrets hidden deep in the structure of matter. Humans will never be able to access the micro dimensions, and the ability for them to manipulate matter will be limited to below five dimensions. From now on, whether it’s four point five million hours or four hundred and fifty trillion hours, Earth civilization’s technology will never achieve this fundamental breakthrough. They will remain forever in the primitive stage. The science of Earth has been completely locked down, and the lock is so secure that humans will never be able to escape from it by their own strength.”

“That’s wonderful! Please forgive my lack of respect for Project Sophon in the past.” The military consul’s tone was sincere.