Item from remembrance-of-earths-past by
An international academic society — outwardly a respected science forum, secretly a recruitment apparatus of the ETO that targeted physicists and mathematicians whose research had been disrupted by sophon interference.
Frontiers of Science is a slow predator. Members are flattered, given access to interesting collaborators, and over time pulled toward the group's core conviction — that physics has stopped working and the only remaining question is what to do about it. By the time a recruit has played Three Body to its inner levels, they are ready to be told what is really going on. The society's collapse after the Operation Guzheng raid is one of the Crisis Era's first major counter-ETO victories.
Conferences in five-star hotels with an excellent open bar. Member badges in heavy enameled brass. A quarterly journal printed on heavy paper. Beneath the public events: dinners in private rooms, slow conversations about scientific despair, eventual gentle suggestions about a certain VR game.