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An immersive VR simulation built by the ETO to teach the history of Trisolaris through analogues of human civilizations — the recruiting tool that pulled Wang Miao into the conspiracy, and the only place outside Trisolaris where the alien cosmology was ever made playable.
The game is the trilogy's playable thesis statement. Each level is a Trisolaran civilization wearing the costume of a human one — Qin Shi Huang's empire, the Vatican, the modern UN. Each level ends in dehydration or fire. By the time a player reaches the higher levels they have absorbed the alien cosmology emotionally as well as intellectually, which is what the ETO needs them to do. Da Shi found the game irritating. Wang Miao cannot stop thinking about it.
A V-suit and full-coverage headset on a metal stand, plugged into an anonymous server identified only by the URL www.threebody.com. Inside the simulation: a vast cold flat plain under unstable suns, a Pendulum Monument to the chaotic-orbit problem, a human-formation column computer of millions of standard-bearers running a three-body calculation by hand.