Chapter Text
Crisis Era Year 3
Vancouver, Canada
“Greetings, everyone. I’m Wang Miao, and today I’ll be presenting what I learned during my time ‘infiltrating’ the ETO.”
Wang Miao is a Chinese nanotechnology researcher. He is currently on a world tour, where he will be visiting and delivering presentations at many institutions across the world. This week, he is visiting the prestigious University of British Columbia, the university that Madeline attended.
After climbing Mt. Celeste, Madeline is filled with newfound energy. After overcoming and making peace with her depression and anxiety, she did everything in her power to transfer from the community college she used to attend to a better school for her master’s degree. After three years of hard work, she was finally accepted into the University of British Columbia.
In between classes, Madeline has also been attending many presentations by various professors, scientists, and researchers from across the world. She finds many of those presentations very inspiring, always looking for new things she could add to her life. Far away from any position of power, Madeline hopes she could live a full life without worrying about the impending Trisolarian invasion, which won’t occur for another 400 years.
Madeline listened attentively during Wang Miao’s presentation. During his presentation, Wang Miao discussed his entire experience, from seeing the strange countdown to playing the Three Body video game to retrieving ETO intelligence from the ship Judgement Day, as well as reflecting on the choices he made.
“Before ending this presentation, I’d like to showcase a device we have been developing.” Wang Miao produced a prism-like object and shone a flashlight through it. Instead of producing a rainbow as everyone expected, it produced a beautiful fractal pattern. “This device uses relativistic effects to produce the fractal and is highly sensitive to disturbances in spacetime. Just like this fractal, every one of our lives is incredibly complex and unpredictable with many paths ahead. I hope you all learned something today, and –”
Suddenly, there was a loud snap, and an object fell from the ceiling. It was one of the speakers, and it was right above Madeline. She instinctively dashed away from her seat and onto the stage. CRASH! Had Madeline been 0.1 seconds slower, her life would’ve ended right there.
Everyone stared at Madeline, not sure of what they had just witnessed. Even Wang Miao’s mouth was agape in surprise. The fractal produced by the device changed rapidly before settling down on a slightly different pattern.
“How… did you do that?” one person asked. The audience broke into conversation. Frankly, not even Madeline knows how she is able to do this. She mysteriously gained this ability at the foot of Mt. Celeste and has been able to dash ever since. However, it is in Madeline’s best interest to keep a low profile about her ability and let as few people know about it as possible. With all eyes on her, she walked off the stage and exited the auditorium.
As the wind blew through her hair, Madeline wondered how she is going to downplay what had just happened. There is no scientific explanation for dashing, she thought, I could just deny everything that had happened, and maybe everyone else will believe me.
Back in the auditorium, Wang Miao quickly finished up his presentation, but it is clear nobody is interested in it anymore. Word of Madeline’s ability spread like wildfire, and it dominated the topic of every conversation at her university in no time.