Chapter 4: A Detective in the Shadows

In 1997, the first sophon launched by Trisolaris slipped through Earth’s upper atmosphere, invisible to all but the most sensitive military tech. Below, the world spun on, unaware.

Thanks to the Trisolaran Leader’s foresight, the sophon was invented a decade early and sent to Earth at once. Its arrival passed unnoticed, just another ripple in the cosmic pond.

That same year, Evans died. His loyal followers ran to the police, claiming murder by a vast conspiracy. Late-night radio hosts pounced, spinning tales of cover-ups and secret societies.

The police poked around for months, found nothing, and finally closed the case as a traffic accident. The detective in charge filed the report over burnt coffee, another unsolved mystery for the pile.

"Detective Sam, no murder weapon was found at the scene. Should we send someone to search the nearby river?" a young officer asked, badge glinting in the fluorescent light.

Sam was examining the victim’s removed organs when a flood of memories from another timeline hit him. He blinked, stunned, a jolt of fear shooting through him—he’d seen this before.

"No need," he waved. "Check the kitchen trash his wife threw out—look for fish bones and anything odd. Also, bring her in for questioning. I’ll handle it myself."

After solving the frozen tilapia case, Sam took a long vacation—packing up for a cabin on Lake Superior, hoping the cold would numb his mind. Leave papers stamped, he slipped away.

Privately, he contacted university students Mark Miller and Jay Lewis. Neither knew anything about the Trisolaris crisis; Jay had never met a Diana Young. The absence felt like a missing puzzle piece.

Through old friends, Sam dug into Blue Ridge Base, finally finding Leo Carter, now in an Ohio retirement home. Carter’s handshake was strong, his memory sharp.

"Ye Wendy? Never heard of her," Carter said. The Blue Ridge project was declassified; there was nothing to hide.

"What about William Young?"

"Chief Engineer Young? He left early for the construction corps."

"Did you ever send electromagnetic signals to the sun?"

Carter snorted, dismissing the idea as science fiction, but his brow furrowed.

Blue Ridge was long abandoned, nothing left to check. Sam scribbled notes in his battered field journal, frustrated by dead ends.

With the Blue Ridge lead broken, Sam tracked former ETO members, but stumbled on news of Evans’s death—a blurb on page seven, next to an ad for used Fords.

"Strange," he muttered. "So strange, there must be something supernatural."

He followed up on Judgment Day members, finding only shuttered offices and wary neighbors. But the evidence pointed to Evans knowing about Trisolaris and the ETO’s existence.

Sam would rather believe in ghosts than accept Evans’s death as an accident. He muttered as much, shaking his head.

He tried to contact his old boss, Charles Wilson, for a high-level investigation, but got only silence.

In another timeline, the Crisis Era began in 2007. Sam thought: he had to figure out before then whether Trisolaris really knew about Earth.

The weight of history pressed down—one more case, one more shot to save the world. "Ye Wendy, where are you hiding?"