Sophon (Chinese: 智子) is one of the main characters on Netflix's Three Body Problem.
Novel[]
Sophon is an AI robot developed by the Trisolarans to be their voice on Earth and communicate with humanity. She is controlled by the Sophons sent to Earth by Trisolaris. Sophon serves as the Trisolaran ambassador on Earth. She appears in Death's End and is introduced to Cheng Xin there, appearing to her to be the most beautiful woman she has ever met. Sophon dresses and lives in a Japanese fashion and serves Cheng Xin a beautiful tea ceremony, of which she diligently performs.
Once the Deterrence Era ended Sophon's appearance changes to that of her wearing military fatigues. She acts in the form of a dictator now. Forcing and directing the plans for all of humanity to live on Australia. Once the plan was enacted, she destroys all electrical facilities in Australia, removing humanity's ability to feed the 4.5 billion people living in the continent. Chaos ensues when world leaders say they will no longer be able to feed each of their people, she looks at them and says they are all food. She predicts once humanity has finished killing each other, there will be approximately 200 million people left. Despite this sentence for most of humanity, Sophon directs Earth Security Forces to save Cheng Xin and take her to a safe place by helicopter. Cheng Xin refuses though and asks her to save her friends AA and Fraisse.
Biography[]
Sophon is described as an avatar in the VR Three Body (game).[1]
50 years after the events of The Dark Forest, mankind is still under the truce with Trisolaris, and Sophon is repurposed as an ambassador of Trisolaris on Earth. Instead of the practically intangible proton form of hers, she now inhabits the robot body in the form of a gorgeous Japanese woman who appears to be all fragile and harmless. At this time, Luo Ji has long occupied the position of the Sword-holder (the one in charge of the broadcasting of Trisolaris' coordinates into deep space), and his retirement is imminent. The would-be female Sword-holder, Cheng Xin, pays a visit to Sophon before attending the transference, during which Sophon says that they're both women, and are thus responsible for making the world a prosperous and beautiful place.
Cheng Xin then assumes the position of the Sword-holder, while an elderly Luo Ji finally lets down the burden after his half-century-long career as the guardian of mankind. However, a mere ten minutes after the transference, the Droplets attack Earth and wrecks all its gravitational wave emitter that are vital to broadcasting the coordinates. Sophon reveals her true colors, sneering at a frightened and helpless Cheng Xin and telling her that it has been waiting all these years for humans to lower their guard, grow weak, and elect a gutless Sword-holder like Cheng Xin who won't swat a fly, let alone destroy a civilization (and risking her own, since Earth is very close to Trisolaris and is likely to be caught in the destruction of it). Upon sealing mankind's only means to deter Trisolaris, Sophon acts as a herald of the second invasion of the Trisolarans, ushering all human beings on Earth to migrate to Australia disarmed, where they would be treated like indigenous people in a reserve. She uses the Droplets to enforce her words, and kills off rebellious and disobedient humans with them and her swords.
As the mankind faces impeding doom, hope comes in the form of a human spacecraft which has long left the Solar System during the devastation of the first Droplet. Carrying their own gravitational wave emitter on board, they broadcasts the coordinates of Trisolaris in hope of saving their fellow people some time. An year after the broadcasting, Sophon senses the gravitational wave; knowing that there's no good invading Earth now, she beckons the second fleet to change course, as Trisolaris and Earth are both danger zone now, and are likely to be destroyed at any time.
Before departure to the second fleet, Sophon arranges a meeting between Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming, a friend of Cheng Xin's who volunteered two centuries ago to have his brain put in a probe and sent to the first Trisolaran fleet in hope of a slim chance to gather intelligence about them. Yun Tianming, now again embodied, tells Cheng Xin three fairy tales composed by him in which he hides the secret of evading the destruction of the Solar System. Successfully passing the intel to Cheng Xin undetected by Sophon, Yun Tianming bids her farewell through the feed, and Sophon's robot body self-destructs shortly after, her proton form leaving the Solar System.
The next and last appearance of Sophon is long after the destruction of the Solar System, due to that planetary system's mankind failing to decipher Yun Tianming's intel and due to Cheng Xin being caught in a time dilation event. Accompanied only by a human male named Guan Yifan (also separated from 艾 AA,) Cheng Xin arrives on an extraterrestrial planet as Yun Tianming instructed her to, where she and Guan find a pocket universe. Sophon awaits them inside (in robot form), stating that the pocket universe is a gift from Yun Tianming, and it is now responsible for taking care of the two remaining humans. The trio survive the end of the (main/great) universe by hiding in the pocket universe, which must be deconstructed along with all the others to return matter to the super membrane, according to the Returners and Zero-Homers. These alien civilizations have sent out a message across galaxies in the languages of more than a million species, including Trisolaris' scripts and Earth humans' writing. The pocket universe is deconstructed and all the objects, entities and matter pass through the door back into the super membrane, and After the rebirth of the universe, the trio, led by Sophon, leave the pocket universe in a rudimentary spacecraft to explore the unknown.
Throughout the Series[]
In Red Coast, Jin Cheng shows Jack Rooney the helmet that Ye Wenjie gave her, she explains how everything in that world feels indistinguishable from reality. Jack puts it on, and is transported to the world, and is weirded out when he tests the sand, and it feels very much real. However, before he can proceed any further, a woman appears and slashes him with a sword as she says that he wasn't invited. Despite Jin trying her best to save Follower in the game, she is frozen solid, and crumbles to pieces. Afterwards, the same woman who slashed Jack with a sword, explains to Jin that Civilization Number 137 was obliterated by an extreme cold event. But even though she did not save the people, she managed to establish the superiority of science over mysticism. The woman continues by stating how in level two, Jin must now use science to save the next civilization.
In Destroyer of Worlds, Auggie Salazar finds herself in Jack's room, and comes across the mysterious helmet Jack was gifted. She puts on, but much like when Jack put on Jin's helmet, the same woman from before slashes her and tells her that she was not invited. Frightened, she rushes downstairs asking Jack what the helmet is, and eventually Jin and Jack admit to playing the game. Later, after Civilization Number 152 was destroyed by a tri-solar day in level two, both of the friends find themselves within level three now. She reunites with Follower, who tells her that she is running out of chances to save the world, and soon the world will end for good. In the end, Jin realizes that the point of the game is not to solve the three body problem, but rather, to succeed in saving the people and helping them survive. To which Jack remarks that it is impossible for anything to survive on this planet with three suns. Eventually, the mysterious entity from before comes down from the sky. She tells the two that Civilization Number 184 was destroyed by the stacked gravitational attractions of a tri-solar syzygy. However, in this civilization, Jack and Jin have correctly determined the true purpose of the game. As a result, they have now moved onto level four. Both Sophon and Follower then show the progression of three civilizations; the Pueblo City which froze, the Industrial City which burned, and the Futuristic City which was buried. In the end, the Trisolaran Fleet of Civilization Number 9478 is its final hope and is now heading to Earth, after being invited back in 1977.
In Judgment Day, both Jin and Thomas Wade end up putting on the helmets to see what it is the San-Ti are trying to show them. When Wade meets Sophon, he asks her why she brought them here. Which she reveals is that it is to inform him that the San-Ti are doomed. The reason being that their fleet will take four hundred years to arrive on Earth. But human beings have existed on Earth for over a 100,000 years. For most of that time humans were not so different from apes. But to discover agriculture, it took humans 90,000 years to effectively go from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Then to become industrialists, it was about 10,000 years. Followed by obtaining atomic power in two hundred years, and more recently to get to computers and the information age it was fifty years. Whereas for the San-Ti, it took them much longer to get to those historical achievements. At the end of the day, Earth is stable, and their planet's catastrophes aren't really catastrophes when compared to the San-Ti's planet which consist of stable eras and chaotic eras, with the boundary between each wiping out the current established civilization. The humans never had to start over but the San-Ti did; many times over. However, in order for the San-Ti to win, they are killing the human's science, in order to stop them from moving forward. This Sophon reveals that the San-Ti used all their resources to make four sophons. Two pairs of two; with the pairs being intrinsically entangled. Each connected on the quantum level. Two remain with them, and the other two are used to hearing and seeing everything, and their main goal is to freeze the human's science by interfering with the particle accelerators and make humans afraid again.
Gallery[]
Promotional stills[]
Links[]
Sophon (real-life secret operation)