3 Body Problem‘s character, Augustina “Auggie” Salazar was the kind of woman who followed the righteous path even when she knew that she would have to fight the entire world and, in all probability, walk alone. Something strange happened with Auggie at the beginning of the series, and after that point, her life was never the same again. So, let’s find out what happened with Auggie and if she decided to fight against the aliens or not.
Spoiler Alert
Why Did Auggie Start Seeing A Countdown?
Auggie was the founder of the company that designed self-assembling synthetic polymer nanofibers. We saw in 3 Body Problem that she was on the verge of making a groundbreaking discovery when something very strange happened to her. A countdown started in front of her eyes as if a digital screen were placed there. She didn’t understand what it was, and obviously, she got a bit scared as nobody around her had ever witnessed anything. Auggie told Cheng, Jack, Saul, and others around her about it, and in the meantime, she carried on with her work. One day, a mysterious woman, who we later came to know was Tatiana, told her that she was not the only one who saw a countdown in front of her eyes. He said that there were others too who saw it, and a few of them died because they didn’t hear what the “Lord” had to say. Auggie had never met the woman before, and she didn’t know the real purpose of her visit. Tatiana, in a suspicious manner, told Auggie to stop her work at her company if she wanted the countdown to disappear. Tatiana wanted Auggie to know that if she was unable to do that, then the extraterrestrial beings with whom her people had made contact would kill her. Auggie wasn’t sure that something like that could happen to her, but she didn’t want to take any sort of risk. She knew that if somebody could make that countdown appear in front of her eyes, then they could do anything.
Auggie did not consult anybody after that, and she just went and declared that the company would stop making nanofibers. She went out of the premises, and then, magically, the countdown disappeared in front of her eyes. The countdown, according to me, was a tactic employed by the aliens to create fear among human beings. When a person believed that they were standing in the face of death, their entire belief system changed. The aliens knew that fear would be a very significant tool for them in the upcoming battle. It was a psychological war and the aliens wanted to defeat the human race even before they actually came face to face. Probably, Auggie wouldn’t have died at the end of the countdown, but her being uncertain about it instilled a lot of fear inside her, and Tatiana’s words played inside her mind. Auggie, later in 3 Body Problem, once again started making nanofiber, and she was ecstatic when she found out that the countdown didn’t appear in front of her eyes. It was a cathartic moment for her, and looking at her, one could tell how much stress and pressure that tactic put on an individual.
What changed after Auggie worked with Wade?
After Wenjie was taken into custody, Wade got to know that Mike Evans operated from a ship that was going to arrive at a particular dock. He needed the storage device that had all the conversations that happened between Evans and the San-Ti. Wade didn’t care if the people on board lived or died; he only wanted results. It could have been possible that if he had warned them once, Evans could have at least asked the women and the children on the ship to get down. Auggie pointed out that fact to Wade and even to Raj, Cheng’s fiance. But both of them told her that in war collateral damage was inevitable. Raj told them that if Evans had cared for his own life, he would have agreed to do what he was told. Making use of the technology that Auggie had devised, the entire ship was melted and destroyed. There were dead bodies everywhere, and Auggie couldn’t get rid of the guilt once she saw the severed leg of a minor. Auggie decided to stop working for Wade, but later, Cheng convinced her to once again come on board as they needed her expertise for the Stairway project. Auggie and Cheng might have been close friends, but both of them had very different ideals. Auggie might have come back to work for Wade once again, but she still regretted the fact that it was her technology that was used on the previous mission. She tried telling Cheng that Raj was a fascist who didn’t have an ounce of empathy inside him, but Cheng, at that point in time in 3 Body Problem, had a very different kind of mindset altogether.
What did Auggie do with her research work?
Auggie, in the end, wanted to make her work accessible to every human being on the planet, but the people managing her organization were totally against it. Auggie knew about this, and so at the end of 3 Body Problem, she uploaded the entire data on websites like WikiLeaks, and Denys Porlock was shocked beyond any measure, as he hadn’t expected that she could take such an extreme step. He told her that he would sue her, but Auggie was beyond caring, and she replied that he could do whatever he wished. Auggie walked off from her office and took a flight to San Louis, Potosi, Mexico. In the end, we saw that she used her nanofiber technology for the welfare of society and for uplifting the downtrodden. She gave it to the locals in Mexico who were facing a crisis due to polluted water supplies. She told them that through her technology, they would get clean drinking water, something that the government was never able to provide them. I believe we would see more of Auggie if there was a second season. Obviously, if and when the need arose, she would come back to fight for what’s right. She was not so selfish, like others, that she would blindly join the humans in their quest to fight the aliens. It would be interesting to see what Auggie does in the future and how her technology proves to be a game-changer in the scheme of things.
