Lu Zhou thought that the game would have ended here; he thought there might be a “game over” or an “end of scene” title page popping up. He wasn’t sure if he had completed exploring the entire Void Memory.
After Professor Lane left, the consul announced the end of the meeting. All of the clues about the Oracle seemed to end here; it was no longer relevant to the story.
After Lu Zhou left the parliament hall, he followed Captain Ince back to their military station. He applied to leave the military task force and handed over his equipment. He then aimlessly wandered around the world on a rail train.
Even though there was a strong social class structure, this world was more complicated than he had imagined.
On this ring-shaped world, there were industrial districts that specialized in producing consumer goods and there were commercial districts dedicated to retail and entertainment. There were also college districts, farming districts, high-density and low-density residential areas, natural landscape areas, and so on.
The Calanians that lived here did not need to work hard to enjoy a relatively successful and luxurious life. Because the incomes within the same social class were similar, people from different classes rarely interacted with one another. Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor did not seem as obvious; everyone was living in their own utopia.
The currency used here was something similar to a credit score.
This soldier named Reinhardt was congratulated by his superiors for his outstanding performance and for inheriting the property of an upper-class Calanian. Thus, Reinhardt had a comfortable life in front of him.
Lu Zhou went straight to the college district and found the library closest to him.
However, he was disappointed. Just like he had imagined, most of the in-depth information and specific technology was obscured in this Void Memory.
When he opened a textbook, he could only see a blurry mess of words and images. The same happened when he tried to find information on the Internet. Specific and esoteric knowledge was not recorded in this memory. The deeper he dove into a subject, the less information there was.
This was like a dream; he could only see an outline, and there was no way to dig deeper.
If he only followed the main plot line, this wouldn’t have felt like a dream at all. However, once he deviated from the main story line, he could feel invisible walls blocking him.
He was like Michael De Santa in GTA5, aimlessly wandering the streets of Los Santos, interacting with people that did not actually exist.
At least for now, he had yet to find any clues or Easter eggs.
Other than a substantial inheritance, the only thing Professor Lane left him was suspense regarding the “natural disaster”.
What exactly is the natural disaster?
The story seemed to have ended here…
…
Lu Zhou took off his helmet and got out of bed. He felt like his head was overheating. He took a deep breath of the air-conditioned air in the laboratory.
Xiao Ai’s drone flew over, a line of text was displayed on the screen.
[Master, do you need a glass of water? 0.0]
Lu Zhou: “Yes, please.”
The robotic arm on the wall began to move; it soon handed Lu Zhou a cold cup of water.
Lu Zhou took a sip and contemplated it for a while. He then suddenly spoke.
“Xiao Ai.”
Xiao Ai: [What? (u003e▽
Lu Zhou: “Do you have information about the Calans inside your database? I mean… other than the Void Memory part.”
Xiao Ai: [I don’t think so… Why? ┌|* ́∀`|┘]
I see.
After Lu Zhou thought for a while, he shook his head.
“… Nothing.”
Lu Zhou stood up and walked toward the elevator.
…
The Void Memory story had ended.
However, the suspense still lingered in Lu Zhou’s head.
What kind of natural disaster is the Calans scared of?
What is the unprecedented crisis?
Also, what is the strange quark star flying toward the center of the galaxy?
Lu Zhou went back to his office and sat in front of his desk. He took out his notebook and began recording his thoughts.
He stopped writing and gently tapped the pen on the table. After pondering for a while, he spoke.
“A natural disaster…”
This was obviously translated from the Calanian language, but the meaning should be somewhat similar.
The most annoying thing in academic research was trying to understand a translated paper.
However, it was impossible to study the original meaning of the Oracle. The memory sent to him by the system already translated everything into Chinese.
Not to mention that there was no way he could use the current technology on Earth to translate the Oracle.
“There is only one thing for certain, that is the high tech system does not come from the Calanians…”
Due to the moral values of the Calanians, even if they discovered planet Earth, they would not attack humans.
National level actions aside, even a company had to consider costs and benefits.
Apart from an atmospheric environment, Earth did not have a lot of resources compared to other planets in the universe. It also had a relatively high gravitational force.
There was no way a civilization that could create a ring world would bother attacking earth. Even if they needed resources such as water or gas, they could just collect them more efficiently from glacial or gaseous planets. They wouldn’t even have to purify the collected resources.
There was no reason they would spend so much effort giving Earth a “high tech system” to improve the level of human technology.
This kind of behavior could only be done by a more advanced civilization, similar to the one that created the quark star.
However, there was one problem.
What was the motive of the advanced civilization?
Or rather…
Are they the so-called “void”?
Lu Zhou thought about it for a long time, but he couldn’t come to a conclusion. He could only write down his series of conjectures.
Obviously, the work on the 750 GeV signal was more urgent than exploring the secrets of the quark star and the void.
Now that the entire physics community was expecting him to find an amazing discovery, he had to do something.
After hesitating for a while, Lu Zhou took out his phone and made a few phone calls. Finally, he was able to contact the person in charge of the Ali CMB Telescope Project—Professor Zhang Tianming, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This gravitational wave detector began construction in 2017 and was first tested in 2020. It was the highest altitude gravitational wave observatory in the world.
Even though Lu Zhou did not have any hope in mind, he still asked Professor Zhang for the latest gravitational waves data.
Even though probably nothing would come of this.
Doing something was better than doing nothing.
