Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
At dawn on the third day, Ye Xuan opened his eyes from his drowsiness. He was still half asleep.
“So fast? And it’s still the middle of the night?” He walked sleepily out of the prison door and looked all around. He saw the committee commissioner waiting for him.
“The lab made their official report an hour ago,” the commissioner said. “The captain is waiting for you.”
“Mmm, thanks.” Ye Xuan nodded and followed behind him. As they left, he heard the guards spit with disdain. He didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, but he could guess that the eyes of those looking at him were not very friendly.
Along the way, everyone on the side of the path looked very gloomy. The joy and happiness of the few days before had disappeared.
Naturally.
After the crew, who had been seeking new land’s hopes were kindled, they were extinguished by a sudden accident. Everyone on the ship was in poor spirits. Only the captain’s suppression was preventing a mutiny.
And as the one who had caused the accident, Ye Xuan naturally understood their hatred and anger.
Even in confinement, he had heard many of the rumors on the ship.
Countless strange hypotheses were circulating among the crew regarding the mysterious “unknown objects.” Some said that they were a conspiracy by the other colony ships, some said that they were deliberate, and some foolish people said they were alien weapons that were making an attack on humanity.
As for why they had attacked, they simply turned to the “dark forest” theory from hundreds of years ago.
Science fiction novels that had long been forgotten in databases were poured over. The debate about the existence of “the mysterious weapon that could flatten the universe into a piece of paper” was a common occurrence in virtual space.
Even though up till now, when humanity had been floating in the sea of stars for 50 years and had not seen so much as a hair of alien life, Ye Xuan was thinking all along the way.
It was not until the elevator door opened that he realized, “We’re going the wrong way.”
“Yes.” The commissioner stood before the door. He looked at him without expression. “In here.”
Now, there was something good, something bad, and something that he did not know if it was good or bad but that made him uneasy in front of Ye Xuan.
They were supposed to go to the conference room, but the bad thing was that this was not the way to the conference room.
What was good was that it was also not the way to the “cleaning area.” After the most serious violations, the committee would vote, and the crewmember would be thrown in there, strapped to a metal chair, injected with tranquilizer until they were drooling, and when someone else in the room hit a button, they would be broken down into particles and thrown into the incinerator, never to be seen again.
But the thing that made him uneasy was this: his transgressions were not to be punished by a secret execution. He was not heading towards the conference room to be sentenced, nor the cleaning area for secret punishment.
He was heading for the private area of the ship.
The bridge.
Some colony ships didn’t have so-called chief officers and second officers. If everything on board the ship was agreed upon by the committee, then how to sail was the captain’s decision.
Even if there was no one to pilot the ship, Nibelungen and Hermes would coordinate with each other to safely pilot it.
Most of the time, it was on autopilot, and the captain only needed to make policy decisions. Because of this, the bridge was the highest embodiment of a captain’s authority.
For other members of the committee, not to mention Ye Xuan, they were not even allowed on this level, much less to enter the bridge.
Now the commissioner was bringing him there himself…
Ye Xuan’s mind raced. He didn’t like political struggles, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at them. He was in charge of the mental control room, and he could instinctively profile and monitor people.
So, there were two possibilities now.
The greater possibility was that someone wanted to kill him and use the situation to their advantage to cause an incident or… a riot?
The hair stood up on the back of his neck.
A riot was possible.
The disaster that had happened on the new land had dampened everyone’s mood to the extreme. The situation was a powder keg, and it was only missing a spark.
But he didn’t want to be the sacrifice that started the revolution.
Moreover, he felt the current administration on board the ship was quite good, especially after seeing the dictatorship on board the other ship. He would never want there to be another Steve, who would persist in his cruelty till the end.
Even if he was already dead by that point.
But what would Zhangsun do?
So, who wanted to use him? Or… kill him?
Bai Nan? It was indeed possible that it could be that nasty guy, but he lacked intelligence when it came to anything other than technology. He had always been used as a weapon by others. His intelligence was limited, and the reason he didn’t like him was that he saw psychology as a pseudo-science. He was a guy who just liked to eat, drink and lie, and probably wouldn’t go through the trouble to come up with a scheme to kill him.
Maybe Liu Dongli? He had wanted to put the mental monitoring room under the medical institution’s control for a long time. Or Zhao Qian? Whenever you saw that guy, he was smiling, and had money and power to get whatever he wanted, but he was extremely narcissistic and did not care about anyone else.
Or maybe…
He stood there in silence as the commissioner waited outside the elevator. But he did not move.
Even when the elevator’s arrival sound rang out he did not move.
“Sorry, my stomach hurts.” Ye Xuan smiled. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Ye Xuan, use your head.” Captain Xiao Huan’s voice was being broadcast from the elevator. “Either you get in, or get the hell out. I don’t want to waste time waiting for a good-for-nothing wretch.”
Fine, the last possibility was that the one who wanted to kill him was the captain.
Ye Xuan shrugged helplessly.
In that case, there was nothing he could do.
If Xiao Huan wanted to kill him, he could do it with both eyes closed.
In short, it was an unavoidable disaster…
He sighed, and prepared himself for the commissioner to pull out a pistol, point it at the back of his head, and pull the trigger at some point as they walked to the bridge.
But as they opened the doors to the bridge, his head still had not exploded.
That was worthy of celebration.
Then he saw the vast starry sky.
Behind the suffocatingly vast floor to ceiling portholes, the darkness of space was dotted with endless stars. Before him, the vast planet shone with a silver light. Silver light flowed, stirring up the sea of stars and showing its iridescent beauty to those who had come.
It was like it had woken from a long sleep, and would no longer be silent.
“It’s so beautiful.” Captain Xiao Huan sat in a chair next to the porthole and looked back at him. “Isn’t it?”
“Do you have any hot water?” Ye Xuan found a place to sit and wiped his nose with two paper towels. Since he was there, he might as well make the best of it. Moreover, he was now extremely curious. Why would the captain suddenly call him to the bridge?
“Were you beaten?” Xiao Huan looked at the bruise on his face and gloated in his misfortune. “Should I arrange a single room for you?”
“Forget it. I’ve been beaten several times, but at least I feel better now.” Ye Xuan sighed. “But what are you thinking? The crew’s emotions have reached a dangerous level. According to conventional methods, you should have already started forcibly stabilizing their mood.”
“Isn’t that because someone in the mental monitoring room has been placed in confinement? Even if the committee passed a vote to enforce stability, wouldn’t the crew start a riot if they even saw your face, let alone if we gave you an injection?”
“My mistake.” Ye Xuan sighed.
As a psychiatrist, when the patient saw him as an enemy he had already lost. Although you could force a treatment when necessary, Ye Xuan was not interested in trying that.
If he regarded psychotherapy as an art, then electric shocks and lobotomies were the explosives that would destroy that art. The damage they would do to personality and consciousness made them no different than murder.
A sudden thought occurred to him.
Maybe he should have chosen a successor earlier?
Anyway, after the incident, he hadn’t been able to work in the mental control room for long. Looking back, all he could have done was flip through the talent pool of hibernating people and find a successor that way.
“We’ll talk about your incident later.” Xiao Huan put out his cigarette. “Right now, let’s turn to the main matter.”
A thick data sheet was placed in front of Ye Xuan.
It had just come from the printer and was still warm.
Unfortunately, just looking over the cover sheet with all its technical nouns made his eyes hurt. As technology developed, every branch of research got farther and farther apart from each other. To some extent, it was not like the different trades were separated by mountains, but rather by solar systems.
“I don’t understand.” Ye Xuan rolled his eyes. “Captain, if you have something to say can’t you just say it simply and straightforward?”
“I called you because I want you to hear the lab’s analysis of the unknown objects,” Xiao Huan said calmly. “I thought you’d be interested.”
“Just me?” Ye Xuan looked at the emptiness all around him. “What is this, the trial round? I’ve heard those usually aren’t too good.”
The captain did not directly answer his question. He just knocked on the desk. “Don’t worry, I’ve also called someone to explain it to you.”
Then, the floor cracked. A huge container rose from the floor. It was a vacuum container that was nearly three meters high and two meters wide.
Through the heavy glass, he could see some unknown objects collected in a lowering device. They had been deposited in the bottom of the container like fallen snow. They had a certain metallic texture and shone with the luster of mercury.
He saw no traces of movement.
A hunchbacked researcher entered the room. It seemed as if he had not exercised for some time. There were rings of black around his eyes and he was as skinny as a matchstick, which perfectly matched Ye Xuan’s impression of people in the lab.
A huge screen was projected from the ceiling and appeared at his side.
“I listened to this specific briefing from Nibelungen. This time the important thing is to introduce you to it. If there’s anything you don’t understand you can ask directly,” Xiao Huan said to Ye Xuan. He lit another cigarette and waved to the researcher. “There’s not much time, Mr. Roland, let’s get started.”
“So, let me explain to you two how great of a miracle the discovery of the unknown objects was.” The skinny researcher held up the data in his hands and his eyes became ecstatic. “Trust me, sirs, for this, ten times, nay a hundred times as much sacrifice would be acceptable!”
Ye Xuan frowned.
He thought, but did not say anything.
Although he could see that they were excusing his mistakes, he was still not happy.
Don’t say ten times as much…
If Zhangsun was dead, he would never forgive himself for as long as he lived.
Qiao Huan knocked on the desk, interrupting Roland’s excitement. “Get to the point.”
“Ahem, then let me begin.” The researcher coughed awkwardly twice as he considered his wording, then said, “At the start, the lab was just like everyone else. We believed the unknown objects covering the entire planet were some weapon created by an alien civilization. In fact, this conjecture was rejected at the beginning of the study, so please don’t worry.”
It wasn’t an alien weapon? Although he had been scornful of this hypothesis when he heard this, Ye Xuan could not help but breathe a sigh of relief as a burden was removed from his mind.
That was great. It wasn’t an alien conspiracy.
They were very lucky.
If that big ape Yuan Eryi was here, he would have definitely spoiled the good mood. He had long been looking for an enemy to fight.
But Ye Xuan relaxed a little.
Although his expression was controlled, he was no less curious about the unknown objects than anyone else.
“As long as it’s not an alien weapon, we can find a little girl to sing ‘Memorable Love’.” Now that he was relaxed, he began to tell some lame jokes that no one else got.
“Um, you should correct your opinion,” Roland said seriously. “The unknown objects are an alien civilization itself!”
Silence.
Ye Xuan did not respond. He looked at him blankly, then looked at Xiao Huan.
He didn’t understand what that meant.
“Although under high powered microscopes they seem almost identical and their forms almost exactly the same without any difference, in essence, they are not self-replicating Von Neumann probes,” said Roland. “They are alive.”
“They’re aliens?” Ye Xuan nearly jumped out of his chair. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. He pointed at the vacuum container. “These are the aliens from our childhood stories?”
He looked at Xiao Huan and then at Roland, and uncharacteristically lost his composure. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
He had waited for an answer for so long, and had made many conjectures. He had even prepared himself for the eventuality that he might not live to learn the answer.
And the result of this puzzling mystery was that it was just like the swindling authors of centuries ago had said. These were aliens.
“Are you kidding me?”
Roland coughed awkwardly twice, then continued speaking. “Mr. Ye, the term ‘alien’ is not accurate. Although they are extraterrestrial creatures, they don’t accord with human definitions, and…”
Xiao Huan was impatient. He interrupted him by slapping the table. “Get to the point!”
“Yes, yes…” Roland nodded in a panic and then began to rattle off a bunch of confusing terminology, some of which was barely understandable. “After careful research and testing, we believe that the unknown objects are silicone-based organisms that are completely different from the carbon-based organisms that we know today. Please look at the screen. You can see that they are completely different from all creatures, cells, and bacteria on Earth. They have their own unique nucleobase and structure, but you can rest assured that for ordinary people this is nothing more than a new kind of bacteria. There’s nothing to worry about.”
After nearly half an hour of Roland’s explanation, this was the only useful information.
Ye Xuan, who had been impatient for so long, uncharacteristically smoked a cigarette as he sorted out his confused thoughts.
“Fine, let’s accept that they are creatures. So the natives of this new land are, um, just like Indians from Earth’s history. So why do they want to attack us? Do they think we are going to scalp them?”
“This is not an attack,” the researcher explained. “This is just normal feeding.”
“They eat people!?”
The agitation that he felt was even more than before, and in his horror, he trembled from head to toe and nearly screamed.
“No, no, no! Please let me explain,” the researcher rushed to add. “They are so small they don’t even have a digestive system. Their so-called eating is really just energy intake. And the energy that they consume is sound. According to our speculations, because of this, the terrible incident was due to their detection of the ship’s landing. Thus, I think that Mr. Ye is innocent. Even without him, it would have only been a matter of time before we experienced such a disaster.”
He finally talked like a human!
Ye Xuan’s troubled mood calmed a bit.
Not because he was innocent, but because the one who had harmed Zhangsun was not him. Otherwise, he would never have been able to face him again.
“We’ll talk about you later.” Xiao Huan glanced at him, then looked back at the researcher. “Continue.”
“Ahem, I’ll continue my introduction. We don’t know what environment formed their special morphology. It was probably a coincidence that would be difficult to guess and recreate. But without a doubt, they are the race that occupies the main body of the planet,” said Roland. “Because of their existence, sound on the whole planet is diminished. The only place where there are traces of activity is the sea areas, due to the tides. Everywhere else has fallen into a similar state of hibernation.”
Ye Xuan finally calmed down.
Ok, he was a little cooled off.
As a human and a colonizer of the new world, the first thing he thought of was a question.
“So, is there a possibility of exterminating them and clearing them away?”
“Why would we exterminate them?” The researcher was stunned, and his voice rose several degrees in pitch. As he got more agitated his voice went even higher. “No! We absolutely cannot exterminate them! You don’t understand what a great discovery this is! Our, no, humanity’s future will be changed by this discovery!”
“But didn’t you say that their food is sound? So, they will hinder humanity.” Ye Xuan asked a question out of curiosity, “Not even taking into account talking, humans’ internal organs have different frequencies. Just living will cause this to happen. The balance and circulation of the human body are very fragile. If this kind of thing gets into the internal organs, what can we do? What will we do when our heads start to explode? And what about our large scale engineering equipment? And what about the sound and infrasound that is released when the spaceship’s engine is running? Just a ship landing caused such a disaster, what would happen because of the sound of a large mining machine? Also, what about other kinds of large scale devices? That would be a disaster!”
The researcher went pale and stammered a reply, “In calculations and simulations some unknown changes may occur, but… but they can also be used by humans, I mean…” He looked to the captain for help.
Xiao Huan nodded. “I already said that I’ve given Ye Xuan the right to know everything. Show him.”
Roland nodded enthusiastically, ran towards the vacuum container and began adjusting the parameters. Its operation was loaded down with trivial details.
“In our study, we found that they have different responses to sounds of different frequencies. There are fixed patterns that we don’t understand, just like the fixed answers after formulaic input parameters. It’s like… it’s like…”
“Language,” said Ye Xuan.
“Yes, language!” the researcher nodded excitedly. “It’s just like language! We can affect them with sound, just like sending zeroes and ones to a computer!” He finally dealt with the obstructive panel, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and pressed the touch screen.
At that moment, a soft melody played all around the bridge.
It was piano music.
It was like flowing water.
“Gymnopedies?” blurted Ye Xuan. Since part of psychotherapy was treatment by classical music, he was familiar with it, but he had never thought he’d encounter it here.
Seeing Xiao Huan’s curious look, he explained, “This is a piano piece created by the classical musician Satie more than 400 years ago. It comes from an even more ancient time; the melody that the Greeks would use in their sacrifices to the gods. After a naked youth smeared oil on himself, he would dance for the gods in front of the temple…”
He stopped speaking abruptly, because, in front of everyone, the unknown objects that were as still as falling snow began to shine. They slowly floated up from the bottom, and were suspended in the center of the container. They gathered together and expanded, just like the proliferation of snowflakes, they formed a magnificent crystal, and a faint glow extended in all directions.
Among the pure glow, a beauty unique to mathematics and topology was revealed.
“Please take this.” Roland distributed two pairs of heavy glasses to them. The glasses were specially made, and even had a cable that inserted into the soft socket at the back of everyone’s head and connected to the brain.
Even though he didn’t know why, Ye Xuan still put on the glasses.
He plugged them in and they started.
The sharp sound of friction between a seat and the floor rang out.
Ye Xuan stood up from his seat and stepped back in shock. He staggered and almost fell to the ground.
“What… is this?” His voice trembled.
With the special equipment, he surpassed visual obstacles and the real changes of the unknown objects.
It was a beautiful crystal that seemed to cover everything.
After the huge 16-faced object had spanned its dimension, the higher-dimension elements that were impossible for humans to reach lowered down a grand projection, and “condescended” to form a negligible shape in the human world.
The whole world was contained within its glow.
What they saw with their naked eyes was just a shadow of the giant that had descended. Now, with their mechanical perception, they could see its changes.
They were only gazing at it, and it was still dazzling and hard to understand.
After escaping the limits of length, width, quantity, and temperature, its shape stretched slowly in the higher dimensions, as if it had briefly woken from its long slumber.
But when the piano music stopped, the magnificent light also disappeared, and the huge outline that they had glimpsed for an instant was hidden in the higher level dimensions and collapsed into “snow powder” that was less than a millimeter thick.
There was a long silence.
Ye Xuan took off the glasses.
“What was that?”
“That was the true form of the unknown objects.” No matter how many times he had seen it, Roland was still unable to hide his excitement. He said in a trembling voice, “They ‘expand.’ They enter higher dimensions!”
All was silent.
“You still don’t understand? Mr. Ye, they are different from us humans who are limited by sight, hearing, and touch. They are not three-dimensional creatures! They have their own world. Their perception and interference can enter higher level dimensions. What you have just seen does not even reach to a thousandth part of their perception. When they are completely awakened, space and even time are meaningless! They are crystallized string theory and quantum physics, a miracle of evolution!”
As he spoke, he became even more excited. “Not only that, but according to our tests, they are also an excellent information storage medium! Although their individual information storage capacities are not outstanding, their storage space is based on the number of individuals and can increase by orders of magnitude! And the interaction between them is done through higher level dimensions, thus, in theory, there should be no delay! As long as we can build the most basic networks and structures through their deep connections and interactions, what we have obtained will not simply be a new land, but also an unprecedented planetary scale computer model!”
“A soul…” Ye Xuan whispered softly.
