Earth Era

In the distant and dark depths of the universe, in the empty space between stars, a cold stone is moving silently. Although the appearance of macroscopic objects in such a thin place is a strange thing, it is not impossible to explain. Due to the mutual gravitational disturbance between stars, the debris in the Oort cloud at the edge of the stellar system may also break away from the gravitational pull of the original stars and enter the universe. In the universe that may last hundreds of millions or even billions of years After sailing, it enters the gravitational range of another star and is captured by another star.

This is an exchange of matter between stars, and while rare, it's not unusual.

Surrounded by boundless darkness, cold and quiet. In the distance are the shining stars, up, down, left, right, front, and in all directions. This is a sea of ​​darkness and stars.

This stone is about two meters long, with a height and width of only one meter and 0.8 meters respectively. It has an irregular shape and is covered with dense potholes. It is obvious that during its past life, Among them, it has suffered more than one collision.

It is just like the countless ordinary stones that exist in this universe. It is unremarkable, and no special place can be found anywhere. But it was such a stone that suddenly had a strange change in the next moment.

Suddenly, a small crack opened in its body, and a glass ball-shaped object stuck out from the crack. The light of the stars in the distance shines on it, adding a bit of mystery to it.

Those are its eyes.

This is a monitoring satellite of the Lyra Deep Space Monitoring Network. In order to improve its survival rate and concealment, people covered its surface with thick camouflage, disguised it as an interstellar stone, and placed it in the void space between stars. Let it run according to a specific orbit and monitor all changes in this vast void space.

Thousands of spy satellites like this have been dropped here. These thousands of satellites form a large network, responsible for the monitoring of the E7368 star field, and form a higher-level monitoring network with hundreds of other satellite networks of similar size.

Light from the depths of the universe enters the glass ball-shaped eye, and then enters the analytical instrument hidden inside. In addition to information collection equipment in the optical band, it also integrates more equipment for different purposes. There are space curvature detectors, gravitational wave detectors, wave detection instruments, etc.

A few hours ago, it detected space curvature fluctuations, which means that something is traveling at super-light speed not far from it, and this thing that is traveling at super-light speed is not in the Lyra deep space monitoring network Report. Under the current circumstances, it is obvious that the only possibility for things that have not been reported and are traveling at faster than light speeds is the robot group. The intelligent program inside it also calculates this. So it moved its orbit, intending to come here to check the situation of the robot group in more detail. But for some reason, an hour after it noticed the fluctuations in space curvature, the fluctuations in space curvature suddenly disappeared.

The disappearance of the space curvature fluctuation means that the robot group has left the super-light navigation state and entered the regular navigation state. The robot group under normal navigation conditions can be observed by optical telescopes. It is precisely because of this that it released its "eyes" and planned to see what was going on here.

But the dark universe isolates too much information, and it sees nothing in the visible light band. So it switched to the infrared band for observation, and then... a sun suddenly appeared in its field of vision.

That's not the real sun, but it's so similar to the sun. It was too big and too bright. This spy satellite observed that a powerful infrared ray source appeared hundreds of millions of kilometers away from itself. If it was further distinguished, it saw that this infrared ray source... was actually composed of more very tiny It is formed by the convergence of small ray sources. It's just because the distance is too far that they appear to be one piece when viewed from a distance.

It did a little calculation with a computer program and came to the conclusion: "There are at least... thirty trillion small infrared ray sources that make up this powerful infrared ray source."

The presence of an infrared ray source means there is heat. Obviously, the heat is emitted from the bodies of those robots. Their engines generate a lot of heat during operation, which is why this satellite can observe them.

It immediately passed on the information it observed. This message will be transmitted to a nearby spy satellite, and then transmitted to the earth through a relay. This is the working mode of the Lyra deep space monitoring network.

It doesn't know why these robots suddenly left the super-light speed navigation state, and it doesn't care about this. Its job responsibility is only to collect data. As for the analysis of data, that is the responsibility of the Earth Base.

But a moment later, it noticed something unexpected. The instruments equipped on it told it that in the past little while, the intensity of that powerful infrared ray source... seemed to have decreased a bit.

It also doesn't care why the intensity of the infrared ray source decreases. It still just faithfully records this and then sends it out.

The reduction in infrared ray source intensity seems to be an unstoppable trend. During its silent observation, the sun in the infrared field of vision was rapidly dimming, turning from a scorching sun to a setting sun, and finally dimmed completely and disappeared completely. So it lost the last means of observing the robot group.

In another corner of the universe, on a planet in a red dwarf galaxy.

This was originally a paradise for mankind. People built various facilities here, built high-rise buildings, built roads, transformed the natural landscape, and built space bases... But all man-made objects have completely disappeared. During the cleaning operations when humans retreated, all these things were destroyed by artillery fire. Then, after decades of silence, the place welcomed its second set of visitors.

It was an army composed of ferocious-looking robots. They fell from space like a meteor shower, occupying the planet's land and mountains, its canyons and oceans in less than a day. The silent stars are once again noisy, and the robots are here to mine the materials and minerals they need, and to reproduce to their heart's content...

But at this time, a signal was transmitted here from the depths of the universe, and entered the signal receiving equipment of the robots. As if something was aroused, after receiving this message, all robot movements stopped.

It's as if someone has cast time-stopping magic here.

But the time stop only lasted for less than a second. After one second, everything was different from before. The robot flying in the sky suddenly fell to the ground like raindrops. The body of the crawling robot tilted and fell to the ground without any movement. The larval robot that was foraging for food under the leadership of the mother robot was ready to face it. The food is too heavy to move forward...

There are still robots in the sky trying to land on the ground. They will slow down when entering the atmosphere from outer space, and finally land at a safe speed. But for some reason, the originally planned deceleration did not happen. Under the dual effects of the planet's gravity and its own inertia, they entered the planet's atmosphere at extremely high speeds, and so... they turned into fireballs during the friction with the atmosphere.

Endless fireballs with long tails appeared in the sky, like a meteor shower... No, a meteor shower is not enough to describe the situation at this moment. It was a fireball impact that was thousands of times more violent than a meteor shower, and they even filled the entire sky.

On the horizon, the star that dominates this star system is about to set. Its afterglow can only bring a bleak color to the world. But at this time, under the illumination of the infinite light spots, the entire world Bright as day.

The planet's atmosphere is not enough to burn up the robots. After passing through the atmosphere, there will be many remains of the robot's body. So they hit the ground at a speed of at least ten kilometers per second - such a high-speed impact can even trigger a nuclear fusion reaction.

One shell after another hit the surface of the planet, endless smoke and dust rose up, all the landforms on the surface of the planet were destroyed, and the entire atmosphere was shrouded in smoke and dust... The world quickly entered darkness.

But the sky is still bright, and the continuous collisions have not stopped, but are becoming more violent.

It wasn't just this planet that was hit. The movement state of the robots at the last moment before they lose consciousness determines their subsequent movement state - they no longer have the consciousness and ability to change this state of movement, and they can only move under the dominance of inertia and the gravity of the planet. As a result, trillions of robots turned into mindless interstellar cannonballs. Some of them collided with stars, some with other planets, and some with each other due to overlapping orbits. The collision eventually turned into fragments, and some escaped from the star system directly under the support of inertia and entered the endless depths of the universe... (To be continued~^~)