Star Empire

"The system self-check has been completed, and the strength of the basic material of the life-support cabin bulkhead has been strengthened. No leakage defects caused by high-dimensionality reaching the warning value have been found." In the Gnaku of the sixth external connection area of ​​the frontline space station, the scientific officer In front of General He, a large silver-gray ball with a diameter of one kilometer was reading out its inspection report without emotion.

"The computer calculates the average thickness and uniformity of the spherical shell of the life-support cabin to check with the mission objectives, and starts it again to test the warp space bubble transition and high-dimensional property transition engine." For the next task, Cavinrel must start Be diligent, there is only one chance to directly collect the chaotic material ring in a short period of time, and this sacrificial experiment is also testing the destructive power of the material ring. If the test product fails midway, everyone will All these months of hard work will be in vain.

Some crystal-clear total reflection mirrors began to appear around the sphere, and the warped space bubble generator began to power on and self-check, and those unpredictable lights and shadows were reflected in the surrounding space being bent. However, although it looked very close, But in fact, this kind of thing is much smarter than those simple space bending devices.

After it is fully activated, the area it forms is almost a closed small universe, and all the constants and rules are exactly the same as those of the large universe. At this time, the small universe and the large universe are in a subtle parallel state, so this bubble can be said to be in a subtle parallel relationship with the entire universe. Therefore, it will not be affected by the laws of the large universe and can ignore the light speed barrier and achieve supernormal speed. Sailing at the speed of light.

"The self-test of the navigation system is completed, and both engines can work normally." As the electronic synthesized sound of the cabin's independent computer rang in Cavinrel's ears, the dancing and distorted light and shadow around the sphere began to slowly dissipate; "Excluded Except for the gap reserved for the probe to collect work, the average thickness of the spherical shell in this cabin is fifty meters, the error is one order of magnitude lower than the warning value, and the probe is in good condition."

In the monitor, Cavinrel and Kalost could clearly see that inside the bright spherical cabin, in a corner near the wall, a slender fusiform probe was quietly suspended in the air, waiting. My next instructions.

"We have done all the inspections, let's start executing the next plan." Kalost turned to look at the science officer, and Cavinrel nodded, indicating that it was ready to launch.

In the Gnaku, groups of beacon lights lit up one after another. At the exit not far away, a huge airtight gate slowly opened, as if the force field of water waves was jumping in the hatch, preventing the air inside the space station from being affected by the negative pressure outside. Pressed and sucked into deep space, through the open hatch, one can clearly see that the golden vortex five thousand light years away is still slowly surging, and its momentum is as breathtaking as ever.

"The order has been issued, the vehicle is leaving the port." As the final command sounded, the silver metal sphere began to float towards the exit. Before flying out of the space station, it needed to be assisted by the traction field in the station, so its speed was not very fast. After the sphere completely left the space free matter disintegration force field of the hatch, a blazing white halo instantly lit up on the side of the sphere facing the space station.

After using conventional power to break away from the range where equipment such as the high-dimensional jump engine may affect the space station, the fully powered-on sphere began to accelerate, and some slightly deformed light and shadow danced around the sphere, as if an invisible hand was pulling up the space station. The black curtain full of stars, as the curtain gradually closed, the starlight from the distance flashed violently, and the spherical spacecraft disappeared from everyone's sight.

"The starlight will be affected by the warping closing effect, but the light of this golden vortex is almost undisturbed." Kalost said while looking at the closing hatch.

"Neither the speed of light nor the warped world structure can block its transmission at close range. The actual space structure begins to be observably affected when it approaches a distance of two billion light years..."

While summarizing the nature of some of the abnormal phenomena he had accumulated during this period, Cavinrel opened a holographic window and stared at the movement of the carrier. The warped navigation state would greatly compress the communication bandwidth, so in Before the countdown on the screen ends, he can only see whether the status returned by the probe displayed on the screen is "normal" or "abnormal."

After the countdown fell below double digits, Cavinriel concentrated all his energy. Near the golden vortex, all interference would be increased to an unbearable value, but Cavinriel still added extra energy to the probe. A manual operating system is installed. If the probe's autonomous system fails, he can try to manually control the return of the probe. Although this may not achieve the desired effect, these multiple insurances are Cavernrel's. A consistent creed.

Always be prepared and never give up hope.

"The interference is increasing... Even the world bubble cannot avoid the unknown influence that the huge golden vortex has been releasing since its emergence..." Sensing the probe that some parts of the machine seemed to have begun to resist the pressure, Cavinrel I couldn't help but sweat for this action.

"Five, four, three, two, one, the frequency is consistent, the vehicle has arrived." The moment the prompt voice fell, the holographic window in front of Cavinriel instantly switched to the internal monitor of the spherical shell, and the scene was filled with clutter. On the screen, you can vaguely see the white aperture at the tail of the probe. Under the predetermined procedure, the probe is adjusting its attitude. When the spherical shell is broken by the wave of destruction and the sample is collected, it returns immediately.

The moment the spherical spacecraft rushed into the ring, the roiling waves of chaos instantly began to gnaw at the outer shell of the spacecraft. Although the real scene could not be seen, in the entire system window in front of the science officer, the spherical shell was distributed inside The sensors of the spacecraft are losing contact in batches. However, although as soon as it entered the ring, more than 50% of the outer shell of the spacecraft was lost. However, this result made Cavinriel feel a little lucky:

The physical environment near the vortex still conforms to the existing macroscopic three dimensions. And from the current point of view, it seems that this idea of ​​using dosage to resist is correct. The thick outer wall of the reinforced life-support cabin section has played the expected role, and the digestion speed is slightly slower. This much time is enough for the probe. Made all the moves.

"Attention, the breach has appeared." Cavernrel's sight quickly aimed at the position of the loading gap, which corresponds to the storage area of ​​the probe. In order to facilitate the probe to collect materials with as little movement as possible, the inner cabin here is A part of the wall attachment layer structure has been cut off. Now, it is functioning as planned. The last layer of sensors has also begun to glow red, and the time window is about to arrive.

"The peripheral shell was completely dissolved, and the probe storage area was damaged by the impact of unknown substances, and the damage was acceptable." After the storage operation was completed, the probe quickly adjusted its flight attitude, and a total reflection mirror appeared around the probe, and the probe The needle itself is slowly merging into the darkness. The blazing white halo is beating between the four long open needles at the tail of the detector, providing surging power for warping the space bubble. In the lightless curtain, the probe's The figure has become increasingly difficult to detect. Before the last white area was swallowed up, the probe barely entered a parallel state and escaped from this dark and boiling sea of ​​destruction.

In the frontline base, all normal members were paying attention to this operation. When the probe successfully escaped, almost substantial cheers erupted in various cabins, even Cavendish who was still in the Gnaku. Er and Kalost both felt the surging thoughts through the temporary independent information collection network segment. They were also very happy, but the most important thing was to start research on the samples as soon as possible. This was serious business.

In the warped parallel state, there is no relative displacement between the probe and the surrounding space. In order to avoid unnecessary displacement that causes the material in the probe to further damage the probe structure, the temporary space vibration wave field responsible for the response is directly opened. The internal test area of ​​the space station is also a dangerous operation in terms of regulations. However, compared with the current special environment and sample preservation requirements, the original rigid safety regulations were temporarily terminated by Cavinrel's order.

In the experimental cabin that has been prepared for a long time, the space is vibrating faintly at a special frequency. This frequency is the beacon that guides the return of the probe. Several conical tower buildings are placed in a circular shape. Within the range, each other's vibration fields are superimposed on each other to lock the coordinate position of the probe as accurately as possible after it returns to the main material plane.

"Buzz~boom!" After a slight buzz, the probe appeared in the experimental cabin. After leaving the main material plane, the propulsion halo at the tail of the probe had not completely dissipated. The scorching white pure energy instantly All the thin inert filling gas in the experimental cabin was burned into plasma, and a wall of red-hot light roared towards the surroundings.

However, before these high-temperature storms that could vaporize metal began to show their power, an invisible force field instantly covered the entire probe and isolated the remaining restless energy. The pressure relief hatches to the universe opened one after another. All these restless plasma jets were blown into deep space.

"This is all expected." Cavernrel pulled Kalost and "started sample analysis immediately."

In the center of the experimental cabin, the returned probe has been fixed by the force field. Although most of the structural materials of the probe are chromatic force materials based on the quark confinement principle, in just a few seconds of contact, This probe, which was almost indestructible by conventional means, was hit with obvious scars by the chaotic wave whose power had been greatly slowed down. Seeing such a scene, Cavinriel was also deeply grateful: If the outer bulkhead was thinner, , then the influx of material will most likely penetrate the probe and cause the plan to fail.

Under the command of the space station AI, several independent manipulators began to approach the probe, preparing to analyze the internal samples. In order to avoid unnecessary damage to the test equipment due to shaking of the internal materials, the AI ​​decided to use local weak gravity. The field came to pull matter, but the next phenomenon surprised everyone present.

Not a single bit of the chaotic matter stored inside the probe moves under the pull of the force field; they all remain stationary in the probe's storage compartment.

"What...is going on?" Cavinriel was shocked, "Quickly, determine the standard mass of these substances!"

A light blue light swept across the probe from top to bottom, and in front of Kalost's eyes, a three-view rotation diagram showing the current status of the probe appeared.

"The gravity effect produced by the probe under the standard g value is 999.9989 tons. After the stripped part is restored, it is 0.0011 tons. The normal probe mass is one thousand tons. This is Measurements at the ultimate precision.”

The matter that was collected back seemed to have no mass - it didn't appear to interact with the ubiquitous Higgs field.

If it is said that there is no mass, it is still debatable. For example, some of the current very large space buildings in the Federation will use gravitational wave blocking devices, so that these large objects comparable to celestial bodies will not disturb the surrounding environment and approach due to their own gravity. aircraft. Moreover, information disturbance methods will create some things with strange properties. If one day we find a pool of paste that can still float under the gravity field, it will be strange but not abnormal, but the subsequent measurement will be even more... To the surprise of everyone present: these chaotic substances... seem to be continuous!

"Both electronic projection and photon snooping show this result?" Cavinriel asked the operator in front of him word by word. His posture looked like if you are talking nonsense, I will eat you alive.

"It's absolutely true, Science Officer." The operator was also shocked by this scene and completely ignored Cavinriel's attitude and identity. Of course, identity is not something that needs too much attention:

"We have used all microscopic observation equipment, and what we can achieve is the current limit of the semi-material scale of this universe. Under this precision, we still have not discovered any microstructure of these wonderful things. Under current multi-scale observations The results show that they have always been continuous...at least the energy decay rate of light quantum is constant without any unitarity..."

"Completely continuous...the existence of the observer effect has become strange..." Cavinrel talked about this material property that is enough to shake the current physical foundation and information foundation of the entire federation. Information perturbation methods have indeed produced many substances with strange properties. , but most of their abnormal properties are secondary results brought about by the distortion of the object's microstructure.

For this reason, many of the original properties of these materials have to be "compensated", such as the energy-guiding grid used to guide the vacuum zero point when blasting the spacecraft, although that material has poor energy conduction and damage resistance. It is extremely strong, but at the price, its hardness, stiffness and toughness are extremely low. Its microstructure becomes countless porous tubes at the atomic scale, but no matter how these materials change, they are not stable. continuously.

However, the chaotic matter that the pile of probes had worked so hard to bring back didn't seem to be enough, as if they were determined to stun Cavinriel and the others. Just as Cavinriel was thinking about the two pieces of information he had received so far, The weak gravitational field traction manipulator and mass detector that had been placed on standby suddenly responded!

"It was found that gas was produced, there was a mass reaction, and the substance was identified... After the identification, the properties of these gases were consistent with hydrogen, but there were four nuclear subunits... The target sample was showing visible changes."

"AI, send the live surveillance video!"

On the big screen, a clear picture was unfolding. In the middle of the probe, in the probe storage area that had been opened, the indescribable color substances were slowly decreasing, and hydrogen was being continuously generated.

"Originally there is no mass. The observation of main matter is completely continuous. The color cannot be synthesized by spectrum. However, hydrogen will be produced, and the produced material does not completely conform to the general form of existence..." Cavinriel frowned, as if there was something wrong. Something is ready to come out, "This process feels like..."

"Decay?" Kalost reminded quietly from the side.

"That's right! It's decay!" Cavinrel became excited instantly. "This is in line with some of the speculations about the unification of information! I can explain the characteristics of these strange substances!"

Caloust was about to ask why, but he was suddenly caught by the excited science officer: "General, let me ask you a question, do you know how heavy the world we live in is?"

"The mass of the world?" Kalost was confused by this sudden question. "The world we live in has hundreds of billions of galaxy-level galaxies. This result is a huge number."

"No General, it's not the mass of matter in the universe, it's the mass of the entire world." Cavinrel couldn't hold back his excitement, so he simply stopped asking, "The mass of the world is zero."

"Zero?" Caloust was very curious about how this result was obtained. "The world we live in has a large number of celestial bodies that even now can be called a large number. These small celestial bodies weigh trillions of tons. How can you say mass is zero?”

"General, how do you think we measure the mass of objects?"

"Physical laws." Calost simply didn't care why the science officer asked these incomprehensible questions, "Physical laws exist objectively in this world, and we can make them understandable through logical descriptions. , and weight is a measurable property of matter under standard acceleration due to gravity."

"So General, which one is bigger, the laws of physics or the world, who includes whom?"

"Of course the law is included in the world. Your question...wait! I seem to understand! You mean the world as a whole..."

"That's right! The laws of physics are included in the world. The world as a whole is higher than the physical laws. Therefore, if we regard the world as a whole, its mass is zero. To be more precise, it is because it There is no such attribute as mass, or there are no laws to measure it! Because physical laws are only part of the world, and all properties are only part of it, and they cannot be used to describe the entire world!”

"so……"

"So I think the collected chaotic matter also has these characteristics!" Cavinriel activated a huge holographic information window, in which all the properties of the chaotic matter currently known are written in bold fonts, "Ignore Some of the properties of ordinary matter, which have no mass, are infinitely continuous, and change into hydrogen gas, can all be explained in this way! Its existence is higher than all things in the world, so conventional physical properties cannot have an effect on them. The same is true for the two middle ones. As for the last Ichijo, this kind of transformation from something without a material structure into the matter of the universe as we know it, what do you think this is?"

"What will happen in the short term after the Big Bang?" Caloust was shocked when he heard this.

"That's right! This is a scene from the Creation! Although it is small in scale, it is equivalent to the creation of the universe!" The science officer almost jumped up, "We have witnessed the initial formation process of the universe!"

"Remind the person in charge of the space station to pay attention to the fact that there are unknown changes in the emergency medical module. Please deal with it immediately..." However, before the two people in charge here, Wen and Wu, could recover from the results they had just obtained, an electronically synthesized voice It hit the face together with several beams of light used for short-distance space transmission.

"What's wrong?" Cavinriel moved away the person who was attacking him, "What's the regulation like?! Why did you leave your post without permission?"

"They...some of them just woke up!"