Star Empire

"Is it a tombstone?"

"Yes, this is a tombstone, or to use another word - a monument to describe it. Our country has been through some things, and the world has also undergone some... terrible changes. After these disasters finally stabilized, We tried our best to build some very strong fortresses, and restored everything we could in the fortresses, although we don’t know what their final effect will be..."

"Show it."

"? God, you..."

"Show all the data and information in the monument." The weak vibration waves created by the Elf King's thoughts are acting in the sea of ​​will of this withered and haggard man, "We may behave and exist in the same way as you imagined. Sexuality is not consistent. We have our own decision on how the event will proceed. However, perhaps we also mentioned in the previous notification letter that this world has been affected by some powerful existence similar to ours. I am not sorry for you. On the basis of having a major impact, we cannot completely see through everything you have experienced. We need to know more before we can make more accurate judgments and decisions."

“…just do it, hold your head up, stand up straight.”

"yes."

The figure in the black cloak still hesitated for a moment, but he didn't care about it at the moment. He quickly walked out of the shadow-shrouded edge area and pulled hard on a certain side of the huge black metal box. A raised, movable handle made of more stable material on the lower edge.

The somewhat haggard old man pulled it down effortlessly. With a faint mechanical noise, the handle and its base were slowly pulled to the end of the groove. After the end was stuck to a fixed position, the dim light in the hall, and some shadowy lights in the completely windless secret room, were quickly extinguished along with the click sound of some huge switch being cut off, and when the light was completely In the cabin after it was extinguished, some white light spots with a texture like crystal that had been hidden by the lights appeared from the four cliff-like walls that made the hall look like the bottom of a rift valley.

"We don't know what the scene will be like outside the world, and we don't dare to guess what kind of scene we will face once the end of the world occurs. We can only rely on our meager knowledge to build these fortresses. To be as solid as possible, there are such monuments in the empty star areas at the end of every super-galactic cluster in this universe. They record all the knowledge and memories that we can summarize." Looking at the person who looked a bit like The legendary elves in this world are generally beautiful and noble, with a figure slightly flowing with golden light in the darkness. According to the practices and habits of their civilization, after giving permission for all his actions, this very haggard figure The figure paused in awe.

As certain energy flow veins were slowly activated, the entire hall turned into a huge holographic projection playback station, as if an entity was about to emerge out of thin air.

"These holographic projections are supporting self-interpretation systems. They contain almost all the knowledge, phenomena, law structures and our thinking in this universe that we can understand. Its function is to detect possible outsiders when they arrive. , matching all the structures recorded in the monument with what we see and know. We considered the differences between different cognitive systems as much as possible, so we finally chose this method that can directly display the picture of the world , this is the highest level that we can think of, and can achieve long-term stability as much as possible... Well, cough cough - the highest level, and will not make our efforts turn into a series of unprocessable garbled codes... Very Feel sorry…"

"...Our shallow technical system does not guarantee that we can completely analyze the other party's cultural system and match it correctly in an instant like you, so we can only use the safest "rough method" to deal with it. Each of these facilities is equipped with a dedicated "Higgs" mass spontaneous generation field. We are still unable to fully explain this source of energy and power that seems to us to violate the laws of the world, but at least for now, this The power source is reliable.”

In front of the gods, one holographic projection after another began to flicker in every blank space in the entire hall.

In the holographic image printed by the "light flow" ejected by thousands of crystal nodes, there is a primitive planet that has just emerged from the boiling state and is filled with certain complex macromolecular material structures. In the material ocean, some trembling material chains began to experience some special fluctuations - they began to try to close their own material structures and draw themselves from the nearby chaotic environment to create the next generation. Materials - life begins to be born...

…

At first, the ancestors of civilization, probably hundreds of millions of generations before evolution, began to crawl on the earth. On the one hand, they began to try to open up living space in the dark and moist forests, and on the other hand, they began to work hard to observe the natural environment. We strive to obtain more phenomena or events that can enable us to shape our living environment better. Among them, countless cruel mass extinctions have washed away the foundation of life again and again... In I don’t know how many years passed, but the primitive migration of animals, driven by the survival instinct given by nature, began to reverse... The earliest settlements began to appear.

…

For the sake of their own survival, each individual works hard in the larger cluster. In the process of developing from the planetary level to a higher and broader level, civilizations that are generally based on similar foundations and development routes will basically go through this link - in the process of understanding the structure of the world step by step, Many difficulties will make it difficult for different branches of the same technology system to develop to a matching level at the same time.

The consequence of such a level of technology is that the interests that individuals who make up a civilization often conflict with the technology itself and the social structure. In order for such a conflict to truly improve, it is not just oneself and everything around one that needs to be transformed. Life and environment interact.

Differences between different civilizations, different basic technological systems, and different organisms and life forms will cause different levels of social pain at different stages, but very few existences can achieve the highest goal from the very beginning. Or directly use the supremacy of civilization as the basic creed for the survival of every individual with equal existence value. However, even if there are such existences, the existences that can develop to the ultimate level are too few compared to the vast endless structure.

…

In the long river of history, the initial clues of some events often do not attract attention, but they may have devastating consequences. In the starry sky, the smell of iron and blood began to slowly emanate from the nebula.

Some kind of inherent natural passage made the Klinka civilization notice the different structures between worlds. Encountering such an event under the technological system of an interstellar civilization caused a certain degree of turmoil in the society of that era - but very soon Soon, the huge benefits generated by the practical application of the virtual and real world lines overwhelmed almost all doubts.

The strange nature between the virtual and real world lines, as well as the exposure of some more original and unknown world structures, have enabled civilization to surpass the speed of light in the world at a very early level and exceed the limits of any main world line development laws. range.

As a very early intelligent existence, this civilization made the earliest breakthrough in the field of super-light speed, and its technological system also began to advance rapidly with its abundant material foundation.

The voice of racial supremacy emerged.

Between the stars, in the thin nebulae, in the stellar abyss that has faded away from darkness and coldness, and then transformed into infinite space for development, Klinka began to scale with his earliest and strongest super-light movement method. Increasingly huge expansion operations.

When in contact with other civilizations, the voice of racial supremacy has developed to a fairly complete level and has been the most mainstream trend of thought in this civilization for a long time - the coexistence of other civilizations with itself probably does not represent any so-called mutual benefit and win-win situation , but to hinder, contain or even lead to large-scale war. Communication itself is difficult, and if the cost of communication is lower than that of war, then there will either be a stalemate or one side will completely overwhelm the other.

If there are no higher-level constraints on the balance of interests between groups, it is almost impossible to achieve any result that can be called "balanced" under one-way radical will by relying only on communication between each other. Moreover, under such circumstances, it is extremely difficult for the two parties with a huge gap to be willing to sit on the negotiating table recognized by the other party - there is almost nothing new under the stars, interests and disputes will always exist, and the environment and civilization that restrict them will The gap in strength will inhibit or promote them to a certain extent, and the countermeasures caused by the continuous stacking of doubts and distortions in some of the most essential logical loops will make the chain of suspicion and increasingly crazy actions alternately climb, forming a The unreachable tower infinitely squeezes the survival possibilities of all those who come after.

Klinka's war for supremacy begins.

Because it occupies some special world structure sources, the faster-than-light flight method that can be regarded as the prototype of world coordinate definition has allowed Klinka to obtain a considerable degree of war priority. In the eyes of other civilizations, the gap between the virtual and real world lines Jumps are still fixed at something called microscopic particle uncertainty, but Klinka is able to deliver antimatter bombs directly to other people's doorsteps, directly into The "burning" reactor or even the bodies of some key individuals - before there is direct information blocking protection, such a weird attack method is almost unstoppable.

For a very long time, this kind of war has been going on. With the earliest series of understandings of the world structure, as well as the vastest and richest accumulation of resources and experience, one civilization after another has provided information on the end of the world. Being permanently imprinted on the overall development line of Klinka civilization...

In the past, there were calls among civilizations to retain some civilizations as observation samples. However, since the development of Klinka's own technical system can be said to be quite complete, and with the observation reports brought after several deep space voyages, It shows that except for natural uncertainties and transition probabilities, the entire universe is generally uniform——

This means that there is nothing special about the conventional technologies and development ideas of other civilizations - it is almost impossible for conventional technologies and ideas to appear in some corners of the world. The gap in technological structure is so large that it cannot be understood by Klinka. "new" existence.

The same basic elements may form certain polymers with hugely different properties under different levels of environments, but in any case, before the concept of basic elements is distorted, its properties cannot be changed and constrain it. It is the basic law of the world.

"Such calls were quickly drowned." The voice sounded again in the hall that was flooded by holographic projections and constantly changing pictures. His life form has naturally undergone transformation, but for a long time The lack of basic maintenance and the repression of the civilized atmosphere had an impact on everyone. It could be said that it was not a serious impact on everyone, but it left much more serious traces in the body of this "old man". He left his "throne" It didn't last long, but it was just that. Perhaps it was the peaceful atmosphere exuded by these "visitors from another world" that relieved the strong breath in the heart of this "last ruler". He is now He was getting weaker almost at a perceptible speed.

"We have killed all other civilizations in this universe. Many civilizations have no communication. Without communication, they are buried under our artillery fire. Just like when we are building large-scale construction on the planet, we do not care about the microbial communities living underground. ."

Along with the scene of silent marching, the old man's hoarse voice continued to add some parts that were more "subjective" and more inclined to a "civilization" thinking about itself, "Relatively strong existences in other civilizations also prayed that we can Leaving behind some of their small forces or weakened descendants that have no chance of affecting us, but amid the calls for racial supremacy, who will care about these contents?"

"Relying on what we considered to be a complete and powerful technical system at the time, we continued to advance into the last unknown deep space, and finally determined the "world circuit" of the entire world's macrostructure. After basically conquering the main macroworld, We began to look for common technical practices that could stabilize other parallel worlds, and we also mastered the production methods of "quality" that can be recognized in this world.

It is a black box existence just like the faster-than-light method of traveling between parallel worlds, but in that process of continuous technological breakthroughs and continuous progress of civilization, these are not problems for us - we abandoned them a long time ago We have always controlled the population to some extent through the inconsequential competition for interests between individuals.

Moreover, we also have a certain degree of soul attainment - after the existence of consciousness is fully established and operated, more individuals among us choose to "reincarnate", which is more efficient and more effective for the entire society. Later, when the resources available to each of us even required a separate memory for memory, we simply stopped caring about them - just get what we want. "

"About 160,000 to 150,000 years ago, we encountered an unknown blow for the first time - almost a head-on blow. It destroyed the logic tower that we had climbed infinitely, and the damage was so heavy that our civilization was still intact. It has not recovered for tens of thousands of years. It was also at that time that for the first time we saw the end of a powerful existence that was far more majestic and unfathomable than the entire material world. It was a completely artificial creation, and the things on it were Symbols are completely incompatible with any of our language systems and application systems.”

A ferocious planet that seems to be built from a jagged skeleton appears in the picture. At the extreme position of the planet where the skeleton was finally "healed", the blood-red "Σ" is even in this weakened holographic projection. All shining brightly.

"We can't study the specific structure inside it anyway. Even if we can see it, it's impossible to go deep into it. The brilliance created by our most powerful weapons can't even touch the weird structure that makes up that "skeleton." On top of the materials... Phew, cough cough..."

After another noisy gasp, as if the old bellows were being pulled, the voice continued, "We have suffered a serious blow to the will of the entire civilization - not that we think everything in the world is already known to us, It’s that we have probably explored all the unknown areas in the world and are ready to move in all directions, but the creation that is unknowable and incomprehensible to us does exist - in perhaps decades , or hundreds of years later, the artificial planet burst out with a flash of light and deleted nearly half of our fleet in an instant - deleted, this is the most appropriate word I can find."

"It is indeed very appropriate. That creation is the world management terminal used by the top civilization that once controlled the world. For you, if that star wants to get rid of you, just use the input device to delete a copy from the storage disk. It’s as simple as documentation.”

"Those were the two most devastating blows to our civilization in terms of ideology and reality, but these events were the initial process of major setbacks for civilization. That artificial planet has never launched any attack on us since. blow, but we increasingly find that our behavior begins to become more and more monotonous, and the other parallel worlds we can enter are becoming more and more monotonous, and our own development has begun to fall into a bottleneck that can make us completely stagnant - as Asia The continuous weakening and shrinking of space and parallel worlds, driven by ancient ideas that have been passed down and may have been reincarnated for dozens of generations, have led us to conjecture that unknown beings are using the world as a tool to kill us. "

"In the face of unprecedented environmental changes, our compatible ideas collapsed in an instant. Speculations about the major disasters that the collapse of the parallel world might cause made us lose all reason, and we broke out into a huge civil war—— Civil wars and conflicts that have never happened in millions of years. When primitive desires and instincts once dominated the mainstream thoughts of all intelligent individuals, our civil wars created several nebulae that can be seen outside this supergalactic group. nebula."

"After the entire system of thought and belief collapsed, and we tore our inheritance and glory to pieces, our civil war slowly ended in confusion."

"The time points are roughly the same..." Elendis nodded, "Then... you have already prepared all the backup plans for yourself, and even set up a tombstone?"

"More of the content in these tombstones is not for us, but for other civilizations that have existed in this world." Although full of respect for these "extraordinary beings", when talking about the tombstones themselves, At this time, the old man's attitude seemed to be neither humble nor overbearing, expressing what he thought was the fairest statement.

"After the transportation network on which we depended gradually collapsed, and our communication network would soon fall into total darkness, we personally tore apart everything we once believed in. Even now, our country, this country Society is still functioning, but civilization itself is dead - after the civil war, we have made various efforts, but they often failed as a result of technological workarounds, or the entire scientific research facility was under the control of different personnel. Ruined by violent attitudes - we take ourselves so seriously that we have almost no legal system to punish ourselves."

"If tearing down all the goals we once believed in with our own hands and seeing for the first time an existence that is simply impossible to understand is regarded as the death of our civilization's will; then what seems to be peaceful now will become increasingly The monotonous, increasingly cramped real world and the constantly collapsing parallel world are the signs that our civilized body is counting down to total death.”

"We recalled everything in the past, the painful expressions and helpless struggles of other civilizations when they faced the end of the world that had begged us to leave even the most ordinary memorial but it was impossible. , and now, we ourselves have been placed on the chopping block where they once were, and this time, it can even be said that no one can refuse and then kill us."

"In order to prevent the violence hidden in our hearts from accelerating the destruction of our civilization as much as possible, we have enacted the most stringent laws to restrict everyone, and at the same time we have begun to prohibit large-scale non-command transfers of personnel. During this time of transformation , we squeezed out nearly all the memories of everyone, screened and sorted out what we could recall about all other intelligent creatures recorded in their memories, and loaded them all into the repository .In the hundreds of years before your arrival, residents almost never left the radiation range of their settlements."

"We've kind of killed our own civilization ourselves, and we've definitely brought it on ourselves."

"Civilizations that have died will naturally not care so much anymore - why do dead people need to take care of their dignity? We once extended this concept to all other existences that are not our species, but in the end this concept also returned to us of itself."

"To a certain extent, these monuments also record our crimes, and we hope that in this way, we can pay for our sins to some extent."

"Therefore, we hope that God can take away this database that will hardly occupy your resources. If possible, the facilities in this hall also hope that you can take away part of it. We don't expect how much that box will have. The meaning is there, but..."

"We have already died once - originally we had no chance of dying a third time. We originally thought that no wisdom would appear here again, so naturally no one would be able to remember us. So, our funeral We can only execute it ourselves.”

"But now, God's presence makes it possible for us to avoid the third death - and still have someone remember us."

"As long as there is still the last memory, our atonement and repentance will not end. We don't want everything to end so easily without being clear. This is not an unfounded moan, but our last wish. In addition, , we don’t have the face to pray for more.”