Star Empire

In the dark and lightless warp space, there is a shuttle-shaped battleship sailing silently - Cavernrel's mission ship.

"Troublesome situation." Cavinriel's consciousness kept jumping among multiple threads, as if all the surrounding environment did not exist. After a long time, he seemed to remember something, raised his head softly and asked:

"AI, how is the situation of the spaceship? How prepared are all the preparation possibilities? Under the current conditions, how long will it take for the spacecraft to sail?"

"The spacecraft is currently stable inside the warp space bubble. All life support facilities, isolation facilities, and testing facilities are operating normally. The current voyage range has not exceeded 50%. Is it necessary to issue additional navigation instructions?"

"No, there is no need to..." Cavenriel shook his head, "Since it seems... everything is as ready as possible, then before sailing out of the warp space... there is no need to maintain a purely rational state of thinking."

…

During the silent voyage, the spacecraft as a whole was highly autonomous and independent, and the few operators also performed their duties at their posts. The entire spacecraft fell silent, as if everyone was just a machine following certain orders.

And in this, which may be said to be a coincidental opportunity, recalling what he was thinking when he just set out, Cavinrel's other threads of thinking also started to spread out...

…

In the Star Federation, the chief scientists have their own private fleets and private soul-body recasting devices.

This may sound unreasonable, but it is actually normal: with the development of the Federation, the required technological energy level is constantly increasing. In the planet-level civilization tens of billions of years ago, the maximum energy level in the country was ten About four orders of magnitude, and after growing into star system level and river system level civilizations, this number has increased by twelve and eleven orders of magnitude respectively, and most of the sources of these high-energy technologies come from these scientists.

Later, with further development, not only energy series, space, time, and some of the basic laws of the universe were also included in the research scope of those who pursue the limit. It is normal to blow up the entire laboratory to ashes in a certain experiment, or even blow up the planet and space station to pieces.

Even in the last gravitational wave accelerator explosion accident, the entire cantilever of the barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of 120,000 light-years where the test site is located disappeared without a trace, and even the mass could not be traced—— Under absolutely high energy, it can even be said that controllable means have failed in many cases. However, only these most violent methods can make the conditions reach the cold number of energy levels required for the experiment.

…

After more and more similar accidents, most scientists have arranged their testing sites in remote borders. Many processes require armed protection. The Great Council of Aldosil simply decentralized some of its troops. permissions, and let those who have to conduct high-energy experiments handle these matters themselves.

In addition, this is also related to the gradual decline in the use of the army - after the Modori Zerg and the Theodal Empire, the two main opponents of the Star Federation, have been completely defeated one after another, it is difficult for the large-scale standing army to have a decent Although there has been some reduction in armaments by successive consuls since then, due to the laws and established rules, and the fact that large warships are actually quite difficult to handle, a small amount of diversion has been carried out...

…

Although there are many problems to be faced by transferring the overall activity of the army and "cooling" the original army, considering the current trend, this is an effective method in the current environment...

"Thought logs are a good operating module. These new or old records connect the trajectory of the entire civilization."

"Remind all members that the space bubble voyage of the spacecraft is about to end. Please check all facilities again."

In the experimental cabin, Cavinrel focused all his attention on calibrating all the equipment again. As the spacecraft got closer to the target, Cavinrel felt a sense of excitement and nervousness that he had not seen for a long time:

This is the second time in the history of the Federation that true "action at a distance" has been discovered, and many of the principles that produce action at a distance are still completely unknown, however.

"No matter what, now and in the future, the security system must be the best it can be." The worst thoughts were suppressed after two rounds in Cavinrel's mind. Compared with being unknowingly exposed to the invisible The unknown impact, at least it is tangible, and it occurs almost certainly at the edge of a completely deserted universe - the process should be enough to accommodate this event.

This Taloga-class ship has been additionally strengthened. Its energy shield and mass-to-energy conversion field power are 15% higher than the conventional model, and the thickness of the chromatic core armor is about 50% higher, and According to Cavinriel's order, the life preservation facilities have been greatly enhanced, but there are some more special things:

Although the appearance of the current Star Federation citizens is exactly the same as the carbon-based life forms that once lived on the planet, at the atomic level, every citizen has been eliminated from all defective genes and has been implanted with material recognition and destruction. Similar to the regeneration plug-in and the individual strengthening plug-in, their essence is similar to the transformation of people mentioned in ancient books, but the material impact is smaller and the actual effect is greater. The transformed life is no longer afraid of disease.

However, with the establishment of the national information collection network, someone in the Grand Council raised this issue again. After the network is fully established, every citizen will become a network node, and such a network must have troubleshooting nodes and clear infected nodes. Node capabilities.

At the same time, nodes must also have this obligation to take themselves offline when they are irreparably infected and may pollute the network. Although the main bodies of the other two major civilizations have been eliminated, the large number of distortion points they left behind still remain. They exist in space, and among them, there are many highly infectious beings.

The current information collection network has spread to the planetary level, so the executors of every planet have such methods, and Cavinriel, as a high-ranking node, is no exception.

A large number of space annihilation bombs and warp space generators are laid around the experimental section of his spacecraft, and the main reactors of these devices are also connected to all energy circuits of the entire ship, with three independent sets of logic distributed throughout the ship. The stabilizer jointly controls the main switch. Once Cavinriel's soul and personality are detected to be seriously deviated, wide-area memetic contamination may occur, or if Cavinriel is awake and determines that the situation is irreversible, this The spacecraft will initiate an emergency exile process, throw itself into a different space and completely blow up.

"The long history, the continuation of ancient structures...but everything..."

"The system self-test has been completed again, and all devices of the life support system are operating in good condition." The emotionless electronic synthesized sound sounded in the experimental cabin, and finally brought Cavinriel's consciousness back to reality.

"AI, report the operation status of the spacecraft." After confirming the completion, Cavinrel looked up at the AI ​​projection of the ship.

"The spacecraft is in good operating condition. All devices and its overloader can be activated. The spacecraft is about to escape the warp state and is expected to arrive at the hub in one minute."

"Understood, the entire ship's observation facilities are activated. Stay in the hub area for five minutes to collect the first step of information before heading to the destination."

"AI understands."

The spacecraft switched to panoramic mode, and all the spacecraft structures were hidden from Caverniel's sight. In front of the spacecraft, a crystal sapphire appeared in the originally dark distance. The sapphire gradually dimmed, expanded, and became very large. It soon unfolded into a sea of ​​brilliant stars all over the sky. The battleship has arrived at the hub. For a distance of one light day, the long axis of thousands of kilometers can almost be regarded as a point. In the direction of the outpost, the weird golden structure has replaced the ancient quasar and became the starry sky. The brightest beacon.

With a thought in Cavinriel's mind, a large number of curves and parameters instantly appeared in the original panoramic starry sky. They were marked in the blocks outlined by the golden structure. Between the jumping characters, Cavinriel's His expression gradually became doubtful.

"No logical information was observed... The speed sensor read zero... The energy sensor failed... If it is consistent with perspective, its diameter is estimated to be 100 million light-years..." Looking at this weird structure, even Cavinriel was a little confused. Confused.

No...it's not that I'm confused, it's just that this conjecture is too shocking. Until more detailed information is obtained, even the most radical scientists in the Federation will choose to believe this theory.

The grasp of time is already accurate to milliseconds when everyone has a perpetual motion clock in their mind. At the same time that the scientific officer interrupted the panoramic mode, the AI ​​also started the high-dimensional jump engine in accordance with the instructions, and the battleship left the main body again. Space, continue to drive towards the destination.

When the battleship returned to the main universe, it was already approaching its new anchor point. Under the multiple captures of detectors spread throughout the universe and connected to the information collection network, the light speed barrier has long been filled by various means. In the universe, it should be said that there is almost nothing that the Federation people want to see but cannot see. The first time he saw the structure at such a close distance, he was deeply shocked——

Five thousand light-years away, the bright yellow star that originally looked small and crystal-clear turned into a behemoth that stretched for hundreds of light-years. In the middle of the structure, the black round hole was like a scar in the universe, deep and breathtaking.

Around the black hole, the bright golden transparent matter does not appear radiating, but combines into a huge vortex with amazing momentum. It circles the central black hole in about an hour. The closer to the center of the vortex, the weirder the movement of these bright golden substances becomes. , these transparent cloud-like substances are moving crazily at angular speeds and orbits that they should not have, and the patterns outlined by many of the bright spots can be described as crazy.

Dazzling lines flicker in and out of the bright vortex disk, while the outside of the vortex is extremely "clean", as if an invisible hand has delineated a range, and the matter outside the range has been erased.

However, the existence of such a volume is theoretically not enough to clearly reveal all its details using "visible light" billions of light-years away.

"The scale is not as huge as expected... It really doesn't comply with the principle of perspective at all..." Although the scene in front of him was shocking, the military qualities he had developed as a scientist and soldier still made him calm down quickly. An inexplicable feeling The feeling of dizziness and blindness suddenly came over me, as if my brain was suddenly filled to the brim.

"At first glance... the impact seems to be an abnormal structure, or a meme, a concrete phenomenon of specific cognition and information distortion structure, content that the Theodal Empire didn't know how to create... but it is compared to what we have seen before. Any similar structure, this huge space structure that looks like a black hole superimposed and alienated accretion disk has more special features, it is a celestial-level entity."

"Not only that, the spacecraft system did not show any hostile alarm, and it does not seem to contain any fixed distortion information loop... This is really difficult to understand. It seems that this may be some kind of new existence with... unknown properties. I don't know. Can the federation's existing model system be compatible with it..."

"Science officer, the spacecraft shield disturbance capacity is declining rapidly. It is expected to reach the warning value in ten minutes. Some sensors were abnormally overloaded during flight and are now emergency offline." The words of the battleship AI interrupted his thinking, and the synthesized electronic sound was still There is no wave in Gujing, but from the holographic projection, it can be seen that a large number of red light spots are shining everywhere in the spacecraft. That is the various systems or devices on the battleship that are alarming. Obviously, even the reinforced defense is unable to resist this kind of The impact of strange phenomena is also quite difficult.

"Has the approach of a threatening mass entity been detected?" Cavinriel cut off the external monitor and tried to wake himself up.

"No, the gravitational wave sensor and the mass focus searcher have not been offline yet. The current comprehensive detection of the two shows that there is no material around the warship that can penetrate the chromatic nuclear armor. However, the search range of the former is limited and it can only detect the surrounding area. The range is within five light minutes, and the results of the gravitational focus detection... are a bit strange." The AI ​​said while uploading a report to Cavinriel.

"The gravitational focus structure diagram drawn by the information computer?" Cavinriel noticed something was wrong after just one glance. Outside the scope of the golden vortex, in the area erased by the invisible hand, there was a huge mass ring. , the color representing its mass is darker than even a neutron star.

The position of the vortex is filled with a large number of twisted and ferocious graphics. A large number of garbled characters and grotesque patterns that are enough to burn the brain of an untransformed person are twisting on the screen. In the center of the vortex, the black hole is located. A line of text appeared directly: Exception, unrecognized operation request...Exception...The detection structure does not exist...No valuable entities were detected...The command was cancelled.

"Theoretically, there is no such series of suggestive contents in the battleship system...the unrecognizable operation request...the central black core...has something been tampered with...?"

The situation is getting more and more bizarre. This vortex has a lot of abnormal properties, and the over-distance effect is enough to make it...? ?

"...Forget it, let's just keep doing it." He thought for a moment, then silently accepted that everything in front of him could be called a major accident. He asked the shipboard AI to delete the report and take the gravitational focus detector and mass-energy conversion field generator offline. The remaining power furnace output was all given to the shield recharger, and the redundant shield recharger Charge Amplifiers and Shield Energy Resistance Boosters are also all in use. As more shield recharge coils came online, the ship's situation stabilized.

"Scientific officer, after another self-inspection, we found that our communication with the home port has been seriously interfered with, and large-capacity data packet transmission cannot be carried out."

"Can we contact the forward base?"

"Trying to establish a connection... The connection failed to be established. There is an unknown source of strong interference. However, it can be detected that the bottom line basic link of the information collection network is still operating, and it can be determined that the engineering fleet is still intact."

"As expected, the AI ​​guides the spacecraft to the temporary anchorage. According to the federal military operational requirements, the temporary space station should have completed coordinate anchoring."

"AI understands."

At the rear of the ship, several antenna-like slender needle-like structures slowly opened, and bright white arcs of light danced between the long needles, creating ripples in the space.

The spacecraft quickly adjusted its attitude, and the jumping arc gradually stabilized and turned into a white ring surrounding the needle tip. The brightness of the ring gradually increased, and the speed of the spacecraft also gradually increased. Soon it reached the maximum speed of 75% of the sublight speed by "sitting on the slide" and flew towards the precise coordinate point of the temporary anchorage.