Star Empire

August 29, Year of Exile 3198.

Three thousand years of persistence paid off. Civilization staggered forward, and finally reached its first intended target before exhausting all its remaining energy:

A little piece of the world.

Indeed, the dead tide that may still be attached to the structural materials did not cause any obvious damage to the entire spacecraft during this period of time. Even in the most damaged flagship and Ark No. 15, from the moment the situation was determined, the erosion depth of these dangerous presences on the armor plate of the spacecraft that shone with dim golden light did not exceed half a centimeter. Even so, The erosion has been going on for thousands of years, either overtly or covertly.

After being weakened enough, the disintegration of matter that is just hiding in the shadows that cannot be illuminated by the golden light is no longer enough to pose a serious enough threat to the Ark, which has already stepped into the higher-level information field at a considerable level.

However, even if their lives were temporarily safe, these arks that had withstood the impact of the death wave with primary crystal energy technology began to weaken. After more than three thousand years of experience in the void, he has begun to feel weak.

The mathematical rate core of the Fifteenth Ark has reached the critical point of safe use. Even though it has been reduced by a considerable amount of output power, the situation is still not optimistic. Now the area around the mathematical rate core of the Fifteenth Ark has been built with various materials. A temporary protective barrier, this protective barrier is used to block the crystal energy jets splashed out from the initially unstable restraint shell that would cause harm to ordinary living beings.

It can be said that the Fifteenth Ark can still barely keep up with the team because it relies on the relatively good quality of the equipment and its service life to force it to stay on. Since the construction of the Ark, the mathematical rate equipment has been turned on earlier than the crystal energy reactor. It is the control center for the fluctuation of all Taichu information in the ship. Once this equipment goes down, it is equivalent to a living statement being directly removed from the brain. .

Therefore, this equipment cannot be stopped in any case, so Albeck has no choice but to build a protective wall that looks like a pile of garbage.

During this period, other Arks also experienced more or less problems. Most of the failures occurred in the environment maintenance equipment inside the ship. For example, the flagship experienced incorrect start of the spacecraft attitude and the inertial stabilizer went offline for a short time. Fortunately, these two events did not happen at the same time, so the flagship did not suffer much additional damage. The gravity constraint environment of Ark No. 4 experienced two imbalances, and Ark No. 10 experienced a failure of the hull closure constraint part, etc.

The reasons for these situations should be obvious based on past observations: compared with the outer shell, equipment with active crystal energy such as mathematical rate cores and crystalline guide rails rarely have problems, and their working environments are basically under This is true for both input and output in a crystal energy environment with higher purity.

As for the equipment systems responsible for maintaining the internal environment of the ship, since the imperial equipment cannot directly fabricate detailed rules composed of direct and complete mathematical models, their output terminals output various types of conventional physical substances. For example, the gravity environment adjustment system outputs gravitons. These gravitons will be distributed under the floor of the ship body to provide standard living gravity for the environment inside the spacecraft.

The inertial stabilization system has been divided into two directions of use. The mild version of the driving method for the crew uses information offset on the environment inside the ship to directly shield the mass of vulnerable individuals for a short time, while for the solid and sturdy ones. Ark, the rough version is to directly use information propulsion to accelerate a small number of conventional particles to near light speed within various small constraints of the spacecraft, and offset the abnormal motion trend of the entire spacecraft through short-term mass expansion.

However, in order to prevent wasting energy and performing additional deceleration, these particles will be thrown directly into the order field after an adjustment, and then directly annihilated in the void.

Anyway, if you want to get the effect, no matter what material it is, some gas molecules will be enough if necessary. These devices are closer to physics and closer to "earth energy" than those tall crystal energy machines, which makes their output terminals also become the entry points for the intrusion of death tide aura.

Fortunately, when faced with the disaster at that time, these equipments still relied on their own redundancy and quality to withstand even when they were exposed to the impact of the death tide. Otherwise, I am afraid that Vidoville and the others would have to look up to An Zai frequently. Math rate core on the floor now.

The internal environment of the order field currently created by the empire can be said to be quite "simple". It can only be compatible with solid entities such as Ark ships and can exist stably in it. For living things, if they want to find a more suitable survival in this environment land, they still need a considerable degree of physical constraints from their hometown as environmental constraints - until the empire can completely encode the crystal energy into rules that can be revised at will, the existing overall model is still relatively simple and good. use.

But no matter what, hope is now close at hand, and the feedback from the crystal energy scanning wave has been completed almost instantaneously. Sesame seeds finally appeared in the sesame cake of the old void scanning radar that has been shut down for thousands of years, but it is not the same as the electromagnetic wave scanning radar. Similarly, what the sesame seeds in this sesame cake actually indicate is a frequency.

A unique information fluctuation frequency is enough to represent the frequency of the world.

…

According to calculations, if the current "void speed" is maintained, within twenty-four hours of the fleet system's perpetual clock, the fleet's order field will come into contact with the remaining world barrier. Since the existing coordinate system was still relatively "rough", Vesrifan ordered the fleet's speed to be reduced by 50%, and 24 hours later it was reduced by another 50% on the existing basis.

For the sake of safety, such "delay" is not only necessary, it can also be said to be a life-saving behavior. The level of everything in the world may not be as good as the current Star Ark, but the world itself is real, and it is on the same level as high-frequency crystal energy. If you want to enter such a world as a first-level creation of the void ladder order, you must gradually adjust the frequency of the order field when the fleet's order field comes into contact with the world barrier, reduce the error between the two, and finally complete the "fusion" , just like cells accepting foreign membrane bubbles.

If you hit it directly with too high "speed", if you are lucky, it may bounce off each other like two high-bouncing rubber balls colliding head-on. If you are unlucky, you may even directly collide with the piece of debris in some strange way. Fusion, like those unlucky ones in a particle accelerator who are forced to run around the pipe; or tear a rift in the fragments of the world due to frequency conflict, and then the fleet itself is forcibly closed near the void rift due to the repulsive effect of the world The order field is annihilated together with the starry sky in the void, and so on.

No matter which of these situations occurs, the star civilization in its current state will never be able to withstand it. No one can afford this death.

Estimated contact time: one hour.

Compared with the previous "long-distance journey" in the void at a speed, the current fleet can even be said to have almost "climbed" the final journey in the void bit by bit.

"Now, how far are we from the fragments of the world?" In the holographic projection in front of Victorville, the distance between the "vacuoles" representing two different frequencies is almost invisible.

"Very close, almost touching each other, but due to current technology, we do not have a smaller unit to measure how much we have moved in the void. After all, our previous "accurate navigation" was established by simulating world barriers. The accuracy of the coordinate system can only be said to be sufficient for determining the direction, but more requirements cannot be met for the time being."

Zhai Cahir's holographic projection was prompting at the side. Behind Vidoville, the mathematical rate core that had been flashing with golden dazzling light now seemed extremely calm. The inner part of the constraint shell that should have been showing a golden light was only A golden sphere was lifted up in mid-air. Ripples flashed across the sphere's surface from time to time, and such ripples were accompanied by golden pulsations in the crystal rails extending from around the huge circular base.

"It's almost time. This fragment of the world is not too big. Its "pull" will definitely not be able to pull us directly like the big universe. Your Majesty, it is time to modify the frequency of the outer edge information barrier of the order field."

"Understood." After receiving Cavernrel's prompt, Victorville started the fleet broadcast: No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, No. 8, No. 16, No. 17 Ark Mathematical Rate Core opens the second The main thread, according to the frequency sent by the flagship, corrects the information representation of the information barrier on the outer edge of the order field, and prepares to contact the world fragments!

A faint golden light flashed instantly between several spaceships. After a faint silence, the information barrier at the edge of the golden order field began to slowly fluctuate, adding a layer of vagueness to the entire order space that looked like ripples on the water. light and shadow.

In the dozens of hours before the landing, the flagship's mathematical rate core put a lot of its remaining output into the void navigation room above the first bridge where Cavinriel and others were.

During the continuous scanning of these devices that were dismantled from the last base of the former home world, the world barrier information of this fragment of the world is also being parsed out one by one, like peeling off cocoons. However, the analyzed data, in the view of Cavinrel Seems a little strange.

It is somewhat similar to the world barrier information of the "target world", but it is only "somewhat similar".

The void represents 100% probability of completeness, which also means that everything in the void has a probability of happening. There is such a familiar fragment of the world in front of you, and then think about the emptiness shown by the sesame cake before. The Void does seem unreasonable, but when you think about how far this fragment of the world is from the "departure point" of the Ark fleet, and when you think about the super-large-scale information explosion from unknown sources, it seems that it is not too unreasonable.

Forget it, the inference based on the unification of information still needs to be confirmed, and the inference based on fantasy seems to have no other meaning besides restricting one's own thinking and messing around. Cavinrel shook his head and threw aside these vague conjectures. The most serious thing to do now is to quickly complete the information fusion.

…

It has to be said that the effect produced between information bodies with similar frequencies in the void is like planets in space. The universal gravitational constant is not large, but this does not deny that for the macroscopic world, gravity itself has such axioms everywhere. After the fleet's order field began to modulate, Cavernell confirmed that the fleet's speed had accelerated.

"Lower the output power of the mathematical rate core." Cavernrel breathed a sigh of relief. He raised his hand to wipe the non-existent sweat on his forehead and greeted Vidoville: "Your Majesty, you can."

"Prepare for impact!" Before the two people who were still talking before could react to each other, Zhai Cahir's roar resounded throughout the entire bridge and all other arks that followed. In the subconscious reaction, the mathematical rate The core suddenly exploded with a ball of golden light. The shipboard AI activated the shield of the spacecraft, and everyone's spirits also tightened.

Less than a second after these countermeasures were completed, an invisible ripple swept through the entire order field where the fleet was located and struck out light patterns on the surface of the crystal energy shield, the spacecraft's inertial stabilizer and small posture The adjustment nozzles were partially activated, and with the rapid response of the shipboard AI, the slightly scattered fleet quickly reorganized itself.

"What was that just now?" Recalling the invisible ripple, Victorville felt a little familiar, "It seemed that he had experienced it before, and why when it swept across the order field, I felt for a moment that I seemed to be standing on "Before two sets of laws"

"Your Majesty, you are right, and you have indeed experienced it. The last time this feeling occurred was when the world fragments wrapped in the void exploration ship hit the blockade area. We have been "in contact" with the target world fragments. "Beside Vidoville, Zhai Cahir, who was staring at stars, didn't know whether to cover his forehead or his eyes, "We have come into contact with the fragments of the world——"

"Succeeded?!" Vidoville's face lit up almost instantly, but soon, Vesri's thoughtful attitude of teaching by words and deeds calmed him down: "Shouldn't our order field frequency be said to have been linked to the world fragments? Quite similar? But why is there such a collision-like result?!"

"I don't know the specifics. Maybe it was the influence of that information tide, or maybe we ourselves - this landing was still too hard." Zhai Cahir finally recovered, "But after the contact, other The problem will be much smaller, now we are trying our best to crack the frequencies that are not fully compatible, it seems to take a while, but it won’t be too long, right?”

"What's wrong?" Seeing that several scientific masters began to frown slightly, Victorville's expression instantly became serious.

"It's a little strange, the deciphering situation is a little strange." Zhai Cahir directly copied the content in the first window on his right to Vidoville: "When the deciphering was first started, the general relationship between the information matching progress and time was It is directly related to the simplest linear function, but I haven’t finished speaking yet.”

Without Zhai Cahill's nagging, Vitouville saw at a glance the curve that instantly turned into an exponential function and skyrocketed wildly. Under the crazy rise of the curve, it might have taken at least an hour to reach the peak of the analysis. The degree display curve was pushed to 100% in almost one sentence.

"So, it is possible that this fragment of the world is what survived the target universe... and there may even be some other strange places..." Vidoville took a look at the result, "It is indeed very similar, and I From a personal perspective, it seems that a pre-matched relational expression is needed to get the solution so quickly, right?"

"It's hard to be sure. We have scanned that universe several times before and sailed it several times with unmanned ships. We have not found anything unusual in it. Of course, it may be hidden deeply, but that universe did not appear at that time. It shattered instantly under any strange circumstances, and the cosmic fragments returned to zero very quickly. This process is in line with our observations."

"Based on what we know so far, that universe should not be subject to too many external factors."

"Well, even if there are problems, we need to study them later. But right now, the successful analysis of the world barrier is what we need to pay most attention to."

Vidoville's expression soon became vivid again. After reading all the barrier information representations of the world fragments, various computers and mathematical rate cores immediately started their work intensively. In the void, a thin The golden film seems to have surface tension, gradually integrating this foreign tiny bubble into the fragments of the world.

After a while, a faint muffled sound suddenly came from deep inside the ship. At the same time, Vidoville felt that his body seemed to lean back slightly, and the floor under his feet seemed to be using an invisible and very slight force. Pull your feet forward. .

"Successful!" Cavenriel shouted, and with this shout appeared in front of Victorville and Vesrifan, there was also the first re-photographed picture of the world of Order, which was different from the former world. Like fragments, the background starry sky here is unnaturally distorted and broken. There are also several very bright and huge light spots scattered in the starry sky. The chaotic and dim nebulae form a huge dust ring that seems to be enough to surround the entire world. Fortunately, there is no dead tide here.

"Let's use that place as our new forward base. We are very lucky. We can find such a planet when we come in directly."

Weisrifan pointed at the center of the huge panoramic photo. In front of the fleet, a huge "rocky" planet that seemed to be slightly earthy in the dark and dim environment was particularly noticeable. That planet was It is so huge that the gravity it generates even affects the ships of the Ark Fleet. Under its huge gravity, the entire fleet is slowly sliding towards the surface of the planet.

"Of course, no problem, my Majesty the Queen." Victorville smiled slightly. In space, the tail spout of each ark lit up with a faint golden light ranging from one to five o'clock, catering to the gravity of the planet. The fleet began to slowly accelerate and headed towards the surface of the planet.

Along with the fading stream of dim golden light, several bright orange-red lights lit up in the planet's extremely thick atmosphere.

Perhaps these rays of light are the first sight in this unknown place for thousands of years, or even longer, that cannot be found from the fragments of the closed and broken world line. It is also the same or even longer time. The only light that is enough to bring short daylight to this planet.

The long night has faded and dawn has dawned.