Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 1 - From the Deepest Depths of the Whirlpool (1)

Cat’s Rose

Description

“We have sailed for centuries, lost our motherland, lost our way, and lost the love symbolised by the rose.”

When the world met its doom, the Voyager sailed away from Earth.

Lin Si was a top biologist on the Voyager, whose life’s only failure was an experiment sample who never woke up from his genetic modification project, “limitless”.

After a black hole incident, the radiation caused an unknown mutation in the experiment sample and it regained consciousness. Where is this supposed “strongest combat-type mutant”? Who is this squeamish little bun? Huh?

Associated Names : Maomide Meigui / 猫咪的玫瑰[星际]

Author(s) : Fourteen Continents / Yi Shi Si Zhou / 一十四洲

Year : 2018

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Chapter 1 – From the Deepest Depths of the Whirlpool (1)

“Lin, even though you can’t make it in time due to your responsibilities, you still have to give an address to everyone at this grand celebration banquet—as a summary of our work over the years.” The blonde female assistant of French descent blinked. “Come on, dear.”

She moved aside and sat down. The video displayed the banquet hall in Area 1: at the round table, people surrounded a woman in a black scholarly outfit, who was currently looking at Lin Si through the screen.

“It’s good to see you, Madam Chen.” Lin Si’s voice was cool, but it did not appear discourteous. After a brief greeting, he immediately cut to the chase. “Yesterday, ninety-six experimental subjects officially passed the monitoring period and were handed over to the military. Phase two of the ‘limitless’ plan that was launched five years ago is now complete with success. According to the official evaluation data from four days ago, all the experimental subjects have completed basic modification of a three-times increase in muscle strength and five-times speed increase in neural stimulus-response, as well as additional enhancements with varying emphasis determined by unique individual traits—they are all in stable condition.”

The people seated began to applaud unanimously. The original researchers were pleased with the successful results of the past five years, while the invited guests marvelled.

“Lin, I heard your plan goes even further than that,” said the woman in the centre, Madam Chen, with a smile.

“The structure of the human body cannot support the modification of over three-times the muscle strength, but there is still room for stimulus reaction speed. We even saw an opportunity to strengthen brain functions in this process.” His tone was calm and peaceful, lacking the cadence that orators used to arouse strong feelings in their audience, yet this almost mechanical plainness strengthened his trustworthiness—just as how people always believed in a machine’s calculations over intuitive predictions.

“The military is prejudiced against the human modification plan because of their excessive conservatism, which makes it quite difficult to carry out the experiment. Regrettably, Marshal Süss had officially turned down phase three not long ago, but I still believe that we have sufficient reasons to begin the next phase of the plan, and it can also bring us—”

Hiss—the sound of an electrical current suddenly rang out.

The screen projected in front of the people fluctuated several times, and then finally shattered. The voice was abruptly cut off, and the ground began to violently shake.

Lin Si grabbed the edge of the control panel to stabilise himself. A sharp siren and the feminine voice of the system sounded in Area 6’s main hall: “Area 6 is disconnecting from the main body, Area 6 is disconnecting from the main body…”

He quickly called up the independent operating system of Area 6. “Lucia. Connect to the main body.”

“Error. Command cannot be executed.”

He swiftly adjusted the parameters as he said, “Give me the error details.”

“Conflicting commands. Your level is too low. Command cannot be forcibly executed.”

Lin Si spoke very quickly. “Details of the disconnection command.”

Loading was complete after a tenth of a second. “Command issued by: Marshal Süss, Department of the United Front of Area 3. Reason for issuance: The spaceship has sailed into the edge of the event horizon of a giant Type B-II black hole. Warp drive acceleration of twelve-times is required to escape, which exceeds the maximum provided by the engine speed. Area 6 is to be disconnected to provide Level 3 recoil.”

A roar sounded, and the entire Area 6 shook rapidly with increasing intensity. The ear-piercing siren was mixed with the sounds of falling laboratory equipment racks and hundreds of test tubes crashing to the floor. Grasping the control panel tightly, Lin Si squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, overcoming the extreme dizziness caused by the spinning and failing gravitational force. He tried to speak steadily so the system could clearly distinguish his words. “Switch to the independent navigation system. Calculate the angular momentum.”

The progress bar lit up on the screen once more.

At the same time, Lin Si suddenly felt a scorching, stinging pain on his body. He quickly opened the emergency drawer under the control panel and opened up the anti-radiation equipment—after disconnecting from the main body, the spaceship was no longer protected by the Van-Gaal field, now exposed in the black hole’s strong radiation.

After doing so, his blood surged upwards in a violent bout of acid reflux, and his vision was obscured by kaleidoscopic colours. Unable to control his body, he was slammed against the hard wall by the centrifugal force brought about by the spinning spaceship.

Lin Si gasped with difficulty, tasting a foul sweetness in his throat. He raised his head, but the view in front of him was a complete blur, the scenery outside the window rapidly transforming. The black shadow of a giant warship moved further and further away, shrinking smaller and smaller, until it finally vanished within the sea of stars.

The next moment, the sea of stars vanished without a trace too, leaving only darkness outside the window.

The shaking persisted, and he lost consciousness completely.

Lin Si was woken up by a voice.

No—by a pinch.

Amidst the chaotic shouts of “Lin” and “Dr Lin”, someone pinched his philtrum, and another was pressing his chest.

He opened his eyes and found himself placed on the dissection table.

Seeing him open his eyes, the several children in white coats reacted with excitement. “He’s awake! He’s awake!”

The excitement in their voices was comparable to the cheers of “The baby is born! The baby is born!”

“The philtrum acupoint is located in the upper third area of the nasolabial fold, but the force I felt was concentrated on the upper lip. CPR is only used in conditions of cardiac arrest. I don’t think that has happened to me,” said Lin Si expressionlessly. “I suspect you’ve all been away from Earth for so long that you’ve forgotten the most basic physiological knowledge.”

A child scratched his head. “…Doctor, the emergency response equipment is all out of order, so we could only use our hands. Look—you’ve woken up anyway, haven’t you.”

Lin Si was helped up to a sitting position. He was still dizzy, but his condition was much better than before he passed out. The children in front of him were researchers or research assistants of several other laboratories. Today, almost everyone in Area 6 had gone to Area 1 to participate in the celebration banquet. Only some intelligent machinery that could not be completely dealt with, as well as the projects that could not be left behind were entrusted to the watch of children with junior qualifications.

Experimental hall no.1, where he himself was located, was at the edge of Area 6, which was affected by centrifugal force to a greater extent. The others were clearly in better shape—at least they didn’t pass out like him.

At this moment, the spaceship was in an abnormally stable condition. Lin Si looked outside the window—a dark void that made it impossible to tell whether they were still sailing.

He pressed on his temples, turned to the five children before him aged twenty or slightly older, and asked, “Is there anyone else?”

“We checked it over one more time. There’s nobody else.” One of them replied, and then asked, “Doctor, is it a navigation accident? The control system is also out of order.”

“I changed the system to ‘Lucia’. You don’t have permission for the time being,” said Lin Si. “Hello, Lucia.”

“Hello, Mr Warlock,” a mechanical female voice sounded.

“Report the situation.”

“Generating data. Please wait.”

The child’s eyes brightened. “It’s the legendary Lucia! So this is the superintelligent system that Area 5’s been working on this whole time?”

Lin Si nodded. “It’s her. Tang Ning loaded her into Area 6 for testing a few days ago. We didn’t encounter a navigation accident—we were thrown into the black hole event horizon to provide recoil for the Voyager’s main body.”

The child was very surprised. ”But we’re still alive.”

The other one raised his hands and made a wing-flapping motion. “In theory, the probability of death after entering a black hole is one-hundred percent, so are we all dead and transformed into a quantum state?”

Lin Si’s mind felt a little clearer after listening to their chatter. Conjuring a hypothesis, he said to Lucia, “Fit Einstein’s equation.”

Lucia began processing two instructions in parallel.

Lin Si stepped off the dissection table and surveyed his surroundings. The hall was in complete disarray.

The experimental liquid labware in the room shattered and flowed all over the floor. Many tissue fragments floated around.

“The other laboratories have also been completely destroyed. There were also many precious samples brought from Earth that can’t be obtained again.” The child was very upset. “It’s such a shame.”

Another child patted him on the shoulder. “It’s good that the 3D model backup will be fine after all, but it’s not like that matters either—we’re all dead anyway.”

Inside and outside the black hole’s horizon, there were two worlds, completely unrelated. The spacetime curvature inside was enormous, and the escape velocity was far greater than the speed of light. After entering, even light could not escape. By various inconceivable and strange physical properties, the spaceship would immediately be stretched, torn, and destroyed.

Lin Si sat on the armchair in front of the control panel, ten fingers interlocked. He looked at the data and narrowed his eyes.

He asked, “Who here understands basic physics?”

The child who just spoke raised their hand. “I’ve studied biomechanics.”

Lin Si made a half-smile. “Everyone here has studied biomechanics.”

Area 6 was the biochemistry area. Evidently, their knowledge of physics was quite poor—perhaps only stopping at higher education undergraduate-level physics.

With them as contrast, Lin Si felt that he could almost be called a physicist.

He looked at Lucia’s calculation results and said, “We’ve entered a strange rotating black hole, so we weren’t destroyed immediately. If we can persist in sailing, there is a very small possibility of escaping through the white hole… The spaceship’s material should be able to withstand the pull of the singularity.”

The Voyager was a giant vessel composed of nine areas, named Area 1 to 9 respectively. Area 1, 2, and 3 were the core areas, located in the centre surrounded by the others, and each area could also form its own independent spacecraft, equipped with a curvature engine which granted them the ability to journey long distances independently.

This was not the first time a disconnection incident had occurred. In the several navigation crises that occurred previously, the main body of the Voyager had ejected Area 4 and Area 7 in order to escape from a dangerous area; now it was simply Area 6’s turn. Area 6, centred around Lin Si’s “limitless” project, was one of the least populated areas on the ship.

The least populated area, yes—but certainly not an appropriate area to be tossed away.

Someone was already beginning to grumble about this.

“Area 6 has the least number of living people and the most robots. By doing this, the least personnel is lost, but our Area has so many precious research results that losing us is equivalent to losing the entire existing field of science. So stupid.”

“The principle of first importance in interstellar navigation is to ensure the survival of personnel. It’s understandable.” Lin Si raised his eyebrows. “Although Area 6 has always been a nail in Marshal Süss’ eye, we still have to make every effort to return to Marshal and Madam Chen.”

He pondered for a while, then marked several locations on the star chart. “After the Voyager escaped from the black hole, it must’ve entered the subspace. According to the flight plan, it will leave the subspace near the Cetus TN-III33876-87624 asteroid and hover for at least a month in place, during which it will be in an observable state. If we can escape from the black hole, we’ll immediately enter the subspace at the highest warp speed and sail towards TN-III to meet up with the Voyager.”

The child praised, “Master warlock, you’re really as incredible as the rumours.”

Lin Si: “…”

‘Warlock’ had been his alias—ever since one of his genetic modification experiments caused fish to grow two succulent legs.

He pressed the spot between his eyebrows and said to Lucia, “Calculate survival rate.”

As a super system whose knowledge reserves and intelligence quotient exceeded the sum of everyone here, Lucia used her powerful computing power to model various scenarios to produce the success rate of Lin Si’s plan—unfortunately, it was less than three percent.

Expressionlessly, Lin Si gave the “immediately execute” command and began to adjust the energy distribution of the spacecraft, lowering all indices of the oxygen generation, gravity, and temperature control systems.

The children huddled together in fright. One asked, “Master Warlock, do we have enough fuel to fly to Cetus?” 1

Lin Si tapped the surface of the control panel in an irregular rhythm. “Seth, I suggest you apply for a set of physics courses from Lucia right now.”

Lucia’s voice rang out. “Area 6 is able to obtain energy from the momentum of the white hole.”

The children breathed sighs of relief and began to liven up.

Lin Si looked at them and said, “Before we escape from the black hole, we must save as much energy as possible. I hope you all can make yourself useful…well, in ways other than food reserves.”

—They were no longer lively the next instant.

Seth probed, “What do you mean by ‘ways other than food reserves’?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lin Si saw a pair of thin silver-rimmed glasses on the table. He reached out and put them on.

The children began to demonstrate great attentiveness towards Lin Si. “Doctor, the latest therapeutic device in our laboratory can correct myopia within half an hour.”

“Doctor, the biological tissue repair technology in our laboratory—”

Lucia said coolly, “According to my personality analysis, glasses are a symbolic object that provides a feeling of meticulousness for Dr Lin and keeps him calm.”

Lin Si swivelled around on the chair, facing them with a half-smile. “Useful in ways other than food reserves…such as pleasing me.”

He had good looks and thin lips light in colour. When he was not smiling, he often gave off a coldness that was not akin to the experiences of humans. When he smiled, he gave off an air of malevolence. And yet, he had completely mastered the scale of a half-smile between the two states, appearing quite akin to a barbarous creature with a refined exterior.

The children reacted with horror.

The horrified children exchanged a look often made by victims of unspoken academic rules. They were worried about their chastity.

Lin Si crossed his arms and threw them an expressionless glance, using his eyes to gesture at the mess on the floor. “Clean this place up.”

As the children’s chastity crises were lifted, they let out a long sigh of relief and began to tidy up the laboratory diligently.

“Nearly all of them have been inactivated.” One picked up the many strange-shaped tissue fragments on the ground with tweezers and examined them one at a time under a microscope. “Some also show abnormal proliferations.”

“They’ve mutated,” said Lin Si while adjusting the navigation parameters. “The radiation at the edge of the black hole is too strong. There is no reference value, so you can dispose of all of them.”

The child made a noise as a response, and after bemoaning a sentence of “what a shame”, began to work quietly and methodically.

After a while, someone suddenly spoke. “That…did any of you hear anything?”

“Huh?”

“No.”

After they finished speaking, they held their breaths at the same time. A dead silence fell upon the laboratory; only the host computer remained its endless humming as a result of heat dissipation from high-speed operation.

Knock. Knock.

A faint sound suddenly emerged in the silence, seemingly carried over from somewhere deep and far away.

Lin Si closed his eyes and listened for a while, frowned, got up from his chair, and walked towards the edge of the laboratory.

The others followed in haste steps. The closer they approached the wall, the more clearly they could hear.

Knock.

Knock. Knock.

It was the sound of knocking, shiver-inducing and rhythmically carried over from within the silence.

“D-Doctor,” said the child fearfully, “what’s next door?”

An ear-piercing siren suddenly rang out, the silence was broken, and the mechanical female voice spoke at an extremely fast speed.

“Warning. Warning. Abnormal life signal detected. Signal source: biochemistry storage hall No. 1, scrapped cabin No. 97. Assessment level: extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous.”

*

The author has something to say:

New serialisation~ I’ve saved up a few chapters so far w

Soft Sci-fi. The science parts are mostly nonsense, so don’t take it for real.

I’ll update every morning at six.

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