Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 39 - Cycle and Begin Again (1)

Chapter 39 – Cycle and Begin Again (1)

Ling Yi liked the pair of glasses a lot. Not only did he look at the starry skies for a good amount of time, he also wore them as he walked around the spaceship corridors.

Many waves that were invisible on the light spectrum had transformed into visible light, causing the entire spaceship to be shrouded in a hazy multicoloured halation. It was the case with the experiment equipment in particular, where within the platinum silver of the machinery, there was an indigo and pale red glow that exuded, completely unlike the cold, icy feeling it usually gave off.

Ling Yi finished looking at them, then turned back to look at Lin Si.

Lin Si stood on the transparent platform, looking at himself from within the ocean that was a vast spread of light. Beside him, this radiance slowly fluctuated and surged. It was a captivating and fantastical scene.

The radiance at this very moment was so striking that it nearly reached the limits of his imagination of everything good in this world.

The law that ruled the universe said: everything that lived would die, everything obtained would be lost, and time would never flow backwards.

Therefore, one day, he would also be like his loved ones who were no longer in this world, departed from this universe forever and ever.

When that moment comes, the scene that remains indelible in my memories will be this one, Ling Yi suddenly thought.

This scene—Lin Si looking at himself, and behind him, the ocean of eternally silent stars and dust, together with the brightness of planets from millions of light years away—will lastingly entwine with the remainder of his life.

Lin Si observed Ling Yi, noticing how he originally looked everywhere excitedly, but suddenly fell quiet when he turned to look at himself. He was about to ask Ling Yi what was the matter, but saw Ling Yi slowly take off the glasses.

In that instant, Lin Si froze, for he saw a deep sorrow permeating within Ling Yi’s eyes.

He quickly dismissed this thought, believing it was an illusion—a child this age, apart from troubles with feelings, would never have any reason to feel sorrow. Moreover, he knew all of Ling Yi’s friends, and thought he did not have any possibility of worrying over feelings.

But Ling Yi’s condition was absolutely not the excitement he wore at the beginning.

He asked, “Are you tired? Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Ling Yi nodded.

He walked over and pulled at Lin Si’s hand, following him from behind as they walked through the corridor, wordless for a very long time.

Lin Si naturally noticed that something was wrong with him. “Unhappy?”

“Yeah,” Ling Yi said glumly.

“Why?”

“That poem said ‘our souls are love, and a continual farewell’,” he said. “Since everything we have will be lost, so when we love something…does it mean we also accept that one day, we will sadly say goodbye to it?”

Lin Si thought, then said, “It’s indeed as such.”

“Then if I keep remembering it, would it count as not losing it?”

Lin Si nodded. “If the memories won’t bring you pain.”

“Then…” Ling Yi’s voice lowered. “Will I lose you too?”

“You will.” Lin Si looked into his eyes. “I’m not young anymore, and the many kinds of radiation from the laboratory aren’t good for my body. Death will take me away before it takes you.”

Ling Yi looked at him, stricken. His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “But I don’t want…”

In the three years after he woke up, he learnt various things, till today—the very day he grew into an adult, he finally learnt death.

The tears fell one after another, sliding across that beautiful face. Lin Si looked at Ling Yi, reached out his hand to wipe his tears, then placed a light kiss on his forehead. “But before that happens, if you don’t want me to leave, I will properly stay with you.”

Ling Yi nodded.

He no longer spoke. Pulling at Lin Si’s hand, they went back to their room together.

After that, the matters on the spaceship developed at a steady pace as each day went by. Under Su Ting’s leadership, the microchip project progressed very smoothly, and the antimatter weapon from Area 1 also received an inkling of success after they sneakily borrowed Tang Ning and Lin Si away.

Madam Chen had also successfully persuaded the Marshal to agree on the plan to send out teams to explore other planets. Moreover, the process of persuasion went quite smoothly.

Of course, this was not because the Marshal also felt anxious regarding the development of human civilization—he would let out a snort at such worries.

In reality, he never even thought in that direction. The moment he heard Madam suggest the idea, he guffawed. “Is that not just colonisation? We will use this planet as our base, then explore other planets we could live on—and in the end we can even develop into a giant-sized country spanning many planets, or even galaxies!”

—Alright, even though they were driving north to reach the destination in the south, it still counted as reaching a consensus.21

A referendum was immediately carried out. Four out of every five people voted “agree”, thus the proposal passed, and various works began to progress urgently.

After assessing trade-offs, the data stored in Area 8 and the ten thousands of frozen bodies in Area 9 were moved to the ground base. After they were cleared, Area 8 and Area 9 were equipped with enough resources, took along the most advanced exploration tools, separated from the Voyager and carried out independent voyages.

The members it carried still awaited confirmation; the only condition was that the military would be prioritised, whereas less researchers would be brought along. The core of scientific research would still remain on the Voyager.

At the same time, as various matters progressed smoothly, the microchip and antimatter weapon programmes were respectively announced as complete.

Today, the Marshal sat in the master control room of Area 8, Lin Si and Lambert both accompanying him.

Area 8 separated from the main body, and was flying towards a meteorite belt two-hundred light years away. They were heading to test the antimatter weapon there.

Meteorite belts were a common astronomical phenomenon. Its previous form was the asteroid belt; these asteroids that were affected the gravitational pull of planets could originally become planets that orbited regularly, but were unluckily obstructed by the gravity of giant planets nearby, and began to chaotically orbit in its set region, frequently creating collisions, every day producing countless meteorites and space dust. When these collisions continued, the asteroid belt would become fragmented to an extreme extent, and seldom complete, spherical shaped planets would be seen. They would all be fragments of various sizes large and small, thus then a meteorite belt was formed.

Traversing through the turbid dust clouds, the chaotic meteorites appeared in their field of vision. This kind of place was a high-risk area for voyage accidents, hence the spaceship would rarely set foot in it—but today was different.

The Colonel operated his Skeleton, exited from the port and exposed himself in outer space.

On the right arm of the Skeleton, a black cylinder emerged; this cylinder had lost the glossiness of a metal, appearing as a deep dark surface. It looked like it went through carburisation, seemingly very dangerous.

The Colonel slowly raised the right arm, clenching the fist.

The nuclear fusion energy that emitted blue light from his chest suddenly darkened, then turned especially bright, as if it was accumulating a giant amount of power within the invisible void, and then—the mini curvature propelling device on the right arm activated at maximum power, and the black cylinder seemed to surge once.

The vacuum environment did not deliver sound, and the cylinder’s volume was also not big, so those waves were extremely hard to detect.

The Marshal looked at the recovering energy furnace and the Colonel who retracted his right arm, frowning. “You launched it already?”

The instant the sound of his words dissipated, something within the depths of the meteor belt blew open!

There was no sound, no light, but…it shook all his senses and shocked his heart!

Faraway within the dust clouds and meteorites, there appeared a dot, a dot of nothingness. Then, with this dot as the centre, everything in its surroundings—all form and energy—swiftly vanished. Originally, they still existed there, but in the next instant, that place became a vacuum where nothing existed.

The point that was blasted open by the antimatter weapon was like the centerpoint of a circle, and its surroundings was a giant void—in a simple instant that could not be captured by the naked eye, a void was born.

The diameter of this void, if one used kilometres as the unit, one would have to use scientific notation to express it.

In other words, it only needed one antimatter bomb for the entire planet they resided on to be reduced to dust.

“…Very good.” The Marshal exhaled, nodding. “You’re all very impressive.”

The Marshal seldom praised others from the bottom of his heart.

But nobody was surprised, for the result of this programme was truly astounding.

“This must be kept strictly confidential!” The Marshal’s tone changed sharply. “This applies to every participant in the experiment. When publishing the results from today, the data must be reduced by a hundred times!”

Mr Lambert nodded, he also understood that this thing was too dangerous. If it was obtained by someone who harboured ill-will, and used it on the Voyager with a flick of their hand—the consequences were unimaginable.

Fortunately, only the three of them were present today, so the data could be falsified to their heart’s content. Moreover, this thing could not be operated by just anyone.

“It can only be assembled on the Skeletons?” The Marshal confirmed once more.

“Yes,” said Mr Lambert, “the density of the device is too high. A normal person wouldn’t be able to pick it up.”

Lin Si added, “Apart from assembling it on the Skeletons, it can also be added into the spaceship’s weapons system.”

“I’ll consider it,” said the Marshal. “What do you think of its functions?”

“Firstly, it can be used in voyage,” said Mr Lambert. “When we encounter a bad environment, we can directly destroy it to create a safe, absolute vacuum. That way, we almost do not have to fear any accidents.”

The Marshal nodded.

Lin Si said, “Theoretically, we no longer need to be afraid of the existence of alien civilizations that are higher level than us. Under the prerequisite of both parties having antimatter weapons, neither will choose to attack the other.”

“And if they have weapons of an even higher level?’ asked the Marshal.

“They cannot be stronger than antimatter weapons,” Lambert answered for Lin Si. “There are limits to physics. They might hold some weapons that are more powerful at close-range combat that we cannot defeat, but if we set off an antimatter bomb as a form of suicide-resistance, they won’t have any way out, and can only be annihilated along with us.”

The Marshal silently contemplated for a while, then nodded again.

“However, we must ensure safety first…” the Marshal said, throwing a glance at Lin Si.

Lin Si knew the Marshal was once again thinking about the matter of the microchip.

Previously, the Marshal already insisted on implanting a control programme into the microchips. Now that the Skeletons were equipped with the requirements for carrying antimatter weapons, it provoked the Marshal to feel an even deeper fear for its consequences—when an experienced hunter found a dynamite with strong firepower, their first thought would certainly not be how to use it, but rather how to prevent it from going off unintentionally.

Lin Si did not completely fail to understand the Marshal’s sentiment, so he chose to make a compromise, “I can include a command in the Skeleton’s control system, so that when there is abnormal activity, the Skeleton will be completely paralysed.”

“No.” The Marshal’s rejection was very clear-cut. “The control system’s command can be changed simply with a skilled hacker!”

“Let Tang Ning write the program. There is no hacker better than him,” said Lin Si.

“There isn’t now, but what about later? What about a century later?” said the Marshal, “There can only be implanting microchips! The Skeletons are operated through microchips, anyone who uses a Skeleton has a microchip in their brain, and they cannot use the Skeletons once the microchips are taken out! This is the safest way! Unless someone is able to cut open their skull again and change the microchip program, but these huge movements will definitely be discovered before it happens!”

The Marshal looked at Lin Si. “I know you’re still in disagreement, but I can take a step back…the electrical current released by the microchip will not kill them, and instead will only make them temporarily unconscious. The specifics I can leave for you to manage! Otherwise, no matter how powerful the Skeletons are, or how much value they can contribute, I will not allow people to become too absorbed in using them!”

Lin Si shut his eyes as if he was making a decision. When he reopened them, his expression was calm. “Alright, but I have more requests.”

“You can speak,” said the Marshal.

“To achieve this function, the microchip will need to be controlled through an external terminal,” said Lin Si. “The access authority of this controller must be held by both you and Madam Chen, and the command can only be executed when the two of you operate it simultaneously.”

“This is a reasonable request,” said the Marshal.

“Also, I request for you to keep this confidential. I don’t want them to know their life can be so casually controlled by someone for a few reasons.”

The Marshal fell into thought for a while, then nodded. “That I can do. If you don’t have any other feedback, please immediately hand it over to Area 5 to design and produce.”

Lin Si pressed at the spot between his eyebrows tiredly. “I don’t have any more.”

*

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