CAT Chapter 39: Endless Cycle (1)

Ling Yi really liked these glasses. Not only did he stare at the starry sky for quite a while, but he also wore them and wandered back and forth in the spaceship’s corridor.

The spectrum turned many invisible wavelengths into visible light, enveloping the entire spaceship in a hazy, multicolored glow. The experimental instruments, especially, glowed with faint blue, purple, or light red light, no longer cold and metallic, but softly illuminated.

After watching them for a while, Ling Yi turned back to look at Lin Si.

Lin Si stood on a transparent platform, gazing at Ling Yi amidst a sea of light. The light swirled slowly around him, creating a dreamy, beautiful scene.

The brilliance of that moment was so vivid that it seemed almost impossible to forget, reaching the limits of Ling Yi’s imagination of the world’s beauty.

The law that governs the universe states that all living things will die, all possessions will be lost, and time will never flow backward.

So, one day, he too would, like his family members who were no longer alive, forever leave this world.

At that moment, Ling Yi suddenly thought, the one thing I would never forget would surely be this scene.

This scene—Lin Si looking at him, with the eternal silence of stars and the sea of cosmic dust behind him, and with the starlight from millions of light-years away, it would forever intertwine with his life.

Lin Si watched Ling Yi, who had originally been excitedly looking around but suddenly fell silent when he turned to face him. Just as Lin Si was about to ask what was wrong, he saw Ling Yi staring at him and slowly taking off his glasses.

In that moment, Lin Si was momentarily stunned, because he saw a deep sadness filling Ling Yi’s eyes.

He quickly dismissed this thought, believing it was just an illusion—after all, children of Ling Yi’s age had no reason to feel sadness unless it was due to love troubles, and he knew all of Ling Yi’s friends, so he didn’t think there was any such problem.

However, Ling Yi’s mood was certainly not the same as the excitement from earlier.

Lin Si asked, “Are you tired? Do you want to go back and sleep?”

Ling Yi nodded slightly.

He walked over, took Lin Si’s hand, and followed him down the corridor, both of them remaining silent for a long time.

Lin Si naturally noticed something was wrong. “Not happy?”

“Mm,” Ling Yi mumbled.

“What’s wrong?”

“In that poem, it says that all of our loves are just farewells,” he said. “Is it because we will lose everything we have now, so when we fall in love with something… it means we accept that one day, we will have to sadly say goodbye to it?”

Lin Si thought for a moment and said, “That’s right.”

“Then if I remember it, does that mean I haven’t lost it yet?”

Lin Si nodded, “If the memory doesn’t cause you pain.”

“Then…” Ling Yi’s voice lowered, “Will I also lose you?”

“Yes,” Lin Si looked into his eyes, “I’m not young anymore, and the radiation in the lab has damaged my health. Death will take me before it takes you.”

Ling Yi stared at him, his eyes suddenly filling with tears, “But I don’t want to…”

In the three years since he had woken up, he had been learning all kinds of things. Today—on the day he had grown up—he finally understood death.

Tears fell, sliding down his beautiful face. Lin Si looked at Ling Yi, reached out to wipe his tears, and then gently kissed his forehead. “But before that, if you don’t want me to leave, I will stay with you.”

Ling Yi nodded.

He no longer spoke, just held Lin Si’s hand as they returned to their room.

After that, things on the spaceship proceeded smoothly, day by day. The neural chip project, led by Su Ting, was going very well, and Zone 1’s antimatter weapon project showed promising signs of success after borrowing Tang Ning and Lin Si.

Madam Chen successfully persuaded the Marshal, making him agree to the plan of sending out a fleet to explore other planets. The process went very smoothly.

Of course, this was not because the Marshal was concerned about the development of human civilization—he scoffed at such worries.

In fact, the Marshal had never even thought about it. When he heard Madam Chen’s idea, he laughed heartily. “Isn’t this just colonization? We use this place as a base and explore other planets that are suitable for habitation. In the end, we could even develop into a large nation spanning many planets, even whole star systems!”

—Well, although the goal was completely different, at least they had come to an agreement.

A public referendum was immediately conducted, with four-fifths of the people voting “agree.” The plan was approved, and the various tasks began to proceed urgently.

After weighing the pros and cons, the data stored in Zone 8 and the thousands of frozen bodies in Zone 9 were transferred to the ground base. The emptied Zone 8 and Zone 9 would be equipped with enough supplies, carrying the most advanced exploration tools, then would depart from the Voyager to conduct independent missions.

The personnel to be carried on board had yet to be determined, but it was known that the crew would mostly be military personnel, with few researchers. The research focus would still remain on the “Voyager.”

As the various affairs proceeded smoothly, the neural chip and antimatter weapon projects were both announced as completed.

On this day, the Marshal sat in the control room of Zone 8, accompanied by Lin Si and Mr. Lambert.

Zone 8 had separated from the main body and was now heading towards the asteroid belt 200 light-years away. They were going to test the antimatter weapon there.

The asteroid belt is a common celestial phenomenon. It was once an asteroid field where the asteroids were influenced by stellar gravity and could have become planets, but due to the interference of nearby giant planets, they began to move erratically within a specific region, frequently colliding and creating countless asteroid fragments and cosmic dust every day. This continued for a long time, and the asteroid field became highly fragmented, with very few intact spherical planets—mostly just chunks of debris. It thus became an asteroid belt.

Through the murky dust clouds, the chaotic asteroid belt appeared in view. This area was a high-risk zone for navigation accidents, and spaceships rarely ventured here—but today was different.

The Colonel operated his exoskeleton, stepping out of the docking port and into the vacuum of space.

On his right arm was a black cylindrical device. The cylinder lacked the metallic shine, looking dull and almost as if it had undergone a carbon treatment, making it look very dangerous.

The Colonel slowly raised his right arm and clenched his fist.

The blue-glowing fusion reactor in his chest suddenly dimmed and then brightened, as if it were accumulating vast amounts of energy. Then—his right arm’s miniature curvature drive activated at full power, and the black cylinder seemed to fluctuate slightly.

In the void, no sound could be transmitted, and the cylinder was small, so the fluctuation was barely perceptible.

The Marshal watched the energy reactor return to normal and the Colonel retract his right arm, frowning. “Did it launch?”

At the very moment he spoke, something exploded in the depths of the asteroid belt!

No sound, no light, but… it was chilling to the core!

In the distant clouds of dust and asteroid clusters, a point appeared—an empty point. Then, centered around this point, everything rapidly vanished—both matter and energy completely disappeared from the physical world, where they once existed. In the next moment, the place turned into a void, devoid of anything.

The point where the antimatter weapon exploded was like the center of a circle, and around it was a massive void—a void that was born in the fraction of a second that the human eye couldn’t capture.

The diameter of this void, if measured in kilometers, would likely need to be expressed in scientific notation.

In other words, just one antimatter could make the planet they inhabit vanish into nothingness.

“…Very well,” the Marshal exhaled, nodding. “You’re impressive.”

The Marshal rarely complimented others so sincerely.

But no one was surprised, because this achievement was truly astonishing.

“We must keep this strictly confidential!” The Marshal’s tone shifted. “This applies to the experiment’s participants as well. When the results of today’s experiment are made public, the data must be reduced by at least a hundred times!”

Mr. Lambert nodded. He also knew how dangerous this technology was. If it fell into the wrong hands, and someone aimed it at the Voyager— the consequences would be unimaginable.

Fortunately, only the three of them were present today, so they could falsify the data at will. Moreover, not everyone could operate this device.

“Only the exoskeleton can be equipped with it?” The Marshal confirmed again.

“Yes,” Mr. Lambert replied. “The device’s density is too high for an ordinary person to handle.”

Lin Si spoke up, “In addition to being installed on the exoskeleton, it can also be integrated into the spaceship’s weapon system.”

“I’ll think about it,” the Marshal said. “What do you think its potential uses are?”

“First, it can be used for navigation,” Mr. Lambert said. “When we encounter harsh travel conditions, we can directly destroy them, creating an absolute vacuum for safety. This way, we wouldn’t have to fear navigation accidents.”

The Marshal nodded.

Lin Si added, “Theoretically, we would no longer fear the existence of more advanced alien civilizations. If we all possess antimatter weapons, no one would choose to attack the other.”

“What if they have even more advanced weapons?” the Marshal asked.

“That’s impossible,” Mr. Lambert answered on Lin Si’s behalf. “There are limits to physics. They might possess weapons that are more effective in close-range combat, which we couldn’t counter, but if we had to trigger an antimatter for a suicide counterattack, they’d have no way to stop us. They would simply be destroyed along with us.”

The Marshal pondered for a moment, then nodded again.

“But first, we must ensure safety…” the Marshal said, turning his gaze to Lin Si.

Lin Si knew that the Marshal was once again thinking about the chip issue.

Previously, the Marshal had insisted on implanting a control program into the chip, and now that the exoskeleton had been equipped to handle antimatter weapons, it would naturally raise even more of the Marshal’s concerns—an experienced hunter, upon acquiring a powerful weapon, wouldn’t first think about how to use it but rather about how to prevent it from accidentally discharging.

Lin Si wasn’t unable to understand the Marshal’s concerns, so he made a concession, “I can add an instruction to the exoskeleton’s control system that will paralyze the entire exoskeleton in case of abnormal operation.”

“No,” the Marshal rejected firmly. “The instructions in the control system can easily be altered by a skilled hacker!”

“Have Tang Ning write the program. No hacker is better than him,” Lin Si suggested.

“Not now, but what about later? What about a hundred years from now?” the Marshal said. “The only solution is to implant the chip! The exoskeleton is operated through the chip, and anyone who uses the exoskeleton will have a chip in their brain. Once the chip is removed, the exoskeleton won’t work! This is the safest approach! Unless someone can reopen their skull and change the chip’s program, such a large-scale operation would definitely be detected in advance!”

The Marshal looked at Lin Si, “I know you still don’t agree, but I can compromise its use… You can make the current flow from the chip make someone temporarily unconscious without killing them. The specifics of this can be left to you to decide! Otherwise, no matter how powerful the exoskeleton is or how much value it can create, I won’t allow them to be put to use!”

Lin Si closed his eyes, seemingly making a decision. When he opened them again, his expression was calm: “Okay, but I have one more request.”

The Marshal, “Say it.”

“To make this function work, the chip must be controlled by an external terminal,” Lin Si said. “The permissions for this controller must be held by both you and Madam Chen. Only when both of you operate it together will the command be executed.”

“That request is reasonable,” the Marshal replied.

“Then, I request that this be kept secret. I don’t want them to know that their lives could be controlled by someone for some reason,” Lin Si added.

The Marshal thought for a moment and then nodded. “That’s acceptable. If you have no other objections, I’ll have it handed over to Zone 5 for design and manufacturing.”

Lin Si tiredly pressed his fingers to his forehead. “None.”