Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 288: Trade and Investigation

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

It might be hard to admit out loud, but everyone on the Hope understood that compared to the experts on the mini-sized escape spaceship, the Hope’s members weren’t really qualified experts.

To put it simply, the so-called researchers, professors, experts, and scientists might know a lot, but their knowledge was specialized. For example, a university’s physics professor wouldn’t know about the basics of the latest invisible jets (at least by 21st Earth scientific standards).

The scientists that knew about high end weapon technology would spend their time in the governments’ employment. The public might not even know of their existence, much less meet them. This was the difference between public and the government’s high tech department’s scientists.

When the Hope left Earth, Yao Yuan had tried his best to locate the best scientists from all the countries, but his only reference was the knowledge he garnered from his head hunting years. It was logical that he would have missed out on people that he didn’t know. Furthermore, the government-employed scientists would have been taken away by the mini-sized spaceship. After all, the mini-sized spaceship was led by Earth’s best politicians, so of course they knew these scientists were the most valuable. How would they miss out on bringing them?

Therefore, even though the Hope’s weapon system, be it siege engines or assault rifles, had related information and techniques, the research progress was still glacially slow. There was really only one person on the Hope that knew a thing or two about these systems, and she was Bo Li. As a Whisperer, most of the Hope’s weapon upgrades were her doing!

Then, we shall turn to look at the Noah One…

It was a spaceship created during the peak of the human era. The Earth’s governments weren’t privy to the existence of the neutron star fragment then. The spaceship was created using all of Earth’s resources and the cooperation of 30,000 specially selected experts… These were the experts among experts. If the 3,000 scientists were to join the Hope, the Hope’s scientific world would have an earth-shattering change. At the point, Yao Yuan perhaps wouldn’t be concerned about Genesis but the Requiem instead.

Therefore, they had to get the people left on the Noah One!

After Yao Yuan and Xiao Niao entered a small, isolated room, Yao Yuan asked excitedly, "Xiao Niao, contact ZERO now. I have something important to ask her!"

Xiao Niao was not surprised by this demand; it was as if he knew this was what Yao Yuan was going to ask. He replied directly, "That’s impossible, ZERO has told me clearly that at least before she has her own body, she will not talk to anyone besides me… Captain, do you plan to have ZERO bring us to the Noah One’s signal's origin?"

Yao Yuan nodded firmly. "Of course, but it might not exactly be that. First we have no clue whether this signal is real or not or whether is it a trap. Second, the signal’s arrival was too sudden; it is as if the signal came out of the space around the Hope. There was no definite direction or source. This didn’t feel like human technology, or at least not a technology from the 3rd or 4th revolutions. These are questions I have to ask ZERO."

Xiao Niao waved his hands and said, "ZERO will not meet you. If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t think she’ll even meet me if you’re present… For some reason, I can tell that she is afraid of you, so she won’t meet you."

"Afraid of me?" Yao Yuan pointed curiously at himself. After a long pause, he continued, "Stop kidding, I’m serious. She is a god-tier civilization’s AI, and it would take her less than a few minutes to wipe out the entire spaceship. How can she be afraid of me?"

"It’s your choice to believe it or not." Xiao Niao shrugged helplessly. He was too lazy to go into the difference between AI and intelligent life forms with Yao Yuan. He said, "I can’t provide you with any proof, even if you demand it. This is just my personal instinct telling me that she is afraid of you, but… actually, that’s not important. In conclusion, you want to find out about the authenticity of this signal and how it arrived, right?"

Yao Yuan continued seriously, "And the location of the signal's origin. I know ZERO can control the ship’s space warp. She was the one who trapped us inside the new planet. Even though the mother nest alien did give us a lot of trouble, I still wish to thank her on behalf of the entirerity of humanity. She gave us a few wonderful years on the new planet, and from that, we can see she has a degree of control over the space warp technology."

Xiao Niao thought about it and answered, "Alright, I will pose her these few questions, but I can’t guarantee that she will answer. Also, one more thing, Yao Yuan, you have to be mentally prepared… She once said that there is price to pay for her to control the space warp. It sounded like she had paid a hefty sum for our earlier warps, so I have no clue whether she is still capable of controlling the Hope’s future space warps."

Yao Yuan nodded understandingly and patted Xiao Niao on his shoulder. "Regardless, do help me ask her those questions. And tell her this… we humans are willing to provide her with anything she needs, other than our lives. We’re willing to compensate her in any way we can. And we will remember this kindness that she showed us forever. Right, you mentioned she wanted to have a physical body when we have the technology to do that. You can tell her that I promise her that other than myself and those directly involved in creating that body, no one else will know about her identity. She will be able to live like a normal human being in our human society. This is what I promise."

Xiao Niao sighed and nodded. Then he left the meeting and went back to his room. He opened his computer and planted himself before it, waiting for ZERO to arrive.

He believed ZERO had the power to survey every corner of the Hope, so she must have heard his earlier conversation with Yao Yuan. Even if she didn’t do so due to her fear of Yao Yuan, she would have known that he was waiting for her, since he had opened his computer. If she wanted to converse with him, she would arrive soon enough.

As he expected, a black screen took over the computer and some words appeared on it. "…You’re here to ask me about the Noah One?"

"That’s right, I have three questions. First, is the signal real? Does it come from the Noah One? Or is it a trap from some high level space civilization? Second, why would the Noah One’s signal appear in this part of space? How did it get transferred? Last question… Do you know where the signal’s location is?" Xiao Niao didn’t hesitate and fired off all the questions at once.

After a long time, ZERO answered, "This signal is real and it appeared so suddenly is because it used the space warp technology. It is because of space warp communication technology that its appearance was so out of nowhere…"

"Space warp communication technology?" Xiao Niao copied and pasted this curious phrase back to her.

"That’s right. To put it simply, the physical limit of speed in space is light speed; no signal can surpass this limit. The warp drive technology that you’re researching uses the folding of space to surpass this limit, but you have to understand that while mass itself can fold space, messages and signals cannot. This is because messages cannot create such a large amount of energy to fold the space around the signals. Even wormholes can’t make signals achieve the speed of light. You will need technology like the star gate to do that, a permanent and stable worm hole. This allows messages to break the light speed barrier, but that is also only at the two ends of the star gate," ZERO replied.

Even though Xiao Niao wasn’t a scientist, he was a Thinker. He knew a thing or two about basic science. He processed the information ZERO provided and understood it after some time. The meaning was fairly simple, a spaceship could use the device and technology within the spaceship to break through light speed, but pure signals could not do that. After it was launched into space, it would travel at most the same as speed as light through space. That was the basic law of the cosmos.

"And space warp communication technology uses space warp to transfer information. The message goes from Point A to Point B, it doesn’t involve any space folding like the warp drive or wormholes. Instead, the signal directly disappeared from Point A and reappeared at Point B. This is why the arrival of this signal from the Noah One is so sudden and without alarm…"

Xiao Niao’s expression was serious. He typed, "Then the signal has to be a fake. We still haven’t obtained this technology, and from the sound of it, this is some complicated, high level technology. I don’t think the people from Noah One have mastered it."

"No, the signal is real. So many years ago, due to the lack of energy and low quality energy circuits, the space warp of the Noah One was incomplete and unsuccessful… Now, the situation of Noah One is as follows: around 3/5 was warped successful, 1/5 blew up near Earth, and the last 1/5 showcases a status of being in spatial transition wave. This signal came from this last 1/5 of the Noah One. This should be a natural signal coming from this part of the Noah One and not a manual signal…"

"3/5 of Noah One is still intact!"

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