Dead on Mars

Chapter 124: Sol Two Hundred and Seventy-One, History Moves Upward in a Spiral of Negations

“The Roman empire?” Tomcat had its head buried in the cabinet as it tidied it up. “The Roman empire is a classic case of a centrally controlled ancient empire. Even though its form of government wasn’t as stable as ancient China of the same era, it was one of the few massive nations in history that ruled all of Europe. At its peak, the Roman Empire territories were big enough to make the Mediterranean Sea a continental sea. After ancient Rome fell, until the Earth’s disappearance, Europe has never come under unified rule again.”

“The Roman Empire fell in the fifth century.”

“Yes, in fact, Rome was already splintering in the fourth century. During the invasion by barbarians, the Roman Empire collapsed under the hands of the Germanic people, the Xiongnu, and the Goths. That was the first large-scale human migration in history.” Tomcat placed the bottles on the floor as it continued. “Rome never recovered from that, and Europe plunged into a thousand years of war. Citizens became farming slaves, and the Church controlled the thoughts of the people, forbidding the discussion of philosophy and the arts.”

“Is that considered a retrogression?” Mai Dong asked.

“History moves upward in a spiral of negations.” Tomcat paused. “Miss Mai Dong, humans can take the wrong path at times, but they will not do so all the time. In engineering, this is called negative feedback control.”

“Isn’t the Middle Ages the Dark Ages?” Tang Yue’s voice sounded over the comms. “The Church waged wars against enemies of the faith and declared all of them heretics. They were then burned at the stake, isn’t that so? I recall my primary school textbook mentioning Bruno and Copernicus.”

“In that case, you should learn to stop viewing problems from the angle of a primary school textbook.”

“Anyway, those cheats didn’t have a good reputation,” Tang Yue quipped. “As a Chinese who follows materialism, I’m innately born with a buff to criticize religion.”

“The way the school textbooks framed it, makes you view it as a conflict between religion and science, but that’s a very superficial take on matters,” Tomcat explained. “The Church wasn’t viewing science with animosity most of the time; in fact, it was the opposite. Many of the members of the Church were proficient in both mathematics and astronomy. The most famous and great physicist, Isaac Newton was a theologian himself. Newton spent twenty years working on mathematics, but he spent his entire life studying theology. He deeply believed in the existence of God.

“But in that era, few scholars could be free from the Church’s influence because the schools they attended were established by the Church,” Tomcat continued. “Even in the Middle Ages with wars waging constantly in Europe, the commoners received very low levels of education. From an objective perspective, religious organizations took on the responsibility of spreading and proliferating culture… even though they could teach how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.”

“What use is teaching that kind of stuff?”

“From the Middle Ages to more modern Europe, there wasn’t anything like the ‘Strategy of Invigorating China Through Science and Education’ or how development is the cardinal principle.” Tomcat got up. “Philosophy and science were only the hobbies of the rich. Apart from helping the king calculate the angle of his garden’s fountain or estimating the trajectory of a cannon, do you think mathematics and physics can be used on potatoes?”

“Ignorant Europeans.” Tang Yue shook his head.

“Asians of the same era were busy studying, hoping to take the imperial examinations. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty, the Empress Dowager even dabbled with horse-drawn railways. Superficially, she’s the earliest Marxist Leninist in China,” Tomcat said indifferently. “How much better was that?”

Tang Yue dragged out the solar panels from the garage, while the Mars Wanderer was parked inside for charging.

It had fallen into a hole the last time Tomcat had driven the Wanderer out to seek the Chelomey, causing it to suffer major damage. The front of the vehicle had warped, and all the glass had shattered. Now, the Wanderer was like an open car. All that was left of the driving compartment was a frame. Sitting in the driver’s seat gave a good view, but it was open air.

Every day, Mai Dong would discuss history and humanities with Tomcat. They would go from Macedonia to ancient Rome to Carthage. Tang Yue rarely had a chance to interject; after all, he was terrible at history and was only able to applaud to liven things up.

With Tomcat around, crudely recording history wasn’t a very difficult task.

However, once things developed deeper, even Tomcat didn’t have an answer. Most of the outstanding questions in history remained unsolved, and Tomcat wasn’t a historian. All it could do was regurgitate the research findings of others.

It was very easy to stump Tomcat. For instance, Tang Yue would often ask such questions:

“Was Jianwen Emperor burnt to death?

“What really happened with the conspiracy story ‘shadows by the candle and sounds from an ax?’ Was Emperor Taizu murdered by his brother?

“If the peasants didn’t revolt, would the Manchus still be in power?”

Tomcat would be left dumbfounded.

Documents consisting of hundreds of thousands of words had been digitized and broadcast by the space station’s antenna. Digitally encoded information couldn’t contain as much information as text, so the broadcast time spanned an even longer amount of time.

As for the automatic interpretation system, it was equivalent to a cipher book that allowed decoding. Just like the Rosetta Stone, beings that received the information could use it to decode the original text. The broadcast information would contain the automatic interpretation system within the content itself. Back when they were designing the automatic interpretation system, Tomcat had considered whether to use Chinese or English. As Chinese had a huge word bank, and logograms made it difficult to divide, to attempt an easy conversion from numbers to Chinese characters with a simple automatic interpretation system was just too difficult. Therefore, Tomcat eventually used the English alphabetical system.

This also meant that intelligent lifeforms who received the signal could restore the content in English.

After Earth’s disappearance, the final language transmitted into the cosmos was ultimately English.

However, the documents stored on the hard disks were in Chinese. Tang Yue and Mai Dong had written the epitaph for the human civilization using Chinese.

…

“Miss Mai Dong, do you have any free time over the next two days?”

At noon, Tang Yue and Tomcat were resting inside Kunlun Station. The former was having his meal, and as usual, it was compressed biscuits mixed with some sugar-pickled tomatoes with a cup of water. Mai Dong was also eating. She had a piece of bread.

“Oh? Time? How long?”

“At least four hours,” Tomcat answered. “We need you to head out to check the Eagle’s Ascent Vehicle’s heat-resistant tiles.”

Tomcat had accepted Tang Yue’s suggestion. The Eagle was the only vessel that wouldn’t disintegrate during the atmospheric entry. In this desperate situation, it was the only hope. However, they needed to guarantee that nothing was wrong with the heat-resistant tiles on the lander. Therefore, inspecting them was the first step.

It was impossible to do the inspection indoors, so Mai Dong needed to head out.

Forced by circumstances, Tomcat was actually going to use a condemned spacecraft.

“Check the Eagle?” Mai Dong was surprised before she slowly nodded. “Head out? Sure. I’m free to do so anytime. It just so happens that the space station’s S1 solar panel’s revolving mechanism has some problems. It’s not rotating very smoothly, so I’ll be able to solve it at the same time.”

“There’s something wrong with the solar panel?” Tang Yue looked up with biscuit crumbs in his mouth as he appeared nervous.

“It’s a common malfunction. The computer has done a self-check. It says that a sensor was disconnected. Changing a wire should do the trick.” Mai Dong was also eating biscuits. After taking a bite of the compressed biscuits, she sucked the water blob that was floating in front of her. “It’s a usual case of wear and tear of the wiring. There’s no need to worry.”

The Mars United Space Station had been in operation for years. There weren’t any major problems, but there was no end to the minor ones. Usually, the astronauts would fix it, heading out to switch out components and materials. It was considered a daily mission.

“Then, you should have a good rest later. Ensure you have enough stamina,” Tomcat instructed. “We will begin twelve hours from now. When the time comes, I’ll give you detailed instructions.”

Mai Dong nodded.

“Alright, got it.”