The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

After receiving the information from the drones, Hao Ren brought everyone to the Crapple Research Station, or CARS.

This space station was not only a research center; its powerful central computer and crystal resonant antenna allowed the space station to assume the function of integrating and processing all the information of the Plane of Dreams. The planet Tannagost, as an essential test site, where various life sample tests and experiments were conducted, was under the monitoring of the CARS. It was also the largest spaceport Hao Ren had ever built in the Plane of Dreams. The Pattianne and the Ansu, two ancient spaceships, also docked here. With the powerful offensive and defensive capabilities, CARS had become Hao Ren’s most crucial base in this universe.

No long ago, Hao Ren had ordered the installation of the most massive Nest Core in a tower of the space station to facilitate the control of the ever-expanding drone cluster. The information exchanges between the hundreds of millions of drones would go through this Nest Core. In a sense, the CARS was now the highest command center of the drone cluster. Of course, morphologically, the drone cluster did not have the highest commander. It adopted a distributed decision-making network, and the CARS could only monitor the network at the highest authorization level.

Instead of going to the crystal chamber where the central computer was, Hao Ren headed straight to the Nest Core of the drone cluster. The Nest Core was a stack of luminous veins and strange metal capsules as if a metal brain thousands of times larger than the human brain. Those tubes and lines that extended out from the ceiling and the floor were all concentrated to the metal brain, which exuded a strange air. Lily yelled at first sight of this thing, “Wow! That’s ugly!”

A bunch of messy lines appeared in front of the metal brain and slowly formed into a human face, which was the interactive interface of the drone-cluster consciousness. “I am sorry to make you feel this way; I do not know much about aesthetics.”

“Drones at each node is a little different from the rest. The basic units out of the factory were standardized, but as the drone cluster developed, it would learn and evolve and ultimately become different from the original design. The farther the distance, time, and extent of expansion, the more apparent the difference between them,” the MDT explained. “It seems our drone cluster has gotten great inspiration from the local environment as they explored the Plane of Dreams. Do not forget that all habitable planets here have creatures of tentacles and lumps of meat.”

Nangong Sanba buried his face in his hand. “Damn! I start to miss the boxy machine that we have first released. This thing has gone in the wrong direction.”

Hao Ren waved his hand and interrupted their conversation, which had gone astray. He then turned to look at the metal brain that was supported by a large number of pipelines in midair and continuously releasing a twisting force. “Tell me about what the probes have found.”

“Yes, sir,” said the drone cluster, which then changed its interactive interface to show the images that the probes had sent back. “Due to the inaccurate star chart you provided, the three probes chose three coordinates closest to the theoretical value to perform warp jump. Probe 1 probably plunged into space turbulence or high-energy region in the universe during the warp jump and lost contact with us because the deviation of coordinate was too large. Probe 2 and 3 arrived at the target galaxy almost at the same time, and they sent back this.”

The hologram first showed a passage composed of twisted starlight. The front and rear ends of this starlight passage exhibited a very pronounced redshift, and the phenomenon rapidly decreased in a few seconds. It was a normal phenomenon when during the transition between warp jump and normal spacetime. The drones must have recorded and sent back this footage when they completed the warp jump to arrive at the target galaxy.

The footage showed the starlight stabilizing, and the stars seemed to be still on the dark cosmic background. But there were occasional flashes on the footage, and some nearby celestial objects appeared stretched. It showed that the drones were not stationary but moving at sub-light speed. They had just been out of warp jump near the target coordinate and continuing their the next few light seconds distance using the conventional propulsion, which was part of the mission.

Hao Ren watched the seemingly ordinary video until he saw the starlight jitter for a second.

All the stars suddenly changed their positions.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking that his eyes must be playing a trick on him or the image was flickering. But he quickly realized that it was the strange phenomenon that the drones had recorded.

The starlight was almost static. Without atmospheric interference, the light would not twinkle, and the relative positions of the stars would never show visible changes. But, all the stars had shifted their positions just now. Some of the stars had demonstrated subtle changes in brightness although their positions changed little. It was as if someone had cut a section of a recorded video, and the unobservable slow changes had now been sped up.

“Rewind the footage. What happened just now?”

Again, Hao Ren replayed the footage where the jittering occurred. This time, he knew that everything happened in an instant. When the drone crossed a specific boundary, the positions of the stars changed.

“The drone has observed a boundary, which is non-physical, non-obstructive, and non-exclusion. But within and outside this boundary, the observed universe is different,” explained the drone cluster consciousness. “One drone is inside the boundary while the other is outside looking at the same direction, and so they have confirmed the existence of this phenomenon.”

“Is there a different universe?” Hao Ren frowned. “How is it possible?”

“All celestial bodies are out of position, and light does not travel in a continuous space on a macroscopic scale. The boundary is crossable, but there is a broad ‘warp-jump zone’ between the two distinct spaces. Space is discontinuous.”

Hao Ren scratched his jaw. “What do you think could have caused this?”

“By comparing the starlight observed on both sides of the boundary, we know a vast space has gone missing. The misalignment of space has caused the observable jittering phenomenon when traveling through this horizon. Even if the physical distance between the two observation points is only a few hundred meters apart, the two observation positions will see the same object as if they were looking from two positions that are a few million light years apart. When the drone that remains outside the horizon observes the other drone crossing the horizon, there is a momentary loss of contact between the two. When the contact finally reestablishes, the distance between them is already millions of light years. The spatial distortion has rendered the measurement inaccurate, and it is impossible to determine the size of lost space.”

Nangong Sanba scratched his head. “I don’t get what you say.”

Nangong Sanba had ridiculed his sister for not studying hard enough when she was little just two days ago. Now, Nangong Wuyue found a chance to mock him back. “My stupid brother, I do not understand too.”

Lily suddenly looked at Nangong Wuyue in disdain. A salted fish is still a salted fish, matter how many times it flips, she thought to herself.

Hao Ren understood that not everyone was a Peking University graduate like Lily or had a database in the head like him. So, he explained in layman term, “This is like a blank sheet of paper, on which there is a drawing. When we cut and take out the middle section of the paper and then join the remaining together, the drawing will become misaligned. We can see this misalignment in the three-dimensional space and accurately measure the size of the missing part. But what if a bug that lives in a two-dimensional space is crawling on the paper, it will only find that it has suddenly entered into a new world as it crawls forward. Space is not continuous here. This situation is what we experienced right now. The difference is that insects cannot observe three-dimensional structure, but we can control higher dimensions with technology.”

The MDT echoed. “See? Buddy does not only know about explosives. He knows non-explosive stuff too.”

Everyone was struck dumb.

Hao Ren buried his face his hand, tucked the MDT in his pocket, and continued to interact with the drone cluster consciousness. “Aside from this boundary, what else is there in the target galaxy?”

“Probe 2 has made random warp jumps after arriving at the target galaxy. It has found some unknown high-energy matter.”

As the voice of the consciousness trailed off, another hologram showed a space scene. Gaseous clouds were glowing in yellow and milky white. Starlight in the distant background was visible through the thinnest part of the nebulae. The densest regions looked as if there were solid matter but irregular shapes. They were mostly in disc-shape with radiating belts at the fringe.

“These high-energy nebulae have more or less the same size, about a thousand kilometers in diameter, distributed throughout the target galaxy. These nebulae emit strong and chaotic electromagnetic waves, which the drones have found it to be meaningless. The law of physics of the Plane of Dreams could not explain the origin of this cosmic phenomenon. We have not found any evidence of artificial elements in these high-energy nebulae.”

“What else?”

“That’s all for now. The target galaxy contains several widely scattered planetary systems. It is impossible to complete the scanning of the entire galaxy in a short time with only two probes. But we have a rough map of the galaxy and gravitational map for warp jump purpose.”

Hao Ren looked up at the glowing clouds of gas and said softly, “It seems to be a place worth visiting.”