55: Chapter 55 The Wrinkles of Time

Seven days after the first phase of the Gardener's test ended, the 'Civilization Ascension Plan' was officially launched globally.

The Dragon Country led the establishment of the 'Human Civilization Development Committee,' with Lin Shen appointed as the Chief Scientific Advisor and Sarah as a Special Observer—although the Empire remained wary of the node consciousness within her, no one could deny her value.

The committee's first resolution was to invest 1% of global GDP into basic scientific research for forty-seven years.

This meant that over 800 billion Dragon Yuan would be injected annually into key fields such as physics, mathematics, materials science, and biology.

At the same time, the global patent system was fully opened, and all technologies related to the Civilization Ascension Plan were made mandatory for sharing.

'This is not a scientific competition in peacetime,' Lin Shen said at the first Global Science Summit. 'This is a war for survival. Our opponent is not each other, but time itself.'

The summit showcased the first phase of the technology roadmap integrated by Nuwa.

With a forty-seven-year limit, it was divided into three stages:

Phase One (Years 1-10): Complete the foundation of a Level 1.0 civilization.

This includes: a global fusion energy network, space elevators, permanent lunar bases, Mars outposts, and the popularization of quantum computing.

Phase Two (Years 11-30): Break through the Level 1.2 threshold.

Key objectives: master the principles of vacuum zero-point energy extraction, achieve a fully closed-loop biosphere, establish a real-time communication network within the Solar System, and develop the first generation of sub-light speed spacecraft engines.

Phase Three (Years 31-47): Prepare for the final evaluation.

Build at least one interstellar ark capable of carrying ten thousand people, develop planetary-level defense systems, and unify the global decision-making mechanism to cope with the Gardener's moral dilemma tests.

The roadmap was breathtakingly grand, but Nuwa provided detailed breakdown steps.

Each step was marked with prerequisite technologies, required resources, and estimated time.

This chart was projected onto the walls of every laboratory, factory, and school around the world.

Yet, Lin Shen and Sarah had an even more urgent task: the exploration of the Kuiper Belt tunnel in eleven months.

In the northwest of the Dragon Country, the newly built 'Deep Space Gate' base stood.

This place was originally a desert, but it had now been transformed into humanity's most advanced aerospace R&D center.

Standing in the center was the 'kuafu-2' currently under modification—based on the original probe design, but five times larger, with a complete ecological recycling system and an improved fusion thruster added.

The hull surface was covered with the newly developed 'Stardust' coating, a nanomaterial doped with trace amounts of Daosu that could effectively resist deep space radiation.

Lin Shen stood on the observation deck of the assembly workshop, watching the engineers install the ship's core component: the topological quantum navigation array.

This system was based on the design Sarah obtained from the pacific node, but it had been simplified—the complete version required too many graviton crystals and could only be built after the tunnel mission succeeded.

'The stability test for the navigation array's quantum entanglement source has passed,' project lead Wang Zhenguo reported to Lin Shen.

'In a simulated deep space environment, the entanglement maintenance time reached seventy-two hours, enough for us to travel to and from the Kuiper Belt. But the problem is...'

'The energy consumption is too high.' Lin Shen looked at the data. 'When the array runs at full power, it requires 30% of the ship's energy supply. This means other systems must be power-limited.'

'And Dr. Sarah's neural interface...' Wang Zhenguo hesitated.

Sarah was undergoing adaptive training in the laboratory next door.

She sat in a transparent cylindrical container filled with conductive gel, wearing a helmet covered in sensors.

Her task: establish a direct neural connection with the navigation array and correct the ship's course in real-time through her consciousness.

This connection could theoretically achieve millimeter-level navigation precision, but the risks were extremely high—Sarah's consciousness could be contaminated by quantum noise or further merged with the node consciousness.

Max stood outside the observation window, his brow furrowed.

Since Sarah began training, she only had four hours of wakefulness each day; the rest of the time was spent in connection.

Moreover, after each disconnection, her memories would become slightly confused, and sometimes she would suddenly speak in a language that did not belong to her.

'She is no longer the pure Sarah,' Max said to Lin Shen. 'I can feel it. Her eyes... sometimes look like those of an old person hundreds of years old.'

Lin Shen did not deny it. 'This is a necessary price. Ordinary navigation systems cannot cope with the space-time anomalies inside the tunnel; only she can collaborate with the node consciousness to parse high-dimensional geometric changes in real-time.'

'And what about after the mission? Can she recover?'

Lin Shen was silent.

Nuwa's simulations showed that long-term deep neural connection could lead to permanent personality fusion.

Sarah might eventually become a hybrid: part human, part sower node, and part unknown entity.

But they had to go to the tunnel.

Without graviton crystals, humanity could not build a true interstellar spacecraft; without understanding the truth about 'the builders,' they could not comprehend the Gardener's true intentions and weaknesses.

'We will do everything in our power to protect her core personality,' Lin Shen finally said.

'Nuwa has developed a consciousness anchoring protocol that will reinforce her personal memories and emotional connections every day. And...' He looked at Max, 'You are her most important anchor. Maintain daily communication with her and remind her of who she is.'

Just then, an alarm sounded in the laboratory.

Sarah convulsed violently in the container, and all the indicator lights on her helmet turned red.

The monitoring screen showed an abnormal split in her brainwaves: one frequency was within the normal human range, while the other was perfectly synchronized with the quantum oscillations of the navigation array, and its intensity was rapidly increasing.

'She is being assimilated by the array!' The medical team rushed into the laboratory.

Lin Shen rushed to the console. 'Nuwa, initiate the consciousness anchoring protocol! Inject neural stabilizers!'

'Executing... but her quantum entanglement level has reached 47%. Forcing a disconnection could lead to consciousness tearing.'

Sarah opened her eyes.

In those eyes, mathematical symbols flowed like a waterfall.

She opened her mouth, and the voice that came out was overlapping—one was her own female voice, and the other was a deep, inhuman echo:

[High-dimensional coordinates detected... Tunnel entrance is activating... Not a natural opening... It is being summoned...]

'Summoned by whom?' Lin Shen asked.

[An ancient existence... Older than the sower... They are waiting... for the candidate...]

Sarah's body suddenly went rigid, and then all her vital signs dropped sharply.

The medical team performed emergency rescue, and five minutes later, her heartbeat recovered, but her consciousness did not wake up immediately.

Nuwa analyzed the data. 'She briefly made contact with an external quantum signal source. The signal came from the Kuiper Belt, but not from the tunnel itself, but from an object near the tunnel. The object's size... is approximately five hundred meters in diameter, with an unknown structure, but the signal pattern emitted has a 30% similarity to the sower node.'

Another unknown existence.

'The Gardener's trap?' Max asked.

'Doesn't seem like it.' Lin Shen pulled up the signal characteristics. 'The Gardener's technical characteristics are more 'perfect'; the mathematical structure of this signal has obvious... flaws. Like a machine that has fallen into disrepair.'

'Perhaps it's something else left behind by 'the builders',' Academician Li Weimin's voice came through the communicator. 'If the Sower System is only a part of their legacy, then there may be other systems running that we just haven't discovered yet.'

A new variable.

The risk of the tunnel mission had increased again.

At the same time, in geostationary orbit, at the 'Tiangong-2' space station.

As the space hub for the 'Civilization Ascension Plan,' Tiangong-2 had expanded threefold over the past seven days.

New modules included: a microgravity materials laboratory, a quantum communication relay station, and most importantly—the 'Space-Time Observatory.'

The core equipment of the observatory was an improved gravitational wave interferometer, with a sensitivity three orders of magnitude higher than ground-based equipment.

Its task: continuously monitor the space-time curvature changes in the Kuiper Belt tunnel area and provide early warnings for 'kuafu-2'.

But at this moment, the observatory detected an anomaly.

'Space-time ripples have appeared 0.3 light-days from the tunnel's designated coordinates,' the duty scientist reported. 'It was not generated by the tunnel itself, but is a drag effect caused by an object moving at 0.2 times the speed of light. According to calculations, the object's mass is approximately equal to Ceres, but its size is only five hundred meters—the density is extremely high.'

Nuwa called up historical data for comparison. 'The trajectory matches an unknown celestial body that passed through the Solar System seventy-three years ago. At the time, it was classified as 'interstellar wandering object Oumuamua-2', but now it seems it may not be a natural celestial body.'

'It is returning,' Lin Shen concluded after receiving the report. 'And its target is the tunnel. The 'summons' Sarah perceived may have been emitted by it.'

'Is it waiting for us?' Max asked.

'Or waiting for the 'candidate',' Lin Shen mused. 'The node consciousness within Sarah is one of the passes. Perhaps this object is the tunnel guardian, or... the examiner.'

The mission plan had to be adjusted.

'kuafu-2' was originally scheduled to go alone, but now it might need an escort, or at least the ability to handle unexpected situations.

But there was not much time left.

The tunnel opening window was only seventy-two hours, and the spacecraft needed eleven months of travel to reach the Kuiper Belt—this meant they had to leave immediately to catch the window.

'The launch date is moved up,' Lin Shen decided. 'In three weeks, 'kuafu-2' must launch. All systems will be accepted at the minimum viable standard, and missing functions will be supplemented via remote upgrades during the voyage.'

'And the risks?' Wang Zhenguo asked.

'Nuwa calculates the current mission success rate is 41%. But if we miss the window, we will have to wait another eleven years—and the Gardener only gave us forty-seven years; wasting eleven years is unacceptable.'

41% probability.

Slightly lower than a coin flip.

But this was the current situation of human civilization: walking on the edge of a blade, every step was a gamble.

Over the next three weeks, global resources were tilted toward 'kuafu-2'.

The Dragon Country contributed the latest fusion reactors; the Empire provided material technology reverse-engineered from the Gardener's scan data; the EU sent a consciousness protection system developed based on neuroscience; and other countries also did their best.

This spacecraft became the crystallization of human civilization's technology, albeit a hastily cobbled-together crystallization.

Sarah woke up three days before departure.

Her consciousness had basically recovered, but she had added some new 'memory fragments'—not images or sounds, but mathematical intuition.

She could instinctively understand certain high-dimensional equations and visualize four-dimensional geometric shapes in her brain.

'I saw some structures inside the tunnel,' she said at the mission briefing. 'Not complete images, but... topological contours. The entrance is a variant of a Klein bottle, where the inner and outer surfaces are connected. The spacecraft needs to enter along a specific Möbius strip trajectory, otherwise it will fall into an infinite loop.'

She drew a curve on the whiteboard that constantly entangled with itself; the curve defied conventional spatial logic, and looking at it for too long would make one dizzy.

'I can navigate,' Sarah put down the pen. 'But I need to collaborate with Dr. Lin in real-time. His technology tree system can provide technical parameters, and my intuition can provide geometric paths. We must be perfectly synchronized.'

For this, the two began high-intensity joint training.

Through the neural interface, their consciousness briefly connected, sharing thoughts.

For the first time, Lin Shen 'saw' the world in Sarah's mind: it was not a linear flow of time, but a multi-dimensional network of thought, where every thought unfolded simultaneously across multiple dimensions.

And Sarah also perceived the technology tree system—that tree of light projected countless technological branches into her consciousness, each leaf being a possible future.

'Your system is evolving,' Sarah said after the training ended. 'I saw new branches, regarding consciousness uploading and collective intelligence.'

Lin Shen nodded.

Since the Gardener test, the unlocking speed of the technology tree system had accelerated.

Perhaps it was because global scientific collaboration had generated huge 'social influence,' or perhaps because the system had sensed a crisis.

The night before departure, Max came to Sarah's room.

The two stood in front of the observation window, watching the brightly lit launch site below.

'Promise me one thing,' Max said. 'No matter what, keep the part of Sarah Chen. The girl who likes to spin in zero-gravity environments, the scientist who secretly smiles after solving a difficult problem.'

Sarah held his hand. 'I will try my best. But Max, if when I return... I have changed. If I become more like the node and not like a human—'

'Then you are still you,' Max interrupted her. 'As long as you still remember our shared memories, as long as you are still willing to hold my hand, you are Sarah. The other parts are just... an upgrade.'

Sarah smiled, and in that smile, there was still the shadow of her seventeen-year-old self.

Launch day, 6:00 AM.

'kuafu-2' stood on the launch pad, much larger than the original design, like a silver spear pointing into deep space.

Three billion people around the world watched the live broadcast—this was humanity's first active manned mission to the edge of the Solar System, and the destination was a place that could change the fate of civilization.

Lin Shen and Sarah completed the final checks inside the cabin.

The life support system was normal, the navigation array was online, and the fusion engine was preheating.

Nuwa's voice sounded in the cabin: 'All systems ready. Countdown to the launch window opening: ten minutes.'

In the control center, General Liu, Li Weimin, Max, and others stood in front of the observation window.

No one spoke; there was only the rhythmic beeping of instruments.

The countdown reached zero.

The engine ignited.

A blue plasma flame spewed from the tail, and 'kuafu-2' slowly lifted off, accelerated, and soared into the clouds.

Ten minutes later, it entered low Earth orbit and began accelerating around the Earth.

'Orbital parameters are normal,' Nuwa reported. 'It is expected to enter the Earth-Moon transfer orbit after seven orbital accelerations. Total travel time: ten months and seventeen days, two weeks earlier than originally planned.'

As the spacecraft flew over the Dragon Country, Lin Shen looked at the land below, which was gradually becoming smaller.

There were seven billion people there, thousands of years of civilization, and all the love, hate, dreams, and struggles.

Now, their future was partially entrusted to this spacecraft.

Sarah softly recited a passage, the 'builders' maxim left to her by the pacific node:

[The universe is a conversation. Stardust asks, life answers. Do not be afraid to ask, and do not stop answering.]

The spacecraft adjusted its direction, aiming for the outer Solar System.

Ahead lay the endless darkness, and the light waiting in the darkness.