197: Chapter 197 The Trisolarans Vanish Instantly, Global Horrification

California, Mount Wilson Observatory.

At 3:17 AM, Evan Calder, the on-duty night observation assistant, was staring blankly at his third cup of instant coffee.

His job was as dry as an old machine that had long since been replaced by automated systems yet was still kept at its post.

He stared at the real-time data stream sent back by the automated sky survey telescope on the screen, recording any anomalies and submitting them to his superiors.

Having worked at this observatory for six years, he had never submitted a single anomaly report to his superiors in the dead of night.

There was no difference between 3:00 AM and 3:00 PM in the universe.

Stars burned as they should, and planets revolved as they should.

All celestial movements precisely followed the equations written centuries ago by Newton and Einstein.

But right now, on the screen before him,

a set of data in the direction of Centaurus was fluctuating violently in a pattern he had never seen before.

He set his coffee cup down beside the keyboard, pulled up the raw spectroscopic data, and checked it line by line.

Then he pulled up the radio band data and checked it a second time.

The data from the two independent observation systems cross-validated each other, pointing to the same conclusion:

a known triple-star system about four light-years away from Earth had been completely covered by some pure black spherical structure a few minutes ago.

Then, after the three stars were simultaneously compressed, the entire galaxy completely vanished.

The spectroscopic reading was zero, the radio reading was zero, and the gravitational lensing reading was a still-decaying miniature singularity.

Where there should have been three stars, at least twelve planets, an asteroid belt, and a massive amount of interstellar dust, there was now nothing.

Evan knocked over his coffee.

The coffee spilled along the edge of the desk onto the floor, but he didn't even look down at it.

Trembling, he picked up the tablet specially used for printing anomaly data briefings, rushed out of the duty room, and ran wildly down the corridor, hammering repeatedly on the door at the end of the corridor bearing the sign "Observatory Night Duty Director".

Dr. Hollis Tanner, the night duty director, pulled open the door from his office, his hair disheveled and eyelids half-drooping, clearly just knocked awake from a folding cot.

He glanced at Evan, then at the shaking tablet in his hand, his tone carrying obvious impatience:

"Calder, you better have a good enough reason to explain why you woke me up from bed at three in the morning."

Evan flipped the tablet over to face Tanner's face. The spectral curves and gravitational lensing decay charts on the screen were still updating in real-time.

His voice trembled with excessive excitement:

"Dr. Tanner! A triple-star system four light-years away from Earth... has completely disappeared just a few minutes ago!"

"It was swallowed by something like a black hole!"

Tanner took the tablet and glanced at it, then pressed his stubby fingers against the edge of the screen, pushing the tablet back down and shaking his head slightly at Evan:

"Calder, you've worked at this observatory for six years, and I personally signed every column on your resume."

"The constancy of the speed of light is an ironclad rule."

"If something really happened to a galaxy four light-years away, it could only be observed on Earth four years later; it is absolutely impossible to see it instantly."

He pushed the tablet back into Evan's arms, his voice even colder, "Report to the Personnel Department tomorrow."

Evan stood in place, the edge of the tablet repeatedly scraping across his uncontrollably trembling fingers.

Just then, from the other end of the corridor, another burst of hurried footsteps sounded.

Another observation crew member, Alan Avery, sprinted over barefoot carrying printouts of the same set of data, panting as he said to Tanner:

"Dr. Tanner! In the direction of Centaurus... the triple-star system is completely wiped out! Swallowed by an unknown black hole! All raw data has been cross-validated, and there are no instrumental errors!"

Tanner turned around, his face still wearing the same impatient tone as when he spoke to Evan just now,

and was about to scold these two guys who "teamed up to pull a prank" together,

when a third figure stumbled out from the corner of the corridor.

Lisa Morrissey, the leader of the observation team for the No. 3 Telescope Array and a veteran technician with over a decade at this observatory who never ran in the corridors under any circumstances, was currently running wildly barefoot all the way from the duty room.

Without even having time to print the data into a paper briefing, she held the tablet directly aloft, her breathing intermittent and rapid:

"Dr. Tanner! Four light-years away... the triple-star system... swallowed by a black hole! The data has been cross-validated with Station No. 2! It's... it's true!"

Tanner looked at these three people standing in the corridor, the tablets in their hands each flashing the same debris trajectory calculation chart.

He fell silent for quite a while.

The constancy of the speed of light was a sacred law of physics,

but at this moment, inside this observatory, three sets of independent observation systems had all printed out the same debris spectral line compressed into a singularity by a black hole on their respective control panels, and everyone's expression was filled with extreme terror.

He took the tablet from Lisa's hand, slowly flipped through it page by page, and carefully compared each observation parameter.

After comparing all of them, he spread out the raw spectrum and plasma ejection full waveform from Evan's hands onto the ground terminal, examining them meticulously many times.

Aside from the fact that the foundational explanatory basis of the constant speed of light could not hold true,

all other data were completely correct.

He raised his head, pressed the tablet tightly against his chest with his palm, and then, barefoot, stumbled down the corridor toward a higher floor.

The stained coffee stains on the hem of his pajamas and the edges of ordinary printing paper were scattered together on the floor.

A dozen minutes later,

in the office of Dr. Cedric Winslow, the director of the Mount Wilson Observatory,

Tanner placed the tablet in front of Winslow and took less than a minute to briefly summarize the observation results.

After listening, Winslow put on his reading glasses and replayed all the observation data from beginning to end.

His fingers pressed against the edge of the screen, repeatedly swiping across the singularity afterimages locked by the same moment in the fields of view of various wavebands.

Then he slowly took off his glasses, gently wiped them with his cuff, and pondered for a long time.

"There are no problems with the observation results."

He put his glasses on the desk, raised his head, and said to Tanner, as well as Evan, Alan, and Lisa who were standing at the office door not daring to come in,

"The Three-Body Star System four light-years away from Earth has indeed been destroyed."

"The destruction process was compressed into an extremely short window, and then the entire galaxy was swallowed by a rapidly expanding and contracting miniature singularity, with the debris spectrum completely matching all our waveband data."

Evan held onto the door frame and asked softly: "Why can we see it right now?"

Winslow gently rubbed his glasses and set them down again, looking past the desk at Tanner, and then sweeping across everyone at the door. His voice wasn't loud but extremely clear:

"Zeta Star has deployed a pilot intelligence device codenamed 'Yuanzi' on Earth."

"The public announcement of π = 3 that previously appeared in the firmament was precisely a direct demonstration by Yuanzi on the Earth's visual channel layer."

"Now, instantly transmitting the imagery of the destruction of the galaxy four light-years away to Earth is likely also Yuanzi executing some kind of message-passing strategy."

No one inside or outside the office made a sound.

The principle of the constancy of the speed of light still held true in physics textbooks,

but the existence of Yuanzi itself was a rewriting of this principle.

Winslow pulled open the drawer, took out an encrypted communication terminal independent of all network ports from inside, and pressed the authentication key for the White House Situation Room's direct-connection channel.

The encrypted terminal's prompt tone was low and mechanical, and the authentication characters lit up box by box on the screen.

Meanwhile,

the Flagstaff Observatory in Arizona, the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, the McDonald Observatory in Texas, and the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico successively sent observation briefings with completely identical characteristics to the White House.

On every briefing, that set of spectral waveforms was completely identical:

the triple-star system four light-years away was completely wiped out, and the debris spectrum and miniature black hole decay traces were repeatedly visible.

At the same time,

all countries around the world with astronomical observation capabilities observed the same debris signal of the Three-Body Star System being swallowed by the black hole.

In the United Kingdom,

the joint briefing from the Cambridge Observatory and the Greenwich Observatory was flipped open page by page in the Prime Minister's office on Downing Street.

In Gaul Country,

the debris spectrum from the Southern Alps Observatory was directly synchronized to the Elysee Palace's encrypted data center.

In Russia,

the Caucasus Astronomical Observatory sent the independently cross-validated ranging data and black hole decay waveforms to the Kremlin.

In India,

the Chandigarh Radio Astronomy Center forwarded the printouts of the singularity afterimages that it had compared multiple times to the Department of Defense in New Delhi.

In Japan,

the National Astronomical Observatory pushed the targeted debris spectral lines in the direction of Centaurus into the Tokyo Prime Minister's Official Residence.

The observation time for every country was completely synchronized:

Yuanzi did not favor any country, but instead poured this pulse simultaneously into all optical windows around the globe that were tuned to the correct observation frequency band.

Number 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister's Office.

Edward Harrington, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, sat behind an old oak desk that had been used for nearly two hundred years, his hands crossed and resting on the joint briefing marked "Top Secret" before him.

His Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Alistair Croft, stood opposite the desk, having just finished explaining page by page the synchronized observation data transmitted over the encrypted dedicated line from the Elysee Palace in Gaul Country.

"The people of Zeta Star used a mirror we cannot shield to push the entire process of something four light-years away being killed directly before everyone's eyes."

Harrington flipped the briefing to the last page, looking at the debris spectrum labeled "Microscopic Black Hole Decay Traces",

"By doing this, they are merely telling us:"

"They can destroy another civilization in a few seconds, and they can destroy us in a few seconds."

"But they have already left subtitles over the Hoover Dam demanding that Earth hand over the Fourth Prince."

"This shows that they don't want to blow Earth and Trisolaris together into a black hole; they need to find something on this planet that they cannot directly blow up."