155: Faster-than-light future

Xiamen, Earth Science Research Center.

The subtropical sunlight outside the window streamed through the massive anti-UV glass curtain wall, illuminating the entire spacious laboratory. This was the cutting edge of human wisdom, and a suspended holographic screen in the center of the lab was replaying the speech that had caused a global sensation hours ago.

On screen, Lei Wen, dressed in a dark blue uniform, stood on the podium, the focus of everyone's attention, painting a grand blueprint for the colonization of the Kari Star System for all of humanity. His voice was steady and powerful, and every gesture seemed to guide the direction of civilization's progress.

"... Go conquer, go build, go multiply! Let the fire of civilization burn under the light of another star!"

Below the screen, lines of comments and bullet screens cascaded like a waterfall, all filled with fanatical remarks such as "Long live Human Civilization," "Salute to Director Raven," and "I want to sign up too."

However, as the owner of this top-tier physics laboratory, Ilya von Klein seemed uninterested in all of this.

She was curled up on the sofa in the laboratory's break area, still wearing that slightly oversized lab coat, her two shoeless little feet swinging unconsciously in mid-air.

She held a steaming cup of black tea, which was printed with a cartoon penguin making a face.

"Honestly, it's all just emotional, inflammatory nonsense."

Ilya curled her lip, tapped her fingers lightly in the void to lower the volume, and then gently stirred the black tea with a small silver spoon, letting the fragrant aroma waft out.

"What about the key points? What about the high-energy crystal mines unique to the Kari Star System? What about the genetic map of that purple plant that can survive in low-oxygen environments? These are the things scientists actually care about, okay?"

Beside her, several gray-haired old professors were watching the replay intently, their eyes glistening with tears, occasionally sighing with emotion.

"It's too magnificent... I never thought that in my lifetime, I would actually see humanity step out of the Solar System to land on a planet in another star system." An old professor took off his glasses and wiped the corners of his eyes. "Back in the day, we had to calculate every detail just to launch a satellite, and now we actually possess an entire alien star system."

"Indeed, it's simply a miracle." Another researcher echoed, "The pace of Human Civilization is just too fast, so fast that it sometimes feels unreal."

Listening to the exclamations around her, a hint of disapproval flashed in Ilya's crimson eyes.

As a "New Human" born in 2062, one of the first geniuses to enjoy the benefits of blood orchid genetic optimization, her worldview was completely different from these old-generation scientists who had come from the old era.

In her view, all of this was a matter of course.

Since they possessed anti-matter engines and had mastered such advanced materials science, if they still couldn't cross that mere 5.4 light-years, it would be humanity's shame.

As for conquering alien civilizations? That was just an inevitable footnote in the process of civilization's development, as natural as when humans once walked out of the African continent and conquered the oceans and the sky.

She had no interest in political conquest, nor was she attracted to the vanity of controlling alien races.

What she was interested in was the unknown that existed in that distant star system.

"I heard that the gravity on Kali Star is only 0.8 times that of Earth. I wonder if the spatial curvature constant there will have a slight deviation due to the different stellar gravitational field?" Ilya bit the edge of her teacup, her mind filled with dry data. "If I could get first-hand gravitational wave detection data, perhaps I could correct my Klein metric model..."

Just as she was immersed in her own palace of thought, pondering how to use alien data to optimize her equations, the laboratory door suddenly emitted a gentle chime.

A young staff member walked in quickly, his expression carrying a hint of undisguised nervousness.

"Doctor!"

"What is it? If it's a report for funding, let the deputy director sign it." Ilya said without turning her head, her gaze still fixed on Lei Wen's face on the screen, as if trying to analyze from his expression whether the man was lying.

"No, it's not funding." The staff member took a deep breath and lowered his voice, "It's Director Raven. He's downstairs and says he wants to see you."

Ilya was stunned for a moment, then put down her teacup, a playful smile curling at the corner of her mouth.

"Oh? Our big Director Raven ran over to me right after finishing his speech?"

She jumped down from the sofa and straightened her wrinkled lab coat. Although her height only reached the staff member's chest, the aura of authority that didn't need anger to be felt made the other person subconsciously lower his head.

"Let him come up." Ilya sat back in her office chair, assuming the posture of a host. "Just as well, I have some things I need to talk to him about."

...

A few minutes later, the automatic door of the laboratory break area slid open again.

Lei Wen walked in.

He hadn't had time to change out of the dark blue uniform from his speech, and he still carried that majestic aura of someone who had just walked off the spotlight. But the moment he saw Ilya, the serious expression on his face instantly melted, turning into a kind of helplessness and gentleness one shows when facing an old friend (or perhaps a troublesome child).

"Good afternoon, Dr. Ilya."

Lei Wen greeted her with a smile.

"Good afternoon, Director Raven."

Ilya leaned against the large table, arms crossed, her crimson eyes scanning Lei Wen up and down, and said with a smile: "You really stole the show today! Tsk tsk, listening to it almost made my blood boil. You really are the man who can twist those politicians around his finger at the Earth Council."

Lei Wen chuckled, pulled over a chair, and sat down, letting out a long sigh.

"Don't mock me. You know I don't like those occasions, but sometimes, to get those guys to open their wallets, you have to put on a show."

"Hmph, hypocritical adult." Ilya hummed, then took out a jar of precious tea leaves from a drawer. "Want some tea? Although it's not as good as the special supplies you usually drink, this was grown by my parents personally."

"I'd love to."

Watching Ilya make tea skillfully, alarm bells rang in Lei Wen's heart.

This girl usually couldn't even be bothered to lift an eyelid, yet today she was voluntarily making tea?

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

"Speak." Lei Wen took the teacup and took a sip. "What do you want?"

A sly, fox-like smile immediately appeared on Ilya's face. She extended her slender fingers and waved them in front of Lei Wen.

"Nothing much, just those little things you promised me last time."

"Last time?" Lei Wen was confused. "It's been half a year since I last came, right? What did I promise you?"

"Oh, noble people are forgetful." Ilya blinked and said righteously, "Didn't you say that as long as the space-time interference theory was successfully verified, you would approve an extra special budget for my next phase of research? And you also nodded about building an independent deep-space faster-than-light physics laboratory, right?"

"..."

Lei Wen's hand holding the teacup froze in mid-air.

He desperately searched for relevant memory fragments in his mind.

Half a year ago? At that time, the space-time interference theory under the Klein metric model proposed by Ilya was still in the verification stage. He had indeed come here. Ilya seemed to be complaining about the gravity interference on Earth being too great and wanted a better place to conduct experiments... But he absolutely had not explicitly promised any "huge extra budget" or "independent space station"!

"When did I promise those things?" Lei Wen looked at her speechlessly. "What I said at the time was 'We will consider improving the scientific research environment when the time is right.' That's completely different from what you're saying, isn't it?"

"Isn't 'consider' just a euphemism for 'agree' in the language of politicians?" Ilya tilted her head and asked innocently.

"..."

Lei Wen was amused by her logic. Is this the sophistry ability of a genius?

"white flower, retrieve the conversation record from that time." Lei Wen directly called for external aid.

"Father, the records show that you did not make a direct promise at the time." white flower's voice was as smooth as ever. "However, your exact words were: As long as you can solve the last few theoretical problems of space-time interference theory, I will pluck the stars for you if you want."

Lei Wen: "..."

Well, this is what they call 'loose lips sink ships,' but the space-time interference theory is indeed very important. To develop a Warp Engine, one must develop equipment capable of interfering with space-time curvature.

Watching Lei Wen get stumped, Ilya proudly lifted her chin, like a victorious little rooster.

"Fine, fine." Lei Wen waved his hand helplessly. "The budget is easy to handle; the Interstellar Affairs General Bureau isn't short of money right now. As for the space laboratory..."

His expression became more serious.

"This is also the main reason I came to see you today."

Hearing this, Ilya also put away her playful expression. Her red eyes instantly became focused and sharp, as if she had switched personalities.

"You mean, the project can be started?"

"Yes." Lei Wen nodded and put down his teacup. "Although the anti-matter engine gave us the ability to cross star systems, as you said, it is still too slow. Fifty years... for an interstellar civilization, this kind of communication and transportation delay is fatal."

"We need true faster-than-light travel."

Lei Wen called up a top-secret file, which was the calculation results of the [Apocalypse] mainframe on space physics over the past few months.

"In the past few years, although we have been busy fighting and colonizing, research in basic science has never stopped, especially since we obtained some theoretical inspiration regarding Higgs field fluctuation elimination from... well, from the Faleim Civilization."

"Mass eliminator?" Ilya's eyes lit up instantly, like a child seeing her favorite toy. "I think I know the principle of that theory! By eliminating the higgs boson of matter to make its rest mass zero, thereby ignoring the limitations of relativity to reach the speed of light or even faster! This is a genius idea!"

"However," she frowned slightly, "the engineering implementation of that technology is too difficult, and it can only achieve pseudo-teleportation. It has extremely high risks for maintaining stable long-distance navigation, especially manned navigation. Once the Higgs field recovers halfway, the spaceship will instantly collapse into a black hole due to infinite mass."

"Exactly, so we are not taking that route for the time being." Lei Wen said. "We are going back to a more fundamental field, which is Warp Drive."

Warp Drive is an enduring concept in science fiction works and is the only feasible plan in current human physics theory that might bypass the speed of light limit.

Its principle is to build a "warp bubble" around the spaceship, compressing the space in front of the ship and stretching the space behind it, thereby allowing the spaceship to move faster than light relative to an external observer without violating the "local speed of light limit." The "tide" of cosmic space expansion will further accelerate the speed of the warp bubble.

"How has your Klein metric model been optimized in the past few years?" Lei Wen asked.

Mentioning her professional field, Ilya immediately got into the zone. She walked to the holographic console, her hands dancing, and called up an extremely complex four-dimensional topological structure model.

"There is progress, and it's significant."

She pointed to the constantly fluctuating sphere in the center of the model and said.

"The biggest bottleneck has always been energy density and spatial stability. To maintain a warp bubble capable of wrapping an entire warship, the energy required is difficult for an anti-matter reactor to provide. Moreover, the elasticity of space itself is extremely high, like a strong rubber band. We try our best to pull it apart, but it will snap back at any time and crush us."

"But we discovered that if high-energy super-graviton streams are injected into the warp field generator, they produce a peculiar lubricating effect. They can greatly reduce the elastic modulus of space, reducing the energy required for us to fold space by three orders of magnitude!"

"Three orders of magnitude?" Lei Wen was moved.

This meant that an engine that originally required the energy of a star to drive might now only need a large anti-matter reactor to function.

"Yes!" Ilya waved her fists excitedly. "Not only that, I also discovered a special spatial frequency. As long as we lock the engine's output frequency to this band, the stability of the warp bubble will be increased exponentially!"

"Theoretically, we have already found the key to the door leading to faster-than-light travel."

"But the problem is..." Her voice suddenly lowered, and a helpless expression appeared on her face.

"What is the problem?"

"Materials." Ilya sighed. "We don't have materials that can withstand this high-frequency spatial oscillation and super-graviton scouring. Although the current EL103 alloy is hard, it will still shatter like shortbread in that environment. We need a material with higher strength and special affinity for gravitational waves to manufacture the core components of the engine, which is the warp coil."

After hearing this, Lei Wen was not disappointed; instead, he smiled.

"If it's just a material problem..."

He took a storage device out of his pocket and pushed it in front of Ilya.

"Look at this."

Ilya took the storage device suspiciously and inserted it into the terminal.

The next second, her eyes widened, her mouth slightly agape, and she completely lost all expression management.

This was the detailed data on the new biological composite alloy developed by the kari scientist named Kul from the Kari Star System, as well as the formula further improved by Grey Wind using Faleim technology.

"This is... carbon-silicon-biological polymer composite structure?" Ilya's fingers slid rapidly across the virtual screen, her reading speed astonishingly fast. "This lattice arrangement... this stress dispersion mechanism... My god! Who thought of this? This is practically tailor-made for warp coils!"

"A kari genius from 5.4 light-years away." Lei Wen said with a smile. "Although their technology is backward, their intuition in certain fields is amazing."

"With this, plus the technology provided by the Faleim People as an aid..." Ilya's brain was running at high speed, her eyes getting brighter and brighter, as if two flames were burning.

She suddenly raised her head, staring at Lei Wen, her tone filled with incomparable confidence.

"As long as you give me that space laboratory, give me enough resources and manpower, and this new material..."

"Five years!"

She held up five fingers.

"In five years, I can build you a prototype of a Warp Engine that can run stably!"

"By then, let alone 5.4 light-years, even 54 light-years will only be a matter of a few years!"

Looking at the genius girl radiating dazzling light in front of him, Lei Wen was also very happy.

Another shackle of Human Civilization was about to be broken.

"Good."

Lei Wen stood up and reached out his hand to her.

"The budget is doubled, the space laboratory will start construction immediately, and the people and materials you need will all be in place within this month."

"Go ahead and do it, Dr. Ilya."

"Take us to see the scenery above the speed of light."

Ilya looked at that hand, a brilliant smile curling at the corner of her mouth, and shook it firmly.

"It's a deal, big financier!"