162: Amazing Stories of a Genius Scientist

After the Wanderer completely severed its last physical connection with the Horizon Space Station and flew into deep space wrapped in a warp bubble, Ilya von Klein thought she would feel vibrations, dizziness, or even some kind of out-of-body tearing sensation.

But there was nothing.

No inertial pressure, no engine roar, not even the slightest hint of being pushed back into her seat.

Only the scene outside the window had undergone a drastic, earth-shattering change in an instant.

Ilya jumped down from the command seat, her small leather shoes tapping against the temperature-controlled floor, and walked quickly to the massive panoramic viewport.

Her crimson eyes widened to their limit at this moment, greedily devouring the painting before her that only existed in the dreams of the craziest theoretical physicists.

"Is this faster-than-light travel?"

She murmured to herself, her voice as light as a bubble that would shatter at the slightest touch.

The universe outside the window no longer looked like a deep, dark background dotted with diamond-like stars.

That familiar starry sky had vanished, and what appeared before her was a colorful, bizarre, and surreal tunnel.

Directly ahead of the ship, the originally sparse starlight was now frantically converging toward a single point in the center, and during this convergence, the colors of these light points underwent drastic changes.

They rapidly shifted from normal white through the blue end of the spectrum into dazzling cyan, blue, and purple, finally turning into clusters of blinding white light that the naked eye could barely look at, even escaping into the invisible ultraviolet and X-ray bands.

The situation behind the ship was the exact opposite.

All the starlight was rapidly receding and diffusing, their colors sliding toward the red end of the spectrum, turning orange, deep red, and finally sinking into the dark abyss of infrared.

On both sides of the ship, at the edges of her field of view, a brilliant rainbow halo appeared, encircling the hull.

That wasn't a rainbow caused by atmospheric refraction, but a "scar" left behind after the radiance of the universe itself was forcibly bent.

"Log entry." Ilya took a deep breath, forcing her wildly beating heart to calm down and regaining the rationality of a scientist. "Earth standard Beijing time, October 4, 2117. Location: outside the Oort Cloud of the Solar System... No, it's already hard to define the concept of location now. Status: warp cruise mode. Current speed: 100 times the speed of light."

"Navigator, activate the full-spectrum optical filter and correct the forward radiation blue-shift and rear radiation red-shift to the visible light band."

"Understood, Captain."

A soft electronic voice sounded, and the smart coating on the viewport instantly adjusted its refractive index and light filtering parameters.

Those blinding clusters of white light and the deep darkness returned to being brilliant starlike points, but their positions and shapes remained distorted.

Ilya turned around to look at the massive holographic projection in the center of the bridge, which displayed a real-time topological map of the spacetime curvature around the ship.

It was an artificially created gravitational potential well.

In front of the ship, space was extremely compressed, forming a bottomless downhill slope, while the space behind the ship was extremely stretched, forming a continuously rising uphill slope.

The Wanderer was situated in the flat area between these two slopes, which was the core of the warp bubble.

"Incredible..." Ilya waved her fingers, writing formulas in the air rapidly, muttering to herself as she wrote.

"This is the perfect engineering implementation of the Klein metric, or rather, a model modified by Faleim technology."

She pointed to the spherical interface enveloping the ship, as if speaking to the Navigator.

"I understand now!"

"Many people mistakenly believe that faster-than-light flight would cause stars to turn into elongated 'star-lines,' just like in those Hollywood science fiction movies. Hah, that is simply an insult to special relativity."

Ilya curled her lip in disdain.

"When the speed approaches or even exceeds the speed of light, the first thing that occurs is severe relativistic aberration, also known as the searchlight effect."

"We have caught up to the light emitted from the front, or rather, the photons in front are hitting us at a higher frequency, causing the viewing angle of objects in front of us to shrink drastically, and stars originally distributed all around or even behind us visually gather in the direction of the ship's advance."

"It's like running in the rain; the raindrops that were falling vertically look like they are hitting us head-on."

"But that's not even the most exciting part." The Navigator projected a waveform graph in front of Ilya at the right moment. "What's even more exciting is the extreme nature of the Doppler effect."

"When we slam into the photons ahead at 100 times the speed of light, the wavelength of the light waves is violently compressed, and the frequency increases exponentially. Visible light instantly turns into ultraviolet, X-rays, and even gamma rays. If there were no protection, the starlight ahead would turn our ship into a giant microwave oven in an instant, cooking all the proteins inside."

"Conversely, the light waves behind us are stretched, turning into radio waves, leaving us with nothing but a void of darkness."

"Therefore," she looked at the rainbow halo spanning the middle of the ship outside the window, "only on the sides of our field of view, that narrow region perpendicular to our direction of motion, is the impact of the Doppler shift relatively small. The originally invisible cosmic microwave background radiation is blue-shifted into the visible light band, while the original starlight is partially red-shifted or blue-shifted, forming a 'Star Rainbow' that spans the sky."

"So this is the horizon of a faster-than-light traveler."

Ilya watched that brilliant halo, her eyes full of fascination.

"We are wrapped in an isolated island outside the light cone; events ahead haven't happened yet, and events behind can't catch up to us. This ship has become a ghost in the universe, a bug in the chain of causality."

"Navigator, report the current engine output parameters."

"Dark matter reactor output power is 1%, dark matter thrusters are in standby mode, the warp field generator is running stably, and the space compression ratio is 100:1," the AI replied.

"Only 1%..." Ilya sighed, "Is this the terrifying aspect of Faleim technology? Relying on just this level of energy output to manipulate the very structure of spacetime with such ease."

She recalled the massive thrusters humanity once had to build just to reach 25% of the speed of light and the massive amount of propellant consumed, then looked at the elegant silver ship beneath her feet and couldn't help but shake her head.

"No, we aren't flying." Ilya corrected herself.

"Inside the warp bubble, the Wanderer is stationary relative to the local space around it. Our relative velocity is zero, so I don't feel any inertial force, nor is there any time dilation effect."

"The twin paradox of special relativity doesn't apply here; the rate of time passing for me is the same as on Earth."

"What is truly moving is space itself."

Ilya walked to the console, looking at the extremely tempting speed slider.

Current setting: 100c (100 times the speed of light).

Maximum limit: 3000c (3000 times the speed of light).

"3000 times the speed of light..." Ilya's finger hovered over that limit, trembling slightly, "If I push it to the max, we will cross 8 light-years in one day."

"In that case, what would the scenery outside the window look like?"

"Navigator, simulate the visual environment at 3000 times the speed of light."

"Simulating..."

The image on the holographic screen changed instantly.

At such extreme speeds, the forward radiation blue-shift would reach a terrifying extreme. Even with the strongest filters, the sensors would only see a blinding, sight-stealing expanse of white—an ocean of high-energy gamma-ray bursts—and that beautiful 'Star Rainbow' would shrink further, turning into a tiny, extremely bright halo.

"Too boring." Ilya pulled back her hand, "I wouldn't be able to see anything; it would be like locking myself in a glowing cocoon."

"I'm here to travel, not to rush."

She sat back in the large command chair, pulled out a half-eaten pack of cookies from her pocket, and began munching on them.

"Maintain a cruise at 100 times the speed of light," she ordered, "This speed is just right; it allows me to feel the thrill of exceeding the speed of light while letting me see the scenery along the way."

"Navigator, turn on the full-band wave detector. I want to hear the sounds of this universe."

"Connecting... Filtering background noise..."

A series of strange sounds echoed within the bridge.

It was not the vibration of air, but simulated audio effects converted from data generated by electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves, and various high-energy particles hitting the outer wall of the warp bubble.

Sometimes like the low moans of a whale—that was the rotation of distant pulsars;

Sometimes like the patter of a rainstorm—that was the friction from passing through interstellar dust clouds;

Sometimes it was a deathly silence of humming—that was the eternal, unchanging background noise of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

"This is the real symphony." Ilya closed her eyes, looking satisfied, "Much better than Mozart."

Suddenly, as if remembering something, she opened her eyes and asked, "Navigator, what would happen if we hit an asteroid right now?"

"In the warp state, the space in front of the ship is extremely compressed," the AI answered calmly. "Any macroscopic matter entering the leading edge of the warp field, whether dust or an asteroid, would be instantly torn apart into elementary particles by that terrifying tidal force and then slide along the edge of the warp bubble toward the rear."

"Simply put, we are now like a drill wrapped in an invincible force field. Unless we encounter a strong gravitational well generated by a massive celestial body (such as a star or black hole) that interferes with the stability of the warp bubble, no matter can stop us."

"Is this what they call being immune to all attacks?" Ilya smiled, "No wonder that guy Lei Wen dared to let me come out alone."

"However, speaking of gravitational wells..."

Ilya called up the Star Map ahead.

"Our first destination, that F-81 Star System 81 light-years away, is there anything special about it?"

"According to the database shared by the Faleim Civilization," the AI replied, "that star system has a yellow-white dwarf star of spectral type F, and there is a planet with life in the habitable zone. The civilization level is the Middle Ages."

"The Middle Ages..." A glimmer of curiosity flashed in Ilya's eyes, "Knights, castles, swords? Or ignorance, plagues, and the stake?"

"Regardless of what it is, for me right now, I am like God."

She looked at the small dot on the screen that was still a few months of voyage away (calculated at 100 times the speed of light).

"No, even better than God."

"God created light, but I have surpassed light."

Ilya stood up, walked to the matter synthesizer in the living area, input the parameters, and soon received a cup of hot cocoa.

"The journey is still long," she said to the empty bridge, "Navigator, help me pull up those papers on loop quantum gravity theory. I want to take this time to further optimize my warp equation."

"Understood, Captain. Additionally, a reminder: according to your physiological monitoring data, it is time for you to sleep. Although time flows normally within the warp bubble, staying up late will still affect your height development."

"Shut up! That's determined by genetics! It has nothing to do with staying up late!" Ilya jumped up as if her tail had been stepped on, "Delete that notification for me!"

"Command cannot be executed. This is a foundational care protocol set by Director Raven, locked with highest authority."

"Lei Wen!!! You bastard!!!"

The roar of the silver-haired girl echoed in the silent faster-than-light ship, accompanied by that streak of silver light cutting through the sea of stars, speeding toward the unknown distance.