94: Twenty years

Facing the French reporter's question, the usually ice-sculpture-like, cold face of Talon twitched slightly.

He was silent for a moment, appearing to weigh his words carefully.

"We understand and appreciate everyone's curiosity about the unknown world." He finally spoke slowly, his voice remaining steady. "The Falaim Scientific Integration Nation welcomes any civilization to engage in cultural and knowledge exchanges with us on equal footing."

"But at this stage," his gaze swept over the expectant faces present, "we believe that large-scale contact between two civilizations with vast differences in biological form, social structure, and understanding of the universe is still premature."

He did not directly say the word "refusal," but the meaning implied in his words was already self-evident.

A more tactful way of putting it is that we are not the same race, lack a shared cultural background and set of values, and even the air we breathe is different; forcing us to live together would only create all sorts of problems.

A more direct and cruel way of saying it is this—until you reach a matching level of civilization, you are not yet worthy of setting foot on our land.

Although these words left many who were immersed in beautiful fantasies feeling a trace of disappointment and displeasure, it was within everyone's expectations.

Friendship is built on a foundation of equality.

Before possessing sufficient strength, any so-called "friendliness" might just be a condescending act of charity.

"However," Talon seemed to realize that his previous words had been a bit too blunt. Remembering that the guide originated from this civilization, he changed the subject and offered a more constructive suggestion.

"In order to facilitate more efficient and standardized long-term cooperation between our two civilizations in the future," he said to the representatives of the Earth Council present, "I personally suggest that you should establish a permanent body dedicated to handling all interstellar affairs as soon as possible."

"This body should possess authority exceeding that of ordinary national departments and be able to represent the entire Human Civilization in coordinating with us."

"All future cooperation between the Faleim Civilization and Human Civilization—whether it be technology transfer, resource exchange, or jointly dealing with unknown cosmic threats—will be conducted under the framework of these two equivalent bodies on both sides."

This proposal immediately received unanimous approval from all the high-ranking Earth officials present.

...

"Following a vote by all member states of the Earth Council, it has been unanimously passed that Mr. Lei Wen will serve as the second Director of the Interstellar Affairs General Bureau of the Human Federation."

New York, Earth Council Headquarters Building.

In the solemn plenary hall, when the current rotating chairman announced this appointment in his deep, resonant voice, the entire venue erupted in prolonged, enthusiastic applause.

Under the spotlight, Lei Wen stood up from his seat and smiled, waving to the representatives below who represented all the nations and factions on this planet.

He was wearing a well-tailored dark blue suit, his black hair meticulously groomed.

Time did not seem to have left many traces on his face.

In his forties, he still looked like a young man in his twenties, except that his black eyes held more profound wisdom and composure, like a sea of stars.

The Interstellar Affairs General Bureau, an institution established based on the suggestion of the former Faraim Fleet commander Talon, had now become the most powerful and important external organization within the entire Human Federation system.

It was fully responsible for handling all matters related to interstellar diplomacy, interstellar trade, interstellar exploration, and even interstellar warfare, and the official name of Human Civilization as a whole was the Human Federation.

Its first Director was none other than the highly respected Academician Chen Haikang.

Over the past twenty years, this old man had dedicated almost the last of his life's light and heat to this institution he had created with his own hands.

With his exceptional wisdom and noble character, he had earned everyone's respect and laid the most solid foundation for Human Civilization in the early stages of the interstellar era.

But time is, after all, ruthless.

As one of the few high-ranking humans who refused to take the fountain of youth potion due to personal beliefs, he was now over seventy and felt that his physical condition could no longer handle this job that required such immense mental effort.

Therefore, several months ago, he had formally submitted his retirement application to the Chinese government and the Earth Council.

And there was almost no controversy regarding his successor.

Everyone unanimously cast their gaze toward that man who, for the past twenty years, had been influencing the direction of the entire Human Civilization in a semi-hidden manner—Lei Wen.

In the eyes of most human leaders, this mysterious mastermind behind Paradox Technology was undoubtedly the person with the most research and the most authority on interstellar relations and future technology.

It could be said that his taking over the position of Academician Chen Haikang was what everyone expected.

Twenty years had passed.

For the vast universe, this was just a blink of an eye.

But for Human Civilization, this was a golden period of development that had seen earth-shaking changes.

In these short twenty years, the technological leaps achieved by Human Civilization were even faster and more concentrated than the two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution combined.

The basic scientific theories and the perfect periodic table of elements generously gifted by the Faleim Civilization back then were like a golden key, opening countless doors to the hall of truth for human scientists.

With the computational power of the [Tianqi IX] optical quantum supercomputer, the [Gonggong] Hadron Collider and the more powerful particle accelerators built subsequently continued to crack open the deeper secrets of the microscopic world.

Humans had not only completely mastered the technology for the stable capture and excitation of super-gravitons but had even discovered more unknown particles that existed in the more microscopic world and only participated in weak interaction forces.

These huge breakthroughs in basic science were quickly applied to practical engineering fields like a catalyst.

All sorts of inconceivable new materials were being developed in laboratories around the world like mushrooms after rain.

Self-healing memory alloys, ultra-black materials capable of absorbing 99.9% of light, phase-change metals that could freely switch between different forms...

The engineering capability of the human world was orders of magnitude stronger than it had been twenty years ago, and the most landmark change among them was undoubtedly the maturation and popularization of anti-gravity technology.

Nowadays, it was rare to see traditional aircraft that relied on aerodynamics to take off in the skies above major cities around the world.

Replacing them were various anti-gravity vehicles with sci-fi aesthetics that could silently take off and land vertically or even hover freely.

They were like docile metal fish, shuttling orderly through aerial routes uniformly planned by AI, completely solving the traffic congestion problem that had plagued humanity for centuries.

And the impact of this technology on the aerospace field was nothing short of revolutionary.

New-generation interstellar warships and engineering spacecraft could now rely entirely on their own onboard anti-gravity devices to easily lift off freely from the heavy gravity wells of planets like Earth and Mars, no longer needing to rely on bulky booster rockets like their predecessors, the [jinglei-class].

This greatly reduced the cost and barrier to entry for interstellar travel.

A true great age of interplanetary exploration belonging to all people had finally arrived.

Human engineering spacecraft were now capable of frequently traveling between Earth, the Moon, Mars, and various mining space stations located in the asteroid belt at a very low cost.

They mined valuable resources from those asteroids rich in rare minerals and then transported them back to several huge industrial space stations located in orbit around the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter for deep processing.

An interplanetary industrial system and trade network spanning the Solar System had basically taken shape.

The construction of a spacecraft no longer required the national effort of a single country or the collective effort of the entire Human Civilization. Thanks to the massive gains from the AI technology and automated production lines of Paradox Technology, which had long since permeated every corner of manufacturing, any enterprise capable of running a large factory could now order a unique, custom-made spacecraft from major shipyards spread across Earth and Mars orbit according to their own needs.

Some companies pursued speed and would select top-tier ion thrusters and lightweight hulls for their ships.

Some companies focused on cargo capacity and would choose modular freighters with huge cargo holds.

There were even some wealthy giant enterprises that would spare no expense in equipping their flagships with military-grade armor and weapon systems to showcase their strength and status.

Various spacecraft of different models, different liveries, and filled with corporate personalized characteristics became the most beautiful scenery of this era.

Nowadays, the Earth Defense Force had been disbanded, replaced by the Human Federation Starrealm Army.

The Starrealm Army was under the jurisdiction and command of the Department of Interstellar Warfare of the Interstellar Affairs General Bureau, with the First Interstellar Fleet and Second Interstellar Fleet under its command. These two fleets were the most powerful military forces of Human Civilization (excluding Lei Wen's forces). The hull of the First Interstellar Fleet's flagship, the pacific, was nearly 2.5 times that of the voyager, possessed armor made of materials stronger than the el-3 composite target material used to build the voyager, and was even equipped with a strong magnetic field resonance deflection shield device, capable of deploying an invisible electromagnetic shield to deflect kinetic attacks.

The upgrades to the weapon systems were even more striking; the positron cannon that once served as the main gun of the voyager could only serve as a secondary gun on the pacific. The main gun of the pacific was a massive-caliber plasma cannon, which could release tremendous energy to destroy targets by accelerating and focusing high-temperature, high-energy plasma. At a time when antimatter theory was not yet fully mature and the energy levels of positron cannons could only be maintained in a relatively small range, the power of the plasma cannon was more than ten times that of the positron cannon, and its theoretical rate of fire was faster.

Besides the powerful flagship, a fleet also contained 100 capital ships the size of the voyager and 2,000 Wave-class frigates, which had slightly stronger combat capabilities than the starfish-class frigates.

And excluding this military force that guarded Human Civilization, the entity within the Solar System that possessed the most warships and spacecraft was, surprisingly, Elon's Nikola Group.