"Oh, you're here, Siske!" Luna said to the last arrival.
Guangmulings and the others looked at the languid Multi-eyed, slightly surprised.
"He's part of our team?"
Luna nodded, "Yes. Siske is the ship's safety officer. He has experience in space travel, and you're all newcomers. You can consult him if needed."
An experienced veteran.
They quickly offered polite greetings; this was their team's pillar; even with hidden agendas, maintaining relationships was important initially.
Luna addressed Siske, "Siske, your resume shows hundreds of years of space travel experience. I won't go into detail; you know your team's mission. Let's go."
Eleven people.
Luna believed they would have many interesting experiences. Their experiences, whatever they were, would be good stories.
After speaking, Luna returned to her room, leaving the others staring at each other. Usually, the boss of a small company would go along, wouldn't they? Why was this different? The boss was leaving, and they were to pilot the ship?
They had only known each other for a few days and hadn't met Siske.
Siske, expecting an interview, was also confused.
"..."
Silence and awkwardness filled the room.
After a moment, Guangmulings decided to board the ship, "Standing around is pointless. Let's get on the ship."
"Finally leaving the Ringworld! Aren't you excited?"
A brain-worm, Tiacocasi, nodded, "Right. Standing around is tiring. Interstellar space—I've never been to space before."
Luna had chosen inexperienced newcomers. Siske looked at his colleagues, surprised.
He just wanted to leave Alpha Eridani quietly. Strong-willed colleagues might cause conflict, but inexperienced newcomers meant he would bear the primary responsibility—even worse.
He almost decided to leave.
Seeing the ship, he changed his mind. Why did this ship exist? It gave him an intense sense of pressure. Was it a ship or a monster?
His hundreds of eyes shone as he focused on the ship. The range of his vision shifted, from infrared to ultraviolet, then to X-rays and alpha rays—incredibly sensitive, capturing the faint rays in space. His sight could penetrate the hull and flesh, like a scan.
"This is..."
He saw weapons hidden within the ship, different from its standard armament: KMington x283-a Antimatter Annihilation Cannons, Angku-series black hole weapons, Dragon Corps c19 Quantum Trap Weapons...
And a weapon he didn't recognize.
Each of these weapons cost millions of Energy Credits; this ship was far more valuable than its appearance suggested.
What kind of company was this?
Siske was the type who thrived on challenges; he enjoyed them because they led to exciting experiences. He decided to stay.
"Let's go. After takeoff, I'll share some knowledge you won't find online."
Siske's words sparked conversation among the others.
Luna watched them from a window. Siske was a carefully selected individual, among the top 10,000 in the Mortality Selection Plan.
What caught Luna's attention was that he had survived 729 years in the Mortality Selection Plan—a long time. Most participants didn't survive the first ten years; most of the top 10,000 survivors lived around 300 years.
Siske was tenacious and unlikely to die prematurely, adding a layer of security to the mission.
The ship slowly ascended, hovering at 100,000 meters before accelerating to Mach 10, piercing the Ringworld's atmosphere. Everyone looked out the window at the beautiful, massive Ringworld they called home.
The ship then activated its anti-gravity auxiliary engines, accelerating further. Within half an hour, it exceeded 10,000 km/s—the maximum speed within the star system. Seventeen days later, they had traveled 100 AU and left the Alpha Eridani system. Outside the system, the ship underwent a third acceleration, reaching 42,773 km/s in 3 hours and 18 minutes.
Siske glanced at the mission parameters: "Our destination is an explorer rendezvous point 163 light-years away. At this speed, it'll take 1143 years. This is a long journey; let's enter cryosleep."
"This is a high-end ship with an advanced server and a large simulated world. To avoid wasting time, explore the simulated world. It's randomly generated, so it's worth exploring."
Guangmulings and the others were surprised; Siske called this ship advanced?
"Are you joking? It's a bio-ship, built to save costs; how is it advanced?"
Siske, considering them future colleagues, explained, "Typical bio-ships are like that, but wealthy clients customize incredibly advanced ones."
"It seems you don't know our boss is quite wealthy. This ship probably cost 20–25 million Energy Credits, including energy replenishment systems—a minimum estimate."
Even on the wealthy Mobius Ringworld, purchasing a multi-million-Credit starship wasn't easy.
If not for the pressure emanating from the ship, Siske would have already turned around to question the boss; he wasn't one to follow the rules.
Guangmulings and the others were speechless for a while.
They suddenly felt like they were on a pirate ship.
Meanwhile, Luna was in her lab, examining an interesting object. It wouldn't cause a revolution, but it could make the Federation a little stronger.
...
In 2023, Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier received the Nobel Prize in Physics for attosecond lasers, ushering in a new era.
Attosecond laser technology allowed humanity to enter the atomic realm. Previously, atoms could only be simulated; now, they could be observed directly, propelling humanity into the atomic age.
The 2023 attosecond laser breakthrough led to the AI revolution of 2031, with numerous companies developing advanced AIs. That year was called the [Genesis Era].
This indirectly led to Ayla's creation. Luna, as an AI programmer and software engineer, tested Ayla on a rocket, allowing Luna to miraculously survive Earth's destruction.
Ayla later developed controllable nuclear fusion, leveraging her research into zeptoseconds.
Luna only learned about the arduous experiments later; Ayla hadn't yet mastered zeptoseconds, but the research process itself led to numerous discoveries and technological advancements.
Due to the limitations of light, in the 20th century, humanity considered attoseconds an insurmountable barrier. Technological progress was expected to stall at femtoseconds. The most common application of femtosecond technology was femtosecond laser eye surgery for myopia—the most advanced laser technology of the early 21st century.
The attosecond laser was a product of physicists' ingenious ideas. Because light is a wave, its limit using electronic methods is a picosecond pulse. Femtosecond lasers used locking techniques to achieve shorter pulses; attosecond lasers went further, using long-wavelength infrared light and noble gases to generate high-frequency electron pulses, resulting in attosecond pulses.
Based on this, physicists used equipment to interfere with and cancel out numerous high-order harmonics, achieving even shorter laser pulses.
Building on this, Ayla violently interfered with numerous high-order harmonics to achieve 917-zeptosecond pulses, exceeding the limit, but only marginally.
With more energy and new materials, zeptosecond laser pulses became possible in extreme energy environments.
A pulse is like a flashlight's switch; continuous light is like holding it on. Generating a pulse requires switching it on and off. Humans can manually achieve second-level pulses; attoseconds are one quintillionth of a second; zeptoseconds are one octillionth; yoctoseconds are one septillionth.
The Federation's current science has achieved yoctosecond levels—practically the limit in three dimensions.
During an experiment, Luna discovered that the electrons emitted during a black hole's death could potentially reach this level. She decided to concentrate numerous black holes and induce their simultaneous death, using the resulting high-order harmonics to achieve even shorter pulses.
This was extremely difficult.
Controlling the timing of a black hole's death was almost impossible in the modern Federation.
Black holes are highly unstable and susceptible to various disturbances, especially micro black holes. Minute variations in an atom's electrons or quarks could shift the black hole's decay time by a picosecond or nanosecond—a vast difference at the yoctosecond level.
Luna experienced repeated failures. She tried to create a perfectly isolated absolute vacuum for the experiment.
This experiment lasted over 300 years. Luna then turned her attention to quantum physics. Quanta are the smallest units of physical quantity. If tachyons exist, what is the smallest unit of a faster-than-light tachyon?
Luna reasoned that if tachyons carry information, then faster-than-light travel is impossible even in higher dimensions, because the cosmic rule isn't that matter can't exceed the speed of light but that anything carrying information can't exceed it.
She considered how tachyons could exceed the speed of light in higher-dimensional space, imagining space as a circle where higher-dimensional space is narrower than lower-dimensional space, allowing tachyons to exceed the speed of light.
But what if it wasn't like that?
What if tachyons themselves didn't carry information, but could still transmit it?
This is what Luna had been considering.
These two hypotheses were contradictory, but Luna felt her new idea might be the true nature of tachyons. Using circles to describe dimensions was too abstract. The universe contains multiple dimensions and is confirmed to be flat, conflicting with other scientific fields.
Only if tachyons themselves don't carry information can they be fully integrated into existing physics.
But if a tachyon carries information at point A and at point B, but not between A and B, how is this achieved?
Could this transformation be extremely brief?
Luna was conducting this research but had found no answers. These questions were purely speculative, lacking concrete data.
Then she discovered the connection between tachyons and gravity!
Gravity can traverse spacetime; tachyons use gravity for transmission and can interact with gravity. What if high-speed tachyons passed through a black hole?
The tachyon's properties allow it to escape a black hole's event horizon. Utilizing the black hole, high-order tachyon harmonics can be generated, creating high-frequency oscillations as the tachyon enters and exits the black hole. Because tachyons are fundamental particles, they exhibit wave-particle duality.
These high-energy tachyon oscillations are captured by tachyon communication devices and transferred to gravitons, creating rapid graviton oscillations. Luna could then use these high-frequency graviton oscillations to achieve yoctosecond pulses.
After mutual interference of these yoctosecond pulses, Luna finally achieved 0.74-yoctosecond pulses, propelling the Federation into a new realm—the Planck Time domain.
Graviton oscillations can also influence other dimensions, allowing the Federation to more easily explore other dimensional worlds. This also allows direct manipulation of open and closed strings at a microscopic level. At this point, the Federation can claim complete mastery of three-dimensional space, officially advancing into other dimensions.
Of course, this is still theoretical. Implementing new technologies requires extensive development and application; this is only the beginning.
...
While conducting her research, Luna befriended several top Federation scholars—descendants of the old Federation's scholars. The Olive Branch Civilization had no scholars; their research was based on accumulating technology and energy, not on scientific innovation.
Luna learned much from these scholars.
They were researching a field called—Causality Weaponry.
Causality weaponry had always been a largely unexplored field due to the inherent uncertainties involved. The challenge lay in eliminating these uncertainties.
At least, Luna hadn't heard of anyone in the Federation developing causality weapons.
The difficulty wasn't just the research itself; verification took too long, deterring investors.
The Federation permitted scholars to develop weaponry, but this weaponry was only sold to the Federation.
The Federation strongly supported such research; powerful weapons earned significant rewards, attracting investment.
While conducting her research, Luna befriended several top Federation scholars—successors to the old Federation's academic lineage.
The Olive Branch Civilization lacked scholars; their research was based on accumulated technology and energy, not on scientific innovation and advancement.
Luna learned much from these scholars.
They were researching a field called—Causality Weaponry.
Causality weaponry had always been a field many explored but ultimately abandoned due to inherent uncertainties. Ensuring these uncertainties was the insurmountable hurdle.
At least, Luna hadn't heard of anyone in the Federation developing causality weapons.
Beyond the difficulty of development, the long verification time for causality weapons made it unattractive to investors.
The Federation permitted scholars to develop weapons, but these weapons could only be sold to the Federation.
The Federation strongly supported weapons research, offering significant rewards for successful projects, incentivizing investment in weapons research.
Among weapons research, starship cannons were the hottest area, with significant investment in superweapons. These two areas dominated the stock market, consistently rising year after year.
Luna befriended a small weapons research team of only twenty-two people. This team, focused on causality weapons, had faced multiple bankruptcies but persisted because its members were determined. After each bankruptcy, they took jobs, saved money, and returned to their research.
Even so, some couldn't continue; the team had started with fifty-six members.
——Thunderbolt Causality Weaponry Research Facility
This was the facility's dusty sign, standing for hundreds of years.
Luna arrived in an autonomous flying vehicle; she hadn't been here for a while, arriving on invitation.
A young man approached; he was only 185 cm tall and somewhat overweight, considered undersized in the Federation.
During the old Federation's tens of thousands of years, both humans and other species pursued perfection. Luna couldn't assess other species, but humans were all handsome or beautiful, like products from an assembly line.
Luna felt this wasn't good; societal diversity required variations in height, weight, and appearance.
The new Federation, influenced by the Olive Branch Civilization, was becoming more individualistic.
The Olive Branch Civilization's uniformity led to a preference for unique appearances among the first generation of converted citizens. While handsome and beautiful individuals were popular, they were a branch of the mainstream, not the mainstream itself.
"Rossi, are you certain you've completed a Causality Weapon?" Luna asked.
Rossi had excitedly mentioned completion during their previous conversation, prompting Luna's visit.
Rossi smiled, his chubby face flushed, "It's not a Causality Weapon, but a non-Causality Weapon."
Luna was confused.
A causality weapon was a causality weapon; a non-causality weapon wasn't called a non-causality weapon. This was a new term.
"Just come with me."
Rossi led Luna into the research facility. Weapons research facilities were typically located outside cities. This facility was much larger than Luna's company, its main building over 1000 meters tall, extending 500 meters underground.
The Mobius Ringworld had soil and rock layers; the soil layer was 100 meters deep, the rock layer 5000 meters. Buildings couldn't exceed 1000 meters above ground or 5000 meters below.
Entering the research facility, Luna's vehicle drove to the research area. Approximately 40,000 square meters of space were filled with various devices—not sophisticated instruments but more like a workshop filled with various mechanical parts.
Sophisticated electronic equipment wasn't absent, but it was hidden; Federation life forms rarely used screens, and Ayla's digital world accelerated the disappearance of physical interfaces.
All the researchers were present, turning to look at Luna. The team leader, a petite Shore Tribe woman, levitated in the air using anti-gravity equipment and addressed Luna, "Luna, you've finally arrived! We can't wait to show you our non-Causality Weapon."
A non-Causality Weapon developed by a Causality Weapon research facility?
This sounded strange.
But after Aina showed Luna the simulation data, she understood why it was called a non-Causality Weapon. It wasn't a Causality Weapon but related to causality.
To be precise, this weapon should be called a Butterfly Effect Weapon. The Butterfly Effect is essentially causality, but this wasn't the same; it was a physical Butterfly Effect.
They used one atom to collide with another, repeating this process multiple times to disrupt a region's atomic structure. This sounds simple, but the challenge lies in maintaining the colliding atoms' kinetic energy. If kinetic energy is lost during transmission, the impact diminishes, restoring equilibrium rather than creating a butterfly effect.
Even the atoms' inherent forces could be canceled during collisions. Perfect energy transmission, even replication, is necessary.
This weapon achieved this; during collisions, the forces between atoms are confined within the atoms, preventing kinetic energy loss and allowing continuous propagation, disrupting the target's structure.
Aina demonstrated this by striking a 1kg iron block with a non-causality atom; the block instantly shattered, its physical properties altered.
However, Luna noticed that only 1/5th of the block changed, not the entire thing.
"This weapon has much room for improvement," Aina said.
But for Luna, this was astonishing; Aina used only a single atom.
"It's truly not a Causality Weapon, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless."
Luna laughed joyfully, not only because the Federation had acquired a new weapon but also because her friends had made a breakthrough.
"Let's go; I'll treat you all to the best restaurant in the world."
Aina shook her head, "How could I let you? I should treat you."
"Ha ha ha!"
...
After dinner with Aina and the others, Luna returned to her company.
Her second interstellar team arrived; she repeated the previous process and went to her lab.
"Ayla, what's the situation? Can we create a larger non-causality weapon?"
Non-causality weapons don't rely on causality; they aren't conventional causality weapons. They can be mass-produced and can instantly cause a chain reaction.
With sufficient quantity and slight enhancement, they could even disintegrate stars at the atomic level.
This differs from superweapons or strong/weak force weapons. Superweapons require massive energy; strong/weak force weapons require energy-carrying intermediaries. If the target is too large, strong/weak force weapons are useless.
But the butterfly effect non-causality weapon is different; it's like using a small force to create a large disruption.
Is this weapon powerful?
Yes, it is.
Is it weak?
Also yes.
In warfare, the target is usually an enemy civilization's warship. These warships have defenses against the four fundamental forces. Atoms, unless incredibly high-energy, can't penetrate these defenses.
Without reaching the warship's surface, even the most powerful weapon is useless.
Therefore, the butterfly effect non-causality weapon has limited applications and won't be a conventional weapon.
...
Ten days later, Luna obtained a dumbbell-sized non-causality warhead. Mounted on a one-meter-long railgun, it was fired at a lake near her company.
This "lake" was more like an ocean, covering 58.29 million square kilometers.
Upon impact, the lake began to boil from the center, expanding outwards. The entire lake and a large surrounding area were vaporized, creating a nearly ten-thousand-kilometer-diameter gaseous region. A massive explosion ensued, with light intensity exceeding that of a star by trillions of times and temperatures reaching a terrifying 2.8 billion degrees Celsius.
Even at 100,000 kilometers away, Luna felt winds exceeding Mach 20. A vacuum surrounded her, preventing her from being hit by radiation.
This vaporization wasn't simply water turning into mist; mist is still water. This vaporization destroyed atoms at their fundamental level, causing widespread atomic disintegration. The power was extreme.
Strictly speaking, this was a nuclear explosion, but the yield depended on the non-causality weapon's range of effect.
"This non-causality weapon affected a 72-meter-diameter body of water, causing approximately 20,368,900 tons of hydrogen and oxygen to undergo fission, resulting in the massive explosion."
Luna could see the underlying metal layer in the explosion crater. The blast's power was equivalent to 300–400 million small nuclear bombs. Fortunately, the Mobius Ringworld, after numerous renovations, used extremely strong metals, employing advanced atomic arrangement and aggregation techniques. These metals were tens of thousands of times denser than gold; the steel of the 007179 era was long gone.
The Federation now uses 173829-aaaaa grade steel, with a half-life of 82.4 million years, a density of 658,520.11 g/cm³, a hardness of 1871, a melting point of 5.1 million degrees Celsius, and a strength of 19,382,920,200 MPa. It's still called steel because it uses iron, but the atomic spacing is reduced.
173829-aaaaa grade steel is degenerate matter, with a density only slightly lower than that of a white dwarf.
"Why didn't the previous experiments produce the same result?" Luna asked.
The surrounding area had been evacuated; there were no casualties. Luna knew the experiment's destructive potential, but the nuclear explosion's range was contained.
"A single atom's kinetic energy is too weak to destroy atoms. This high-mass non-causality weapon causes atoms within a region to collide repeatedly, like bouncing ping-pong balls. If one collision is insufficient, then thousands are used; if thousands are insufficient, then millions. Calculations show that at the center of a non-causality explosion, a single atom undergoes at least 7.411 billion high-frequency collisions. Even fewer collisions—tens of thousands—are sufficient for collapse and disintegration."
This is the quantitative change leading to a qualitative change.
Luna considered what would happen if these disintegrated atoms continued to collide.
She soon found out. After Ayla finished speaking, a more powerful explosion occurred, destroying everything within a 1.53-million-kilometer radius.
The collision of disintegrated atoms could cause light atoms to fuse into heavier atoms—nuclear fusion.
"The weapon test was more successful than expected. The Causality Weapon is indeed a terrifying weapon, capable of producing countless effects from a single cause."
"Next, let's fire the Causality Weapon not with metallic atomic projectiles but with photons or electrons for maximum destruction."
Photons and electrons, being fundamental particles, can't be further broken down. Further breakdown involves dimensional concepts and string theory. Ayla and Luna's research indicated that fundamental particles are related to space; they are waves that can only intensify or weaken, not be divided.
Luna's goal was to use photons and electrons to disintegrate atoms into fundamental particles, causing super-disintegration. These fundamental particles would then recombine due to strong and weak forces and Coulomb forces, creating a secondary explosion.
The potential energy would be enormous, possibly even disrupting black holes.
"Light carries powerful energy, and light is ubiquitous in the universe. Ayla, could this weapon become a superweapon?"
Ayla carefully considered, "This requires extensive testing; it's not simple, Luna."
"Any weapon has the potential to destroy the universe. Some weapons are limited by energy; others by stability. Non-causality weapons are the latter; stability involves energy transmission—complex."
Luna agreed, but sometimes, idealized visions obscure the complexities at a microscopic level.
Looking at the massive crater, Luna snapped her fingers…
With a snap, the hundreds of thousands of kilometers-wide crater gradually filled and returned to its original state.
"It seems the digitalization process is proceeding smoothly." Looking at the restored landscape, Luna was slightly surprised.
Not by the restoration itself but by the speed.
"Atomic-scale robots have spread throughout the Mobius Ringworld. Human living areas, both internally and externally, are now integrated with microscopic robots," Ayla said, unsurprised; this was part of the initial plan.
"With this, we can truly claim control over the new world."
"Luna, our previous research into the two-dimensional realm revealed the existence of membranes—two-dimensional structures bridging one and three dimensions. However, these membranes differ from the membranes in the concept of the cosmic membrane. I've been studying the similarities and differences between these two types of membranes and have finally understood the relationship between inner and outer space."
"The cosmic membrane itself is space, while the two-dimensional membrane is an object within space. What about the 2D world? We live on a membrane within the 2D world. This membrane is three-dimensional, but because the 2D world itself is a membrane, it's like a mille-feuille—a layered pastry. Starting from this point, I believe the 2D world's sandwich structure allows us to directly jump from three-dimensional spacetime to one-dimensional string existence."
"Therefore, we can hypothesize that the 2D world isn't empty but filled—its plane is completely filled with two-dimensional matter, acting as a bridge between spatial membranes. This means that if we can influence the 2D world, we can influence space itself, and vice versa."
Luna felt a bit dizzy, feeling like she was going in circles. She asked directly, "So, how can we use two dimensions?"
Ayla didn't expect Luna to grasp the concept of the 2D world from a single explanation; it's too abstract.
"We now understand the existence of gravitons, don't we?" Ayla said.
Luna was instantly pulled back to her previous considerations.
Discovering gravitons doesn't mean capturing them; it's a simulation or measurement. We know their properties and utilize them, imagining their form.
But we don't know their exact form; we can't observe them directly with instruments or the naked eye.
The Federation has directly observed electrons, photons, and fermions, but gravitons are embedded within spacetime. They can only observe the spacetime ripples caused by gravitons; these ripples on the screen resemble electromagnetic or sound waves, allowing them to infer the graviton's state.
The Federation has been searching for gravitons but hasn't succeeded.
Now, the hypothetical 2D world offers a new perspective. Gravitons might exist within the 2D world.
Closed strings are the source of gravity; gravitons are the intermediaries transmitting it. Since closed strings can traverse spacetime, how do they affect spacetime, objects, and space itself?
Perhaps this is related to the 2D world. Closed strings influence two-dimensional gravitons through the 2D world. Because gravitons are close to spatial membranes, their interaction causes spatial warping, which then warps time.
Time itself is a concept arising from particle movement; spatial warping alters particle movement, thus changing time.
"Bold hypothesis."
Luna could only describe it with these five words.
If the universe were truly like this, Luna couldn't imagine it.
"But this presents another challenge, doesn't it?"
"To find gravitons, we must transcend dimensional limitations. To observe strings directly, not just their effects, we must transcend two-dimensional spacetime and reach one dimension."
"We've confirmed that in three-dimensional spacetime, we can influence one-dimensional strings, causing open and closed string transitions and unifying the four fundamental forces. But we can't manipulate gravitons."
"Yes, gravitons might solidify spacetime itself, making the universe more complete."
"Therefore, we might never find gravitons. Even if we transcend dimensions, finding them would mean we could manipulate space, create space, or perhaps create universes…"
Ayla halted Luna's dangerous train of thought, "If the 2D world is disrupted, we can't predict whether it will collapse—like a chain reaction."
"Don't black holes disrupt the 2D world?" Luna asked.
She was already seated; the flying vehicle arrived without interrupting her thoughts.
"Precisely. Black holes might maintain the 2D world's balance through unknown means. Or perhaps black hole matter is compressed into two dimensions; black holes continuously transfer matter to the 2D world, creating it."
"Perhaps other dimensions are formed similarly."
"The Big Bang tore spacetime, creating primordial black holes. These black holes absorbed vast amounts of matter, forming two dimensions, separating three-dimensional and one-dimensional space."
"How plausible."
Luna chuckled; this was highly speculative; Ayla wasn't presenting findings but discussing the possibility of this hypothesis with Luna.
All science is based on exploring the unknown; all civilizations' science and technology are merely byproducts of scientific exploration.
Luna and Ayla couldn't predict the impact of their hypotheses on the Federation; it transcended current understanding.
Science isn't about cause and effect but about the process from cause to effect—like the universe, not its beginning and end, but the process from beginning to end that creates the universe's wonders and all life.
In science, even incorrect results matter; the process yields countless byproducts, which might seem like results but aren't necessarily consequences of the cause, as there is no end; they are merely intermediate steps causing a chain reaction.
Therefore, when Luna said "How plausible," she meant this path was viable; scholars could pursue it, perhaps yielding many byproducts to drive the Federation's development.
"The stellar layer will take some time to complete; you'll have some fun, Luna," Ayla said.
Luna nodded, "That's good. My company has just started operations; it'll probably take 1500 years to generate revenue. Actually, I have an idea for quick revenue generation…"