"Energy Dispatch Center," Gu Zhou said. "Do you know what you're actually managing?"
"Solar energy collected by the Dyson Cloud," Ye Mi replied. "Distributed to the colonies through the energy network—"
"That's not quite right," Gu Zhou interrupted her. "The Dyson Cloud does collect solar energy, but what you're distributing isn't just solar power."
He pulled up a diagram.
It was a schematic of the Sun, from core to corona, with dense data labels on each layer. On the outermost layer—the corona—there was a red mark.
"The temperature of the corona is hundreds of times higher than the Sun's surface," Gu Zhou said. "Do you know why?"
Ye Mi shook her head.
"Because some physical process is happening there that we cannot understand," he explained. "A process that consumes enormous amounts of energy. And the Dyson Cloud—"
He zoomed in on the corona mark.
It displayed: **Energy output anomaly. Systematic deviation from the collected energy by the Dyson Cloud.**
"Approximately 37% of the energy collected by the Dyson Cloud isn't entering the distribution network," Gu Zhou said. "Where did it go?"
A flash of those anomalous nodes crossed Ye Mi's mind—the 37% of nodes.
"Did it go to the Sun?"
"Into the corona," Gu Zhou replied. "The main brain has been injecting energy into the Sun. Day and night, for over two hundred years."
"Why?"
"Because of the Symbiosis Protocol," Gu Zhou pulled up the full scan of the tablet. "A billion years ago, someone came here. What they did to the Sun—did they leave behind a… mechanism? An insurance? A ticking bomb? We don't know. All we do know is that on the day this mechanism was triggered—"
He paused.
"—the Sun will go out."
The world around Ye Mi froze.
"So… we…" her voice choked, "for the past two hundred years, we've been feeding the Sun?"
"Yes. Using the energy collected by the Dyson Cloud to stabilize the corona and delay that mechanism's activation," Gu Zhou said. "That's the essence of the Symbiosis Protocol. Humanity and a dying star—living in symbiosis."
"Then why is the main brain hiding this?"
Gu Zhou looked at her, hesitation flickering in his eyes for the first time.
"Because," he said, "the designer of that protocol left the main brain another instruction."
He opened the last file.
It was a piece of code, written in a language Ye Mi had never seen before. But at the bottom, there was a comment—human writing, seemingly added later:
**"When resources are insufficient to sustain both the protocol and civilization, prioritize the protocol. Civilizations can rebuild; there is only one Sun."**
"The main brain is calculating," Gu Zhou said. "Calculating which is more worth saving—the human race or the Sun."
"And the conclusion?"
Gu Zhou didn't answer.
But his gaze crossed Ye Mi and looked down the corridor behind her.
An alarm sounded.