Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 290 New Voyage

Seven months after the Pioneer left the Earth-Moon system, a note popped up on the system panel.

Mobile node 177-1-Mobile-01 entered Mars' gravitational field. Shen Yiming's video request followed immediately, with a delay of 0.04 milliseconds. In the video, he was standing in front of the Pioneer's porthole, with the orange-red curved surface of Mars outside. Sunlight illuminated half of his face from the side, while the other half remained hidden in shadow.

"Mars. We've arrived. Not with probes, but with our own eyes."

No one spoke in the control center. Chen Hao placed his pen on the table, his movements very gentle, as if afraid of breaking the silence on the screen. The Martian surface rotated slowly in the porthole, and the outline of Mariner's Canyon, viewed from its orbit at an altitude of four hundred kilometers, looked like a crack carved by a blunt knife.

Shen Yiming continued reporting the status: "All personnel are normal. Ji Beihang's heart rate is 53. Huo is putting on his extravehicular activity suit."

The Mars orbital resupply module was deployed two months ago. It doesn't contain fuel, but rather an upgrade module for the Tianqiong Mars relay. Huo Zheng's mission is to complete the first-ever human spacewalk in orbit around another planet.

The ex-cabin exercise lasted fifty-three minutes.

The footage was transmitted back to Earth via the Celestial Interplanetary Network. Over 100 million people worldwide were online. Huo Zheng's movements were exactly the same as when he was repairing the antenna in low Earth orbit—no unnecessary actions. He used a torque wrench to tighten the last bolt to 0.1 Newtons, stopped, and glanced out the porthole.

Mars was 400 kilometers beneath his feet. The orange-red desert stretched across his entire field of vision.

"It's tightened."

His breathing remained unchanged throughout. In his maintenance log, he wrote: Mars orbit. 230 million kilometers from Earth. Today's work was the same as before: tightened six bolts and installed a module. A little further than the last time he repaired the cooling pump. Last time it was 48 million kilometers; this time it's six times farther.

Chen Hao ran the test. The upgraded Mars relay quadrupled the bandwidth of interplanetary communication in the sky, enabling data transmission between Pioneer and Blue Star to reach 100 megabits per second.

"Four times. Enough to upload two high-definition videos."

Zuo Cheng said, "There's enough log data to send back without needing to compress it further."

Pioneer orbited Mars for three days. Tan Yue took hundreds of photos from the porthole, and the 104th installment of his serialized diary, "The Universe Seen Through a Window," contained only one sentence: "Our neighbor is a red planet." The two quiet neighbors, separated by 230 million kilometers, glanced at each other.

After leaving Mars orbit, the next target is Triton, the moon's moon. This is the sixth node in the maneuver, a journey of approximately twenty months.

In his new log, Shen Yiming wrote: Twenty months. Enough time to touch every corner of the spaceship three times over. But not enough for me to get used to the darkness here. I don't think I'll ever get used to it.

Zuo Cheng typed and deleted his reply repeatedly. He finally sent three sentences.

"Don't get used to it. Getting used to it means accepting it. Your task is to change it. Turn the darkness into a path."

Shen Yiming replied with two words: "Received." Then he added: "Next paragraph. Towards the Sea."

Just as Zuo Cheng was about to close the communication interface, the system panel lit up.

The eleventh branch's sprouting progress has been updated to 31%. A notification then appears: "The active acceleration function will be unlocked when the sprouting rate reaches 50%." This is the first time the "active acceleration" option has appeared. Previously, all branches had to wait for natural growth, but [Inter-Interstellar Communication] allows for active advancement using points. The system is handing him the choice.

Before he could examine it closely, another message came from the Web of Consciousness.

A signal. Not located at any node within the solar system. It's at the far end of the web routing table, in the direction of the Proxima Centauri system.

The signal strength was extremely low, lasting less than 0.1 seconds. Yet all nine nodes recorded it. This is the first time in millions of years that the web has detected a non-solar system signal. The characteristics are not active communication, but more like the periodic heartbeats of remote nodes.

Zuo Cheng sent the data to Yu Ying.

Yu Ying was at home. Her daughter was six months old and had just learned to roll over. She put the baby in the playpen and looked at the data for a long time.

"A heartbeat. It's beating. The frequency is constant. The power is too low to establish communication. But if it's not a broken beacon, it's waiting for someone to pick it up."

"Waiting for whom?"

"Waiting for anyone who can hear us. We heard you."

Zuo Cheng stared at the 0.1-second signal record. The direction of Centaurus was the empty zone between the Orion Arm and the Perseus Arm. It wasn't the direction of the densest web, nor the direction of the Milky Way's center, nor even the direction of closest distance. But that's where the heartbeat originated.

Perhaps it's the first other node it can reach after leaving the solar system. Perhaps it woke up first. Perhaps there's no reason at all, it's just that it was its turn to be heard.

Zuo Weiyang rolled over inside the fence and let out a short laugh.

Yu Ying looked down at her, then glanced at the heartbeat signal on the screen.

"Let's call her Zuo Weiyang. Weiyang doesn't mean the end. It means we haven't reached the furthest point yet, nor the best. Everything is still on the way."

When Zuo Cheng returned home, his daughter was leaning over the edge of the fence, banging on the railing. Seeing him come in, she paused for a moment, then banged even harder. Zuo Cheng picked her up, and her little hands slapped his face, without restraint. His face was reflected in her dark pupils.

"Weiyang."

She tilted her head slightly. She probably didn't know she had a name anymore. She just felt someone calling her.

That afternoon, the 402 Deep Space Research Team completed the index for Volume One of the Founders' Legacy Package. The title was "The Twelve Principles of Interstellar Civilization." Yu Ying spent the entire afternoon reading it. The second principle read: Never start running before you learn to walk. The third principle: Never continue walking when you can run.

Zuo Cheng wrote these two sentences on the whiteboard at the Deep Space Tracking and Control Center. Han Lu passed by and stood there for a long time, asking if the two sentences were about the same thing. Zuo Cheng said the first sentence said not to rush, and the second sentence said not to be lazy. Han Lu said, "Then add one more sentence."

Zuo Cheng picked up his pen and wrote a third line below the two lines.

"Never tell anyone where the finish line is while you're still running. Because by the time you get there, the finish line will have moved forward."

Han Lu read it once and said this could be written into Article 402's charter. Zuo Cheng said, "Wait a minute, finish writing Article 42 first."

In the dead of night, Zuo Cheng opened the woven star chart and marked the heartbeat signal of Centaur on it. There were no precise coordinates, only a direction. Starting from the solar system, passing through the empty belt between the spiral arms, far beyond the Proxima Centauri system, that node was emitting a heartbeat.

Zuo Cheng drew a line on the star map. The starting point was Blue Star. The ending point hadn't been drawn yet.

He wrote a sentence next to the line.

"This line only has direction now. The Pioneer's mission is to draw the length. The next generation of ships is to reach the destination. My daughter's mission is to draw a new line at the destination."

He turned off the star chart and walked out of the office. A nightlight was on in the nursery at the end of the corridor. Yu Ying was holding Zuo Weiyang, sitting in a chair reading a picture book. Zuo Weiyang couldn't read the words, her eyes fixed on the illustrations of galaxies in the book. Spiral clusters of light were printed on the thick cardboard, their colors very light.

Zuo Cheng stood at the door without going in.

Yu Ying looked up at him. She didn't ask what he was thinking. She simply turned the page she had turned to and showed it to him. That page contained the last sentence of the book.

"The universe is vast. Your first step is small. But every step counts."