Although Tomoko's words were cold and realistic, no matter what they were, the truth behind them was always the same.
yes!
What will the future of the universe be like? Is it something humans with a lifespan of less than a hundred years should worry about?
Even if it develops to this day, if human beings do not rely on hibernation technology, they can only persist for a few hundred years at most.
On the large scale of the entire universe, hundreds of times are nothing more than a fleeting moment.
"Cheng Xin, that's not our responsibility. At least we can't reach that level now."
Seeing that Cheng Xin seemed to have his own ideas and play tricks again, Liang Bing had no choice but to stand up and echo Tomoko.
You are just Cheng Xin, does it have anything to do with you whether the universe dies or not?
Mom, I used to be the King of Demons and one of the top beings in the known universe. Even at such a height, I still cannot reach matters of life and death in the universe. Why do you think so?
At this moment, not only Zhizi felt that Cheng Xin was not good enough, but also Liang Bing felt the same.
"But, we are also part of the universe, right?"
Cheng Xin wanted to continue saying this, but in the end she didn't say it out loud. She just thought silently in her heart; if the day came that it was time to return the mass of the small universe, would she be willing to return it?
She doesn't know, at least now she can't guarantee what will happen in the future.
But from a perceptual point of view, she felt that she was willing to return it.
Later, seeing that several people unanimously wanted to leave Blue Star and enter the small universe 647, Tomoko said no more.
She only has the right to suggest a few people, but she has no right to restrict their decisions.
"Are you ready?"
Tomoko started to say again: "Get ready, I can send you into the small universe No. 647 at any time."
She can only help several people enter the small universe No. 647. Otherwise, with their current scientific level, it may take hundreds of years for them to understand the small universe and be familiar with the application of the small universe.
Hearing this, Cheng Xin, Liang Bing, and Guan Yifan each looked at each other, and they could all see a sense of determination in each other's eyes.
"Get ready, leave Blue Star now."
The three of them said in unison.
Then, they couldn't understand how it was operated. They only felt that their eyes went dark, and then they appeared in a countryside.
"This is small universe No. 647?"
"Why do you still feel like you're on Blue Star?"
"Yes, the familiar houses and wheat fields are exactly the same as those on Blue Star!"
Seeing everything in front of them that was not unfamiliar to them, the three of them expressed doubts and emotions respectively.
"Welcome to Universe 647, I am the manager of this universe."
It was Tomoko's voice. She also entered the small universe No. 647 and appeared in front of the three people.
"Cosmic Manager?" Guan Yifan looked at Tomoko in surprise and said, "This is a great name, especially for a person like me who studies cosmology. It sounds like..."
"Haha, no..." Tomoko smiled and waved her hand: "You are the real owners of No. 647. You have the absolute right to decide everything here. I only serve you."
Tomoko made an invitation gesture, and the three of them followed her along the field ridge until they entered an elegant living room in a white house.
The decoration style of the living room is Chinese style, with several elegant calligraphy and paintings hanging on the walls.
After taking a seat next to an antique wooden desk, Tomoko poured tea for them. This time there was no cumbersome process of the tea ceremony.
Those tea leaves are like a dragon well, standing up one by one at the bottom of the cup, forming a green forest and exuding a fragrance.
All this seemed like a dream in the eyes of the three of them. Tomoko was becoming more and more humane, and even knew how to enjoy a "human-like" life better than other humans.
Tomoko handed the poured tea to the three of them and continued: "This universe is a gift, given to the three of you by Mr. Yun Tianming."
"I think it was given to Cheng Xin."
Guan Yifan said.
Liang Bing also nodded. She knew the love-hate relationship between Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming best.
"No, the recipients must also include you two. The subsequent identification system has the permissions of you and Ms. Liang Bing, otherwise it would be impossible for you and Ms. Liang Bing to enter."
Sophon explained: "Mr. Yun Tianming hopes that you can escape the end of our big universe in this small universe, which is the Big Crunch, and enter the new big universe after the new big bang."
"He wants you to see the pastoral times of the new universe."
"Now, we are in an independent timeline. Time in the universe is passing rapidly. You will definitely be able to wait until its end in your lifetime."
"According to more specific estimates, the collapse of the universe will reach a singularity state within ten years."
"How would we know if a new genesis explosion occurred?"
Guan Yifan asked.
"What we know is that we can detect the state of the universe through superbranes."
Tomoko's words reminded Cheng Xin of the words Yun Tianming carved on the rock, but Guan Yifan thought of something more. He noticed a word that Tomoko mentioned: pastoral era.
This word is used by galactic humans to describe the peaceful times of the universe.
There are two possibilities here. One is coincidence. Trisolaris also happened to choose this word.
The second possibility is very scary. The Trisolaran world has detected the existence of other human beings in the Milky Way. From Yun Tianming's quick arrival at Blue Star, it can be seen that the world of the Trisolaran First Fleet is already very close to several human worlds in the Milky Way. .
Now, the Trisolaran civilization has developed to the point where it can establish a small universe, which is a huge threat to other human worlds in the galaxy.
But he burst out laughing immediately.
"why are you laughing?"
Cheng Xin and Liang Bing couldn't help but look at him strangely.
"Laugh at me for being ridiculous."
It is indeed ridiculous. Even before entering the small universe, several human worlds in the galaxy are likely to be shrouded in the black domain.
Even if there are some who are not shrouded in the black domain, they in the big universe have no idea how many billions of years have passed.
He is now worried about a group of people who he doesn't even know exist.
"Universe 647 is a customized product. I will be here after it is completed. I am essentially just a data body. I can copy many copies..."
Tomoko continued to introduce.
In other words, the person she is now is not the person she was on Blue Star. The person she was on Blue Star has not followed her at all.
"Then let's start discussing whether it is still necessary for us to return to the big universe now?"
After Tomoko finished his introduction, Guan Yifan looked at Cheng Xin and Liang Bing again.
According to what Sophon just said, the collapse of the large universe will reach a singularity state within ten years of small universe No. 647.
In this case, what else can they do when they go back?
It’s better to listen to Tomoko’s advice honestly and stay in the small universe No. 647 to wait for the result.
"To be honest, I'm interested." Guan Yifan continued: "I really want to see what the new universe looks like, especially when it has not been tampered with and distorted by life and civilization. It must embody the highest harmony and beauty. "
"I also want to go to the new universe. The singularity and the Big Bang will erase all memories of this universe. I want to bring part of human memory to the new universe."
Cheng Xin also followed suit.
Liang Bing was the only one who didn't speak. She didn't want to see what she wanted to see, because he had already seen it, and strictly speaking, it was from the new universe.
She just wants to go back now...
Among the three people, two have already expressed their intention to stay in small universe No. 647.
Tomoko then stood up and said, "Then your new life in Universe 647 begins. Let's go out and have a look."
When they went out again, they saw a scene of spring plowing. The robots were working in the fields, and some were sowing seeds in the flat fields.
However, the way they do farm work is very primitive. There is no wide rake that can be pulled, and they just level the ground bit by bit with the small rake held by the hand. There is also no seeder. The robot holds a bag of seeds in one hand and buries the seeds in the other hand. in the ground.
The whole scene has a quaint color, and here, the robots are even closer to nature than the farmers.
"This place is not like Blue Star. The food stored is only enough for you to eat for two years. From now on, you will have to rely on farming to survive."
Tomoko pointed to the fields and continued.
That's why she doesn't recommend that a few people get in so quickly.
Because Blue Star has been operated for hundreds of years, but no one has lived in the 647 small universe for a long time before.
Don't ask why you don't bring in all the food from Blue Star.
Tomoko said: I want to eat what I grew.
…………
Soon, a year in Universe 647 passed.
There were two harvests of wheat in the field. The three of them watched the emerald green wheat seedlings slowly turn into golden waves. The vegetable field next to them was always filled with green.
This small manor has a complete set of daily necessities, all of which have no trademarks. They are obviously made in the Trisolaran world, but they are exactly the same as human products in appearance, without any exotic features.
But they spend more time in front of the computer.
A terminal window can be activated anywhere in the small universe, but they do not know where the computer host in this world is.
The computer contains a large amount of text and image data of humans on Earth, most of which are from before the broadcast era. It is obviously information about the human world collected by Trisolaris, covering all fields of science and humanities.
But more information is in Trisolaris, which is huge and vast. This is also the part that interests them the most.
They couldn't find the software to translate Trisolaris into human characters on their computers, so they started learning Trisolaris and Tomoko became their teacher.
But they soon discovered that this was extremely difficult. The reason is that Trisolaran is a kind of ideographic script, which is different from human phonetic script. It has nothing to do with language and directly expresses meaning.
Human beings also had ideographic characters in ancient times. For example, some hieroglyphics were ideographic, but they later disappeared, and human reading habits completely changed to phonetic habits.
However, they found that this difficulty only existed at the beginning and became easier as time went on.
After two difficult months, they made rapid progress.
Compared with phonetic text, the biggest advantage of ideographic text is the reading speed. This kind of text can be read at least ten times faster than phonetic text.
The three of them stumbled through the Trisolaran literature. Their original purposes were twofold. One was to understand how Trisolaris recorded their history with earth civilization, and the other was to know how this small universe was built.
Regarding the latter, although they all know that it is impossible to truly understand it from a professional perspective in a short time, they should at least know what is going on from a popular science perspective.
Tomoko said that to achieve these two goals, they still need one year to further master Trisolaris and another year to read.
The basic principles of building a small universe are indeed difficult for them to imagine, and even some of the lower-level mysteries have not been understood for a long time.
For example, how is an ecological cycle established in a cubic kilometer of space?
What is the sun?
Where does its energy come from?
Regarding this point, even Zhang Heng, who went to the Super God's Known Universe to rebuild a small universe, was too lazy to create another sun in his own small universe. You can imagine how difficult it is!
However, the most puzzling thing is; as a completely closed system, where does the heat in the small universe go?
Of course, what they are most concerned about now is; can the small universe communicate with the big universe?
Sophon told them that it is impossible for the small universe to transmit information to the large universe, but it is possible to receive information broadcasts from the large universe.
She said: "All the universe is a bubble on a supermembrane. This involves the most basic theoretical picture in three-body physics and cosmology. She cannot further explain this. The large universe has enough energy to transfer information. Spread across the supermembrane."
"But it's very difficult and requires an unimaginable amount of energy. If the universe does this, it may need to convert a mass equivalent to a galaxy into pure energy."
"Actually, the monitoring system in Universe 647 often receives information from other large universes on the supermembrane. Some are naturally generated, and some are uninterpretable intelligent information, but they have never received information from the large universe from which they came. .”
Time passes day by day, like the water in that creek, calm and smooth.
Cheng Xin began to write a memoir to record the history she knew.
Sometimes they also envision life in new universes.
Sophon told them that according to cosmological theory, the new universe must be higher than four dimensions at a macro level, and may even be higher than ten dimensions. When a new universe is born, Universe 647 can automatically establish an exit in it and detect the surrounding environment.
If the new universe is higher than four dimensions, the exit of the small universe can move across space until a suitable living environment is found.
At the same time, we can also contact the immigrants from other small universes in Trisolaris. Of course, we may also contact the immigrants from the Milky Way.
In the new universe, the immigrants from the old universe almost belong to the same race, and they should be able to build a world together.
Sophon particularly emphasized that in the high-dimensional universe, there is a factor that greatly increases the probability of survival.
Among the many dimensions, there may be more than one dimension that belongs to time.
"Multidimensional time?"
Several people could not understand what this concept meant for a while.
"Even if time is only two-dimensional, it will be flat rather than linear, with countless directions, which means we can make countless choices at the same time."
Guan Yifan explained.
"One of the choices is always the right one."
Tomoko said.
…
Several more years passed, until one day, Sophon suddenly found a few people again and said, "We have received a super-membrane broadcast from the universe!"
Then she brought up a terminal window and made it very large. In order to let them see the contents of the window clearly, she also dimmed the brightness of the sun.
Countless lines of symbols scrolled rapidly in the window, which were displayed by the dot matrix graphics sent by the super-membrane broadcast. Those symbols were strange and unrecognizable. Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan also noticed that the symbols were not of the same type. They rolled by like a fast river with messy ripples.
(End of chapter)
