Chapter 22

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Chapter 22: Their Choice

The smell of smoke lingered on even three days after the explosion. The once vibrant land lay in ruins, with only a massive pit marking the former location of the biological laboratory.

Luo Yu piloted a reconnaissance aircraft, flying low over the pit and circling it several times. She used an infrared detector back and forth, then deployed the collection device to retrieve a piece of debris from the wreckage.

After that, she ascended the aircraft to three thousand meters high. Looking down at the dark, desolate ruin below, she picked up the communication device on the control panel. “No living beings detected at the target site.”

Moments later, a crackling reply came through, “Understood, you can return.”

She responded with a “Yes,” turned off the communication device, lowered her head, and took a deep breath. Her nose tinged with a hint of bitterness, and she inhaled sharply to keep the tears at bay.

“Please, sit down, child.” Ao Ci’s voice interrupted her memories and pulled her back to the bright office of the Biological Research Station.

Luo Yu nodded and took a seat at her desk. The assistant passed her a cup of water from the nearby robot.

Luo Yu quietly said “Thank you,” then fell silent for a moment before asking Ao Ci about a specific genetic mutation that can appear during asexual reproduction. She briefly described the symptoms and asked if this situation had occurred in their world during the early stages of implementing asexual reproduction.

Ao Ci listened carefully and slowly replied, “I didn’t expect your world’s biotechnology to have advanced to the study of asexual reproduction.” After a pause, she continued, “The genetic mutation you mentioned did occur in our early stages. It manifests during the oocyte division as a duplication anomaly. It doesn’t show any signs in embryos or toddlers, but symptoms begin to appear around ages five or six, primarily characterized by extreme drowsiness, with sleep lasting over fifteen hours a day. This condition requires timely medicinal intervention. Individuals exhibiting this mutation typically also possess exceptionally high intelligence and perfect pitch, which I believe she might already exhibit to some extent while awake.”

Luo Yu nodded vigorously, leaning forward slightly. “Is this condition treatable?”

Ao Ci smiled gently. “Of course. We have already overcome this issue, and we have subsequently improved our gene recombination technology to eliminate the negative symptoms associated with this mutation.”

“So there are special medicines here, right?”

“Yes, but the specific treatment plans need to consider the actual situation. I’m not a treatment expert; however, if you want to know more details, I can introduce you to someone.” Ao Ci tapped a few times on the panel at her desk and opened a contact page for someone. “She’s not working now. How about this? The summer grand council is taking place in the valley tomorrow. She will definitely attend. I’ll introduce you to her then.”

Luo Yu felt thrilled and nodded again to Ao Ci. “Okay, thank you, Director.”

Ao Ci smiled briefly, and seeing that Luo Yu had no further questions, she got up to escort her out. Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao were still outside waiting for her, chatting with a guidance robot.

It turned out that Ti Ran, the cosmologist they visited last time, had arranged for two engineers to help them repair the communication device. Lei Ming had picked up the two engineers and prepared to meet them at the hangar in the afternoon to discuss repair options. Learning that Luo Yu and the others were here, she decided to stop by and take them back to the hangar.

Ao Ci and the assistant researcher stood at the entrance of the Biological Research Station, watching as the three of them boarded the aircraft and flew away. The assistant looked at Ao Ci, puzzled, and asked, “Grandma, why didn’t you ask her if the one who is sick is her daughter?”

Ao Ci turned to her leisurely. “If she didn’t bring it up, there’s no reason to pry.”

The assistant tilted her head in thought. “Even if it’s not her daughter, it must be some close family. It seems she will eventually go back. It’s a pity; it would have been great for her to stay here. With the situation thirty thousand years later, how can they survive?”

As she walked, Ao Ci replied slowly, “Whether to stay or return is their choice. We must respect their decisions.”

The aircraft that Lei Ming piloted was larger than the model Luo Yu and her friends usually rode. The back seat had two rows. When they boarded, they greeted the two engineers in the back row, and once seated, the three fell into silence.

Luo Yu didn’t mention to Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao what she had discussed with Director Ao Ci earlier, and they were also unsure why she showed sudden interest in asexual reproduction technology. But seeing that she seemed troubled, they didn’t press her for details.

“You all seem quite contemplative today,” Lei Ming said with a cheerful tone. “Did you see some astonishing experimental results at the research station?”

Zhu Huai leaned against the window, lost in thoughts about Ao Ci’s discourse earlier. She frowned slightly. “How should I put it? It was indeed astonishing; I need a moment to process it.”

Lei Ming laughed heartily. “Well, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s summer grand council. I wonder if Director Ao Ci will bring the test subjects with her? These days, I’ve been looking at lots of footage from your world with Professor Mo Chuan, but I’ve yet to see a living male variant! I heard they can be quite emotionally unstable. Is that true?”

Luo Yu stole a glance at Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao; they all seemed to recall 015 roaring in the cage. Zhu Huai chuckled lightly, “Emotional instability? Well, that’s somewhat accurate.”

The aircraft flew over a wide river, and they could see the hangar atop the mountain where the Shan Hai Jing was parked. About ten minutes later, they softly landed on the helipad, and a hangar robot quickly approached from the hangar.

They followed the hangar robot inside to find the time capsule looking brand new. Since the outer shell had been repaired, the Shan Hai Jing finally looked less distressed. It now lay quietly in the hall, resembling a giant whale at rest.

The two communication experts introduced by Ti Ran were excited to see the Shan Hai Jing up close for the first time; they curiously walked around to examine it. Zhu Huai stood by and explained the signal transmission and reception devices of the outer shell, while the others quietly listened.

After reviewing the outer shell, they still needed to examine the internal devices, but considering the tight space inside the time capsule, the two communication experts, while shorter than Mo Chuan, still over two meters tall, wouldn’t be able to see clearly inside. Thus, Zhu Huai took one of them into the capsule while everyone else remained outside, watching the screens.

After checking the communication devices in both the inner and outer shell, they all gathered in the operation room to look at the communication device on the control panel.

“The communication base station at the space station constantly broadcasts signals to its coverage area. Our time capsule’s receiver will also continuously listen for signals and report its location when powered on. Additionally, the control panel can manually send location data to the base station. Once the base station receives a signal, it will immediately calculate the return path through the network and send the instructions back to the time capsule.”

By this point, Zhu Huai had explained the workings of the entire communication system, including previous tampering with the communication device, briefly mentioning the situation they had found: the transmission location was slightly adjusted but had now been repaired.

Zhu Huai walked over to the control panel and gently patted the base of the communication device. “That’s how things stand. Fixing it isn’t difficult. We just lost contact with the space station before our fall and dropped out of its active communication coverage range. As a result, we were uncertain about our relative position in space, making it hard to determine the direction. Now that Ying Zhao has calculated it and Professor Ti Ran has confirmed it, the error should be small. We have a direction now; it’s just a matter of trying to broadcast the signal into the space station’s coverage area.”

One of the engineers pondered for a moment and asked, “Will your space station try to expand its communication boundary to search for your trace?”

The three exchanged glances and fell silent.

Since the Shan Hai Jing had gone missing, the space station, by protocol, had to attempt contact and search for the lost time capsule for at least three days. However, after three days, the matter became uncertain; given their unexpected situation, it was highly likely that someone at the space station had been informed and might intervene in the search, or perhaps they had already decided to give up on them.

The operation room fell quiet for a moment, and then Luo Yu suddenly lifted her head, looking at Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao. “The space station must not have given up on looking for us, because the sky’s recovery is still in progress.”

The two of them smacked their thighs in realization. “Right! The recovery hasn’t failed, which means the Shan Hai Jing isn’t lost. The space station must know we’re still alive.”

Regardless of whether they were involved in the planning of this accident, upon realizing that the Shan Hai Jing could be trapped in some unknown time and space, the people at the space station would certainly think of ways to contact the station in an attempt to return.

Given this situation, it wouldn’t be easy for the space station, including the ground decision-makers, to quickly reach a consensus to abandon them. They just didn’t know what influence the hidden hands behind this incident had over the Space Administration and the station, what their positions were, and how they would respond.

While the three were deep in thought, the engineer who had asked the earlier question opened a nearby 3D holographic board, mapping out the relative distances of the two time spaces, as well as the coverage area of their space station’s communications. Then he marked an area on the extraterritorial orbit of their current time space: “This is the full orbital monitoring station we are currently using, responsible for monitoring cosmic waves and other historical and temporal anomalies.”

The communication coverage area of this monitoring station was larger than that of Luo Yu’s space station, roughly estimated to cover historical time spaces from about ten thousand years ago.

However, due to the constraints of cosmic laws, the communication boundaries here cannot actively broaden towards the future time spaces. To contact thirty thousand years later, they must first rely on the reception devices of the Shan Hai Jing to receive signals from the space station three thousand years later, then attempt to establish a connection through the time capsule’s signal return mechanism.

The two engineers considered this carefully, and one of them said, “With the communication device from your time capsule serving as a medium, we can attempt to send the signal into your space station’s coverage area. However, we will need to bring this communication device back to our workstation. Is that alright?”

Zhu Huai glanced at Luo Yu and asked, “Can we go along to see?”

“Of course,” the engineer replied, looking at Luo Yu and Ying Zhao. “If you’re not comfortable, you can take it with us and return it at the end of the day’s work, then bring it back the next day.”

“No need to be so formal,” Luo Yu said with a smile. “It’s not that we’re uneasy; it’s just that our engineer would like to learn from you.”

“Right, right, to learn and narrow the gap,” Zhu Huai added, running a hand over her buzz cut and smiling.

The two engineers nodded. “Alright, we’ll clear out a dedicated operation room. There’s also the summer grand council tomorrow. Let’s do this: we’ll pick you up early the day after tomorrow and take you and the communication device over. How does that sound?”

After settling the agreement, the hangar robot brought in two assistant robots to deliver drinks and snacks. They gathered around a large round table outside the operation room, chatting casually, mainly with Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao asking the engineers about the operations of the “full orbital monitoring station” they mentioned earlier.

They kept discussing until dusk. Then Lei Ming assisted the two engineers back, while Luo Yu and her friends watched the aircraft fly away from the hangar before making their way to the cave villa leisurely.

Luo Yu still pondered her earlier conversation with Director Ao Ci, feeling excited at the prospect of meeting the treatment expert tomorrow. She tried hard to remember various details, hoping to clarify the situation and receive good news from the expert.

Seeing that she seemed preoccupied, Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao didn’t speak, and the three of them silently returned to the cave villa. Once inside, Luo Yu informed them that she was going to take a shower and headed straight to her suite.

Ying Zhao moved to the control panel to order herself a summer special drink. Just as she leaned over to ask Zhu Huai if she wanted anything, she noticed Zhu Huai standing still in the lounge, first glancing at the closed archway of Luo Yu’s suite, then turning back to her. “Ying Zhao, have you ever thought about staying?”