Chapter 48
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Chapter 48: Old Memories in a Dream
In the air defense forces headquarters, in the external directives officer’s office, the afternoon sunshine slanted onto the thick carpet in front of the desk. The light carried specks of dust, mingling with the steam rising from a teacup on the desk.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” the person behind the desk sighed gently. “But you know that this secret interception mission was never guaranteed to succeed.”
She sat down in a chair in front of the desk. “If they hadn’t replaced me at the last minute, it wouldn’t have failed so miserably.”
“The principle of avoiding relatives is a hard and fast rule,” the person replied with a trace of helplessness. “After all, the order we received was to complete the interception as discreetly as possible. In the case of any unforeseen circumstances, we had to withdraw immediately to prevent you from disregarding orders and forcing an interception, which could have worsened the current situation.”
After speaking, the person raised their hand and took a sip of tea. “A few days ago, I even pressured myself to let you go out there to collect the analysis of the wreckage. I will do everything I can to support you.”
“I understand the need to see the big picture,” she scoffed coldly. “But the current situation isn’t much better than you expected, is it?”
The person didn’t deny it, merely nodding heavily. “Indeed. There are significant issues with the substitute chosen for this mission. However, the scheduling officer who approved the last-minute replacement has already faced punishment, and you also put that person in the hospital, which doesn’t reflect well.”
She clenched her fists. “It was just hospitalization; I’ve shown great restraint.”
The person sighed again. “Let’s put this matter to rest. I’ve kept your assault under wraps. The execution errors in this secret mission have various causes, and you need to understand that. If you truly feel uncomfortable, I can grant you a few more days off to take a breather.”
“No need,” she said, placing an official document on the desk. “I came here to have you sign the transfer order.”
The person set down the teacup, frowned, and flipped through the document several times before finally saying, “Space Administration, Time Bureau? What good is going to a newly established place like that? It might disband any day; why would you want to go there?”
“I don’t have a reason; I just want a change of environment, and they happen to need people.”
The person sighed heavily. “Let me think about it.”
“I came here to get you to sign, not to ask for your consideration. The process is already halfway done.”
“You only have three months until you can be promoted to executive; why would you leave at such a critical moment? I can promise you won’t receive a disciplinary record for the assault, and it absolutely won’t affect your future promotions. Don’t act on impulse and ruin your career over this.”
“It’s not impulse; I’ve thought it through.”
The person stared at her in silence for a while; she returned the gaze coolly. The office was quiet until the person lightly shook their head and reached for a pen from the nearby holder. “Since you’ve made up your mind, I can’t force you to stay. But I must remind you of one thing: I can agree, but there are several approvals you will still need to go through. You may not truly leave, and if you can’t leave, it won’t bode well for your future. Also, the air defense forces isn’t a place you can easily return to once you leave. You need to think it through.”
“I know, just sign it.”
The person sighed once more, then unscrewed the pen cap and signed the document. They placed it under the nearby scanner and pressed the fingerprint recognition to upload it to the command center’s administrative cloud.
This is an old tradition of the air defense forces; all approvals must go through both physical documentation and cloud processes simultaneously. She took the scanned document and stood up. “I have nothing else, so I’ll take my leave.”
As she turned to exit, she heard the person call her back. “Wen Jing, don’t regret this.”
She glanced back at the older woman behind the desk. The sunset outlined her figure as a silhouette, and because she was backlit, her expression was unclear. She looked at that shadow but said nothing as she turned and left the office.
Luo Yu suddenly opened her eyes, the morning sunlight spilling on her arm. She blinked, the dream fading quickly from her mind. After sitting up and leaning against the soft cushions of her cozy nest, she turned to observe the view outside the window.
Her bedroom window faced a forest, and on this clear summer morning, the sight was a sea of vibrant green, full of life.
Although the window had blackout curtains, she loved the feeling of waking up to natural light each day; since there were only trees outside, she never closed the curtains.
She sat up for a moment, lost in thought about past events, when the in-house housekeeping system noticed she was awake and gently said, “Luo Yu, your companion Ying Zhao is in the lounge asking if you’re awake.”
She snapped back to reality. “Tell her I’ll be right there.”
After saying that, she got up to wash up and changed her clothes before stepping out of her suite. She found Ying Zhao sitting on the cushions, and as soon as she heard the door open, she turned and said, “Professor Mo Chuan said that the exploration team from the time travel center launched yesterday has returned with some very valuable footage. She asked if I wanted to go take a look, so let’s go together today! You haven’t been there yet.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Zhu Huai emerged from her own door. Hearing this, she said, “I think that’s great. The Return Simulation doesn’t need to be practiced at high intensity every day. Let’s go out today and relax a bit; it’ll help us return in better condition.”
Luo Yu thought for a moment before saying, “If I don’t practice for a day, my skills will get rusty. How about this: let’s do a simulation shortly, and then we can go over around eleven. What do you think?”
Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao readily agreed. After the three finished breakfast in the lounge, they walked toward the simulator. Zhu Huai prepared the environment in the control room while Luo Yu and Ying Zhao entered the time capsule, selecting coordinates further away than yesterday. They simulated three rounds, finishing just fifteen minutes before eleven.
Ying Zhao sent a message to Mo Chuan in the morning, saying that the three of them would go together today. Mo Chuan thought that since Luo Yu could operate the aircraft, she did not need to come here to pick them up and instead set off with Ao Ci and Wanhua first.
Luo Yu and her companions asked the hangar robot for a small aircraft at the helipad and, following the navigation, flew northwest.
Along the way, the three enjoyed a view of the towering mountains and mighty rivers to the west. Because Mo Chuan had left a message telling them not to rush, they did not activate the high-speed mode and leisurely admired the scenery for over an hour before arriving at the time travel center.
They landed at the helipad right in the center of the sinkhole and listened as the hangar robot introduced the names of others who had arrived before them. Then, it invited them to follow the guiding robot inside.
As the three entered the natural cave ahead, Luo Yu and Zhu Huai, visiting for the first time, curiously looked around. Having been there before, Ying Zhao asked the guiding robot to explain the situation to them.
“The time travel center was established thirty-five years ago. It conducted the first historical time retrospective observation, sending exploration teams to parallel time periods from one hundred years ago to verify some historical events. Since then, the time travel center has expanded its exploration to more distant parallel time periods, launching two missions each year, reaching as far back as eight thousand years to uncover traces of the evolutionary branches of seventeen plant species. Later, cosmologists discovered a certain entanglement between parallel time periods. If the historical time exploration is mismanaged, it could impact each timeline’s development. After repeated confirmations and discussions, the time travel center officially ceased exploration missions ten years ago and retained only the analysis of previously collected data.”
As they listened to the guiding robot narrate the history of the time travel center, they also looked at the various historical time exhibition halls along the corridor, each marked with the era it belonged to and a brief introduction of its exploration tasks. These included classifications of flora and fauna, the origins of diverse cultures around the world, and changes in global topography, temperature, and ocean currents.
Walking through the corridor, they stopped at the entrance of a large hall. The guiding robot raised its hand and said, “You’ve arrived at the lounge.”
Upon entering, they indeed found several people already inside. Mo Chuan, standing in the middle of the hall and speaking with Ao Ci, waved at them.
The three walked over and greeted everyone. Mo Chuan smiled and said, “The footage analysis meeting is in the afternoon; we just had lunch next door and are planning to take a nap for a bit. You all can order some snacks; if you don’t want to rest, feel free to explore the exhibition halls outside.”
Since arriving, they had spent most of their time busy in the hangar or following Mo Chuan out and hadn’t had much of a chance to rest, leading Mo Chuan to think they weren’t in the habit of napping.
But on the way here, they saw those exhibition hall signs, which seemed more appealing than a nap. Luo Yu turned to Zhu Huai and Ying Zhao and smiled at Mo Chuan, saying, “We just passed those exhibition halls and were thinking of going in to take a look.”
As soon as Luo Yu finished speaking, a youthful voice came from behind them, saying, “Hey, aren’t you my great-great-granddaughter from thirty thousand years in the future?”
Zhu Huai’s eyes twitched, and turning to look, she found Wanhua, hands on his hips, looking quite pleased.
“Uh… Hello, Wanhua.” In front of so many people, she couldn’t bring herself to call him ancestor and scratched her head, greeting him politely.
Wanhua didn’t care much about titles anyway; he had just been joking. Seeing her greet him seriously, he chuckled. “I’ve practiced the music score you wrote for me last time; next time you come, I’ll play it for you.”
After that, when he heard they were planning to visit the nearby exhibition hall, Wanhua said, “I only explored a little last time, so I’ll join you since you’re going now.”
At that moment, a Serving Robot approached to take their orders. They each chose some snacks and drinks before bidding farewell to Mo Chuan and Ao Ci. Together with Wanhua, they left the lounge and headed toward the nearby exhibition hall.
As the four walked into the first exhibition hall on the right, besides the guiding robot continuing its narration, a Serving Robot accompanied them, balancing a large tray filled with snacks and drinks so they could munch while exploring. Behind them, a cleaning robot followed to clean up any dropped food debris.
The exhibition halls were categorized by themes. The first was the plant hall, showcasing plant specimens from this time period and footage samples along with 3D illustrations of plants from various historical time periods.
The guiding robot explained that the exploration teams had previously tried to bring plants back, but they always turned to ashes in the time tunnel. Even if specimens were prepared in historical time periods, any extractable DNA segment would invariably vanish. Thus, they could only preserve images and 3D drawings.
Luo Yu nodded silently at this; it was a cosmic law that current time travel could not overcome. Any living thing, even a single leaf or a drop of saliva, carrying extractable biological information, would disintegrate in the time channel leading to the future. Only non-living items remained unaffected. She had previously brought back some porcelain and coins from historical time periods, which were now stored in the exhibition hall of the Space Administration.
She recalled hearing about another executive team within the Time Bureau that had attempted to bring back human genetic samples from historical time periods, but they had also missed the chance through the time tunnel.
That attempt must have been aimed at using historical genetic materials to compensate for the rapidly shortening modern v-gene defects, but practice proved that this route could not be taken.
After visiting the plant exhibition hall, they moved on to the culture exhibition hall, observing the development of various ethnic groups around the world, as well as their language pronunciations and writing evolutions.
Wanhua, living in the Western Continent, shared interesting anecdotes about the evolution of certain vocabulary in their language. Luo Yu and her friends also shared about the written characters in their world, pointing out the surprising connections in their meanings between the two civilizations spanning thirty thousand years.
These two civilizations across time held remarkable connections in some areas, leaving them puzzled about the development of human culture.
After exiting the culture exhibition hall, they arrived at the nature exhibition hall, where they explored the geological changes in this world over eight thousand years—how the landscapes of mountains, rivers, and lakes shifted, and how the climate underwent significant changes similar to the Ice Age, finally forming the landscape they currently stood on.
The four had just finished touring these several exhibition halls when the guiding robot approached, saying, “The footage analysis meeting of the historical time exploration team is about to begin. Please follow me.”
