Ji Renrui couldn't help but shake his head, "You, you are really a bodhisattva." In fact, they are not bitter, they think that the penance of the flesh will reap the happiness of the soul, the salvation of the soul. ”

Yu Leshui insisted with a smile, "You try to persuade once." After persuasion, if they still insist, we have done our best. ”

"Okay, I'll try."

They still arrived by helicopter. In the center of the crowd there is a large stainless steel pot, which contains what is probably a Chinese-style chowder soup, which is fragrant and steaming, and people are queuing up to receive it, in an orderly manner. The three old ladies who held long spoons in their hands were distributed to everyone, and they seemed to enjoy the role of "giver", working very hard, and talking cordially with the recipients as they distributed. Two of the old ladies looked unkempt, they should be the two neighbors who lived a hard life in the tent, and the neatly dressed one must be Kang Buming's wife. Ji Renrui asked his companions to wait outside the circle, and he found the three old ladies and spoke for a while. Yu Leshui and the others couldn't hear what he was saying, only that he was staggered between Chinese and English, and that he was obviously speaking to the people around him. Twenty minutes later he came back and said with a smile:

"Okay, Lao Kang's two old neighbors have agreed to return to China, and the others have been shaken."

Yu Leshui admired, "So fast!" What did you say? Which of the 36 plans is this time? ”

"It's useless at all, this time by the power of the truth. I said to them: This is indeed the place where a vacuum bubble can be excited, and this second-order vacuum can be said to be a new universe, so it is not wrong for the Lord to say that this is the gateway to the new universe. But objects in the excitation zone, including the human body, are embedded in the walls of the hollow ball in front of you. You see, you can see through the gap that there's a human body, right? At that time, there were four righteous martyrs embedded in the wall, and as for whether their souls can leave the physical body and enter the new universe, according to our beliefs, we do not believe it, but it is not excluded that your faith is right. I will tell you the news that the first industrial stirring will take place in half an hour, according to the Lord: then the gates of heaven will be opened. If the three of you are willing to enter the gates of heaven, I can open a back door and send you to that tank beforehand—but after doing so, I can't guarantee the fate of your souls, but the flesh will definitely be embedded in the hull. ”

"What do they say?"

"Kang Lao's wife shook her head first, and said with a smile: 'You are mistaken, I am here to give them porridge, and I am not ready to enter the kingdom of heaven.' The two old neighbors hesitated for a while, and decided to give up the back door I provided, saying that they would leave here immediately and return to China. The others were immediately shaken, and there should be quite a few people following in their footsteps. ”

"Good, good job. Thank you Renrui, the merit is immeasurable. ”

The scaffolding over there has been dismantled, and the excitation is about to begin. They returned by helicopter and stood at the mouth of the pit, looking down without blinking. After the preparation bell rang, everything was silent, and suddenly a white light flashed, and the space seemed to twitch, and with a clear sound, the huge vacuum tube suddenly disappeared. If you look closely, it's still there, but it's a completely transparent canister-shaped hull, slightly larger than the original. The support under the tank was crooked, and the tank sat directly on the ground, and the clear sound should be the sound of the tank sitting on the ground. The vacuum pipes outside the tank range remain intact but have been detached from the tank. Two laser cutters stretched out their long arms at the same time and began to cut on the hull. The cutter glows a dazzling blue, but unlike ordinary cuts, there are no sparks flying at all, only an extremely thin cut that slowly outlines the shape of the hatch on the transparent hull as the laser extends. It seems that this new type of substance is more difficult to cut, and the cutting travels rather slowly. An hour later, two doors – no, four – were cut, and it turned out that the laser cutter had also cut on the opposite side of the tank wall.

Kang Buming and Dai Qi led everyone into a sightseeing pod, and the hydraulic telescopic arm sent the pod to the freshly cut doorway. According to Dyche, the hull will soon be removed for further processing in other workshops. Here the door is cut out in advance, just for the convenience of inspection and hoisting, and then it is time to start preparing the next product. Through the doorway, everyone looked in awe at the huge transparent hull. The bulkhead is really thin, only two millimeters, which, combined with complete transparency, is almost like melting into the air. Ge Qihong smiled and asked:

"Mr. Kang, Mr. Dykey, with such thin walls, can you really make a spaceship hull?"

Dyche seemed to have anticipated a similar problem, and prepared a sledgehammer in advance, and at this time he brought the hammer and smashed it into the hull of the ship, and everyone couldn't help but feel a sense of tightness - they were used to the scene of glass shattering under the hammer. But such a scenario did not arise. Only a clear sound was heard, and the hammer was bounced back, leaving the smashed area intact. The aftermath of that sound continued, and the shock wave traveled along the thin hull, causing the diffraction of light, and circles of colored ripples swung along the hull. From this phenomenon, this high-strength material also has excellent elasticity. Kang Buming smiled and said:

"His hammering is just a show, a visual picture for reporters, in fact, the strength of the hull is far greater than the force of the hammering, and it can even resist the impact of micrometeorites." He asked Ge Qihong with a smile, "Xiaoge, do you have a fear of heights?" If not, you can use such transparent spheres to form a skyscraper, so that the building melts into the blue sky, and the residents can look through the floor and watch the rainbow lie at their feet, and the clouds fly to a halt. ”

Ge Qihong said sincerely: "That is the realm of immortals. ”

Everyone laughed, but there was also bitterness in the depths of the smile - human society has reached a new stage, and with inexhaustible cheap and clean energy, "environmental pollution" will become an outdated old word. Mankind has entered the kingdom of freedom because of technology, from the human realm to the divine realm. Unfortunately, there is still a demon lurking in front of it, and it will swallow all this beauty without mercy, and the technology that has been deified has no way to deal with it, at least so far. True, Pauli is working hard to develop the baby universe, but the outcome is unpredictable, it can only be described as a crazy effort in despair.

Everyone said goodbye to Kang Lao in bitter joy and embarked on the road back.

Since then, new ships have been built at an astonishing pace. Based on the standardized hulls produced by the Fermi Center in the United States, Ji Renrui organized assembly line production all over the world, and all countries with the corresponding technical level participated in the production of parts and components, and finally assembled them in China. Of course, Ji Renrui had reached an agreement with all the shipowners in private in advance: after the completion of the spacecraft, the "Friends of Joy" would borrow it for three months without paying rent, but would ensure the integrity of the spacecraft, and if there was any damage, it would be compensated according to the price.

As for the industry that produced monolithic houses in the same way, Kang Buming's grandson Kangping was the general director. This is a large industry involving trillions of output value, and they must first formulate standards, conduct preliminary experiments, and complete finalized drawings.

Two years later, with the almost frantic efforts of Ji Renrui, Pauli, Kang Buming and others, thirty-three spaceships were successfully built, and one more was used as a backup. The new process and assembly line production greatly reduced the cost, and even so, the total construction cost accounted for 45% of the world's GDP that year, which greatly affected the quality of life of the people. But the people knew what it was for, so it didn't cause any trouble. There was only one thing that Ji Renrui didn't do: he originally wanted to buy insurance for the spaceship, but no insurance company dared to take over the business. In fact, even if someone picks up, Ji Renrui can't get an astronomical premium. And – after all, what's the difference between insuring and not insuring? In Ji Renrui's mind, the money in the world is now his, and it can be used for the purpose of human escape. Then, if you buy insurance, you are just transferring the money from your right pocket to your left pocket. What's more, this experiment is "intrinsically safe" (Pauli's words), vacuum annihilation can only release a trace amount of energy, that is, low-intensity light pulses, and personnel and equipment are absolutely safe as long as they are outside the range of annihilation. The success of the "Goldfish" and "Noah" is evidenced by the industrial stimulation that has been routinely implemented by the Fermi Center. So later, Ji Renrui gave up the idea of buying insurance.

In the past two years, Chu Tianle has been paying close attention to the progress of this matter, but he has indeed not participated in it. More often than not, he spends his time at home in the mountains: in a wheelchair, his eyebrows slightly frowned, his gaze focused on infinity, motionless for hours. Yu Leshui tries to spend as much time as possible at home with her husband, she knows that he is struggling to find "another way", but his search will definitely not go well. Yu Leshui could feel the anxiety in his heart. Even six-year-old Cao'er knows a rule: she must not be disturbed when her father "turns into a stone statue", and she will quietly follow Sister-in-law Xu or her mother to play outside. Yu Leshui never asked her husband how he was doing, so as not to put pressure on him. She remembered that her father-in-law took the initiative to quit scientific research in his later years, just like a water lover who took the initiative to stay away from the sea when he was old, and it was inevitable that she would feel a sense of loss at that time. Yu Leshui has a feeling that her husband may be about to leave the stage of intellectual fighting. Although he was only forty-four years old, his illness may have affected his intellect.

For a person like her husband, mere intellectual decline means the end of her life, Yu Leshui thought bitterly.

Two years later, in June, preparations for the Baby Space Experiment were all ready. Ji Renrui borrowed the "Cosmic Bug" from SCAC, pulled Chu Tianle and Yu Leshui, and came to the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon gravitational system, 60,000 kilometers behind the moon, to inspect the experiment on behalf of the "Friends of Music" headquarters. Thirty-two unmanned spacecraft have been moored there, and the hulls are painted with the names of each ship: "Shield Machine", "Deep Diving", "Lonely Heart", "Miner", "New Eden", "Gate of Heaven" and so on. Since the new ships are equipped with tail antennas, they still resemble goldfish, but with small tails. Thirty-two goldfish are grouped head to head, and their tails form a giant flower ball. The experiment will take place at midnight Beijing time, at which point thirty-two goldfish will spit out water bubbles (second-order vacuum bubbles) at the same time, and the thirty-two bubbles will be connected into a closed sphere, and the spherical space (first-order vacuum) enclosed by this sphere will be separated from its original three-dimensional universe, float away, and disappear.

Pauli accompanied the inspection. This guy has always been unkempt, he has been so busy in the past two years that he has even saved a haircut, and now his pale yellow hair and beard are long and unkempt. Ji Jichang and Emma privately called the teacher a "white-haired lion", which should be an apt nickname. He has not had time to swim or bathe lately, and the smell on his body is as pungent as that of a lion, but visitors are gentlemanly and pretend not to know about it. Pauli pointed to the spaceship and smiled at Yu Leshui and said:

"Look, this is your football."

Thirty-two ships are exactly the same in appearance, only the shape of the tail antenna is divided into two types. During the construction of the spacecraft, some good deeds were privately connected in series and made the following distributions: the tail antennas of the twelve ships were made into regular pentagons, black; twenty ships made in a regular hexagon, white; Taken together, they resemble the 32 pieces of a football. Considering that this small change has nothing to do with the overall situation, Ji Renrui laughed and let him go at that time. So from a distance, these ships form a large, realistic soccer ball, but it hasn't been put together yet, and there is a gap between the black and white pieces.

Yu Leshui smiled and shook his head, "This football is also a little bigger." ”

Chu Tianle also smiled: "If you want to kick it, you have to have a big foot like Kuafu." ”

Pauli pointed to the center of the soccer ball, where a grid-like object hovered, "and that's the radioactive source, which is used to verify the success of the experiment." There is a sensitive probe placed on the far side of the moon, and if the index of the probe suddenly returns to zero after the bubble is excited, we can open champagne. I made the radioactive source into a grid, a total of 125 nodes, each with 100 grams of radium fixed. Such a structure can use the low temperature of space to cool the radium block and avoid overheating the center due to radioactive energy. ”

Chu Tianle said: "But only the moment of excitation can be measured, because the moon where the instrument is placed will soon be far away from this space." "This explanation is for Ji and Yu, who are not professional scientists after all." In the past, people have always mixed 'star coordinates' with 'spatial coordinates', and only recorded the coordinates of stars when observing the universe, and never tried to determine a specific spatial point, because the vacuum is nothingness, and it is the same everywhere, and there is no feature that can be located. But after we excite it, there is a certain point in the universe, which is like the navel of the ocean, which causes the surrounding space to flow out. Because the Earth and Moon are in motion, they will quickly move away from this specific point of rest. For example, it's like lighting a firecracker in the tail of a speeding car and blowing a small crater in the ground. The pit will move away from the car very quickly, and that's because the car is moving, and the pit is stationary. ”

Yu Leshui was a little puzzled, "Then how do you verify whether the excitation is successful?" If the lump does not fall into the baby universe, it will quickly move away from the moon at that particular point, and the lunar probe will also lose its readings. ”

Chu Tianle smiled, "Wrong! If the radium block does not fall into the baby universe, but remains in the universe, it will be affected by the gravitational pull of the Earth and the Moon, and will still move with the Earth-Moon coordinate system. So the combined result is that as long as the on-the-moon probe reads back to zero, it means that champagne can be opened. Pauli, am I right? ”

"Yes."

Ji Yu and the others pondered carefully, nodded and said, "Yes, that's the case." ”

Suddenly, two clouds of blue light appeared from the tail of one of the thirty-two spaceships, and the hull of the ship moved slightly. Two or four clouds of blue light also appeared behind the tail of the other spaceships, and the hull of the ship also moved slightly. The blue light then went out and the hull returned to stability. Pauli explains:

"Thirty-two spacecraft are linkage controlled, with a central radioactive source as the origin, maintaining a strict spherical shape. If there is a slight amount of drift, the computer will automatically direct the ship's fine-tuning system to ignite and accurately correct the ship's orientation. ”

was very satisfied with the on-site inspection, and neither Ji Renrui nor Chu Tianle had any opinions. So, the group left here on the "cosmic bug" and went to the far side of the moon 60,000 kilometers away, where the experimental command post was located. At this time, the sun, the earth, and the moon are not in a straight line, and the far side of the moon (that is, the side that always faces away from the earth) is mostly bathed in sunlight, hanging like a shining gold disk over the canopy. However, this gold plate is full of scars and has many craters, but what is more striking are the numerous "seas", such as the Korolev Sea, the Tsiorsvsky Sea, the Mendeleev Sea, the Apollo Sea, the Moscow Sea, etc., which are scattered on the surface of the gold plate. Chu Tianle watched greedily, skillfully pointing out various places for his wife, and sighed heartily:

"I've been observing astronomy for 30 years, and this is the first time I've seen the far side of the moon, but I've memorized them on a map of the moon."

The spacecraft stopped in the center of the far side of the moon, a nameless plain not far from the Aitken crater. A simplified version of the ship stopped here, with the name "Nuwa" on it, and it was the spare one of the thirty-three ships. The "Cosmic Bug" closed the wormhole flight state and landed on the moon in low gravity using the power of four "little bees" in the tail. After stepping off the ship, everyone saw the command post, which was a completely transparent building that seemed to dissolve in the sunlight. It is perfectly spherical in shape, and the lower part of the sphere is buried under the moon rock. There were two dozen people and some equipment inside the sphere, and a small telescope with a video camera was facing the zenith. Pauli led the three of them into spacesuits, got off the spaceship, entered the command post through the tunnel, and took off the spacesuits again. Ji Jichang, Kang Buming, and World News Agency photojournalist and announcer Hops greeted them and shook hands with the guests, while Emma also waved to this side in the distance. Pointing to the transparent spherical houses, Pauli said with appreciation:

"Look, the credit of Kang Lao. He cleverly borrowed the well-established hull manufacturing technology to make it simple on the moon, and used the excitation system of the 'Nuwa' to create this laboratory. ”

Several people shook hands with Kang Lao and thanked him, and Ji Renrui said: "You old guy is really idle, running on the moon and making this big bubble." ”

Eighty-five-year-old Kang Buming still maintains a pure heart. He said passionately: "Welcome to the age of science fiction. Working here these days, I always feel like I'm in the scene of some kind of science fiction movie. I think that even if the final fate of humanity is unchangeable, I have to thank the pot of boiling water more than 20 years ago for allowing a group of tiny frogs to jump to the highest heights in life. ”

Ji Renrui scolded with a smile: "You old crow, don't be blind here. Let's start with the situation. ”

So, Ji Jichang introduced the preparations for the lunar base. After the introduction, Ji Renrui asked: "I see that the main force of the Pauli group is here." Do you have to use so many people for the experiment? ”

Ji Jichang replied: "No." The experiment was fully automated, and it was enough for two people except the photojournalist, but none of the partners wanted to miss the opportunity to observe the experiment with their own eyes. ”

Ji Renrui said unceremoniously: "Then you haven't learned the tradition of 'Friends of Happiness'. The tradition of Friends of Joy is to do only what is necessary and take only the most necessary risks. "Of course, I know that this kind of experiment is safe, and it only excites soft pulses of light, which are already routine in Lao Kang's factory, not to mention that it is still 60,000 kilometers away from the experimental site." But since the experiment didn't use so many people, let them go back to Earth, including the 'Nuwa' next to it. ”

Pauli immediately nodded in approval, and made a resolute gesture to his apparently reluctant men, saying, "This whip is right." I, Ji Jichang, and photojournalist Hopps stayed, and the rest left on the 'Nuwa'. ”

Ji Renrui said: "Yes, hurry back, you can watch the live broadcast in the middle of the night." ”

One of his men said in frustration, "That's a whole moon away......"

Chu Tianle smiled and said, "I have to wronged you." Don't you know the name of the whip of God? - The point is that he is right, it never hurts to be more careful. ”

Kang Buming suddenly interjected: "Yes, you should leave - but Ji Jichang can't stay." Since it was for safety, the second-in-command of Pauli's group should have left. I'll stay. He stopped the young men in advance, "For the sake of my gray hair, no one will fight with me." At my age, even burying bones in the moon is worth it, and it can definitely be regarded as a joy and mourning. ”

Ji Renrui scolded him again: "You old crow, the more noisy you are, the more energetic you are." But that's what you say. ”

Yu Leshui looked at Ji Renrui, and secretly admired it in his heart. This man is capable and thoughtful, bolder than anyone else when he should be bold, and more careful than anyone else when he should be careful. It's not that the experiment was risky, but he resolutely discarded any "unnecessary risks" in advance, and did a very good job. I really want to thank fate for bringing this person to the "Friends of Joy" (in fact, it should be said that he contributed to the birth of the "Friends of Happiness"), he is the soul of the "Friends of Happiness" like Tianle. If Tianle is the brain that thinks about it, then he is the cerebellum that manages action. His only drawback—which can only be regarded as her feelings—Ji Renrui seems to enjoy the thrill of power too much. Two years ago, she did not agree to Abikar's proposal, which was an important reason.

Ji Jichang was not very reconciled, knowing that Pauli would not agree, he still said tentatively: "Teacher, let me stay in command, you can rest assured, I promise to ......"

Pauli interrupted him and said briefly, "The group leader takes precedence." ”

Ji Jichang knew that he couldn't resist him, shook his head in frustration, and muttered: "You white-haired old goblin." Emma over there heard this, smiled and said in English, "Mr. Pauli, Changchang is calling your nickname again." Pauli was silent.

Yu Leshui smiled and urged everyone: "Let's go, let's go." Don't delay watching the live broadcast. ”

Everyone began to wear space suits, and Ji Jichang suddenly stopped halfway through it and patted his head, "Yo, I suddenly remembered, today is Dad's important day, 60th birthday!" ”

Ji Renrui was stunned for a moment, "If you don't say it, I forgot about it myself." Before leaving, your mother asked me if I could go back today, and I said sure. She didn't say anything about her birthday, maybe she wanted to surprise me? ”

Everyone laughed and said, "Go home quickly, you family of three will watch the live broadcast by the candlelight of the birthday cake." Ji Renrui suddenly patted Kang Buming, because they had the same birthday, they always jokingly called Lao Tonggeng: "You ......"

Kang Buming also remembered at the same time: "Haha, it's also my birthday!" It's okay, it's okay, I'll just spend it on the moon, it should be my most chic birthday in eighty-five years. But I have to talk to my wife. ”

He asked for a phone call at home through the headquarters, saying that he couldn't go back today, and that he would eat the birthday cake for him. The wife asked the four-year-old great-granddaughter Cricket to celebrate the birthday of the grandfather, sang the birthday song in a milky voice, and the old man hung up the phone happily.

When Kang Lao called, Pauli called Chu Tianle aside and said calmly: "Since it is the implementation of security measures, I will simply leave my last words." Chu, in case something happens, the Pauli formula is left to you. ”

Chu Tianle looked at the male lion with messy hair with emotion. Pauli's gaze was calm, but Chu Tianle read his deep meaning from it. This "white-haired old demon" can be said to be the most sober in the world, and his intuition is amazing. Insiders know that he likes to bet on a study to guess the result intuitively before coming to a conclusion, and he has hardly ever lost. In the recent period, he suddenly changed from a bare-bottomed sunbathing freeman to a workaholic, and there must be a major reason. Maybe he saw another catastrophe ahead of humanity? He once said that although the Pauli formula is an empirical formula, it has the beauty of simplicity and symmetry, and should be able to become a theoretical formula. Now, he deliberately keeps the formula to himself, of course, with deep meaning...... But it's not appropriate to talk for a long time at the moment, Tianle just smiled and said:

"You're embarrassing me. You know I'm a halfway monk, and I have a poor math background, so I can't do this. I'm sure you'll come back safely, and it's up to you to do it. ”

Pauli said with his usual bluntness: "I know you're a bit bad at math, but you have a great intuition, and it's just as important as math proficiency." Well, over to you. ”

"Okay, I'll take it for now."

The two groups of people said goodbye, and everyone came out through the tunnel and boarded the two spaceships respectively. The sun had half set, and it was twilight in the lunar wilderness. The spacecraft takes off with conventional power and then switches to wormhole flight. Before everyone's vision turned blind, everyone saw that in the brightly lit crystal ball building, three figures bathed in warm light were waving to them frequently. This has also become a posthumous photo of the three of them in everyone's memory.

The two spacecraft are parked in a synchronous orbit over the Halmahera launch site. They returned to the ground on a "little bee" and then took a special plane back to China's Xixia. It was already 11 o'clock at night when he arrived at the headquarters, and Ji Renrui didn't let the Chu couple go, asking them to eat birthday cake together. Although Yu Leshui wanted to go home early to see the grass, it was difficult to refuse, and the grass must have fallen asleep, so he readily agreed. Miao Ji heard movement outside, hurried out, and was relieved to see that it was her husband and his party. Her son, who couldn't go home, also came back unexpectedly, which made her even happier. She said:

"I finally came back today in a hurry, and I didn't delay my 60th birthday until tomorrow."

She really prepared a birthday cake and a table of feasts, and there were Lu Junding and his wife in the house. Everyone was busy blowing out candles and cutting cakes, but they all had one eye on the TV screen. On the screen, the big black and white "football" still hovers quietly, waiting for the command to ignite. Today is the seventh day of the lunar calendar, and through the window, a thin crescent moon hangs in the middle of the night sky, and the dim lunar disk is faintly visible. In terms of orientation, the experimental site, the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system, is behind the center of the lunar disk at the moment. Lu Junding said to Yu Leshui:

"If the experiment is successful, I'll be able to do it right away."

He said that if the experiment is successful, the people have hope again, and they can vent psychologically, no one will come to carry out any more assassinations. He was right, but when he suddenly mentioned this at this moment of joy and excitement, Yu Leshui suddenly felt a wave of melancholy in his heart. Glancing at her husband, he was trying to eat (now that he was chewing more difficult), he didn't seem to pay too much attention to this sentence, and Yu Leshui hurriedly pulled the conversation away.

This birthday feast was a storm, because the time was almost zero. Everyone didn't have time to clean up the dishes and chopsticks, so they piled them up on the dining table and went to the living room to watch TV. Occasionally, people would look at the crescent moon outside the window, because from the real position, the experiment site was in that direction, and they really wanted to see the laboratory through the moon.

Because there are too many uncertain factors in the Baby Universe Project, today's live broadcast is relatively low-key, with no professional hosts and no VIPs to watch the ceremony. The camera switches back and forth between the experiment site and the lunar lab, where only Pauli, Kang Buming, and Hopus, who doubles as host. At 11:59, Hopps simply announced:

"The experiment is about to begin, now start the one-minute countdown!"

The computer counted monotonously, and the Ji family's room was quiet, and all eyes were fixed on the big black and white "football" on the screen. At the end of the count, the big "football" suddenly burst out with an extremely strong white light. Everyone couldn't help but shout hello, but this cheer was only half shouted before it was stuck, because the TV screen suddenly went black! At the same time, the night sky outside the window became snowy, and against the background of strong light, only the moon disk in mid-air was black, like Satan's one-eyed. The bright light flashed, and the night returned to its original appearance, only the circumference of the lunar disk remained with a thin white light, surrounding a hollow moon. However, the aperture soon faded, revealing the original crescent moon. Strangely, before the white light faded, the lunar disk seemed to shake suddenly, and then everything fell silent.

The TV screen is still black.

Such a bright light far exceeds the theoretical calculation and is a bad omen. The room was silent for a second, maybe two, and then several people jumped up at the same time and went into action. Ji Renrui and his son called and asked the staff on duty at the headquarters of "Friends of Music" and SCAC respectively, and learned that at the moment when the bright light flashed, all the people who directly watched the night sky with binoculars were temporarily blinded. At this time, the only one that could bypass the moon observation experiment site was the Chuma Telescope in space, but it was also unable to provide a report due to the data spillover caused by the sudden bright light. Chu Tianle beckoned to Ji Renrui and said:

"Immediately take the spaceship and go to the scene!"

Ji Renrui nodded and gave a series of orders on the phone. Ten minutes later, Chu, Ji, and more than a dozen other people had already boarded a helicopter, went to Nanyang to change to a "little bee", and flew towards the Halmahera launch site. At the same time, other members of Pauli's cell rushed there from all over the country.

During the flight, Ji Renrui made a decision that these people would take two spaceships to the scene of the accident. He and Ji Jichang took two members of the Pauli team to take the "Cosmic Bug" first, and Chu and Yu led the rest of the people to take the "Nuwa" to stand by in synchronous orbit. The two ships are in constant contact and the latter can only depart after receiving a safety briefing from the former. There is unlikely to be any danger behind the moon at the moment, but - they also thought the experiment was safe! Chu Tianle and Yu Leshui agreed to this decision. Chu Tianle whispered:

"Brother Ji, Changchang, take care!"

Due to the need to keep in touch at all times, the "Cosmic Bug" could only use the intermittent flight mode, and it took two hours to arrive at the scene of the accident. After crossing the lunar border, they cautiously pushed forward, and Ji Jichang kept reporting:

"All thirty-two ships are missing...... There appears to be floating objects in the distance, and it is not clear at the moment...... Now to the far side of the moon – oh my! ”

Yu Leshui, who was guarding in front of the "Nuwa" intercom, asked anxiously, "What do you see?" ”

The intercom was replaced by Ji Renrui's voice: "Come and see for yourself." It has been confirmed that there is no danger. ”

An hour later, the "Nuwa" arrived behind the moon, and the crew members were stunned by the sight. In the center of the far side of the moon, a giant bowl rises out of thin air, roughly the size of China's Turpan Basin. The bottom of the bowl is sunk deep into the surface of the moon, about ten kilometers lower than the unchanged surface of the moon around it. The walls of the bowl rise in all directions, and the edge is about thirty kilometers higher than the surface of the moon. The walls of the bowl are incomplete, the edges are jagged, and the color is inconsistent, there are dark and light areas, and there are transparent areas. The bowl has a thin wall, raised high on the surface of the moon, and it seems that it will collapse in an uproar when you poke it with your finger, giving people a sharp sense of pain. Seeing this strange scene, Chu Tianle thought of what had happened at the Fermi National Accelerator Experimental Site, where a huge hollow ball with a gap appeared, and later he knew that it was the natural accumulation of matter formed along the annihilation sphere after the vacuum was annihilated. Today's bowl is the same natural pile, but nearly a thousand times larger. At the center of the sphere is the second Lagrangian point of the Earth-Moon gravitational system, where the experiment is located, that is, the annihilation space excited by this experiment has a radius of approximately 60,000 kilometers.

At that time, the inner walls of the two hemispheres of Fermilab were very smooth, with the innermost layer transparent, gradually transitioning to opaque, and the same is true of the inner wall of this bowl today. The two spacecraft are reflected on the mirror surface of the inner wall, and because the curvature of the mirror is small, close to that of a plane mirror, the image of the spacecraft is only slightly smaller. Both ships stopped firing at this point to avoid danger. The first spacecraft released a "little bee", flying on conventional power, searching along the huge bowl wall. They soon found the remains of two spacecraft, which had become flat and flat on the edge of the bowl, but their large structures, such as the bow, the pentagon or hexagonal tail antenna, the electromagnetic acceleration coil arranged in the shape of a warp, and so on, were almost indistinguishable. The name of one of the ships was facing this side, and upon closer inspection, it was barely recognizable: Lonely Heart.

The "little bee" flew towards the bottom of the bowl, and there was an area here that was a little more transparent than the others. It used to be the experimental command post, the transparent spherical building. It is also flattened and attached to the wall of the bowl. The three people in the hemisphere became magnified silhouettes, embedded in the transparent material with their hands and feet, a bit like the paleontology embedded in amber, but the scale was dozens of times larger. Emma in "Little Bee" was heard whispering over the intercom:

"This may be Mr. Pauli, who has the whitest complexion; This should be Hopus, with the small astronomical telescope next to him; This is Mr. Kang, and you can still see his gray hair. Today is his eighty-fifth birthday......"

There was silence over there, and the crew was paying a moment of silence to the three martyrs.

The two ships left the lunar surface, and after some searching, they found a number of other ships. They are also all planarized, forming spherical fragments of the same radian. These fragments should all be equidistant from the second Lagrangian point at the moment of formation, i.e., they are all piled up on the supersphere with a radius of 60,000 kilometers. These positions are far from the gravitational stabilization point, and the mutual positions of the Earth and the Moon have long since changed, so the fragments are scattered in the Earth's orbit for hundreds of thousands of kilometers due to the gravitational drag of the Earth and the Moon. However, no cube mesh for the radium blocks was found in the fragment. Both Nuwa and Cosmic Bug have radiation monitors, but nothing is shown on the instruments. In order to confirm the disappearance of the radium block, Ji Jichang asked the spaceship computer to calculate the spatial coordinates of the radium block three hours ago, and then rushed there. The ship approached the center of the former sphere, but the instrument still did not respond. That is, the experiment was successful. The radium square, with its one hundred and twenty-five nodes, had indeed drifted away from the universe with a self-enclosed space.

The experiment was successful, and it was unexpectedly successful. Now, Pauli-inspired enclosed space is not on the scale of a kilometre, but a supersphere with a diameter of 120,000 kilometres. It could even easily enclose the Earth with a radius of 6,373 kilometers and send it to another universe. It's just that the cost of this victory was too great, it cost three lives and thirty-two valuable wormhole ships as burials.

The two spacecraft returned to the surface of the moon again, hovering in the center of the Great Bowl with conventional power to pay tribute to the three martyrs. Everyone's eyes were clear, but none of them shed tears. The strangely shaped bowl in front of you can be said to be a monument to the three people, and it is an ultra-modern work of art. It is strong enough to resist the impact of micrometeorites, and its lifespan can reach at least tens of thousands of years - but the universe does not have such a long lifespan, but only hundreds of thousands of years. In this way, this thin monument will definitely be able to "live with the sky".

They said goodbye to their comrades-in-arms and returned, and Ji Renrui said calmly:

"Three lives, thirty-two spaceships, half an annual GDP of the world. I owe a huge debt that I can't pay off in a million years, and maybe I can only get a hundred by following the three of them. ”

The Chu couple shook their heads relative to each other, and Chu Tianle whispered, "Brother Ji, don't think like this. This is a debt to all of us. ”

Yu Leshui looked sad, "It's our debt." I'll have to pay my respects to the families of the three as soon as I get back, but—how do I say it? ”

Information about this small-scale astronomical-scale catastrophe is converging one after another. An unexpected takeaway from the cataclysmic moment was that the space laser interferometer antenna LISA [Note 1], which was jointly funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, had never received a definite signal since it was built in 2015, but there was a sudden spike on the record that day, and the time was the moment of experimental excitation.

On the evening of the second day, after discussing with Chu Tianle, Yu Leshui, and Ji Jichang, a joint meeting of the Friends of Le Academy of Sciences and Pauli-Ji Jichang's group was held. In view of the lessons of the last assassination, Ji Ren took precautions this time, and Pai Lu Junding and his men set up a strict guard outside the conference room. The atmosphere of the venue was heavy, and the portraits of the three martyrs were not hung, but three white bouquets of flowers were placed on the rostrum. Ji Renrui said in a deep voice:

"Everyone stood and observed a moment of silence in tribute to the three martyrs."

Everyone mourned in silence, and everyone burst into tears. After the silence, Ji Renrui invited everyone to sit down and said straight to the point:

"The Baby Space Stimulation Experiment was the biggest failure since the founding of Friends of Joy, costing three precious lives and thirty-two valuable spaceships. The world will soon be swallowed up by a fierce wave, and I, the greatest debtor in the history of mankind, can only apologize by committing suicide. But I think we need to take the time to summarize the experiment before the sword of punishment falls, so that it can be easier to confess in court. Now, I would like to give the floor to Ji Jichang, the second person in charge of the Pauli group. ”

Ji Jichang got up, walked over first, and bowed solemnly to Ji Renrui, "First of all, thank you to Mr. Ji Renrui." He thanked his father so solemnly that everyone was confused for a while. Ji Jichang said, "Before the experiment, when my father inspected the site, he proposed that most of the members of Pauli's team must be withdrawn to Earth just in case, and his decision saved 19 lives in the group. And Grandpa Kang Buming took the initiative to stay on my behalf, so that I could still stand here. ”

The participants didn't know this detail, and they all nodded appreciatively to Ji Renrui, and at the same time they all felt scared for a while. Ji Jichang immediately got to the point:

"My dad said that this was the biggest failure of Friends of Joy, but in fact the experiment was very successful, and the success was beyond our expectations. In the past, we could only excite a second-order vacuum at the kilometer level, but this time it has increased sharply to 120,000 kilometers, jumping from a macroscopic scale to a cosmic scale. In other words, if it is confirmed that the infant universe is successfully stimulated, we will easily send the entire earth to another safe universe. You don't know that the moon at this moment, together with the earth and the sun behind it, is no longer in the original space coordinates, they are wrapped in space and displaced 60,000 kilometers to the center of the sphere at that time, but because it is a synchronous displacement, the relative distance has basically not changed, and we can't feel it. The celestial body opposite the hole in the vacuum is 120,000 kilometers closer to us, and this distance difference and the resulting gravitational change can be measured, but it is not taken into account at the moment. However, there is no doubt about this, because the LISA space laser interferometric gravitational wave meter has recorded this moment unmistakably. "It reminds me of Mr. Kang Buming." If he were still alive, he would definitely be able to describe for us that invisible upheaval, that unparalleled scientific and technological progress. It's a pity ......"

The crowd was shocked. Time was too short, and most people were still immersed in grief and frustration, not yet thinking about the scientific significance of this disaster.

"Our mistake is that the second-order vacuum created by 32 times the excitation is not 32 times the original one, but they excite each other to produce secondary excitation, and the end result is this baby universe with a diameter of 120,000 kilometers. Fortunately for humans, the spherical surface of the second-order vacuum bubble reached the surface of the far side of the moon, causing a depression 10 kilometers deep on the lunar surface. If the radius of the sphere were to be 3,000 kilometers larger, the entire moon would – as happened with Fermilab – instantly turn into a thin hemispherical natural accumulation. At that time, the experiment was arranged behind the moon to make the moon play the role of a safe bunker, but we were wrong, for this vacuum bubble excitation, the bunker did not work at all, and the only safety factor was distance. As long as the distance is greater than the vacuum bubble radius, it is absolutely safe, but if it is less than the vacuum bubble radius, then any kind of cover will not work. He joked in a bleak tone, "If you make such a huge moon disk, you will definitely not need to light the lamp to read at night." ”

The joke is creepy - a huge lunar disk of hundreds of thousands of kilometers! It turns the earth into a fly on a giant ceiling lamp, a spectacle that is both spectacular and eerie. Ji Jichang continued:

"If the radius of the vacuum bubble is another 360,000 kilometers, it will be the turn of the earth. So – we're really lucky. ”

The crowd was silent. Now it's not creepy, but calm fear after being shocked, which is far more than shallow creepy. Rogge sighed deeply:

"If that's the case, we're really going to die. But it can't be helped. In order to escape the catastrophe, we have tried to take the road that we have never taken, and we cannot ensure that everything is foolproof, so we can only pray that the cosmic law that Kang Lao said will be secretly blessed - the greater the cataclysm, the higher the threshold for its excitation. ”

Ji Jichang continued: "In retrospect, our experimental plan was indeed wrong, but it was not much wrong, and it only needed to be slightly changed: instead of forming a spherical shape with their heads facing inward, the thirty-two spacecraft were all lined up on the inside, with their heads facing the periphery in a spherical shape. Thus, when the 120,000-kilometer-diameter sphere is inspired, thirty-two spacecraft will be encased in the newborn baby universe. That is to say," he glared at everyone, "not to mention the project of sending the entire Earth, at least we have the ability to send a fleet of this size to the new universe at once: thirty-two ships, plus thirty-two thousand crew members. ”

Hearing this unbelievable and reasonable conclusion, everyone was suddenly startled, and then their eyes suddenly lit up. They stared at the speaker and then turned to eye contact with each other. There was an extreme silence in the room, but there was a clear leap of joy in the silence. Emma looked at her lover with joy in her eyes. Yu Leshui looked at them, thinking with a little bitterness and a little playfulness: This is really a group of children who don't remember to eat. I had just experienced a disaster, and the tears on my cheeks had not yet been wiped away, and as soon as I heard that there was a better game, I immediately threw myself into it. She saw that Chu Tianle's eyes also brightened suddenly, staring at Ji Jichang tightly, and did not hide her appreciation. She understands her husband's psychology at the moment. The husband has always been quick thinking, clear thinking and conceited, but at this moment he suddenly discovered the same genius, just like Zhuge Liang discovered Jiang Wei in his later years, and his joy was indescribable. Chu Tianle paused for a moment, seeing that no one had spoken, and then said to Ji Jichang:

"Thirty-two ships is too much, what if we make the fleet a little smaller? I think this number can be greatly reduced when the ship is switched to 'head out' discharge. So, how many ships are used at least to excite a closed sphere? Tell your father. ”

Ji Jichang immediately turned to his father and replied, "I have already thought about it, it is the number of faces of a cube. Six ships. ”

Chu Tianle also turned his gaze to Ji Jichang's father. Ji Renrui understood what the two meant, and said with a wry smile: "I know what the two of you mean, you want me to add six more to the debt of the thirty-two spaceships, right?" If you owe, you owe, as the saying goes, lice don't itch, debts don't worry, as long as someone dares to borrow. He pondered for a moment, and then asked, "That is, the minimum size is six ships?" ”

"Yes."

"Okay. My son thanked me just now, and now I want to repay the favor, and thank Ji Jichang for his life. With this bright picture he painted, I believe that there will be no more fierce winds and waves that I was worried about. As long as we take such a big step, the people will forget about the previous failure and continue to follow us. At the same time, try to move the world to build six ships and lend them to us, and although it is difficult, I can do it. Okay, Changchang, you can discuss how to go down, I want to start thinking about going up there to fight such a big autumn wind—especially on the basis of the unpaid debts of thirty-two ships. ”

Ji Jichang began to talk about the follow-up plans, including the formation of a fleet of 6,000 people, including the revision of the Noah's Convention. Chu Tianle and Ji Renrui did not participate in the discussion that followed, both of them sat with their eyes open, and their thoughts were already swimming outside the house. Yu Leshui looked at these two people silently and was full of emotion. They are exemplars of perseverance, and they are both planning the general layout of the next big battle. Among them, especially Ji Renrui, it is said that external fundraising should be the business of the Friends of Joy Foundation, not the Ministry of Engineering, but he does not distinguish between each other and takes it all on his shoulders. Yu Leshui pondered for a moment, explained to her husband, and quietly left the venue.

This was the longest meeting in the history of the "Friends of Music", and it did not end until late at night. At the meeting, the design of the next major campaign, including the transactional aspects of the campaign, was all discussed. When the meeting ended, Ji Renrui walked out of the venue tired and saw his wife waiting for him at the door. He asked what was the matter, and Miao Qi said bluntly:

"It's Leshui who told me to guard you here. She said that I want to take care of you these days, and you are not allowed to leave a single step until she returns. She said, otherwise, you would have dared to commit suicide and apologize for the huge debt of thirty-two spaceships. "She also said that suicide is not about you thinking you are guilty, but about trying to take the moral high ground by committing suicide so that the next six ships can easily solve it." ”