In the distant dark depths of the universe, in the void space between the stars, a cold stone is quietly moving. While it is strange for macroscopic objects to appear in this thin place, it is not impossible to explain. Due to the gravitational disturbance between stars, the debris at the edge of the galaxy may also break free from the gravitational pull of the original star and enter the universe, and enter the gravitational range of another star after a space voyage that may last hundreds of millions or even billions of years, and thus be captured by another star.

This is the exchange of matter between stars, and although it is rare, it is not unusual.

All around was boundless darkness, cold, and quiet. In the distance are shining stars, up, down, left, right, front and back, all directions are stars. Here is a sea of darkness and stars.

The stone is about two meters long, only one meter high and only 0.8 meters wide in height, and is generally irregular in shape, full of dense craters, and it is clear that it has been bumped more than once in its past life.

It is as plain as the countless ordinary stones that exist in this universe, and no special place can be found anywhere. But it was such a stone that suddenly changed in the next moment.

Suddenly, a small crack opened in its body, and a glass sphere protruded from the crack. The light of the stars in the distance reflected on it, and the plainness added a bit of mystery to it.

That's its eyes.

This is a monitoring satellite of the Lyra Deep Space Monitoring Network. In order to improve its survival rate and concealment, people covered its body with a thick camouflage, disguising it as an interstellar stone. And placed it in the interstellar void. Let it run on a specific track. Monitor all the movements in this vast void space.

Thousands of spy satellites like this have been dropped here. These thousands of satellites form a large network, which is responsible for the monitoring of the E7368 satellite field, and forms a higher-level monitoring network with hundreds of other satellite networks of similar size.

Light from the depths of the universe enters the glass sphere-shaped eye, and then into the analytical instruments hidden inside. In addition to the information-gathering devices in the optical band, it also integrates more devices for different purposes. There are space curvature detectors, gravitational wave detectors, fluctuation detection instruments, etc.

A few hours earlier, it had detected fluctuations in the curvature of space, which meant that something not far from it was traveling faster than light. And this thing that is traveling faster than light is not reported in the Lyra deep space monitoring network. In the current situation, it is clear that something that has not been reported and is traveling faster than light is only possible with a robot group. This is also calculated by the intelligent program inside it. So it moved its tracks, intending to come here to check the situation of the robot group in more detail. But for some reason, an hour after it noticed the fluctuation of the curvature of space, the fluctuation of the curvature of the space suddenly disappeared.

The disappearance of space curvature fluctuations means that the robot group has moved away from the state of faster-than-light navigation and entered the state of conventional navigation. The group of robots in normal navigation can be observed by optical telescopes. It was because of this that it released its "eyes" to see what was going on here.

But the pitch-black universe is cut off from so much information that it sees nothing in the visible light range. So it switched to the infrared band for observation, and it ...... Suddenly a sun appeared in its field of vision.

That's not the real sun. But it's too similar to the sun. It's too big and too bright. This spy satellite observed. A powerful infrared ray source appeared at a distance of hundreds of millions of kilometers from itself, and if it was further resolved, it would see that this infrared ray source was ...... In fact, it is made up of more very small ray sources. It's just because it's so far away that it comes together when viewed from a distance.

It did a little bit of math-throttling through a calculation program and came to the conclusion: "The small sources of infrared rays that make up this powerful source of infrared rays are at least ...... Thirty trillion. ”

The presence of an infrared ray source means that there is heat, and it is clear that this heat is emitted from the body of those robots. Their engines generate a lot of heat while working, which is why the satellite can observe them.

It immediately relayed the information it had observed. This message is relayed to a spy satellite that is close to it, and then relayed all the way to Earth. This is the working mode of the Lyra deep space monitoring network.

It didn't know why these robots suddenly left in faster-than-light mode, and it didn't care. Its job is only to collect data, and as for the analysis of data, that is the responsibility of the Earth base.

But a moment later, it noticed something unexpected. The equipment it was equipped with told it how strong the source of infrared rays had been in the past little bit...... It seems to be lowered a bit.

It also doesn't care why the intensity of the IR source decreases, it just faithfully records it and sends it out.

The decrease in the intensity of infrared ray sources seems to be an unstoppable trend. In its silent observation, the sun in the infrared field of view is rapidly dimming, from the scorching sun to the setting sun, and finally completely dimmed, completely disappeared. As a result, it loses its last means of observing the bot group.

In another corner of the universe, on a planet in a red dwarf galaxy.

Originally, it was a paradise for mankind, where people built all kinds of facilities, built high-rise buildings, built roads, transformed natural landscapes, and built space bases...... But all these man-made objects have completely disappeared. During the sweep as humanity retreated, all of this was destroyed by artillery fire. Then, after decades of silence, it welcomed its second group of visitors.

It was an army of hideous-looking robots. They descended from space like meteor showers, taking over the planet's land and mountains, its canyons and oceans in less than a day. The silent stars are noisy again, and the robots are here to mine the materials and minerals they need to their heart's content, and reproduce to their heart's content......

But at this moment, a signal was transmitted from the depths of the universe to here, and entered the signal receiving equipment of the robots. As if something had been activated, all the robot's movements stopped after receiving this message.

It's as if someone has cast a magic spell to stop time here.

But the time stopped for less than a second, and after a second, everything was different. The robot that was flying in the sky suddenly fell to the ground like raindrops, and the crawling robot fell to the ground with a crooked body, and there was no movement anymore, and the young robot that was foraging under the leadership of the mother robot was unable to move forward in the face of the prepared food......

There are still robots in the sky trying to land on the ground, they will slow down when entering the atmosphere from outer space, and finally land at a safe speed, but I don't know why, the originally scheduled deceleration action did not happen, under the dual action of the planet's gravity and their own inertia, they entered the planet's atmosphere at a very high speed, so ...... They turned into fireballs in the friction with the atmosphere.

Endless fireballs with long tails appeared in the sky, like meteor showers...... No, meteor showers are not enough to describe the situation at the moment. It was a fireball blast thousands or tens of thousands of times more violent than a meteor shower, and they even filled the entire sky.

On the horizon, the star that dominates this star system is about to set, and its afterglow can only bring a little dim color to the world, but at this time, under the illumination of the infinite points of light, the whole world is as bright as day.

The planet's atmosphere wasn't big enough to burn the robots to the ground, and after passing through the atmosphere, there would be a lot of wreckage left of the robots' bodies. They then hit the ground at a speed of at least a dozen kilometers per second – a high-speed impact that could even trigger a fusion reaction.

One cannonball after another bombarded the surface of the planet, endless smoke and dust rose up, all the landforms on the surface of the planet were destroyed, and the entire atmosphere was shrouded in smoke and dust...... The world quickly descended into darkness.

But the sky was still bright, and the constant impact did not stop, but tended to become more and more violent.

And it's not just this planet that has been hit. The last moment of motion before the robots lose consciousness determines their state of motion thereafter - they no longer have the consciousness and ability to change this state of motion, they can only move under the dominance of inertia and the gravitational pull of the planet. As a result, trillions of robots have become headless and brainless interstellar shells, some of them have crashed into stars, some have crashed into other planets, some have collided with each other due to overlapping orbits and eventually turned into pieces, and some have escaped from this star system directly under the support of inertia and stepped into the endless depths of the universe...... (To be continued.) )

PS: There's another chapter in a minute