I haven't seen the night, I haven't seen the stars, I've never seen spring, autumn and winter.

I was born at the end of the brake era, when the earth had just stopped turning.

It took 42 years for the Earth to brake, three years longer than the coalition government's plan. My mother told me about the last sunset as a family, the sun set very slowly, as if it stopped on the horizon, and it took three days and three nights to set, of course, there will be no "day" and no "night" in the future, and the eastern hemisphere will be in eternal twilight for a long time (there are more than ten years), because the sun is not sinking deep below the horizon, and it is still reflecting its light in half the sky. It was in that long sunset that I was born.

Dusk doesn't mean dark, and the Earth's engine illuminates the entire Northern Hemisphere. Earth engines are installed on the Asian and American continents, because only the intact and solid block structure of these two continents can withstand the huge thrust of the engines on the earth. There are 12,000 Earth engines in total, distributed in various plains of the Asian and American continents. From where I live, I could see columns of plasma light ejected from hundreds of engines. You imagine a huge palace, the size of a temple on the Acropolis, with countless huge pillars that stand up to the sky, each pillar emits a blue-white glare like a huge fluorescent tube. And you are a bacterium on the floor of the huge palace, so that you can imagine what the world I live in is like. In fact, this description is not too accurate, it is the tangential thrust component generated by the earth engine that brakes the rotation of the earth, so the injection of the earth engine must have a certain angle, so that those giant pillars of light in the sky are tilted, and we are in a giant hall that is about to fall! People from the southern hemisphere come to the northern hemisphere and suddenly find themselves in this environment, and many people will go insane. Even more terrifying than this scene is the extreme heat brought by the engine, the outdoor temperature is as high as 70 or 80 degrees Celsius, and you must wear a cooling suit to go out. In such temperatures, there are often torrential rains, and the sight of the engine light column through the dark clouds is a nightmare! The pillars of light were scattered in the clouds with blue-white intensity, turning into a crazy surging halo of countless colors, and the entire sky seemed to be covered in white-hot volcanic magma. Grandpa was so confused that he couldn't stand the heat once, and he was overjoyed to see the heavy rain, and rushed out of the door shirtless, but we didn't have time to stop him. Outside, the raindrops had been roasted by the ultra-high temperature plasma beam of light of the Earth engine, burning a layer of skin on his body.

But for our generation born in the Northern Hemisphere, all this is as natural as it was for people before the Brake Age, the sun, the stars and the moon, and we call the history of mankind before that time the pre-solar age, and it was a fascinating golden age!

When I was in elementary school, as a course, the teacher took thirty children in my class on a trip around the world. By this time, the Earth had come to a complete standstill, and the Earth engine had only made some attitude adjustments other than to maintain this stationary state of the planet, so during the three years from my age of three to six, the luminosity of the pillar of light was greatly reduced, which allowed us to better understand our world during this trip.

We first saw the Earth Engine up close, at the exit of the Taihang Mountains near Shijiazhuang, a metal mountain that towered in front of us, occupying half of the sky, and compared to it, the Taihang Mountains to the west resembled a string of small mounds. Some children marveled at how tall it was as high as Mount Everest. Our homeroom teacher, Ms. Xiaoxing, is a beautiful girl, and she told us with a smile that the height of this engine is 11,000 meters, which is more than 1,000 meters higher than Mount Everest, and people call them "God's blowtorch". We stand in its great shadow and feel its vibrations as it turns through the earth.

Earth engines are divided into two categories, the larger ones are called "mountains" and the smaller ones are called "peaks". We climbed the "North China Mountain 794". It takes longer to climb the "mountain" than to climb the "peak", because the "peak" is up and down by a giant elevator, and to go up the "mountain", you have to take a car along the "mountain" road. Our cars were mixed in with long convoys with no end in sight, crawling up the slick steel road. To our left is a cyan metal cliff, and to our right is an abyss. The convoy consisted of 50-ton giant dump trucks loaded with rocks dug out of the Taihang Mountains. The car soon rose above 5,000 meters, and the ground below could no longer be seen in detail, except for the blue light of the reflected earth's engine. Teacher Xiaoxing asked us to bring oxygen masks. As we got closer to the vent, the luminosity and temperature increased dramatically, the color of the mask darkened, and the microcompressor in the cooling suit was busy at high power. Six kilometers away, we saw the inlet, and a cart of large boulders was poured into the big hole that shone with a faint red light, and no sound came out. I asked Mr. Xiaoxing how the earth engine uses rocks as fuel.

"Heavy element fusion is a very deep science, and I still can't explain it to you. You just need to know that the Earth Engine is the most powerful machine ever built, such as North China 794, which can generate 15 billion tons of thrust to the earth when running at full power. ”

Our car finally reached the top, and the vent was right above us. Due to the diameter of the pillar of light, we now look up and see a giant wall of plasma glowing blue that stretches upwards to infinity height. At this time, I suddenly remembered a philosophy class not long ago, and the emaciated teacher gave us a riddle.

"You are walking on the plains, and suddenly you are confronted with a wall, which is infinitely high upwards, infinitely deep downwards, infinitely far to the left, infinitely far to the right, what is this wall?"

I shivered, and then told the riddle to Mr. Xiaoxing, who was next to me. She thought for a moment, then shook her head in confusion. I put my mouth to her ear and told her the terrible mystery.

"Death. ”

She looked at me silently for a few seconds, then suddenly held me tightly in her arms. I looked over her shoulder, and there was a huge metal peak rising over the misty earth, stretching from all around us to the horizon. The pillars of light spit out by the giant peak, like a sloping cosmic forest, pierce our crumbling sky.

We soon reached the beach, where we saw the spires of the city's skyscrapers jutting out of the sea, and at low tide the white water flowed out of the building's numerous windows, forming cascades...... The era of braking has just ended, and its impact on the planet has been staggering, with the tides caused by the acceleration of the Earth's engines engulfing two-thirds of the largest cities in the northern hemisphere, and the global heat brought by the engines melting the polar glaciers, making the floods worse and spreading to the southern hemisphere. Thirty years ago, my grandfather witnessed the 100-meter-high waves engulfing Shanghai, and he still has a straight eye when he talks about it now. In fact, our planet has been changed beyond recognition before it has even set off, and who knows how much suffering awaits us in the long outer space wanderings that will follow?

We sailed the sea on an ancient means of transport called a boat. The pillars of light of the Earth Engine grew farther and farther behind it, and after a day it was completely invisible. At this time, the sea was between two rays of light, one was the blue-blue glow produced by the light pillar of the earth's engine in the west, and the other was the pink glow produced by the sun under the eastern sea level, and their reflection on the sea surface divided the sea into two parts that shone with two colors, and our ship sailed at the boundary between these two parts, and it was a wonderful view. But as the blue-blue glow faded and the pink glow intensified, an unsettling atmosphere permeated the ship. There were no children to see on deck, they were all hiding in the cabin, and the curtains of the portholes were tightly closed. A day later, the moment we feared the most finally came, we gathered in the large cabin used as a classroom, and Teacher Xiaoxing solemnly announced:

"Kids, we're going to see the sunrise. ”

No one moved, our eyes glazed over, we froze there as if we had frozen suddenly. Teacher Xiaoxing urged a few more times, but no one moved. One of her male colleagues said:

"I mentioned a long time ago that the Global Experience class should be placed before the modern history class, so that students can easily adapt psychologically. ”

"It's not that simple, before the modern history class, they already knew everything from society. Teacher Xiaoxing said, she then said to several class cadres: "You go first, children, don't be afraid, I was very nervous when I saw the sunrise for the first time when I was a child, but it would be good to see it once." ”

One by one, the children stood up and moved towards the hatch. At this time, I felt a wet little hand grasp my hand, and when I looked back, it was Ling'er.

"I'm afraid ......," she muttered.

"We've seen the sun on TV, it's all the same anyway. I comforted her.

"How can it be the same, are you watching snakes on TV the same as watching real snakes?"

“...... Anyway, we have to go up, or this class will deduct points!"

Ling'er and I held hands tightly and walked to the deck with the other children to face the first sunrise in our lives.

In fact, it has only been a matter of the past three or four centuries that mankind has associated the sun with fear. Before that, human beings were not afraid of the sun, on the contrary, the sun was majestic and magnificent in their eyes. At that time, the earth was still turning, and people could see sunrise and sunset every day. They cheered at the rising sun and celebrated the beauty of the setting sun. Teacher Xiaoxing stood at the bow of the boat and said to us, the sea breeze blowing her long hair, and behind her, a few rays of light shot out from the line between the sea and the sky, like the snort of an unimaginably large monster under the surface of the sea.

Finally, we saw the chilling flame, which at first was just a bright spot on the line between heaven and water, but soon grew in size and gradually showed the shape of an arc. At this moment, I felt something choke my throat, and fear suffocated me, and the deck under my feet seemed to suddenly disappear, and I was falling into the abyss towards the sea, falling...... Falling with me was Ling'er, her silky little body trembling against me, and the other children, everyone else, the whole world, all the other people were falling. Then I remembered the riddle again, and I had asked my philosophy teacher what color the wall was, and he said it should be black. I don't think so, the wall of death in my imagination is supposed to be snow-bright, and that's why that plasma wall reminds me of it. In this era, death is no longer black, it is the color of lightning, and when that last lightning comes, the world will turn into vapor in an instant.

More than three centuries ago, astrophysicists discovered that the conversion of hydrogen into helium in the sun's interior suddenly accelerated, so they launched tens of thousands of probes across the sun to build a complete and accurate mathematical model of the star. The results of the supercomputer's calculations on this model show that the evolution of the Sun has shifted outside the main sequence, and the fusion of helium will spread throughout the interior of the Sun in a very short time, resulting in a violent explosion called a helium flash, after which the Sun will become a huge and faint red giant, and it will expand so much that the Earth will orbit inside the Sun! In fact, our planet has been vaporized in the previous helium flash explosion.

All this will happen in 400 years, and now 380 years have passed.

The solar cataclysm will blow up and engulf all habitable terrestrial planets in the solar system, and completely change the shape and orbit of all Jupiterans. Since the first helium flash, with the repeated accumulation of heavy elements in the center of the Sun, the solar helium flash will recur over a period of time relative to the evolution of stars, which may be equivalent to the length of thousands of human history. Therefore, human beings will no longer be able to survive in the solar system in the future, and the only way to survive is to migrate to outer space stars, and according to the current technological strength of mankind, the only feasible target for all human migration is Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to us, 4.3 light-years away. There is a consensus on these views, and the main point of contention is the way of immigration.

To enhance the teaching effect, our ship turned back twice in the Pacific Ocean and gave us two more sunrises. Now we are fully accustomed to it, and we believe that the children in the southern hemisphere who face the sun every day can indeed survive.

After that, we sailed under the sun, and the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, and the weather that had cooled down for the past few days became hot again. I was drowsy in my cabin when I heard a commotion outside. Ling'er pushed open the door and poked her head in.

"Hey, the spaceship faction and the Earth faction are fighting again!"

I'm not interested in that, they've been fighting for four centuries. But I looked outside, and among the boys who were in the mess, I could see at a glance that it was Ah Dong who was the initiator, and that his father was a stubborn spaceship faction who was still in prison for participating in an anti-coalition riot, and that there was a father and a son.

Teacher Xiaoxing and several stout crew members finally pulled apart, Ah Dong's nose was bloody, and he raised his arms and shouted: "Throw the Earth Pie into the sea!"

"I'm also an Earth faction, and I'm going to throw it into the sea?" asked Teacher Xiaoxing.

"The Earth faction is thrown into the sea!" Ah Dong did not show weakness, and now, the sentiment of the spaceship faction is on the rise all over the world, so they are crazy again.

"Why do you hate us so much?" asked Mr. Xiaoxing, and several of the other spaceship boys continued to shout.

"We don't send fools to die on Earth with Earth!"

"We're going to go in a spaceship!

......

Teacher Xiaoxing pressed the holographic display on his wrist, and a holographic image was immediately displayed in the air in front of us, and the children's attention was immediately attracted by it and they were temporarily quiet. It was a crystal clear sealed glass ball, about ten centimeters in diameter, and two-thirds of the ball was filled with water, and there was a small shrimp, a small sprig of coral, and some green algae plants, and the small shrimp swam leisurely in the water. Teacher Xiaoxing said: "This is a design assignment in Adong's nature class, and in addition to these few things, there are some invisible bacteria in the ball. They depend on each other and interact with each other in sealed glass spheres. The shrimp feed on seaweed, ingesting oxygen from the water, and then excreting feces and carbon dioxide exhaust gases containing organic substances, which are broken down by bacteria, and then the seaweed uses these inorganic substances to photosynthesize with artificial sunlight, make nutrients, grow and reproduce, and at the same time release oxygen for the shrimp to breathe. Such an ecological cycle should allow the organisms in the glass sphere to thrive with only a supply of sunlight. This is the best curriculum design I've ever seen, and I know that it's the dream of Ah Dong and all the spaceship kids, and this is the epitome of the spaceship of your dreams! Ah Dong told me that he genetically designed every creature in the ball according to the rigorous mathematical model in the computer, so that their metabolism was just in balance. He firmly believes that the life world in the ball will live for a long time until the end of the shrimp's lifespan. The teachers loved this assignment so much that we put it under the artificial sunlight of the required intensity, and we firmly believed in Adong's prediction, silently blessing the small world he had created. But now, only a dozen days have passed......"

Mr. Xiaoxing carefully took out the glass ball from a small box he had brought with him, and the dead shrimp floated on the water, the water was cloudy, and the decaying algae plants had lost their green color, turning into a mass of lifeless hairs covering the coral.

"This little world is dead. Children, who can say why?" Mr. Xiaoxing held up the world of death to the children.

"It's too small!"

"That's right, it's too small, and small ecosystems, no matter how precise, can't withstand the winds and waves of time. The same is true of the ships imagined by the Ship Faction. ”

"Our spaceship can be built as big as Shanghai or New York. Adong said, his voice much lower than just now.

"Yes, according to the current technology of human beings, it can only be built so big, and compared to the earth, such an ecosystem is still too small, too small. ”

"We will find new planets. ”

"Even you don't believe it. There are no planets in Sagittarius, the nearest star with planets is 850 light-years away, and the fastest spacecraft that humans can build can only reach 0.5 percent of the speed of light, so it would take 170,000 years to get there, and the spaceship-sized ecosystem can't even sustain that tenths of the time. Children, only an ecosystem of this scale and such a majestic ecological cycle can make life endless! Human beings have left the earth in the universe, just like babies have left their mothers in the desert!"

"Yes...... Teacher, we can't get in time, the earth is too late, it hasn't had time to accelerate fast enough, go far enough, and the sun will explode!"

"Time is enough, believe in the coalition government! How many times have I said this, if you still don't believe it, let's take 10,000 steps back and say, humanity will die proudly, because we did our best!"

The escape of human beings is divided into five steps: the first step is to stop the rotation of the earth with the earth engine and fix the engine nozzle in the opposite direction of the earth's operation; the second step is to start the earth engine at full power to accelerate the earth to escape speed and fly out of the solar system; the third step is to continue to accelerate in outer space and fly to Proxima Centauri; the fourth step is to re-rotate the earth in the middle of the process, turn the engine direction and start to slow down; and the fifth step is to park the earth into the orbit of Proxima Centauri and become a satellite of this star. People call these five steps the era of braking, the era of escape, the era of wandering I (acceleration), the era of wandering II (deceleration), and the new solar age.

The entire migration process will last 2,500 years, 100 generations.

Our ship continued to sail to the dark part of the earth, where neither the sun nor the pillars of the earth's engines shone brightly, and in the cool breeze of the Atlantic, we children saw the stars for the first time. Oh my God, what a sight it was, it was heartbreaking. Teacher Xiaoxing put his arm around us with one hand and pointed to the starry sky with the other, look, children, that's Centauri, that's Proxima Centauri, that's our new home! After saying this, she began to cry, and we all cried with her, and the sailors and captains around her, these iron-clad men, also shed tears. All of them looked in the direction pointed by the teacher with teary eyes, the starry sky twisted and shook in tears, only the star was not moving, it was the lighthouse of the distant land in the wild waves of the sea in the dark night, it was the fire that loomed in front of the lonely traveler who was about to freeze to death in the ice and snow wasteland, that was the star in our hearts, and it was the only hope and support for mankind in the sea of suffering for the next hundred generations......

On the voyage home, we saw the first signal to set sail: a huge comet appeared in the night sky, and it was the moon. Humans can't take the moon with them, so they have installed planetary engines on the moon to push it away from the Earth's orbit so that it doesn't collide when the Earth accelerates. The giant tail produced by the planetary engines on the moon shrouded the sea in a blue light, and the stars were invisible. The gravitational tides created by the movement of the moon sent the waves of the sea soaring, and we flew instead to our home in the southern hemisphere.

The day has finally arrived!

As soon as we got off the plane, we were blinded by the light pillars of the earth engine, which were several times brighter than before, and all the light pillars turned from inclined to straight, the earth engine was driven to the maximum power, and the 100-meter waves generated by acceleration roared and rolled up each continent, and the scorching hurricane carried the boiling water foam, roaring wildly between the plasma pillars that stood on top of the sky, uprooting all the big trees on the land...... At this time, from the perspective of space, our planet has also become a huge comet, and the blue tail of the comet pierces the dark space.

The earth is on the road, and humanity is on the road.

Just as he set sail, his grandfather passed away, and the burns on his body were already infected. As he lay dying, he repeated a sentence.

"Ah, Earth, my wandering Earth!"