Erasing Humanity

While they waited, Xu Chen asked to call Grandpa Yang. He wanted to ask how Grandpa Yang had learned the name Taihao.

Captain Chu flatly refused, saying that no one was allowed to speak with Yang Tianyou.

Xu Chen thought it a little heartless, but when he remembered how terrifying taihao disease was, he agreed that it was necessary.

Captain Chu did say, however, that he could pass a message to Yang Tianyou and let Xu Chen know if there was a reply.

After a short wait, the computer showed that a considerable amount of information had been uploaded. There was so much that Xu Chen was a little shocked.

He had previously thought there was something wrong with the artifacts affected by Special Corrosion, but, frankly, he had neither the ability nor the perseverance to search for them one by one. If not for the faint sense of impending danger nagging at him, he really would not have wanted to bother with this mess.

Fortunately, they took it quite seriously and had considerable resources at their disposal. He had only had to mention it to obtain such detailed information.

So, to resolve his doubts, he looked to see whether things really were as he had imagined.

What he wanted to examine was the condition of the damaged artifacts.

The information was detailed enough to include even artifacts that had never been displayed. From his studies in archaeology, he knew that the artifacts excavated from the ground were practically innumerable, but museums had limited exhibition space, so more artifacts were kept in storage elsewhere.

And they received far less attention than those on display.

Before long, Xu Chen had finished comparing all the information. It was detailed enough that he only needed to glance over it.

And that glance did give Xu Chen an answer to the question on his mind, though it also left him somewhat bewildered.

"What is it? Did you find a problem?" Old Ge saw Xu Chen's expression change and concluded that he might have found something, so he asked with interest.

Xu Chen nodded. He looked at Old Ge hesitantly, as though he had something to say but did not know how to begin.

Old Ge took a sip of tea. Rather than press him, he patiently waited for Xu Chen to gather his thoughts.

"Um... do you know about the hypothesis my internship group mentioned?"

Old Ge said, "Yes. We're already looking into the hypothesis you mentioned. What is it? Do you have more information for us?"

"No, I mean..." Xu Chen hesitated, then threw caution to the wind. "Suppose that this Special Corrosion didn't occur naturally, but was also caused by a person I'm hypothesizing exists, just like the fungal infection?"

Without a moment's thought, Old Ge immediately said, "Impossible," as though he had just been told that water was deadly poison.

Xu Chen felt his temper rising. "I'm only making a hypothesis. Can't I even do that?"

Old Ge came to his senses, thought for a moment, and nodded. "All right. We'll follow your lead and suppose someone caused the Special Corrosion on the artifacts. Then what is he? Why did he do it? How did he do it?"

"More importantly—where's the evidence?"

"I can't answer the other questions." Xu Chen looked at Old Ge. "You're pretty smart, right?"

The question caught Old Ge off guard. He rubbed his chin. "I graduated from Nanshan National Defense, so I suppose I'm not stupid."

"Good. Let me show you something."

Xu Chen picked out a selection of the information he had looked through and put it into a table on the computer, allowing Old Ge to look through it quickly.

"These are... human remains from the Stone Age? The ones you marked all seem to be the remains of injured humans. No, there's also a skull with a hole drilled in it from the Fukou Site."

The remains Xu Chen had marked were all bones that had been injured and then healed, or bones that had grown rather misshapen. Unlike in modern medicine, there had been no doctors to set their bones for them, so after healing, they had generally ended up twisted into all sorts of strange shapes.

After looking through all the information Xu Chen had selected, Old Ge had some inkling, but he was still somewhat at a loss.

He looked at Xu Chen. "There still doesn't seem to be anything special about these, does there?"

"If there's Special Corrosion, then there's nothing special about them. But suppose there were no Special Corrosion?"

Old Ge frowned and looked back at the table. Then, for some reason, he unconsciously moved his fingers.

Captain Chu was a little surprised. He knew Old Ge's identity, and while dealing with the Taihao incident, he had chatted with researchers working under Old Ge and learned of his talents and little habits.

Old Ge had an exceptionally strong memory and a remarkable ability to calculate in his head. Whenever he encountered a difficult scientific or technological problem, he liked to count on his fingers while thinking and doing mental calculations. Before long, he was sure to arrive at a satisfactory result.

"You're right. The probability's P-value is far too high. Something is obviously wrong." Old Ge had finished his mental calculation, and his face was rather calm.

Xu Chen was surprised too. He had almost forgotten what a P-value was in probability theory; if his memory had not been so good, he would nearly have failed to understand what Old Ge meant.

"But... your premise excludes Special Corrosion. Doesn't that make it rather insignificant?"

Xu Chen did not quite agree. Instead, he asked, "Old Ge, what do you think is the mark of human civilization?"

"The mark of human civilization... tools, I suppose? Stone tools and the like."

"Someone has already answered that question. The anthropologist Margaret Mead said that the first sign of civilization was a human femur that had broken and then healed. That showed that someone had spent a long time with the injured person, bound the wound, carried him to safety, and helped him recover slowly."

Xu Chen continued on his own.

"Mead said that this kind of solidarity was the first sign of civilization."

Old Ge was suddenly at a loss for words.

He seemed to have thought of some terrifying possibility. His gaze, sharp at first, turned bewildered after he looked at Xu Chen for a while.

He was indeed clever. Once Xu Chen had said that, he understood what Xu Chen was trying to say.

"Xiao Li."

"Yes."

"Get the cigarettes out of my coat for me."

"Yes!"

Captain Chu could no longer stand by. "Old Ge, your students told me..."

Old Ge took the cigarette pack and waved impatiently. "Shoo, shoo. Why do those brats have to meddle in everything? Besides, ah!"

With a click, he lit a cigarette, making Captain Chu's brow crease deeply.

All he could do was watch Old Ge take drag after drag, pausing between them as he pondered something.

The deputy regiment commander and the regimental staff officer were also there. Old Ge normally would not have paid so little attention to his appearance, and perhaps they had never seen him like this before either. Their expressions turned grave.

At last, Deputy Regiment Commander Feng could not help speaking up. "Old Ge, what are you two talking in riddles for? What exactly did you find?"

Old Ge had just finished the whole cigarette. He stubbed it out in the ashtray on the table and sighed.

"Young Xu just offered a perspective that I think is very likely a possibility."

The deputy regiment commander asked, "What perspective?"

"Someone is destroying cultural artifacts."

"What? Outrageous! I'll contact the police detachment. If it's on a large scale, they can ask us to assist them." Deputy Regiment Commander Feng understood the importance of cultural artifacts too and immediately stated his position.

"No." Old Ge pulled out another cigarette. "Perhaps it isn't humans. It might be aliens."

Deputy Regiment Commander Feng was shocked. "What? Do aliens have nothing better to do than this?"

"I'm thinking that the fungal infection on the coast might also be connected to whoever is destroying the artifacts."

Deputy Regiment Commander Feng immediately fell silent. He knew how difficult that fungal infection had been to deal with; it had nearly been a disaster that could have destroyed the country.

Staff Officer Xu, however, nodded. "How do you know it's aliens? And what is their goal?"

Old Ge lit his cigarette and took a drag. "I just said it offhand. It might be aliens, or it might be humans themselves. The goal is to completely erase humanity's existence."

"I mean from above and below, from the front and the back, across the spans of time and space—not just wiping out humanity itself, but erasing every trace of humanity as well."

"They've already destroyed the traces of human civilization from before the Neolithic Age."

Everyone at the conference table was startled.

"Was it 'Taihao'?"

"There's no evidence."

Old Ge took a drag on his cigarette, then seemed to think of something. His eyes lit up as he looked at Xu Chen.

"I have a hypothesis about these artifacts affected by Special Corrosion, but it needs to be tested. If things really are as you say, there must be traces of unnatural damage in the Special Corrosion."

"So you agree with me?"

"That's right. First, sign a confidentiality agreement and go outside. I'll tell you if we find anything further. I'm going to talk with them."

Xu Chen hesitated, but agreed in the end.