While Tobeiru's scientists busied themselves calibrating the equipment and following Bubble's guidance to learn how to interpret messages from the Empire's data network, Sandora was already growing impatient. She knew that every minute of delay increased the chance of losing contact with the Fifth Fleet again, because no one knew what "region" the Fifth Fleet would move into next. "Movement" in the void had none of the trackable characteristics found in normal space—trajectory, direction, distance, and so on. As long as it was within the Fifth Fleet ships' void-jump radius—radius was merely a convenient term; strictly speaking, it meant the maximum displacement in the modification of their own informational representation—they could flee anywhere at any time. While escaping their pursuers, they might also jump beyond the Garden of Departure's scanning range at any moment. Though the Garden of Departure had expanded its scanning range to the maximum, the possibility of the Fifth Fleet suddenly "disappearing" remained extremely high.
And the call signals we had sent still could not "illuminate" the other side.
Sandora and Bubble had just explained the technical principles of cross-quadrant communication in the void to me, and I had gained a basic understanding of it. We all knew that although the void was chaotic and seemed to lack all order, possessing physical "uniformity," it also had "non-uniform" characteristics from the perspective of information theory: it was divided into quadrants. Though the reason was unknown, it was indeed partitioned into separate regions. These regions were not physically isolated; they were like virtual partitions on a hard drive, divided solely because their "characteristics" differed. In other words, physically speaking, every Void Quadrant actually overlapped with the others—they were all the void itself. When located in two different Void Quadrants, not only would the worlds contained within them differ vastly,