March 2029, Rocket City, Sazhou, the United States
Michael Max invited his girlfriend, Daphne Braun, to spend the weekend at his home. To avoid awkwardness, he came up with a perfectly respectable excuse, saying that he and Daphne would conduct an important scientific experiment together.
On the phone, Daphne asked curiously, "What kind of scientific experiment?"
Putting on a serious face, Michael replied, "My dear doctor of astronomy, this experiment is closely related to your Mars Burst Theory. It requires precise electrical equipment and a complicated process to complete. The experiment is called baking bread."
Daphne giggled. She knew that the bread Michael meant was Italian ciabatta, named "slipper bread" because its cracked surface looked like a slipper. A few days earlier, Daphne had tried making some and told Michael about it.
Baking bread? That was a rather unusual excuse for a date.
For Daphne, the reason didn't matter. She had long been drawn to the tremendous energy Michael radiated.
Daphne believed that true love was unconditional. Being with Michael made her happiest, and she didn't need a reason for it.
Though he was the richest man in the world, Michael Max's home looked rather shabby. It was merely a prefabricated house of less than 100 square meters, put up on an empty lot in just three days.
Their important scientific experiment began.
The precise electrical equipment Michael had mentioned was actually an old-fashioned electric oven, while the complicated process he'd described was no exaggeration.
Kneading the dough, letting it rise, wrapping each ball of dough in plastic wrap to keep it moist—the baking process was extremely involved once the dough had risen. It also required precise control of the temperature and steam humidity.
First, they preheated the oven to 260 degrees, then put in the baking tray with the dough and another tray filled with water. The water tray produced steam. After baking for 30 seconds, they opened the oven door and sprayed in water, lowering the oven temperature to 230 degrees, then repeated the process.
The dough expanded as it heated and shrank as it cooled. When it expanded again and then cooled, the hard crust on its surface cracked, forming deep, valley-like grooves that looked just like a slipper.
"Daphne, your Mars Burst Hypothesis is fascinating. If Mars expanded when heated and contracted when cooled, then after doing that over and over, its crust would crack," Michael said.
"Michael, you're so perceptive. The principles behind the Mars explosion and the formation of slipper bread are the same." As she spoke, Daphne leaned against Michael's broad chest. Their aprons, dusted with flour, pressed together.
Through the oven's glass door, they could see the bread inside swelling up, its surface bursting open with a dull thud.
The bread was on the table, and the two were absorbed in the conversation. Daphne told Michael about her research into the Martian landscape and her findings.
The elevation difference across Mars's surface was more than 20,000 meters, the greatest of any planet in the Solar System. But because there was no intense tectonic activity on Mars, its surface had no large-scale folds. In that sense, its surface was smooth and flat.
Overall, Mars had only two kinds of terrain: flat plateaus and flat plains. Olympus Mons stood on the plateau, along with three smaller volcanoes lined up to its southeast.
Extending southeast from these four volcanoes lay a long canyon, more than 4,000 kilometers in length. It was called Valles Marineris, and was second in length only to Earth's Great Rift Valley.
Where the plateau containing Olympus Mons met the plains, there was no transition zone—only an almost vertical escarpment, hundreds or even thousands of meters high.
The plains showed extensive traces of flowing water, but not the sort left by rivers. They suggested that Mars had once been warm and wet, with vast oceans.
Some of the rocks on the plateau and escarpment had formed only tens of millions of years ago, while the plains—the geological age of what had once been the ocean floor—were more than several billion years old.
What was most puzzling was Valles Marineris on Mars. It had been observed by Mariner 9 in 1972 and named after the spacecraft.
Valles Marineris was more than 4,000 kilometers long, 300 to 600 kilometers wide, and up to 8 kilometers deep. Unlike Earth's Great Rift Valley, which consisted of two curved, enclosing rifts, Valles Marineris ran straight. There were no mountains or folds on either side, only endless plains. How had it formed?
In the 1970s, one theory held that Valles Marineris had been formed by one or more floods. But that theory was quickly dismissed. Even a massive flood couldn't have carved such a wide, deep canyon, and there were no similar traces at all on either side of it.
The prevailing theory was that Valles Marineris had formed when the plains collapsed as the plateau around the Olympus Mons volcanoes rose.
The slipper bread experiment and the curved structure of Earth's Great Rift Valley showed that if geological activity had raised the Martian plateau, the rift should have formed a curve around it. It couldn't have collapsed and split along a straight line pointing southeast in a single fixed direction—let alone continued splitting for more than 4,000 kilometers, farther than the radius of Mars.
There was another mystery about Valles Marineris: large amounts of layered sediment had been found at its bottom. Such deposits were a common geological feature, usually formed at the bottom of a lake or by accumulating volcanic ash.
After Valles Marineris formed, where had all that extra sediment come from?
Michael listened intently, then asked, "According to your hypothesis, the plateaus on Mars were once land and the plains were once ocean floors. So how did Valles Marineris form?"
"I think Valles Marineris formed when underground magma flowed beneath Mars's surface and erupted from volcanoes, then cooled and caused the ground to collapse. But what I can't figure out is why the underground magma flowed in a straight line like that."
The two fell silent. Suddenly, Michael's eyes lit up. He took Daphne by the hand and said, "I can connect you to my VESSEL. Brain-Computer Fusion might help you think more deeply."
Michael led Daphne over to a special chair. He paused, then added, "My Brain-Computer Fusion Project is still in the experimental stage. VESSEL—the Non-contact External Brain Connector—was designed specifically for my brain. You know more about Mars than I do, but I don't know whether you'll be compatible with VESSEL."
Daphne was eager to try. Jokingly, she said, "Let's give it a go. If I'm not compatible, we can call it a failed bread-baking experiment."
Daphne relaxed in the chair and put on the specially designed helmet. She signaled for Michael to turn on the device. As the power increased, she grew drowsy, then felt dizzy and muddled.
She tried hard to concentrate, hoping to enter a meditative state. A few minutes later, Daphne reluctantly raised her right hand to signal Michael to turn it off.
Michael helped Daphne remove the helmet. She slumped in the chair with her eyes tightly shut and said weakly,
"I'm so dizzy. I can't do it. I can't think at all."
The experiment to connect Daphne Braun to VESSEL had failed.
That night, Daphne rested her head on Michael's shoulder. Her arm lay softly and naturally across his chest, and her breathing was steady as she slept soundly.
Was it a dream? Daphne saw a beautiful planet with vast oceans and towering mountains. One large volcano and three smaller ones spewed fiery lava into the sky.
A jet of fire would flare up and burn fiercely, then shrink and dim, like the temperature inside a bread oven rising and falling. Under the repeated heat and cold, the planet's crust expanded and shattered.
With a sharp crack, the crust of the land, along with its mountains and lakes, broke away and flew off the planet's surface. The entire ocean floor, carrying its seawater, was flung into the air and instantly froze into ice. The planet's remaining landscape became nothing but bare plateaus and level plains.
Where the plateau met the plains, a clean, vertical break remained. That was the planet's original plate boundary. The ocean floor, where underground magma had flowed, collapsed with a thunderous roar, forming a long canyon.
Some of the sediment layers that had broken away from the plateau's lakebeds fell back onto the ocean-floor plains and into the canyon. The planet lost its azure and emerald colors, slowly turning reddish-brown.
A movement in Michael's shoulder startled Daphne awake. Michael said softly,
"Sorry, I woke you. I just had a dream."
Daphne came to and asked in surprise, "You had a dream too? What did you dream about?"
"I dreamed there were thin clouds floating above Valles Marineris. I was in a chamber deep inside the canyon, using a mechanical arm to dig ice out of the rock," Michael replied.
"Your dream was so realistic. There's ice in the rocks of Valles Marineris, and thin clouds in the sky above Mars in summer. Those are both real. Didn't I tell you?"
Daphne rubbed her eyes, then continued, "You told me you wanted to build a Mars habitat deep inside Valles Marineris. What did you call that habitat again?"
"Valles Marineris Capsule," Michael replied.
&
A concatenated poem to end the chapter:
A long dwelling place—surely it has a spirit. —Li Dong, Tang dynasty
I dreamed of seeing its form. —Li Liuqian, Song dynasty
Seeking the source, I entered a secluded valley. —Ouyang Xiu, Song dynasty
The tide rose beyond the banks. —Xu Ji, Song dynasty
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