June 2028, Hassen River Park, Neon City, Bright Country
At dusk, Daphne Braun arrived early at Hassen River Park for her first date with her dream man, Michael Max.
Daphne sat leisurely on a bench, looking up at VESSEL, an architectural work of art made from a massive steel frame.
The Hassen River ran through the western part of Core Island, a name synonymous with Bright Country's prosperity and a microcosm of the nation. The eastern part of the island, with its skyscrapers and orderly, numbered streets, had been bustling for a century, while the western part, where the Hassen River lay, was relatively underdeveloped.
In 2019, the spectacular debut of VESSEL, a new landmark public building, ushered in the Hassen River New Area Complex, the largest regional redevelopment project in Bright Country's history, with a total investment of over $25 billion. It infused the century-old metropolis of Neon City with a fresh air of technology and art.
Michael was walking toward Daphne. Broad-shouldered and powerfully built, he moved at a brisk pace, as if riding on the wind.
Daphne stood up and turned to face him, surveying her dream man like a scanner, a smile in her heart.
Michael had dark brown hair and hazel eyes, a straight nose and well-shaped mouth. His skin was red from his face down to his neck.
It wasn't a healthy flush, the kind anyone might have. This redness was in his genes and was often seen among ancient European fishing and hunting tribes.
His complexion brought to mind Plymouth's thick fog, Amsterdam's surging tides, and the towering waves at the Cape of Good Hope.
It was a color left behind by blazing sunlight, sea salt rubbed into the skin, and sudden downpours washing over it.
It was the complexion of sailors, captains, and adventurous seafarers.
This man was none other than the world-famous richest man, founder and CEO of Acebe Space Technology Company:
Michael Max.
"Hi, are you Daphne?" Michael greeted her first.
"Yes, I'm Daphne. Are you Michael?" Daphne replied with a joke, addressing the world-famous face everyone recognized.
As soon as they had settled onto the bench, Michael said something startling:
"My brain-computer fusion project has made some progress. VESSEL, the external brain that helps me think, searched for connections between us. It came up with something interesting."
Daphne gazed at Michael, puzzled and curious. Isn't VESSEL the public building right in front of us? How has it become his 'external brain'?
What Michael said next was even more direct, and left Daphne even more astonished. He said:
"Forgive my forwardness. VESSEL told me that Daphne Braun is very likely to be my girlfriend."
"What?!" Daphne's eyes widened. She had no idea how to keep her expression under control. They'd barely said two words, and he was already getting straight to the point. Wasn't that a little too direct?
Michael seemed to read her thoughts. He sent her a message and said:
"Take a look at this letter first."
Daphne opened the message on her tablet. It was a letter that read:
"To Mr. Michael Max and his girlfriend:
My name is Li Xiaoxuan. I'm an ordinary girl who grew up in Qingliang Valley, Mount Wutai, Shanxi, China. I'm writing to you both, though I hope you'll forgive the intrusion.
I was born on December 23, 1999. Today is my thirteenth birthday. Yesterday, December 22, 2012, I had a very strange dream.
I was floating in space, directly beneath the North Star, looking down at the Solar System. It was the winter solstice on Earth, and Earth was at the six-hour position on the celestial sphere.
Venus and Mars were each 120 degrees from Earth, forming a large equilateral triangle. Mercury, Venus, and Saturn were aligned in a straight line relative to the Sun.
A set of numbers appeared before me. They were the synodic periods of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn with Earth: 117 days, 584 days, 780 days, and 378 days, respectively.
I plunged downward, and Earth grew clearer and clearer. I saw a man facing two circular discs. One had 365 marks, the other 260.
He took a piece of string and tied a knot to represent 18,980 days, or 52 years. Then he carved an equation into a stone tablet: 19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0=1.0.0.T.0.1.T.0.0.
A voice told me that these numbers represented days and were related to the Maya's Short Count and Long Count calendars. In this world, only Michael Max and his girlfriend, who was researching the Mars explosion, could decipher them.
Suddenly, Mars turned into a giant ball of fire. Earth and Venus became balls of fire, too, and I was so frightened that I woke up.
That's all I have to say. No need to reply."
As Daphne read the letter, she thought it over. Then she asked Michael, perplexed:
"This letter was written to you more than ten years ago. Are you only seeing it now?"
"It was sent to my work email. I get so many emails that I'd never seen it before. After I arranged to meet you, VESSEL drew my attention to the contents. You told me you've been researching the Mars explosion lately, right?"
Daphne Braun was twenty-nine. Like most women, she longed for love and idolized her dream man, but the moment the conversation turned to serious astronomy, she became an accomplished scientist again.
Daphne had just earned her doctorate and joined the Ling Shen Star Exploration Project Team at the Bright Country Space Administration. Ever since she began studying astronomy, she had been fascinated by the asteroid belt. After conducting her research, she proposed a bold hypothesis and told Michael about it in a chat on her phone.
Her hypothesis was that the asteroid belt was made of fragments from Mars—that they had come from Mars.
Daphne hadn't come up with the idea on a whim. First of all, how had the asteroid belt formed? Astronomers had several theories about it.
The theory that material in the asteroid belt had come from outside the Solar System had been rejected, because it couldn't explain how 500,000 asteroids could cross the Solar System and reach the space between Jupiter and Mars, where almost all of them had remained.
Another theory held that the asteroid belt was made of debris from an ancient planet in the Solar System that had exploded. This theory had two serious flaws.
First, there wasn't enough mass. The total mass of the asteroid belt was only 1% of Earth's. If a planet had exploded, where had all the other mass gone?
Second, after a planet formed, the rapid rotation of the protoplanetary disk and its own gravity would have exerted an extremely powerful inward pull. Within the framework of modern physics, no plausible mechanism for a planet exploding had been discovered.
So Daphne had thought: what if the asteroid belt didn't come from an entire planet exploding, but from the shattered crust of Mars? Wouldn't that account for the missing mass?
That wasn't all. The Mars Burst Hypothesis could also explain another phenomenon.
Of the eight planets in the Solar System, the four closest to the Sun were rocky planets, while the other four, farther away, were gas planets, also known as giant planets. Among Mercury, Venus, and Earth, the farther a planet was from the Sun, the larger it was. But at Mars, the size suddenly dropped.
Mars had a radius of 3,389 kilometers, just a little more than half Earth's radius.
The farther outward a rocky planet formed, the larger it would be, which was consistent with the rules governing planet formation in a protoplanetary disk. Rocky planets farther away swept through a larger area of the disk, giving them more opportunities to gather the material needed to form them.
The asteroids in the belt were divided by composition into carbonaceous C-types, silicate S-types, and pure iron-nickel M-types. M-types were extremely rare. So far, only Lingshen Star had been found. It was likely metal from the core, brought up by volcanic eruptions on Mars. The remaining 99.9% of asteroids were C-types and S-types.
If the S-types were rocks from the Martian crust, and the C-types were water ice and dust from the Martian surface, then, given the same kinetic energy when Mars shattered, the surface ice would have "set off first" and traveled farther than the deeper rocks. That would mean the S-types were closer to Mars and the Sun, while the C-types were farther away—a perfect match for the asteroid belt's distribution.
Michael listened to Daphne's Mars Burst Hypothesis with great interest, then added:
"The largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons, is about 21 kilometers high, roughly equal to the combined heights of the Mariana Trench on Earth and the Himalayan peaks. If Mars had exploded, losing all its seawater, and we used the seabed as the Martian reference level, then the height of Olympus Mons wouldn't seem strange at all."
Daphne nodded excitedly. "The most remarkable thing about Olympus Mons is that its slope is only five degrees, almost flat. Around the edge of that vast, gentle region, there's a sheer drop ten kilometers deep. It's just like an exploded walnut shell, with some fragments blown away. Olympus Mons is the original Martian surface left behind, while what we now call the Martian surface is actually the bottom of Mars's ancient ocean."
"Exactly. That would explain why there are so many signs that water once flowed across the Martian surface."
Daphne's gaze lingered on the series of numbers at the end of the little girl's letter. She asked Michael:
"19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0. Those numbers must be related to the Maya Calendar, right? They represent days?"
"The numbers are separated by dots to indicate place values. Our usual strings of numbers don't have dots because we take the decimal system for granted. The Maya used a vigesimal system, so dots were needed to avoid confusion."
Michael looked at the string of numbers, then at Daphne, and said mysteriously:
"VESSEL used the Maya Long Count calendar to calculate how many days these numbers represented. It's over 23 billion days."
"What? What kind of calendar is that? How many years is over 23 billion days?"
"Over 63 million years!"
Michael answered.
The ends of the earth have their limits, Song dynasty, Yan Shu
A spiritual bond across the ages, unknown to the world. Song dynasty, Huang Tingjian
Yet I don't regret that we are still here, Song dynasty, Fang Yue
Clearly, the written symbols were meant to be passed down. Song dynasty, Shi Dingxu
Before you continue