As people of the 21st Century, we might overestimate how much technology would advance over the next twenty years, yet find it hard to imagine the state of Physics Technology four hundred years from now. The former was based on optimistic assumptions about technological progress, while the latter belonged to an era when breakthroughs in Fundamental Physics had surpassed the limits of earlier generations' imaginations.
For example, in the 21st Century, the Near Ancient Network Era, humanity could imagine no form of Interstellar Navigation beyond Hibernation Pods, Particle Thrusters on spaceships, and the various challenges faced by a few thousand or tens of thousands of people who arrived on a planet illuminated by another star and tried to grow corn, or encountered Alien Organisms.
By the 26th century, however, after making breakthroughs in fundamental physical observation, humanity had established one thing: the physical region of the universe where Earth lay had energy levels that were far too fixed to accommodate Interstellar Ships.
So what could they do? A giant ship couldn't sail down a ditch, so they had to find an ocean.
People on Earth today would naturally think: just have scientists send humans and their production tools, along with enough Information Enthalpy, to a suitable physical region. Then humanity could build a Cosmic Starport and mass-produce an Interstellar Fleet!
The universe was vast, and far from smooth.
The physical conditions in the Main World, where Earth was located, were like "dry land." Other places might be oceans.
The technology behind Chemical Rockets and Particle Thrusters in the Main World couldn't explore the universe, but under different physical conditions, it might be enough to reach the heavens in a single bound.
How could one put it? It was precisely because Earth's physical conditions were so stable that humanity had developed Mechanical Technology and Material Design to such an advanced level.
In other words, the Main World's space-time was so stable that only by harnessing gravitational distortions on a Stellar Scale and using massive Industrial Technology facilities—Gravity Wells—could people observe and experiment with it.
Before the 26th century, people on Earth in the Main World were practically locked inside a cage, watching the sea! They gazed at the Sea of Stars, then helplessly calculated the capabilities of the spaceships they had built.
In the end, they could only wonder whether those Space Skiffs would reach another star before their supplies ran out.
Now, the people of Earth had come out.
Ten billion mad dogs had been let out of the cage. Ahem.
The multiverse was, in fact, a Human Trace Ring centered around Earth's Main World.
First, one fact needed to be made clear: before any technology was put to use, its underlying principles and phenomena might already have been applied naturally and unconsciously by Human Consciousness.
For example, the ancients knew nothing about chemical displacement reactions, but they did know how to smelt copper using wet methods.
Today, Plane Travel through Gravity Wells was built upon modern technology and modern Life Science.
Particle Colliders from the late 20th century proved that traces of particles not found on Earth could be produced. This showed that the Big Bang could give rise to other particles, forms of matter, and even worlds.
So how could people reach such worlds? Collider experiments could break through the Space Membrane surrounding Earth.
People today naturally understood that transmigration meant breaking open the Space Membrane at the stable gravitational point at Earth's center, then projecting information through it by tunneling.
When civilization in the Main World first enabled consciousness to set out carrying enough thought, and then return carrying enough thought—as the Great Voyage around the globe had in fact proved that the Earth was round—it proved the existence of other planes.
This was proof, not invention.
Because under natural conditions, consciousness could already travel between planes! It was just that this phenomenon hadn't been measurable with precision in the past, so people couldn't confirm it.
Humans dreamed. Most of the information in their dreams came from what they had experienced during the day, but some of the bizarre, fantastical content had a source that was hard to explain.
Then there was the fact that after death, consciousness left this world. Occasionally, it might also gain enough energy to leave carrying some of its memories.
There had even been a kind of "superstition" in the 21st century: someone killed by lightning might suddenly gain enough energy to travel to another world.
However, the modern Time-Space Department couldn't deny the possibility of people traveling through lightning strikes. It sounded like a bad joke, but people on Earth today thought there was some truth to the Near Ancient Network Era's hypothesis.
On certain explored Sub-dimensions, people had confirmed many traces of Earth's cultures. These Cultural Traces dated from the late 20th century, as well as from the 23rd century.
This had been an era of Information Explosion in Earth's history. Society kept Human Consciousness highly active, while failing to provide complete safety; in other words, accidental deaths were common. After the 23rd century, there were no more accidental deaths. People gradually let go of their memories during Regeneration Surgery, so when their consciousness eventually departed, it didn't take their memories along.
That was why traces of Earth's culture from this era were so dense in Sub-dimensions. Cultural phenomena appearing in Different Planes proved that consciousness might travel with its memories and thoughts intact.
From an even more fundamental perspective, life in Sub-dimensions evolving toward humanoid forms was perfectly reasonable. Travel across space-time existed at the narrow level of Intelligent Consciousness, and even the broader development of life was influenced across time and space.
The Main World's physical conditions were stable, and stability aided the accumulation of knowledge. There was only one Mass Extinction every hundred or two hundred million years, unlike in some Sub-dimensions, where civilizations came to an end every ten or twenty thousand years.
Earth's stable physical environment had allowed its evolution over four billion years to proceed largely without interruption. The information carried by surviving higher life forms might therefore guide the evolution of life in Sub-dimensions through the Quantum Tunneling Effect. Since consciousness and life information had continually spread outward, it was reasonable to call it the "Main World."
Of course, although consciousness could tunnel naturally,
the pioneers who had traveled through space-time after suffering accidents in the Main World had struggled terribly in other worlds, from the perspective of people today. Most of them had gone in with Naked Equipment, relying on a little advanced knowledge from Earth and Luck-based chances to make their way in the world.
By comparison, travelers between planes in the modern era were armed to the teeth with the support of Industrial Technology!
What mattered most when traveling to a Different Plane? Information analysis and Processing Power.
Because the phases of some Elementary Particles in Different Planes differed from those in the Main World, physical phenomena that seemed supernatural by Earth's standards might occur there.
Travelers had to gather information, decipher the Physical Laws, and finally experiment to develop Science and Technology suited to that region.
Today, every Shuttler who arrived in a Different Plane carried Information Nodes.
These Information Nodes were connected to a Supercomputing System.
Using certain Xuanhuan concepts from the 21st century, modern Transmigrators had "Virtual Chips" in their brains after arriving in their target planes.
They ran computations! Fast computations, relying on higher energy levels and more microscopic Energy Arrangements. In a plane where matter was stable beyond the space-time membrane, everything was at its most microscopic and highest-energy level.
The Information Enthalpy sent from the Main World, under the control of the monitors, provided computing, processing, and other capabilities that surpassed the chips supported by all conventional energy phenomena in the target plane.
Simply put, after a Transmigrator arrived in a Different Plane, the System Hardware in their brain was intangible and massless, but its data processing was faster than anything in the local world, including every brain and Energy Computing Device.
[The computational nodes in the brain had very little mass and were difficult to detect. But that didn't mean they left absolutely no trace. It was like neutrinos in Earth's Main World: if a civilization's observation capabilities were advanced enough, their traces could still be detected.]
The specific process was as follows:
On Earth, large Supercomputers sent computational data into particles, which were then delivered to a Gravity Well. After tunneling through the center of the Earth, the data first connected to the monitors in a high-energy state, then was sent to the nodes on the Transmigrator.
At first glance, this process seemed to put the monitors in control of the Transmigrators, but that control only existed during the early stages of Plane Exploration.
Once a Transmigrator had become familiar with the physical rules of their target plane, they no longer depended on the Information Enthalpy sent from Earth. Instead, they gathered energy locally and processed it into Information Enthalpy, becoming self-sufficient in the plane.
So a Transmigrator's true strength depended on how many nodes their consciousness could bind to—in the words of Earth's physicists, the number of Phase Particles.
Particles passed through Gravity Wells on Earth, were reflected into the target plane, and connected to the Transmigrator's consciousness, like a Net Cable stretching across the void.
With technology and industry backing them, modern Transmigrators engaged in cross-plane activities, but this wasn't something everyone could do. It required rigorous training. Although Transmigrators in this era had different methods for training their consciousness, their ranks were strictly classified according to the scale of Phase Particles their consciousness could load.
The world currently had two classification systems for Transmigrators.
The Zhongyuan system: Civilian, Scholar, High Minister.
The Mediterranean system: Citizen, Hero, Consul.
The broad ranks in the two systems roughly corresponded, but the two sides differed greatly in how consciousness accumulated.
These differences led Transmigrators to behave differently during Plane Exploration. In turn, the two sides could develop different social ideologies in Different Planes, which might cause conflict.
On Earth in the Main World, the two systems had become more accepting of each other, and their conflicts had grown less frequent. Standards for Extraterrestrial Aircraft were also beginning to align, but the conflicts seemed to have shifted to Sub-dimensions.
In space-time regions of the major planes where traces of Human Society were known to exist, particles had energy levels that made certain buffering phenomena easier for life to harness. In other words, people there could wield powers that seemed relatively supernatural from the perspective of the Main World.
But in these planes, human social organization and technological methods were inferior to those of the Main World.
After the Main World opened routes to these planes, Earth's Transmigrators could often use their local technologies and systems of power more scientifically, even under the physical rules there. Transmigrators from both East and West could establish dominance over these worlds.
And there were also economic interests involved!
Plane Exploration had rescued Earth's unhealthy economy! It had finally given humanity's cutting-edge physical high technology a way to benefit the public, instead of constantly devouring the economy and turning it into a bubble.
Plane Exploration brought back immense wealth!
This wealth wasn't gold or silver. The Main World followed the law of conservation of matter, and the tunneling phenomenon controlled in Gravity Wells brought information alone—it didn't bring supernatural powers to Earth.
So what kind of informational wealth was it? Well, it wasn't something like Bitcoin in the 21st century. It was extremely valuable data.
Earth had gained a great deal of valuable verification in theoretical technology alone.
For example, dozens of design methods for Nuclear Submarines? Several design approaches for Nuclear Power Plant reactors? In the 21st century, even superpowers couldn't accumulate every technological route. Each route cost a fortune! That saying about "crossing the river by feeling for stones" had saved the people a lot of money. And medical technology had cost lives, one after another.
That money could be spent experimenting in Sub-dimensions with physical rules similar to Earth's.
The only rivals of Earth's Time-Space Shuttle Department were its counterparts on Earth.
Today, the economies of Different Planes had greatly stimulated Earth Civilization's enthusiasm for development.
One Gravity Well after another was being developed on Earth. And Earth alone was no longer enough for humanity. Apart from terrestrial planets like Mars and Venus, Earth's Space Development Department had established a foothold on Jupiter, where it had set up city-scale habitats and planned to dig more Gravity Wells. The project had already progressed to surveying Jupiter's Metallic Hydrogen Layer.
Besides building Gravity Wells, the scale of Information Enthalpy in the Main World also needed to expand. At present, the most basic "Civilian"-rank Transmigrators received support from Earth only to analyze the matter and energy phenomena of their target planes.
"Scholar"-rank Transmigrators could use Information Enthalpy to construct objects from the void in their target planes, but doing so consumed too much Information Enthalpy, so the process was strictly regulated. If it were made freely available to all Transmigrators, Earth's conventional Nuclear Fusion Array Power Generation System and Mantle Heat Collection System wouldn't be nearly enough. As a result, only those of High Minister Rank were authorized to use the technology for projecting matter directly into a Different Plane.
But the need was real, and where there was need, there was future development.
The engineering team on Mercury had made this plan: build a Dyson Ring within three hundred years, while also establishing a Photon Array Computer spanning one-third of an astronomical unit.
Once humanity harnessed the Sun's energy and processed it into Information Enthalpy, it could completely overwhelm the native civilizations of most of the planes already explored and crush anyone who dared to resist.
If things continued at this rate, developing space and energy,
then even if Earth's Main World wasn't suited to space travel, Earth Civilization might still break through the Solar System in the next millennium, reach neighboring Proxima Centauri, and realize its dream of racing toward the stars.
The thunderstorm ended, and the Store Intelligent System once again said to Wei Keng, "Welcome back."
The teacher who had been instructing Wei Keng forced him through the remote system to return to school the way he had come. When Wei Keng jumped aboard the boat, the cat followed him on board too. But when he returned to the waterside dock in front of the school, the cat leapt ashore and darted off somewhere.
He plunged straight into the Information Pod and continued his miserable project work. He didn't feel particularly moved by this world's bright future.
Wei Keng thought, The present is already the future to me. As for the era beyond that, I can't be bothered to think about it.
Before you continue