The Future of the Human Colony

On the Desperate Plane, the Yuanhua 834, a massive ocean-going vessel, suddenly lost all communications in the middle of the open sea, causing a huge commotion. For a time, the tabloids in a certain free-trade port were abuzz with talk of pirates, the Eastern Bermuda Triangle, and alien abductions.

In the South Ninth Segment Sea Area, a fleet of three destroyers was searching the region. Blue-and-white helicopters skimmed over the waves, their crews scanning the sea for targets with the naked eye.

"9214 (Gou Liang Yi Si), please respond—"

"9224, sea conditions are normal here. Wind force six, wave height... No targets spotted so far—"

"Continue searching—"

Radio signals passed through the integrated command tower aboard the warship.

The missing cargo ship still hadn't been found, and the search-and-rescue team thought the odds of finding it were slim. But their superiors had issued orders: they had to keep searching.

Meanwhile, a black stealth reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the United States flew high overhead. The Pentagon seemed quite concerned about the disappearance, though perhaps it was more interested in whether a ship belonging to that quasi-ally in the East had really gone missing. During their exchanges with the Five-Star organization, Washington's decision-makers had learned of some of the East's "devious" tactics, such as "making a feint to the east while attacking in the west."

After all, the ship was carrying an array of valuable production equipment, some of which involved sensitive materials. According to the latest intelligence, the Global Salvation Army had recently used guided rockets loaded with highly toxic substances in its attacks on Israel. Producing those toxins required some large, critical industrial equipment.

At three in the afternoon, the third destroyer on the search spotted strange electromagnetic emissions near the Dongsha Islands and immediately moved in.

When Destroyer 201 came within two hundred meters, its crew saw a mirage. The light-and-shadow phenomenon depicted the Yuanhua 834, sailing toward the port in Guangdong.

The destroyer's captain immediately halted the approach. He relayed the situation to the military district, then waited for further instructions.

Twenty minutes later, a search-and-rescue helicopter launched from the destroyer located the source of the light. It was a glowing object with no electrical charge, yet it repelled any matter that came within sixty meters. The closer an object got, the stronger the repulsive force became.

They could confirm that the object was still affected by Earth's gravity and that it had a mass of forty-five tons. However, the volume of water displaced by its repulsive force was greater than the weight pulling it down, so it floated on the sea.

A nearby supply ship used steel cables to haul the matter-repelling wormhole into its hangar. Once inside the square hangar, the wormhole quickly filled the entire space.

Three days later, the glowing object was transported ashore. The military confined it in a pure-steel carriage, then sent it by train to the Southwest Physics Center overnight.

On the Pandora Plane, smoke began pouring from the chimney of a newly built brick-and-tile house as Wei Keng fired up the power boiler.

The Yuanhua 834 was anchored outside a natural deep-water harbor. A cement ship was moored beside it, with a metal gangway propped against its side. Wei Keng boarded the vessel.

Wei Keng was quite surprised that he'd been allowed on board. Since arriving in this world, he'd been met with nothing but suspicion. Having an unguarded, face-to-face conversation all of a sudden felt strange to him.

Wei Keng met Captain Sun Xiangyang for the first time.

The two stared at each other, then exchanged baffled military salutes before greeting each other with a simple "Hello" in Mandarin.

Although "Unity is Strength" had been playing at the dock, Sun Xiangyang found Wei Keng and his people a little strange, since they all looked exactly alike. Still, the red flag flying over the small harbor led him to trust the people here.

[Sun Xiangyang wanted to figure out what kind of place this was. Wei Keng couldn't let on that he knew people from their Main World had created a space-time vortex and brought them here. He had to act as if he, too, was a Transmigrator in need of help.]

Wei Keng said, "This plane is in the future—or, well, the future as far as I'm concerned. I'm from the 21st Century. I was in a plane crash, and after I parachuted out, I passed through some mist and landed here. When I landed, I found that I'd become many individuals."

Sun Xiangyang was stunned. "You're from the 21st Century? This is the future to you, so then what year is it here?"

Wei Keng finally got a chance to look at the markings on a life ring aboard the ship: "19xx... Wait, Wuchen Year?" He asked with "surprise," "Did you come here from more than ten years ago?"

At last, the two of them stopped talking at cross-purposes.

The first step toward communication was sincerity. Or rather, Wei Keng wasn't confident in his ability to read people, even when he held the upper hand.

So, instead of following Luo Hongxing's suggestion, Wei Keng told the medical team aboard the ship the truth about the symptoms after boarding.

Inside a cabin in the middle of the ship,

Old Li, the ship's medic, listened to Wei Keng explain the effects of Life Radiation on this plane, then asked, "Blood types don't matter? There's no rejection?"

"That's right. Rejection is extremely rare. There are a lot of me, so in theory, injecting my blood can quickly stabilize a patient's condition. But I don't know what other effects it might have. I recommend that patients with mild symptoms give blood to one another to form Life Radiation links. That's what people in this world generally do. For patients in serious condition, you can inject my blood."

Beside them, Sun Xiangyang said, "Young Comrade Wei has thought this through carefully. But you just said Life Radiation is very strong in this world. Don't you need to inject one another?"

"Most of the time, no. My clones all have very similar genes, and their life activity is unified. Most of the time, that's enough to withstand the radiation. Only severe injuries are an exception."

"Have you ever been seriously injured?"

"Yes. When I first arrived in this world, there were a lot of wild beasts in the Zhujiang River Delta Region, and I suffered some casualties. I've compiled the relevant information into a file."

"Knock, knock, knock!" Someone rapped on the cabin door. Luo Hongxing walked in and said, "Captain Sun, something's happened in the cargo hold. Could you take a look?"

Sun Xiangyang stood up and shook Wei Keng's hand with both of his. "Then I'll leave it to you, Comrade Wei." He turned to the medic. "Old Li, make sure the comrades recover." Then he followed Luo Hongxing out. Before leaving, Luo Hongxing glanced at Wei Keng and gave him a slight nod.

On the Desperate Plane, a group of scientists had finished adjusting the electromagnetic equipment inside a huge structure resembling the cylindrical outer shell of a 21st-century reactor. The wormhole was securely fixed within a metal frame.

As a steady supply of electricity flowed in, the point inside the ball of light seemed to stretch open, revealing an area like an entrance. Once the opening had widened to a meter, they confirmed it led into the cargo hold of the Yuanhua 834.

"Switch to Mode 303." "Set the power to B344." "Increase infrared electromagnetic radiation"...

In the control room, staff members took turns reporting their test results.

Seconds later, they confirmed something else: the shadows flickering on the other side of the wormhole were people! After slowing the footage of the shadows to one sixty-fifth speed, the researchers confirmed that the captain was standing over there.

The chief scientist stared blankly at a clock set beside the wormhole, then said, "Time is moving sixty times faster over there than it is here!"

"It looks like they're trying to send something through to us."

A recorder rewound the footage to five minutes earlier. On the other side of the wormhole, dozens of crew members had gathered together, trying to push something through the opening with a long pole.

The attempt had met with resistance from the wormhole! The scientists calculated that breaking through this resistance would require electromagnetic force to pierce the distorted outer shell of the wormhole's force field.

Nearby, General Ling Liang, a military representative, stared at the wormhole. "Tell them to communicate using Morse Code."

In the cabin, Wei Keng helped Old Li with the procedures.

Old Li was very cautious and still tested the blood types. He had healthy comrades on board donate blood to patients with mild symptoms. Wei Keng's blood was tested too; it was type A, and he was assigned six people's worth.

An hour later,

Old Li's sixty-four patients with mild symptoms were still under observation. Meanwhile, several of Wei Keng's patients in serious condition had gotten out of bed and walked around the mild-symptom ward to show everyone that the illness could be cured and put the crew at ease. Now they were next door doing rehabilitation exercises—building their lung capacity by singing a song together.

"A great river flows wide, waves rolling on; the wind blows through the rice flowers..."

The singing wasn't loud by the time it reached the next room, but almost everyone heard it.

A worker lying in bed tossed the cold towel off his head and into a basin, then said irritably, "Old Jiang and the others got better so fast. Does giving blood to each other once really do nothing?"

The medic, Old Li, said, "Comrade Wei Keng explained the situation here. Life Radiation takes time to work. The leadership has discussed it, and everyone apart from the seriously ill will receive conservative treatment. Comrade Yuhua, you'll have to be patient."

The worker named Huang Yuhua had a fiery temper. "I need to get better soon. I've got work to do. I don't have time to lie here while you observe me."

"Yuhua? Yuhua, what are you doing?" Old Li tried to hold back the stubborn mule, but the strong, broad-shouldered worker in his thirties shrugged him off with one swing of his arm.

Wei Keng watched as the agitated man rushed up to him and stuck out his sleeve for an injection. He paused, then asked, "Comrade, did the clinic write you a prescription?"

"Comrade Wei, could you give me a shot of that medicine?"

"Uncle, this isn't medicine. It's my blood serum, and I'm only giving it to seriously ill patients."

"Come on, Comrade Wei, don't be so stingy!" Just as an argument seemed about to break out, Luo Hongxing hurried over to mediate.

"Worker Huang, you're too impatient. He's only trying to help you. Comrade Wei Keng has experienced Unknown Replication Hyperplasia here, and there are many individuals."

"I've heard about it. There's a mountain of work in my office. I could use a few extra bodies myself."

Seeing he couldn't persuade him, Luo Hongxing turned to Wei Keng. "How about it?"

Wei Keng stared at Luo Hongxing, as if trying to decide whether he was really putting on an act. His behavior gave no hint of what he'd told Wei Keng through the system.

Wei Keng took a deep breath, tore off a form, and handed it to the Acute Maniac named Huang. "I'll give you a shot, but you have to fill out this form three times a day for the first week."

And so, someone who wasn't seriously ill received the first injection. Soon, the exception became the rule.

After receiving Wei Keng's serum, Huang Yuhua felt his symptoms disappear quickly.

He was full of energy, ate several extra bowls of food, and fell asleep the moment he finished work. As he put it, "It's rare to sleep that soundly."

After a week, he was full of life. He went to Old Li for a physical, got his heart, chest, and lungs checked, and muttered, "Strong as an ox."

In China's social environment, once the first person to try something new came through fine, you could fish every last crab out of the ditch.

The rest of the people on the ship stopped paying attention to the warnings. They crowded around the clinic window, pointed at Wei Keng, and demanded an injection on the spot.

Luo Hongxing was among them.

Once about two-thirds of the people aboard the ship had received Wei Keng's blood,

Luo Hongxing passed the data he'd collected to the system, connecting it to his Observer, Mang Xinzong.

Mang Xinzong said, "Confirmed: the Human Colony is coalescing. Please keep an eye on your position within it." A diagram of a dispersed distribution appeared on the screen.

The model covered not only the current human population in the Zhujiang River Basin, but also several other regions under the protection of Apostle-level Node Creatures.

Node Creatures represented settlements, but they couldn't be treated as the entirety of a settlement.

According to the Space-Time Crossing Department's existing records, when a Node Creature acted as the convergence point for the Life Radiation energy in an area, it could concentrate and use the energy its colony occupied in the ecosystem. On a dispersed model of the life scale of the entire colony, it was the highest peak at the very center.

When a node disappeared, the point where the energy converged was gone, but the colony's Life Energy activity remained! The colony might then split into several smaller groups according to its internal differences, giving rise to several new Node Creatures. For instance, Yue Region originally had one large node. After interference from other colonies, it split into many smaller nodes, which fought bitterly around the mouth of the Zhujiang River.

Wei Keng was unusual! In this settlement of nearly eight thousand people, including the new crew members, the colony effect was already evident, but there was no definitive Node Creature! The highest point was Wei Keng's fifteen hundred individuals, whose Life Radiation levels were all the same. Perhaps the Wei Keng group itself was a vague, massive node.

What would happen if Wei Keng left? The colony that had already formed wouldn't disappear, but a new Node Creature would emerge.

In other words, once Wei Keng disappeared, his telepathy and regenerative abilities would appear in someone in the colony whose life force was strong and who best resonated with it.

But who would inherit those abilities?

Luo Hongxing was watching his own value on the dispersed model. He still hadn't drawn close to Wei Keng's central peak, so he couldn't let Wei Keng leave yet.

Luo Hongxing said, "Make a note: at the current point in time, the name of this system is the 'Human Emperor.'"

Luo Hongxing's actual rank: High Minister.

He'd visited planes where the consciousness of life could move heaven and earth. The Human Emperor! The center implicitly recognized by the people, the gathering point of humanity's fortune.

After Wei Keng's group had completely left this timeline, a single node-bearer would emerge in the Human Colony currently occupying this world. Thus, High Minister Luo gave it an Eastern-style name.