"13.8 billion years ago..."
Gilan repeated the Whisperer's words, unable to help but feel startled.
What an unimaginably distant past that was!
According to the scientific theories of his previous life, the sun was only around 4.5 billion years old. Yet the Director's camera could capture a past even more remote, as though offering a glimpse of the primordial scene at the birth of the universe.
But Gilan did not understand.
What exactly did the Director want to show him?
This world was not Earth from his previous life, so perhaps everything differed greatly from what he knew.
Filled with doubt, Gilan approached the chair floating amid the cosmic stars and came up behind the Director, who was dressed in an astronaut's uniform.
The Director reclined in the chair, the deep and brilliant starry sky reflected upon Its gleaming, mirror-like spherical helmet.
Without any visible movement from It, the bizarrely shaped giant camera nearby slowly shifted, aiming in a certain direction.
Then Gilan saw an image appear on the retro square television connected to it—
It was a pitch-black, deathly silent universe.
There was neither light nor sound, as though the television had malfunctioned and displayed nothing but a black screen.
Who knew how much time passed.
Two boundless galaxies, each countless billions of light-years in size, appeared on the screen. One was a dim grayish purple, while the other shone a dazzling golden red.
They slowly drew closer until they collided.
Though there was no sound, Gilan could sense the terrifying shockwave produced at that instant. The unimaginable energy filled the fabric of space with collapsing black holes and cosmic strings, kicking up "dust" stretching tens of thousands of light-years.
There was an incalculable amount of that "dust," and every single particle was a celestial body.
The purple and