Zhou Kun entered the room and glanced around before realizing there were quite a few people inside.
Those strange aerospace experts, that chairman, and Yuan Heguang himself, who summoned him, are all here.
As soon as he entered, all eyes were on him, and they all stared at him and smiled, creating an inexplicably eerie atmosphere.
Yuan Heguang came over and patted him on the shoulder. "Director Zhou, everyone is waiting for you, please sit down."
"Our country has made remarkable achievements in aerospace during this period, and I would like to express my gratitude for your hard work."
"No," Zhou Kun waved his hand, "It's mainly thanks to the other comrades. My contribution was minimal; I only played a minor supporting role."
An aerospace expert interjected, "President Zhou has been very supportive and cooperative with our work, and that's enough."
"You're too kind." Zhou Kun nodded, feeling somewhat uneasy.
Yuan Heguang noticed his nervousness, offered a few words of comfort, and then got down to business. " President Zhang mentioned your situation to me a few days ago, saying that you know too little, so you have many unresolved issues, which makes it difficult to carry out your work."
"So after thinking about it for a long time, I've decided to explain some things to you."
Upon hearing this, Zhou Kun immediately straightened up, "I swear on my life I will keep everything I hear next a secret!"
Zhang Tianyuan, sitting on the other side, said, "Actually, it's not exactly top secret. It's just that it's not convenient to disclose it now. We'll release it to the public as soon as possible."
"No need to be too nervous."
Yuan Heguang also said, "These past few days, you must have been very curious about how we suddenly gained the ability to launch a new wormhole exploration project."
Zhou Kun unconsciously clenched his fist. "I'm really curious. From what I understand, we should only have about twenty solid-fuel rockets in storage right now."
Solid rockets are relatively easy to store and launch, but range is a problem; it would be very difficult to launch a payload to Saturn using them.
The rocket transported from the Wandering Spacetime was a large rocket using liquid fuel.
These rockets are difficult to preserve and expensive, making them unaffordable for people of their time.
Yuan Heguang said, "If you remember correctly, aside from military applications, we only have so many rockets that we can use for spaceflight. So, the rocket that was launched last time wasn't actually ours."
Zhou Kun's brow twitched.
He had considered this possibility, but in this day and age, their entire country couldn't afford a single rocket, so how could a private entity possibly manufacture and launch one?
Yuan Heguang continued, "What I'm about to tell you might seem a bit unbelievable, but it really exists, so don't be too surprised."
Zhou Kun took a deep breath, preparing himself mentally.
Yuan Heguang smiled and spent five minutes explaining the details of the Mutual Aid Society.
silence...
After listening, Zhou Kun remained silent for a long time.
After a long while, he turned to look at the Mutual Aid Society experts around him and uttered a single word with difficulty. "Parallel universe?"
Zhang Tianyuan and the others nodded.
"... This, this is really..." Zhou Kun was speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say.
He simply couldn't believe that these people in front of him were from a parallel universe.
It feels like one day a colleague tells you that he is actually an alien recognized by the government...
He even began to doubt whether he might have actually seen aliens without his knowledge.
Perhaps one day, some guy in human skin who walks by him will be an alien?
Yuan Heguang laughed heartily, interrupting Zhou Kun's thoughts.
"Director Zhou, now you know why I didn't tell you this news before, right?"
Zhou Kun nodded, his expression stiff.
"I really shouldn't have told you."
"So, the reason you haven't been able to truly participate in the project before isn't because we're excluding you; it's just that the organization is still studying the matter. Only after we've thoroughly investigated it can we make it public to you..."
Yuan Heguang patted Zhou Kun on the back, as if he had shattered the mountain that had been weighing on his back, making him feel much lighter.
Zhang Tianyuan laughed and said, "Actually, parallel universes are not unimaginable, especially for your universe which is being interfered with by higher-dimensional beings."
Now it was Yuan Heguang's turn to freeze, and his gaze immediately turned towards them.
Zhou Kun
They looked over in equal astonishment.
Only the experts from the Mutual Aid Society already knew about this news and were not surprised.
" President Zhang, what does 'high-dimensional life' mean?"
"Could it be that our situation here has been deliberately disrupted?"
"You could say that." Zhang Tianyuan hadn't found an opportunity to discuss this with Yuan Heguang until now, when it was basically confirmed that higher-dimensional humans were affected by causality, and this was a good opportunity.
"That wormhole near Saturn you mentioned wasn't actually formed naturally; there's no scientific theory to support its sudden appearance."
Zhou Kun said, "Indeed, the mysterious appearance of wormholes remains a mystery. The space boom of the past few decades was largely driven by the desire to understand this issue. According to what President Zhang is saying now, it is the work of so-called higher-dimensional beings?"
His heart was pounding, and he felt he was getting closer and closer to the truth.
The next second.
Zhang Tianyuan directly proved his conjecture:
"That's right, that wormhole was actually placed in the Solar System by higher-dimensional beings specifically for your use."
Yuan Heguang's face suddenly darkened. "That Blight?"
Zhang Tianyuan shook his head and said, "Actually, I have no evidence to prove that it was their doing."
Zhou Kun said, "But the fact that they can place wormholes near Saturn means they most likely have this kind of interference capability..."
"So the root of everything is those higher-dimensional beings?"
What exactly is their purpose?
Yuan Heguang addressed two issues.
Zhang Tianyuan had already guessed that he would ask this question:
"I guess they're trying to complete a closed loop of cause and effect."
Please explain in more detail.
"They will destroy the Earth with the Blight, bringing humanity to its end, so that you will struggle to reach the stars, escape through the wormholes they provide, and begin the first Interstellar colonization."
"For this reason, they even chose a prime location for you, right across from the wormhole."
"Is it the habitable planet on the other side of the wormhole that President Zhang told me about before?"
Yes, it's the one I told you about.
In an instant, a chill ran through Yuan Heguang's heart.
For all these years, has the entire Earth been performing an ugly dance on the stage arranged by those higher-dimensional beings?
How could anyone not be alarmed!
"In their script, you will eventually find a way to survive with their help, successfully migrating the remaining population, or most of the remaining people, to a new planet, thus making humanity an interstellar race."
"Then, over countless years, those new humans, after a long period of development and countless hardships, finally transcended and gained incredible power."
"Time was no longer an irreversible line before them, but a mountain they could freely traverse..."
"And so at that moment, they picked up their pens and began to write the old scripts."
Zhou Kun froze in his chair, as if he were paralyzed.
He was panting heavily.
So they are what they are?
Yuan Heguang then realized. "Those higher-dimensional beings are us in the future?"
"To correct you, it's not 'you' in the future, but 'humanity' in the future."
Even if we follow the script of higher-dimensional humans, global migration wouldn't be that easy.
Didn't you see the ending, almost a hundred years later, that humanity on Earth was still living in space stations?
Even though Murphy made a huge contribution by solving the equations of gravity, her space station only reached the atmosphere above Saturn.
Therefore, it is impossible for this generation or even the next ten generations to become a higher-dimensional life form.
This news is truly shocking.
Yuan Heguang covered his forehead and rested for a while before his blood pressure came down.
He now has only one thought in his mind—
"What unfilial descendants!"
As long as they follow the "script," they will definitely become higher-dimensional humans and achieve great transcendence for humanity, which sounds wonderful.
But if you go out and ask any person suffering from hunger, would they be willing to sacrifice themselves for the happiness of who knows how many generations to come?
Would anyone willingly starve to death for this reason?
That's utter bullshit!
Don't spout any cause-and-effect logic, and certainly don't claim their sacrifice was for the future happiness of humanity.
That future is way too far into the future!
They've all moved to the point where they can't see the future anymore!
People
A whole bunch of his mothers starved to death!
What future is there left!
Yuan Heguang had nowhere to vent his anger, and he slammed his fist on the table repeatedly in frustration.
If he weren't so unable to reach those so-called higher-dimensional beings, he probably would have already launched a nuclear attack.
Just thinking about this makes my blood pressure rise again...
Zhang Tianyuan told him to calm down and not get too excited, lest he collapse over something like this. Then he continued, "However, judging from our current situation, the higher dimensions of spacetime should have already changed."
What does this mean?
"Yes, you can understand it as follows: in the original script, our Mutual Aid Society didn't exist in this timeline. Now that we've appeared, the future has changed, and the cycle of cause and effect has naturally gone wrong."
"The very foundation upon which those higher-dimensional humans existed naturally vanished."
"So, they're all 'dead'?"
That's one way to understand it.
"That really benefits those unworthy descendants!" Yuan Heguang said through gritted teeth, his hatred for those higher-dimensional humans reaching its peak.
Thinking of this, he expressed his gratitude to Zhang Tianyuan again.
If it weren't for today's conversation, he would never have known that such a secret was hidden behind the wormhole, and most likely he would never have known it.
Zhou Kun, standing to the side, seemed somewhat worried.
"Since the habitable planet on the other side of the wormhole was chosen for us by higher-dimensional humans, is there any point in us migrating there?"
He now finds it hard to believe that those high-dimensional humans who specialize in killing ancestors could be so kind.
Oh, no, it should be those who survive this great selection are the ancestors of those higher-dimensional humans, so they can't really be said to have killed their ancestors.
At most, they killed some "savages" who looked similar to their ancestors.
But no matter what, Zhou Kun finds it hard to trust them now.
When asked this question, Zhang Tianyuan thought for a moment and replied, "I haven't been to that planet either, and I know almost nothing about it."
"But logically speaking, that place is most likely a treasure trove specially chosen for you. It is precisely because you occupied that place that you will be able to achieve dimensional ascension in the future and thus become like them..."
The more Zhang Tianyuan talked, the more convinced he became that his idea was correct.
Because the New Star at the other end of the wormhole is near a supermassive black hole, and that black hole is the core of a galaxy.
Moreover, incredibly, habitable conditions exist in such a place.
So it's really true that it's a place with excellent feng shui.
In that place, you wouldn't need to painstakingly build any large instruments to study physics; you could just look up at the sky, and the core of the entire galaxy would be right there.
Unlike Earth, a lawless suburb of the Milky Way, where you have to build this and that just to get a few outdated cosmic scraps from who-knows-how-many years ago, there is nothing else.
Even the older women don't bother talking about that stuff at the village entrance!
In short, once we get there, human physics research can be largely freed from the limitations of instruments, and we will be only one pair of eyes away from the truth of the universe.
Zhang Tianyuan's words of comfort put Yuan Heguang's worries at ease, and he decided to continue with the relocation plan.
However, when this topic came up, Zhou Kun couldn't help but mention Amelia's delegation, who had just visited.
"They have expressed a very strong desire to cooperate with me recently. Should we cooperate with them going forward?"
Zhang Tianyuan said, "These people are indeed exhausting all means to find a way to save humanity, but to us, their methods are too rudimentary."
"As we just mentioned, as soon as that spaceship in space reaches the wormhole's orbit, we can immediately send a large number of probes into the wormhole, without needing to do what they did."
When Zhou Kun heard Zhang Tianyuan mention this, a smile naturally appeared on his face. Now he could understand why the other experts always seemed so relaxed.
He's using a teleportation cheat!
"Ahem," realizing he had gotten a little carried away, Zhou Kun quickly suppressed his smile. "NASA was the first to observe wormholes, and some of their data should still be useful to us, so I think it's worthwhile to cooperate with them."
Zhang Tianyuan and other aerospace experts do not deny this point. After decades of accumulation, they can eventually summarize some patterns.
but...
Thinking of this, the faces of the aerospace experts turned ashen, like those of someone suffering from constipation.
Zhou Kun also sensed that the atmosphere was off, and subconsciously scratched his neatly combed hair:
"What... what happened?"