The stars hid in the enchanting red mist, emitting dazzling white, blue, and red light, like star gods watching over the people on earth through a veil.
The savages continued their prayers, as if the ritual would never end.
Ivan grilled fish of unknown breed; the meat was a bit coarse, tasting like old beef, but hunger made people's taste buds bloom like flowers, and with the addition of salt, the charred meat tasted as delicious as the world's most exquisite meal.
The Crow clucked incessantly as it ate, " Guagua, caw, it's so delicious! This is the Guagua meat I've ever eaten!"
Su Huilan laughed and said, "Didn't you say that nothing can compare to your boss's braised pork knuckle?"
"Times have changed, quack! If we had braised pork hock now, it would definitely taste better. But if we don't have braised pork hock, this meat will have to do!"
The Crow cawed twice, then suddenly glared at Su Huilan. "Hey, don't think I'm saying you can settle for less. For a responsible man, a woman is not something to be settled for!"
Su Huilan almost choked on a piece of meat. She finally understood a lesson: never try to get the better of a Crow with words.
She ignored the Crow and noticed that Situ and Qingmu had suddenly fallen silent, creating an awkward and tense atmosphere. She wanted to ask Situ about the Alliance, but felt the timing wasn't right. Or perhaps there were still some things she didn't understand, and she didn't want to be led by the nose. The conversation between Qingmu and Situ earlier made her feel that this man was somewhat unreal; if she were to talk about her dream, it would inevitably involve many things she didn't want to discuss. She didn't want to reveal her secrets to someone who was frighteningly intelligent and seemed so unreal before the situation was clear.
She remembered that the discussion about time and atomic clocks hadn't ended yet, only interrupted by Qingmu's question. Wanting to continue the discussion, she asked:
"Mr. Situ, you just said that you first created a Real-Scene Dream to synchronize the dream with reality, and then created a cesium atomic clock in the dream to keep time. But you can't possibly carry an atomic clock in your mind all day long and be in a sleepwalking state, can you?"
"No need for that complicated process," Situ said. "I just need to integrate the real-world scenery of the island into the dream, and then determine the cycle of regular events occurring in the surrounding environment, such as the interval between two tides, to roughly determine the time corresponding to this place and our world."
Su Huilan recalled the giant moon phenomenon she had experienced before and said, "Tides are caused by the moon's gravity, and the instability of this space indicates that it may be moving between the Earth and the moon. This would obviously cause changes in the tides, so how can we use the tides to predict time?"
Situ said, "Therefore, one measurement is not enough. Once a change in the environment is detected, it must be measured again. However, there is something you may not have noticed: the instability of this space is not changing at a uniform rate. It is stable most of the time. Otherwise, civilization could not have arisen on the island. Unfortunately, the tribal civilization here was destroyed in the disaster caused by the spatial changes."
So, how much time did you measure?
It's been almost a year.
"Almost a year?" Alice, who had already eaten her fill, wiped the grease from her mouth and shook her head in disbelief. "I don't understand this atomic clock thing you're talking about, and I really can't remember how many days and nights have passed, but I do know how many meals I've eaten. We don't have much food to begin with. If a year has passed, I must be a ghost now, not a human!"
The Crow Guagua and nodded in deep agreement. " Guagua, crows are starving! Crows are starving!"
Situ glanced at the Crow with interest, and the Crow, feeling uncomfortable under his gaze, turned its head away. "Alright, alright, that's enough, you guys chat! I'll just eat my meat..."
Su Huilan thought for a moment and said, "I once guessed that this was a Klein Bottle. Qingmu and I have discussed this many times, and many things that have happened have confirmed that my guess may be correct."
You and Mrs. Larry entered this space at the same time, but ended up on different islands. According to you, almost a year has passed, while Alice only feels that a few days have passed. This is clearly not something that happened in the same timeline. Your atomic clock is accurate, but the body's metabolism and biological clock will not lie to her.
Although the Klein Bottle contains a portion of four-dimensional space, it is generally closed, and all parts of the bottle are interconnected. Could it be that we were once in the same space, but at different times?
Situ nodded and said, " Professor Su, your guess is correct. This can indeed be understood as a Klein Bottle, but you've overlooked one point: Klein Bottle doesn't have a fixed shape. We call it a bottle because we can only see its projection in three-dimensional spacetime; a real Klein Bottle can be any shape."
Su Huilan pondered the deeper meaning in Situ's words, "You mean...?"
Situ reminded him, "If you really want to imagine it, you can imagine the neck of this bottle as very, very long, longer than a giraffe's."
"Giraffe?" Su Huilan looked at Situ with confusion.
Situ laughed, "A neck that's light-years long."
Su Huilan seemed to understand something, and suddenly said, "I know, you mean when we're on different islands, we're in different positions on the Klein Bottle, sometimes the distance between us... is measured in light-years?"
Situ nodded. "That's why I've said before that atomic clocks aren't very useful for telling time. I don't use them to tell the time; I use them to deduce our position in space and time."
"Why?"
"Because if you were inside a spaceship traveling at high speed or even the speed of light, think about what would happen, and what would be the point of an atomic clock?"
"High-speed travel would have significant relativistic effects." Su Huilan recalled the giant moon she had seen that day, indicating that the island was approaching the moon at an extremely high speed. She mentally calculated the speed at that time and the possible relativistic effects.
A sudden flash of inspiration struck Qingmu, but he couldn't recall anything.
He looked up at the clusters of nebulae in the sky, and the twinkling stars among them. This sky was one he had never seen before, yet he felt a strange sense of familiarity, as if he had gazed at it countless times before.
Situ also looked up at the sky and said, "Look at the starry sky above you, doesn't it look familiar?"
Su Huilan, who had studied astronomy, suddenly exclaimed, "This... this is the Orion Nebula!"
Others hadn't yet grasped what was so surprising about the Orion Nebula.
Su Huilan, however, excitedly pointed to the magnificent and dazzling star clusters in the sky and exclaimed:
"That large bird is the Great Orion Nebula, 1350 light-years from Earth; that swirling, dark cloud is the Horsehead Nebula, 1500 light-years from Earth, and the light behind it is a cloud of hydrogen atoms ionized by stars; that red arc of light is Barnard's Loop, spanning 300 light-years. These Orion nebulae are impossible to see from Earth. To see them so large and clearly with the naked eye, you'd need to travel at least three-quarters of the distance, which means..."
Su Huilan's heart pounded, and her voice trembled with surprise and uncertainty, "We're now on the Orion Spur, 1000 light-years away from Earth?!"