Aboard the science ship, Earth time had just reached midnight. Outside the fleet, there was no distinction between day and night, but the fleet had continued to use Earth time. Even so, the ship was still brightly lit, with people bustling about everywhere. By now, they were more than six light-years from Tau Ceti.
Unable to sleep, Hu Yu first sought out his old friend Wen Zhonghua and inspected the fleet's daily operations. Then the two took a small spacecraft to the science ship. There were still many questions about the fleet's future to discuss, and Academician Xiao Yi happened to be there too, rather than conducting those terrifying studies aboard his biological ship.
"General, Chief of the General Staff, what brings you here so late?" Academician Zeng Zhaoyuan asked.
"I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk. I knew you two would still be up, so I came over to talk," Hu Yu replied.
"General Hu, you're the backbone of the fleet. You need to take better care of yourself," Academician Xiao said with concern.
"Don't worry, Academician. I'm fine. Aren't you two up without any rest too?" Wen Zhonghua replied.
"Us? Haha, Academician Zeng and I got used to it long ago. Besides, how many researchers keep regular hours? It's an illness, a researcher's illness. Whenever there's something new, we get too excited to sleep."
"Academicians, I keep feeling that there's a serious problem with our fleet's structure. Look, our Deep Blue fleet is like a fat man sitting in a sedan chair, while our Hunter-Killers are like the bearers, carrying this huge chair slowly along and having to keep him safe. At Tau Ceti, we were lucky: our fleet received a warning in advance, and the Deep Blue escaped disaster. If we suddenly encountered another civilization and war broke out now, the Deep Blue would be the first to come under attack. I feel there's a serious problem with this structure, but I can't find a suitable solution."
"Mm, that really is a problem. But humans are social animals, and we need a lot of space. We can't cram everyone into a small area; it would cause psychological problems. That's exactly why we built the enormous Deep Blue residential ships, to give hundreds of millions of people a comfortable environment so they could work more efficiently."
"I know that, Academician Xiao. I'm just thinking about the future. We have fewer than six hundred million people now, but what about later? Our population could reach six billion, sixty billion, even trillions. What will we do then? Those enormous residential ships will be huge, slow-moving live targets."
"General, this situation is a common problem for almost every low-level civilization. It's hard to change until we've fully mastered space technology, unless we use some extreme methods," Academician Zeng said.
"Academician Zeng, what extreme methods?" Hearing that there was a solution, Wen Zhonghua grew eager.
"Genetic modification, for example. We could turn humans into cave-dwelling animals. Then a few cubic meters of space per person would be enough, dozens of times less than what we need now. But no one would agree to that, would they?"
"That's a bit too extreme," Wen Zhonghua said with a pout.
"Exactly. So for now, we'll have to keep carrying this big sedan chair along slowly. We're also working day and night to overcome technical challenges and raise our warp speed another level. Things will be a little better then. Don't be too anxious. You have to eat one bite at a time and put on clothes one piece at a time. But I do have another suggestion. When we find a suitable planet, we could see if we can leave a group of people behind. They would stay on the planet to develop instead of continuing to risk their lives with the fleet. We'd leave them enough technology and equipment and see if anyone was willing. Like the founding leader's guerrilla warfare, we'd leave bases everywhere. But this is only a preliminary idea of mine. Whether we can carry it out still needs to be discussed at a meeting," Academician Xiao said.
"I'll consider it. Once we find a habitable planet, we'll ask everyone what they think. Some people might be willing to stay. After all, drifting from place to place is hard, and they have to live in fear too. How is the analysis of the technology progressing?"
"We're short of personnel right now. The more advanced technology becomes, the more branches the technology tree has. From the time we reached Tau Ceti until now, we've focused on building the fleet and placed the training of technical personnel second. So our technical workforce hasn't grown much over the years; it's still around a hundred thousand. At present, we can only select some of the main technologies to analyze and work through."
"During the hundred years it takes the fleet to reach Alpha Centauri, we'll have just enough time to train large numbers of scientists to fill the science ship. They have nothing else to do anyway, so find a way to get everyone more enthusiastic about learning. We also need to find a way to raise the fleet's birth rate. We have enough; the Deep Blue fleet was designed for a population of ten billion, and we don't even have six hundred million yet. It's such a waste."
"Mm, I'll make the arrangements," Wen Zhonghua replied.
"Pay attention to the upbringing and ideological education of the new population. I promised the leader I wouldn't disgrace the spirit of the Chinese Nation. We need to give the new generations a sense of identification with the Chinese Nation and have them revere the essence of our people. We're safe for the time being, so open up all the Deep Blues. Have the engineering ships build more small spacecraft, and let the people choose wherever they want to live, as long as they have enough contribution points. Don't keep them crowded into a few ships. They can treat it as a trip. Every Deep Blue has a completely different architectural style, and three hundred ships are plenty for them to enjoy."
"Once we reach Alpha Centauri and digest most of the technology, we'll find a habitable planet to settle on and develop at our own pace. Drifting and wandering can never be the normal state of a civilization. I wonder how the leader, Minister Luo, and the others are doing."
"Old Hu, don't worry. Minister Luo is a veteran of countless battles. They're raiding now, so they'll fight when they can win and run when they can't. They're like a venomous snake hidden in the shadows; they'll be fine. The leader has already flown toward the edge of the Milky Way. Advanced civilizations see it as a desolate place, so the leader will be safe too. Our own situation is the one that doesn't look promising."
"I hope so. By the way, Academician, what are we going to do about communications? We can't keep using electromagnetic communications forever, can we? Besides, our fleet is only a few hundred thousand ships strong now. Once we reach Alpha Centauri and expand it several times over, it'll be spread across an even larger area. The delay in electromagnetic communications is too long. And when we're traveling at warp, the warships have to stay very close together within the same curvature of space. If they're farther apart, electromagnetic waves in normal space simply can't catch up with warships traveling at warp."
"Soon, soon."
"Academician, please tell me something, so I know what to expect."
"Haha, all right. First, let me tell you about a phenomenon. As we all know, an electron's position within an atom is uncertain. It disappears and appears instantaneously within the orbital of its current energy level. We can never know its exact position at the next instant; we can only describe its position using solutions to the Schrödinger equation. When an electron absorbs or releases energy, it transitions between orbitals, again without a trajectory. We've studied this mysterious behavior of electrons for centuries without reaching a definitive conclusion.
"I remember a little of that. It seems that's right: an electron can appear anywhere outside the atomic nucleus in the form of a probability electron cloud, not like a planet orbiting a star as we usually imagine," Hu Yu said.
"That's right. Now, let's talk about our quanta. At present, we obtain them by annihilating an electron with a positron, releasing two photons. Those photons form a pair of quanta with the property of entanglement. No matter how far apart they are, changing the state of one photon causes the same change in the other. We use this property for long-distance communication. It works without problems except when a photon is destroyed by cosmic radiation, until we achieved warp travel. During warp travel, two entangled photons can easily lose their entangled state. We've spent these years investigating why this happens in depth, and confirmed our initial idea."
"What idea?" Wen Zhonghua asked.
"Dimensions," Hu Yu said.
"Dimensions?"
"That's right, dimensions. Come on, let's go to the lounge. All this talking has made my mouth dry, and it's getting late. Let's get something to eat and talk over the food."
The lounge was not far away, and they arrived in two minutes. It was near the science ship's armor layer, and the vast starry sky outside was visible through the thick viewport glass. Logistics personnel soon brought out some snacks, desserts, and drinks, and the four of them-the two academicians, Wen Zhonghua, and Hu Yu-sat down together. Academician Zeng continued, "For many years, we studied the mystery of why a pair of quanta becomes entangled without finding an answer. But the loss of large numbers of quanta during warp travel gave us a new idea. We believe that what we call a pair of quanta is actually a single particle."
"Academician, the more you say, the stranger it sounds," Wen Zhonghua said, still not understanding.
"Don't be impatient, Chief of the General Staff Wen. A pair of entangled quanta is actually one particle. Although it looks like two separate particles in three-dimensional space, we believe the two are connected in the fourth dimension. For example, suppose we have a U-shaped magnet. We stand it upright and attach its north and south poles to an iron plate. If a two-dimensional creature lived on a sheet of paper, it would surely think the magnet's two poles were separate endpoints. If we moved the magnet sideways, the creature would also find that its two ends had a property like quantum entanglement. But to us three-dimensional beings, the two points are connected in the third dimension. By the same reasoning, quanta may be connected in the fourth dimension. We're like those two-dimensional creatures: we can't see things in the fourth dimension, but that doesn't mean they don't exist."
"Then what does that have to do with quanta losing their entangled state?"
"The two poles of this magnet are attached to the iron plate. The magnet is very strong and closely connected to the plate, just as a particle is closely connected to three-dimensional space. If we bend, fold, or otherwise deform the plate, it might cause the magnet to break, just as when we travel at warp. The rapid twisting and deformation of space during warp travel can easily sever this particle in the fourth dimension. Deformation of two-dimensional space can affect objects in three-dimensional space, and deformation of three-dimensional space can likewise affect objects in four-dimensional space."
"This particle!!! That's an awkward way to put it."
"It is awkward, but that's the way it is. After discovering this during the warp experiments at Tau Ceti, we conducted countless tests, confirming that only this conclusion could explain why quanta lose their entanglement during warp travel. The same conclusion can also explain why an electron's orbital transition is instantaneous: the electron simply doesn't complete its change of position in the fourth dimension, and then it's projected directly into the third dimension. That's why we can't find its trajectory of displacement in the third dimension."
"There's another phenomenon it can explain," Academician Zeng continued. "Our atoms are made up of electrons and atomic nuclei. Let's assume for now that the nucleus is stationary, but electrons are constantly moving at high speed and have extremely high energy levels. According to classical electromagnetic theory, an electron radiates energy into its surroundings. Its energy should therefore decrease, and its orbital radius should gradually shrink, bringing it closer to the nucleus until it eventually falls into it. But that isn't what actually happens. Centuries of observation have shown that the relationship between electrons and atomic nuclei is extremely stable, yet electrons really do radiate energy outward. That makes no sense. An electron is like a pot of boiling water taken off the fire that keeps boiling forever. That's unreasonable, but the fourth dimension explains it well: the energy an electron loses in the third dimension can be fully replenished in the fourth, so its energy level doesn't change unless outside conditions intervene."
"Academician, this is a major discovery. It was only a conjecture before, but now it's been confirmed. This is another major advance in fundamental science, an epoch-making leap. Its importance even exceeds that of warp travel," Hu Yu said happily.
"We have indeed confirmed the existence of fourth-dimensional space, but there's still a long way to go before we can put it to practical use. Right now, fewer than a hundred scientists are engaged in pure space research, and that number only came about because we trained so many during our warp research. Space studies will be our most important discipline in the future, and we must give it due attention. Only if we achieve a certain level of mastery in space studies can we truly have the strength to protect ourselves."
"I understand a little now. Academician, that Destroyer said even Great Star Region Civilizations hadn't mastered dimensional technology. If we master it, won't we have surpassed them?" Wen Zhonghua asked.
"Chief of the General Staff, you're dreaming too big. Becoming a Large Star Region Civilization isn't that easy. That Destroyer only said that Large Star Region Civilizations hadn't fully mastered dimensional technology. We have no way of knowing exactly how far they've gotten; we can only judge that they still can't travel through dimensions. But Large Star Region Civilizations have certainly mastered at least these most basic dimensional technologies. Even if we master dimensional technology, we still won't be a Large Star Region-level civilization. Perhaps we might be particularly good in that one field, but a civilization doesn't reach the Large Star Region level merely by leading in one or a few technologies. Its entire technology tree has to develop fully. We can expect Large Star Region Civilizations to have no particularly obvious technological weaknesses. After all, they're long-established civilizations that have developed for billions of years, and they may already have reached the pinnacle in many areas."