Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 1012 New Moon
Even the owner of the hive city does not know what is inside the Old Moon and the New Moon. He only knows that the Twin Moon Fortress was a powerful weapon prepared by the Alpha Civilization to fight against the alien gods' followers. In addition to the star destroyer cannon, it is also equipped with a large number of strategic-level weapons. Any one of the fortresses launched is enough to destroy the human civilization on Earth in the old era hundreds of times.
Ke Lan was standing in a corridor filled with light, wondering which direction to go. Apart from the door of the warehouse he had come out of, there were no other landmarks in the corridor, no road signs, no lighting fixtures, and not even any seals between the walls, the ground, or the ceiling.
The entire corridor is seamless, as if it were a tunnel carved out of a large metal ingot.
"Is anyone there?" Ke Lan tried to shout.
No response.
He thought about it and thought that maybe the Alpha people ignored him because they didn't understand Chinese, so he immediately switched to the Alpha language and asked again.
"Anyone there?"
All of a sudden, all the lights in the entire corridor lit up - the reason why Ke Lan hadn't seen these lights before was because all the lamps were installed inside the walls. Although the walls were made of alloy materials, they were designed to be very thin where the lamps were installed. The lamps themselves were very bright, so the light naturally passed through the walls and shone into the corridor.
"Who are you?" a voice asked. Ke Lan subconsciously wanted to trace the source of the voice, but found that the voice seemed to come from all directions - what's even more outrageous is that in the narrow and semi-enclosed environment of the corridor, the voice did not produce an echo effect. At least to Ke Lan, the sounds coming from all directions had no order in time, and the volume and timbre were exactly the same, which did not sound like an echo at all.
"Are you the night watchman who stayed behind in your Crescent Fortress?" Ke Lan asked directly - there was not much time left, and he had no time to play around with the other party. The most urgent thing was to let the other party directly activate the star destroyer cannon and blow up the tree of destruction on Alpha.
For a large weapon like a star destroyer, the preparation time is definitely not short - taking the Yaguna Tor as an example, if it is a star destroyer with 30% power, it will take five hours to charge. If the charging efficiency of the Crescent Fortress's star destroyer is slower than this, then the time left for Ke Lan can be said to be very tight.
"I'm asking you." The other party's tone was very calm, and no emotion could be heard at all.
"I am a human, a human from the Ark civilization!" Ke Lan emphasized, "I am a human being who was pulled here by you from another parallel universe."
"No, you are not human." The other party's voice still did not fluctuate.
To be honest, Ke Lan hated arguing with such a stubborn guy, and said anxiously: "Okay, whatever you say I am is what I am! But I have something very important to tell you. If you don't want to talk to me, then I will tell you right here!"
"The Corruptor on the Ark has successfully germinated the Ashcrown variant No. 194a. In another 28,915 seconds, its roots will penetrate the earth and merge with the Earth." The "Earth" mentioned by the other party is obviously referring to Alpha. "Your goal is to use the Star Destroyer on the Crescent Fortress to destroy the Ashcrown variant No. 194a."
"Since you know everything, why are you still asking those insignificant things? Is it fun?" Ke Lan couldn't help but feel angry when she heard the other party tell her the purpose of her trip in detail as if reading a script.
"Wait...using the official full description of the Tree of Destruction, and calculating the countdown in seconds...are you an Alpha, or something else?" Ke Lan suddenly felt something was wrong and asked subconsciously.
"I am the core control hub of Crescent Fortress, codenamed 'Selene'."
"Sure enough... it's an artificial intelligence program." Ke Lan's heart trembled, "Then... what about the Alphas who stayed in Crescent Fortress? Are they here now? Can I talk to them directly?"
"It's a shame." Although she said 'sorry', Selene's tone did not contain any regrets at all. "Just six minutes ago, the last Alpha disappeared from this world."
"Six minutes ago?" Ke Lan looked down at her watch. "Wasn't that when I was just teleported to Crescent Fortress? This can't be a coincidence, right?"
"It's not a coincidence. You are the direct cause of their disappearance - there is a time and space paradox between the Alphas and the humans on the Ark. The only way to avoid this paradox is for the two sides to have no contact. When you were teleported to the Crescent Fortress, you and the last of these Alphas were bound to have intersections. Therefore, the time and space paradox was triggered again, and their existence was directly erased." Selene replied.
"But, I remember that the 776 Special Forces Team met an Alpha in the ruins of a planetary engine, and the two sides had a conversation... Although the conversation failed, he was not killed by the time and space paradox when he came into contact with these soldiers! In the end, he died at the hands of those soldiers who didn't speak the same language. How do you explain this?" Ke Lan asked puzzledly.
"What those soldiers saw was not a native Alpha, but a 'pseudo-Alpha' bred using biochemical technology, with personality and memories artificially implanted. It is connected to the planetary engine through a base and is essentially a part of the planetary engine, just like me." Selene explained in concise and clear words.
"What the 776 Special Forces saw was actually a humanoid intelligent computer? A 'component' of a planetary engine... something like a core brain?" Ke Lan couldn't help but twitch his lips. "In other words, the Alpha people and the humans of the Ark civilization will never meet? That's not right. According to the owner of the Hive City, the Fool had contact with the Alpha civilization when he first landed on Alpha !"
"He came into contact with the Alpha civilization, not the Alpha people. Any direct contact, including physical contact and visual contact, will lead to the occurrence of time and space paradoxes, and even the inevitable intersection of future timelines will also erase the existence of the Alpha people. The only way for humans in two parallel time and space to communicate is to use physical information carriers for indirect communication, but doing so will still lead to time and space paradoxes, but the time will be delayed."
"Indirect communication? It means that the Alphas write the information on a message board, and then put the message board in a conspicuous place, and then send a signal to let the Fool or some other Ark people find the message board and read the information on it... Is that what you mean?"
"Almost close," Selene said, "but when the Ark people start reading this message board, it means that the readers and the posters have an intersection. Even if this intersection is only indirect, it will cause the poster's existence to gradually fade until it is completely erased from this world."
Hearing the other party say this, a picture popped up in Ke Lan's mind: an Alpha left a long and densely written text on a stone slab, threw the stone slab in the wilderness, and then fired a signal flare like a firework into the air, and then fled away.
The Fool, who was cruising in the wilderness, rushed to the location of the stone tablet after discovering the flare and found the stone tablet. When the Fool picked up the stone tablet and began to read the words on it, the body of the Alpha who left the stone tablet began to gradually fade away... until the Fool finished reading the entire stone tablet, and the Alpha disappeared completely.
This is simply using life to convey information...
Ke Lan suddenly understood why in the Fool's memory fragment, the Alpha Civilization aircraft that saved the Fool and his companions fell straight from the sky as if it had lost control, and they were unable to find any bodies in the wreckage of the aircraft - it was not a remote-controlled drone, but the Alpha pilot who was flying it was wiped out by the time and space paradox after completing the mission, and the aircraft without the operator naturally crashed.
"Without the Alphas, can the Crescent Fortress's star destroyer can still be activated?" At this time, Ke Lan had no time to mourn the Alphas who disappeared because of him - after all, this was the fate they chose themselves. What he had to do was to preserve the existing Ark civilization so as not to let the Alpha civilization... and more human civilizations in parallel time and space that he didn't know about be sacrificed.
"Yes," Selene replied, "but the Star Destroyer needs to be activated manually. After all the garrisons of Crescent Fortress have disappeared, as the core control hub, I do not have the authority to activate the Star Destroyer."
"How do I get this permission?!" Ke Lan suddenly became anxious - the Fool might have calculated that the Crescent Fortress's star destroyer cannon could deal with the giant tree, but he certainly didn't expect that when the Ark Civilization decided to use the power of the Crescent Fortress, all the remaining Alphas in the Crescent Fortress would be wiped out because of the time and space paradox.
Even the wisest man can make a mistake...and this one mistake can lead to a total loss!
Selene did not answer, but a sharp friction sound was heard in the corridor, which came from far away and got closer... In less than five minutes, a vehicle shaped like a coffin, with a streamlined shell and two conical heads stopped in front of Ke Lan. The lid of the vehicle slid to one side, revealing the seat inside.
This obviously meant that Ke Lan was asked to lie down.
"The central control room of Crescent Fortress is at the center of the earth, 1,700 kilometers away from here. The shuttle can move in the tunnel at twelve times the speed of sound. It can take you to the central control room within seven minutes." As if noticing Ke Lan's hesitant expression, Selene began to explain.
"Anyway, let's go to the central control room first and think of a solution..." Ke Lan lay down inside the shuttle. After the cockpit cover was closed, a sticky fluid surged up from under the seat and completely filled the entire cockpit space. These fluids, which had properties very similar to LCL, could even dissolve the air. They drilled into Ke Lan's ears and nose, squeezing out all the cavities in Ke Lan's ear canal and lungs.
Ke Lan knew that this liquid was used to dissipate the G-force exerted on passengers when the shuttle moved at high speed, but the next second, he discovered that this liquid had another function -
A strange electric current traveled along Ke Lan's ear canal directly to his brain. As it approached, the internal structure diagram of the Crescent Fortress emerged in his mind. At the same time, the image of a young woman who combined the characteristics of Eastern and Western beauties entered his field of vision.
"Are you Selene?" Ke Lan opened his mouth, but his throat was already filled with anti-gravity fluid and he couldn't make any sound... Fortunately, this fluid seemed to serve as a channel of communication at the conscious level. As soon as this thought popped up in Ke Lan's head, he could feel that the other party had "heard" this sentence.
"I am Selene." The young woman nodded to Ke Lan. Although the Alphas themselves had turned into half-tentacled monsters, the AI virtual images they designed were still 100% human in appearance, and were quite consistent with the aesthetics of the old-era earthlings. At least, in Ke Lan's eyes, there were probably only three people who were more beautiful than Selene's virtual image.
Zelo, Zofia Soma, and Aphrodite, the sixth "lover" of the Undead Crew.
The shuttle began to accelerate. Although Ke Lan's whole body was wrapped in fluid, he could still feel the strong push on his back. A number representing the speed appeared on Ke Lan's retina - from zero to twelve times the speed of sound, the shuttle only took eleven seconds. No one knew how the propulsion device of this thing could achieve such a terrifying output power. From the outside, there were clearly only six bowl-sized jet nozzles, and this was the number on both sides added up.
"Has the Fool been here?" While on the road, Ke Lan planned to ask Selene something about the Fool.
"No human from the Ark civilization has ever entered the Twin Moon Fortress. You are the first." Selene answered truthfully.
"That's right, otherwise the Alphas left behind in the fortress would have disappeared long ago... Wait, I came to the New Moon, so the Alphas on the Old Moon should still be there, right? Can you find a way to contact them? I don't mean that I should contact them, but you should contact them and tell them tactfully to use the Old Moon's star destroyer to bombard the Tree of Destruction. Should this be possible?" Ke Lan said excitedly as if he had discovered a new continent.
"I'm sorry, the communication between the Old Moon and the New Moon has been disconnected for more than ten thousand years. I don't know if there are still Alphas in the Old Moon."
"Huh... okay." Ke Lan was a little disappointed. "Besides the Alphas who stayed in the Twin Moon Fortress, are there any other Alphas left?"
"Before you were brought to this time and space, there was a 'refuge fleet' carrying 1.5 million people that left this space, but after they left, we lost all news of them."
