Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 925: The Fool
"The Fool was a member of the first advance team sent to Alpha after the Ark discovered the planet. After he arrived at Alpha, he came into direct contact with the Alpha civilization... or to be more precise, with members of the Night Watch."
In 840 of the New Era, the Ark discovered Alpha.
In the year 875 of the New Era, the Ark arrived at the Alpha Solar System and in the year 876 it entered Alpha's low-Earth orbit.
From the same year to 880, several advance teams were sent out to conduct detailed explorations of Alpha Centauri.
In the year 880 of the New Era, the United Council, or rather, the Undead Crew behind the Council, decided to land the Ark on Alpha.
After twenty years of preliminary preparations, the Ark landed successfully in 900 AD.
This is content written into the compulsory history textbooks. Anyone on the Ark can answer it if you ask it (except that the Undead Crew is behind the United Council)... But Ke Lan knows that the earliest advance team was not sent out in the year 880 of the New Era.
In the year 840 of the New Era, the year when the Ark discovered Alpha, the first advance team had already flown to Alpha on a shuttle. All members of this advance team were sleeping in hibernation cabins. Every year, the equipment would wake up a group of people who monitored the direction and status of the shuttle to take turns on duty. After nineteen years of sailing, that is, in the year 859 of the New Era, they arrived at Alpha.
They are the first Ark people to set foot on Alpha Planet in the true sense.
However, there is no record related to this advance team in the Black Well. Ke Lan could only find out that such a group of people existed, but there was no mention of their identities or their later experiences... At first, Ke Lan thought that the advance team should have been completely wiped out, but now it seems that the Fool deliberately erased these records after joining the Undead Crew.
"Direct contact between the Fool and the Night Watcher...Did the Night Watcher tell him everything?" Ke Lan asked.
"I don't know the content of the conversation between the two parties. I only know that after he, a human from another time and space, formally came into contact with the Alpha people who became humans from this time and space, it led to the second 'paradox'. The first 'paradox' was that when the Ark passed through the wormhole and arrived in this time and space, the population of the Alpha civilization suddenly evaporated by 95%. And at the moment when the Fool and the Night Watch came into direct contact, nearly half of the surviving Alpha people disappeared because of the 'paradox'." The owner of the hive city replied.
Ke Lan felt that the fog in his memory was gradually fading, but it was only fading. The fog still existed, and he still could not touch those sealed fragments of memory.
"There were fifteen people in the advance team, but in the end only the Fool returned to the Ark. But other than that, I know nothing about what happened on the Ark."
"Then how do you know those things related to the undead crew?" Ke Lan asked again.
"Neto has read your memory, and as the controller of this hive city, I have the authority to read Neto's database. If it can see those things, I can see them too."
"Then the part of my memory that was sealed..." Although Ke Lan knew that Nieto could not spy on his sealed memories, he still held a glimmer of hope. What if this conscious master of the nest had some other means? He was trapped in the nest under the sea, but he could know what happened on the surface later. Does that mean he has other ways to obtain information?
"Sorry, I can't do anything." The master of the nest said, "Besides, I think it's not a good thing for you to remove the seal of those memories. Although I don't know those things related to you, I can roughly guess your origins. Do you want to hear it?"
"I do." Ke Lan responded without hesitation.
"But I want to say one thing first. Since the Fool chose to seal these memories, he must have a plan. Maybe in the future, when this plan reaches a certain stage, these memories will be automatically unsealed... And if I tell you these speculations, it may cause the seal of the memory to loosen, or even awaken some of the sealed memories, which will disrupt the Fool's plans. After knowing this, are you sure you want to listen?" The owner of the nest confirmed with Ke Lan.
The Fool's plan... The Fool is myself, or rather, I am a part of the Fool... Ke Lan also has some guesses about his true identity. He believes that what the "Seraph" said is indeed correct. His body is just a shell, a container, used to store the separated parts of the Fool's personality... Perhaps one day, these separated personalities will gather again and "synthesize" a complete Fool.
So, am I, who possesses part of the fool's personality, a fool, or another independent person?
After hesitating for a few seconds, Ke Lan nodded: "I want to listen... I would rather seize the present moment than entrust my fate to a plan made decades ago. Plans are dead, but people are alive... If I am really part of the Fool's personality, then he might also predict my current choice."
"...You seem to have some truth in what you said." The Hive Master seemed to be stunned for a moment, and even his answer was delayed for about two seconds. "If you are really a fragment of the Fool's personality, then he should be able to calculate your character and your choice... Maybe this step is also part of his plan."
Is this Fool...really that powerful? Ke Lan muttered to himself. The members of the Undead Crew were all immortals who had lived for hundreds of years. Even the dumbest and simplest of them could be tempered into a wise man after experiencing hundreds of years of events. But this Fool, according to the time, is only about a hundred years old at most... When he split his personality into multiple parts and stored them in different containers, he should be even younger. But why did he give Ke Lan the feeling of an old monster who was older than the combined age of all the members of the Undead Crew?
Ke Lan's eyes caught a glimpse of the frozen engineer, and the doubts in his heart were immediately resolved - as the first Arkman who had contact with the Alpha civilization and the Night Watch, he might have been baptized by some black technology. Just like himself now, even if he stayed in this frozen space for tens of thousands of years, it would only take a moment to go outside.
