Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 979: The First Advance Team
"December 1, 859 New Era..." Ke Lan recited the date silently, looked around again, and checked the room he was in.
The equipment in this room are all very old models, which just fits the background of the era nearly a hundred years ago... At that time, the Ark was still in the interstellar drifting stage. Although Alpha Star had been discovered, the first advance team had not yet arrived at Alpha Star, and the people on the Ark naturally could not mine the resources on Alpha Star...
etc!
The first advance team?!
Ke Lan couldn't help but think of the "knowledge points" in history books——
In 840 of the New Era, the Ark discovered Alpha.
In April of the same year, the Ark sent the first advance exploration team to Alpha. The advance team boarded a shuttle that was outdated from a modern perspective, and after a long journey of 19 years, they finally arrived at Alpha.
In order to ensure the physical condition of the advance team members, most of them spent the past 19 years in hibernation cabins. Only those on duty would be awakened. Their task was to monitor whether the shuttle's heading deviated and to maintain and repair the equipment on board.
Could it be that... I am now on the shuttle carrying the first Alpha advance team?
No, that's not right!
This is not real, this is a dream... Ke Lan suddenly reacted.
Back then, The Fool was one of the members of this advance team. What I see now should be the scene in The Fool’s memory.
Those memory fragments should have been buried deep in his mind...these are the things that Ke Lan has always wanted to explore but are shrouded in a thick fog.
This time, perhaps I triggered certain conditions and successfully unlocked this part of the memory, which made me indulge in it.
Ke Lan suddenly became curious about the Fool's real name, and immediately lowered his head to look at his chest - according to the tradition of the Ark civilization, the identity information of these "public officials" is usually printed on the chest of their uniforms, and this Alpha Star advance exploration team is naturally no exception.
Ke Lan did see the identity plate sewn on the hibernation suit, but the words on the plate were blurry - this blurriness was not because the plate was contaminated or worn. No matter how it was wiped, it would not become clear, as if the problem was with Ke Lan's eyes.
This is roughly the same effect that people with severe myopia experience when they see things without wearing glasses.
Ke Lan tried to touch the words on the nameplate with her fingertips... This was a plastic nameplate, and the words on it were engraved with a laser. Even if she couldn't see it clearly with her eyes, she could feel it with her sense of touch...
But just when Ke Lan's fingers touched those words, he speechlessly discovered that the touch of his fingertips disappeared directly, as if his tactile nerves were suddenly cut off.
"It seems that nothing will work..."
Ke Lan thought about it and decided to give up - this information was probably deliberately blocked by the Fool... or to put it another way, it was deliberately "forgotten" by him.
The Fool in this memory fragment only remembered that he had an identity plate on him, but he had no idea what was written on the plate or what his real name was... As an "experiencer", Ke Lan naturally could not create something out of nothing and see things that "did not exist" in the first place.
He then turned his gaze to the chests of those who were still lying in the hibernation chambers. The identity plates of these people were also blurry.
"The memory fragment has been unlocked, but not completely unlocked..." Ke Lan muttered and crawled out of the hibernation cabin.
I should have been awakened by the timing device of the hibernation chamber. As for the others, judging from the control panel of the hibernation chamber, they were all still in normal hibernation state.
"December 1st..." Ke Lan glanced at the time on the screen again, "According to this calculation, I should be the last batch of 'rotators' to be awakened... Soon this shuttle will arrive at Alpha, and all these people will wake up... I just don't know how long this memory is, whether it includes the content of these people's exploration on the surface of Alpha... At that time, perhaps I can ask some useful information from these people... As long as that information is not blocked."
As for now, maybe we can check this shuttle first... After all, the computer on the ship should also have some important information recorded. Since we are here, we should make the best of it. After confirming that this is just a fragment of memory in his brain, Ke Lan felt relieved - although he could not find a way to get rid of this memory for the time being, he thought that as long as the content of the memory fragment "finished playing", he should wake up in the real world.
Ke Lan walked to the door. The sensor device on the door frame made a soft "beep" sound, the red indicator light instantly turned green, and the metal gate slid into the wall.
"Identity verified, welcome back. It is now 12:09 on December 1, 859 New Era. This is your fourth awakening, and it has been four years and seventeen days since you last entered the hibernation chamber. The last batch of crew members on duty have entered the mission log into the central computer, please go to the control room to check." A clear female voice sounded above my head - although the voice was very realistic, it still had a certain stiffness. As soon as I heard it, I knew that it was synthesized by AI after the sound source was recorded in advance... With the technology of Ke Lan's era, as long as the money was in place, the artificially synthesized voice was almost indistinguishable. And a hundred years ago, these technologies were not much better than when the Ark just escaped from the earth.
For the Ark civilization during its interstellar drifting period, any technology that did not promote survival was not necessary to develop - entertainment activities were also limited to the lowest level, such as movies, music, literary creation... yes, but they basically served the construction of the Ark, just like a certain era in the old era that was inconvenient to mention.
Ke Lan stepped through the gate. Behind the door was a straight corridor. On the right side of the corridor was a small compartment. The projection device projected a green arrow-shaped holographic image in front of the small compartment, which kept flashing, obviously signaling Ke Lan to follow the arrow.
Ke Lan walked in without hesitation, not worrying about any danger lurking in the cubicle.
The most dangerous things in memory are the forbidden knowledge, but Ke Lan has a strong resistance to those things. Apart from that, nothing in memory can really hurt him - he is like playing a consciousness immersive game. Even if there is an alien lurking on this shuttle, even if this alien kills him, he will not be harmed in reality.
He can even use "death" to return to the real world.
However, Ke Lan was not in a hurry to go back. He didn't know how to enter the memory world... Since he was already in this time, he naturally had to collect enough information so that his trip would not be in vain.
This compartment is actually a "bathroom". In addition to the utensils for washing, it also stores several sets of cabin uniforms for daily activities on the shuttle and a set of extravehicular spacesuits for working in space environments... These clothes are stored in transparent cabinets. Although Ke Lan still can't see the nameplates on the cabinets clearly, he knows very clearly that the cabinet on the far right side contains his clothes.
Or, in other words, the clothes of fools.
He took off his hibernation suit and stood naked in front of the floor-length mirror to look at his body - the appearance of the Fool in his memory was not blocked, it was a face almost identical to Ke Lan's, which did not surprise Ke Lan... After all, he was also a "container" for part of the Fool's personality, his body was cloned using the Fool's cells, and the genetic similarity between the two was higher than that of twins, so it was natural for them to have exactly the same appearance.
"Even their figures are similar... well, their sizes are the same..."
Ke Lan turned around in front of the mirror, and after making sure that there was nothing unusual on her body, she used her fingerprint to open the closet, took out a cabin uniform, put it on, and walked out of the bathroom.
When he returned to the corridor, the arrow changed accordingly, pointing directly to the end of the corridor.
At the end of the corridor is the "control room" mentioned in the synthesized voice.
Ke Lan tugged at his collar and walked briskly towards the control room. Along the way, the synthesized voice kept reporting to him what had happened . However, any information related to the Fool or the crew would be directly erased, which made the report sound very uncomfortable.
Imagine that in a recording, every sentence is missing some key information, and it is not even replaced by "beep" like sensitive words, but the relevant audio tracks are directly deleted. If a curious person with obsessive-compulsive disorder listens to it, he will probably go crazy.
"Instead of silencing it like this, you might as well change it to 'beep'. At least I can judge how many words are missing here based on the length of the 'beep'." Ke Lan complained to herself.
The gates on the shuttle are all sensor doors, which will open automatically when Ke Lan approaches - when the gate of the control room rises, three women and one man turned their heads at the same time and looked at Ke Lan standing outside the door.
They were wearing the same cabin uniforms as Ke Lan, so they must be the " rotators" who were awakened at the same time as Ke Lan .
There was more than one hibernation chamber on the shuttle, and these four people should have woken up in other hibernation chambers. After waking up, Ke Lan spent some time to figure out his situation, which made him the last one to arrive at the "control room" among these rotating personnel.
“Beep—you’re finally here. I thought you had the same ” The only male among the four greeted Ke Lan with a smile. His expression was very friendly. It seemed that he had a good relationship with Ke Lan... and the Fool.
"They really replaced the mute with a beep—huh?" Ke Lan complained, "This memory fragment has quite a lot of custom functions."
His complaints did not attract the attention of the four people. This was just a memory fragment. The people and events in the memory fragment all developed according to a predetermined track. Although Ke Lan could participate in it, he could not have any influence on it, nor would he change the direction of events.
Even if he blew up the shuttle, it would return to its original state in the next second.
He had already done an experiment on this in the bathroom - he smashed the floor-length mirror with his fist, but in the blink of an eye, the mirror returned to its original shape, and the wound on his fist caused by the glass fragments disappeared without a trace.
"You look like you haven't woken up yet. Do you need some medicine to help?" The man smiled again, "If not, then start working... We will arrive at Alpha soon, and we have to stand guard for this last shift."
This is a tall black man with a hairless head that is shiny and shinny, like a smooth boiled egg - the body functions of people in the hibernation chamber will be in a state of almost complete stagnation, and the growth of hair and nails will become extremely slow. Otherwise, after sleeping for four years, Ke Lan's hair would have covered his entire face.
"Then I'll call you Lu Dan." Ke Lan secretly decided in his heart that since he didn't know the names of The Fool and these people, he might as well give them a code name that is easy to remember.
"You are talking about that guy, what happened to him? What accident happened?" Ke Lan tried to ask "Lu Dan".
"That's the one in the second group. He was originally the last person on duty, but within twelve hours after he was awakened from hibernation, he suffered a sudden heart failure and died without any chance of rescue. Well, we all had a detailed physical examination when we were selected. If we had a hidden heart disease, we would not have been able to pass the selection..."
"Some acquired heart diseases cannot be detected unless they develop." Another female team member continued, "Perhaps his heart has developed an unknown disease while in hibernation..."
This woman has short hair that reaches her ears, her eyebrows and eyes have a sharp feeling, and her delicate facial features are matched with her cheeks with clear contours, giving people a handsome and neutral beauty...The only flaw is that her chest is too flat, which can't be compared with the big brother Lu Dan's strong and exaggerated chest muscles.
"Oh, yes, yes, you are a doctor, what you said is right... I just wonder, if there are signs of illness, the vital signs monitoring equipment should have sounded the alarm in advance. Even if the heart is diseased in a hibernation state, wouldn't the electrodes still be in place? How come there is no sign of anything being detected until the person falls to the ground, and then the alarm goes off?" Lu Dan said somewhat unconvinced.
"The human body is a very wonderful system. Modern hospitals are still at a very superficial stage in their exploration of the human body. No one can say that they have figured out all the mysteries of the human body. Sudden death is not such a strange thing... If you are worried that you will be like him, I can give you a suggestion. Go get an artificial heart." The short-haired female doctor's words were very sharp. "At least, it is much easier to find the cause of a problem with a mechanical device than with your original body."
