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Chapter 281 The New Order
The countdown for the Europa Sentinel is still ticking. One hundred and twelve days.
But Zuo Cheng didn't intend to look at it today. He opened the Web Control Interface. This was the first time he had actually operated the system since gaining control. The interface wasn't graphical; there were no buttons, no menus, no mouse pointer. Every instruction was written in the Creator's code, arranged in the consciousness space like a string of suspended light traces, activated with just a thought.
He located the current status of the sentinel monitoring station. Equipment model: Weaving Node Sentinel Type 5. Deployed approximately four billion years ago; offset calibration is meaningless now. Current program: Europa Protocol, Buffer Period, Seed 177. One hundred and twelve days and several hours remain until the automatic sending of a positive acknowledgment signal. All status parameters are listed at the bottom in a very light blue-gray font. It's not a warning, not an urging, just a bland statement of facts, as if the system never considered the countdown urgent. It simply counts. Those who have waited for four billion years won't mind a hundred-odd days.
He scrolled up and found the protocol comment layer. Those were notes the creators casually left while writing the protocol. The notes weren't for the person being evaluated, but for the potential controllers of the network later on.
"If control of the web is acquired by the activator during the grace period, the Sentinel Protocol is automatically voided. The transfer of control signifies that the civilization has made its choice. You don't need a button. You have proven you deserve the key."
Zuo Cheng read this line of text several times. It wasn't a system-generated prompt; it was a sentence spoken by the founders in their own voices four billion years ago to humanity before it even existed. There were no technical parameters, no operational instructions, only a confirmation of an outcome they already knew would come. He paused for a few seconds, then focused his attention on the sentinel's command entry point.
Sentinel monitoring station, switch to monitoring mode. Stop the countdown. Retain all monitoring functions, disable the automatic wake-up signal transmission program.
The instruction took 0.3 seconds to execute.
The countdown timer on the system panel has stopped. It hasn't disappeared; it's stopped at a fixed number, which has turned green. The status bar has changed: Sentinel Mode: Monitoring. Status: Continuously Observing. Wake-up Protocol: Actively cancelled by the Web Owner.
The countdown wasn't paused. It was invalidated. Pausing means it could start again. Invalidating means it no longer exists. Every second from now on isn't borrowed from the 112 days; it belongs to humanity itself.
Zuo Cheng sent a message in the core team's top-secret channel: The countdown has ended. From now on, there are no options A and B. Only our own options.
Yu Ying sent a question mark.
Zuo Cheng replied: Option C does not require a countdown. Option C is a schedule starting today.
He called a meeting with the core team. On the whiteboard in the meeting room were several old photos that Han Lu hadn't had time to take away on the day the timeline was unveiled: the workbench from the incubator era, the first model of the Tianqiong satellite, and the backs of five people. Han Lu said she was too lazy to tear these photos down once they were up; every time they met, the first line was "Survive," and before the last line was even written, she knew they were still on their way. Zuo Cheng moved the photos to the upper left corner of the whiteboard and drew three lines in the remaining blank area. He wrote a line of text below each line.
Phase One, three years. Pioneer's maiden flight marks humanity's entry into deep space. Exploration of Triton, the seventh node of the Web of Destruction is initiated. The eighth node of Titan and the remaining two nodes in the Kuiper Belt simultaneously complete the retrieval of scientific data.
The second phase, lasting five years, sees the Pioneer upgraded to a Web-class spacecraft, capable of autonomously venturing beyond the gravitational pull of the solar system. It will possess sufficient energy and speed to reach the nearest Web node planet. The target is the Proxima Centauri system, 4.2 light-years away. From here, the starting point will no longer be the solar system, but the next planet in the Web.
The third phase, lasting ten years. Web Expansion. Connecting the solar system to the nearest node planet via the Web of interstellar links. Establishing, for the first time, a direct connection between humanity and another node planet within the Web. Not through probes or consciousness probes, but by a spaceship that personally carries the connection from Earth.
After reading the three lines, Yu Ying remained silent for a long time. Han Lu placed her pen on the table. "Three years, five years, ten years. It seems you're creating a timeline even larger than 402."
"It wasn't 402 to begin with," Zuo Cheng said.
"Ten years," Yu Ying said. "Ten years from your rebirth to today. Ten years from today to another solar system. Every decade of your life has been pushing the boundaries of humanity outward."
Zuo Cheng shook his head. "It's not me who's being pushed. It's everyone who has taken the baton on this path."
Chen Hao pointed to the far right of the line in the second phase. "Proxima Centauri. Are you sure the Pioneer can reach 4.2 light-years?"
"The Pioneer's current design makes it impossible to fly. But the Weaver-class can."
"What is a web-weaving level?"
Zuo Cheng flipped the whiteboard over. He drew a new outline on it. Nearly three times larger than the Pioneer, its propulsion system wasn't a plasma engine or nuclear thermal propulsion, but a completely new engine design resulting from the fusion of ten branches. It required the tenth, ninth, and eighth branches to intersect simultaneously. It hadn't been built yet, but the theoretical basis was already written in the legacy package.
Chen Hao stared at the outline for a long time. "You're drawing spaceships faster and faster."
"Because now we don't need one person to draw it anymore."
After the meeting, Zuo Cheng returned to his office. A module in a corner of the Web control interface remained lit, one he'd noticed earlier that day while operating the Sentinels. The module was labeled "Web Interstellar Links." He clicked on it and found it contained all of the Web's connections outside the solar system. These connections had been broken for at least tens of millions of years, but the other end remained intact. One hundred and seventy-seven node planets were distributed across the four spiral arms of the Milky Way; in the Web's coding, they were never called abandoned nodes, but rather dormant links. Each link had a label indicating the last beacon received. The earliest was tens of millions of years ago. The most recent was zero. It wasn't that no beacons were being sent; it was that this link had never been used. It had been waiting from the very beginning for the first person to set off.
The first node is the Proxima Centauri system, 4.2 light-years away. Currently in dormant mode. Signal strength is zero. The network's description reads: "Waiting for restart."
He shrunk the panel to the corner of his field of vision. The sky outside was already darkening. One by one, the satellites in the celestial dome lit up. He suddenly remembered a sentence Zhou Henian had written in the earliest part of the Celestial Dome project—not in the official document, but a personal note at the end of an email—saying that one day we could use this system to call Mars. But Xiao Zuo, if one day you need to call Proxima Centauri, remember to tell me.
Zuo Cheng stared at the note for a long time. Then he closed the panel. It was completely dark outside, but the darkness was not empty. The sky above was lit, the nine nodes of the web below waited, and in the direction of Centaurus, an invisible star was sending out a signal that had been written four billion years ago, waiting to be restarted.
He wrote a note on the last line of his work log today: "Teacher Zhou, I probably don't need to call. Just go directly there."