Deep Space Wandering Fleet-Chapter 584 - 581: Black Technology

Zhang Yuan reflected upon the past and suddenly realized that, indeed, every advance in civilization had come at the sacrifice of some people.

The two of them talked about the black technologies that had appeared, including nuclear weapons, addictive drugs, and virtual worlds. There was actually another black technology that humanity had overlooked—poisonous fuels.

What are poisonous fuels? They are the propellants used in rockets. From a purely chemical standpoint, the ideal would be fluorine fuels, such as the reaction of fluorine with hydrogen to form hydrogen fluoride, releasing a massive amount of energy.

However, this stuff is extremely toxic! Skin contact with just a few dozen milligrams could necessitate amputation, and a few hundred milligrams meant no hope for survival; one could start preparing for the end.

The fuel for the Long March 5 was about 800 tons. Using fluorine, a single launch could kill hundreds of millions of people.

A rocket the size of Saturn V could wipe out humanity in one fell swoop!

There were also additives such as pentaborane and methylmercury. According to early designs, hydrazine fuel was meant to be used with mercury. A single rocket launch, if leaked, could contaminate an entire province.

So, why use such dangerous substances? Because without them, the rockets wouldn’t have enough thrust to reach space.

In the 1970s, it was an era of mutual competition and a bit of sadness; everyone launched rockets with trepidation, fearing that a failure would lead to widespread contamination.

Fortunately, humanity tremblingly navigated through the most dangerous times, and aerospace technology developed over generations. Poisonous fuels were long abandoned in favor of hydrogen and oxygen fuels.

Even rocket technology was gradually phased out...

The arrival of curvature engines naturally propelled humanity toward higher skies, ushering us into a true Fourth-level Civilization.

Zhang Yuan looked up at the starry sky on the café’s dome, lazily stretched, as if embracing the future.

No, he was already embracing the future!

A new era was slowly lifting its curtain...

...

The birth of Curvature Technology spread human footprints all over the nooks and crannies of the planet system within a few years!

If left to the slow ion engines, traveling from one planet to another on the edge would take several years, and it would have been impossible to explore every planet here within hundreds of years.

Thanks to these new means of transportation, a large number of explorers with a longing for distant places emerged among the human groups, discovering the best sceneries of this planet system.

For example, a large comet called "Barry Bagaba" composed of rocks and ice chunks, its color was like a giant custard-yellow cake, especially the side facing away from the Sun, steep like a pink slice of cake!

Many young people enjoyed climbing onto the "slice of cake" to take photos.

There was also a planet called "Medallas" strong in magnetic fields, where the solar wind from the constant star often drew spectacular auroras above its atmosphere.

Humans didn’t intend to settle in this place permanently, hence most planets were left undeveloped, but it did provide natural adventure spots for these travel enthusiasts...

"... Attention all passengers, we have now arrived at the New Human Second Branch Ruins. Please wear your spacesuits and disembark in an orderly fashion."

This planet, once chosen as a branch destination by the Radiant Galaxy, had a gravity environment similar to Earth’s, which made living more comfortable for humans, so the entire base of the New Human Civilization had long been relocated to this planet.

On one end of the planet lived humans, while the former ruins of the second branch on the other end slowly became a tourist holy site.

Here, people could see these gradually dilapidated ruins with their own eyes, experiencing the stories that had once unfolded.

During a rare holiday, Zhang Yuan and Lin Xuanyuan came to this human site.

"Back then, did you ever think something like this would happen?" Lin Xuanyuan asked softly, surrounded by ruins.

Zhang Yuan was startled, "What if I had anticipated it... The force of an era doesn’t change just because it’s predicted. What’s meant to happen will still happen. But now, the outcome is pretty good, isn’t it? We must always look forward."

Lin Xuanyuan asked somewhat suspiciously, "Since you anticipated this possibility, why didn’t you implement some plans to prevent it from happening? You had already foreseen its occurrence?"

Zhang Yuan shrank his neck and sighed, "To put it bluntly, the decline of a human branch is not meaningless..."

In the crowd of people coming and going around them, most were middle school and elementary students, many of whom were excited to step out of school for the first time. But when they entered the ruins, they all fell silent.

His voice gradually lowered, "It will only make our progress more solid."

"Why? Can you tell me?" Lin Xuanyuan knew her husband was a very cold person when it came to big issues. Most of the time he was kind, but sometimes, human lives were just numbers to him.

"Why...?" Zhang Yuan thought for a bit, "Back then, a few of us old folks discussed it and suddenly realized, no, a part of humanity will deteriorate... Later, we found that this was actually better, nothing too serious."

"First, you see, our population has swollen to a hundred million. With this event, this hundred million population has become a high-quality populace with upward ideological tendencies."

"This high-quality population cannot be produced merely through education."

"Second," his voice grew even huskier, "this group of people will have a higher chance of passing the Extraordinary Test in the future. Even if it’s just one percent, that’s still a million Extraordians, which is indeed very good."

"So, it’s best if this doesn’t happen, but if it does, it does... There always has to be someone to light the path ahead. Fourth-level Civilization is far from being the endpoint."

Lin Xuanyuan suddenly fell silent, just sighing.

The ruins were not deliberately repaired, just left to slowly decay and rust, with increasing dust and more rust, with only a few dim lights.

This power arising from the passage of time was something the children felt deeply for the first time.

The teachers were handing out cleaning tools, asking them to clean.

There was a hibernation chamber up ahead, and a lady was frozen inside, like a Sleeping Beauty, with a faint smile on her face. It was written in her will that she voluntarily chose to be placed here, to serve as a lesson for future generations. She was both a good person and a bad person.

When the children saw these eternal hibernators, they felt genuine fear...

This was real fear, beyond mere instinct.

"She will never wake up, just like she’s in a beautiful dream..." Lin Xuanyuan said a bit sadly, "What exactly is human self-awareness?"

"It should be a kind of randomness that can create information..." Zhang Yuan, as an expert in this field, had his own explanation, "Pure information doesn’t create more information; the generation of information must originate from true reality."

"And randomness, or the ability to generate information, is a form of reality. Self-awareness must combine with existing information to create genuine human information."

"So, after losing self-will, a person appears to become a vegetable because her brain can no longer create more of her own information."

"Since randomness is a form of reality, we now believe that the Virtual World is also real, which is why it can give birth to new life."

Zhang Yuan paused, then added, "Now the Unreal Laboratory is trying to study a kind of pseudo-randomness, that is, installing part of the robot software into the human brain."

"In the future, these vegetative people will be able to ’come back to life’ again, they’ll be able to run and jump, and even talk and sing. But they’ll all be weak AIs without randomness, which humans under normal conditions can’t differentiate, briefly called: Pseudo-men."

Lin Xuanyuan couldn’t help shivering, her valley of terror instinct triggered, looking at her husband as if he was a mad scientist.

This research... of course had its meaning.

She tapped Zhang Yuan, and the Power Armor made a "clang" sound, asking, "Could it be that you are the legendary... Pseudo-man? You have to tell me, how should I differentiate whether the one sleeping next to me is real or a Pseudo-man?"

"I am a Pseudo-man, truly, I’ve already used first-generation high technology!"

Zhang Yuan felt his joke went a bit too far and hastily made his escape...