Crossroads of Fate

Near the power room on the lower deck. An amber holographic cordon hovered in the corridor, walling off a large quarantined zone. This was where the collision had occurred. A lifeboat-class civilian vessel had pierced the hull of the cruiser Orion, wedging half its chassis straight into the warship's frame. Even in the context of human civilization's relatively brief spacefaring history, this was an astonishingly bizarre catastrophe. What baffled everyone most was how this tiny craft had bypassed the deflector shield and punched through an outer hull that should have been nearly impenetrable. Fortunately, the damage had occurred in the gym of the lower deck's residential sector. Because the ship was preparing to enter the hyperspace lane at the time, such recreational facilities had been locked down, so no one was injured. That was also why so many people had gathered to gawk afterward. The Ship Safety and Maintenance Department immediately shut down the ventilation exchange systems in the damaged section and isolated the area according to emergency protocols in the safety manual. Although the actual damage was confined to a fairly small compartment, the security chief had cordoned off the entire connected sector based on the assessment from Fourth Department engineers. At this moment, engineers in EVA exoskeletons stood around the cordon, tapping on their tablets. Seeing Luo Yi approach, one of the engineers stepped forward. "Hey, this is a restricted area. You need to suit up in a spacesuit before entering." Luo Yi slung a respirator around his neck and flashed his Third Department credentials. "My cybernetic prosthetics are rated for low-pressure environments. Is there any risk of a secondary explosion?" The engineer turned to exchange glances with a colleague standing by the cordon, then looked back at him. "No chance of that. We've already shut down the offending vessel's reactor and chemical batteries." "Then that's fine. I'm just taking a look from the outside to get a sense of what happened." Luo Yi patted him on the shoulder, ducked under the cordon, and walked up to the door marked "Under Repair." The alloy blast door was sealed tight, reinforced inside and out with layers of folded titanium plates. A crew member standing nearby handed him a tablet connected to a repair drone's camera feed. Through the screen, Luo Yi saw the interior. The gym equipment had been slammed into a corner by the massive impact, and the hull was caved inward by the civilian ship, leaving a breach one to two meters in radius. The scene could only be described as catastrophic. Luo Yi frowned. Honestly, this didn't look like damage a lifeboat-class civilian ship could possibly inflict. "Looks like an explosion went off, doesn't it?" The engineer shrugged and grinned. "Except it didn't. We found no armor-piercing warheads on that ship. It really is just a civilian science vessel, and its hull shows obvious signs of oxidation... Which suggests it normally operates inside an atmosphere." A crewman beside him chimed in. "Whatever the case, we pulled the survivor out right away. As for the rest of the damage, the ship's maintenance gear can't handle it—we'll have to leave it to the dockyard crew at the starport." Luo Yi nodded, logged the data onto his memory chip, and asked, "The kid you pulled out said there was someone else on that... research vessel. Supposedly a young girl. Did you find anything?" The personnel standing by the hatch exchanged bewildered looks, then turned back to him with strange expressions. "How could there be?" "The Eighth Department rescue team breached it immediately. There was only one hibernation pod in the whole ship." "Did he hit his head or something?" Luo Yi said nothing. He tapped the screen twice with his index finger, maneuvering the repair robot forward a few steps to aim its camera at the mangled cockpit. There was indeed nothing there. As he fell into thought, the engineer beside him spoke up again. "Speaking of which, something weird happened." Luo Yi looked over. "What kind of weird?" The engineer continued, "Some people heard an explosion, but others didn't." Luo Yi paused. He remembered hearing it himself, which was why he had rushed to the scene right away. Yet others indeed hadn't heard a thing—like his comrade Xiao Yong, who only came over after hearing the alarm. Come to think of it, that was bizarre in itself. The alarm should have sounded the second the impact occurred, but it had malfunctioned. It was only after lower deck units reported the damage to the First Department that the First Department triggered it manually. That was also why a crowd had gathered at the time. After all, based on past experience, if the sirens weren't blaring, it couldn't be anything serious. It was only natural that people wanted to see what was going on. What wasn't normal was that some heard an explosion while others didn't. Luo Yi carefully recalled the scene. Indeed, there hadn't been many people in the room—only a few dozen. Compared to the thousands of crew on the lower deck, that number was far too small. "Is there any pattern to it?" "Can't see one," the engineer shook his head. "I was hoping you might have a clue." The crewman beside him chuckled jokingly. "Shouldn't this be the Fifth Department's job? Now that the war is over, that division ought to make itself useful for once." "Didn't that kid claim to be a time traveler?" "Haha! If he's telling the truth, we'd better hurry and buy ourselves some accidental death insurance." "Accidental death insurance? Who pays out, the Alliance?" "Hahaha." Clearly, no one believed the boy came from the future. After all, the fact that they were all still breathing was indisputable. Just then, as if something else had crossed his mind, the engineer spoke up again. "Oh, right. One more thing." Lost in thought, Luo Yi looked up. "Can you finish everything in one go?" "I just remembered..." The engineer glanced at the adjacent compartments and pointed toward the end of the hall. "Down there is the mess hall for the living quarters. There were a few people inside at the time, but they swore they didn't hear a thing. They didn't even realize something was wrong until our team rushed in." Luo Yi froze again. His own duty post was quite a distance away, yet he had clearly heard a deafening blast. How could people right near ground zero have heard nothing at all? "Weird, isn't it? The acoustic insulation there isn't even that good—people have complained more than once about how noisy the diners are," the engineer shrugged, speaking in a joking tone. "Maybe we really ought to get an actual priest in here." "Makes sense." Luo Yi nodded, handed the tablet back to the crewman, and turned to the engineer with a serious expression. "This information is crucial... I want to map out everyone on the lower deck who heard the blast versus those who didn't, noting what they were doing and where they were when it happened. That might help us solve the predicament we're in." "Good idea." The engineer snapped his fingers. "Go talk to the Eighth Department. That's their jurisdiction." The Eighth Department was Ship Safety and Maintenance—essentially the ship's law enforcement and security division, encompassing the security chief, provost marshals, and emergency rescue squads. Though the Fourth Department (Engineering and Maintenance) also had "maintenance" in its name, it dealt primarily with hardware maintenance, extravehicular operations, and other technical tasks. A starship of three thousand was like a small town sailing through the void; virtually everyone had an assigned role. Still, Luo Yi couldn't help griping sometimes: there were so many departments that even the crew had to pause and think about whose responsibility a particular matter was. Fortunately, everyone was diligent. If anything, there wasn't enough work to go around, but no one passed the buck. Luo Yi recorded the gathered intel and gave a crisp nod. "I'll head over." ... The Third Department—Weapons and Defense—was the primary combat division of the missile cruiser Orion, as well as its emergency response unit. While routine security matters fell to the Eighth Department, major incidents that breached the hull, threatened the lives of the entire crew, or could not rule out terrorist attacks warranted the Third Department's intervention. As a professional soldier, Luo Yi acted swiftly. After inspecting the collision site and the torpedo bay, he went straight to the Eighth Department to exchange intel and pulled access logs from all facility checkpoints. This made it easy to pinpoint where everyone had been at the time. The Eighth Department treated the Third Department's intel with immense gravity, dispatching nearly all its security personnel to interview all 1,600 crew members on the lower deck. The findings caught everyone off guard: only about two hundred people had heard the blast, and because the alarm hadn't sounded, most had paid it no mind. In the Eighth Department's briefing room, a 3D holographic projection of the cruiser Orion's lower deck hovered over the conference table. Per the recommendation of Third Department combat personnel, areas occupied by people who heard the explosion were highlighted in red, while those occupied by people who hadn't were marked in yellow. The pale blue hologram was virtually blanketed in red and yellow. The winding red pattern stretched through the hull like a sprawling serpent, but unfortunately, there was no obvious rhyme or reason to it. Curiously, however, within any given section, there was never a case where some people heard it while others didn't. In other words, there was no third possibility falling between red and yellow. "It seems the issue is spatial," Luo Yi mused, studying the marked map. "I think we should conduct a thorough inspection of these red-marked compartments." The Eighth Department's security chief stood nearby, his stubbled face wearing a subtle, conflicted expression. He seemed to have thought of something, yet found it too preposterous. In the end, he cleared his throat. "Do you know what this reminds me of?" Every pair of eyes around the table turned to him. Luo Yi voiced the question for all of them: "What?" The security chief replied at once, "Schrödinger's cat." Whispers rippled through the room; a few people seemed to agree. Glancing at the silent Luo Yi, the security chief continued hesitantly, "Aren't we stuck in the hyperspace lane right now? And on top of that, this strange thing happens... Could we be trapped in something like a quantum space?" Disliking such vague theories, Luo Yi asked seriously, "What is a quantum space? What is the specific definition?" At a loss for words, the security chief rubbed his stubble with an index finger and smiled wryly. "I'm just spitballing, honestly. I'm no physicist... My degree is in logistics management." A security officer standing nearby whistled and quipped, "Guess not a single one of us ended up in their field of study." "Isn't that guy in the Fifth Department in his field?" "Yeah, but he's completely useless." Not expecting Dr. Wu to get roasted here as well, Luo Yi wore a helpless look. "I plan to ask his opinion in a bit... regarding that 'quantum space' you mentioned." The security chief coughed awkwardly. "I made that name up on the spot... but you get the general idea. Go ahead and ask him." Jokes aside, the man was an elite scholar, after all. When it came to Dr. Wu's expertise and credentials, he still had considerable faith. After the meeting concluded, Luo Yi hurried to the Fifth Department without pause, only to find Dr. Wu absent. The only one on duty was an intern under his wing. After asking around, Luo Yi learned that the man had slipped off to drink again. The Science and Technology Department had very little to do—a marginal division with practically no utility in peacetime. Most of the people assigned there were easygoing, slackers accustomed to doing nothing. Resigned, Luo Yi contacted a friend in the Eighth Department and finally tracked the drunken fellow down in a corner bar on the mid-deck. Looking at Dr. Wu slumped over the counter, Luo Yi sighed, pulled up a seat beside him, and glanced at the bionic android bartender. "Two lemon waters." "Iced or room temperature, sir?" "One iced, one room temperature." "Right away, sir." The android replied in a mild tone, and before long, two glasses of water garnished with lemon slices appeared on the counter. Pushing the warm glass in front of Dr. Wu, Luo Yi lifted the one with floating ice cubes and took a sip. From eight in the morning standard time until his shift ended, he had worked ten hours straight without a single bite to eat. It wasn't solely because he was busy; part of it was that he had no appetite. Watching Wu Xinghuan reach for the glass, Luo Yi spoke in a casual tone. "Drinking during duty hours? Is that appropriate?" "Doesn't matter..." Wu Xinghuan grabbed the glass and took a gulp. Discovering it had no alcohol and was warm, he frowned. Seeing the man's defeated attitude, Luo Yi raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'doesn't matter'? Didn't you say you discovered new physics? Didn't you say we'd miss you... the you with a bottle glued to your hand?" At that, Wu Xinghuan gave a self-deprecating chuckle. He swirled the lemon water in his glass, casting a glazed gaze toward the liquor shelf before him. "It doesn't matter anymore... No one will remember us. I didn't discover any new physics, and the old edifice hasn't collapsed—it's sturdier than ever. We're still trapped in our cage, just hamsters that happened to stop running on the wheel." The man was clearly drunk. Luo Yi could barely make sense of his rambling, only gathering that he seemed to have overturned his earlier conclusion. "So... now you think that kid isn't a time traveler after all?" "Does it even matter whether he is or isn't?" Wu Xinghuan shook his head and took another sip. Luo Yi frowned, staring intently into his eyes. "Listen. You're the only person on this ship with any chance of helping us understand what's going on. We need to know what's happening to us. I don't know what hit a wall in your research, but I hope that right now, at least, you can pull yourself together!" The words seemed to have an effect. Wu Xinghuan looked up, his gaze locking directly onto him. "Let's make a hypothesis." Luo Yi watched him, gesturing with his eyes for him to continue. Wu Xinghuan set the glass down, dug two seeds out of the lemon slice, and dropped them inside. Watching the seeds sink, he spoke deliberately. "Say there's a video game with an enormous population... Let's say ten billion people." Luo Yi frowned. "And?" Wu Xinghuan continued, "Our eyes have limits, and so do camera lenses. Now, assume the camera can only display one hundred million people at once. The game engine supports one hundred million on screen simultaneously." Before Luo Yi could ask, he pressed on without pausing: "So here's the question: what about the other 9.9 billion people outside the camera's view? Where did they go?" Stumped by the question, Luo Yi hesitated for a moment before giving a puzzled reply: "Outside the camera frame, obviously." "Smart!" Wu Xinghuan gave a thumbs-up and grinned. "Too bad that's only skin-deep... The real truth is, they exist in a quantum state. "You know they exist. The host system recognizes that they exist, and every one of their names is even logged on record. But they aren't actively rendered in the program, are they? Or rather, they're stored in cache. Only when we pan the camera over do they render in real time and become visible to us. "That's exactly how developers in the Old Era built games cost-effectively. As long as you constrain the viewport to a set range and use clever asset loading, you can render an entire planet with just a few textures." "I think I follow your point," Luo Yi said with a furrowed brow. "But what does that have to do with the situation we're facing?" Wu Xinghuan didn't answer directly. Instead, he knocked over the glass on the counter. Looking at Luo Yi's startled expression, he said slowly, "Now, suppose an explosion occurs off-camera. It really happened—you've even seen the casualty figures, seen the shockwave, seen the aftermath... But did the explosion actually happen?" "Do you even need to ask?" Luo Yi looked at him in bewilderment. "You said it yourself—it really happened." "I am the host system. I am the narrator. I'm the one who told you there was an explosion." Wu Xinghuan stared into his eyes and grinned. "Yet what you should understand is that before you panned the camera over, the visual effects, the screams of the dying, what someone saw and did in their final moments—none of that was ever rendered in the program, was it? "Maybe when the explosion went off, some guy was flipping off the player beyond the screen. I bet if you saw it, you'd gasp in disbelief because an NPC had awakened self-awareness and broken the fourth wall... But you'll never see it, because by the time you pan the camera there, you might not even find his body." Luo Yi stared blankly at him, a faint glimmer of understanding beginning to dawn. "'Horizon,'" Wu Xinghuan murmured, letting the word roll off his tongue. He went on, "We define the boundary in spacetime where an event can just barely be observed as an 'event horizon.' And in this crude analogy, the edge of your camera frame is that horizon. "As for those of us sitting right here, trapped inside the hyperspace lane, we are right outside that 'horizon.' The same goes for that wayward kid. We've all been stuffed into an opaque black box that the outside world cannot penetrate. Our end is an established fact to him, while his fate is irrelevant to us. Because no matter what he tells us, no matter what happens in the future, we are already dead in his timeline." At this point, Wu Xinghuan gave another self-mocking smile. "The universe is far crueler than we ever imagined, isn't it? Under this theory, whatever we do right now is utterly meaningless. Even if we carve our entire story onto the walls, chronicling our legendary deeds, what must be erased will be erased just the same. "Perhaps throughout history we've encountered time travelers countless times... Yet without exception, they're like that NPC standing off-camera giving the middle finger to the player: nobody knows he broke the fourth wall. By the time God looks back down upon us, he has been completely wiped from existence. And the reason is precisely the result we see... because we've never heard of this traveler before." Luo Yi held his breath involuntarily. After a long silence, he managed to speak. "But... how did we get in here?" Just because of hyperspace travel? Ever since the war broke out, they had made countless hyperspace jumps, yet they had never heard of any starship encountering something like... Wait. It wasn't necessarily that no one had encountered it. A bead of cold sweat trickled down Luo Yi's forehead, splashing onto the bar counter. Perhaps others had encountered it, but no one ever lived to tell. Just as no one knew what lay beyond death—whether reincarnation or a place called heaven. The only message they left for the outside world—or rather, inside the "horizon"—was a single fact: unambiguous death. "How did we get in? Haha, only heaven knows." Wu Xinghuan laughed out loud. Seeing that Luo Yi seemed to understand, he said languidly, "That doesn't matter in the slightest. Maybe a massive explosion killed us all in a split second, and we just don't know it yet..." At that, he let out a drunken hiccup, locked eyes with Luo Yi, and enunciated each word: "So why did I say you're doing something meaningless? Because that kid was telling the truth! We might already... no, not might—we definitely are! "We are already dead! "And you and I sitting here... are nothing more than ghosts." Silence descended over the bar counter. Only the android skillfully wiped a glass, producing faint squeaks. Luo Yi stared blankly at Wu Xinghuan. After watching his face for a long time, he finally turned to the android bartender. "...Two Waters of Life." The android bartender said in a gentle voice, "I would advise against consuming alcohol during duty hours, especially high-proof cocktails." "You served him," Luo Yi pointed at Wu Xinghuan beside him. A look of mild distress crossed the android bartender's face. "However, this gentleman stated he is from the Fifth Department. You all say the Fifth Department has no work to do..." Luo Yi's eyebrow twitched, but his expression remained impassive. "They're both for him." This explanation seemed acceptable to the bartender. Soon, two glasses of crystal-clear spirit were placed on the counter. Luo Yi pushed one glass toward Dr. Wu, then sprinkled a few grains of salt into his own. "Everything you said is just your hypothesis. I could just as easily theorize that we're on different timelines... like that parallel universe theory." Wu Xinghuan shrugged. "You don't understand parallel universes at all. If you did, you'd know it makes no difference from what I said. The fate of our slice of spacetime is sealed. Almost entirely sealed—" "I think there is a difference. And the difference is that I'm still breathing, my heart is still beating, and at least right now, I am alive." Luo Yi stared unblinkingly into his eyes and spoke each word with deliberate force. "The living should do the work of the living. As for what happens after death, leave that for the living who come after. "Still, I owe you an apology for my earlier prejudice. You didn't do nothing—in fact, what you've done is far more than any of us." Before the astonished Dr. Wu, Luo Yi downed the liquor in one gulp, planted his hands on the counter, and stood up. "There are still things I can do. Meaningless as it might seem to you, I don't want to just give up." Just as he turned to leave, solitary clapping drifted in from the bar entrance. All three, including the android behind the counter, looked toward the door. Their captain stood there. "Good evening, Captain, sir," the android behind the counter greeted with a smile. As for Wu Xinghuan, he awkwardly tried to hide his glass behind his back, then slid off his barstool. For right behind the captain stood his cousin, Wu Mengke. He could already feel her sharp glare drilling into his thoroughly plastered self. "Well said." Zhao Tianhe lowered his hands, nodded to the android bartender, and looked at the two standing before the counter with a smile. "That is the attitude a Human Alliance warrior should have: never give up until the very end." "You flatter me, sir..." Luo Yi saluted, somewhat stiffly. Zhao Tianhe returned a brief salute, then looked at the fellow struggling to stand straight from drunkenness, continuing with a smile: "Dr. Wu, I noticed earlier that when you mentioned our fate being sealed, you used the word 'almost.'" "Well, yes..." Dodging Wu Mengke's piercing gaze, Wu Xinghuan rubbed the bridge of his nose awkwardly. Zhao Tianhe said with a smile, "So there is a way to change it, isn't there?" Wu Xinghuan blinked. Before he could speak, the captain paused for a beat and continued, "For instance... keeping the established future intact, while altering only the unknown." Wu Xinghuan smiled bitterly. "But how could that be possible..." Zhao Tianhe looked at him and said, "The Gemini is the Orion's sister ship. We share the exact same blueprints." Wu Xinghuan gave the captain a strange look. "You mean..." Zhao Tianhe laid it out with crisp logic: "The craft that struck us lacks interstellar cruising capability. We have reasonable grounds to suspect the incident occurred near Earth... or at least somewhere accessible by reaction engines." Wu Xinghuan stole a quick glance at Luo Yi, and seeing him nod, murmured, "It seems... that's the case." Paying no mind to his hesitation, Zhao Tianhe continued, "And we are inside a hyperspace lane. As far as I understand, hyperspace lanes possess no start or end point in the classical spatial sense—only beginning and end points in terms of time... Am I correct?" "Not entirely accurate, but close enough. Our distance relative to two massive celestial bodies cannot be calculated... Wait, do you mean—" Halfway through, Wu Xinghuan's eyes suddenly went wide as he stared at the captain in shock. Zhao Tianhe looked at him and delivered his hypothesis: "Could there be a possibility that this self-proclaimed time traveler who boarded the Orion didn't actually know whether he was on the Orion or the Gemini?" Luo Yi furrowed his brows and asked, "But didn't the Gemini already head back—" Zhao Tianhe raised a hand, cutting him off. "They were sunk. And it was us who sank them." The air in the bar froze in eerie silence. Both Luo Yi and Wu Xinghuan froze where they stood. Then, Luo Yi instinctively looked toward Wu Mengke behind Zhao Tianhe—the starship's second-in-command, the Executive Officer. Her face was expressionless, devoid of even a trace of surprise. It was obvious the captain wasn't making this up. Luo Yi's Adam's apple bobbed. He stared at Zhao Tianhe in disbelief—the superior officer he had once revered above all others. "...Why?" Looking at the young soldier, Zhao Tianhe let out a slow sigh, his voice heavy with conflicting emotions. "Because... we had no choice." "You... killed them..." Wu Xinghuan stared blankly at his cousin, squeezing the last words through trembling lips. "...Three thousand people?" His eyes bored straight into hers, but this time it was she who averted her gaze, unable to look at her younger cousin. Zhao Tianhe cleared his throat softly, breaking the stifling tension. "We had to prevent a crime by the Aerospace Force. As for the specifics... it is all recorded in the black box. Once we return to the Lagrange Point Space Station, I will submit to arrest and answer for my actions before a court-martial. Furthermore, this was my decision alone; none of you bear any responsibility. "In short, the waters behind this 'incident' run very deep. I had no desire to stain my honor, but we had to make a choice. If we didn't act, not only would we die, but countless others would perish as well—including so many survivors who barely endured these three grueling years..." Luo Yi stared dumbfoundedly at the captain, his mind utterly incapable of accepting such a perfunctory explanation. The Gemini was the Orion's sister ship. Their crews frequently rotated, and there were plenty of people on that vessel he knew personally. Yet now, the officer he respected most was telling him... they were all dead. And killed by their own hands. With the vast majority of the crew kept completely in the dark... Wu Xinghuan took a deep breath, trying desperately to pull his mind away from the grim revelation. He did see a sliver of hope— In a whisper inaudible to everyone else, he muttered to himself: "There are two cats in the box... Only one is dead, while the other's fate is undecided. "We see the person opening the box, but the person opening the box only sees one dead cat... As long as they are dead, we are alive." Luo Yi couldn't hear what he was mumbling, nor was he in any state of mind to listen. Looking at the devastated young man, a fatigue never before seen on Zhao Tianhe's weathered face surfaced. He spoke slowly: "I will explain everything regarding the Gemini and the orders from the Lagrange Point Space Station later. For now, let us discuss how to resolve the situation right in front of us."