Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 294: Cannot Warp?

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The one who made the call was not Eva but Eva’s personal Thinker, Ren Tao. After he heard the story from Eva, he told Yao Yuan the news immediately and pulled Eva towards the Hope’s captain's room.

Yao Yuan didn’t delay either. He told Guang Zhen immediately, "Ol’ Wong this is very important, I will call Xiao Niao, Bo Li… and a few others to join us. We have to keep the number small because too many cooks spoils the broth. We’ll not do it here, let’s go to the secret meeting room."

Guang Zhen nodded. Very quickly, he managed to seek out the secret unit of the Defense Unit. Every one of them used to be a special agent back on Earth. This was a unit specially selected by Guang Zhen. Regarding the use of this unit, well, that was knowledge limited to Guang Zhen and Yao Yuan. Suffice to say it had plenty to do with how Yao Yuan found out who was manipulating the political scene earlier so easily.

Soon, after Ren Tao and Eva arrived, Xiao Niao and Bo Li came. Alongside Guang Zhen, the group was escorted by the secret unit to the secret meeting room. When they entered, Yao Yuan immediately asked Eva, "Tell us what you saw in your vision."

Eva pouted but didn’t make a fuss, because she knew the gravity of the situation. She started, "I saw many visions of the future, but they are all disjointed. The one that’s important I saw one hour ago. A group of about 30 aliens in silver robotic casing entered the Hope. They were of average height, about 1.2 meters. The robotic shells were spherical and didn’t look like they fit the aliens’ bodies tightly. They used some kind of conical weapon, wide in the back and narrow in the front. The weapon would appear out of the casing, and with a flash of light, the metallic wall before it would melt, creating a 2-meter-wide hole.

"After that, they stormed into the Hope. They left no prisoners. With a blast of the light, the people exploded into dust. There were no bullets or trajectory. When the vision ended, it was 29 days from now."

Guang Zhen asked, "How can you tell it’s 29 days later? Your power is so strong that you can tell the date and time of your vision?"

Eva pouted again. "Of course not, but this is why you assigned me a personal Thinker, right? My visions are absolutely random; they are all over the place in terms of sequence. It was such a huge headache… However, now as long as the visions are inside the Hope, I basically have a 70 percent chance of knowing the time and date of the vision. This is so much better than before."

Guang Zhen finally understood. After so years away from Earth, the Hope had undergone many upgrades. Even the original creators wouldn’t believe the Hope was the Noah Two. Other than the internal structure, the Hope was like a completely different spaceship to the Noah Two.

The latest upgrade on the Hope introduced a few strange features. One of them was to label the street names and levels at easy-to-see locations. At the same time, many electronic clocks were installed at many places so one could see the time and date whenever they wanted. These clocks were everywhere; one street would have at least 10. This confused the public greatly.

Now Guang Zhen understood that these changes were to aid Eva utilize her Sage power to the maximum capacity.

With that out of the way, he turned to look at Ren Tao and Xiao Niao. They shared a meaningful look with each other before turning to give the same look to Yao Yuan. If one didn’t know better, one would suspect there was something going on within the three of them.

It was Yao Yuan who eventually spoke first. "Eva, can you still see into the future? Do you feel any side effects from changing the future yet?"

Eva answered, "The latest vision happened only some time ago, so how I can have any visions so soon? Regarding the side effects, currently, there are none."

Yao Yuan nodded and Xiao Niao chimed in, "Looks like the definition of changing the future is extremely loose. Technically speaking, when you told us about this future, the future was changed because we will not allow that future to happen. However, it looks like your power’s side effect will not kick in until we commit to an actual action. That’s neat."

Yao Yuan sighed. "We have no idea what the science behind normal Homo Evolutis powers are, much less the Sage. Nothing surprises me after finding out some Homo Evolutis can look into the future. Then, Ren Tao, what are you thinking?"

Ren Tao seemed to be staring into space. When Yao Yuan called him, he was pulled out of his reverie. "Oh, me? I was thinking… If we know about this future and still do nothing, then will the future change or not?"

Guang Zhen was a traditional soldier, so he was very much averse to vagrant-like behavior. His relationship with Ren Tao was completely formal, so if they met each other personally, they probably wouldn’t exchange greetings. After hearing Ren Tao’s suggestion, he harrumphed. "If you continue blanking out, then our future will definitely be like that."

It was as if Ren Tao didn’t hear the dissatisfaction in his criticism. He clapped and said, "That’s the idea. Actually, in these few years, we’ve been trying to determine the limitations and functions of this prediction power, but there has been no such occasion. In a way, this will be the first time we will be able to test out this power in real time if we discount the war with the space merchants… Xiao Niao has mentioned this: the future cannot be known. Why? Because the future is constantly changing. This is why the butterfly effect can be used to describe time. This is similar to wave functions in quantum theory; it is unknowable when it is not observed, but after it comes into being, the wave function will collapse. The key is an observer. Therefore, I came up with a hypothesis for this prediction power, and that is unpredictability. Before we commit to an action, we only stop at the stage of knowledge, and that will not affect the unpredictability of the future."

Xiao Niao and Yao Yuan started thinking, but Guang Zhen was getting antsy… because he had no idea what they were talking about. He grumbled, "What is the use of talking about that now? We should be coming up with a solution instead."

To his surprise, Yao Yuan berated him, "Ol’ Wong, if Ren Tao is right, then it will help us greatly in understanding the power of the Sage. Do you know why we don’t ask Eva to look into the future as often as she can? That’s because the pressure from utilizing the Sage’s power is too big. None of us can be sure whether a decision to drastically change the Hope’s future will cause Eva to go into a coma like Jay or not. We cannot shoulder such a responsibility, but if it is like Ren Tao said, that looking into the future but not doing anything will not harm the Sage, then we can have incessant visions of the future and from there choose the one that has the best outcome… But Ol’ Wong, you’re right as well. Now we need to focus on finding a solution."

Xiao Niao shrugged. "What else can we do? From what Eva told us, it is obvious that the aliens are from the 5th revolution or above. Even foot soldiers have access to plasma weapons, so they’re at least a Level 3 space civilization. This means that our silent journey plan has failed, and there is no other solution but to warp."

The others sighed. Pain and regret clawed at Yao Yuan. They still had two more controlled warps to go before reaching the Noah One. Alas, that plan was rudely interrupted by a Level 3 space civilization. They seemed more professional than the space merchants, so if there really was a war, things were not looking well for the Hope…

"How about this, we will try our best to come up with other solutions, and if there is no better solution…"

Yao Yuan looked at them and finally said, "We’ll warp in 20 days to avoid this alien civilization. There are still 20 days to go, so let’s get our brain juices flowing."

The others nodded silently. Suddenly, Eva’s eyes went vacant and color drained from her face. She yelled suddenly and hugged her head as she crumbled to the floor. Guang Zhen, who was standing beside her, quickly went to catch her.

However, the color didn’t return to Eva’s face, she mumbled, "Explosion… a big explosion. We cannot warp! This next warp will bring us next to a sun! The Hope will explode!"