Chapter 426 More lonely waiting [7400 words large chapter]
Hammersley Ridge is located in the southwest of the Australian continent, close to the sea, covering an extremely large area, stretching for 260 kilometers.
The mountains are high and deep, criss-crossing.
It was an important iron ore base more than a thousand years ago, providing almost 80% of Australia's iron ore.
At that time, the vegetation on Hammersley Ridge was sparse, with only some stubborn meadows struggling to grow.
But although the topography here has not changed now, the vegetation conditions are very different.
The tops of the mountains are covered with thick vines that are often hundreds of meters long.
The vines move like dragons, their broad leaves are like cattail fans, and their stems are as thick as one meter in diameter and as thin as several decimeters.
Thin roots pierce the ground from all over the vine stems like centipede legs.
The vines intertwined with each other and climbed all over the peak, almost becoming an ecological overlord.
This is a plant that Chen Feng has never seen before in the 21st century. It is probably a new species that has developed some strong mutations after climate change.
In the middle of the mountain range, there are mainly some large trees with extremely thick branches.
The roots of big trees are so thick that even the thinnest ones require dozens of people to surround them. The thickest trees have diameters of hundreds of meters and heights of hundreds or even thousands of meters.
The canopy of the trees spreads out like an umbrella, and the layers are intertwined with each other, like broccoli stacked in a vegetable basket, so that from top to bottom there is almost no trace of the ravine.
If Chen Feng hadn't been able to scan the terrain through the spacecraft's detector, he could have almost parked the tree crown as if it were flat ground.
Considering that Morrowind One did not have an energy shield, it might be damaged if it was forced to park in a ravine, which would be troublesome to repair. He stopped on the top of the mountain first, then put on a brand new combat uniform, picked up his knife, and took a fission shotgun.
gun, put on a backpack, and get out of the ship.
In his backpack was an iron box the size of a microwave oven.
Inside the iron box is a small biological battery power supply chamber that he spent a lot of effort to complete. It is mainly used to power the "toy" gravitational wave scanner, and there is also a micro-computing server the size of a fist.
He first ordered a meal of quark synthesis, and then pressed the button on the side of the iron box behind him. With a metallic creaking sound, two thick robotic arms popped up from the box behind him and paid out.
Come more than one meter.
A 17-inch LCD monitor hangs in the middle of the two robotic arms.
With a click, the joint of the robotic arm holding the monitor bent first, and then bent twice. The monitor was placed diagonally above Chen Feng's head, half a meter away from his eyes, making him look like Ning Caichen carrying a scholar's box.
Chen Feng raised his hand and pressed on the monitor for a while. The debugging was successful. A spherical space with a diameter of fifty meters began to appear on the screen, which was the image of the scanner.
The wearable integrated detection auxiliary device was successfully developed!
Oh no, the assembly was successful.
This wasn't the end yet, he turned around again, and at this time, a large iron box was being lifted and lowered by the mechanical arm of Morrowind One.
Opening the box, it was filled with colorful metal structures, which were all wearable equipment that he assembled in his spare time.
Putting them on one by one, in five minutes, he turned into a punk-style mechanical warrior.
Chen Feng briefly tested the jet engines on the left and right sides of his waist, and they floated slightly.
Very good. With the support of the auxiliary artificial intelligence algorithm, his flight is very smooth, and his change of direction and speed are also very sensitive.
When he was ready, he walked down the hillside and plunged into the unbelievably dense jungle.
The deeper you go down, the darker the sunlight becomes in the forest.
Even though it was midday and the sun was shining brightly, it couldn't shine at all.
No wonder these trees have to grow so tall. If they don’t climb a little further up, they won’t even be able to drink soup.
The ecological environment in the forest is not simple. In addition to tall trees, there are countless plants, large and small, growing all over the ground.
The tall ones are like ordinary trees, while the low ones are bushes of different shapes.
These low trees, which are rarely exposed to sunlight, do not have wide leaves.
As for where their nutrients come from?
You only need to look at the branches of the trees to understand everything. The branches grow up to the giant tree in unison.
If it weren't for the obvious holes where the branches were breaking through the bark of the giant tree, Chen Feng could have mistaken these small plants for the roots of the giant tree.
In addition to plants, there are also many kinds of animals in the valley with different shapes.
There are giant wolves with big ears that cannot open their eyes at all and rely on ultrasonic positioning. There are also black bears that can naturally emit strong light in their pupils, as if they have two large flashlights on their heads, and there are also black bears that can smear across the ground like lightning.
, a dark-skinned snake as fast as a mouse.
These animals are very aggressive. When they noticed his movements from a long distance, they rushed towards him one by one like moths rushing to a flame.
Chen Feng was secretly glad that he was wearing wearable equipment and could fly there, otherwise he would have to walk and kill all the way, which would exhaust him to death, let alone search for human clues in this valley.
He also lamented that it is a pity that high-precision gravitational wave detectors are gone forever.
There are parts, but due to my own limited capabilities, I really can’t repair it.
Otherwise, according to the performance of the Galaxy War Armor in the previous timeline, float in the air and scan it, and then you can lie down peacefully and look at the stars to analyze the results.
Most of the day later, it was getting dark outside, but it made no difference to him. He had descended to the bottom of the valley, and the place had already become a dark world.
But nature was not without light, and his field of vision actually improved.
Among the dense heterotrophic woods, countless gleaming lights are floating, all of which are various insects that can emit light.
These insects each chase the stream of light, sometimes converging, sometimes scattering, and sometimes walking through the trees like the Milky Way across the sky.
The picture looks dreamlike, as if you are in a fairyland.
Some small birds that make a living by eating insects flash past like lightning from time to time, and the aerial river brought by the fluorescent insects suddenly loses a piece.
Chen Feng did not turn on the lights. He had already put on a simulation helmet and relied on the projection of imaging using the principle of ultrasonic feedback to determine the direction.
He walked, watched, investigated, killed animals that couldn't be avoided, and collected some biological batteries from time to time.
The terrain in the mountains is complex, the density of animals and plants is extremely high, and the amount of information is incredibly large.
Moreover, even if there are traces of human activities, such as footprints or picnic embers, they cannot be preserved for long under the influence of high-frequency and high-intensity activities of a large number of animals.
Based on the strength of these animals' abilities, Chen Feng estimated that ordinary Metroid warriors without equipment would not survive here for three days.
Since Sergei's secret base has been hidden for nearly five hundred years, it will definitely not be lying on the ground. If you want to find it, you have to work slowly and carefully.
Chen Feng did not daydream or foolishly think that he could achieve success in one fell swoop. He was mentally prepared for a long-term war of resistance and settled in this valley.
Time flies, and March passes in the blink of an eye.
During these three months, Chen Feng plowed the land up and down Hamersley Ridge more than ten times.
His database is filled with huge and complex information, accurate to every plant, every insect, and every animal in the mountains.
He can also simulate and predict all dynamics of animals and plants, even down to when these plants will take root and sprout, and when they will wither.
He also used a gravitational wave detector to complete a complete terrain simulation, going down to three kilometers underground.
Within three kilometers underground, the flow of soil and rock in the earth's crust can be accurate to modules in grams.
Countless small modules are combined together to form a simulation model like ocean currents.
In addition, although the gravitational wave detector can only accurately scan the underground to a maximum depth of five kilometers, Chen Feng has scoured the world and assembled some conventional geological exploration equipment that is not that high in technology and not that accurate in accuracy.
Equipment types include geophysical and geochemical exploration, trench depth, drilling, large-scale geophysical exploration equipment, etc.
In the field of geological simulation modeling, physical exploration is the main focus, and physical exploration mainly includes gravity exploration, magnetic exploration, electrical exploration, seismic exploration, radioactive exploration, etc.
In short, Chen Feng used whatever means were available. He did not seek absolute accuracy, but only tried to use more detection methods to collect more and more comprehensive data.
Therefore, the geological data in his hands still went down to eighteen kilometers underground, but the three kilometers underground were the technological level of the thirty-first century in the seventh timeline, and the three kilometers to ten kilometers were the twenty-fifth century.
The level of ten kilometers to eighteen kilometers is the level of the early 22nd century.
Such a huge amount of data can hardly be accommodated in the extremely large data storage database he specially expanded.
There is no point in continuing to strengthen the collection. On September 3, 2020, his raids officially ceased.
With the computing power he currently possesses, it is simply impossible to convert these data into images that can be seen by the human eye.
The machine is jammed to the point where he cannot survive or die. Any change of perspective reminds him of the fear of being dominated when he used a computer from 2008 to open QQ from 2019.
So he wrote another algorithm program and handed it all to the server to calculate it in the background.
As for himself, he started making chips again and inserted them into the server piece by piece.
With less than sixty days until October 27, 3020, Chen Feng's sense of urgency is getting stronger and stronger.
So far, he has initially completed the construction of the new aerospace-grade spacecraft and placed it on the outskirts of Hanzhou.
The spacecraft is approximately five kilometers long, one thousand one hundred meters high, and two thousand meters wide, with a traditional spindle shape.
It's not that he doesn't want a triangular cone ship or a snowflake ship, but with his ability, he can only barely design a spindle-shaped stable curvature-like thin film layer.
It would cost him his life to ask him to make other shapes, or to make them perfectly fit the structure covering the surface of the ship.
The spacecraft was named Morrowind 2.
No. 2 is equipped with two sets of high-performance large-scale curvature-like engines without intelligent assistance, a set of force field shield generators that also lack intelligent algorithm support, and a set of hand-made large-scale biological battery power supply systems.
Dyson-like film solar wings that accurately and stably control energy conversion, as well as hundreds of small and medium-sized equipment related to scientific research and production.
Chen Feng also placed a large number of robots of various types and eras without chips but with basically complete other components.
On the entire planet, more than 60% of the usable parts with certain technological content have been collected by him into eight large warehouses next to Morrowind 2.
About 70% of it has been assembled into different things and stuffed into No. 2.
Theoretically, after Morrowind 2 flies out of the Kuiper asteroid belt, it can continue to accelerate in the universe and reach a stable twice the speed of light within a month.
If Chen Feng can find a more complete database and build a quantum brain with sufficient performance, then he can upgrade the warp-like flight of No. 2 to a curvature flight, allowing Morrowind No. 2 to reach 9.999... times the speed of light.
Now everything is ready, all we need is the quantum chip.
Even if he can only find one piece, he can try to synthesize more with the best-performing high-precision quark meter, and then the problem of artificial intelligence computing power requirements will be easily solved.
Most of the space compression and mass-to-energy conversion technologies will also be restored. In addition to being able to drive No. 2 out of the solar system, Chen Feng can at least build himself individual equipment with performance comparable to that of the Eagle Strike Armor.
He put all his hopes in Sergei's secret base.
Three days later, Chen Feng built a modular supercomputing center covering an area of three hectares on the central ridge of Hammersley Ridge.
The comprehensive computing power of this supercomputing center is approximately equivalent to all the computing power possessed by mankind in 2050 in the eighth timeline.
Four days later, all the calculations finally came together into an answer.
The answer is a small earth bag more than ten meters long.
In fact, Chen Feng had passed by this bumpkin more than once before, but he didn't take it seriously.
There are maybe a thousand or two similar earthen bags at the bottom of mountains and valleys. They are so common that they are not worth mentioning.
However, after double calculations of statistics and probability, and then comprehensively summarizing the geological creeping tendency of the tiny plates, a very inconsistent conclusion was deduced.
The probability that this earth bag is caused by natural changes in the movement of crustal plates is less than 1%, and it would take countless chances to form.
If I had to find something unnatural and abnormal in Hammersley Ridge, it would have to be this dirt bag.
Chen Feng acted decisively, collected samples, and tested the half-life and substance composition.
The conclusion will be drawn soon.
The soil in the soil bag looks no different from ordinary soil, but it is actually mantle material.
Measuring its half-life again showed that the soil collected by Chen Feng from different depths had undergone violent chemical reactions at different times. The change time nodes from the outer layer to the inner layer showed multi-gradient progressive changes. From thirty years ago,
To fifty-six years ago, then to seventy-two years ago, until four hundred and twenty years ago.
The case was solved successfully.
Sergei's base is located in the mantle directly below here.
He returned to the base first and started building a manned earth-drilling exploration machine.
Two days later, he returned to the same spot and started digging a hole.
The drill bit continued to rumble down along the position of the earth bag.
The powerful superalloy drill bit broke through the soil layer all the way, then broke through the rock layer, and then hit the iron ore layer and the silicon-magnesium layer head-on. It slowed down slightly before continuing forward.
Fourteen hours later, the exploration drill bit reached a depth of fifty kilometers underground.
At this time, it has completely entered the mantle and is in the molten magma structure.
This is not the first time he has been underground, and he is already familiar with it, but this time his vehicle does not have a composite shield. Although the outer structure of the alloy drill will not melt easily, the high temperature inside is a bit fatal. Even if he carefully prepared
The temperature control system cannot handle it.
The temperature inside the cabin was rising rapidly, and it was so hot that Chen Feng was sweating profusely.
His judgment was correct. A huge metal structure was indeed found here, but the shell of the structure had a composite shield and he could not enter.
No matter how much power he turned on the drill, he couldn't make any progress.
After five minutes of hard work, the temperature inside the cabin has exceeded 100, and the temperature control system has been overloaded and will shut down in half a minute at the latest.
Chen Feng was so angry that he wanted to look up to the sky and curse, it was like seeing a ghost.
I am a mighty Metroid warrior, I will never fall underground on earth, right?
Back then, let alone the mantle, I had even been to the center of the earth.
How about I withdraw first, move the equipment further in, and then come back down?
Chen Feng quickly rejected the idea.
Although the drill was a hasty creation, it had indeed been filled with all the usable parts. Without a shield, it could only be like this.
With his own ability, he really can't innovate technology, and there is no point in going back.
It's not long until October 27th, time waits for no one.
Just when he felt that there was no way to go to the sky or to the earth, the shield in front of him suddenly changed.
The drill bit slid in without any hindrance, entered an empty space, and fell to the metal shell a hundred meters below.
Chen Feng was thinking about whether to abandon the cabin and escape, so as not to fall into a sandwich cake, but dozens of long metal arms came out from below, firmly grasping the drill bit, and then lowered it smoothly.
After it came to a stop, Chen Feng tried to open the hatch and found that the open hatch cover was held down by the long metal arm that wrapped the drill bit.
He turned on the intercom and dialed the full-frame radio communication, "Is there anyone there?"
"Follow me."
A young boy's voice came over the intercom, speaking Chinese.
Chen Feng was stunned, what do you mean?
"Sergey?"
he asked again.
The young man replied again: "Follow me."
Chen Feng was so angry, "Then you should let go of my door!"
He responded with another "Follow me".
Chen Feng was certain that this was not a replay, but that someone was actually speaking on the other side, because the tone and intonation of each "Follow me" message were slightly different, as if they were getting more and more irritable.
He was also anxious and tried to forcefully push open the hatch cover. However, the alloy could even withstand the weight of the mantle, so he thought too much about pushing with his feet.
"I know you are Sergey. Don't be too secretive. I am Chen Feng. Open the door for me. I can't get out."
Chen Feng thought for a while and said this.
After about ten seconds, those stupid and stupid long metal arms finally let go.
After walking out of the door, Chen Feng looked up and saw the red and black mantle material isolated by a shield a hundred meters away. Under the hazy red light, the world was a dark red.
Two meters in front of him, a square hole was opening, and then something like an elevator slowly emerged from below.
There are two small dark round holes on both sides of the elevator, about the thickness of a thumb, which look like shooting holes for gun weapons.
An electronic sound sounded.
"The identity system is being identified, and the identification is successful. Human, male, Han nationality. The historical gene pool is being compared, and the comparison is successful. Chen Feng, founder of the Salvation Society. Threat level, 0. Trust level, highest."
Listening to the electronic voice checking and verifying his identity, Master Chen burst into tears.
It’s not easy. After almost a year, I finally heard the voice of artificial intelligence capable of autonomous actions.
This indicates that there really is a smart chip in Sergey's secret base, and there may even be a complete artificial intelligence!
There is help!
The elevator door opened slowly with a pop.
A pale and thin boy stood inside.
The boy was about seventeen years old. His eyes were dull, his face was dull, his cheekbones were prominent, and he looked very malnourished.
Chen Feng glanced and recognized him.
Really a young version of Sergei Ponomarenko!
Chen Feng was looking at the other person, and the other person was also looking at him.
The two looked at each other for a long time, but Chen Feng took a step forward first and asked: "Is it Sergey?"
The young man turned his head, his eyes became more dazed, he smiled stupidly, and then said in a hasty tone: "Follow me."
Chen Feng rolled his eyes.
I had heard earlier that human cloning was not perfect in all aspects, but I still didn’t believe it. Now I have to believe it even if I don’t believe it.
I don’t know what kind of education this young version of Sergey received since he was a child, but he only knows this sentence over and over again.
The young man's logical thinking ability seemed to be really flawed. After he finished speaking, he pressed the button, regardless of whether Chen Feng followed suit or not.
Fortunately, Chen Feng acted quickly, otherwise he would have been locked out again.
The narrow elevator car was cluttering and falling. Chen Feng knew that if he asked him again, he would probably not get any information, and he would not waste much time talking.
The other party will only say "Follow me", so it must lead you to a certain place, and everything will be revealed when you get there.
About a minute later, the elevator stopped, and what appeared in front of Chen Feng was a huge and empty workshop.
There are hundreds of pill-shaped life-support capsules scattered throughout the workshop.
Each survival cabin is about two and a half meters high, and is quite similar to the internal circulation simulation cabin where he once lay.
Most of the liquids in the life-support cabins have been emptied, and only a few are still filled with light yellow nutrient solution.
"Where are we going now?"
he asked again.
The young man no longer walked forward, but sat down where he was and said again: "Follow me."
Chen Feng shrugged, it seemed that this was the destination.
Chen Feng tried to take two steps forward, but things changed again in the workshop.
A three-dimensional projection beam shone from the lamp head on the ceiling and landed in front of him.
A bald, middle-aged Slavic man wearing a white coat appeared in front of him. It was indeed Sergey, but a middle-aged and elderly version.
Electronic voice prompt: "Chinese? English? Russian? Minor languages?"
Chen Feng: "Chinese."
The next second, the still image of Sergey suddenly became vivid.
He said in an emotional tone: "Since you can appear here without causing an explosion, you must be a human being who has returned from afar. Right?"
Chen Feng thought for a moment and said, "Yes."
"Welcome, my descendant."
Chen Feng: "..."
Well, now it's time for you to die young, whatever you want to say.
"Everything you hear next is my recording. I don't need to answer your questions. You can briefly understand the situation from me first. The rest of the information is in the reading room in front. Please listen to me patiently and slowly...
"
About half an hour later, Sergey's projection disappeared.
Chen Feng looked back at the silly young version of Sergey who was sitting there like a sculpture, but he already understood completely in his heart.
The case was solved.
First of all, humans in the solar system have indeed perished in this timeline.
The exact time of its demise is 2589.
The landmark event of destruction is that there is only one person left alive in the human race, and it is Sergei.
He did not become a deserter, but worked on the research and development of new weapons in the last base until the last moment.
No matter how fierce the fighting outside was, it did not affect his concentration on his work.
Then ZS humans rushed in wearing individual weapons and massacred everyone in the Australian base, including his respected senior biologist Lai Wenming.
When Sergey was the only real human being left, the zs human suddenly stopped and quietly retreated, never to be seen again.
A month later, an explosion occurred in the super-large space station 30 million kilometers away from the earth.
In this explosion, all zs humans and enhanced mutant animals disappeared at the same time.
This is not Sergey's credit, but the independent choice of ZS bacteria's life.
Since then, Sergei is the only intelligent life left in the entire solar system.
He didn't understand why he was left behind.
This may be sarcasm.
Or maybe it's just a science experiment.
The ultra-high-level civilization that controls the destiny of mankind wants to see what kind of creations the smartest humans can make when they are alone.
He also didn't understand why he had never been infected by ZS bacteria.
Later, Sergey tried parthenogenesis, but failed.
He seemed to have seen the ending.
I will live alone in the solar system forever.
He had considered leaving and going to the colonies.
In the end, he did not set sail, but spent all his energy on rebuilding artificial intelligence and creating this underground base.
He rebuilt the base and hid it underground.
He spent his entire life analyzing zs bacteria, analyzing history, and deducing the future.
He wanted to understand what exactly the enemy was and why it could destroy mankind so easily.
He also wants to know how to defeat the opponent.
Humanity in the solar system has been defeated, but Sergey is still eager to leave something behind. Maybe in the distant future, people from the colony will come back and see it again?
As time goes by, he is aging rapidly day by day, but success is still far away.
Sergey began to absorb the biotechnology left by Lai Wenming and implement a self-cloning plan.
He knows that he will die sooner or later, and he also knows that most clones will have congenital diseases of one kind or another and will not be able to reach his own height, but so what?
If you can do something, just do it.
In 2600, Sergei, who knew he was about to die prematurely from overwork, completed all the preset settings, took a small shuttle to the ground, and was torn apart by ferocious animals before returning home.
Before he died, he collected some more zs gene characteristics from mutated animals that had been weakened externally, and transmitted them back to the base.
He also mocked these wastes fiercely.
"You are so stupid."
Time passed little by little, and thirty years later, another Sergei, who was only twenty-nine years old and still looked young, but his organs were failing and was about to die, rushed out of the ground.
Hundreds of years passed in the blink of an eye.
Generation after generation of Sergeys were born in the survival capsule, and grew up and developed into adults under the care and teaching of intelligent robots, promoting the unfinished business of the first Sergey.
Of course, accidents always happen, and some cloned embryos declare genetic collapse before they can even grow into a human form.
Some clones died for no reason at the age of one or two.
Even successful clones seem to have an eternal lifespan that will not exceed thirty years.
And as time continues to pass, the time span of freeze-dried cells is getting longer and longer, the activity and gene stability continue to decline, the performance of clones is different from one generation to the next, the IQ is getting lower and lower, the learning ability is getting worse and worse, and the life span is getting worse and worse.
The more unstable it is.
Until now, there are only a few life-support capsules left.
The new generation of Sergey who was recently trained only learned the only sentence that must be said to the returnees, "Follow me."
At this point, Sergey's deduction has failed.
The meaning of "Follow me" is only to prove to the returnees that humans in the solar system once existed.
Or maybe it was just discovered by other civilizations, hoping that other civilizations could take away everything from the people on earth.
In this way, the era of mankind will not disappear silently like a bubble in the universe.
In the end, Sergey did not wait for his compatriots to return from the colony, but waited for Chen Feng.
