Silent Ark

Chapter 56: Number 0

"He's not coming," Liu Pan said.

How did you know?

"Xinlan's ship has run into trouble; he should be dealing with it right now—"

The hatch opened.

Wang Xindong walked in.

He was wearing a dark gray windbreaker, his hair was unkempt, and he looked like he had been pulled straight out of bed.

But his eyes were bright—

That kind of "I just received a piece of information that I have to confirm myself" feeling.

He glanced around the cabin and sat down next to Yao Chong.

"I've seen the original version of the final data packet from Deep Blue 7." He didn't greet me. "The version Jiu Ke gave me had a section cut out."

Yao Chong looked at him.

"What was deleted?"

"Seven seconds before Deep Blue 7 lost contact, the sonar array recorded a signal."

It is not a frequency band belonging to a sovereign entity, nor is it a frequency band associated with any known natural phenomenon.

"What signal?"

Wang Xindong took a USB flash drive out of his windbreaker pocket and placed it in Yao Chong's hand.

Listen to it yourself.

He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

But I'll tell you something first—

Of the seven people on board Deep Blue 7, three are employees of Xinlan.

He didn't say anything more.

Yao Chong held the USB drive but did not plug it into any device.

4:17.

Unit-00 vibrated.

It's very light.

It sounded like someone knocked from outside.

Then the curved screen lit up.

The outside is black.

It's not the darkness of the night sky—

It's the kind of black where no photons exist.

Outside the locked field boundary, electromagnetic force is being stripped away, and light cannot propagate.

The screen displays sensor data from the locked area.

Images reconstructed using infrared and gravitational waves.

Grayish-white.

It's blurry, but you can still see the outline.

Below is the sea.

The sea surface is normal, undulating, and reflects starlight.

Above—

Yao Chong closed his eyes.

A grayish-white sky.

Sovereign entity.

Grid.

node.

But it's different from what you see on the ground.

Unit Zero is climbing.

The density of the sovereign body changes as altitude increases.

The bottom layer consists of slow-floating, shapeless objects, which become denser and the grid becomes clearer as you go up.

At a certain height, the grid is no longer flat.

It began to fold.

Like a piece of paper being stretched out from the middle, transforming into a three-dimensional structure.

The connections between nodes are no longer straight lines, but curves.

Each curve pulsates slowly and rhythmically.

"Liu Pan." Yao Chong opened his eyes.

"Um?"

"Did you hear that?"

Liu Pan's expression changed slightly.

His fingers pressed against the armrest of the seat, his fingertips turning slightly white.

"I've been listening since takeoff."

"What frequency?"

"It's not a fixed frequency," Liu Pan said in a low voice, "It's—"

scanning.

It works on a similar principle to radar.

Scan from top to bottom, approximately once every twelve seconds.

Every time it sweeps across, my eardrums will—

He paused for a moment.

"It will be verified."

Yao Chong did not press further.

He remembers.

When Liu Pan first described this feeling on the fourth basement floor of CERN, he also used the word "calibration".

But that time it was my heartbeat.

This time it's a scan.

The zeroth aircraft transitioned to level flight at an altitude of 8,000 meters.

The data stream on the screen began to accelerate.

The coordinates are changing, the velocity is changing, and the energy consumption of the locking field is changing.

Shen Qingci's voice came from the front row: "Remaining time for the locked-out event: five hours and forty-three minutes."

Yao Chong looked down at the USB drive in his hand.

Recording of the sonar in the seven seconds before Deep Blue 7 lost contact.

The section that was deleted by the Ninth Department.

He didn't have the equipment to play it.

But he doesn't need to.

Because Liu Pan was listening.

"It has a rhythm," Liu Pan said, "but it's not a natural rhythm."

Yes--

Artificial.

"Artificial?"

"There are repeated structures."

Each cycle lasts 2.3 seconds, and each cycle contains three pulses.

Short, long, short.

He paused for a moment.

Morse code.

Yao Chong's fingers tightened.

Morse code.

And the signal from the Eden System in the Echo chapter—

The same encoding method.

"S...O...S".

Liu Pan's voice was very soft.

"Seven seconds before losing contact, Deep Blue 7 sent an SOS signal using a sonar array."

Not radio—

The radio waves were jammed at that depth.

It is a sound.

Sound waves.

"To whom should it be sent?"

Liu Pan did not answer.

But Yao Chong already knew.

It's not directed to the headquarters of the Ninth Division.

The sonic chord is downward.

Towards the seabed.

Towards that locked zone with a depth of 4200 meters and a radius of 3.7 kilometers.

They were calling for help from the thing that had "steel nails in it".

The coordinates on the screen jumped.

Target area.

Unit Zero began its descent.

The image on the curved screen has changed.

As the sea drew near, it changed from a blurry grayish-white to a clear deep blue.

You can see the waves.

The direction of the ocean current can be seen.

Then--

Shen Qingci stood up.

"stop."

Her voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the command center stopped.

On the screen, there is something in the middle of the sea.

It's not Deep Blue 7.

Deep Blue 7 stood beside it, like a leaf resting at the foot of a mountain.

That thing—

The image reconstructed from gravitational waves is blurry, grayish, and has indistinct edges.

But its outline—

Circular.

A perfect circle.

Extending upwards from below the sea surface, it has a diameter of approximately 3.7 kilometers.

It perfectly matches the radius of the locked area.

It's not something from the bottom of the sea.

It grew from the seabed to the surface of the sea.

Like a pillar.

A 3.7-kilometer-thick pillar that stretches from the seabed at a depth of 4200 meters to the surface.

The surface is smooth.

There is nothing attached to it.

There was no marine life.

There is no rust.

Around it, the seawater was calm. Not normally calm—

It's a kind of calm where even the movement of molecules is suppressed.

There were no waves.

There are no ripples.

There is no refraction.

Like glass.

Like a 3.7-kilometer-thick glass pillar cast by the laws of physics, inserted in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"Locked-up area." Song Zhiyi's voice came through the communication channel—

She stayed at the headquarters of the Ninth Division to provide remote support and "confirm real-time data."

Fine structure constant, gravitational constant, speed of light —

All locked.

error--"

She paused for a moment.

"zero."

It is not 10 to the power of -20.

It's zero again.

"The error is zero." Song Zhiyi's voice cracked slightly. "That's impossible."

All physical measurements have uncertainties.

Zero error means—

"That means it's not a measurement result," Yao Chong said.

He stared at the gray-white pillar on the screen.

"That's the set value."

Shen Qingci turned her head and looked at him.

"What do you mean?"

"The physical constants have uncertainties because the universe itself is vibrating."

Quantum fluctuations.

Zero-point energy.

You can't "nail" a constant to a single value.

Unless you're not measuring it.

He stood up.

"You are writing it."

There was a two-second silence in the command center.

Liu Pan suddenly spoke up.

"I heard you."

His voice doesn't sound right.

"It came from that direction."

It wasn't scanned—

It's a response.

He tapped his fingers three times on the armrest.

short.

long.

short.

S.

O.

S.

"They received a distress signal from DeepBlue 7," Liu Pan said. "They are responding."