Silent Ark

Chapter 57: Number 0

Yao Chong stared at the pillar on the screen.

A perfect circle.

Zero error.

Setting value.

It's not a recovery.

It's not locked.

It means writing.

Someone—

Or something—

At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, a 3.7-kilometer-thick pillar was written using the laws of physics as ink.

Then it waits for a reply.

Deep Blue 7 sent it a message.

It's back now.

Shen Qingci's voice came from the front row, very flat, as if he were reading a report he had already read:

"Remaining time for the game: 5 hours and 9 minutes."

"decline."

Unit Zero continued its descent.

The constant readings on the bulkhead have all been reduced to zero.

It's not an instrument malfunction; the deviation has truly become zero.

Shen Ruozhi stared at the numbers, tapping her fingers on the edge of the worktable.

Yao Chong recognized this rhythm.

She was calibrating the muon detector in the ETH lab, and that's the frequency of her fingers.

"It took Jiuke three months to use Professor Chen Dunli's underlying code to create a prototype, and the locking field was reduced to a radius of 600 meters," she said without looking up. "This pillar covers 3.7 kilometers."

The gap between us and it—

She didn't find the words.

Yao Chong spoke up for her: "They're not in the same league."

"Not a civilization."

Wang Xindong remained silent.

There were three pieces of equipment laid out in front of him, and his finger stopped on one of them.

"The sonar data from Deep Blue 7 has been deleted." He didn't even look up. "The version that the Ninth Science Department gave me only includes seabed topography scans below 4200 meters."

But I equipped that ship with a deep-sea exploration mode—

The algorithm I wrote myself.

The data for that pattern is gone.

Who deleted it?

"The timestamp was deleted 47 minutes after Deep Blue 7 lost contact."

By then, the ship had lost contact.

Remotely deleting data requires Ninth Department system privileges.

Shen Qingci did not turn around.

"I'll investigate, but now is not the time."

Wang Xindong's finger paused on the terminal for three seconds before continuing to swipe.

The dive lasted for sixty-three minutes.

3900 meters deep.

Liu Pan leaned against the worktable with his eyes closed.

He has been closing his eyes frequently lately.

After The Decameron, his connectionist vision became even more acute.

You can "see" farther with your eyes closed than with them open.

Yao Chong noticed it, but didn't ask.

"There's something there," Liu Pan suddenly said.

Shen Qingci's hand stopped on the control panel.

"What?"

"About 1,200 meters ahead," he frowned slightly, "the seawater is different."

"Why is it different?"

Liu Pan remained silent for five seconds.

"Quiet."

Yao Chong glanced at him.

Liu Pan's right hand gripped the edge of the worktable, his knuckles turning white—

She is as white as Shen Qingci, but for different reasons.

Shen Qingci was restrained, Liu Pan was—

Yao Chong couldn't explain it.

Liu Pan released his grip, picked up the coffee cup, and took a sip.

The cup has gone cold.

He didn't put it down; he held it in both hands, as if trying to warm it.

"There's another direction," he said, his voice even lower than before, "to the right, far away."

What's on the right?

Liu Pan shook his head.

"I don't know, but there—" He paused for three seconds, "it's not quiet there."

The dive lasted for seventy-one minutes.

4180 meters deep.

They saw the pillar.

It is not a sonar image.

It is visible to the naked eye.

When the light from Unit-00 shone on it, the light was swallowed up.

The surface of the pillar has no reflective properties.

Black, seamless, textureless, and without any signs of processing.

A complete geometric shape stretching from the seabed to the surface, 4200 meters high and 3.7 kilometers in diameter.

Shen Ruozhi's hands began to tremble.

She dedicated her life to precision measurement.

In ETH's lab, she was able to push the calibration accuracy of the muon detector to fourteen decimal places.

That is the limit of human engineering.

The precision of this pillar is six orders of magnitude higher than her limit.

"Write it down," she said.

Yao Chong looked at her.

"Measure a constant, obtain a value, and that value has an error—"

"Because the measurement itself can interfere with the results." Her speech quickened. "But what if it's not a measurement?"

What if there were something that directly told the universe that this constant is this value?

Then there will be no error.

You're not reading data from the universe; you're writing data into the universe.

She pointed to the pillar.

"It is writing values ​​into the laws of physics."

Within a 3.7-kilometer radius, whatever it says goes.

The cabin fell silent.

Liu Pan opened his eyes.

"There's something under the pillar," he said.

The dive lasted for seventy-eight minutes.

4200 meters deep.

seabed.

Unit 0 hovered at the bottom of the pillar.

The light shone on it.

building.

Geometric lines extend from the base of the column and embed themselves into the seabed rock strata.

No curves, no decorations, just pure straight lines and right angles.

Shen Ruozhi glanced at the straightness of the lines and turned her face away.

There are lights.

The building has interior lighting.

Cool white color with constant brightness.

The lights are exactly the same as those in the corridor of the Ninth Department.

It's not a ruin.

It's maintained by someone.

The building's entrance faces the columns.

The seabed sediment at the entrance has been cleared away.

It wasn't caused by ocean currents; it was man-made.

The traces of cleaning are fresh, and the edges have not yet been covered again by the fine sand of the deep sea.

Someone has been here recently.

Shen Qingci's hand rested on the control panel, her knuckles turning white.

"Communication channel, everyone quiet."

She accessed the communication system of Unit 0.

The frequency band used by Deep Blue 7 before it lost contact was still looping an SOS signal.

The signal was set up before the Ninth Division set off, so that it would keep going regardless of whether anyone was receiving it.

SOS.

SOS.

SOS.

Then--

Shen Qingci slammed her hand on the control panel.

A new signal appeared on the communication channel.

It's not SOS.

It's not noise.

It is a sound.

The sound that a certain throat structure can produce.

The syllables are clear and the rhythm is steady, like a sentence.

Like a phrase that's been said many times.

Shen Ruozhi frowned: "It is not any known language."

The phoneme combination method does not conform to the rules of human speech.

"But—" she paused, "there is a grammatical structure."

The arrangement of subject, verb, and object.

This is language.

The sound continued.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Yao Chong didn't know what it was saying.

But he knew one thing—

The sound came from under the pillar.

Inside the building.

In a place where the lights are on.

Someone is waiting for them at a depth of 4,200 meters on the seabed.

He closed his eyes.

A grayish-white sky.

A suspended shape.

Grid.

He sees this every time he closes his eyes.

It has never disappeared since the Decameron incident.

He learned not to look at it, to treat it as noise in the corner of his field of vision.

But this time—

The suspended object moved.

It's not drifting.

It's not a shock.

It's a turn.

It turned to him.

Yao Chong opened his eyes.

The cabin lights remained a cool white.

Shen Ruozhi was still analyzing the audio.

Wang Xindong is still looking at the sonar data.

Liu Pan leaned against the worktable, his eyes closed, seemingly "looking" at something.

Shen Qingci's hand was still on the control panel.

everything is normal.

But Yao Chong's back was covered in sweat.

That voice was still repeating on the communication channel.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Shen Qingci turned her head and glanced at him.

"decline?"

Yao Chong stared at the pillar on the screen.

Looking at the building at the base of the pillar.

Looking at those cold, white lights.

"decline."