Chapter 1383: Echo

Sir Scott Planting, director of the Verplandon Observatory and the last director of the observatory—Gawain is no stranger to this name. He has heard about this ancient gangster from Diana. Only a few words from the duo, and knowing that it was Sir Scott who ordered Diana, who was the guard of the observatory at the last moment, to leave his post and flee to the north. In the heart of this iron man soldier with broken memory, Scott The image of Sir Planting should be one of the few most profound things.

It is impossible for her to admit the wrong person at this time.

Gawain's heart moved, and he subconsciously took two steps towards the phantom-on the one hand, to confirm the appearance of the phantom, on the other hand, to get close and protect Diana. After all, this phantom has existed here for many years. The spirit does not know what state it is in. There was a chaotic stage of indiscriminate attack when Carmel was first discovered.

And just as Gawain approached, there was a new change in the hazy light. The tall and fuzzy figure in the center of the light seemed to wake up from stillness, and a slightly indifferent mechanical voice came from it. : "Identified that the door is open...Identified a preset contact...Senior security guard Diana...Transfer to the setting process and start playing the recorded data."

As the voice fell, the hazy light shrank again, and the figure in the center of the light became clearer than before. Sir Scott Planting’s vision stood there, but his sight did not fall on anyone, he looked straight. Ahead, I looked past Diana, as if looking at a target that no longer existed here: "Diana, long time no see...I don’t know how long the time outside has passed when you see this record, but since If you can see it, it means you have really come back here—the greatest miracle happened among the several possibilities that Alfons and I had assumed. You opened the door to the observatory..."

"This is just a video record," Amber reacted, muttering in a low voice, "I thought it was the same as Carmel back then..."

Diana didn't seem to hear Amber's whisper, she just stared at the illusion in front of her, and subconsciously said softly: "Sir Scott..."

But she did not go on, because this is just a video material left a long time ago, it will not respond to her own words-the real Sir Scott may have been out of this world for many years.

She just wanted to know what kind of information her former master left to herself here, and whether this information was related to the memories she had lost due to the malfunction.

After a while, Sir Scott’s vision really broke the silence. He stared straight ahead and said calmly as if reminiscing: “You should be surprised that after the disaster broke out, there are still people alive in this observatory... in fact. This was also beyond my expectation. An ancient artifact, which happened to be stored in the upper storage room of the observatory at the time, miraculously offset the terrible energy surge. Although only a part of it was offset, it was placed in the observatory. A small number of people survived.

"That artifact is part of the Verplandon meteorite rain in the past, which is the'external object' in the world's population. Unfortunately, the wisdom of mortals still seems to be insufficient to decipher its mystery. Alfons and I have studied several things here. Years ago, we didn’t understand its operating mechanism and control method. The only thing we can do is to guide the huge energy it continuously releases, coupled with our only wisdom, to build a small in this terrible purgatory. And survive as long as possible...

"Now that thing is placed in the center of the whole shelter, and you will see it later. When you read this message, we obviously don’t need it anymore—I don’t know how the situation outside is now, whether the earth Has been cured? Has the civilized order been rebuilt? This answer seems to have no meaning to me, but now that you have returned here, then I hope everything is better...

"Diana, when I decided to leave this message, twenty years have passed since the disaster broke out.

"At the beginning of the disaster, six people in the observatory survived, but Mark and Melsana only persisted for less than a month. They were eroded by deadly magic power and their bodies were severely mutated. We had to end their pain early. Levin died in the second year. He... failed to survive the transformation ritual, and with flesh and blood, he could not survive this predicament. Bairlow was the one of us who persisted for a long time. He even persisted for three years. Before. Now... Only me and Alphonse are left here. We have transformed ourselves into magical flesh and blood puppets years ago, so that we can keep moving until the material that constitutes the body rots away. You know, the empire strictly forbids this evil magic—but what does it matter now?

"But even if the life form is transformed, our time is still limited. Alfons and I can feel that our souls are gradually decayed in the skin, so... maybe it's time to leave something.

"Diana, we don’t know if you will really come back, nor if you, as an'iron man, can successfully establish a foothold in the barbaric city-states and closed kingdoms in the north. We are not even sure in this disaster. Is there really any country that can survive, but we still decide to leave all this for you-this is all our research results in the past two decades, and you...maybe the only'person' who can understand its meaning.

"We cracked that signal.

"Diana, do you remember that signal? The signal that came into our sight a few years ago, frequently ringing in the night sky, lighting up among the stars, and conveying information to us in a wonderfully coded way... we know it is What's up."

Accompanied by Sir Scott’s words, Gawain, who was listening quietly beside him, suddenly felt a jump in his heart-passing among the stars, with a wonderfully coded signal, which made him suddenly think of something, and at this moment, Si Sir Kurt’s vision took a half step back. He opened his hands and outlined invisible lines in the air. Then a scene appeared in front of Diana.

Dots, radioactively connected lines, circles, this is exactly the pattern stored in Diana's mental core, and it is also the pattern carved on the wall of the hall on the first floor of the observatory!

"This is the first content we received, and the most repeated content we have received in the past few years," Sir Scott's deep voice sounded on the platform. "We have always wanted to understand what this pattern represents. What, and boldly guess that it may be some kind of design, may be some kind of religious symbol, may be some kind of occult symbol, but we all guessed wrong...until the Alphonse Fellow uses the power of alien objects here A fissure opened in the sanctuary through which a specific starry sky could be observed more clearly, and we finally understood the true meaning of this picture, Diana, this pattern...It is actually a'map', a'between the stars' Map'.

"Perhaps we should call it a'star map'? Alphonse Fellows thought of this good name. What it marks is actually a star, and this star is at the intersection of these lines. You noticed Huh? Each of these dots at the end of the line represents a star that flashes according to the C-26 standard frequency, and this ring...it surrounds the only focus of these radiation rays, and it represents a certain kind of A man-made thing, perhaps a sign, a'characteristic object' that expresses identity...

"And this whole pattern, the only message conveyed to us is-we are here!"

Sir Scott's vision opened his hands, his face was full of smiles, as if he was about to announce to the whole world, even though he and Gawain and Diana before the vision had been separated by seven hundred years of vicissitudes, despite When he left this message, he was in a desperate situation. The world outside the sanctuary had collapsed. At this moment, his body seemed to be burning with a raging flame. The heat of that flame almost penetrated the barrier for seven centuries. Grilled on Gawain's face.

"They are there! They are at the focal point of those stars!" Sir Scott declared, as if to emphasize again, "Diana, this signal comes from among the stars, just like when we were bold at an anniversary dinner. As I guessed-at the time the Alphonse Scholar was biting the barbecue, and you were replacing your brass core with alchemical oil, Bairlow stood up drunkly and said:'We may not be alone in this universe'...

"We are not alone in this universe! Diana, when we finally understood the meaning of this image, Alphonse and I, as well as Bairlow, who was still alive at the time, were all ignited by immense enthusiasm—even though the outside world had already Disintegrated, the order of civilization seems to have disappeared, but in this small shelter, we still find work that we can continue as a scholar who studies stars, and this is the only work we can do here. -Decipher all the signals received by the Wiplanton Observatory in Gondor between 1730 and 1740!"

Sir Scott’s vision said loudly. He raised a hand, and a curtain of entrapped light emerged in the air beside him. There were countless points and lines of light jumping in the light curtain. They were in Gawain and others. Extending and connecting in front of you gradually formed basic geometric figures, mathematical symbols, and calculation formulas. This is the kind of coding pattern received more than once by the Thorin hub and the winter hub, and it is also the dragon **** Enya. Personally confirmed "Greetings" from the stars.

"This is their'introduction' to themselves, a proof of identity passed among the stars. They use the'standard language' of mathematics to show their identity to every civilization capable of receiving signals, and to show that they are a person who can carry out logic. A thinking and intelligent civilization that can use mathematical language..."

Immediately afterwards, Sir Scott raised his other hand, and in the light curtain beside him condensed a larger amount of more complex information, that is a well-structured character, that is completely Different from any kind of writing on the continent of Loren.

"And these are their text, a'letter' they tried to communicate with other civilizations. Of course, we realized this possibility when we first received this part of the signal and smoothly transformed it into graphics. , But for a long time, we don’t know how to crack an “alphabet” from strangers out of thin air, plus the large number of observation tasks undertaken by the observatory, the research work on “heavenly aliens” and the imperial capital. In recent years, the investment in various research fields has been squeezed and talents have been dwindled. We have never had enough energy to pay attention to these mysterious alien symbols. But now, we have so much time, and Bachelor Alphonse and I are finally in those numbers. The secrets of these words are revealed in the huge monitoring records...

"They come with their own'interpretation'-in the signals of those mathematical figures, the sending and ending of each geometric figure has a'stamp', which is used to correspond to a paragraph of text description. Those basic mathematical symbols, numbers and operations are also There are corresponding annotation methods. In addition, these words themselves are actually self-explanatory. As long as you accumulate enough samples and add enough time, a good linguist can slowly deduce them. Possible implications... The combination of these two methods is enough to decipher half of the information and slowly reason out the other half...

"I am not a good linguist, but Bairlow is. He completed 70% of the cracks, and after his death, Alfons and I did the rest...

"Unfortunately, even if we decipher these texts from alien stars, we don’t know how to connect with the civilization that sent the message—we don’t understand the principle of signal transmission among the stars, and the observatory’s current limited Function, the only thing Alphonse and I can be sure of is that the'secondary evolution' has already taken place when this signal is transmitted to our planet.

"This process is very complicated to explain. To understand it in a simpler way, a certain high-level, high-speed energy fluctuation crosses the long sea of ​​stars to reach our planet, and reacts with the magical environment of our planet. After the reaction The fluctuations released are the information recorded by the observatory's listening system. This transmission method may deliberately take into account the'receiving ability' of low-level civilizations, because low-level civilizations like ours may not be able to capture this signal. The'primitive pulse', and correspondingly, it is extremely difficult to transmit such a signal that can quickly shuttle between the stars...

"Of course, in the current situation, even if we know the principle of transmitting signals, it doesn’t make sense—most of the functions of the observatory have been shut down, and there is only a terrible purgatory twisted in the magic of chaos outside the observatory. We have tried to contact other sites. , I also tried to explore further places after trying my best to protect it, but all were in vain. There was no response, and there were no survivors... We confirmed the collapse of the civilized world. In this situation, the knowledge we have... I'm afraid It's meaningless.

"But Alfons and I still keep hope, because we are sure that you will escape safely, and you will definitely come back here with a new partner someday in the future, and in a certain exploration, we are still in Viplan In the No. 2 warehouse northwest of Dunton, traces of people staying and facilities were violently demolished, which shows that at least a group of survivors have passed by here and fled to the north...

"We have been deeply trapped in this corrupted land, and rely on this small sheltered space to survive. There is only a dead end from the observatory, but the traces of those survivors keep Alfons and I always hopeful. We choose to believe. ... the resilience of civilization.

"Diana, it is the 20th year since the observatory has been closed. After leaving this image, Alphonse and I will leave this sheltered space for the last time and leave the star map on the most conspicuous wall of the lower level of the observatory. ', then we will come back here, close the door, and never leave again. In the next time, Alphonse and I will be with the starry sky above, quietly waiting for the arrival of the last moment.

"Perhaps the next time someone comes here, no one will be able to understand the meaning of the star map in the lobby on the first floor. It is even possible that until the observatory is completely destroyed, no one will visit the ruins again, but we believe that knowledge It is always valuable, even if civilization is destroyed, even if the last wise being closes his eyes under the stars, knowledge—as the footprint of civilization seeking the unknown, it will always have its meaning.

"Goodbye, Diana, maybe it's too late to say that it's too late, this is what I didn't have time to tell you back then-you have completed the service with honor, and now you are off work."