Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 293 Kuiper's End

Three months after the Pioneer departed Triton, Ji Beihang reduced its speed to fifteen kilometers per second. It wasn't an engine problem. It was that there was no road ahead.

There is at least no path as we know it. The Kuiper Belt, a ring of billions of icy celestial bodies, lies scattered in the darkness beyond Neptune's orbit. The final two nodes of the web are hidden in this ocean of debris. The eighth and ninth nodes. The end of the solar system's web.

Within the first hour of entering the Kuiper Belt, a map lit up on the control panel in front of Ji Beihang. It wasn't a blank star chart. Two hundred million years ago, the network had marked every celestial body here with a diameter exceeding one kilometer. The paths were already there. Drawn two hundred million years ago.

Shen Yiming wrote a passage in his diary.

"We are not sailing in uncharted waters. We are following a route drawn two hundred million years ago. Others explore using searchlights to find their way. We explore using a pre-drawn map. This isn't exploration; this is inspection."

The eighth node is located inside a Kuiper Belt object, designated 2014MU69. This object, known in astronomical records as "Ultima Thule," is the most distant object ever flown by a human-made probe. Ji Beihang hovered the spacecraft at a distance of approximately 400 kilometers from the target.

"This celestial body looks like a flattened peanut. It's wide at both ends and narrow in the middle. I've been flying around for half my life and I've never seen a rock shaped like this before."

The functional label for the eighth node popped up: Terminal Routing Node. It's not a switch, not a relay station. It's responsible for maintaining the boundary integrity of the solar system's web. Tan Yue stared at the label for a few seconds.

"The web is a wall. The first six nodes are the furniture inside the wall, the seventh node is the window, and the eighth node is the wall itself. Beyond this wall lies interstellar space. The web drew a line here two hundred million years ago. Today we have arrived."

Ji Beihang pressed the access button.

Activation took only forty-seven seconds. But in those forty-seven seconds, all nine nodes of the solar system web completed a full topology synchronization.

Hangzhou Measurement and Control Center. A previously unseen image popped up on Zuo Cheng's system panel: a complete woven star map of the solar system. Nine nodes, each data link, and the real-time status of each relay station. Not a table, but a three-dimensional projection resembling a vascular network. Blue Star pulsed golden light at the center, the pulse traveling along the links to the Moon, Mars, Europa, Titan, Triton, and two points in the Kuiper Belt. Echoes from all nine points arrived simultaneously.

Chen Hao stood behind Zuo Cheng.

"All nine lights are on. Not separately, but simultaneously."

Zuo Cheng looked at the star map. Previously, the web was a group of interconnected nodes. Now, the bandwidth of each link is dynamic, and latency is calculated in femtoseconds using the web's internal clock. It's no longer nine people talking to each other. It has become a complete, single structure. More like a living thing.

A note pops up on the system panel.

"The web has been upgraded from a data exchange network to a self-sensing system. A new module, the full web map, has been added. This is only the second time in the four billion years of web construction that a complete topology synchronization has been achieved. The first time, it took 30,000 years to build the network. The second time, it took only 47 seconds."

The ninth node was located four days later.

It's about 30 million kilometers from the eighth node, buried deep inside another Kuiper Belt object. The object is less than 20 kilometers in diameter, almost half the size of that peanut. A label pops up on the woven panel.

"The ninth node in the solar system's web-weaving system. Functional role: The black box of the solar system's web-weaving system."

Tan Yue was stunned for five seconds.

"It's not a switch. It's not a router. It's not a broadcast array. It's a black box. From the moment the original node was activated four billion years ago until now, all the operational logs of the web are stored in this stone. Every protocol exchange, every node handshake, every data packet's routing record. Everything."

Ji Beihang performed the remote activation. The physical carrier of the ninth node was a cube with sides of about four meters, roughly the size of a small aircraft. The first data packet released after activation caused all screens at the Blue Star Measurement and Control Center to pause for one frame simultaneously.

Ninety-seven exabytes.

And this is just the index file, not the log itself. The index file contains the data storage locations and format numbers for every day over four billion years. This index alone exceeds the total amount of data on the entire human internet.

Zuo Cheng looked at the number and said something to Ying.

"We spent a hundred years building the Internet. This cube contains an Internet that a civilization spent ten billion years building."

Yu Ying integrated the data from the ninth node into the founder's archive. The classification was automatically assigned. The timeline spanned four billion years and was continuous. The data type was a web-like full-state log. The remarks section contained only one line.

"This log contains the entire history of Earth. The names of the seven hosts. The last message left by the founder before he departed. You only have enough time to read the first four hours. But you can search for anything at any time. Because you are now the master of the web."

The system displayed another message.

"All nine nodes of the solar system's web are activated. This took four billion years. The first host species to complete full node activation. The founders' optimal estimate was nine hundred million years. You completed a four-billion-year wait in four years."

The entire network map updates automatically. All nine nodes are golden. A complete link runs through the solar system. It's a line, but more like a pulsating nerve.

A new icon lit up in the corner of the panel. Its name consisted of only two words: Full Map.

Zuo Cheng opened it. The star map expanded beyond the solar system. The boundary of the woven network stretched infinitely, and the solar system degenerated into a tiny golden dot in the corner. One hundred and seventy-seven points of light were scattered throughout the Milky Way.

One hundred and sixty-eight gray dots. Eight blue dormant dots. One gold active dormant ...

A progress bar pops up. Eleventh branch. Interstellar communication. Sprouting progress 79%. Only 21% away from the activation threshold. A new button appears below: Consume points to accelerate.

Zuo Cheng looked at the button but didn't press it.

Ji Beihang's voice came back from the depths of the Kuiper Belt, passing through the newly built full-topology link of eight or nine nodes, with a delay of less than one femtosecond.

"Where to go next?"

Shen Yiming answered on Zuo Cheng's behalf.

"Keep moving forward. There's no corner of the solar system we haven't explored. Ahead lies interstellar space."

Zuo Cheng closed the system panel. Outside the window, satellites were tracing arcs in the sky. The Pioneer spacecraft circled silently in low orbit. But another spacecraft had already left humanity's furthest footprint on a peanut-shaped pebble. The black box of the ninth node glowed quietly in the woven map. A four-billion-year log. One hundred and seventy-seven planets. A neighbor still emitting a heartbeat.

He wrote a line of annotation in the blank space of the entire net-weaving diagram.

"Kuiper End. All nine nodes activated. Full topology complete. Web upgraded to a self-sensing system. Black box index of 97 exabytes. 177 web nodes located. 168 gray. Eight dormant. One active. Centaurus. We're here. One last step."