Jiang Chen looked speechlessly at the guy in the spacesuit as he released the drone. Then he began to control the spherical drone and flew down the well.
Back on the rover, Wang Qiang took off his spacesuit in the buffer compartment and sat back into the driver’s seat. James next to him was drinking coffee while watching the drone disappear down the well.
“Intelligent?”
Wang Qiang leaned back against his seat, then he took a sip of his coffee before he grinned.
“What else? You think it’s controlled remotely by the ground command center?”
Even with hyper-light-speed communication based on quantum effects, the delays in communication was Mars and Earth was still in the thousands if not ten thousands milliseconds. The best way to put this into perspective would be like playing an online game where the character lagged by half a minute.
Communication was not an issue, but it would be hysterical to control a drone.
However, Wang Qiang did not know that the drone he released was not communicating based on electromagnetic waves, but based on a Klein particle communication chip embedded with crystal fragments…
After the drone entered the well, it took about half an hour before the drone Jiang Chen controlled finally arrived at the bottom of the tunnel where the metal shell was drilled through.
“Let’s take some photos first…”
Jiang Chen pointed the camera at the hole, although the previous drone already photographed the scene, neither the resolution nor the lighting were comparable to the drone with the latest technology.
While pressing the shutter, Jiang Chen controlled the drone and flew into the hollow layer with the spiral structure.
The space of five kilometers was unexpectedly empty, at least emptier than the hologram concept map shown at the meeting. The spiral tunnels looked like a trunk, at every interval, the space extended to the surrounding and resembled leafs on the tree.
All the “rooms” were empty, and nothing was there except for the build up of dirt.
After Jiang Chen took a few photos of the rooms, he continued down.
The spiral space was particularly long and extended down to a depth of ten kilometers. Here, the composition of the air changed slightly. Although it was still dominated by carbon dioxide, the oxygen content was much higher compared to before.
“The Martian also breathed oxygen? This is a new discovery right?” Jiang Chen looked at the data on the drone and muttered.
When he arrived at the last layer of the spiral tunnel, Jiang Chen passed through an open door, circular in shape, and slowly drifted into a spherical space.
However, when he entered the spherical space, he felt slightly uneasy.
This kind of uneasiness was like being watched by Death Claws, or Mud Crabs in the dark. The only difference was that his intuition told him that it was not hostile, it seemed to be purely observing him.
He suddenly had a hunch that he had encountered a bit of an issue.
“…I feel a little weird here. I’ll get Amos.”
When he looked around the lines on the spherical space wall, the uneasiness in his mind grew stronger.
Just as he was about to interrupt the connection with the drone and change to Dr. Amos, a white light suddenly illuminated from underneath him, engulfing the entire space together along with the floating drone…
…
He didn’t know how long it took.
Suddenly Jiang Chen opened his eyes and sat up from the ground.
“Where am I?”
He put his hand on his sore forehead, then slowly climbed up from the ground, stood up straight, and began to look around.
A cool breeze blew in his face, and the air was fresh. It was not the ruins of Mars underground, nor the laboratory of Dr. Amos, but a wilderness – a place that resembled the African savanna.
And he was no longer a drone.
When he looked around, the entire land was golden, like a field of wheat. Under the gentle breeze, the wheat swayed freely. In the distance, there was a steep red clay wall. The mountains looked like they were cut by a giant machete, square, without any spectacular shape.
Jiang Chen squatted down and carefully observed the wheat under his feet.
Although it looked like green foxtails, neither the color nor the shape matched the species in his memory.
Just as he was studying the environment around him, a ball of light popped up form nowhere, and it cricled around him twice.
“A mammal? Surprising.”
“Surprising?” Jiang Chen looked at the ball of light and carefully took two steps back, staring directly at it.
Just when Jiang Chen was planning to ask it “who are you”, he heard a faint sigh.
“Yes. On Mars, mammals are like endangered species. I believe if one day you saw the tigers and lions in your zoo follow your appearence and action, and invent their own words, I’m afraid you’ll be equally as surprised, if not more… If you use your language to describe this shock, it’s probably this feeling.”
Jiang Chen took a moment to process this information and suddenly realized something, he frowned.
“Have you read my memory?”
“Please forgive me for taking the liberty to. If I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with you.” The ball of light expressed its apology in a calm tone.
“Well… can you tell me who you are?” Jiang Chen asked.
“I’m a piece of memory,” The light ball replied truthfully.
“Memory? Is it similar to AI? A holographic image?” Jiang Chen still held a frown on his face.
After the light ball was silent for a moment, it gave a very ambiguous response.
“Yes and no. Similar, but there are differences.”
The light ball’s words made Jiang Chen confused, and as he tried his best to understand the concept. He suddenly recalled that he had seen something similar.
Lin Lin… No, precisely, it was Tingting, when he connected his spirit with the queen of the Harmony Civilization. As if he crossed the barrier of the dimension with the Brahma Colonization Ship, he was exiled to a strange universe, a strange planet, witnessing their culture, technology, society, and so on, moving in the wrong direction.
It felt extremely similar.
Just like his soul exiting his body, it felt like he crossed the distance between time and space and drifted away to another corner of the universe.
He didn’t know what words he could use to describe this wonderful feeling, and he didn’t know how to express his astonished state.
But he already knew what happened to him.
If he were right.
The land under his feet…
Should be Mars from more than three billion years ago…