After the message was sent, Hawke began to wait in silence.
The main way to communicate over distance is through quantum entanglement, which means that two particles in an entangled state will instantly sense the effect on one of them, no matter how far apart the other particle is. The exact principle of quantum entanglement is not yet known to humans, but this does not affect Hawke's exploitation of this principle.
But the quantum entanglement effect cannot be used directly for communication, because although the transfer of information between quanta is real-time, the observer cannot know what it represents just by the parameters of one particle; the parameters of the two quanta must be combined to decipher exactly what it conveys.
But then, it would be back to the old way, and the parameters of the other particle would have to be transmitted to the observer by conventional means, which would still not count as FTL.
But Hawke used an ingenious way to circumvent this obstacle. By using a large number of entangled quanta and applying some kind of logic algorithm to them, the parameters of these quanta would possess a certain pattern, and then applying the algorithm to them from the receiver side, the information to be transmitted could be restored.
But there is a drawback to this method, and that is, when quantum communication is carried out, the information will be probabilistically wrong. With Hawke's current capabilities, Hawke could guarantee that the receiver of the quantum communication would receive a message that was 99.99% similar to the original message, and the remaining zero point one would be the wrong message. This is an inevitable drawback of this logical algorithm, which can only be reduced by all means possible, but cannot be completely eliminated.
Now it was time to measure the feasibility of Hawke's approach.
Seventy seconds and another zero point two milliseconds later, Hawke received the message back.
"Hello universe. My name is Hawk and I'm from Earth,"
Hawk looked at the return message with excitement and exclaimed, "Hyper-range communication technology, finally developed. There is a slight error in this message, the last punctuation mark, the original message was a full stop, but it came back as a comma. That's the inevitable zero point one in the probability, I guess. However, since the general direction is feasible, I can reduce the probability of this error to one in a trillion through technical means, and at that point, it will basically have no effect on me."
Next, Hawke dived into his research on quantum communication.
The advantages of quantum communication were obvious, the most obvious being the real-time nature of the communication, followed by the security of the information.
This means that no matter how strong the interference is between the two parties, it will not affect the information transmitted.
This advantage solved one of Hawke's major problems. In the past, Hawke had been worried that if the alien civilisation he encountered realised that he was only an electronic being and not an intelligent civilisation, it would interfere and deprive him of control of the rest of the ship. But now, with quantum communication technology, Hawke no longer fears any interference.
But this advantage is at the same time a disadvantage. Since quantum communication does not use radio waves, it means that Hawke cannot transfer himself out of the ship via quantum communication. To transfer itself, it had to rely on conventional radio waves.
After extensive testing and refinement, Hawke created the "Super Distance One" quantum communication instrument, which would be able to provide Hawke with real-time communication within 200 million kilometres with an error of less than 10 millionths.
If the distance exceeds 200 million kilometres, the accuracy of quantum communication decreases exponentially, and the information is rapidly decayed into a pile of unreadable garbage.
But even real-time communication within 200 million kilometres is too useful for Hawke, and Hawke can extend this distance indefinitely by building a relay station.
With the Hyperspace One communicator, Hawke's progress in building the ε Eri star system has once again taken a leap forward. With tens of thousands of communicators scattered throughout the ε Eri star system, Hawke has basically covered the entire ε Eri star system with signals. As long as Hawke is in the ε Eri star system, Hawke can contact any instrument anywhere in the system at any time.
Sitting in orbit around ε Eri a, Hawke commanded remotely and began the construction of the interstellar fortresses of ε Eri c and ε Eri b. The home base of ε Eri a, not to mention the entire planet, was now covered by hundreds of large interstellar docks, thousands of moons, tens of thousands of ships and tens of thousands of interstellar turrets, which, truly, had become a network of heaven and earth.
At ε Eri c and ε Eri b, were equipped with ten super-giant energy cannons by Hawke, which had a range of ten million kilometres and could destroy an asteroid twenty kilometres in diameter with a single shot. This would have been unbelievable in the past. You know, the largest yield hydrogen bomb that Hawke could currently build could only shatter such an asteroid, not say destroy it.
Because they were so huge, these energy cannons could only be built on top of the moons of ε Eri b and ε Eri c. No existing ship of Hawke's could fit these big guys.
In addition to these ten super-giant energy cannons, Hawke had a total of over 10,000 village and township-class ships and one hundred 300,000-ton county-class ships in both locations. In addition, Hawke has planted a large number of controlled mines and hidden turrets in the asteroid belt, so that his ships can pass through without being affected in any way, and in the event of an enemy attack, these mines and turrets will be under Hawke's control and will deal a devastating blow to the enemy.
The entire star system of the Epsilon Eri system was set up by Hawke as a net. Hawke was sure that if an enemy of the level of the Lizardman civilization dared to invade at this time, Hawke could blast them to smithereens in less than a hundred seconds.
At this point in time, it had been over two hundred years since Hawke arrived in the Epsilon Eri system. In those two hundred years, Hawke had a real taste of what heaven was like. Yes, this was paradise.
With unlimited resources and precious peace, what could be better than this place?
The Large Particle Collider of the Rim of ε Eri galaxy is performing collision after collision, generating huge amounts of experimental data all the time. ε Eri a surface, and space, is also filled with Hawke's laboratories, where scientific experiments in dozens of major categories and over three thousand subjects are being conducted.
The scientific and technological development of Hawke shows a thriving trend.
The most obvious is that Hawke's material technology has finally broken through the shackles and the first combat City ship has been built.
This City ship, with a mass of four million tons in its unloaded state, was equipped with twenty energy cannons, each of which had 60 per cent of the power of the ground cannons at the ε Eri b and ε Eri c fortresses. In Hawke's war projection, five City ships, carrying eight hundred county ships and ten thousand village and township ships, would have the power to completely destroy a star fortress.
This is a true fortress of war! Even just two City ships, not even escort ships, would be needed to blast an entire civilisation of Lizardmen to slag.
During these years, Hawk's computer technology also saw significant development, with the latest super photon computer built to reach a hundred times the computing speed of computers that reached the pre-Epsilon Eri galaxy. This latest computer is housed in the only City ship, which has become Hawke's new flagship.
Hawke gave the City ship a name that smacked of homesickness.
"Since it's a City ship ... it'll be called the Beijing." Hawke thought, "Unfortunately, City airships require too much material technology, my ability to produce this ultra-high strength material is still very limited, and there will be no major breakthrough in the foreseeable future. To be specific, it would take thirty years to build a City airship. Hey, there can't be a rush, take your time, there's still plenty of time anyway."
Hawk thought, and once again plunged into the era of the great construction that was raging.
Gradually, another hundred years passed. Together with the Beijing, Hawke had built a total of four City ships, named by Hawke as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. In addition to the four City ships, Hawke also built hundreds of County ships, thousands of Township ships and tens of thousands of Village ships.
All of these ships used nanobot repair technology, and all of the county-level ships and above were equipped with energy cannons.
If all these ships were activated, they would take up 70% of Hawk's computing power, plus all kinds of logistics ships, ground bases, space turrets, controlled mines, hidden turrets and other equipment, Hawk's computing power would be used up. But there was nothing Hawke could do about it except laugh bitterly.
Hawke found that his own computer technology development did not seem to be able to keep up with the speed of his fleet development.
"That's not a good sign." Hawke thought, "It's time to speed up the development of computer technology, eh, let's stop the construction of war-type ships for now until there is a breakthrough in computer technology."
Hawke made up his mind.
While Hawk was concentrating on his technological development, two billion kilometres away from the Epsilon Eri system, there was a sudden distortion in the dark cosmic space, and a pure white object with a streamlined body, like a drop of water, appeared.
It seemed to be alive, silently observing Hawk's movements. A month later, it sent a message to Hawke.
"Hello, strange mechanical civilization."