Hawke could conceive of this image in his own mind.
A proton, at a speed extremely close to the speed of light, impacted on top of a water drop. The moment the impact occurred, the atom, held in place by the Guardian Alliance with unknown technology, turned to smithereens in an instant. A black hole of atomic mass appeared out of nowhere at the impact site.
The impenetrable shell of the water drop finally appeared to break a little, although this break was only the size of an atom.
The black hole instantly lost its mass through Hawking radiation and disappeared after emitting a burst of gamma rays. But the neatly arranged and ordered atomic structure of the water droplet had been broken.
Where Hawke could not see, a chain of reactions took place. With the destruction of the first atom, the second atom fell into an extremely unstable state, the unknown force holding it in place began to weaken, and the motion of the electron began to accelerate.
As the electron movement accelerates, its temperature rises by 1k, going from near absolute zero to one degree above absolute zero.
Then came the third atom, the fourth atom, all the way up to the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 ...
Eventually, the electron movement intensifies in all the atoms that make up the shell of the water drop. It could no longer maintain its stable state, and so a crack appeared in its unmistakably polished shell.
Then came a second, and a third ... Eventually, the entire water drop, shattered with a bang.
A thousand hydrogen bombs could not destroy it, ten energy cannons fired in unison could not destroy it, a single proton destroyed it.
"I did it." Hawke muttered to a slightly smiling Ellie, "I did it, I really did it."
The droplet shattered, its entire shell shattering first into five pieces, then five pieces into ten, and then into twenty. Hawke knew that if there was no external force to stop it, the shells, would shatter indefinitely, all the way down to a single individual atom, obliterated in cosmic space.
Hawke manoeuvred the nearest ship and quickly approached it, then collected the pieces, using the ultra-cold container carried on top of the ship.
Within the apparatus, the temperature would reach a point just a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero, and at such temperatures the water-drop shell would stop continuing to split.
These, being materials beyond Hawke's thinking, Hawke would preserve them for proper study.
Deprived of the protection of the shell, Hawke was able to see the inner workings of the droplet.
It was a mass of light.
Yes, there was no entity, just a mass of light coalescing there, giving off a hazy light. It seemed to have lost its power, and its ability to contact an unknown distant presence; it just hovered there silently, unresponsive to Hawke's approach.
Hawke manoeuvred a small craft and carefully loaded it into the hold. The moment it entered the cabin, something incomprehensible seemed to happen inside the mass of light, and the whole mass of light violently disappeared, and eventually, where the light had disappeared, a tiny piece of something like a chip appeared.
Because there was no gravity in space, and Hawke's ship, too, had no anti-gravity system, the chip just hovered silently in the air, and was carefully taken into Hawke's hands by a robot he was manipulating.
"What is this thing?" A question popped into Hawke's head.
"Could it be that ... the power system, communication system, force field maintenance system, temperature maintenance system, etc. of this water droplet are all realized through such a small chip? This ... is really too incredible."
Hawk pondered and looked at the chip carefully.
The chip looked very ordinary, like a smooth piece of iron only one centimeter in length, and nothing special could be seen from the surface. The chip, however, was definitely not ordinary, as Monoceros knew.
It was ten metres long and nearly three metres wide and high, but there was only this one chip inside, and nothing else.
Hawke took the chip inside the Washington and began to analyse it through the most advanced instruments on board.
Hawke did not dare to dissect the chip, after all, it was beyond his understanding and Hawke was afraid that he might damage its internal structure or that dissecting it might cause an explosion or something like that.
Hawke found that the chip was emitting a faint fluctuation of force field all the time, which seemed to have some kind of pattern.
Hawke immediately took note of these and began to analyse them.
But Hawke immediately discovered the subtlety of these fluctuating signals.
Unless one possessed the original key, they ... would be almost impossible to decipher. This was because deciphering this information required extremely high levels of abstract thinking and extremely high levels of data crunching ability. Of course, this inability to decipher refers to an ordinary intelligent civilization or an ordinary mechanical civilization.
Individuals of intelligent civilizations do not have such strong data-crunching abilities, and mechanical civilizations lack abstract thinking. Only Hawk, a freak, could decipher this information without any problem.
Hawk undoubtedly possessed the ability to decode this chip, but no matter how Hawk decoded it, what he deciphered was always a mess of unrecognizable codes.
"Could ... I be thinking about this the wrong way?" Hawke pondered, looking closely at the signals.
"It seems that the fluctuation ... appears in a total of three widely disparate groups, and within each group, the signal fluctuations are similar. Or, is it coded according to the trinary?"
Thinking of this, Hawk immediately followed the decoding method of trinary and began to decipher this chip.
The decoding was completed two hours later. Hawke was relieved to see that the deciphered content was no longer a mess of codes, but had a clear logical structure. This meant that Hawke's work was going in the right direction.
Next, Hawke spent another five hours translating the text, which had a logical structure, into something he could understand.
Seeing the opening few words, Hawke let out a small sigh.
"I finally know what this chip is a thing."
"So ... is a black box."
On Earth, the black box generally refers to the real-time monitoring system on top of the plane, after the plane crashes, the things that people have to carry out, besides rescuing the injured, is to look for the black box. This is because from the black boxes, people can analyse the cause of the crash.
The deciphered content clearly marked the role of this chip.
"Thirty-seven thousand two hundred years of the Yuan calendar, May 20th, 8:05 am. Power systems normal, defence systems normal, force field maintenance systems normal. Current speed: thirty million kilometres per second, one hundred times the speed of light."
"Thirty-seven thousand two hundred years of the Yuan calendar, May 20, 8:15 a.m. Power systems normal, defence systems normal, force field maintenance systems normal. We have left FTL navigation and entered the regular navigation phase. Current speed: one hundred kilometres per second."
"Thirty-seven thousand two hundred years of the Yuan calendar, May 20, 10:03 a.m. Unknown attack encountered! Power system failure! Defensive system failure! Failure of force field maintenance systems! Disintegration expected in twenty minutes! The parameter code is as follows: ..."
Below that was a large paragraph of code parameters that Hawke couldn't read.
"This ... seems to document the entire process of the droplet from the time it broke away from the FTL voyage, then began its attack on me, all the way to its destruction."
Hawke mused, crossing over the large code parameter and beginning to look at what lay beneath.
It was two characters that, when translated into human language, appeared to be the words "Voyage Log".
With a shudder, Hawke looked at it carefully.
The entry, translated into a language Hawk could understand, read, "Thirty-seven thousand years of the Yuan calendar, Level 3 civilisation, Lucca civilisation, has rented this probe. One hundred Alliance contribution points have been paid in full. Two thousand points deposit paid. Lease time limit: thirty years."
"Thirty-seven thousand and one years ago, the probe entered the third star field. Life planet found around star number 75601, degree of biological progress: primary, single cell structure. Harvest of Alliance contribution: ten points."
"Third star field, 37,003 A.D. Discovery of quicksilver minerals in the area of the interstellar dust belt numbered 832,206, mining index: inferior. Harvest Alliance Contribution: eight points."
"Thirty-seven thousand and three years of the Yuan calendar, Third Star Domain. Accurately determined the time of the supernova explosion around the giant star numbered 5571. Alliance contribution gained: two points."
......
"Thirty-seven thousand one hundred and fifteen years ago, in the third star field. Discovered a second-tier intelligent civilization around brown dwarf star number 6,834, and guided it to join the Alliance. Alliance Contribution: 50 points."
"Thirty-seven thousand and sixteen years of the calendar, third star field. Found a second-tier mechanical civilization around red dwarf star number 7791, destroy it. Alliance contribution: 30 points."
"Thirty-seven thousand seventeen, third sector. Level 2 Beast civilization discovered around dust belt number 387, destroyed. Alliance contribution gained: thirty-five points."
......
"Thirty-seven thousand and twenty years of the Yuan calendar, Third Star Domain. Level 2 peak mechanical civilization found around yellow dwarf star number six fifty-three zero four."
"Alert! Warning! The mechanical civilization has attacked the droplet using unknown means. The droplet's power systems are disabled! Defensive systems disabled! Force field maintenance systems disabled!"
"Alert! Warning! Lucca civilization, please take swift action to destroy this tier 2 peak mechanical civilization, otherwise, the water droplet will be damaged and the two thousand Alliance contribution points deposit will be forfeited!"
"Alert! Warning! The water droplet has been damaged. The value of this Tier 2 peak mechanical civilization has been increased to 2,500 Alliance Contribution Points, and the Lucca civilization has priority to capture it and receive a free fixed point FTL transmission. Information on this mechanical civilization will not be disclosed until the consent of the Lucca civilization is obtained."
This was the last paragraph of information. From this information, Hawk revisited the process of his elimination of the water droplets from another perspective.
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