Silent Ark

Chapter 4: The Death of "God"

"The four forces separated from chaos," Liu Pan said. "Each force carries an absurdly precise constant, and each force performs an absurdly precise function. The way the four forces couple with each other in an absurdly precise way allows for the existence of atoms, molecules, stars, planets, and life."

"Brother Pan, you've already said that."

"I wasn't finished." Liu Pan stopped in front of him. "What does this whole system—the four forces, their constants, their coupling methods—resemble?"

Yao Chong didn't answer, not because he didn't know the answer, but because he didn't want to say it.

"Like a protocol," Liu Pan said for him, "like the TCP/IP protocol, which specifies how data packets are encapsulated, transmitted, and verified. There's no reason why it's this format and not that format. It's because someone agreed on it, and that's how it's decided. Physical laws aren't 'natural laws.' Physical laws are protocols in operation."

"By whom—"

"I don't know. What it's called doesn't matter. What matters is—"

Liu Pan pointed to his left ear.

"Half an hour ago, a parameter in that protocol was modified."

At 3:00 AM sharp, the 4721st collision train was launched.

Beam injection, focusing, acceleration, and circulation.

All parameters are normal.

Yao Chong stared at his data panel, while Liu Pan sat beside him without saying a word.

He didn't speak again after he finished saying those words.

Yao Chong secretly glanced at him—Liu Pan was looking at his left hand. Palm up, fingers slightly spread, as if sensing something.

3:01.

The beam current reaches the rated energy.

13.6TeV.

3:01:40.

The collision is over.

Data burst onto Yao Chong's screen.

The decay products arrived as expected—Higgs signal, top quark pairs, and multiple jets—all within the range predicted by the Standard Model.

He began to routinely label things.

Then he saw that thing.

A vacuum region of 0.3 mm around the point of impact.

A track appeared in a place where no signal should have been generated.

Like a straight line, a perfect straight line, without bending, without clustering, without accumulating energy.

Something that should never have been detected has been detected.

Yao Chong turned to look at Liu Pan.

Liu Pan was already looking at him.

Instead of looking at the screen behind him, we were looking at him.

There was something in his eyes that Yao Chong had never seen before—not excitement, not fear, but recognition. Just like when he first arrived in Europe and met Liu Pan, seeing someone on the street whom he hadn't seen in a long time but who felt very familiar.

"You saw it too?"

"I saw it, but I didn't see one."

"Not just one?"

One hundred and seventeen articles.

Yao Chong looked back at the screen in front of him; there was only one message.

Why do I only see one?

"Because you're staring at the data panel, not the big screen. Look in front of you."

Yao Chong looked up and faced the monitor screen.

Between the screen and the eyes, in the air of the control room, there is a line.

Very fine.

It at least looks thinner than a strand of hair, thinner than a spider's silk.

Or rather, this line is not visible to the naked eye; it is finer than the finest thing that the concept of "fine" can encompass, and it is composed of units even smaller than quarks.

But it's there.

Extending out from a direction 15 degrees to the left of his front, it cuts through the air, through his field of vision, and extends behind him, disappearing into the darkness deep within the corridor.

It is emitting light, but it is not real light—there is no light source, no photons, only the concept of "brightness" itself.

It's like separating the concept of "brightness" from light and making it something that exists independently.

Yao Chong closed his eyes.

These lines did not disappear; in fact, they were even clearer than when I opened my eyes.

"One hundred and seventeen articles?" he said with his eyes closed.

"No, after the impact two years ago, you spent nineteen hours on the fourth basement level. Nineteen multiplied by π and rounded down, is fifty-nine. You should have seen fifty-nine lines."

Yao Chong counted again.

That makes exactly fifty-nine articles.

"Everyone sees a different number," Liu Pan said. "The current evidence suggests that the number of hours people who entered the radiation range of this unknown substance two days ago survived is the result of multiplying π by the number of hours and rounding down."

"How could you..."

"I entered the underground about 37 hours and 30 minutes ago. Professor Chen came here 14 hours ago. He should be able to see 44."

"Did you ask him?"

No, I was just guessing.

Yao Chong opened his eyes, and the line disappeared.

The screen still shows a data track.

"Brother Pan, this isn't right."

"I know."

"It's not physically wrong." It's logically wrong. These lines know how long each of us has lived after coming into contact with something. They are being seen in a way that is tailored to our individual personalities. This is not a particle. This is not a physical phenomenon.

"right."

"What is that?"

Liu Pan did not answer.

Because the lights in the control room went out.

It's not a power outage.

The screen was still lit.

The equipment is still running.

The indicator light is still flashing.

Only the overhead lights were off.

It's as if someone precisely removed only the "lighting" function from the lamp.

Then the temperature changed.

It's not a physical temperature drop; the condensation on the iced Americano on the table is still evaporating at the original rate on that water ring.

But Yao Chong felt cold, not the kind of cold that you feel on your skin, but a more primal kind of cold that bypasses the brain's temperature sensory areas and goes directly to a deeper level.

It felt like something had touched him, not in the sense of physical contact, but more like some non-existent sensory organ that didn't perceive temperature, pressure, or pain.

It perceives only one thing: being watched.

It's not that it's "looking from a certain direction," but rather that the state of "being watched" has become a physical property of the current environment, like gravity or electromagnetism. It's not that "someone" is watching him.

It's not that the entire space is watching.

Yao Chong found himself trembling, but not from fear.

Fear is visible, directional, and can be fought.

However, his trembling is now completely out of his control—like a cell phone vibrating, but localized, high-frequency, low-amplitude, localized, but only his hands are affected.

He looked down at his hands.

My hands weren't shaking.

It was his bones that were shaking.

It's not muscles that move bones.

It's the bones vibrating on their own. Frequency—

He doesn't need to calculate.

His subconscious already knew.

0.118 nanoseconds.

The hyperfine structure transition frequency of a hydrogen atom is divided by π.

It is exactly the same as the perturbation of arc segment 4.

But he had never been to arc four.

The only thing your hands have touched is the controller in the main control room, which means the isolation measures have completely failed.

"Brother Pan."

no respond.

"Liu Pan".

There has still been no response.

Yao Chong turned the chair around.