Deep Space Wandering Fleet
Chapter 412 - 410: The Loneliness of a Planet

Chapter 412: Chapter 410: The Loneliness of a Planet

"These batches of kids can really be called lucky ones, actual travel is so much more interesting than just talking about it on paper."

Chen Zheng recalled his own childhood, where education in Cosmology was limited to gazing at the stars by the window, nowhere near as fun as being able to travel to Outer Planets now...

Cosmology is a compulsory course for members of the New Human Civilization during their elementary and secondary education years, much more beloved than subjects like language and Mathematics.

Of course, due to the limitations of the body, everyone could only gaze from space, or experience the splendor of the planets and the cultures of the native civilizations through robot VR equipment during this trip, which was also a significant regret.

Many teachers were reading out the "Alien Civilization VR Tourism Discipline Rules," including but not limited to "not disturbing the life of the native civilizations, respecting local customs and traditions, following the rules, and not making aggressive or discriminatory actions..." and so on, a long list of regulations.

This series of cultural activities had already led to the signing of a number of agreements with the Taipu Civilization. The Taipu people could now confirm that humans were here for fun, and they wished for humans to make more requests, so that they could earn more Trading Points. Various countries allocated some natural parks and large museums and even compulsorily drafted some clueless celebrities to perform shows of their civilizations.

"The thought of using VR equipment just makes it feel like something’s missing."

"Come off it, this is already pretty good. If your body landed on a planet, you’d end up flat on your face."

"Let’s go, let’s fly out and see the whole planet," Lu Tao patted his good buddy’s shoulder.

There was a large group of classmates behind them, chattering and joking around, some of whom were couples. This was their graduation trip; afterward, they would officially enter society and wouldn’t have as many opportunities to fool around.

After entering society, life would be completely different from the student days. Upon entering society, one would officially start working; during interstellar travel, crew members would take turns hibernating, and only when a new planet was reached would everyone fully awaken to carry out spaceship maintenance.

If their waking periods differed, friends and family would be unable to see each other for a long time.

This was something that they never experienced during their student days.

Children have their worries, adults have theirs; no society is perfect. If no one wanted to work, where would a powerful civilization come from?

And so, the crowd split into two batches, one batch experiencing the robot VR equipment and the other preparing for a spacewalk.

"Let’s go, it’s our turn," Lu Tao suited up in his Power Armor and spoke hesitantly with a bit of trepidation in his headset.

Spacewalking was an important part of training for space Engineers. As tourists, they were just there for sightseeing without any special tasks, and this counted as their first close encounter with a planet in their lives.

With a "click," a slight vibration, they passed through the final airlock door and suddenly saw that vast pale blue Planet.

Looking down from this angle, a planet was just too vast, too inconceivable!

It floated silently in the pitch-black Universe. The universe was filled with many such blue planets, but that did not alleviate its loneliness.

A girl’s voice suddenly came through the headset, "When I was small, I always had a question. Why don’t planets floating in the universe fall down?"

"Haha, that question is so silly... Fall down? In which direction would it fall?" a boy said.

"Falling down is falling down! Like when walking, if there is nothing under your feet, don’t you fall? How could I think too much as a kid—didn’t you ever wonder?"

"Of course not, you’re really silly!"

The chatter gradually dwindled as Chen Zheng took a deep breath. The intense excitement had dissipated, replaced by a strange sense of desolation. Although he specialized in Space Machinery and often walked in space, this was his first time facing such a vast planet.

He didn’t know where this feeling of desolation and emptiness came from, or why it had arisen...

This type of Power Armor featured gas-powered control sticks. Whenever an astronaut wished to move in a certain direction, gas would jet out from the relevant position, propelling the astronaut. Since it was for civilian use, the device’s top speed was three meters per second.

In front of a planet, a person really is like an ant—no, merely like a dust mite.

And the planet is just one grain of sand in the universe’s vast ocean. Every one of these Life Planets is separated by trillions of kilometers. Even if they are aware of each other’s existence, they probably have no way to communicate. How lonely that is.

After all, everyone was a university student, well-educated in cosmology, and they quickly recovered from their initial despondency.

"The telescope on the helmet can be zoomed in to see things on the ground! Our elementary school VR experience spaceship seems to have gone down..."

"I’ve spotted the tallest structure on this planet!"

With the Power Armor’s built-in telescope, they could clearly see various objects on the planet’s surface.

Everyone resumed their search for interesting structures on the ground—here was an Airship base, there a factory, and over there a large swimming area... The Taipu people were very fond of swimming, hence the unusually high number of large swimming pools.

And there, that was the largest river on the planet. Due to the vast oceans and humid climate, this river had a flow three times that of Earth’s Amazon River.

That area... was a ten-thousand-meter plateau created by the Enlightener Civilization!

Suddenly, a girl said, "Do you guys ever feel like the entire planet is like a giant organism, with its flowing rivers and various forms of life... Only, this organism lacks Self-awareness, and instead, it’s the cells that make up its body that possess Self-awareness."

"You’re talking about Gaia Consciousness, right? I’ve done some special research on this and even wrote a science fiction novel about it..."

"Really, what’s it about?"

Chen Zheng smiled and said, "In my novel, there’s this ’group consciousness’ character that looks like a dog, but it requires several ’dogs’ to combine to develop consciousness. If the ’components’ are separated, the consciousness disappears. Gaia Consciousness is similar to this combination, just on a larger scale... Haha, you get it, right?"

"Ah, but are there really such life forms in the universe?"

The girl replied, "Even if there are, it would be hard for us to understand such creatures."

"They must be life forms that exist in a time dimension higher than us; our entire lifetime is but a moment to them. We have emotions, but it... probably wouldn’t have emotions."

Chen Zheng suddenly seemed to have realized something, his expression one of enlightenment, "Here you’re mistaken, such creatures are quite understandable. In fact, we are not the protagonists of the universe, it is."

Yes, flowers, trees, humans, and animals—all things fade, but this life does not. As long as individuals exist, it exists.

This life exists only in concept, and its official name is just two characters—

"Civilization"!

...