Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

There are seven new crew members on the Starsea.

Seven people from different places stood in the docking bay passageway. The youngest was a girl at the front, in her early twenties, with short black hair and a backpack taller than herself, with a pair of old running shoes hanging on the outside. She stood beside the gangway, looking up at the Xinghai ship's hull, her mouth slightly open, as if looking at something that shouldn't exist in reality.

Her name is Jian Ning.

Of the seven new crew members, three came from the Proxima Centauri enclave, two from the Blue Star 402 Deep Space Training Camp, and one was a recent graduate directly recruited from Hangzhou University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Jian Ning was that one. Her application form didn't list any technical skills, didn't include any letters of recommendation from her advisor, and only contained one sentence.

That sentence is now circled in red by Han Lu and is tucked into the personnel folder on Zuo Cheng's desk.

"I don't want to go to see the universe. It's because when I was a child, I would stand on the balcony and wave every evening when the Pioneer flew by. I waved for more than ten years. I saw Uncle Shen Yiming's extra flash every time he passed by. Now I want to go over there, so that next time a three-year-old child is waving on the ground, I can flash along with him."

Zuo Cheng didn't write anything after reading it. He simply folded the paper and put it back in the folder. When Han Lu bumped into him in the hallway, she asked how it went. Zuo Cheng said he would stay. Han Lu said, "Aren't you going to have an interview?" Zuo Cheng said she had already had an interview listed on the application form.

Jane was assigned to the communications module.

The communications bay, located slightly aft of the midsection of the Starsea, was a much smaller room than one might expect. There were no walls covered in screens or flashing indicator lights, only a row of communications array control consoles embedded in the bulkhead and a chair. The chair's seat had been used for a long time, leaving a shallow indentation in the middle.

Shen Yiming sat in that chair. He had been waiting for a while.

Shen Yiming didn't stand up when Jian Ning left. He pushed a stack of handwritten diaries on the table, thick enough to flatten a wobbly table.

"The new route log, from 00001 to 00047, is entirely in its original manuscript form. Don't look at my typos. Read it from the beginning. You'll see what I was writing at the start. It wasn't navigation data; it was me saying 'Good morning' to the window every morning when I woke up. Then I wrote the word 'Good morning' in the top left corner of a page before writing the main text."

Jian Ning stood in front of the table, looking at the stack of manuscripts, but didn't reach out to flip through them. She said, "Then the first word I say every morning might not be 'morning'."

Shen Yiming glanced at her.

"What is that?"

"it is good."

Shen Yiming nodded. It wasn't approval, but a quiet confirmation. He said, "Then write it down. A journal doesn't record what you did, it records who you are. Who you are determines how you write your journal."

Jian Ning placed her hand on the cover of the stack of diaries, without opening it, just setting it aside for a moment. She said okay.

Another small folding table next to the chair was opened. Shen Yiming had added a deputy position to his resume in the communications cabin of the Starsea.

Jian Ning's first blog entry was numbered New Route 00048.

She sat at the folding table, a brand new blank journal open. Outside the window, the quantum light stream of the outer harbor shone through the porthole like a slowly flowing, deep golden mist. She sat there for a long time before she began to write.

She unscrewed the pen cap and put it back on, repeating this three times.

The handwriting was a little shaky when I first started writing, but it gradually became steady as I wrote more.

"This is the first entry in my new journal. I'm sitting next to Uncle Shen in the seat he used to give to Aunt Wenya. Outside the window is the rainbow halo of the quantum pathway. It's not like the pixels I saw in textbooks; it's much slower, and every ray of light has a temperature."

I think I heard a very faint sound from starboard. It wasn't a communication tone, nor was it the electromagnetic remnant of a quantum field. Uncle Shen said it was the earth within the background noise of the weaving net. The civilization that spoke in a low voice at node 155, which has been speaking for countless years, is still speaking. It flashed briefly on the path I just passed.

It was received. Received. Not a serial number. Not a log. It's just that it was received. Like someone waving goodbye under the tracking lights every evening.

I know who it is.

But I won't say.

Because Uncle Shen just said he wouldn't talk about those people. He just wrote. So I'll write too.

When Jian Ning finished writing the last line, her hand finally stopped shaking. She screwed the pen cap back on, closed the journal, and placed it next to Shen Yiming's stack of manuscripts. The two stacks of notebooks were of different heights; the taller stack had curled edges on the cover, while the shorter one was still brand new.

Shen Yiming didn't look at what she was writing. He said he was finished. Jian Ning said she was finished. Shen Yiming said they would continue tomorrow.

Ji Beihang passed by the communications cabin in the evening.

He didn't go in. Standing in the corridor, he saw Jian Ning sitting at a folding table, flipping through Shen Yiming's old manuscripts. She was flipping through them very slowly.

He stood in the corridor for a while, then went to the cockpit.

Su Yuan was conducting pre-flight checks in the cockpit. Ji Beihang sat down in the right seat next to him, looking straight ahead without glancing at the instrument panel.

"This girl will stay for a long time."

Su Yuan stopped what he was doing and turned around.

Why?

Ji Beihang said it was because the title of her first blog post wasn't "Communication Test," but rather something she started writing from the top left corner of a page. Like Shen Yiming, but not quite Shen Yiming. She said okay, not "early." That one word difference determined the tone of her blog post.

Su Yuan thought for a moment and said that was for sure. She would be led astray by Shen Yiming, and in the future, she would hide a typo for Zuo Weiyang in every diary entry.

Ji Beihang said that would be best. The log system wasn't for recording voyages; it was for chatting with people from another era.

He didn't say anything more. The seat cushion on the right side of the car he was sitting on wasn't as deep as it used to be; he hadn't been sitting on it as much, but it still retained its shape. He didn't intend to sit on it again.

He just sat there, like a light that doesn't need to be operated but is still on.

Jian Ning added a sentence at the end of her diary entry 00048.

She had already closed the notebook, but then opened it again and wrote a very small line of words on the blank space of the last page, as if she was afraid that others would see it, or as if she was afraid that others would not see it.

"A girl named Zuo Weiyang saw my first blog post in the Central Diary. She replied with a sentence: 'Your rainbow halo is a little warmer than mine. Maybe it's because you live closer to the galactic center than Hangzhou.'"

I always thought the central authority was a distant entity. It's not.

It only takes her one heartbeat to see my blog.

The universe is so vast, yet our hearts are so close.

Jian Ning put the pen back in the pen holder and closed the journal.

The rainbow halo outside the window seemed to warm up slightly for a moment. Perhaps it was an illusion, perhaps not. No one spoke in the communications cabin. In the background noise from a certain direction at the bottom of the network, the earth-shaking sound of node 155 still echoed. Very faint. But it never stopped.

The Starsea's course continues to extend. More dormant nodes await awakening, and more doors await opening.

Jian Ning sat in the folding chair, staring blankly at the quantum light stream outside the window for a while. Then she stood up, pushed the chair back under the table, and walked out of the communications pod to queue for food in the cafeteria. Her backpack contained the newly written journal, its cover still warm.

She bumped into a crew member she didn't recognize in the corridor, who smiled at her. She paused for a moment, then smiled back.

I didn't have a chance to ask the other person's name.

But there's no rush. There's plenty of time later.