Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

The Starship slowed down in the outer atmosphere. Outside the porthole lay a planet with virtually no land; only scattered pale spots peeked through gaps in the clouds on its deep blue sphere. Water covered 97 percent of the surface, with an average depth of 40 kilometers. There were no continental shelves, no islands, nothing that could be called land.

Shen Yiming stared at the signal on the communication screen. The communication protocol was completely incompatible with the Web standard—not because of encryption, but because of different standards. The signal originated from below the surface of the planet's water, transmitted every extremely short interval. It wasn't electromagnetic waves, but bioluminescent pulses. The signal was so short that it took Shen Yiming a long time to determine that it wasn't a malfunction, but a greeting. This civilization lacked Web access capabilities, but they sensed the quantum field ripples after a node was activated, which they interpreted as ripples on the sea surface indicating someone was emitting light.

"A race that has just joined the Web." Su Kuang sat in the left seat, his hands not touching the control levers. "They don't yet know what the Web is, but they've already used a metaphor: glowing. Glowing is enough."

Ji Beihang, sitting in the right seat, said softly, "Quieter than I expected. Most civilizations send a rudimentary signal to the Web shortly after activation, but this one is doing nothing. They're not silent; they simply don't realize they've heard anything."

When Zuo Weiyang received the Starship's docking data packet in the Central Log, she was in the access room, sipping water and looking out the window. After reading the assessment report, she remained silent for a few seconds, then used the Central Perception Layer to touch the faint biofield beneath the planet's surface. It wasn't a consciousness network, but rather isolated biological light points drifting in the deep water. She took a sip of water and typed six words in the reply box: "Do not force contact."

Su Kuang made a decision that was even more outrageous than not forcing anyone.

He didn't send any probes underwater, nor did he send any interstellar communication signals. He reduced the power of the rainbow halo to an extremely low level and input a set of parameters into the main control panel—not navigation coordinates, but a modulation sequence of an optical frequency. Ji Beihang saw the parameters but didn't ask any questions; he simply crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned back in his chair.

The rainbow halo produced a brief shift at the edge of the quantum field's interference band at the home port. The light, piercing the atmosphere and through gaps in the clouds, drew a circle on the water's surface at an extremely slow scanning speed. Not a precise circle; the edges were slightly uneven, like a finger dipped in water. At the center of the circle, a small arc curved slightly upwards, containing one of the earliest shapes in all the sketches that humans could recognize within that arc. A smiley face.

No one spoke on the Starsea.

There was no wind on the surface. Less than a minute later, another beam of light appeared less than a hundred meters below the surface. It wasn't a reflection; it was bioluminescence shining upwards from the bottom, a greenish-blue, unstable light. The beam illuminated a patch underwater, its edges raised and recessed, appearing at certain angles like a spot of light in the sky—a circle. The outline was irregular, but the intention was clear. A short arc also marked the top of the circle. Imperfect, asymmetrical, and unperfect, yet it was a smile.

The spots of light on the water's surface and the luminescence on the seabed flickered a few times, separated by the interval of several heartbeats, as if confirming to each other, "Are you still there?" Yes.

Su Kuang didn't make the Rainbow Halo do anything extra. He maintained the same frequency and then opened the new flight log on the main console. Number #00072.

"The docking point, an unnamed ocean planet. We don't know what this civilization is called; they probably never named themselves. But they know a form of communication that doesn't require language, the same code written in the genes of all species. In that code, the weight of a circle and the weight of a smile are the same. I didn't name them, just temporarily marked the coordinates: Smile Number One. They don't need to know what the spaceship is; they only need to know that someone smiled at them from above. They responded. Not with a communication protocol, but with a signal far older than any protocol: I saw you, and I smiled back. That's enough. Distance doesn't need to be filled; it can be a distance where you can wave but don't need to shake hands."

After reading the log, Shen Yiming sat in the communications cabin for a while. He opened a directory that was never open to the public, containing the first few entries from the previous years' voyage logs, and then saved the new entry into the same folder. The folder name remained unchanged, exactly the same as when it was first entered many years ago, starting with the same name.

When Zuo Weiyang forwarded the Xinghai ship's docking report in the Central Diary, she added a note.

"Forwarding number, Xinghai Harbor Report #00072. Target: an unnamed ocean planet. Contact method: drawing a smiley face on the water's surface with light. The response: an irregular glow emanating from the seabed. Its edges were uneven, not mathematically round. But I've seen more perfectly round geometric shapes, none possessing the weight of its glow underwater. It has no mathematical relevance to the first circle I drew years ago, but it's psychologically identical. Drawing a circle in the deep sea of ​​space, waiting for someone to return from the heavens. The heavens returned. I smiled when I saw that glowing image. Not in response, but involuntarily."

After seeing this comment in her diary, Han Lu forwarded it to Yu Ying. "She was actually moved by a few crooked light spots."

Yu Ying replied, "It's not about being moved. It's the simplest choice a civilization makes without a first contact protocol. Drawing a smiley face. It's not a procedure, not prudence, it's intuition. In the deep sea of ​​the universe, intuition is the best first contact protocol."

Shen Yiming wrote the last sentence in his diary that evening.

"The Starship has docked in two star systems. Proxima Centauri's enclave used the light of the entire beach to write 'Welcome Back.' This nameless ocean used underwater bioluminescence to draw an incomplete circle. Light is a language. The delay on a quantum entanglement channel is zero. But the time difference felt by life deep underwater when drawing the first circle is not physical; it's the distance between hearts that cannot be eliminated by the speed of light, nor does it need to be eliminated. It's just right, not too much, not too little, just enough for a person to see the bioluminescence and smile. The length of that smile reaches the speed of light, and then stops. No need to go faster. Just right."

That evening, Zuo Weiyang wrote a private note at the bottom of the Central Diary and sent it to only one person.

"Dad. The Starship drew a smiley face today. Nobody on that planet knows who we are. But they came back. Years ago, you pointed to Centaurus on the rooftop and told me, 'The universe is vast, it's okay, take your time.' Today, when I saw that fluorescent photo, I didn't think about how vast the universe is. I thought about how small humans are. Humans are so small. But humans still smile. So small and still smiling. So maybe the universe isn't so hard to understand after all."

Zuo Cheng didn't reply. A few hours later, the Central Log's reading history showed he had read the private note, lingering a little longer at the end. No message, no mark, just left there. Like a fading light on the surface of an ocean planet, no follow-up was necessary. It was seen. Received. Enough.