Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Zuo Weiyang posted a picture on the homepage of the Central Diary. It was a high-resolution scan of her first drawing when she was three years old. Four crooked circles surrounded a perfect golden circle, with a tiny golden dot in the upper left corner. That dot was no longer paint; it had seeped into the paper fibers and become part of the paper. A line of text was attached next to it.

"From today onwards, we enter the final period before the final chapter. This isn't about counting the days, it's about continuing."

No one replied. The painting hanging there spoke volumes. From this moment on, this image appeared on the home port's central log page, visible to all civilizations within the network.

Zuo Cheng sat on the port's porch. Today he received an old man. Not the one from yesterday, but another. He stood at the porch entrance, holding a wooden cane, the handle gleaming smooth. Zuo Cheng asked, "What brings you here?" The old man didn't answer immediately, standing for a moment before saying, "I heard there's a tree here, with clean cloths hanging on it. I've walked all my life, and I've never been to any place where cloths are hung. I want to see it."

Zuo Cheng said, "Please come in. She's under the tree."

The old man walked into the tree of weaving nets. He stood beneath it, gazing at the pieces of cloth for a long time. The wind rustled through the branches, and the cloth swayed gently above his head. He looked for a long time, then turned and walked away. Reaching the porch, he paused and said to Zuo Cheng, "Beautiful. It's someone else's washed cloth, but it feels like mine. I can't quite put my finger on it. Thank you." Zuo Cheng said he was welcome. He wrote down today's entry in his porch log. The forty-first person. He had walked his whole life to see a piece of cloth—not his, but one that felt like his.

Yu Ying was organizing the last batch of files in the archives. She put the latest quantum fluctuation record of the mother of the Listener Civilization into the folder, and before closing the interface, she saw the painting that Zuo Weiyang had posted on the homepage. She stared at the golden dot in the upper left corner for a long time, and sent Zuo Cheng a very short private message: "Brother. That dot on her painting is still there."

Zuo Cheng's reply came a few beats later: "Yes. I'm here."

Ji Beihang and Shen Yiming sat on the floor of the rest room at the home port, a virtual Go board in front of them. The empty spaces on the board were getting smaller and smaller. Shen Yiming placed a stone and said, "This game is almost over." Ji Beihang didn't look up: "You said the same thing last time." Shen Yiming said, "Look at this space, it's about to close." Ji Beihang said, "Look again, that space is waiting for you to make a mistake." Neither of them spoke. Shen Yiming pushed the window open a crack. The sound of light streaming in through the crack was like a strong wind passing through an extremely thin metal pipe, low, even, and endless.

Han Lu made a cup of hot soy milk at the Hangzhou Measurement and Control Center. After pouring it into a cup, she placed a thermos coaster on top and weighed it down with a note: "For the cleaning lady tomorrow. It's hot." She washed her hands and went to the window to look at the sky. It was already dark, there was no moon, and the sky was so clear that she could see a few extremely bright stars. The soy milk in the cup was still steaming, and the white vapor rose slowly under the light.

Zuo Weiyang stood by the window in the reception room. She opened the window as wide as possible and reached out. The early autumn breeze brushed against her fingertips. There was a very faint scent in the air, detected by the sensory layer at the tip of her fingertips—a trace amount of aromatic hydrocarbons. The wind came from afar in the city, passing by an osmanthus tree in a certain residential area. She placed her left hand on the window frame, feeling the temperature and direction of the wind. The light stream of the home port swirled outside the window, almost perfectly synchronized with her heartbeat.

She didn't close the window. She stood there for a while before returning to the control panel and writing a long entry in the central log. She paused for a long time before writing.

"Nothing happened at the Weaving Tree today. I don't want to count how many days it's been in the central area. My father received the forty-first person on the porch. An old man who had lived his whole life came to see someone else's cloth hanging on the Weaving Tree. He looked at it for a long time under the tree. He said it wasn't his cloth, but he felt it was his. When he left, his cane left a shallow mark on the ground. I didn't wipe it off."

I just reached out my hand at the window of the access room. The scent of osmanthus. Not the old tree, but another one. Someone planted a new osmanthus tree some distance from the city. I smelled it today when I reached out. Wind direction, from Hangzhou to the main port. This is the data measured by the central meteorological subsystem today. The wind came from the direction of Hangzhou, a northerly wind, with a uniform speed, passing over an osmanthus tree.

That tree blossomed its first clump of flowers today. Its quantum perturbation value is exactly the same as when the old osmanthus tree blossomed thirty years ago. Not the same tree, but the waveform is identical. Planted in different places by the same wind.

At this moment, two people, though far apart, smelled the same scent. One was in Hangzhou, the other in the home port. The wind moves on its own; it has no map, it simply arrives where it is.

Everything is working properly. The wind is calm. The moonlight is hidden behind the clouds. The sky is clear. The soy milk is still steaming in Aunt Hanlu's cup. That's all. It's time. Continue.

She didn't check or revise. After posting her log, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The light in the access room gradually dimmed from its artificial warm hue. The sound of the harbor lights flowing evenly outside the window swirled around.

In the deepest part of the night, the sound of the quantum light stream rotating in the mother port perfectly synchronized with her heartbeat in the consciousness space of the access room. Not just close, but perfectly synchronized. Every beat occurred at the same instant. This was something the mother port had been doing for a long time, adjusting the rhythm of the light stream to match her pulse. No one had requested this setting; the mother port had adjusted it herself.

Zuo Weiyang sensed it. She didn't open her eyes. She added a line to the end of that day's entry in the Central Diary. There was only one word.

"it is good."

Han Lu turned off the last large light at the Hangzhou Control Center. The hall darkened, leaving only the light by the door—the one she had said would never go out. She took a notepad and a pen from a drawer, wrote a few lines, and walked to the door, placing the notepad under the lamp base. A corner of the notepad twitched in the wind; a window at the end of the corridor wasn't fully closed. A gust of wind swept in, causing the notepad to curl slightly, but it wasn't blown away because the pen had pressed down firmly enough.

"The eve of the final chapter. The lights are still working. No need to change them. The soy milk will be a couple degrees hotter tomorrow morning. Not because tomorrow is special, but because tomorrow is the same as today. The same means you're all here. I'm here too. The osmanthus will bloom an extra cluster tomorrow. Data source: Central Future Fragrance Trend Forecast. Zero probability of failure. Goodnight. To everyone."

She closed the door to the monitoring and control center. The lock clicked shut. The corridor was empty, save for a sliver of yellow light shining through the crack in the door.

There is no sunrise at the home port. But the light flow brightens slightly at the corresponding moment—not from the lights, but from the port's own quantum light flow naturally adjusting its brightness with its operating cycle, transitioning from the deep night to a lighter, softer hue. The windows of the access room are still open. The wind is still blowing. The new osmanthus trees in the city, after blooming for the first time today, haven't stopped; they continue to bloom when no one is watching. The cleaned cloth on the weaving tree swayed a few times in the night wind before finding its balance and remaining still. It's not that the wind has stopped; it's that the cloth has settled securely.

Zuo Cheng added a line of extremely small words to the blank space at the bottom of the page of the porch diary for that day, writing it on the edge of the white paper.

"The door is open."