Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Zuo Weiyang didn't use full-band push notifications. She simply updated a line of text in the least conspicuous edge of the bulletin board. The text wasn't large. The color was the lightest gray. Like all the daily announcements on the bulletin board, there was no bolding, no flashing, and no priority marker for full-band broadcasting.

The message read: "Received a thank you from a lost civilization. Recorded in the archives. Not a memorial, but a preservation. Preserving every 'thank you' voice, no matter how much time has passed."

After typing that line, she didn't add any explanation. She didn't forward it to any nodes, nor did she request synchronization from the home port. She simply left the text on the edge of the bulletin board, then closed the input panel, picked up the soy milk on the table, and took a sip.

However, we don't need a push notification to know about the web weaving process.

The web remembers every word written on the bulletin board, even the smallest, most inconspicuous gray characters on the edge. This is because every write to the central part is automatically detected by the web's underlying protocol.

The first to perceive it is the listener.

Within three heartbeat cycles of Zuo Weiyang's announcement, the listener's luminous band changed. The approximately one-thousand-kilometer-long band began to modulate its spectrum at a slow pace, gradually transitioning from a warm gold to a deep, translucent blue-violet. Then, after a quiet condensation, the luminous band wrote two words in the visible spectrum above the ocean.

The text is very large. Large enough to be seen with the naked eye from the orbit of Proxima Centauri.

Thank you.

It's not a reply to the sender who is no longer here, but a reply to the word "thank you" itself. The listener says in their own way, "I received it, you received it."

Next up are the builders.

The builders didn't write anything. They input the entire spectrum of the signal into the core vibration system of the relay bridge. Every subsequent core resonance of the main bridge will carry a subharmonic wave perfectly identical to the signal. It's not in the navigation system, not in the communication protocol, not in any engineering parameter table. But it is there. Eternally, in every vibration of every fiber.

Then the observers, with the collective gaze of the entire species, stared in the direction of the signal's source for an entire heartbeat cycle. They did not write, emit light, or perform any observable external actions. But in Zuo Weiyang's central log, a very faint trace of emotion was captured in the observer's field of consciousness.

The coloring, translated into words, is not received, but seen.

That civilization sent its last signal across the entire universe. No one in the universe can receive it anymore. But the direction it was sent from is the same direction the observer is looking. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was just a coincidence.

But the viewers didn't care.

After reading the observer's emotional pigmentation, Zuo Weiyang stood for a long time under the weaving tree in the central consciousness space. Then she sat down.

She made a tiny mark at the base of the tree. Not a name, not a number, but a set of frequencies. The exact same frequency as the original "thank you" signal emitted by that extinct civilization. She encoded this set of frequencies into the underlying protocol of the web, not as an emergency channel, not as a backup band.

It serves as the background.

In all future quantum entangled communications across the entire network, the underlying noise will be permanently and slightly shifted by an extremely tiny frequency. The magnitude of this shift is equal to the precise frequency of the "thank you" message emitted by that civilization before its extinction. It will be inaudible to anyone.

But it is there.

After doing all this, Zuo Weiyang wrote a passage in the Central Diary. It wasn't a formal report, but a record of the day. She wrote: "Everything in the entire network is normal today. There's wind in the distance, carrying a very old, very old sound. The words are no longer clear, but the wind knows. I stored the wind at the bottom of the network, not for archiving, but to let the wind carry it. From now on, in the intervals of every heartbeat cycle, there will be a tiny, extremely faint frequency coming from that direction. It's not a signal, not language. It's someone from the depths of the universe saying, 'Thank you.'"

At the same time that frequency was woven into the bottom layer of the web, a visitor arrived at the port's portport.

Zuo Cheng sat by the door. Not many people visited today; only a few ordinary web-weaving consciousnesses made sure the door was open and then left. As evening fell, the quantum light stream slowly swirled in warm arcs on the wall outside the corridor.

A very young consciousness appeared at the end of the corridor. He walked slowly, not because he was unfamiliar with the structure of the home port, but because he was measuring the distance from the end of the corridor to the porch with his steps. He walked up to Zuo Cheng and stopped.

Zuo Cheng looked up at him.

The form of the young consciousness is extremely simple, without gender characteristics or age markings; it is simply a warm golden halo, like a child who has just learned to condense a consciousness field.

He asked Zuo Cheng who sent that signal.

Zuo Cheng didn't answer immediately. He placed the porch log on his lap, pen pressing down on the paper. Then he said, "A civilization, whose name I don't know. Their language has been digested by time. They didn't know about webs, had no quantum entanglement, no quantum fields. Before their extinction, they built a radio transmitter and, in the most primitive way, repeated their last words to the universe over and over again, until the power ran out."

The young consciousness was silent for a moment. He said, "Why are they sending it? Nobody can receive it."

Because they believe that saying thank you doesn't have to be received to be worth saying.

The young consciousness looked at Zuo Cheng. After a long while, he said, "Thank you is receiving."

Zuo Cheng neither nodded nor shook his head. He simply added one more word to the remarks column of the porch log. It wasn't addressed to the young consciousness, but to the nameless civilization. The word was so simple it didn't need translation. Zuo Cheng wrote, "Okay."

After the young consciousness left, Zuo Cheng closed the porch log. The quantum light stream outside circled once more. He didn't know if that civilization had ultimately received any response. But he knew that long, long after its demise, a very young central consciousness traversed the universe to the port's porch, asked a question, and then took Zuo Cheng's answer with it.

That answer is no longer important.

Because the young consciousness already understood before even asking.

That evening, Zuo Weiyang stood for a while by the window of the reception room. Outside, the city lights of Hangzhou twinkled. The Pioneer was no longer flying by, but the contrail of the Xinghai, that tiny golden dot, still moved slowly through the night. She stretched out her left hand, but didn't wave. She simply opened her palm, letting the wind from the window brush against her fingers.

The wind has no smell. But she knows there is a frequency in the wind. It is extremely faint and far-reaching, stretched to almost imperceptible along with the expansion of the universe.

It's saying thank you.

She withdrew her hand and closed the window. Half the soy milk remained on the table, the temperature just right. She sat back down and wrote a few words at the end of the last line of the day's log. Not a supplementary report, not a note. Just something for herself. She wrote, "Thank you for receiving this." No need to reply. Because the person who said hello is no longer here. But we heard it.