People in Terra, governing a bizarre little country

Oh my god, why is Priscilla so mean?! What's going on between you two?! Why are you two showing off your love as soon as you appear?!

How did you end up holding hands? How did you start intertwining your fingers? How did you start pouring out your heart to each other? How did you start gazing at each other with such tenderness!

Oh my god, how could Priscilla be so mean! There are other people next to you! Am I even human?! Am I even human?!

And you, Doctor, can't you be a little more reserved? Precyth is very aggressive, but you can't just let your guard down completely!

Who taught you to be so passive? Are you playing hard to get?

You believed a couple of sweet nothings from her? I admit, it's quite charming to start with "Even if the stars fall, I'll still be by your side" and end with "I'll remember you even at the end of time," but where's the serious, doubtful look on your face in front of me? Why are you suddenly speechless, blushing, your heart pounding, and stammering?

Where did this virgin come from?

Stop, I said stop!

Have you forgotten why we're here?! Who gave you permission to be all lovey-dovey there?!

"You don't care?"

Ernst glanced at Trevor Friston.

A benevolent and non-sticky smile spread across the old man's face, and he winked at Ernst, saying:

"I understand them."

“I’ve been through this age before.”

Ernst: "You f***ing..."

Ernst was somewhat speechless.

He felt that people from pre-civilizations all had some flaws. Is this some kind of female-oriented novel? In a world on the verge of collapse, everyone's talking about love?

It's not that humans shouldn't have emotions in the face of the apocalypse, but shouldn't things be prioritized?

And Precyth, why are you laughing even more unrestrainedly! Don't think I don't know we're in the middle of a debate; you can actually hear what I'm thinking!

I insulted you and you're still so happy, you masochistic old four∠fig slaughter soUsUO:?

Or am I just another part of your game?

Seeing that the poor Doctor was clearly being manipulated by Priscilla, Ernst finally spoke up and stopped them, encouraged by Kal'tsit's suppressed yawns.

The light bulb is leaking electricity!

"Alright, Precys, and Doctor, can we put your relationship matters aside for now? You know the Doctor has amnesia, and it's illegal to be an idiot."

“Our morality is the cornerstone of the law. But Treasure is right, the most important thing right now is to help you regain our past memories.”

Precys smiled, cupped the doctor's face in his hands, and whispered,

"You promised me, you mustn't forget me."

Ernst hardened his fist.

How can it still unleash a flash?

If you keep blinding me like that, believe me, I'll kick your cat!

Kal'tsit, breathe on her!

Kal'tsit glanced at Ernst, and for some reason, even though Ernst didn't say anything, she felt that he was thinking something very rude.

However, even if Ernst hadn't given the order, Kal'tsit would have wanted to breathe on him, especially when she saw Precys standing hand in hand with the Doctor; her eyebrows were practically twisted into a knot.

The doctor, regaining his senses, tried to struggle, but couldn't break free from Precys's tight grip. He could only nod apologetically to Ernst.

Ernst ignored him, snorted coldly, and continued:

"Then, let's talk about it?"

"Let's start with the very first question."

Precyth nodded:

"So it seems you've already found the problem?"

Ernst shook his head.

He does have many questions, including the one that Precyth asked them to look for, and he has some clues about it.

But what he wanted to confirm at that moment was something else entirely.

"Prisus, you once told me that if I offered up my soul, I could save everything. Was that true, or a lie?"

“I don’t mean to force you to do this, treasure, but if we’re just talking about the truth of this statement, then without a doubt, it’s true.”

Precyth nodded firmly, but before she could explain, Kal'tsit retorted righteously:

"Fake!"

The convenience of "debate," which allows for direct expression of thoughts without the need for language, finally allowed Kal'tsit to break free from her linguistic limitations. And her very first words were a serious accusation.

"Prismus, you're lying!"

“Originium cannot save everything. The ancient civilization has perished, and we all know that.”

"Time will tell."

Kal'tsit tried to step forward and stand in front of Ernst, but under Priscilla's cold gaze, she stopped and chose to stand in the same row as Ernst.

Ernst also understood Kelsey's meaning.

This is a question he has been pondering ever since he met Precys.

Even if Precys didn't lie about the nature of the amber, and he could indeed preserve everything, what about time?

Both Precys and Trevor Friston have explicitly stated that when Precys and the prophet encountered the "treasure" in the sea of ​​stars, it was already the end of the prehistoric civilization.

Humanity has retreated into the small star system where Terra is located. Their tentacles for exploration have been severed by the "Lumberjacks." They can only rely on the technology that is still relatively intact and the resources of a single star system to painstakingly advance the "Survival Plan" in the face of the apocalypse.

At this point, even including the "seeds" of 100,000 people preserved by the [Preserver] project, the number of human civilizations was already in grave danger.

A "treasure" can preserve everything, but only if there is something for it to preserve.

Ernst often said that the Terrans had no shortage of time, but for prehistoric civilizations, they were desperately short of time.

I am not born, but I am old.

The ancient civilization perished before the creation of Originium, also known as "artificial amber."

Just before hope arrives.

The debate fell into a brief silence.

This is unusual because, theoretically, "debate" reveals people's true feelings. As long as there are thoughts and ideas, these thoughts will become the nourishment for debate, be conveyed through language, and form a real clash.

But for a moment, Ernst felt that the surroundings did indeed quiet down.

Whether it was the Doctor's complex and multifaceted thoughts, Kal'tsit's simple hostility, or Friston's suspicion, his waiting seemed to vanish in that instant.

Only Precyth remained.

The place was completely silent. Standing there facing the doubts, she felt as if she were being pointed at by a thousand people, and her body trembled with loneliness.

But soon, this feeling dissipated like an illusion, and all the sounds returned.

Precys smiled, then shook her head firmly once more:

"I did not lie."

"Ama-10, this is a realm you cannot comprehend. But just because you cannot comprehend it does not mean it does not exist."

"I have found a way to transcend time, transcend space, transcend the universe."

"I have pioneered this new territory."

“Prisus,” the doctor began, interrupting Prisus’s voice. The somewhat thin, silver-haired man removed his hood and looked at the person beside him with a hint of wariness in his eyes.

He seemed to recall something, his expression grave, his voice low:

"What are you studying?"

"Prismus, what are you researching?"

The metal dome of the monitoring station reflected the faded star clusters, while the energy panel arrays along the crater's edge rotated at an unchanging rhythm. When the prophet placed his palm on the observation window, the ice crystals condensing on the inside of the glass shimmered simultaneously with the starlight from billions of light-years away between his fingers. Those once-boiling communication frequencies now became an eternal background noise, falling like electromagnetic snowflakes between the ring antenna arrays.

This is probably the last time he will set foot on this lunar surface observation station.

His colleagues, the last conscious Trevor Friston, had completed the upload of his consciousness, and the Preservator project officially began despite skepticism. The Prophet did not believe that life support devices could fool the Lumberjacks, but he acquiesced to Trevor Friston's idea of ​​"giving it a try."

The more complex the plan, the more prone it is to errors. Sometimes, a fool's approach can have unexpected results. Friston was such a "foolish" person; of all his plans, he was the only one who still hoped to rekindle the flame of human civilization in the future.

Everyone else, including the prophet himself, has given up.

Now, he has come to the lunar observatory to see the last remaining project leader who is still awake, and also his lover.

"Treasure."

Precyth turned around, her gentle smile unable to conceal the weariness and numbness in her eyes. In her hands she held a small, golden egg, as if cradling her own child.

"I've been thinking about what you just said."

"There is no language to describe God, because God's existence is absolutely incomprehensible."

"I think that perhaps we have been on the wrong path in order to find the answer to that question—trying to interpret the essence of the universe by using the rules that the universe has already been established."

The prophet felt a pressure welling up from the bottom of his heart, and that overwhelming weariness that made him want to escape filled his body once again.

This was not the first time he had heard Precys bring up this topic; in fact, according to his memory, this was the 3197th time.

This statement initially came casually during their aimless conversation, and it certainly wasn't "just now." In fact, the prophet could hardly remember when or where he had said it to Precyth.

But after all of civilization's technology became ineffective before the lumberjacks, and all creations were reduced to ashes under the giant axe, along with themselves, they could not escape their fate, Precys began to bring up this issue again.

If there truly is a deity in the vast universe, is there a language to interpret that deity?

Precys was a linguist, so her curiosity about this question was understandable. The prophet was happy to discuss it with her. In a less busy time, he could accompany Precys on studying this potentially unanswerable question hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of times, until she grew tired of it, or until they found the answer.

But now, things are different from the past.

They have too many things to do; deciphering the language of the gods is not as important as protecting human safety or passing on the sparks of civilization.

The former is a vague and unrealistic ambition, while the latter can bring real hope to those who come after.

But it was precisely at this moment that Precys claimed to have found the answer.

The answer was her initial response—"treasure."

The female researcher raised her hand and deftly drew a perfectly standard rhombus in the air.

The Milky Way's spiral arms slowly collapsed into pale ghosts above their heads, while on the circular control panel, the silvery-blue light of human civilization stubbornly flickered. Those dying stars were constantly altering their physical states, bursting forth again at the end of their annihilation as fleeting blueshifted spectra, like the last fireflies in a dark forest, illuminating the ruthless, predatory silence that was devouring the entire universe.

Only in Priscilla's hands did the rhombus shine so brightly, as if undisturbed by anything.

"Treasure."

“Prophet, I have been pondering this question.”

“I’ve been thinking about this question ever since the day I melted it, fiddled with it, and shaped it.”

“We have grasped the characteristics of the treasure. We know that natural amber can preserve endless information, the content of which has no upper limit and no boundary. In order to support our research, the treasure has made a huge sacrifice. In the end, we even had to brush away the dust of the memories it left with us and kill it in order to study its true nature more deeply and directly.”

"We finally got what we wanted. The moment the Originium broke out of the body of the natural amber, we finally completed the initial cleaning and replacement of the redundant information in the treasure's body, threw out those fragments, and created our clean and pure artificial amber."

"But how many people did we kill in the process?"

Precys turned her head, her eyes filled with deep sorrow and an almost terrifying stubbornness.

The prophet was slightly taken aback.

He didn't quite understand what Precys meant.

This wasn't the first time; he'd had this feeling ever since the day Precys dissolved the "treasure" himself, ever since Lo came knocking on his door.

There seemed to be some inexplicable "information gap" between them. Even though they were doing the same work and conducting the same experiment, Precys always seemed to discover "more" than him in the experiment.

After a certain point, he felt that he was gradually unable to understand what Precyth was thinking.

The "treasure" he spoke of was not the kind of emotional understanding that "a woman's heart is like a needle at the bottom of the sea," but rather, even from the perspective of "rational thinking," he was somewhat unable to keep up with Precys's train of thought.

"How many people did we actually kill?"

The prophet couldn't understand this question: shouldn't there only be one victim in the entire Originium Project?

But Precys shook his head.

She saw the prophet's confusion, and a kind, teacher-like smile appeared on her face, as if she were willing to answer his questions.