Cat’s Rose

From the depths of the vortex（1）

Translator: Eyljee

“Wizard-daren, you’re as amazing as the rumors say.”

“Lin, you couldn’t attend in time due to your heavy schedule, but it’s still important to give a speech to everyone at this grand celebration feast — as an abridgement of all our work over the years.” The blonde French female assistant blinked: “Come on, dear.” 

She stepped aside and sat down as the image showed a scene from the banquet hall in Zone 1. At the round table, people flocked around a madam dressed as a black scholar, eyeing Lin Si who was positioned across the screen. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Chen.” Lin Si’s voice was frosty, but he didn’t seem rude. 

After a brief greeting, he immediately got to the point: “Yesterday, 96 experimental subjects formally passed the monitoring period and were transferred to the military. The “Limitless” Phase II project was launched five years ago and has been successfully completed so far. In the official evaluation data four days ago, all the experimental subjects completed the basic modification of three times of muscle strength and five times of reaction time, as well as other enhancements with different focus for each individual, and were in a stable state.” 

The people seated had applauded in unison. The original researchers were pleased with the successful outcome of these past five years, while the invited guests were filled with admiration. 

“Lin, it was said that you have more than that planned.” The madam in the middle, known as “Mrs. Chen”, voiced with a smile. 

“The structure of the human body cannot support a transformation of more than three times the muscle strength, but there’s still room for reflex speed. We even saw opportunities to strengthen brain function in the process.” His tone was cool and calm, with none of the provocative cadence that would incite people. This almost mechanical dullness had added to people’s trust — just as they had always trusted machine calculations rather than intuitive predictions. 

“The military’s bias against human modification programs due to excessive conservatism has made it difficult to conduct the experiments. It’s a pity that Marshal Joyce formally rejected the proposal for Phase III not long ago, but I have always believed that the next phase of the plan has a good reason to start, and could bring us——” 

“Ss——” The sound of electricity suddenly rang out. 

The image projected in front of the people was distorted several times before it finally broke. The sound came to a screeching halt as the ground shook violently. 

Lin Si grabbed the edge of the console to stabilize himself as a shrill alarm sounded in the halls of Zone 6, followed by the female voice of the system: “Zone 6 is disengaging from the main body, Zone 6 is disengaging from the main body…” 

He quickly called up the independent operating system in Zone 6: “Lucia, connect to the main body.” 

“Error, command could not be executed.” 

As he quickly adjusted the parameters, he said, “Error details.” 

“Conflicting orders. Rank is too low to execute.” 

Lin Si spoke extremely fast, “Disengagement order details.” 

The reading had finished in a tenth of a second: “Command issued by: Third District Unification Office, Marshal Joyce. Reason for issue: The spaceship sailed into the edge of a gigantic B-II black hole’s field vision, requiring 12 times warp acceleration to disengage. Exceeded the upper limit provided by the engines and ejected Zone 6, providing a three-level recoil.” 

With a booming sound, the level of turbulence throughout Zone 6 had rapidly increased; the ear-splitting alarm interspersed with the sound of laboratory equipment racks toppling over and hundreds of glass test tubes falling to the ground. 

Lin Si firmly gripped the console as he shut his eyes hard and quickly opened them, trying to overcome the dizziness caused by the gravity disorder’s turbulence. His voice was as steady as possible so that the system could clearly distinguish his command: “Switch to an independent navigation system, calculate angular momentum.” 

The progress bar lit up once again. 

At the same time, Lin Si had noticed a sharp scorching pain on his body. He quickly pulled open the emergency drawer under the console and deployed his anti-radiation protection equipment—— After detaching from the main body and losing the protection of the Vanger field, the ship was exposed to the intense black hole radiation. 

Once he had finished, his blood surged upward, and he experienced extremely strong nausea. Before his sight were a jumble of colors; he was unable to control his body, and was hurled hard against the wall by the centrifugal force brought about by the rapid spin. 

Lin Si struggled to catch his breath, his throat was fishy and sweet. He raised his head, his sight blurred. The scene outside the porthole window changed rapidly; the dark shadow of the huge ship became more distant, increasingly smaller, and had finally disappeared into a sea of stars. 

——The next moment, the sea of stars also disappeared without a trace, leaving only complete darkness outside the window. 

The turbulence still persisted, as he completely lost consciousness. 

Lin Si was awakened by a call. 

No, he was pinched awake. 

In the chaotic shouting of “Lin” and “Dr. Lin”, some people were pinching him, while others were pressing his chest. 

He opened his eyes and had found himself on the dissecting table. 

A few young people donned in a white coat were very excited when they saw him open his eyes: “He’s awake! He’s awake!” 

The excitement in their voice was comparable to “It’s born! It’s born!” It was absolutely similar. 

“The philtrum¹ is located in the middle and upper third of the nasolabial fold,² yet the force I felt was concentrated on my upper lip. CPR would only be used for cardiac arrest situations. I don’t think that happened to me.” Lin Si was expressionless. “I suspect that you’ve been away from Earth for so long that you have forgotten the most basic physiological knowledge.” 

The kids scratched their heads, “…Doctor, the first aid machine wasn’t working, so we can only do this. Look, you’re awake now.” 

Lin Si was assisted to sit up. He still felt dizzy, but he was in a much better condition than before he had passed out. The youngsters before him were either researchers or assistants in several other laboratories. Almost everyone in Zone 6 went to Zone 1 for the celebration feast today. Only a few intelligent machines couldn’t completely handle projects without human assistance and must be guarded, thus leaving these children with shallow qualifications to keep watch. 

The first experimental hall where they were located was at the edge of Zone 6. They were greatly affected by the turbulence, yet their circumstances were apparently a little better; at least they hadn’t passed out like the others. 

The ship was in an unusually smooth state at this moment. Lin Si looked over the porthole—— It was so empty and pitch-black that people couldn’t distinguish if they were still sailing. 

He pressed his temple, looked at the five kids in their early twenties in front of him, and asked, “Are there any others?” 

“We’ve checked all over. They’re gone.” After one of them answered, the other asked, “Doctor, is it a navigation accident? The operating system is out of order, too. ” 

“It was me who cut into the system ‘Lucia’. You guys have no authority for the time being.” Lin Si said, “Hello, Lucia.” 

“Hello, Mr. Wizard.” A mechanical female voice sounded. 

“Report the situation.” 

“Data is being generated, please wait a moment.” 

One of the kid’s eyes lit up. “The legendary Lucia! Is this that super intelligent system that Zone 5 has been working on?” 

Lin Si nodded. “It’s her. She was finally downloaded into Zone 6 a few days ago for testing. We didn’t encounter any navigational accidents, but were thrown into the edge of the black hole’s field in order to provide recoil for the main body of the Voyager.” 

The kids were surprised. “But we’re still alive.” 

The other one put up his hand and flapped his wings: “In theory, the probability of death after entering a black hole is one hundred percent. So we’re now dead and in a quantum state?” 

They chirped around Lin Si for a while. With a slightly sober mind and a speculation, he said to Lucia, “Fit Einstein’s equation.” 

Lucia began to process two instructions in parallel. 

Lin Si stepped off the dissecting table and looked around at the mess in the hall. 

The laboratory full of experimental liquid containers were shattered and had flowed all over the floor, with a lot of tissue remnants floating around. 

“The other laboratories have also been completely destroyed, and there were many precious samples brought from Earth that were no longer available.” The kid was in a very depressed mood, “It’s too bad.” 

The other patted him on the shoulder: “Luckily, 3D model backups don’t break, but it’s useless —— we’re all dead anyway.” 

There were two unrelated worlds inside and outside the field of the black hole. Inside the visual field, the curvature of space-time was huge, and the escape velocity was much faster than the speed of light. After entering, even light couldn’t escape, and the spaceship would be immediately stretched, torn and destroyed by all kinds of unimaginable and strange physical properties. 

Lin Si sat on the armchair in front of the console. He crossed his fingers, looked at the data, and narrowed his eyes. 

He asked, “Do any of you know anything about basic physics?” 

The kid who just spoke raised his hand. “I studied biomechanics.” 

Lin Si smirked, “Everyone here has studied biomechanics.” 

Zone 6 was the biochemical zone. Evidently, their knowledge of physics was absolutely poor —— It had probably merely halted at the level of college physics in higher education. 

Compared with them, Lin Si felt that he could simply be considered a physicist. 

He looked at Lucia’s calculation and said: “We’ve entered a strange revolving black hole, so we were not destroyed immediately. If we can persist in sailing, there’s a very small possibility that we could escape from the white hole… The material of the spaceship should be able to resist the gravitational singularity.³”

The “Voyager” was a huge spaceship composed of nine zones, named zones 1 to 9. The first, second and third zones were the core regions, surrounded by other zones in the center. Each zone was an independent spacecraft, equipped with warp engines, and had the capability of independent long-distance navigation between the stars. 

This was not the first time that the disengaging incident had occurred. In the previous navigation crises, the main body of the “Voyager” has thrown out the fourth and seventh zones in order to escape from the dangerous areas, and now it’s the sixth zone. Zone 6 was one of the zones with the least number of people on board, with Lin Si’s project “limitless” as its center. 

It’s the zone with the least number of people, yes—but it’s absolutely not the suitable zone to be ejected. 

Someone should already be talking about this. 

“Zone 6 has the least living people and the most robots. Although in this way, the loss of personnel is the least, our zone has so many precious research results. Losing us is simply the loss of the whole existing science. It’s extremely stupid.” 

“The first principle of interstellar voyages is to guarantee the survival of personnel, which is understandable.” Lin Si raised his eyebrows, “Although Zone 6 has always been a thorn in Marshal Joyce’s eye, we will spare no effort to attempt to return to the marshal and Mrs. Chen.” 

He pondered for a while and marked several places on the star chart. “After breaking away from the black hole, Voyager would inevitably fly into the subspace. According to the flight plan, it will leave the subspace near the asteroid TN-III 33876-87624 in the constellation Cetus and hover for at least a month, during which it will be in an observable state. If we’re able to escape the black hole, we will immediately enter the subspace at maximum warp speed, sail to TN-III, and rendezvous with the Voyager.” 

The children praised Lin Si. “Wizard-daren⁴, you’re as amazing as the rumors say.” 

Lin Si: “…..” 

Wizard was his nickname —— ever since one of his genetic modification experiments had made edible fish grow two succulent legs. 

He pressed his eyebrow and said to Lucia, “Calculate the survival rate.” 

Lucia, as a super system whose knowledge reserves and hard IQ had exceeded the sum of all the people here, used her powerful computing prowess to comprehensively model a combination of scenarios, and provided the success rate of Lin Si’s scheme. Unfortunately, it’s less than 3%. 

Lin Si expressionlessly gave the order of “execute now” and began to adjust the spaceship’s energy distribution, reducing the indexes of oxygen generation, gravity and temperature control system. 

The young ones huddled in fear. One of them asked, “Wizard-daren, do we have enough energy to fly to Cetus?” 

Lin Si’s fingers tapped on the console table once and said, “Seth, I suggest you go and request a set of physics courses from Lucia now.” 

Lucia’s voice rang out, “Zone 6 has the ability to obtain energy from the impact force of the white hole.” 

The young ones breathed a sigh of relief and began to perk up. 

Lin Si looked at them. “Before we escape the black hole, we need to prioritize energy conservation to a maximum degree. I hope you can play a… Well, a role other than a food reserve.” 

——It suddenly became solemn. 

Seth tried to probe and asked, “What do you mean by a role other than food reserve?” 

Lin Si saw the thin silver-rimmed glasses on the table. He reached over and put them on himself. 

The kids began to pay attention. “Doctor, the latest treatment device in our lab can rectify myopia in half an hour.” 

“Doctor, our lab’s biological tissue repair technology——” 

Lucia staidly said, “According to personality analysis, glasses are a symbolic object that would make Dr. Lin feel austere and help stay cool.” 

Lin Si turned around in his chair to face them, smirking, “Roles other than food reserve such as…pleasing me.” 

He was a good-looking man, with thin, pale lips. He would often have a kind of inhuman detachment when he’s serious. But he would seem a bit evil whenever he laughed. The scale of “a fleeting smile” was grasped to perfection. He seemed like a very refined creature. 

The kids were creeped out. 

The horrified young ones exchanged looks that were unique to victims of an academic subterfuge, tremendously worried about their virginity. 

Lin Si clasped his arms and gave them a perfunctory gaze, gesturing with his eyes to the messy ground. “Clean this place up.” 

The children, with their chastity crisis resolved, let out a long sigh of relief and began to work diligently to clean up the laboratory. 

“Nearly all of them are dead.” One of them used tweezers to pick up many oddly-shaped tissue fragments on the ground and put them under the microscope one by one to inspect, “There’s also an unusual breed.” 

“Mutated.” Lin, while adjusting to maintain the navigational parameters, said. “The radiation at the edge of the black hole is too strong to obtain a reference value. Get rid of all of them.” 

The kid responded and regretfully said, “what a pity” then began to work quietly and methodically. 

A while after, a sound suddenly echoed. “That… Did you guys hear anything?” 

“Huh?” 

“Nope.” 

After they responded, they all held their breath. The laboratory was deathly still; only the subtle buzzing sound of the intelligent brain engine when it was running too fast to ceaselessly dissipate heat could be heard.

“Knock, knock, knock.” 

A soft sound suddenly appeared in the silence, which seemed to have come from a far, deep place. 

Lin Si closed his eyes and listened for a while. He frowned, got up from his chair and walked towards the side of the lab. 

The others followed him. The closer they got to the wall, the clearer they could hear it. 

“Knock, knock.” 

“Knock, knock.” 

It was the sound of knocking that came in a quiet rhythm, which sent chills down one’s spine. 

“D-doctor,” The kid was scared, “What’s next door?” 

A piercing alarm suddenly sounded, which had broke the silence. The mechanical female voice spoke extremely fast. 

“Alert! Alert! Abnormal life signal detected. Signal origin: Biochemical I storage and release hall, abandoned cabin No. 97. Assessment level: Extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous.” 

The author has something to say:
New pit~ currently have a draft w

Soft science fiction. The science part is mostly bullshit, it can’t be trusted.

Translator Notes: 

¹ philtrum (人中) — vertical groove on the median line of the upper lip; the “human center” acupuncture point 

² nasolabial fold (鼻唇沟) — laugh lines

³ gravitational singularity — In the center of a black hole is a gravitational singularity, a one-dimensional point which contains a huge mass in an infinitely small space, where density and gravity become infinite and space-time curves infinitely, and where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate.

⁴ daren (大人) — title of respect toward superiors; Lord;