i was my mistake

"Uh... By the way, why do you have to write something on paper?" Ye Chen's focus is here.

"Because the sound-generating components are damaged, they cannot be repaired or replaced temporarily, so we can only communicate through text."

She wrote a line of words on the paper again '唰唰'.

"Don't ask such irrelevant questions, first answer why we are here." Wan Qing patted Ye Chen on the head and repeated the question she had just asked.

"2α is only responsible for equipment maintenance, and the other things are handled by time observers."

"What is a Time Observer?"

"The staff who observe whether the time node deviates from history."

"Then where is this place?" Ye Chen asked curiously.

"The world in the mirror, because it has the least impact on the real world, so the equipment and devices are placed in the world in the mirror."

The equipment and devices mentioned here are probably time machines.

However, in Wan Qing's imagination, the time machine is either a small and delicate vehicle, or a huge and precise instrument like a building.

But she never thought that the so-called time machine would be so dilapidated. She would believe it even if it was a warehouse dedicated to recycling e-waste, let alone high-tech.

"The world in the mirror, why did you let us fall into the water... it made us all wet." Ye Chen said a little uncomfortable. The key is that the clothes on his body are still winter clothes. After absorbing the water, it seems to be too much A few pieces of iron seem to be on the body.

"Stupid you." This time Wan Qing didn't let 'Tai Yin' answer, "Isn't water itself a kind of mirror?"

"Ah...it seems to be the same?"

"When will the Time Observer come back?"

"The limit time for the time observer to leave each time is 10 minutes, and there is currently 1 minute left."

"In other words, he's coming back soon?"

'Taiyin' didn't write any more this time, but just nodded expressionlessly.

She is only responsible for the maintenance of the equipment here, and she doesn't seem to know more information.

Ye Chen looked around curiously, and secretly touched a keyboard that was connected to the line for some unknown purpose - there was no monitor beside it.

"Please do not touch any equipment." 'Tai Yin' held up the white paper with a few large characters in front of her with a blank expression.

"Ahem..." Ye Chen retracted his hand in embarrassment, "It doesn't look like it's particularly important..."

"This place is like an electronic waste factory. Are these things really time machines?" Wan Qing was quite skeptical.

"Because this time machine was not assembled in the future, but was successfully assembled in the old era through blueprints, and I took it back to the mirror world to continue to use—only slightly modified." A young man's voice was behind the two The sound sounded, and the two of them turned their heads quickly, and saw an ordinary-looking man with a slightly brown complexion looking at them with a smile.

"Are you... an observer of this time and space?"

"Yes, my name is Ye Yu, the inventor of the time machine." He smiled and held out his hand, but Wan Qing didn't intend to shake hands with him.

Ye Chen, who was about to reach out his hand, suddenly became a little embarrassed.

"The inventor? How did the inventor come to such a place?"

"To be precise, it should be called the manufacturer. I obtained some blueprints from the future, and then made a huge leap in the technology of the time machine. In the current timeline, I am the first person to create the time machine."

"Current...timeline?" Ye Chen felt confused, seemed to understand, but didn't seem to understand.

"Please sit down." He opened the seat and motioned for the two to sit down, "I know you have many doubts, so now listen to me from the beginning."

"Tell me." Wan Qing sat down sharply, "We are also very curious about what's going on."

"What do you think the time is like?"

"Time? It can lead to the future, or to the past. Generally speaking... it should be a straight line that can extend infinitely at both ends." Ye Chen expressed his thoughts.

Wan Qing added from the side: "Maybe there are many more straight lines like this, so it becomes a parallel world."

"Wrong." Ye Yu shook his head slightly, "We finally proved that the parallel world does not exist, and all changes will directly affect the subsequent time."

He looked at the expressionless 'Tai Yin' standing aside, and sighed softly: "The past time has an end, and the end is the big bang of the universe, the singularity where all things are created, of course, it may also be due to the lack of human technology To support us to continue backward, as for the future..."

"What's going on in the future?" Wan Qing asked while holding her chin.

"Time travel can only lead to the past, not to the future that has not happened."

"What do you mean?"

"It means that the places that time travel can go to are all the history that has happened, and the real future that has not yet produced history cannot be reached." He paused and made a metaphor, "We can Think of time as a domino. If we take a domino from any section in the middle, the following cards will not continue to fall down. At the front of the domino, there are still people who are constantly placing cards, but it is not infinitely long after all. Yes, when you get to the front, the place where the cards haven't been placed is naturally empty."

"Then, even if the fallen card is drawn, it won't affect the following cards."

"In fact, when our observation position is in the middle of the cards, the cards behind them will be in a state of not falling down. When we see those cards falling down, it means that we have entered the next period of time. You It can be regarded as an assembly line workshop that is always in operation. Once there is a problem in a certain link in the middle, the entire assembly line will be affected and accidents will occur.”

"So, the role of the time observer is to prevent a certain period of dominoes from being drawn, right?"

"That's right, the role of time observers is to ensure the stability of the timeline." Ye Yu nodded lightly, and said with a wry smile, "But now, we don't know what kind of development is the correct future for human beings." .”

"what?"

……

Z. Correct future

Time shifted to Ye Youliang, when Ye Chen's father was still in chaos——

"Humans don't know what the real history is like?" Ye Youliang frowned, holding a half-burned cigarette in his mouth, but he didn't take a puff.

Surrounded by a vast golden desert, the scorching sun hangs high in the sky.

The only shade is this makeshift awning.

"That's right, in the early days of time travel, due to incomplete standards and rules, this technology was passed on to various eras, resulting in a lot of historical changes. Many people used this technology to travel back in time without any scruples changing the future." Brown-skinned Leaf Feather sat coiled on the shady sand, "People originally thought that the origin of the invention of the time machine was in [-], but it was later discovered that it came from a more distant future—this information was provided by a It was sent from the future to the past by a piece of paper."

Ye Youliang nodded blankly. He looked very old, like an 80-year-old man who had been working in the farmland all year round.

"However, when people want to connect with people in the future, they find that the time machine can't lead to the future recorded in the data at all-at most, it can only reach the future where the sun flashes and human beings die, and then there is a dead darkness. There is no way to move forward.”

At the time, top scientists and world leaders were arguing about it.

Some people think that the information from the future is fake. The origin of the time machine invented by mankind is [-], and the future of mankind is doomed to perish.

Others believe that the proliferation of time travel has caused a huge change in the timeline, so that mankind has ushered in the end, and it is impossible to reach the era when the time machine was really invented.

Later, various sources confirmed that the time machine in [-] was indeed affected by some unexplainable sources of information during the research and development process. After overcoming several difficulties, the time machine was finally born. up.

And these materials that do not know where they come from can basically be determined to come from the future that is no longer accessible.

So many people pessimistically believe that the end of the solar system will eventually come, just because of the huge impact of time travel, it has been brought forward.

This matter has not yet yielded an accurate result, but the countries have joined forces to take timely measures to stop losses.

That is to start from [-] and trace back all the lost time machine technology.

In the end, it was traced back to the one made by Ye Yu.

Unlike most other recovered time machines, what he got was not technical data, but blueprints.

In other words, there is no principle of a time machine in it, but even if you just complete the contents of this blueprint step by step, you can make one.

However, due to limitations in technology and materials, this time machine was built with difficulty, and there were many problems and malfunctions. The fluctuating time and space also affected some innocent people.

These unexpected problems brought the end of the future forward by another 100 years. This time it was no longer a helium flash, but a world war started, and human beings killed each other, resulting in the near extinction of human beings, and there was no spare power to deal with the solar helium flash.

At that time, the time travelers who arrived in the 'future' again were shocked.

Fortunately, history can be corrected in time. All the time machines have not been recovered. Because of the particularity of their own existence, the people who made the time machines were arranged as time observers to observe various time and space.

The time management organization tries to fix all history that has been changed.

However, because it was changed too many times, all the backup historical files were also changed due to historical changes. At that time, it was a mess, and human beings could only find a way to send the backup files to as far back as possible in history.

That is to say, the big bang of the universe has ended, and all the celestial bodies have entered into the relatively stable period, and the solar system has been formed in time.

The longer the time, the less affected it will be.

With these few "clean" cornerstones, human beings began to correct time step by step.

And time itself has the ability to automatically correct and integrate. All humans need to do is to choose at the crossroads, or even just throw a stone into the water for a small change.

Everything is calculated by a large AI, which is an extremely complex project.

I don't know how long this kind of repair lasted, because I have been traveling in the long river of time, so that even the concept of time has become blurred.

But in short, human beings have really put a lot of effort into this.

History has also changed back to the timeline of the extinction of human beings due to the helium flash of the sun.

This seems to be the real history of mankind.

Many people think that human beings should not end like this and want to vigorously promote change, but some people think that continuing to change will only waste all previous efforts and welcome a worse future.

And suddenly one day, humans discovered that the arrival of the solar helium flash was one day late...

"Hasn't all the history been restored? Why is there still a change?" Ye Youliang took a deep breath of the cigarette and shook off the large amount of soot.

"In fact, not everything has been completely restored. After all, even in a so-called sterile room, there is no guarantee that there will be absolutely no bacteria."

"so……?"

"That's right, we observed you at the very beginning, as a person who should have died in the new history, but survived, and through our observation, we found that there is one more person beside you that has no record in history at all." people."

"……my daughter?"

"That's right, it's the person who claims to be your daughter—Wan Qing." Ye Yu took a deep breath, "But since the impact on the future is good, after organizing discussions, we decided to only observe for the time being. Allowing the situation to develop independently, the time of human extinction has been repeatedly postponed, and during this postponed month, there have been huge breakthroughs in the technology of large-scale ecospheres and interstellar navigation-human beings can make the spaceship carrying the ecosphere a maximum of two points. One traveled at the speed of light."

Ye Youliang grinned: "In other words, I can continue to live? But why now? I feel like half of me is still in the past, but the other half has already arrived in the future."

"This is the time resonance effect. In fact, the future you is the future you, but it is connected with the past time and space, memory and touch. This feeling makes the brain unable to process it for a while, resulting in confusion. .”

"Then when will I be able to return to normal?"

"We are investigating the final 'loophole'. If everything is normal, we will promote the reintegration of this timeline-you can understand it as preserving the current state." Ye Yu smiled, "You will also restore to Go to a normal life, but the memory of the things I told you today will be completely erased—the fewer questions that can cause uncertainty, the better."

……

In the warehouse hall full of messy machines:

Ye Chen rubbed her head vigorously, feeling that all the information was too much for her to digest.

"Since the timeline has been reintegrated in a logical manner, why should we be trapped in a time loop?"

Ye Yu looked at Wan Qing and said seriously: "We didn't do this, time loop is a natural phenomenon."

"natural phenomenon?"

"Yesterday's you will stay in yesterday forever." Ye Yu had a deep meaning.

Wan Qing's brows furrowed and stretched, and she didn't know if she understood correctly: "I am a new me every day, just like two computers that are separated by two places are transmitting data. It seems to be continuing to write continuously, but in fact...a part of it is being continued by a different computer?"

"That's roughly what it means."

"That is to say, time is not in a loop at all?" Wan Qing opened her eyes wide, "That is to say, it should have stopped writing and transferred the data to tomorrow's 'computer', because of some kind of error, it can continue continuously. Write it down, but because the 'position' has not changed, so even if you continue to write more, it can only be in this day?"

"Your imagination is very rich, roughly like this, but there are still some subtle differences - but it is enough to understand this general feeling." Ye Yu cleared his throat, "But it will still have an impact on the future .”

"Oh...I see. This means that I am trying to change the future over and over again in the same day."

"Yes, we have observed that the 'future' that can be reached is constantly changing, as if many time travelers have flooded in at once, and finally found that there is a problem with the period of time I observed."

"Then... what is the boundary?"

"The artificial boundary set up to prevent certain people from acting beyond expectations is connected to a relatively safe part of the high-dimensional world. After our screening, including you, a total of 130 seven people will do different things today. , there are different ways of acting, and the one with the strongest autonomy is the two of you—they are more or less influenced by you.”

"Could it be that we're going to go on like this forever?" Wan Qing frowned, "Since you need us to stabilize history, why didn't you just show up and tell us what to do?"

"The 'I' standing here does not belong to this time and space, so it is necessary to reduce the impact on the timeline as much as possible, and try not to appear in the real world—and when I enter the real world, it is as if I was just staring at the real world. People who look at a basin of water, reach out to touch the basin of water, no matter how careful they are, there will be slight ripples, and because there is another young 'me' in this time and space, so I can borrow his The physical action, but it can’t be too long, and it can’t be used frequently, so before that—we are all deducing.”

"Deduction?"

"Yes, deduce the most appropriate way of action to achieve the best result. Now we have some clues. You just need to follow what I said, and you can lead history to a better future. After that I will integrate the timeline again to preserve all of this." He suddenly showed a strange smile, "Before that, I have to erase your memories of everything I said and saw here today."

"Wait, you erased our memory, can we still complete things according to your arrangement?"

"Of course, we will use some hints that you can't detect to make small interventions to achieve the ultimate goal - before leaving, I will solve the problem of infinite loops on you, so that you can truly reach tomorrow."

"So, yesterday's me will really be left in yesterday?"

"Hehe...it's just a metaphor. In fact, it's too complicated to explain, and you don't need to know that much."

"Oh, we will do whatever you ask us to do. If you don't even have to ask questions before erasing the memory, then I won't do it." Wan Qing folded her arms and said coldly, "If you ask someone else to do something, you have to give some help." Benefits? You don’t want to give a few million, at least give a few hundred thousand, or at least 10,000+?”