Chapter 6: The Memory Resonance Experiment

The hum of the ventilation ducts hovered in the ceiling of the science bay. As Lin Shen removed his radiation mask, cold sweat trickled from the back of his neck down his spine. The conversation he had just overheard outside the isolation chamber felt like an ice needle piercing his eardrum—Oleg Petrov’s voice, thick with the dull, heavy tone of vodka: "Three days. I want to see the underlying code of the entanglement matrix."

"Professor Lin?"

Xia Qing’s voice came from behind, accompanied by the static characteristic of the ship’s internal comms. As Lin turned, he saw her leaning against the alloy frame of the bulkhead, the shoulder badges of her combat suit glinting under the emergency lights. The Major’s short hair stood on end like laser-cut wire; only the faint, deep blue in her eyes betrayed her emotions—a mix of scrutiny and vigilance.

"The application for the resonance experiment has been approved." Xia Qing raised the holographic tablet in her hand, its pale blue light blurring her features. "But only at low intensity. I’ve adjusted the current threshold for the neural interface three times."

Lin Shen’s fingers unconsciously stroked the silver-rimmed glasses at his chest. They were a keepsake from his mother, the edges of the lenses still marked by scratches from twenty years ago. "Captain Xia, the essence of the quantum resonance network is the matching of emotional frequencies," he said softly, as if coaxing a delicate instrument. "If we don’t increase the magnetic field strength to 0.3 Tesla, we won’t be able to capture even the most basic emotional spectrum."

"0.25." Xia Qing’s fingertips swiped rapidly across the tablet, and a string of flickering numbers appeared on the tactical screen. "That is the limit I can allow." She suddenly looked up, her gaze as precise as a ship’s gun sight. "You know the result of the Earth Federation's last experiment with primates—the chimpanzee's hippocampus melted."

The science bay’s holographic projector flared to life between them, casting an image of Amir above the quantum entanglement generator. The body of the Dreamweaver liaison shimmered with the luster of mother-of-pearl, stardust-like light spots drifting from the tips of his hair. "Captain Xia," his voice was like snowflakes falling into a resonance chamber, "our psychic structure is fundamentally different from carbon-based life. Low-intensity resonance could actually trigger a rejection response, much like trying to filter stellar winds with a nano-scale sieve."

Xia Qing tapped a rhythmic beat on the edge of her tablet. Lin knew this was her signal that she was weighing the pros and cons—the footage of the Dreamweaver homeworld he had seen in Chapter 4 three days ago was still in her tactical screen's history, the shattered star system and frozen stellar debris like an unhealable wound. "Thirty minutes," she said, suddenly closing the tablet. "Including setup time. If the alpha waves on the monitor spike, I will cut the connection immediately."

Lin’s breath hitched. He looked at Amir, whose projection rippled with a gentle pink—the Dreamweaver emotional spectrum for "gratitude."

The moment the neural interface helmet clicked over his temples, Lin smelled the damp earth of his memories. That summer from twenty years ago flooded his consciousness: he was squatting by the cracked bed of the old Yellow River, his ten-year-old palms cupping the last handful of murky water, the mud and sand slipping through his fingers. His mother’s funeral had been three days prior; his father, his eco-restoration suit still stained with unwashed green algae, had knelt to touch his head, a drop of water from his glove falling onto the back of Lin’s hand—colder than the water in his palm.

"Is this... a cherishing of life?"

Amir’s voice drifted into his consciousness like morning mist. Lin’s vision split: on one side, his ten-year-old self curled on the scorching riverbed, bright tears hanging from his lashes; on the other, a space filled with star-fog, where countless translucent light cocoons floated, each containing a blurred figure—the psychic bodies of the Dreamweavers?

"The children of our homeworld also touched frozen starlight at the end." Amir’s emotions flowed like a warm current, carrying a sorrow and tenderness that transcended language. "When the Star-Hunter’s Dyson membrane covered our star, the temperature in the light cocoons dropped 0.1 Kelvin every hour. The smallest child, her psychic body remained in a grasping posture—just like your hand, clutching that handful of water."

Lin’s consciousness was suddenly dragged into a deeper layer of resonance. He saw himself at sixteen at the Arctic observatory, the aurora on the ice sheet like green silk ribbons entwining the radio telescope; simultaneously, he saw Amir’s memory fragments: the Dreamweavers' "Resonance Plaza" suspended in the orbit of their homeworld, millions of psychic bodies connected via the quantum network, their emotional spectra weaving a river of light more brilliant than the Milky Way.

"Why... do you preserve these memories?" Lin’s consciousness asked, his voice distorted into the tremors of stardust within the resonance network.

"Because forgetting is a more thorough annihilation than death." Amir’s emotions suddenly grew scorching, like the plasma flow of a star’s core. "When the Star-Hunters destroyed our star, when the energy chain of the quantum resonance network broke, we could only seal our psychic bodies into light cocoons with our final energy. Each cocoon is a seed of memory, waiting... waiting for the day we can find a civilization capable of resonance."

The buzzing of the monitor suddenly pierced the sea of consciousness. Lin snapped his eyes open to find himself slumped in the neural interface chair, his silver-rimmed glasses slipped to the tip of his nose, lenses covered in thick fog. Amir’s projection was slowly dissipating, its edges flickering with unstable purple noise—a sign of resonance overload.

"Alpha wave peak at 140 Hz," Xia Qing’s voice came from above, with a deliberately flattened composure. Lin looked up to see her standing at the monitor, her knuckles white as she pressed against the control panel. "37% higher than projected."

"But we succeeded." Lin removed the helmet, his fingers trembling as he adjusted his glasses. The fog on the lenses condensed into tiny ice crystals in the cold, looking exactly like the frost on the Yellow River path twenty years ago. "We shared emotional memories without any rejection response."

Amir’s projection stabilized once more, this time flowing with warm golden light. "Professor Lin’s memory contains a lot of 'water'," he said, a hint of a smile in his voice. "Liquid water, solid water, even the water in tears. On the Dreamweaver homeworld, water is a resource more precious than antimatter—our light cocoons require stellar energy to maintain, and stellar energy... is essentially a form of 'fire-water'."

Xia Qing suddenly turned and walked toward the bulkhead. The sound of her combat boots against the metal floor was sharp. "I will sync the experimental data with the United Government." As she reached the door, she paused. As she turned her head, Lin saw the old scar behind her ear glowing pale pink under the lights—a mark from a fragment during the asteroid defense war. "But remember, Professor Lin," she said, her voice lower, as if speaking to the air, "the universe will not become gentle just because we are moved."

The moment the bulkhead closed behind Xia Qing, the alarm in the science bay sounded. Lin’s gaze swept across the monitor, and he saw the energy readings of the quantum communication device jumping abnormally—the previously stable 0.98 entanglement degree was slowly dropping at a rate of 0.01% per second.

"What’s happening?" He hurried to the terminal, his fingers flying across the screen. "Main power is normal, antimatter reactor output is stable... Amir, is the problem on your end?"

Amir’s projection turned a worried indigo. "Our resonance nodes are functioning perfectly. Perhaps... someone is interfering with the entangled state?"

Lin’s pupils contracted. He noticed an unauthorized access log in the communication device’s maintenance records at 2:00 AM. The username was "Technician 07"—the young man Oleg had met in the isolation chamber three days ago.

"Professor Lin?" Amir’s voice was filled with concern. "Should we terminate the communication?"

Lin stared at the jumping numbers on the screen, suddenly remembering the lunar base asset transfer agreement Oleg had offered. He took off his glasses and wiped the fogged lenses with his sleeve—wiping them with extra care this time, as if to clear away some impending gloom.

"Maintain it for another ten minutes." He put the glasses back on, his gaze behind the lenses becoming exceptionally clear. "I need to confirm if this interference is a coincidence, or... some kind of omen."

Outside the science bay, Xia Qing stood before the observation window. The Milky Way outside the porthole was like a shredded ribbon of light, spanning the path ahead of the starship. She touched the scar behind her ear; the skin there was still slightly hot—just like the moment the asteroid fragment had grazed her, the sirens mixed with the commander’s roar: "All units, take note, this is not a drill!"

Her tactical screen vibrated on her wrist. She looked down; it was a message from Oleg: "I want a copy of the raw data from the resonance experiment."

Xia Qing’s thumb hovered over the "Delete" key, lingering for a long time. In the distance, the lights of the science bay cast blurred patches on the corridor floor through the frosted glass. She suddenly remembered how Lin Shen looked when the experiment ended—that usually calm scholar, lenses fogged, but his eyes burning with an intensity that suggested a fire frozen for twenty years had finally found oxygen to burn.

"Captain Xia?" Communications Officer Xiao Zhou’s voice came through her earpiece. "Emergency meeting of the United Government, your presence is required in the command deck."

Xia Qing pressed the comms button and turned toward the end of the corridor. Her shadow stretched long under the ship’s lights, overlapping with the light patches from the science bay, like two parallel star-tracks that had suddenly found the possibility of intersection.

Inside the science bay, Lin Shen was staring at the energy readings of the quantum communication device. The entanglement degree continued to drop, but what unsettled him more was a small, flashing red dot in the corner of the screen—an encrypted email from Earth, sent by the ecological lab at the lunar base. He clicked the email, and a photo popped up: on a cracked riverbed, a handful of murky water was freezing; tiny air bubbles were trapped beneath the ice, looking exactly like that summer twenty years ago.

The body of the email contained only one line: "The old Yellow River path from your childhood memories—the underground river was detected flowing again last week."

Lin’s fingers gently brushed the photo on the screen. Outside the window, the starlight of the Milky Way spilled onto his shoulders, intertwining with the stardust in Amir’s projection, like two emotional threads spanning light-years, slowly and firmly weaving a possibility in the darkness of the universe.