Nobita's Room
Doraemon stood by the window, watching Dekisugi and Nobita slowly walk toward the playground. He let out a quiet sigh, a trace of nostalgia rising within him for the days gone by…
"I wonder how everything will turn out in the end…" Doraemon thought. It was rare to see him so lost and uncertain.
"Click!"
A soft sound snapped him back to reality. Shizuka and Kelly's group had returned to Nobita's room, and once again everyone gathered around the low table to continue discussing how to save the world. Rim leaned back slightly, propping herself up with her hands on the floor, and asked, "So what should we do now? Does anyone have any ideas?"
Everyone shook their heads. Doraemon used to have a plan, but now things were much more complicated. He wasn't sure whether the mysterious power that had killed the Përjetësia would intervene again or not.
Connie tap on the table and offered a suggestion. "What if we evacuate earlier? That black spot only attacks the sun, right? If we ignore the sun and move away, maybe we won't be targeted!"
Doraemon folded his arms, thought for a moment, then said, "I wouldn't recommend that… History is extremely difficult to change. The further back we go, the less stable things become. Who knows what we might run into then?"
"Is it really true tho?" Karen said thoughtfully, resting her chin on her hand. "If I went out right now and "take care" of some current leaders, would history change?"
"Karen!" Connie slammed the table and glared at her in irritation.
"I'm just giving an example, an example…" Karen waved her hand dismissively. "Besides, we've already seen some changes, haven't we? That black spot, didn't it appear earlier than it was supposed to?"
Kelly shook her head, siding with Doraemon. "That's enough Karen… We don't have much information about the period between 2530 and 2540. All we know is that before August 7, 2540, the apocalypse hadn't truly begun yet…"
At the time, everything had happened too fast. The data they gathered was based purely on observable conditions and hadn't been thoroughly analyzed. They were missing something for sure, an important piece of the big picture, but what could it be?
"Mmmm… We still have plenty of time right now. It's not like we need to decide on a solution immediately…" Shizuka spoke up. "I think we should gather as much information as possible first."
"Shizuka's right…" Rim nodded, acting rashly would be unwise.
Connie seemed to remember something and added proudly: "Speaking of which, Rim and I still have a lot of solar records back at our lab. Kelly's lab only has some part of the data. Over the past ten years, we've collected countless records, reports, and charts. There's no way to transfer all of them to Kelly's server at once!"
"Oh Yeah, right!" Rim clapped her hands: "There's also a set of charts on stellar flickering including the Sun that the two of us compiled. Kelly's server doesn't have those files either!"
Kelly frowned: "The stellar what now? You know what... It doesn't matter, anything about the sun right now could be useful... I hope… But how are we supposed to get them? Going five hundred years into the future again would be pretty risky…"
Doraemon crossed his arms, smiled: "It wouldn't be a problem, leave it to me. I have a gadget that can replicate documents stored across different points in time. As long as it's linked to the user's memories, and we can specify the exact time and location, it can instantly reproduce the documents from that moment."
Everyone's faces lit up. Connie gave Doraemon a thumbs-up: "Now that's Përjetësia's way! Reliable technology as always!"
Doraemon didn't reply, only smiled as he reached into his pocket and rummaged around. After a moment, he froze slightly, his eye twitching, then continued searching before pulling out a red-handled object that looked a bit like an old telephone.
"That looks like the time telephone, no?" Shizuka tilted her head in confusion. She had seen Doraemon use it before to talk to Dorami. Kelly's group also stared at Doraemon in puzzlement. Why was he suddenly pulling out a phone?
Doraemon scratched his head awkwardly and said, a little embarrassed, "Uh… I didn't bring the document replication gadget with me. For now, I can only call someone else to bring it over…"
"…"
"Is he…"
Kelly and Karen suddenly felt that Doraemon had become a little less reliable.
"Yeah, he is sometimes like that…" Rim sighs.
Rim, Connie, and Shizuka, the three of them had accompanied Doraemon on many adventures before, so they see it happen all the time… The serious journey they just had made them almost forget just how unreliable Doraemon is sometimes.
…
"The situation is quite serious…"
On the holographic screen was a robotic cat who resembled Doraemon, but in yellow instead of blue. She wore a large red bow on her head and looked far more feminine as she stood there with her arms crossed in thought. This was Dorami, Doraemon's "younger sister."
Doraemon had used the Time Phone to contact her, asking her to send over the document-retrieval gadget, while also briefing her on everything that was happening here.
At the moment, Dorami was stationed at the Apocalypse Machine, working on recovering it and investigating why it had stopped functioning. The reason she appeared in her robotic-cat form was that she had originally planned to go look for Doraemon once her investigation was complete. The machine was malfunctioning, and Doraemon had gone completely out of contact. Even though she didn't believe humans were capable of doing anything to a being like the Përjetësia, she was still deeply worried.
Fortunately, Doraemon finally called. Seeing his name pop up brought her great relief, though she hadn't expected him to deliver such a huge amount of information all at once.
After thinking for a moment, Dorami spoke to Doraemon: "I'll send the gadget over right away. You should retrieve and examine the documents first. I still need to recover the machine and report on its condition. Once that's done, I'll come over to help."
Doraemon nodded and ended the call.
Not long after, the document-retrieval gadget arrived in Nobita's room. Doraemon wasted no time. Holding it in his hands, he walked over to Rim and Connie and gave a brief explanation. "Alright, this helmet is a mind-link interface. Once the link is established, you can use the computer to replicate the data."
Connie nodded. "You operate the machine. I'll handle selecting the documents." As she spoke, she put the helmet on. Doraemon began working the device, replicating documents according to Connie's instructions. Meanwhile, Kelly turned to Rim and asked: "You mentioned something earlier about stellar flickering charts right? What exactly are those?"
Rim explained calmly: "Before Connie and I joined you two on spacetime-traversal research, we had always been studying and recording something that we call "stellar flickering". They're oscillatory phenomena emitted from the total energy output of a star. To understand the cause-and-effect, we would need to track back quite deeply… But let's just put it simply… Let's see... you all know about electric lamps, right? Its brightness is not caused by moths fluttering around it, but by fluctuations in voltage.
Of course, these stellar flickering oscillations phenomena are far more complex, and also extremely subtle. Without precise observational instruments and sufficient expertise, they're almost impossible to record. Connie and I even used the time machine to set up extended observations. After all, observing these things takes an enormous amount of time. But it's worth it, since studying this kind of flicker is one way to help us understand the deep internal structure of stars."
"Have you two discovered anything?"
"A bit… But not nearly at the stage of any big discoveries yet. At the very beginning, we could only observe the easiest star to observe, the Sun. We observe it flicker for several years, before we gradually expand the targets from near to far, step by step, to other stars…
And with the help of the time machine, twenty-five stars are being observed, and the number and range are still expanding. But even so, our studies are still very limited, you know. We may spend hundreds of years collecting samples across the universe before we can even begin to talk about induction and discovery…"
As Rim explained, the records from the past few decades of these studies were gradually replicated. Rim ran over excitedly, both hands moved swiftly across the keyboard.
On the computer screen, wave after wave of rising and falling curves kept flashing by, clearly records of the Sun's flickering.
Further on, flickering from other stars appeared. Rim excitedly introduced them one by one: "We call this kind of flicker Type-A stellar flickering. Compared with other kinds of flickering, it occurs less frequently. Type-A flickering differs from the other kinds that stars commonly exhibit; not only is the intensity of its energy oscillations greater by an order of magnitude, and better reflect the internal structure of a star, but its waveforms also possess a stronger sense of mathematical beauty."
Shizuka scratched her cheek: "You theoretical scientists are always talking about mathematical beauty. That feeling seems to belong exclusively to you science folk… Like those Maxwell's equations, a lot of Atlantean scientists also call it beautiful. I've studied them too and understood, but I still can't see where the beauty is…"
Rim looked at Shizuka seriously and pointed at the chart. "Look closely at these waveforms. This kind of beauty is like crystal sparkling, very hard, very pure, and very transparent…"
Shizuka shrugged. She didn't really understand. This kind of appreciation was probably something outsiders like her would never truly feel.
The replication machine continued rapidly restoring those waveform charts. Rim stared at them, a look of rapt fascination in her eyes. Just then, the computer suddenly let out a loud beep.
Rim frowned as she stared at the screen. After a moment, she turned to Connie, looked completely baffled and point to the computer: "Um… Connie, is this…"
"Eh… identical? Completely?" Connie leaned in to look at the screen and said in confusion.
Everyone also looked over and saw that the computer had automatically popped up a notification. The alert indicated that the waveform charts produced by two stars were identical, and asked whether to check and overwrite.
"What's the matter?"
Shizuka, Kelly, and Karen couldn't help but feel puzzled. Shizuka tilted her head and asked: "Is that really strange? They're just two identical charts, aren't they?"
Rim shaking her head: "Impossible, this is impossible! Look, these were produced by TWO different stars!"
Kelly shrugged: "Maybe those two stars have very similar internal structures, so their flickering waveforms are alike. Didn't you say Type-A flickering reflects the internal structure of a star or something?"
Rim shook her head. "That's impossible. Even if they belong to the same stellar categories and share the same G2 spectral type, their flickering cannot be identical down to the last detail. Even with similar structures, this situation simply shouldn't occur.
It's like planting trees. Two trees can be of the same species, but they'll still grow differently. Has anyone ever seen two trees grow in exactly the same way? Flickering oscillations produce extremely complex waveforms. For such a complex waveform to overlap perfectly is equivalent to having two trees that are identical down to the very tips of their branches."
Connie and Rim rapidly flipped through the data on the computer, explaining as they went: "These two waveforms, the first belongs to the Sun, the second is a Type-A flickering that comes from Alpha Centauri. The time difference between the two is eight and a half years. These two waveforms are extremely complex and lengthy, yet they match perfectly. This couldn't be a coincidence. It simply couldn't."
At this point, Kelly, Karen, and Shizuka also began to feel that something was seriously off. Doraemon, meanwhile, seemed to realize something and mumbled: "Interesting!"
"Did you discover something?" everyone asked, turning toward him.
Doraemon replied slowly :"Alpha Centauri is the star system closest to the Sun. The distance's 4.25 light-years away to be precise.
The time gap between the appearance of the two identical flickers is eight years and six months, exactly the time it takes light to make a round trip between the two stars.
When the light from the Sun's flickering reached Alpha Centauri after 4.25 years, the latter produced an identical flicker. Then, after the same length of time, the flickering light from Alpha Centauri traveled back and was observed you two."
Doraemon also leaned over the computer and let it run another set of calculations: "Even if we factor in the mutual stellar evolution and decay of the two stars over these years, the results still line up precisely."
"Wait, doesn't that kinda similar to… No…. It can't be… can it?" Karen muttered.
"What is it Karen?" Kelly asked.
Karen hesitated for a moment before speaking up. "Do you remember how we once used 3D virtual-reality elemental microscopic positioning technology to study the human brain?"
Kelly nodded.
Karen continued: "So… according to our research, how do human thoughts propagate within the brain again?"
Reflexively, Kelly answered: "Signals are transmitted between neurons in the brain; cortical neurons continuously flicker and pass signals along…" Halfway through her sentence, her eyes widened as realization struck.
Doraemon finished it for them: "Exactly. Just as a computer's computing power arises from combinations of vast numbers of 0s and 1s, consciousness is nothing more than the result of massive numbers of simple connections. When these simple connections between neurons accumulate to an enormous scale, consciousness emerges. In other words, consciousness is flicking signal transmission among an unimaginably large number of nodes."
Shizuka, Rim and Connie looked at the three, said in disbelief: "Are you guys implying that the flickering between the Sun and those stars is actually the transmission of some kind of living being's thoughts?"
They didn't answer immediately. No one can be certain yet. Doraemon turning to Connie and Rim: "Let's see if we can verify this further. The light from that solar flicker is still propagating through the universe; perhaps it will once again trigger an identical flicker in another star."
Rim and Connie nodded. "After Alpha Centauri, the next star is…"