Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 285 Pioneer

Yu Ying's due date was approaching its final month. In the same week, the Pioneer completed its full-system joint testing.

The test list exceeded two thousand items. Plasma engine cold start, emergency life support switching, radiation shield magnetic field generation, and remote activation of the consciousness interface. Each item was checked off. Two thousand checks, not one missing.

Chen Hao stared at the last page of the summary for a long time. He picked up a marker and signed a huge "Qualified" at the end of the report. Then he drew an upward arrow with two words at the top.

ignition.

The plasma engine successfully completed a 72-hour full-thrust test. With all four engines firing simultaneously, the deep blue exhaust plumes resembled four frozen auroras on the monitoring screen of the orbital assembly platform. Fuel consumption was 3% lower than design expectations, and thrust output remained stable at over 99.7% of the design value. Ji Beihang later watched the test video and commented with only one sentence: "These four engines are more stable than my heart." His heart had survived seven in-flight engine failures during his test flight career, and no one thought he was joking when he said that.

The life support system operated in a completely closed environment for three months. 99.4% of the water and oxygen consumed by the six AI-assisted simulated crew members was recycled. The artificial gravity rotating module rotated at full speed continuously for thirty days, with the simulated gravity inside reaching 0.9 times the Earth's gravitational acceleration, without any structural fatigue. Wenya wrote a note in the biomedical report: the simulated crew members' bone density decline was 30% slower than predicted on Earth. Artificial gravity was more effective than expected.

The deep space simulation of the consciousness interface took place on the last night. Shen Yiming triggered a simulated emergency medical scenario at the Hangzhou ground control center, his heart rate soaring from 68 to 112. Zuo Cheng, without any physical connection, sensed the distress signal within 0.04 milliseconds.

He looked down at his hands. His hands were steady.

"Received. Very clear."

Shen Yiming chuckled over the communication channel. "Faster than expected."

"Emergency situations actually make things clearer. People's consciousness signals become stronger when they are afraid. This is something you wrote about in your previous paper."

"That's just my guess."

"It's not a guessing game anymore."

The naming ceremony was held on a sunny morning.

The hull of the Pioneer was painted with three lines of text. The first line was in Chinese: 先锋号 (Pioneer). The second line was in English: Pathfinder. The third line used the founder's code to write a word with the same meaning, which literally translates to "the first to open the door" in Webweaving language.

A 137-meter-long silver ship slowly rotated in near-Earth orbit, sunlight sweeping from bow to stern, reflecting an arc of light. This image, captured by a Tianqiong satellite, was projected onto large screens in over one hundred cities worldwide. On the banks of the Qiantang River in Hangzhou, in Times Square in New York, and in Shibuya in Tokyo. The same image, the same spacecraft, the same name.

Han Lu stood in front of the monitoring station, watching the data displayed on the global screen. "Simultaneous live broadcasts from 117 cities, with 430 million online viewers, and the number is still rising."

Yu Ying did not attend the naming ceremony. With less than four weeks until her due date, her obstetrician advised her to minimize movement. She watched the live stream in the waiting room, her hand resting on the curve of her abdomen. On the screen, the Pioneer rocket was slowly rotating, its founder code gleaming faintly blue in the sunlight.

She turned to Zuo Cheng and said, "The first person to push open the door. That's not a name, it's a job description. The person who pushes the door open isn't necessarily the first to go in. The person who pushes the door open simply helps the person behind them, then steps aside to let others pass first."

Zuo Cheng didn't speak. He took Yu Ying's hand and held it in his own.

The launch window was set for four months later. The ground team entered the final sprint. Zuo Cheng stayed at the Deep Space Tracking and Control Center until dawn every day, with sixteen parallel data streams in front of him, each representing a subsystem of the Pioneer spacecraft.

One late night, he switched to the Web-Weaving Perception interface. When the Pioneer passed directly above the Web-Weaving Blue Star node, a slight resonance occurred between their data streams. The amplitude was very small, lasting no more than two seconds, but the resonance frequency was stable.

He stared at the phenomenon for a long time. All nine nodes of the Web were on or near Earth. Pioneer was the first manned spacecraft to orbit outside the Web's nodes. The Web was "noticing" it. Not a warning, not a marker, but a response pattern he couldn't find a more precise way to describe.

He jotted down his discovery on a sticky note and stuck it on the edge of the console. The note contained only three words: "The web is listening."

Three days after the naming ceremony, Han Lu knocked on Zuo Cheng's office door.

She placed a dark blue box on his table and opened the lid. Six badges lay side by side on a black velvet cloth, with a dark blue background and silver lettering.

Shen Yiming. Commander.

Han Lu read out the remaining five names one by one. Ji Beihang, pilot, former Air Force test pilot, 41 years old, with over 10,000 flight hours. Tan Yue, mission scientist, planetary geologist, 39 years old. Wen Ya, biomedical engineer, 36 years old. Huo Zheng, aerospace engineer, 42 years old. Lu Yunfei, communications and network expert, 35 years old, Yu Ying's junior at Huaxia University.

Six people. One spaceship.

Zuo Cheng picked up Shen Yiming's badge. They first met in a laboratory at Huaxia University, Shen Yiming wearing that same plaid shirt he never wore. Eleven years ago. Back then, he had only recently been reborn, and Shen Yiming was still conducting basic research for the Federation. Now, he was the first commander in all of humanity to attempt to leave the Earth-Moon system.

"There's one more thing," Han Lu said.

"What?"

"The launch window overlaps with Yu Ying's due date. The obstetrician said there's a 17% chance it will be on the same day."

Zuo Cheng raised his head.

"I'm not trying to scare you," Han Lu said, placing the report on the table. "In the most extreme scenario, you might send a spaceship away in the morning and pick up a child in the evening."

Zuo Cheng was silent for a few seconds. He put the six badges back into the box and closed the lid.

"That's good too."

Han Lu was stunned for a moment.

"If two history-altering events are destined to happen simultaneously within a month," he placed the box in the center of his desk, "why not cram them onto the same day? That way, my heart won't have to stop twice."

Han Lu smiled. But as she smiled, her eyes welled up with tears.

"Four months later." Zuo Cheng pushed the box forward one centimeter. "He will launch the Pioneer out of the solar system. I will bring my daughter into this world. Statistically speaking, it's a very worthwhile addition."

Night had fallen over Hangzhou outside the window. The Pioneer was quietly turning in its low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometers, the six founder codes on its silver hull, "the first to open the door," gleaming faintly in the starlight.

In another window in the same city, Yu Ying turned to the last page of the parenting e-book she had finished reading. The last page was blank. She drew an upward arrow on the blank page with her finger.

Then two words were written at the top of the arrow.

ignition.