June 2028, Hasen River Park, Nidu, Liangguo
At dusk, Daphne Braun arrived early at Hasen River Park. This was her first date with the man of her dreams, Michael Max.
Daphne sat leisurely on a bench, lifting her head to gaze up at the architectural artwork built from a massive steel framework—VESSEL.
The Hasen River lay in the western part of Nidu’s Core Island. Core Island was synonymous with and a microcosm of Liangguo’s prosperity; the skyscrapers in its east and its straight, numbered streets had bustled noisily for a century, while the western area where the Hasen River was located had remained relatively backward.
In 2019, with the stunning debut of the new landmark public structure VESSEL, the largest regional redevelopment project in Liangguo’s history—the Hasen River New District complex, with a total investment exceeding 25 billion dollars—rose from the ground, infusing this century-old metropolis of Nidu with a fresh atmosphere of technology and art.
Michael was walking toward Daphne. He had a sturdy build, a powerful waist and back, and his pace was a little quick, as though he carried the wind with him.
Daphne stood up and faced Michael’s direction, smiling inwardly as she examined her idol like a scanner.
Michael had dark brown hair, brown eyes, a straight nose, a well-shaped mouth, and skin from his face down to his neck that showed a reddish hue.
It was not rosiness—any healthy person’s skin could be rosy. That kind of red in the skin was written into the genes, often seen among Europe’s ancient fishing and hunting tribes.
That complexion called to mind the thick fog of Plymouth, the surging tides of Amsterdam, and the great waves off the Cape of Good Hope.
That complexion was the sediment left behind after scorching sun, sea salt, and sudden rain.
That complexion belonged to sailors, captains, and adventurous navigators.
This man was the world-renowned richest man, founder and CEO of Aisibe Space Technology:
Michael Max.
“Hi, are you Daphne?” Michael spoke first.
“Yes, I’m Daphne. Are you Michael?” Daphne replied humorously to this public face that everyone knew.
The two had just settled onto the bench when Michael made an astonishing remark:
“My brain-computer integration project has made some progress. VESSEL, the external brain that assists my thinking, searched for the intersections between you and me. It’s quite interesting.”
Daphne looked at Michael with both curiosity and confusion, thinking, Isn’t VESSEL the public structure right in front of us? How did it become his ‘external brain’?
What Michael said next was even more direct, and left Daphne even more astonished. Michael said:
“Forgive my presumption, but VESSEL tells me that Daphne Braun is very likely my girlfriend.”
“Huh?!” Daphne’s eyes widened. She did not know how to maintain her expression anymore. They had barely exchanged two sentences on their first meeting, and he had gone straight to the point. Wasn’t this a little too direct?
Michael seemed to read Daphne’s thoughts. He sent her a message and said:
“Take a look at this letter first.”
Daphne opened the message on her pad. It was a letter, and it read:
“To Mr. Michael Max and his girlfriend:
My name is Li Xiaoxuan. I am an ordinary girl who grew up in Qingliang Valley on Mount Wutai in Shanxi, China. I am taking the liberty of writing this letter to you.
I was born on December 23, 1999. Today is my thirteenth birthday. Yesterday, December 22, 2012, I had a very strange dream at night.
I was floating in outer space, directly beneath Polaris, looking down over the solar system. Earth happened to be on the winter solstice, positioned at the 6-hour direction of the celestial sphere.
Venus and Mars were each 120 degrees away from Earth, forming a huge equilateral triangle. Mercury, Venus, and Saturn formed a straight line with the Sun as three points.
A set of data appeared before my eyes: the synodic periods of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn with Earth, corresponding to 117 days, 584 days, 780 days, and 378 days.
I plummeted sharply. Earth grew clearer and clearer. I saw a man facing two disks: one disk had 365 markings, and the other had 260 markings.
He picked up a length of rope and tied a knot, representing 18,980 days, which is 52 years. Then he carved an equation into a stone slab: 19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0=1.0.0.T.0.1.T.0.0.
A voice told me that these numbers represented days and were related to the Maya Short Count and Long Count calendars. In this world, only Michael Max and his girlfriend, who researches the explosion of Mars, would be able to decipher them.
Suddenly Mars turned into a giant fireball, and Earth and Venus also turned into fireballs. I was so frightened that I woke up.
I’ll end the letter here. No reply is necessary.”
As Daphne read the letter, she thought it over. Perplexed, she asked Michael:
“This letter was written to you more than ten years ago. You only just saw it?”
Michael answered, “This letter was emailed to my work inbox. I have too many emails, and I had never read it before. After setting a time for our date with you, VESSEL guided me to notice the contents of the letter. You told me before that you’ve recently been studying the explosion of Mars, right?”
Daphne Braun was twenty-nine this year. Like most women, she longed for love and admired the man of her dreams, but once she returned to serious astronomical discussion, she became again the modestly accomplished scientific researcher she was.
Daphne had just earned her doctorate and joined the Psyche asteroid exploration project team at the Liangguo Space Agency. Ever since she began studying astronomy, Daphne had been full of curiosity and interest toward the asteroid belt. Through her research, she had proposed a bold hypothesis, and had told Michael about it in their phone chats.
Daphne’s hypothesis was that the asteroid belt was composed of fragments from the explosion of Mars. They came from Mars.
Daphne was not indulging in a sudden fancy. First of all, how did the asteroid belt form? On this question, the astronomical community had several conjectures.
The hypothesis that the material in the asteroid belt came from outside the solar system had already been rejected, because it could not explain how 500,000 asteroids were able to traverse the solar system, arrive between Jupiter and Mars, and almost all remain there.
Another conjecture was that the asteroid belt was the remnant of an ancient planet in the solar system that had exploded. There were two unreasonable points in this conjecture.
First, the mass was insufficient. The total mass of the asteroid belt was only 1% of Earth’s mass. If it was a planetary explosion, where had the rest of the mass gone?
Second, after a planet formed, under the high-speed rotation of the protoplanetary disk and the planet’s own internal gravity, the inward cohesive force would be extremely strong. Within the framework of modern physics, no reasonable mechanism for a planet to explode had yet been discovered.
So Daphne thought: if the asteroid belt was not the result of a complete planet exploding, but only the shattered outer shell of Mars, then wouldn’t the missing mass become reasonable?
Not only that, the Mars explosion hypothesis could also explain another phenomenon.
Among the eight planets of the solar system, the four closest to the Sun were rocky planets, while the four farther from the Sun were gaseous planets, also called giant planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth—the farther from the Sun, the larger the planet. But when it came to Mars, its size suddenly decreased.
Mars had a radius of 3,389 kilometers, only a little more than half of Earth’s radius.
The farther outward a rocky planet was, the larger its volume became—this accorded with the laws of planet formation under the movement of the protoplanetary disk, because rocky planets at greater distances swept through a larger area of the disk and had greater opportunity to acquire more constituent material.
Asteroids in the asteroid belt were classified by composition into carbonaceous C-types, siliceous S-types, and M-types composed of pure iron and nickel. M-types were extremely rare; at present, only Psyche had been discovered. It should have come from the metallic core lava ejected by volcanoes on Mars, while 99.9% of asteroids were C-types and S-types.
If S-types were the rocks of the Martian crust, and C-types were the water ice and dust on the Martian surface, then when Mars exploded, under the same kinetic energy, the water ice on the surface would “set off first” and fly farther than the deeper rocks. In other words, S-types would be closer to Mars and the Sun, while C-types would be farther away. This matched the distribution of the asteroid belt perfectly.
Michael listened with great interest to Daphne’s hypothesis about the explosion of Mars, and added:
“The largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons, is about 21 kilometers high—equivalent to the combined height from Earth’s Mariana Trench to the peaks of the Himalayas. If Mars had exploded and lost all its seawater, with the seafloor taken as the Martian datum, then there would be nothing strange about the height of Olympus Mons.”
Daphne nodded excitedly and said, “The most unique thing about Olympus Mons is that its slope is only 5 degrees, almost flat. And at the edge of this vast, gently sloping area, there are sheer, clean-cut faces 10 kilometers deep, exactly like an exploded walnut shell, part of which shattered and flew away. Olympus Mons is the remnant of the original Martian surface, while the so-called surface of Mars that we see now is the bottom of Mars’s original ocean.”
Michael said, “Exactly. That way, it isn’t strange that the Martian surface bears so many traces of water having flowed over it.”
Daphne’s gaze stopped on the set of numbers at the end of the little girl’s letter. She asked Michael:
“19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0—this number should be related to the Maya calendar, right? It corresponds to a number of days?”
Michael answered, “When dots are used to separate numbers, it indicates place values. The strings of numbers we commonly use have no dots between them because decimal notation is assumed by default. The Maya used a vigesimal system. To avoid misunderstanding, the places have to be separated by dots.”
Michael looked at that string of numbers, then at Daphne, and said mysteriously:
“Using the Maya Long Count calendar, VESSEL calculated the number of days corresponding to this group of numbers. It’s more than 23 billion days.”
“Huh? What kind of calendar is that? More than 23 billion days—how many years would that be?”
“More than 63 million years!”
Michael replied.
&
Chapter-end assembled lines:
Even the ends of heaven and corners of earth have their limits. Song, Yan Shu
A spiritual communion through the ages, unknown to the world. Song, Huang Tingjian
Yet it has not disdained that we are here. Song, Fang Yue
Plainly, written covenants show what is passed on and upheld. Song, Shi Dingxu