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Chapter 6: The Eye
“Microwave noise… pseudocolor map?” Su Xiao whispered in a breathy murmur, as if reciting a dreadful incantation. “Microwave noise pseudocolor map?”
“Yes, that’s what it says.”
Li Xingyuan felt Su Xiao’s body stiffen unnaturally, like steel or some other unyielding material. She stood there as though electrified, trembling slightly, as if brushed by a frigid breath from the depths of space.
He didn’t understand why she was so terrified. This was the same woman who, even after witnessing the slowing of light, had said with excitement, “Let’s see what fun surprises await us.” Yet now, fear gripped her to this extent.
But he remained silent, subtly adjusting his stance to support her weight, preventing her from collapsing due to her weakened legs.
After a while, when Li Xingyuan sensed her body beginning to soften slightly, he murmured, “Why are you so afraid?”
Su Xiao was quiet for a moment before responding. “If we discovered a massive, slow-moving, rhythmic, symmetrical, smooth... pupil-like structure on a celestial pseudocolor map—whether it originates from a nebula, galaxy, or any interstellar gas—do you know what that means?”
“It means we’ve found evidence of some kind of god in our universe,” Su Xiao continued. “Or perhaps a godlike civilization—one capable of arranging the cosmos according to its will, bending physical laws and commanding even colossal celestial bodies.”
Li Xingyuan thought of the alien mantis. As humanity's vanguard in communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations, he no longer found such ideas strange.
“So? There’s a god out there somewhere.” Li Xingyuan spoke lightly, attempting to soothe her. “What does that matter? We’re here now…”
“But this isn’t just another fucking celestial pseudocolor map, Li Xingyuan!” Su Xiao snapped. “It’s a microwave noise pseudocolor map.”
Li Xingyuan didn’t press further. He knew Su Xiao would explain.
Her voice wavered, almost breaking into a sob. “Do you understand what this means? It’s a pseudocolor map of the cosmic microwave background radiation! That’s…”
Her voice softened. “Those are the embers of the Big Bang, Li Xingyuan. They radiate uniformly, indiscriminately, from every corner of the universe toward Earth. Do you get it? It’s not an object! That thing, that pattern on the pseudocolor map…”
She inhaled sharply, then coughed violently, as if chilled by the icy breath of the cosmos. “It’s the wallpaper of the observable universe. No—it is the entire universe.”
“If we’d found a deity somewhere in the cosmos, we could avoid it, flee from it, study it—even if we weren’t sure of its intentions. It’s far away! Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of light-years distant!”
“But now…” Su Xiao lowered her voice, as though uttering these words was itself a sacrilegious act. “It’s here. Here on Earth. In every corner of the observable universe.”
“We’re inside its body! Part of it! It is… all of space, all of time. It is the universe itself. Don’t you see? This universe might be a living entity! That radio telescope didn’t capture the eye of a god—it captured the eye of the universe.”
Li Xingyuan shuddered.
The chill—the cold dread that had settled over Su Xiao—now crept over him too. It was an icy frost, deathly cold.
He stared at the eye, and the eye stared back. Across countless eons and vast expanses of space, the universe itself gazed at him, neither malevolent nor merciful.
“It could be interference,” Li Xingyuan said finally. “Maybe the equipment malfunctioned.”
“Perhaps.” Su Xiao paused, then added faintly, “Check the astronomers’ logs… I’m not an astrophysicist.”
Her pride in her knowledge was evident, but clearly, she needed someone to tell her she was wrong.
Li Xingyuan opened the log files scattered haphazardly across the desktop of the high-value computer. They were saved as simple .txt files, named by date.
“The anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background is increasing exponentially. All ‘cleaning’ algorithms have failed. The noise is severely interfering with our observations of other celestial bodies.”
“Deputy Director Cai suggested observing the cosmic microwave radiation. It’s meaningless.”
“… Regarding the regular pattern appearing on the cosmic microwave noise pseudocolor map, the observatory held its first team discussion. We initially believed it to be the result of some unusual interference.”
“The interference persists.”
“After confirming all equipment is functioning normally, Researcher Huang proposed a hypothesis: this cosmic microwave noise may be linked to the recent influx of ‘high-energy particles’ to Earth. But Deputy Director Cai and I discussed privately. Could the changes in physics reported by the UN Crisis Management Task Force—not only affecting microphysics on our planet but also astrophysics—be responsible?”
“We were wrong.”
“A proposal for large-scale observation of the cosmic microwave background noise has been approved.”
“This pattern isn’t new. By comparing it with earlier pseudocolor maps, we’ve concluded it has always been there since the Big Bang. We simply couldn’t see it before. The uniform noise background observed in astronomy was merely a thin veil between Earth and ‘reality.’ Now, the veil is gone.”
“We see it.”
“It sees us.”
“Light is bending.”
“We need more eyes.”
“More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes. More eyes.”
“Researcher Huang is dead. We obtained his eyes. These three eyeballs provide a solid foundation for our next experiments.”
“We still need more eyes.”
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