Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 255: Conversation and Time!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Yao Yuan personally led Liu Bai’s group back to the bridgehead where Guang Zhen was. When Yao Yuan found them, the six were at their physical limits, and their space armors had barely enough energy left to run the most basic of systems. Even after an emergency energy recharge, the six barely had energy left to speak. Yao Yuan’s unit had no choice but to carry the six of them to the resting capsules, and hot meals proved to be the most effective medicine of all.

Simultaneously, the interrogation with the alien captives was still going on. Other than questioning them on issues like the location of their higher authority, the key locations of their mother ship, and the structure of their military, mankind also focused on the issues of the quantum lock affecting the Hope.

However, in the interrogation process, the interrogators stumbled across a curious observation. It appeared like among these alien civilians, about half of them had a stunted intelligence growth…

Yes, it seemed unlikely, but these aliens appeared to suffer to mental retardation. They showed a lack of basic understanding of normal questions and had trouble forming coherent thoughts.

This went against the common portrayal of aliens in human sci-fi. The aliens in the medium were always a species that had higher IQ than humanity. Even the children had high intelligence. This was derived from the understanding of the evolution theory. Since they had evolved to a stage where they could enter space, their technological level couldn’t be lower than mankind's, thus their intelligence couldn’t be lower than mankind's.

However, the reality was, among these civilian alien captives, at least one-third of them showed evidence of mental retardation. In this situation, either they were really retarded or they were faking it, but why do it on such a giant scale? One or two pretending to be retarded would make sense, but one-third of the whole population…? Or did they think mankind was retarded?

This observation quickly reached Guang Zhen’s ears. At that moment, Yao Yuan was resting in the capsule, so Guang Zhen quickly had someone wake up him to relay to him the information.

Yao Yuan was bewildered by this development. He too had no clue what this represented, but seeing is believing, so he quickly rushed to the interrogation point to observe for himself. As he had been told, a large number of the alien captives did showcase a lack of intelligence. Even the simplest of questions, they had difficulties in answering. This whole thing was just weird.

"What about those with normal intelligence? Did you ask them why there are so many retards?" Yao Yuan asked Guang Zhen.

Guang Zhen nodded. "We did, but the answers we got were confusing, to say the least… They said that these aliens were born on the mother ship after they left shelter, so this level of intelligence was to be expected. They also mentioned that the mother ship has a population of about two million and the number has to do with the newborns. Honestly, I have no clue what they were talking about."

Yao Yuan too was befuddled. He thought about it and said, "How long have I been resting?"

Guang Zhen looked at the time inside his space armor and answered, "You’ve been asleep for about 6 hours. You should take some more rest."

"That’s not necessary." Yao Yuan shook his head. "This means that Ren Tao and Xiao Niao have been resting for about 10 hours. Have someone go wake them up and get some food in their stomachs. Then tell them to meet us here. Also, grab one of the big-brained aliens for interrogation, one with normal intelligence. I will interrogate it personally to find out what is happening on this ship."

Under Yao Yuan’s orders, Ren Tao and Xiao Niao, who were soundly sleeping, were pulled out of their dreams and pretty much sleep-walked to the bathroom. After taking in some food, they put on their space armors and rushed to the interrogation point where Yao Yuan and Guang Zhen were already waiting.

"…That’s the current situation. I have a feeling there is a giant secret behind all this, and it might have many things to do with the nature of these shelters, like what qualifies a location as a valid shelter? This is the information we need. I’ve woken the two of you up because we will be interrogating a military officer, one of those big-brained aliens. I need the both of you to analyze its meaning and details." Yao Yuan didn’t hesitate to reveal everything to the two.

The two were confused by the sudden info dump. They too couldn’t understand the connection between the so-called newborns and the shelter. Why would aliens that born outside of shelters become retarded? Could it be that the aliens were species that required specific nutrients to aid with development when they were born and these nutrients were only available at the shelter? But this hypothesis didn’t sound right either…

Furthermore, for such a massive mother ship to only have a population of two million was rather unbelievable!

However, thinking back to when they cut through the mother ship under Ying’s leadership, even though they put down at least ten thousand aliens, in relative to the actual size of the mother ship, that number was curiously small. Compared to the junkyard civilization, which had more than one billion citizens, the space merchant population was indeed curious.

Could this be some unique situation?

The two brushed off their drowsiness and followed Yao Yuan and Guang Zhen into the interrogation room where a big-brained alien was being held captive.

The big-brained alien looked relatively calm, but it might be hunger or drowsiness because it looked rather pale. Yao Yuan cut straight to the point and had the soldier in the room translate his words into the junkyard civilization’s language. "I’m not going to waste time going in circles. You and your entire civilization are currently our captives. We want to ask you some questions, and if you refuse to answer or purposely provide us with the false information, then you will die. Therefore, if you want to live and want to keep your people alive, you better answer our questions truthfully."

The big-brained alien let out a sound that was in between a laugh and a sigh. It replied, "Ask whatever you want. After your military boarded our mother ship, I know our fate was already written on the wall. We admit ours loss, so I will no longer lie to you."

Yao Yuan exchanged a glance with the three others. He then went back to the big-brained alien. "First, I want to know why your race, or rather the future generations of the other races on this ship, suffer from mental retardation."

The big-brained alien widened its eyes and looked at the people in the room curiously. It then suddenly let out the curious laugh again. "So, it is really a misunderstanding…"

Yao Yuan and the rest were even more confused. He quickly followed up, "What do you mean by that?"

The big-brained alien pointed at Ren Tao and Xiao Niao, saying, "Before the mother ship’s main energy core was blown up, didn’t the both of you ask some of my people why we attacked you? That was the two of you, right?"

Ren Tao and Xiao Niao looked at each other before nodding. Ren Tao explained, "That’s right. When your people used the mind-breaker attack on us, there was a mental link, so we managed to gather some information from your mind, but we were unable to be certain, so we posed the question then and tried to convince you all that this was a misunderstanding."

The big-brained alien continued, "The physical bodies of the people of my race are rapidly regressing, but in contrast, our brains are incredibly complex and eventually developed mastery in the field of psychic control. According to the records left behind by my ancestors, my race came from a comfortable planet, and due to the advancement in technology, a lot of robots were invented to replace our manual labor. That was when my race’s physical bodies started to regress and intelligence started to improve. However, with the continued advancement in AI, the robots’ internal program started to achieve Singularity and overwrote the rules of robotics. They eventually captured my ancestors and kept them as pets or farm animals. They were given plenty of food and care, but they were allowed zero freedom and no communication between each other, even though my ancestors were still referred to as their ‘masters’."

For some inexplicable reasons, the big-brained alien started to go into its racial history, but since humanity didn’t have much knowledge about the evolution of space civilizations, they didn’t stop it. These were all useful details. They recorded them down quietly.

"Under such circumstances, my ancestors spent about 100 years in captivity in a stage where even reproduction became mechanized, artificial mating. My ancestors eventually developed a prowess in the psychic field and managed to form a spiritual link between each other. Then, under the guidance of the Great Prophet, my ancestors managed to nab the first victory against the first grade AI robots, or more specifically, the victory for a great escape. My ancestors finally got out of our home planet, and that was about 18,000 years ago…

"Therefore, when you conversed with my clansman, the words he spoke and the things he heard and saw, every single one of us from my race could hear and see it…"

The big-brained alien suddenly looked at the humans present in the room. "The misunderstanding happened about 246 years ago when we stumbled across a small, human space ship…"