Dead on Mars

Chapter 213 - Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Seven, Reuniting With You In Another Universe
Chapter 213: Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Seven, Reuniting With You In Another Universe

Tomcat waved the scrap paper in its paw and sat back. Clearly, Tang Yue was proud of being a feces-creating machine. He was the only working fertilizer generator on this barren planet. Just on this point alone, his importance made him unparalleled. Tang Yue had finally found himself a domain in which he completely beat Tomcat—defecating.

However, Tomcat didn’t wish to vie for supremacy in such a meaningless domain. It only mattered if Tang Yue’s feces could evenly cover the entirety of the Isidis Planitia; otherwise, it was meaningless towards the environment and ecosphere.

Tang Yue took out a piece of biscuit from the cabinet, poured himself a small cup of water, and circled behind Tomcat. He bent down and looked at the screen.

“What’s this?” Tang Yue pointed at the diagram on the screen. There were brownish-yellow and black blurry spots which he couldn’t identify. “A remote sensing image of the Martian surface?”

“No.” Tomcat shook its head. “Something more beautiful.”

“What?”

Tomcat moved the mouse and zoomed out of the picture.

Tang Yue finally identified it. It was a leopard cat in a sultry pose as it lay on a boulder, looking back at the camera.

“Why are you looking at something like this at such times? Shouldn’t you be refining the docking plan? Aren’t you doing calculations?” Tang Yue was appalled. “You’ve been looking at this female cat all this while?”

“It’s a male leopard cat.”

“It’s even a male!?” Tang Yue felt as though he was suffering from a cardiac arrest.

“Why are you making such a fuss. This is my computer’s screensaver. The picture comes from National Geographic. The workstation is carrying out calculations in the background.” Tomcat casually tapped the keyboard and a series of numbers and diagrams appeared. “But this is an extremely difficult job. I’ve designed many different plans. In terms of viability, they were rejected at the verification phase… I have to say that your wedding is probably the hardest one in human history. The most difficult-to-traverse hundred kilometers.”

Tang Yue sat down with his lunch, peeling open the vacuum pack and took a nibble.

“Lass, have you eaten?”

“A little,” Mai Dong replied. “I’m not too hungry.”

“How’s the oxygen and water?”

“There’s 280 hours of oxygen left. There’s still enough water,” Mai Dong said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I can definitely last until Tianzhou arrives.”

When she said so, the United Space Station was hurtling past the Martian surface. The blinding sunlight burst out from the horizon behind her. It was another dawn, but half an hour later, the sun would set.

In near-orbit, dawn was forever chasing after dusk. With the space station’s altitude lowering, dawn could finally reach dusk’s tail.

“Tang Yue, do you believe in parallel universes?”

“Parallel universes?”

“Yeah. Long ago, I read Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell and A Brief History of Time. The books describe the Universe as not being the only one. There are many, many parallel universes in this world. Some universes might be identical to ours,” Mai Dong said. “Do you think there will be a universe where the Earth didn’t vanish?”

Tang Yue took a bite of the biscuit. No one knew if parallel universes existed. There was no way of proving it, nor was there any way of validating it.

“I believe they do.”

Since it was just a theoretical hypothesis, he might as well be a little more romantic.

If Earth was really skewered by some alien civilization, could there be a situation in another universe where the shot missed? If the muzzle was off by just a few arcseconds, the bullet would brush past Earth.

Tang Yue continued letting his mind wander. Since there was a universe with a perfectly fine Earth, there was bound to be such a situation:

A universe with a quarter of Earth obliterated.

A universe with half of Earth obliterated.

A universe with three-quarters of Earth obliterated.

At the same time, Earth would be obliterated infinitely many times in infinitely many universes. As for Tang Yue and Mai Dong, there were situated in one of the infinite universes where the Earth had been completely obliterated.

“If a universe with an intact Earth really exists, we could be back on Earth in that universe,” Mai Dong said.

“Yes.” Tang Yue nodded. “We could head home to our own mothers.”

If Earth hadn’t vanished, the relationship between the two of them would end with the conclusion of the mission to Mars.

“No, no. We can think about the time before that. Assuming that parallel universes are born from choices, such as you using your right hand to pick up a cup of water, the universe will splinter at that moment, producing another universe. In that universe, you’d have used your left hand.” Mai Dong shook her head. “Your every choice will give birth to many, many parallel universes… So there will be one such universe that we will meet again.”

Tang Yue was stunned.

“I was born in Guangzhou. Tang Yue, where were you born?”

“Anhui, Hefei.”

“Alright. So I’m in Guangzhou and you’re in Hefei.” Mai Dong extended her finger to tap in midair as though she was tapping on an invisible map. One point was for Guangzhou, the other Hefei. They were two cities separated by 1,200 kilometers. “Then… I studied in a primary school at Yuexiu District in Guangzhou. Where was yours?”

Tang Yue tried to recall. “Luyang District.”

“When I was in primary school in Yuexiu, you were at Hefei City’s Luyang District. We were both students, carrying backpacks while heading to and coming back from school. You didn’t know me, nor had I ever seen you. We were two complete strangers.” Mai Dong giggled. “After primary school, I went to Huafu for secondary school.”

“I was at Hefei’s 45th Secondary School. Besides, I’m one grade higher than you.”

“Then at that time, we were both secondary school students. Did you ever travel far while in secondary school?” Mai Dong asked. “Did you ever go to Guangzhou?”

“I went to Sanya.”

“I’ve been to Qingdao. Tang Yue, do you believe that we might have brushed past each other?”

Tang Yue was taken aback. He didn’t know the exact date of Mai Dong’s visit to Qingdao. However, going from Guangzhou to Qingdao was a northbound trip, while his visit to Sanya was a southbound trip. Who knew if they had been on the same rail track? Tang Yue recalled how he had sat on the chair in the high-speed rail in his youth. He had curiously leaned against the window to look outside as pearly-white high-speed trains rushed past him. Perhaps in one of the carriages of those incoming trains, there was also an equally young lady who was leaning against the window looking at him.

“Later, it was the National College Entrance Examination. My first choice was Zhejiang University,” Mai Dong said.

“I also applied to it, but I wasn’t accepted.”

“There will definitely be a universe where you listened attentively in the lessons you fell asleep in. The homework you failed to finish was finished by him. Every question you made a mistake was done correctly by him. Then, he succeeded in being admitted into Zhejiang University,” Mai Dong said.

“That’s too low a possibility.” Tang Yue scoffed.

“But it still exists.”

Of course it existed. Life was filled with infinite forks. You would always be able to find a path that reached the destination you longed for.

Tang Yue couldn’t help but let his thoughts wander. His unexpected encounter with Mai Dong in another universe could be a completely different story… They might not even join the mission to Mars as astronauts. He might be a senior who helped in the orientation of the freshman, standing at the school gates, receiving material that a short-haired lady frantically passed to him. Then, he would pat her on the shoulder as a welcome. He might even head out for a walk one afternoon when there weren’t any lessons. Without watching his step, he bumped into a person of unknown gender carrying a backpack.

“Are you blind?”

“But you were the one who bumped into me!”

The wind rustled in the willows as a pair of clear, light-brown eyes were revealed under the short black hair.

Across a sea of 1.5 billion people, over a distance of more than a thousand kilometers, and after billions of forks, there were finally a Tang Yue and Mai Dong who had made all the correct choices to meet in a particular universe.