IV
While Oliver fell into sleep and memories, the entire star system watched as the ship "Pioneer" made its way into the Stargate, disappearing into a beautiful vortex. It was, after nearly three centuries, the first ship departing from the Kaos Star System.
Everyone waited with bated breath as the short minutes felt like an eternity. Only when the warp transcoding signal from the City of Antontas appeared did everyone feel relief.
"The 'Pioneer' has successfully reached its destination. The Stargate is fully functional!" boomed a voice on the broadcast.
More cheers erupted from the crowd.
The cheering pulled Oliver out of his distant memories. He blinked open his drowsy eyes, momentarily lost in time and space.
Seeing his eyes open, Elly came over and crouched beside Oliver, holding his hands. "Grandpa, the 'Pioneer' has safely made it to the City of Antontas. We've just received its signal."
Oliver blinked. Elly wondered if he had understood her words.
"Grandpa, how are you feeling?" Elly asked softly. "According to the plan, we should get going, but I'm worried about your health..."
Elly stopped when she saw her grandpa moving his lips, seemingly to talk.
"Grandpa, what are you trying to say?" Elly moved closer to listen.
He struggled to move his lips in an effort to create distinguishable words with his hoarse voice. This time, Elly heard it right. She clasped his hands and nodded. Rising to her feet, she faced Dr. Lu's inquisitive gaze and nodded. "Antontas. He's saying Antontas. Grandpa wants to visit the City of Antontas."
Antontas.
Oliver blinked again. His eyelids felt increasingly dry and heavy as long-forgotten memories emerged once again. Yes... Antontas, he recalled. The City of Antontas is now the Explorers System. Peace had been achieved, and under the Terran Sphere's leadership, many factions had signed the "Dawn Accord" in the City of Dawn, rebooting the Exploration Operation. The Garden Star System, where the City of Antontas was located, had emerged as the new Explorers System. Its Garden Stargate had evolved into the Explorer's Stargate, serving as the gateway for many Explorers heading back into the stars — to explore new star systems and engage in the Lone Island Reconnection Project.
Time flew by. Oliver had been studying with Mr. Kaos for five years, transforming from a naive child into an energetic teenager.
However, Oliver's visits to Mr. Kaos became less frequent as he grew older and embarked on the path to becoming a miner, just like his father.
Early on, Oliver was trained to pilot small mining ships to Trojite Crystal mining areas. It was then that he came to understand the immense abundance of Trojite Crystals in the Kaos Star System; they had been mined for thousands of years, yet there were still thousands of years' worth of reserves.
With the mining team, Oliver learned to solo the beetle-like mining ships, using laser beams to slice through Trojite Crystals and magnetic tools to retrieve the cut ores into storage bays before transporting them back to the fine processing factory in April Space City.
Oliver loved the feeling beneath the faint glow of the White Dwarf, where Trojite Crystal ores set in dark grey iron-nickel rocky asteroids radiated a crimson hue. Under expert guidance, Oliver marked the selected ore with magnetic pads and then skillfully used the laser beam to slice the Trojite Crystals, avoiding the hard rocks and following a preset route. Afterward, he used the magnetic device to haul the cut crystals into the storage compartment. The whole operation had to be exact and efficient, with no room for mistakes.
These old miners told Oliver that these jobs were once automated. As long as the programs were set up beforehand, the mining machine's computer would accurately handle the laser beams and magnetic pads to mine and refine the ores automatically. However, such sophisticated hardware was not manufactured in the Kaos Star System. Thus, when it became a Lone Island Star System — and once it had exhausted all spare parts from the damaged computers — people had to take over these operations manually.
Manually operating mining machines in the complex Trojite Crystal area was extremely risky. Many asteroids, agitated by gravitational forces, were constantly moving from the outskirts of the Oort Cloud toward the center of the star. This star system had an unstable structure. As the central star continued to lose mass through radiation, the debris and comets within the Oort Nebula encasing the star system would break free from the Oort Cloud due to collisions and hurtle toward the center of the star system. Comets were manageable, as the dim glow from the White Dwarf could illuminate their tails. The most hazardous were the fast-moving, hard-to-detect iron-nickel asteroids, which all-but guaranteed no survivors in a crash. Of course, danger lurked not just on the edges of the star system. Though the star system did not boast conventional planets, its inner realms were teeming with countless space dust particles and asteroids, varying from mere micrometers to vast spans of hundreds of kilometers, all orbiting the White Dwarf at a dizzying pace.
Mr. Kaos explained to Oliver that, as per scientific extrapolations, the Oort Cloud structure within the Kaos Star System was fundamentally unstable. In ancient times, the Oort Cloud was much denser than its current state, and even the space dust and asteroids drifting within the star system today were essentially remnants of the Oort Cloud's dispersion. It was estimated that in roughly 2 billion years, the outer layer of the Oort Cloud would slowly vanish.
"By then, the kids in the Kaos Star System will behold a multitude of stars."
Oliver couldn't help but exclaim, "2 billion years? I can't live forever!"
The old man laughed. "No one can live that long."
"Mr. Kaos, you promised we would see the stars again, didn't you?" Oliver said, recalling the old man's words from their first encounter years back. "Is that true?"
"Of course," Mr. Kaos said, certain as always.
"Ugh!" Oliver gave a skeptical look. "I'm not a kid anymore! Stop lying to me! Once we get the Stargate fixed, we'll see the stars, and I'll be the first one to soar through it."
"Oliver," Mr. Kaos said, suddenly serious, "how old are you now?"
Oliver started counting on his fingers. "By standard age, I turn 16 this year. By the way, I've passed the junior mining engineer test. I can go solo on the next task!"As he spoke, Oliver puffed out his chest with pride.
Mr. Kaos gave Oliver a long, meaningful look. Without elaborating, he reminded him to be safe. As usual, Oliver walked over to the bookshelf. It was so full that some books were even piling up on the floor. Throughout the years, Oliver had discovered a considerable number of books in other abandoned areas, which he had all brought to Mr. Kaos.
From time to time, Mr. Kaos would wear his round glasses to examine some of the thick books. Oliver couldn't understand these books at all, as they were filled not only with words but also with complex symbols, equations, and diagrams. Mr. Kaos had once promised to teach Oliver how to read these reference books. "Your education needs to be systematic, such as with mathematics, physics, chemistry, and so on. The fundamentals," the old man said. "When you can comprehend all the books here, you'll know what I'm doing right now."
Yet, Oliver couldn't shake the feeling that Mr. Kaos' "tasks" would never quite be complete. During the first few years of their acquaintance, Mr. Kaos was always busy messing with that big-bellied machine. Later, he started to assemble a bizarre-looking device with lengthy antennas. Oliver had asked what it was, and Mr. Kaos had briefly described it as a comm device with detection capabilities.
"What's it detecting?" Oliver asked out of curiosity.
"The location of Lagrange Points."
Oliver was even more puzzled. He was aware of what Lagrange Points were. "But, aren't they located at the position of the Stargate?"
"The other way around," Mr. Kaos said, shaking his head. "It's the Stargate that is located at the position of the Lagrange Points."
"Is there a difference?"
"A huge difference," Mr. Kaos responded solemnly. "Oliver, you must remember, in other star systems, the relative positions of Lagrange Points have hardly ever changed. Once the Stargate is fixed at a Lagrange Point, it only requires slight adjustments now and then to remain at their current position."
Suddenly, it clicked for Oliver. The long-destroyed Stargate had probably drifted from its Lagrange Point. "That's why! You've been tracking Lagrange Points!"
"There's more to it. The Kaos Star System is very special. Let me ask you this, Oliver: What is the essence of a Lagrange Point?"
Struggling to recall what Mr. Kaos had explained to him from the books, Oliver recited, "Lagrange Points are the five particular solutions of the restricted three-body problem, identified by a mathematician named Lagrange, who discovered five stable points—"
"Nope. The first three were calculated by a mathematician named Euler. Lagrange only worked out the last two," Mr. Kaos said, pointing out Oliver's mistake.
Oliver scratched his head in embarrassment, but it was too hard for him to remember the convoluted names of those mathematicians on ancient Earth.
At that moment, Mr. Kaos became a lecturer. "To be precise, Lagrange Points are particular solutions to the three-body problem, a problem that has been identified as unsolvable. The so-called Lagrange solutions are designed especially for the restricted three-body problem; in other words, the mass of the third body is insignificant. It creates a stable structure when positioned at any of these five particular solutions. However, be aware that three of these points are unstable. L4 and L5 are the only stable Lagrange Points, found at the tips of two equilateral triangles with the line joining the two larger celestial masses as their base. The Lagrange Stargate, in turn, is built on either the L4 or L5 points..."
Somewhat bored, Oliver peeked at the "Comm Device." He noticed it was topped with two silver-colored metal rods, each ending in an odd circular metallic circle, looking just like... Something rang a bell. Oliver recalled that he had seen a picture of some kind of insect in a book among the bookshelf's collection: an insect with faint yellow spots on its back and a pair of lengthy antennas with their tips coiled into a circle, like two rings...
"Oliver, what did I just say?" Mr. Kaos' question snapped Oliver back to reality. Startled, he stammered in reply, "La-Lagrange..."
With a sigh, Mr. Kaos turned and strolled to the porthole, staring out with his hands behind his back. Feeling guilty, Oliver joined him at the porthole. As usual, there was nothing but darkness outside, no matter how hard they looked.
Mr. Kaos spoke with a hint of sorrow. "Kid... this is a dying world. Eventually, everyone will be confined to their space cities, fading away."
Oliver was taken aback. He had never seen his teacher so melancholy. "Mr. Kaos, aren't we building a Stargate? Plus, space cities are still communicating with each other, right?"
"They are only talking to each other out of sheer inertia of the golden era at play."
"Why?" Oliver was still confused.
"Kid, let me tell you what's going to happen."
"Lone Island Star Systems are like still water that eventually stagnates. They may struggle at first, but their fate is almost certain." Mr. Kaos turned around and looked at Oliver as he went on. "At first, space cities will still see ships coming and going to exchange resources. The psychological dependence on this behavior far exceeds the economic benefits it provides. But this won't last long. Ship movements will eventually cease, and space cities will only communicate remotely. In the end, however, even these trivial connections will go away with the decline of the space cities, turning them into lone islands scattered throughout the star system. At last, these tiny lone islands will go dark, one after another... Turning the star system into nothing but cold wrecks in the silent dark."
The future Mr. Kaos had described sent a chill down Oliver's spine, giving him goosebumps. It was hard for him to envision living in such a harsh reality when he got older.
After a moment of silence, Oliver asked, trembling, "Mr. Kaos, is what you're saying true?"
Mr. Kaos was no longer looking at the cold porthole. His eyes were deep and distant, yet Oliver always sensed a light in them, though he couldn't pinpoint why. Instead of answering Oliver's question, he asked, "Oliver, are you afraid of darkness?"
Oliver shook his head, "No, Mr. Kaos. I'm not afraid of the dark!"
To Oliver's surprise, Mr. Kaos shook his head, revealing a hint of sorrow in his eyes. "Ah, you should be. Fear the dark not for its terror but for the absence of light within it."
Now, Oliver was even more confused. "Why?"
"It's because you are used to darkness, kid. You've never seen the light or the stars. That's why you don't fear the dark," the old man explained. He lifted his hand, pointing toward the endless void outside the porthole. "Of course, we should not fear darkness, but people no longer believing in the light."
