Chapter 255: A Rare Common Era Contactee
In the park.
Xiang Chuan’s words not only shocked Li Wei, but also made the nearby Chou Manman widen her eyes like copper bells. Xiang Chuan turned her head, saw her expression, and frowned.
“Man Man, when you’re out and about, don’t make such exaggerated expressions. Remember, as a future female star and actress, you must manage your expressions well in public occasions…”
“No no no, Xiang Chuan, my expression isn’t important. What’s important is,” Chou Manman paused, took several deep breaths to calm her excited heart, and tremblingly said: “You… did you just say that for real? The information turbulence you contacted was… Common Era…?”
“Common Era 2022, quite a few things happened that year—economy, wars, and even before that…”
Xiang Chuan gesticulated excitedly as if wanting to say something more. Before Li Wei could react, the experienced Chou Manman jumped up and covered her mouth:
“Stop! Stop! These things can only be discussed after submitting an application to the Historical Research Institute and Information Turbulence Processing Office! Did you forget?”
It wasn’t surprising that Chou Manman reacted so strongly. Last month, after Xiang Chuan finished telling everyone the constellation story on the production escort ship, the very next day after returning to the main ship and completing the visit summary, leaders from the Historical Research Institute and Information Turbulence Processing Office came to the Xiang Family to “freeload a meal.” While showing concern for Xiang Chuan, they didn’t forget to warn her between the lines: Next time before telling ancient stories, please submit an application first, okay? Please follow the rules and regulations.
Later, at Monday’s class meeting, homeroom teacher Zhu Bingwen specifically emphasized this matter to the whole class. It had to be emphasized—Class Eight Grade One had such strong curiosity, Xiang Chuan basically answered every question, and sometimes even Zhu Bingwen himself got absorbed and forgot to remind her. So the two major government departments had to give Class Eight, even the entire Nongda Affiliated High School, a strong warning to finally make them a bit more self-aware.
At this point, Xiang Chuan also reacted. She pushed away Chou Manman’s hand from her mouth and said helplessly:
“Fine fine fine, I won’t say it then. Anyway, those things aren’t that interesting.”
The so-called major events from thirty thousand years ago were basically a mix of joy and sorrow. For Xiang Chuan, recounting them orally was less interesting than reading aloud a 21st Century elementary school Chinese language textbook.
“Whether they’re interesting or not, they are important historical events.” Chou Manman said helplessly, but she also knew these topics weren’t easy to expand on, so she returned to the main point: “Xiang Chuan, did your information turbulence really contact the Common Era?”
“Yeah, is it that rare?”
Xiang Chuan looked at the complex expressions of Chou Manman and Li Wei.
“Rare… this isn’t just rare.” Li Wei pressed his temple and looked at Xiang Chuan with even more complex eyes. “Do you know? According to the data published by the Information Turbulence Processing Office, since Tianyuan 5000, in these fifteen thousand years, there have been a total of 5364 information turbulence contactees, but none of them contacted the Common Era. Among these contactees, the earliest information turbulence time period contacted was around Tianyuan 200.”
“Classmate, you are the first information turbulence contactee to successfully contact the Common Era since the Dark Virus Crisis outbreak.”
This time it was Xiang Chuan’s turn to be stunned: So not only am I a rare information turbulence contactee, but among these rare creatures, I’m the only one with atavism? —
Due to the overwhelming amount of information, Xiang Chuan’s brain short-circuited a bit. She held onto the railing, sat down next to Li Wei, bit the straw on her cup, and fell silent.
“Xiang Chuan, have you reported this to the Information Turbulence Processing Office?” Chou Manman asked.
Xiang Chuan thought with her currently sluggish brain and said uncertainly: “I think when they were doing the rating, they didn’t ask me…?”
This casual? The Third Fleet’s Information Turbulence Processing Office? Li Wei sighed helplessly in his heart and suggested to Xiang Chuan:
“Then you should find a time to go to the Information Turbulence Processing Office and supplement some files. By rights, observable years, eras, and such content are things the Information Turbulence Processing Office must grasp clearly. If they missed you this time, that’s their major oversight.”
Though it’s already a major oversight now. Li Wei muttered in his heart.
Although he came from the Eleventh Fleet, which didn’t think much of ancient culture and technology, he still had some understanding of government departments. After all, year statistics were a very important reference data for the Information Turbulence Processing Office in researching information turbulence contactees.
“Our fleet has only produced one contactee like Xiang Chuan in so many years, so it’s normal to lack experience in this area.” Hearing Li Wei’s criticism, Chou Manman, as a Third Fleet resident, couldn’t help defending her own fleet. “But this explains why you were able to produce the complete original script of Romeo and Juliet. So it’s a product from the Common Era… no wonder.”
Hearing her say that, Xiang Chuan finally realized why the Twelfth Fleet’s Romeo and Juliet script was incomplete. Probably that information turbulence contactee from the Twelfth Fleet found only a partial script in the Tianyuan Era database?
According to the intelligence Xiang Chuan learned from the historical timeline back then, before building the Twelfth Fleet, scholars and experts from various fields preserved each country’s images and books in electronic entry form in the Twelfth Fleet’s database. Modern information turbulence contactees all obtained materials intercepted from the Tianyuan Era database. Because Earth Era materials were preserved in data form, scattered in the space-time network, the content contactees could find was all fragmented.
Incidentally, later the Dark Virus Crisis erupted, damaging the database and causing all data in it to be lost. After economic and civilization recovery, the First Fleet led technicians from other fleets to use space-time jump technology to build the space-time network platform, placing servers in the cloud unaffected by the outside world, precisely to avoid losing important materials and data in disasters like the Dark Virus Crisis.
In other words, in the Twelfth Fleet now, only Xiang Chuan, this information turbulence contactee, can contact complete Earth Era cultural data.
Realizing this, Chou Manman’s eyes lit up. She kept glancing toward the direction where Ouyang Yating and the others were, wanting to tell her little friends all about Xiang Chuan’s big secret.
And Li Wei, who also realized this, felt even heavier at heart. As a member of the Twelfth Fleet, he was naturally very happy that an information turbulence contactee who could access the Common Era had appeared, because it meant the Historical Research Institute could obtain more record materials. But on the flip side, Xiang Chuan’s influence would far exceed all information turbulence contactees so far.
From what Li Wei had just browsed on the Third Fleet Local Area Network, Xiang Chuan had already produced numerous ancient gourmet food, literature, agriculture, film and television, drama, and other materials, which had spread through government and family business channels. On SNS, Third Fleet residents were discussing various topics—Yue Xiang Restaurant, TV series, Agricultural Product Increased Production Ratio Adjustment Draft, three novels… but all revolved around the ancient products that had appeared in these past few months.
The ancient culture atmosphere in the Third Fleet Local Area Network was so thick that it almost made Li Wei feel like this wasn’t the Third Fleet, which talked about agriculture and agricultural product processing all day, but rather the Eleventh Fleet, focused on researching ancient culture.
