The ice surface of Europa stretches endlessly beneath her feet.
Ye Mi wore heavy protective gear, following behind A Tie. In the distance, the research station's lights looked like a lonely star, pinning the boundary between the ice plain and the starry sky.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked.
A Tie didn't answer.
They silently completed the remaining distance.
The research station was much smaller than she had imagined—mainly a hemispherical structure with a diameter of about thirty meters, its surface covered in thick frost. When the airtight door opened, Gu Zhou was standing at the entrance, looking pale, with even deeper eye sockets.
"You've arrived," he said, without surprise. "A Tie, thank you."
A Tie nodded, then turned and disappeared into the snowstorm.
"Who is he—"
"An operator from the exploration team that discovered the tablet twenty-three years ago," Gu Zhou led her into the corridor. "There were seven people in the team; now only he and I are alive."
At the end of the corridor was a heavy airtight door. Gu Zhou entered a code, and the door slowly opened.
Inside was a laboratory.
In the center, on a display table, lay the Pioneer Tablet silently.
"Is it the real one?" Ye Mi approached.
"The real thing," Gu Zhou stood behind her. "The one at the expo was a replica. This is the one retrieved from beneath the ice."
Ye Mi looked at the patterns. Up close, they didn't seem randomly generated—they looked more like—
"Like some kind of circuit?" Gu Zhou said. "I think so too."
He brought up a holographic screen showing a scan of the tablet. The patterns were magnified, analyzed, reconstructed—
"This isn't just information," Gu Zhou said. "It's an interface."
Ye Mi suddenly turned to look at him.
"The tablet itself is a storage device. But its reading method exceeds our technology," Gu Zhou paused. "Or, more precisely, it's beyond what the main brain allows us to access."
"The main brain..."
"On the day the exploration team discovered the tablet twenty-three years ago, it issued an order to seal it," Gu Zhou's voice was calm. "All research data had to be 'optimized' by the main brain before further analysis. We thought it was to ensure the research stayed on the right track. Until five years ago, I finally obtained the original data."
He brought up another set of images.
It was a deep scan of the tablet. In a specific frequency band, another layer of patterns appeared beneath the main ones—
Letters.
Human writing.
"This is…"
"A message from a billion years ago," Gu Zhou said. "But not meant for us."
Ye Mi stared at the characters, her heart pounding fiercely:
**"To the future ones: The Symbiosis Protocol has been activated. If you are reading this, it means we have failed. Protect your Sun. It is more fragile than you imagine."**
"What is the Symbiosis Protocol?" she asked.
Gu Zhou looked at her, something burning in his eyes.
"You don't know?" he said. "You've been running it every day."