Unfortunately, it seems that the cosmic radiation is even messing with this type of signal, so currently, it was the third go-round, and I hoped this one would be stable at the correct times so we could get the missing pieces of code to properly retrieve the blueprints to whatever this was.
 
With every repeat of the message being 30-plus minutes long, I had time to think about this. Now, from the looks of it, I would be building some sort of computer that would require some very precise components to make everything as stable as possible. What I also did was start work on this cosmic radiation program as a whole.
 
While I wouldn’t be able to make the signal stronger—I actually didn’t even know how they were transferring that signal—the fact was that cosmic radiation was terrifying.
 
If I turned the music off and listened, I could actually hear it bombarding against the ship hull. In fact, it was very slowly changing our trajectory. That wasn’t a problem. What was a problem was that the outside of my ship was turning radioactive.
 
While the shielding was doing its job of preventing anything from getting through it, the metal armor outside of it—while it did have some protection—was not doing too well. In the sense that, if I needed to dock somewhere, it would be dangerous to any person who got too close. And, of course, me leaving the ship would also be a problem. I would basically have a few days before things got bad enough to start affecting people close to the outside of the hull.
 
I did have a somewhat solution. The nanomachines had the capability of absorbing radiation and turning it into power, the very thing that allowed them to power our ship. Now, I needed to modify the programming so it would only consume radiation and turn it into electrical discharge, which could be safely disposed of into the void.
 
There was no reason to try to turn that into usable power, although it might be a way to keep supplying power in emergencies when the power core was not working.
 
"Lola, add power generation through cosmic radiation to possible emergency protocols in a situation of loss of main ship power generation."
 
"Acknowledged."
 
Then the computer finally beeped happily, meaning that the latest message had the correct part, and I could finally see the entire design. With every part now properly displayed, it was 100% confirmed that this looked like a really old computer, like from the early days of personal computing.
 
Now, why would civilizations that are presumably well past Earth's technology be using something seemingly so primitive?
 
"Then there is this cube-type thing. Because what I’m seeing is a different combination of metals made into a hollow box with holes all over it. What do you make of it, Lola?"
 
"It seems to be exactly what you described, although from the looks of it, it is the starting point for establishing a connection to the quantum net."
 
"Yeah, I can see that, but why did you call it quantum net? I’m not seeing anything resembling those words. In fact, there are no words here, so how did you get that designation?"
 
"It seems appropriate."
 
"Yeah, fine, I can’t argue with that."
 
So, it was time to power up the 3D printer. I was going to use feedstock here because it was going to be faster.
 
I needed to print a lot of things that were worth a lot—basically, everything required the absolute best. Every metal and every component needed to be as pure as possible, and with this printer, I could make 100% certain that everything was completely and utterly pure.
 
"You seem annoyed. Is something going wrong?" Lola asked me.
 
"Good job on reading my emotions. This design is annoying me.”
 
“First of all, take this cube that seemingly does nothing. There are multiple layers of metal, pure metal, that are not even correctly bonded to each other. There's two layers of gold interlaced with four layers of silver, and separating each of those layers is just pure iron. Then you simply make exact holes into it with seemingly no pattern or anything else that makes sense."
 
“The worst thing is, it's apparently one of the most important pieces. The entire sequence to start up the connection starts here by applying— and I’m not joking—a 5-volt discharge that can go up to 5.4.”
 
“So, it has some tolerance, some big tolerances, but then everything afterward—every other piece, every other discharge, the way power is carried, the resistors—everything needs to be as precise as possible, like with stupid tolerances, which would be so hard to do without the 3D printer. But I guess, technically, it should be possible?”
 
“Perhaps that part isn’t that important to be as precise, which doesn’t make sense because that’s where everything starts, and I still don’t understand how this could allow me to communicate with, apparently, the entire universe.”
 
“But you know what the true kicker is? Every component is then soldered on. Like, what the fuck? You want precise—like, stupid precise—and then you make assembly incredibly imprecise, which will probably fuck things up. It’s maddening.”
 
“Perhaps the design is meant for civilizations that do not have access to 3D printers of this level?”
 
That made me stop my work for a moment.
 
“Okay, I’m going to give you that. That’s a good point. This does seem like something that wouldn’t need 3D printers to make, but it would be really hard, like ridiculously hard. But I guess that’s necessary for some reason?”
 
“Do you have any idea what this cube could possibly do?”
 
“No, I have no clue. It does kinda look like experimental light boxes that describe in physics how light bounces, but there are multiple holes, so it doesn’t quite fit.”
 
“Yeah, I thought the same.”
 
As I waited for a few more components to print out, I held the cube and looked at it. Was it capturing something?
 
I decided to unstrap myself from my chair and go over to one of the sensor boxes. This tool was designed to check printed components to see if everything was correct inside and out. It could also detect a lot of other types of energies and signals, so perhaps it might figure out something.
 
Unfortunately, after three tries, the box seemed entirely empty, just filled with air like everything else.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
 
So it's a box that does nothing, but somehow this is the key piece to make this work. Well, whatever.
 
I brought it back to the rest of the pieces I had assembled and placed it in its right place.
 
This computer, which kind of acted more like a server than a PC, was going to be a meter tall, 30 centimeters wide, and 25 in length. It was going to be a solid box designed to stop any signals from going into it, completely isolating it from the outside world.
 
There were only three connections—one so you could get this thing power, then one to get a display output and another for a keyboard, which looked quite different from the ones I knew but basically still worked the same. Just the configuration of keys was different.
 
Those ports were incredibly shielded. The display could be basically anything, it only needed the correct connection, and while I did have to make an analog-to-digital converter, it should work fine. The keyboard itself was the exact opposite. It was precise and needed to be as shielded as the computer itself.
 
I mean, the cable that connected the keyboard and the PC was five times the thickness of normal cables like this, just because 4/5 of it was shielding. Every button was also designed to deliver one precise charge of electricity—there was no holding down buttons here. Apparently, that would be too unstable and unpredictable.
 
The more I built out this PC, the more of an inkling I started to get on how this thing would work.
 
"Lola, have you started to figure out the programming language?"
 
"Negative. Nothing I’m trying makes sense to me. I think it’s something I cannot do."
 
"Send me the files. I’ll take a look at it."
 
The programming was complex. It was seemingly only ones and zeros, with some parts like the operating system written out in something resembling assembly—a really basic programming language.
 
The problem was, this type of programming didn't make sense. It seemingly flowed nowhere and then picked up somewhere else. It was nothing like the programming I knew. It felt... somehow off, and I could see why Lola couldn’t figure it out.
 
The thing was that we actually didn't need to figure it out—we could just input everything like the blueprint said, and it should work. But building something that I didn’t know how it worked was disconcerting at best and could be dangerous at worst.
 
Like, for example, the monitor. If I understood correctly, we needed to build an overlay into the monitor to use some other kind of program, which I guess would help translate whatever we see. But that would also mean that this PC, which I didn’t know anything about, would be at least somewhat connected to the ship’s systems.
 
Yeah, I couldn’t allow that to happen. It needed to be 100% isolated.
 
Perhaps I was worrying too much, but damn, have I seen horror stories about how people have gotten hacked in the oddest of ways.
 
“Lola, start designing an overlay for the monitor—one of the latest botting designs for online games should do the trick. That should assure that this PC is 100% isolated while I try to figure out this programming language.”
 
“Acknowledged.”
 
I worked on the programming language on and off as I was assembling the PC. Eventually, I finally figured it out and understood how this entire thing worked.
 
“Lola, I think I have it. Tell me if this makes sense. Let's start with the PC itself.”
 
“Now, I still don’t understand this cube, but what it seems to do is give an exact output when the input is between 5 and 5.4 volts—like, so exact that it's almost impossible. After that, everything that happens is as precise as possible. I mean, it’s running at 5 volts for the entire system, which is a bit too much, but it does mean that everything is more likely to do exactly what it's commanded to do.”
 
“Lola tell me, doesn’t that kind of sound like the FTL?”
 
“I see where you’re going with this. Let me run calculations.”
 
If I’m correct, the way it communicates over distances impossible to imagine is that every choice this PC makes would be made by another PC in exactly the same way. So if you go onto a web address—which in this programming language is incredibly complex and most likely completely unique—you would basically get the exact same results as they have on their server, giving you an instant transfer of the same data because you went down the same path.
 
How does everything come back to that? The FTL device needed one singular path possible to make the jump, and here it seems everything works off that.
 
It would, of course, have heavy limitations. I’m guessing anything more complex than text and simple UI elements would introduce too much uncertainty, making the entire connection unstable, which would make it impossible to continue before you reset everything.
 
“Your conclusion seems to be the most probable way this device works. Well done, Master.”
 
“Lola! Stop purposely doing that.”
 
“Sorry.”
 
“Now, to the programming language. I can understand why it was difficult for you to figure that out—I just figured it out thanks to the insight I got about how this PC works. It’s so hard to explain, but it’s basically doing binary in 3D, and every once in a while, you need to take time into account as well. At least this feels like something out of science fiction.”
 
“Anyways, go over the programming and see what you make of it, because I think I’m seeing a huge problem.”
 
“Acknowledged.”
 
About 10 minutes later, she finally seemed to have figured it out, using a lot of processing power.
 
“It was difficult for me to make that leap and then to figure out the programming. The good news first—nothing seems to indicate any malicious programming.”
 
“The bad news—the way we would connect would make it obvious to anyone else on the network that we signed in. There doesn’t seem to be any firewalls or anything else to stop someone from spying on what is saved on this quantum PC.”
 
“I think we can safely change at least the IP address. That should give us a bit more time, but in the end, they could do nothing more than see what’s on this PC, which is nothing. But I think we can make it so that if anything connects to us, we could simply shut it down.”
 
“Acknowledged. I will make the changes to the programming.”
 
Changing anything could mean that we couldn't make a connection, but it would be simple enough to change it back. Even if we had to do everything exactly the same way as the message instructed, I think it would still be worth it.
 
Lola finished making the changes, and I finished assembling the PC, then connected the keyboard and the monitor. The monitor itself now had a glass overlay. It was going to see everything on the monitor and could even change what we saw—because hopefully, we would be able to find a way to translate what we saw.
 
One of the last instructions was that it might take half an hour or even multiple hours to restart the server connection. Why that would be the case, I didn’t know, but I was guessing it had something to do with whatever this cube was collecting to make the beginning of the server connection take the exact same path every time.
 
On the keyboard, I pushed the button that would start up the PC. I was used to computers starting in seconds—this one took about 20. The UI of the operating system was simply a black background with white boxes that had white letters in them that I couldn’t understand.
 
With the arrow keys, I could move and select one of these choices. From the design, I knew I needed to pick the first one. So, I pressed the enter key, which was so in the wrong place on the keyboard, but I certainly didn’t have the knowledge to change this design—at least not yet.
 
What followed was a bit of loading. I suspected that the discharge into the cube had happened, and now it was running through startup protocols.
 
Our IP should be different than the standard one everyone was going to use this design, so this message should hopefully give us time before someone comes to investigate.
 
Finally, the screen changed into something resembling a very basic web browser. At least this looked nicer than the operating system.
 
It seemed to be opening up a home page of sorts, with everything written in a language I didn’t understand. Although one section seemed to be just ones and zeros.
 
“Lola, focus on the binary section and see if you can understand it.”
 
“Acknowledged.”
 
“It seems to be the beginnings of teaching this language. The rest of the page is filled with. Please select it.”
 
I did as she asked and, using the arrow keys, moved to the correct location and pressed enter.
 
A new page started to load, which took a few seconds. There was more binary code here, but Lola indicated that she was already working on it.
 
“Next page, please.”
 
Another thing about this web page was that everything was fit into one screen—there was no scrolling or anything, just a ‘next page.’ Like that, we continued to go through multiple pages until finally, we reached the end.
 
There was another option to select, but I didn’t do it yet as I waited for Lola to compile everything.
 
“I now have an understanding of the language used on the home page. It seems to be one of the universal standard languages, although there seem to be thousands of those. The next page should take us to a design for a universal translator. Please go through all the pages of that as well.”
 
I did as she asked, and we went through 50 pages. Everything was readable to me, as the display over the screen translated it in real time. Thanks to that, I also kind of understood how the universal translator worked.
 
Technically, it wasn’t a universal translator—it still needed a key of the language to translate it. But the key itself was perhaps only 5,000 characters long, and if you used that, the translator could instantly translate that entire language. Although there seemed to be better and worse keys, basically giving you a range of understanding of that language.
 
There was also a blueprint to build such a device that would go wherever you received audio input. You could change the design, and the one I would be making—not right now but eventually—would go around my ear and would, in real-time, translate anything someone said into a language I understood.
 
That being said, it also meant that Lola needed to generate a key of our language, but apparently, that took a lot of processing, so currently, it was pushed back.
 
As we went back to the homepage, it finally happened—someone tried to query our IP address, and the safety protocols worked, shutting the server down and returning us to the operating system.
 
All of this had taken about 15 minutes, so when I pressed the button to connect to the server again, it did nothing.
 
“I guess we’ll have to wait. Lola, display the homepage.”
 
Of course, Lola had been saving everything we saw, and this time, when the image displayed on the overlay screen, it changed as we could now understand what all of this meant.
 
There was a reference to needing to build the transponder for a ship if I wanted to use any station or approach a solar system. It seemed to work off the design of a quantum PC.
 
Then there was a basic explanation of the universe itself. It seemed to be full of life.
 
“Lola, does that number translate correctly?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Well, that’s a lot of galaxies.”
 
So over 22,000 galaxies were confirmed to be using and operating in the Galaxy Net. I really wanted to know more about that. What kind of power structure was there?
 
We also got more information about the side dimension. Apparently, there were currents—ones that seemed to be pushing us around, even connecting other galaxies. But without these currents, it seems like you could move 58 light-years a day if you moved at 2.3 G acceleration.
 
I really wanted to select that to get more information, but this was just an image. Then my attention was grabbed by another part of the screen.
 
“Lola, is that translating correctly?”
 
“I cannot 100% confirm this, but apparently, yes.”
 
Why was there a description of what seemed like mana and magic and how it affected the universe?
 
Then it hit me—that was probably what I was collecting in that cube.
 
“Like things weren’t complicated enough, there is apparently magic now. Where is the empty universe I was expecting? Shouldn’t the universe be empty?”
 
“Things do seem a lot more complicated than originally planned for.”