Chapter 952: Only Children

Hao Ren walked along the bridge to the thing that looked like a control stand. He saw that it looked almost brand new. There were no buttons, only a silverish metal panel that was as smooth as a mirror. He reached out to touch the edges of the panel, and found no dust on its surface.

In fact, nothing within the cylindrical space had any dust on them. The last door they came through must have kept the space well isolated to prevent dust from entering. Besides, there must be some dust removal system within this space. This must be the actual storage space of the Ultimate Vault.

“What’s this?” Lily approached him and asked curiously.

“Probably the manual controls for mechanical arms.” Hao Ren looked up at the neatly arranged metallic support structures and rectangular containers in the middle of the cylindrical expanse, and the sliding tracks and mechanical arms around them. He touched the eye-catching light green coloured instruction line beside the control panel. “Based on my experience in the control room, this kind of touch screen should be activated like this … Oh, it works.”

As he touched the line, a mess of geometric polygons began to fill up the silvery metal panel. As the polygons began to settle down, they formed an initialization interface. As expected, the controls were locked behind a security system. Only authorized personnel could enter the system. However, this control station was not accessed via a mechanical key like the one the ark’s captain had on him. Instead, it required a password.

The IDT made short work of the password. It flew to the back of the control staton and linked to the control panel via a blue laser beam from itself to the control stand. The image on the control panel flickered with interference. A few seconds later, the security system was bypassed. A simple and user-friendly command window popped up. Hao Ren tried a few of the functions available, and the neatly arranged rectangular containers in the cylindrical space began to move. One of the support structures extended downwards and landed steadily near the edge of the bridge. A rectangular metallic container slid down from above along a sliding track into a groove on the railings of the bridge. Pssh! The container opened.

Lily quickly stepped forward to have a look. She found the container to be empty, with only some loose tubings and a kind of sticky substance left behind.

“What are these things?” Vivian studied the insides of the container as well, baffled by what she saw.

“A hibernation pod is my guess, and I think it’s highly likely.” Hao Ren said slowly. “These must all be hibernation pods, about 150 thousand of them.”

“Hibernation pods?” Vivian knew the term, but the size of the rectangular boxes was vexing. “Don’t you think they are a little too small?”

“That’s because these are for children.” Hao Ren brought the IDT with him as he walk towards her. The IDT had already synchronized itself with the control stand and had full control of its functions. It activated a holographic projector and displayed the information from the control stand.

It was a name list with accompanying headshot photos. The list went on for hundreds of thousands of lines. As the list scrolled quickly downwards, it became apparent that they were all children.

“The oldest is 13, and the youngest is three years old.” Hao Ren pointed at the holographic projection from the IDT. Photos of crew members and some basic information about the vault, such as the system logs, were displayed as well. “This Ultimate Vault was meant to store children in hibernation. It was built 892 years ago. The last time it was accessed was 815 years ago.”

“So it’s been a few decades since the vault was opened …” Nangong Wuyue dabbed his tail lightly on the sticky substance, confirming that the sticky substance was capable of keeping something alive at low temperatures. “The question is, why only children? Where are all the adults?”

“Do you remember the ark’s last captain that we saw in the control room?” Hao Ren looked up and said. “He died from a chronic disease. The disease ate through his bones. I suspect that all the adults had died from the disease, leaving behind only children.”

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“But we only found the one body.” Nangong Wuyue’s tail curled up. “How can we be sure that the other adults encountered the same fate?”

Hao Ren was thinking about that, and had come to some conclusions. “Do you think someone who contracted a fatal disease can still take on the position of captain? The disease works slowly. People on the ark have time to choose a healthier person to be their new captain, but they did not. The last captain died at his post from his illness. There’s only one explanation for this – they had no choice. There were no healthy candidates left. Everyone was sick. And over here …”

Hao Ren pointed at the numerous silverish boxes in the air. “The children were not infected. This is why there is a setback in civilization on this ark.”

He knew that most of his theory was just guessing, but there was some logic to it. Besides, he could not think of any better reason for what they were seeing. However, there was something more important that he could not figure out – where did this mysterious and fatal disease came from? Why were the children left untouched? When the captain of Terra Firm led his people to certain death, the other arks were still functioning normally. What was the cause of the disease?

There was also something else, something stranger than even this mysterious disease – how did the people with almost primitive technology on this ark got ahold of a Divine Artifact from the Goddess of Creation, and even designed a simple but effective amplifier for it?

“Anything else from the archives?” Hao Ren knocked on the IDT’s shell. “Logs from crew members, voice recordings, video recordings, anything.”

The IDT was interacting with the mainframe of the Ultimate Vault. It was trying its best to retrieve all information from the ancient system. However, since this was only a vault, there was limited information available. Finally, the IDT found some valuable information. They were snippets of video recordings.

“These are from surveillance cameras, caught when the facility was sealed off and opened, respectively.” The IDT explained as it began to play the videos.

The first recording showed children entering the hibernation pods. From the video, they could see the children lining up in an orderly manner along the bridge. Some of them were so young that they had to be carried by older children. The older ones seemed to understand what was going on, and they tried to comfort the younger children around them from time to time. No one cried or faltered throughout the process. All the children lined up quietly, waiting for their turn to enter the hibernation pods. Only a handful of adults were seen beside the children. They wore bulky hazmat suites on top of a white protective clothing that covered every inch of their skin, as though they were afraid of spreading the disease to the children. These adults must be the last crew members of the ark. Their were obviously suffering from their illness. Some of them wobbled as they walked. There was no one else on the ark to do this job. These sickly adults were their last hope to ensure the survival of the future generation.

When the last batch of hibernation pods were secured on the support structures, the adults in hazmat suits began to leave. FInally, the doors of the vault shut, and the last generation on the ark began their 77 years of hibernation.

“Next is a recording when the facility was opened – caught 815 years ago by the surveillance cameras,” The IDT said and played another recording.

When the recording began playing, Hao Ren saw chaos.

It was still on the suspension bridge, but there was no order now. Red lights flashed steadily while an alarm blared in the background. The hibernation pods were released batch by batch onto the bridge and the some other extra “unloading” areas around the bridge. The children awoke in panic. They followed the indication lights and the guidance of the older children to escape this place. This recording was much shorter than the first one. They only saw a few shots of this chaotic scene. When the recording ended, Lily asked instinctively, “What happened back there?”

“The facility was accidentally activated. They should have hibernated for much longer!” Hao Ren’s brows knitted tightly together. “But they were awaken far too early!”

Lily’s eyes widened. “Accident? What sort of accident?”

The one who answered her was not Hao Ren, but the IDT. “The fusion reaction failure! Remember the radiation levels in the outer structures of the Furnace of the Ancestors? That radiation started about 800 years ago – that was when the fusion reactor broke down!”