Chapter 954 Only Children

Hao Ren walked forward along the long bridge in the air and came to what seemed to be a console. He saw that this was a device that was as smooth as new. There were no buttons on it, just a silver-white metal panel that was as bright as a mirror. He reached out and touched the edge of the panel and found that there was no trace of dust on it.

Not only this control panel, but actually the entire cylindrical space is free of dust. The last gate that everyone passed through should have strict dust-proof isolation performance, and the space itself should also have dust removal devices. There is no doubt that this place Convenience is the true storage location for the "ultimate vault".

"What is this?" Lily came over and asked curiously.

"It should be the manual controllers of those robotic arms." Hao Ren looked up at the neatly arranged metal brackets and rectangular containers in the cylindrical space, as well as the slides and robotic arms connecting those things, and at the same time reached out to touch the control panel next to it. A striking light green indicator line, "According to experience in the control room, this kind of touch screen should be activated by touching here... Oh, that's it."

Under his touch, a series of complex and changing geometric figures emerged on the silver-white metal plate, and then these geometric figures slowly stabilized to form an initial interactive interface. As expected, the operating system is locked and requires identification to enter, but this controller does not seem to use the kind of mechanical key carried by the Ark captain. It requires a password.

Such a password couldn't stop the data terminal. The latter floated to the console and connected itself to the control panel with a blue beam. A lot of interference and noise appeared on the screen at once. Within a few seconds, this set of The system was cracked, and a simple and easy-to-understand operation window popped up. Hao Ren tried to activate some of the functions above. The neatly arranged containers in the cylindrical space immediately started to move. One row of brackets was lowered from a high altitude and stopped steadily next to the long bridge in the air. The rectangular metal boxes hanging above Then they followed the slide and got stuck in the groove next to the railing of the long bridge. With a few "chichi" sounds, these containers opened.

Lily immediately ran over to check, and she saw that the metal box was empty. Only some unplugged catheters and a viscous liquid remained in the empty container.

"What are these?" Vivian also went to check the situation in the metal box. She felt a little baffled.

"It's a dormant pod - I guessed it, but it's close to ten," Hao Ren said slowly, "These are all dormant pods, the total number reaches 150,000."

"Hibernation cabin?" Vivian was no longer unfamiliar with this term, but she looked at the models of the metal boxes and felt something was wrong. "Is this a little small?"

"Because these are prepared for children." Hao Ren came over with the data terminal. The latter had already synchronized data with the console on the long bridge and easily took over all the functions of the console. Turn on the holographic projection, which displays the data read from the console.

A list was opened, with hundreds of avatars popping up on the projection and scrolling down quickly - every avatar was a child.

"The oldest is no more than thirteen years old, and the youngest is only three years old," Hao Ren pointed to the projection above the data terminal, which was extracted together with the photos of the personnel list, as well as some basic information of the vault, such as system logs. , "This final vault keeps dormant children. It was built 892 years ago and was last opened 815 years ago."

"Does it mean that it has been frozen for decades..." Nangong Wuyue poked the viscous liquid in the metal box with the tip of his tail, confirming that it was a substance that can maintain biological activity at low temperatures, "Question The point is why are there only children – where are all the adults?”

"Remember the last captain we saw in the control room before?" Hao Ren raised his eyelids, "He died of a chronic disease that caused his skull to slowly erode. I doubt that all adults People succumb to this disease, only children are left.”

"But we only found that set of bones," Nangong Wuyue's tail curled up, "How can we be sure that the same thing happened to other adults?"

Hao Ren had just thought about this issue and speculated: "Do you think a person infected with such a terminal disease can continue to serve as the captain of the Ark? Moreover, this disease is very slow, and the people on the Ark have enough time to choose There is a healthy new captain, but they don’t have one. The last captain died of illness on the job. There is only one explanation for this: they had no choice. There were no healthy candidates at all. Everyone was sick. And here..."

Hao Ren pointed to the countless silver-white metal boxes neatly arranged in the air: "The children did not get sick. This is the reason why civilization was cut off on the last ark."

He knew that more than half of his statements were based on speculation, but these speculations were completely tenable, and he could not think of any other more reliable reasons. It’s just that he hasn’t been able to explain the more fundamental question: How did this weird and suspicious terminal disease come about? Why did only the children survive? When the Ark Captain of Qunluan led all his subjects to death, other Arks were still normal. Did this disease appear out of thin air?

And there is another question, which is more doubtful than the bizarre disease: how did these humans with low technological level obtain the artifact of the goddess of creation, and also designed a simple but effective amplification device for it? system?

"Is there anything else in the database?" Hao Ren knocked on the shell of the data terminal. "Staff's diaries, audio recordings, videos, anything."

The data terminal is communicating with the host of this "final vault". It is trying its best to extract all the remaining things in this old system, but this is just a warehouse after all, and there is not much useful information. Finally, the data terminal found the most valuable information, which were several pieces of broken video data.

"There are some things here that were captured by the surveillance system, and were recorded at two points when the facility was closed and opened." The data terminal said as it began to play the information it found.

The first video shows the children entering those hibernation chambers. On the screen, you can see children walking in neat lines on the long bridge. Some children who are too young are even held in the arms of older children. The older ones seem to know what is going to happen and can occasionally be seen comforting their younger siblings. During the whole process, no one cried or was timid. All the children stood quietly in the queue, waiting to enter their own sleeping cabin. Next to these teams, a few adults can be seen. The latter are wearing extremely thick isolation suits, and every inch of their skin is wrapped under white protective clothing, as if they are afraid of transmitting the virus to children. These adults are probably the last operators of the entire Ark. Their health is obviously very poor. Some of them even stagger when walking. However, there are not enough people in the Ark to do these jobs, so these stumbling The sick can only insist on seeing off the firecrackers of civilization.

After the last batch of dormant capsules were put on the rack, the adults wearing isolation suits left the place, the door was closed, and the last generation of the Ark began their seventy-seven-year freeze.

"Next is the record of the opening of the facility - taken by surveillance equipment eight hundred and fifteen years ago." The data terminal said, playing another video.

At the beginning of this video clip, Hao Ren saw chaos.

It is still a long bridge in the air, but the situation on the long bridge is disorderly at this moment. Bursts of red lights flashed at the edge of the screen, and a continuous siren sounded from outside the screen. The dormant pods were released in batches to several additional "unloading points" on the long bridge and around the cylindrical space. The children who woke up from the dormant pods were panicked and hurriedly led by the guidance light and some older children. Escape this place. This video was much shorter than the previous one, almost only consisting of these messy shots. After the video was played, Lily subconsciously asked: "What's going on behind there?"

"I'm afraid this facility was activated accidentally. They should have stayed dormant for a longer time!" Hao Ren frowned, "But they were awakened early!"

Lily's eyes widened: "Accident? What accident?"

The person who answered her was not Hao Ren, but the data terminal: "Reactor failure! Do you still remember the radiation in the outer area of ​​the ancestral furnace? Those radiations appeared almost eight hundred years ago - when the reactor suddenly broke down!"