Chapter 147: The Specific Technology Exchange

Year 60 of the Human United Era (HUE).

Learning the more specific details about the Sacred Decider in the Stuo Civilization,

and understanding that this Sacred Decider was actually a Strong Artificial Intelligence,

was, for Human Civilization, a piece of neutral news, neither purely good nor bad.

On the bad side: it meant the Stuo Civilization truly was directed by a single will,

which resulted in highly efficient decision-making for the Stuo Civilization itself.

But for another civilization in contact with it, this posed a potentially dangerous situation.

After all, when a single will dictates the course of an entire civilization,

a decision to engage in friendly exchange could be made very quickly.

Conversely, a sudden decision to launch an attack could happen just as fast.

The good side was that, while indeed a single will directed the whole civilization,

the Sacred Decider, being a Strong Artificial Intelligence, clearly lacked emotions. Its major strategic decisions tended to be stable and predictable.

As long as it determined that interaction with Human Civilization was more beneficial than attack,

it definitely wouldn’t suddenly strike at Human Civilization.

Probably because they had finally resolved the biggest lingering question about the Stuo Civilization,

the subsequent exchanges and interactions between the two civilizations became noticeably much smoother.

The unknown is always more frightening than the known.

With deeper mutual understanding and no logical need for conflict between the civilizations,

their inherent mutual trust naturally became a bit stronger.

…

Year 61 of the Human United Era (HUE).

After representatives from both civilizations had visited each other’s Stellar Cities,

the next period saw Human Civilization and the Stuo Civilization conducting several more face-to-face meetings.

The scope of sites invited for visitation by the visiting civilizations also gradually expanded.

By this year, Human Civilization invited the Stuo Civilization delegation to Earth, Humanity’s homeworld, for the first time.

During this visit within Human territory, the Stuo delegation also chose, for the first time,

to rest in the lounge facilities provided by Humans during breaks between tours, rather than returning to their own ships.

Qin Yu, as the head of the Human Federation Negentropy Research Institute,

also met the leader of the Stuo Civilization delegation on Earth for the first time.

Using the delegation leader as its communication bridge, the Stuo Civilization’s Sacred Decider

held a brief conversation with Qin Yu.

Or rather, Sies, that great scientist of the Stuo Civilization, using the Sacred Decider as a medium,

managed to have Qin Yu “see” him, transcending time itself.

In a way,

this was the first truly complete, face-to-face encounter between the two civilizations.

However, much like the Strong Artificial Intelligences within Human Civilization,

the Stuo Civilization’s Sacred Decider had no virtual form of its own.

Essentially, it represented the collective computational power of the Stuo Civilization.

As the Stuo themselves had previously described, it existed everywhere within their civilization, constantly present.

Therefore, this meeting between the decision-makers of the two civilizations was largely symbolic.

…

Also in this year,

the Stuo Civilization extended an invitation to the Human delegation,

welcoming them aboard their migrating fleet’s central body: a Planetary Fortress.

Inside this Planetary Fortress, over 1,500 kilometers in diameter,

it was just like the surface of a planet.

Structured in multiple layers, it housed more than four billion of the Stuo population.

The Stuo Civilization’s core research institutions resided within this fortress.

Whereas inside the smaller, 500-kilometer asteroid fortresses visited earlier, one could glimpse the slight upward curve of the artificial ‘ground’ in the far distance,

within this core Planetary Fortress, the surface stretched flatly forward underfoot, feeling indistinguishable from a natural planetary surface.

Beyond the deliberately created extensive waterways, the fortress primarily simulated the environment of the Stuo homeworld.

The Stuo took evident pride in this Planetary Fortress

while guiding the Human delegation through it.

The Human delegation’s Researchers were indeed deeply impressed.

Honestly, with Human Civilization’s current technical capability,

ignoring some material science hurdles, they might just barely attempt to build something like it.

But actually completing such a fortress? That would take an unknown number of years.

The sheer size of the Planetary Fortress was enormous, approaching the size of Earth’s Moon.

And considering its internal usable space and complexity, it was far more intricate than simply hollowing out the Moon.

“…The Stuo Civilization also progressively finished building this Planetary Fortress, along with other smaller Stellar Fortresses, during their long voyage.”

…

As the two civilizations reciprocated visits to increasingly significant regions within each other’s territory,

their collaboration didn’t stop at purely theoretical fields like mathematics; the exchange of ideas, theories, and joint research projects continued without pause.

During face-to-face meetings, researchers from both sides in relevant fields engaged directly.

During intervals, communication continued via electromagnetic signals.

Both civilizations had accumulated vast stores of knowledge across various fields over time.

Even focusing solely on theoretical collaboration in fields like physics, mathematics, advanced astronomy, chemistry, and others,

it was an immense task, impossible to exhaust quickly.

As mutual exchanges deepened, both sides frequently revealed differences

in their specific research paths and findings within the same fields.

New applications for each other’s methodologies in novel domains were continually uncovered.

While delegations couldn’t possibly bring all core researchers for every face-to-face meeting,

collaboration via electromagnetic communication enabled broad participation,

involving most theoretical Researchers from the Human Federation Negentropy Research Institute on the Human side.

The situation was largely mirrored within the Stuo Civilization during this period.

The Researchers within Human Civilization’s Negentropy Research Institute and their counterparts in the Stuo core research bodies

were constantly highly energized throughout their exchanges.

Frequently, their discussions yielded entirely new discoveries, previously unseen insights they missed!

This was deeply exciting for researchers on both sides, quite naturally.

It felt like opening doors to new worlds constantly, with new knowledge erupting like a geyser.

In the cosmic space between Jupiter and the periphery of the Kuiper Belt, where the Stuo Interstellar Fleet resided,

the surge in communication traffic between the civilizations led to a marked increase in electromagnetic activity.

Simultaneously,

joint theoretical projects undertaken by Researchers from both civilizations kept producing fresh progress.

It wasn’t that every collaborative study sailed smoothly;

often, during joint research, logical hurdles in thinking styles could make progress arduous.

Yet, these obstacles frequently highlighted fundamental differences in approach between the two civilizations.

Differences in tackling the very same research problem can, paradoxically, offer more pathways forward when collaborating.

It was amidst this exceptionally productive phase of theoretical exchange and cooperation that

the Stuo Civilization and Human Civilization finally decided

to undertake their first exchange of practical, specific technology.