Heishi’s words shocked everyone present.
“What will happen after the entire Astrolabe is rebooted?” Feiluo asked in disbelief.
“Many changes will happen in the world, but… I forget. I’ve forgotten so much information. Too much time has passed, and I’ve slept for too long…”
Heishi narrowed his eyes and turned his head back and forth, as if he was trying to shake that section of memories from his own mind and capture that fleeting thought. The clones watched the holograms that the light and shadows created, staring at the magnificent light that emitted from the Astrolabe. But no matter how hard Heishi tried, he couldn’t recall that segment of memory that had been wiped clean.
“I really can’t remember…” His forehead was covered in a cold sweat.
Feiluo knew that this matter was one of great importance. “Don’t rush yourself, Heishi. Think carefully. Is there anything that is connected to all of this?”
“My first memory was seeing A-Ka,” Heishi said, narrowing his eyes. “That time on the beach, A-Ka saved me…”
It wasn’t until this moment that Feiluo learned of the connection between Heishi and A-Ka.
“Would he know anything about your background?” Feiluo asked, concerned.
“The probability is very low,” Heishi said. “The only clue is that I slept in the ocean for three thousand years.”
At this moment in time, A-Ka was currently resting in the ship’s cabin. The sound of the waves caused him to once again remember the day that he rescued Heishi and the words that Heishi had spoken to him many months later in the bathing chamber.
“What are you thinking about, A-Ka?” Percy asked gently. “Is it your friend?”
“Mhm,” A-Ka replied. “When I met him, it was also on the sea. Are you awake now? Do you want to drink some water?”
“Thank you, but I can do it on my own.” He felt his way along until he opened his water bottle and drank a mouthful.
Percy was only twelve years old, and his blindness was congenital. According to him, one day a robotic squadron had wanted to capture and kill all of the people in his village. The villagers fought back in self-defense, but they were still ruthlessly slaughtered. As they were fighting, the division that Feiluo led had rushed onto the scene. Feiluo had discovered him in the wreckage and taken him with them.
Percy was very mature. He didn’t cry or throw tantrums, and he would often try to guess at other people’s intentions. Such a traveling companion was a blessing.
The ship’s journey was long and slow. Twice a day, the clones would come down and hand out food and water, and during set hours, the passengers were allowed up onto the deck in shifts to breathe in the fresh air. The rest of the time, they had to remain crammed together in the lower levels of the ship. Two months passed like this.
After chatting with their compatriots in the cabin, A-Ka learned that the people around them all possessed special skills. Some of them were masters of design, some were familiar with production, some knew how to cook, and others were even artists. Life within the cabin was comparatively pleasant. Sometimes, a bard would play the harp for the children. According to him, long before the revolution in the City of Steel broke out, there had been quite a few people wandering around on the mainland.
The experiences of A-Ka’s comrades opened new doors in his understanding. He gradually learned that the Country of Machines really was not the entirety of the world, and that all this time, humans and clones had been thinking of ways to destroy this country of metal demons that controlled the Astrolabe and forced the residents of the mainland to live in abject poverty.
“Father’s power is on the verge of collapse,” one man said to the crowd. “For history to flourish, this path is inevitable. The robots that have no ability to create will never be considered intelligent life-forms…”
This was the first time A-Ka had heard such a sentiment. It made him curious; he sat and listened with a great deal of interest, but the other listeners expressed boredom.
One small child sighed. “I’ve heard this revolutionary manifesto a hundred times now.”
“I’ve heard it two hundred times now,” another child said. “I want to hear Uncle Moran tell history stories instead.”
Moran, the wandering bard traveling with them, had curly brown hair and a pair of azure eyes. Though he was not young anymore, he was kind, amiable, and the favorite of the little children on the boat. When he heard them say his name, he began to smile and plucked the strings of his lyre twice, making it ring crisply. The kids all clapped, and the bard began to sing a lilting historical ballad.
“In the depths of those faraway stars, the Creator activated his Astrolabe…”
The song detailed the tens of thousands of years of change that had happened in their world. A-Ka combined his existing knowledge with the story that this bard was telling. Gradually, he began to understand more—the legendary Creator had abandoned his compass of destiny in the depths of the universe. Past legends had dubbed it the Astrolabe, which was also the world that the Creator had used to test and grow countless living beings.
That god had left behind a place within the depths of the Astrolabe, the Room of the Stars, where he had once observed the trajectory of the development and movements of this world. The room was constructed from countless combinations of gears, both large and small, whose teeth ground together beneath the layer of land covered by the ocean, causing the mainland to slowly revolve. The entire world moved like the internal mechanisms of a massive pendulum clock. All the lands and islands were inlaid on its bedrock, and this chunk of bedrock was the Astrolabe.
In the prehistoric era, the Astrolabe flourished with abundance. There was no war or carnage, and humans and other species lived in harmony.