Chapter 39 The Curvature Navigation of The Waterdrop_1

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Trisolaran world, supreme rulers joint conference hall.

Supreme Leader: "Lin Sen is indeed too astute, he can actually analyze us accurately across 4 light-years as if he had seen us with his own eyes."

The Strategy Governor, due to wearing a Brainwave Blocker, slowly emitted his thoughts: "Indeed very astute, he has been able to infer many of our predicaments from simple pieces of information.

Although we cut off contact with humans in time, too much information has still leaked out, and we have paid the price for our lack of strategic cunning. It's really unknown what achievements they could obtain in these 400 years, whether they would pose a threat to us."

The Sophon Governor slowly said: "I don't know if you've noticed, the most alarming thing is that, without any hints, he has already analyzed some of the universal truths.

This person is more dangerous than Logic; if he were to learn some key information, he might quickly deduce the true picture of the universe."

The Science Governor slowly said: "Our deductions based on human societal models indicate that humans will soon enter an era of great depression, which could leave them unable to recover.

We had even already planned to guide humans towards submissive and non-resistant ideologies, letting them sink.

But since Lin Sen has come into our view, everything is now unknown. The human society model is meant to calculate the developmental course of all of human society, not to change due to one individual, yet the model has been altered due to just one man—Lin Sen.

Hearing Lin Sen's analysis and plans today, I've even started to worry. He sends shivers down our spine, an experience we've never had before. There must be hidden plans behind him; they might truly have a chance to overcome us.

Our advantage is our decisiveness, but our disadvantage is also our decisiveness; the decisive us lack cunning."

Supreme Leader: "Useless emotions. This is meaningless for our problem-solving. Lin Sen's arrival has led to a fairly serious defeatist sentiment among us.

This is a warning to you, we need solutions to problems. Any more such emotions, and it will mean you are no longer suited for this job. What we need is a problem-solving plan."

The Supreme Leader's warning would normally have no issues in the Trisolaran world, but now many are wearing Brainwave Blockers, and the Supreme Leader cannot know all of their thoughts, only feeling like their thinking has slowed down.

No longer suited for this job means execution, but who wants to die? Quite a few are controlling themselves from emitting defeatist emotions. No one realized the importance of this matter—every living being's nature is to seek benefits and avoid harm, betrayal only occurs zero times or countless times.

At that moment, Listener No. 7, a subordinate of the Sophon Governor, also had some thoughts present in his brain: I can't let anyone know that I too have feelings of fear, he might not even have noticed this himself.

Not emitting defeatist thoughts, and not letting others perceive one's own defeatist emotions, may seem the same to Earthlings, but not to Trisolarans.

Supreme Leader: "First, we enter into the first agenda item, what are your views on the escape and final battle plan?"

Military Governor: "This is the plan that has the greatest impact on us. If humans really dispatch many warships to patrol the Oort Cloud and forbid sending out any information, finding them would be extremely difficult."

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The battlefield would develop in ways we least desired, on average it took Sophon 2 and a half years to orbit the Solar System within the Oort Cloud.

However, Lin Sen had a misunderstanding about our technology. He thought that we could not produce 'Pioneers' because we couldn't build them. Indeed, our resources were extremely limited, and we couldn't build even one vessel on the scale of a warship.

But our 'Pioneer' was the weapon 'The Waterdrop' that we were developing. This was a construct so grand that they could not possibly imagine, indestructible, capable of destroying all their hopes.

The problem was that it would take too long to find their warship. After being discovered by Sophon, we still had to wait for The Waterdrop to go and kill it. The speed of The Waterdrop was limited, and this time would be extremely prolonged.

The Waterdrop couldn't use too high a speed because it utilised curvature propulsion, which was already interfering with space, increasing our risk of exposure in the universe.

When traveling through interstellar space, we dared not let The Waterdrop exceed 2% of the speed of light. Even within the Oort Cloud, despite the cover it provided, we dared only to use 18% of the speed of light to pursue them.

Although The Waterdrop's maximum speed could reach 30% of the speed of light, we generally wouldn't accelerate to 30%. At that speed, the change in space curvature by the curvature engine would leave obvious trails, increasing our risk of exposure.

Fortunately, humans could not possibly know the characteristics of our Waterdrop, so we didn't have to worry about their Deep Space Fleet sending specific intelligence about our attacks to the Solar System when under attack.

An important function of The Waterdrop was to block the humans' ability to send ultra-high power electromagnetic broadcast signals to the universe with the assistance of the sun. This was especially true for their warships, which wouldn't have the chance to send signals, because we would block them in advance."

Lin Sen naturally knew that The Waterdrop's speed couldn't be just 2% of light speed, as humanity had never forced it to reveal its full speed. It took The Waterdrop 200 years to travel 4 light-years, from the Trisolaran Star System to the Solar System, which by such reckoning meant its speed was only 2% of light speed. But if that was the speed, it couldn't possibly catch up with the fleeing Blue Space, whose maximum speed was 15% of light speed.

In the original timeline, The Waterdrop took 200 years to reach the Solar System. It wasn't because their technology was lacking, but because they feared exposure. If its speed were thought to be only 2% of light speed, they would surely lose the advantage in combat.

The reason why The Waterdrop was considered to use curvature propulsion lay in the paramount evidence that it could execute sharp-angle turns, something only possible by utilizing the rules of spacetime.

In the original timeline, the Trisolarans used one Waterdrop to enter the Solar System, while others took a circuitous route to encircle the system, preventing any potential escape by human warships. This was partly due to the Trisolarans' contempt for humans, their arrogance prompting arrogance from the Trisolarans in turn. It was also a confidence in the speed of The Waterdrop.

One could only say that God favored humans, who encountered a piece of 4-dimensional space during their flight and managed to turn the tables on The Waterdrop using the fourth dimension.

Curvature propulsion refers to using a space curvature engine to warp spacetime, contracting space in front of a ship and expanding it behind. It creates an artificial "spacetime bubble," which would then be drawn forward by the space of greater curvature ahead, theoretically reaching the speed of light.

If the curvature propulsion of a warship is like the tracks of a heavy truck in the snow, then The Waterdrop's curvature propulsion is like the marks left by a bicycle. Of course, the closer the speed is to light speed, the more obvious such traces become. If traces are too apparent, there's a high chance of being observed by other civilizations.

The Trisolarans also mentioned that the Trisolaran world was more likely to be discovered because they conducted numerous curvature propulsion experiments. Indeed, not long after the Trisolarans were exposed, they were destroyed, while humanity survived nearly 70 more years.

An experiment could help to understand curvature propulsion: fold a paper boat and then pierce a hole at its stern and insert a piece of soap. When placed in water, you will see the boat automatically travels forward. This happens because the soap dissolved in the water changes the surface tension behind the boat, and the boat is propelled forward by the differential in tension.