novelraw Chapter 9 The Future
Chapter 9 The Future
“Th-this is…”
Jiang Ran felt a chill spread through him.
What was going on?
He had absolutely no memory of this string of numbers, and he didn’t understand its meaning at all. It was like gibberish.
There was no way this was a text he had sent.
And yet the sender name really was his, and the number really was his…
It was horrifying.
Did that mean there were two of him in this world?
But even if there were two of him, there was no way there could be two identical phone numbers.
“I didn’t send this text.”Jiang Ran’s brows knit tight as he looked at Qin Feng.
“The first test text—yes, that was me. But the second one, those numbers like garbled code—that wasn’t me.”
The two of them met each other’s eyes.
Qin Feng knew Jiang Ran well. He wouldn’t joke at a moment like this.
So…
Qin Feng’s expression slowly grew heavy too.
“You’re serious?”
“I remember it perfectly clearly.”
Jiang Ran was certain.
“There’s no reason for me to mess with you in a situation like this. This is terrifying, okay? Besides, if it’s a test text, one is enough. Why would I send two?”
“The spacetime black hole can only last 0.7 seconds. The window for sending a time-traveling text is only 0.7 seconds too. My hands aren’t fast enough to send two texts in that short a time!”
…
No one spoke.
A strange, eerie atmosphere gradually settled over the room.
A text of unknown origin,
numbers of unknown meaning,
a temporal shift that became more frightening the more you thought about it—
all of it made the joy they’d been overflowing with just moments ago… vanish in an instant, buried under a thick layer of worry.
“What do we do?”
Qin Feng spoke first, looking at Jiang Ran.
“Is it possible it was a mistake during the experiment, or that the Positron Cannon I repaired has a fault?”
“I think… once I finish repairing the Positron Cannon, we can immediately run another experiment and see whether we still receive two texts.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
Unlike the other two, Jiang Ran was the only one who could feel the temporal shift firsthand.
That uniqueness—that specialness—was exactly what had left him with an inexpressible unease all along.
“Let’s pause the time-traveling text experiments.”
He raised his head.
“To be safe, until we figure out why there was a second text, and what that mysterious string of numbers actually represents… we shouldn’t run any more spacetime experiments.”
…
The next day.
Qin Feng finally finished repairing the Positron Cannon and set it quietly to the side.
Jiang Ran paced nonstop around the room, thinking as he stared at the number on the board.
289269426494642…
The numbers from that mysterious text had now been written in chalk on the small blackboard. The three of them tried to crack the truth behind it.
At this point, [the creation of a spacetime black hole] and [the principle behind time-traveling texts] had both been resolved with ease, and the [ability to text the past] had been thoroughly mastered.
This series of gains should have been the open road to a brilliant life for the three of them.
But now, this “uninvited” text had become a roadblock, bringing their brilliant-life plan to a dead stop.
“It isn’t an English word.”
Cheng Mengxue set down her pen.
“If you map it in order by the English alphabet, it doesn’t form any known word.”
Qin Feng shook his head.
“On the math side, I can’t find any pattern either.”
“What if it’s possible that this string of numbers has no meaning in itself—just a string of numbers, just a [passcode]?”
Passcode.
Jiang Ran stopped walking.
A bank vault passcode?
A safe’s passcode?
A passcode for some website account?
It wasn’t impossible. But if they couldn’t find where the lock was, what use was a key by itself?
Actually,
if it really were some kind of passcode, Jiang Ran wouldn’t be this worried.
What he was truly worried about was—
that these numbers were a [warning].
A warning—about spacetime travel, about the laws of spacetime, about tampering with history.
“I think we should run another experiment.”
Qin Feng proposed it again.
“Now that the Positron Cannon is repaired, why not do another verification test and see whether this mysterious text is accidental or inevitable?”
“If we want to understand what these numbers really are, we should try more, gather more samples—and only then can we analyze it more comprehensively.”
“Maybe in the next experiment we’ll receive some hints. And based on those hints, we’ll be able to crack this passcode.”
…
Qin Feng’s thinking was scientific.
But—
“What if it produces consequences we can’t undo?” Jiang Ran looked at him.
“What consequences are you worried about?”
Qin Feng asked.
“An uncontrollable [temporal butterfly effect]?”
“No.”
Jiang Ran shook his head.
They’d long since known the temporal butterfly effect was uncontrollable. Especially Jiang Ran, as the most direct observer of temporal shifts—he could feel that fear of “missing memories,” “rewritten history,” “opening a blind box” more keenly than anyone.
Still…
If all they were doing was sending a text three days back and changing the history within those three days, the butterfly effect at that scale wasn’t so terrifying—because there wasn’t enough time for the “butterfly’s wings” to ferment into a “tornado.”
That thinking was a little arrogant.
But judging from the effects of the two time-traveling texts so far, the butterfly effect really had been minimal.
“I’m worried that these numbers are a warning to us,” Jiang Ran said bluntly.
Cheng Mengxue didn’t understand.
“But who would warn us?”
She looked back and forth between the two of them.
“The secret of time-traveling texts—the Positron Cannon, worldline shifts—only we know. It’s our secret. No one else could know.”
“Yes. And that’s exactly the problem.”
This was what Jiang Ran had been worrying about all along.
“Right now, we’ve only just mastered the [ability to text the past]. We aren’t familiar with a lot of mechanisms and rules yet, so we can only send texts to a fixed point: [three days earlier].”
“But if we’re given time—if Qin Feng gradually researches and develops the Positron Cannon further—what if we can break the limit of [three days earlier] and expand the sending point…”
“Turn it into [three weeks earlier], [three months earlier], even [three years earlier]?”
Qin Feng froze—but as always, one hint and he understood.
“You mean…”
“Exactly.”
Jiang Ran turned and looked at Cheng Mengxue.
“If that hypothesis holds, then right now, we’re the receiving side.”
“And the person who sent us this mysterious text… is in a much more distant future.”
“That answers your question perfectly. The secret of the time machine is known only to the three of us—so who would warn us?”
“The answer is obvious: us—three weeks from now, three months from now;
even three years, thirty years from now.”
He raised his head, looking at the bright full moon hanging high outside the window.
“It’s very possible that it was a warning sent by us in the farther future.”
“Warning us now… not to run any more spacetime experiments.”