Chapter 287: Similar Cycles
After their final, disastrous experiment...
All the researchers collapsed at their desks, sobbing uncontrollably. A profound sense of despair formed an abyss, crushing their spirits and breaking their collective will.
With trembling hands, Great Sage Baxter wrote in his diary: "We have spent a king’s ransom, countless hours of labor, and more than thirty years, only to prove that... magnetic confinement fusion is not feasible! At least, it is completely impossible with our current technology!"
"Our technological foundation is far from sufficient!"
"However... many fundamental disciplines have stagnated for centuries. Achieving another massive leap forward is practically impossible. We need groundbreaking theoretical breakthroughs, and we need more once-in-a-generation geniuses to join us!"
"Controllable nuclear fusion is not just a simple engineering project; it’s the ultimate integration of countless scientific disciplines. If any single field is lacking, the entire project collapses. Perhaps... our entire approach has been fundamentally flawed!"
"...We set out to build an airplane, but we ended up engineering a race car. No matter how fast a race car goes, it can never fly!"
"What’s even more terrifying is that the very nature of nuclear fusion subconsciously tricks you into building that race car. It actively tempts you to go down the wrong path..."
"Magnetic confinement is likely the very first solution every civilization in the universe thinks of... but it’s an absolute dead end!"
Baxter grew increasingly agitated as he wrote. The 120-year-old Great Sage trembled with anger, tears streaming down his face as he confronted nature’s cruel deception.
Tears the size of soybeans rolled down his cheeks, dripping onto the paper one by one. He had lost all hope. Over thirty years, they had spent every credit they raised, only to fall into a massive trap set by the laws of physics, unable to climb back out.
Every time they were interviewed by the media, they were forced to claim that "progress was being made," but... where was the actual progress?
As the years went by, the public stopped believing them. The title of "Great Sage" had long since become a punchline. Even the government had grown highly suspicious.
At that very moment, inspectors from the Anti-Corruption Division were waiting outside the laboratory. Many people genuinely believed that the Great Sage had embezzled the colossal 1.8 trillion credit budget and demanded a full investigation!
Baxter was at a loss for words. Embezzlement? If he just wanted to be rich, he would never have sold his incredibly lucrative biotech shares in the first place...
However, the team had achieved absolutely no practical results. They had only spent an astronomical amount of effort and money proving that the concept of "magnetic confinement" was too difficult, if not completely impossible! They had only proven that one specific solution was a dead end!
How could they possibly explain this nuance to an angry public?
Currently, there were only two theoretical paths left to truly achieve controllable nuclear fusion.
First, they needed to divert massive amounts of funding back into fundamental science, achieve groundbreaking theoretical leaps in other fields, and then return to studying fusion decades later.
But... how much would that cost?
The Large Hadron Collider hadn’t yielded any new discoveries and was dismantled centuries ago. Even if they built a new one, it would have to be exponentially larger and more powerful to potentially discover new physics. The Parliament would never approve such an absurd budget. Other disciplines were also facing massive bottlenecks, requiring astronomical financial support just to move an inch!
Every single step required money... It was impossible to get it approved! Moreover, every step required vast amounts of time and the miraculous birth of new, generational geniuses!
The life-or-death energy crisis was only seventy years away! Thinking of this, Baxter closed his eyes in sheer anguish.
The second option was to find a completely different method than "magnetic confinement" to bypass the technical hurdles entirely!
But... what was that method? Did it even exist?
Just then, a vague, terrifying idea formed in Baxter’s mind. A group of researchers began whispering and discussing the concept amongst themselves, completely forgetting the prosecutors waiting outside.
Knock, knock, knock.
Several prosecutors pounded impatiently on the door before pushing it open and marching in.
Baxter was still frantically running the calculations in his head. Faced with the final, astronomical number required for his new theoretical method, he saw both ultimate hope and absolute despair. He collapsed to the ground in agony.
Impossible! This project... the Nix Civilization could never complete such a vast and magnificent undertaking!
This project requires far too much energy and raw resources, so much that the entire planet could barely sustain it! It would cost hundreds, perhaps thousands of times the GDP of our entire civilization!
It’s impossible!
The Nix Civilization has already been filtered out by the Great Filter!
Decades of severe overwork, coupled with extreme, crushing despair, finally brought the last Great Sage to his knees...
He passed away just like that, collapsing on the laboratory floor, his heart giving out. He died filled with endless regrets.
By cruel coincidence, another "star" passed away on the exact same day as the Great Sage. A famous female celebrity, caught cheating on her husband, had panicked and crashed her car during a frantic getaway.
The entire Nix population focused its collective attention on the bizarre, scandalous death of the celebrity. Search rankings exploded. Everyone was obsessing over an entertainment star, condemning her moral corruption and debating whether she deserved to die.
Meanwhile, under the tiny news blurb announcing "Baxter’s Death," a horde of internet trolls left scathing comments, calling him a fame-seeking fraud who burned trillions of taxpayer credits and accomplished nothing.
The final Great Sage passed away quietly, bearing the heavy infamy of a ruined name. No one realized that their civilization’s last true light had just flickered out, and there were no more heroes left to save the world...
Everything collapsed. The ending was already predetermined.
Silence. Absolute stillness.
After listening to the entire historical account, Jason felt a suffocating tightness in his chest.
The Great Filter had utterly extinguished the Nix Civilization... a civilization that was, in many ways, once more powerful than humanity. Heroes had stepped up to try and save them, but they had all failed. Jason felt as if a mountain, or perhaps an entire planet, was pressing down on his heart, making it hard to breathe.
What happened next was predictably grim: as the years went by, energy became increasingly scarce. It was exactly like a frog being slowly boiled alive, right up until the water grew scalding hot and the frog finally realized it was dying.
It began to thrash, desperately trying to jump out of the boiling pot.
Exploiting the ocean floor for deep-crust uranium was technically feasible and could have significantly delayed the energy crisis. However... the ice sheet covering the Nix oceans was incredibly thick. This exponentially increased the cost of deep-sea extraction, making it vastly more expensive than surface mining.
The liberalized free market reacted instantly. The price of uranium skyrocketed. Many far-sighted nations began aggressively stockpiling their uranium reserves and completely halted all energy exports.
As a result, electricity was no longer cheap. Many cities that relied entirely on the nuclear grid slowly fell into disrepair and went dark. Hearing rumors of the impending collapse, massive hordes of Nix citizens flocked back to the ancient cities located in the active volcanic zones, causing property prices in those safe havens to explode into the stratosphere.
Nations lacking their own uranium mines found it impossible to survive. Surging electricity prices caused industrial production costs to skyrocket. This naturally increased the cost of all consumer goods, leading to rapid, uncontrollable price gouging.
Soon, global currencies depreciated sharply. Hyperinflation set in, and the fragile, interconnected global economic system collapsed in a matter of months. There was no solution in sight.
"At this point, the surface uranium resources weren’t even fully exhausted; they probably had enough left to last another twenty or thirty years. But because nations panicked, hoarded energy, and froze global trade, the Nix Civilization immediately descended into chaos."
Due to hyperinflation and total economic collapse, factory workers in several countries began massive strikes. Law and order evaporated, further exacerbating the total collapse of their industrial infrastructure.
The public suddenly realized a terrifying truth: the remaining trickle of geothermal energy could never support a population of five billion. The vast majority of them were going to starve to death. What could they do? What other options did they have?
They wanted to flee to other countries. They wanted to violently squeeze into the overcrowded volcanic cities. They wanted to survive... It was a desperate, bloody eve of the apocalypse.
"After enduring this agonizing collapse for several years, war suddenly broke out... and, of course, it quickly escalated into a global nuclear exchange," Professor Hazel said in a low, somber voice, deliberately omitting the gruesome details of the slaughter.
"The nuclear war brought about massive deformities, mutations, and death. The vast majority of their cities were instantly vaporized. Only a tiny fraction of the population managed to cling to life around the volcanic zones. They were essentially bombed back into the miserable dark ages, forced to live exactly as they had before the discovery of nuclear power..."
This was inevitable. When faced with mass starvation, what other outcome was there besides war?
"If that were the end of it, the survivors could theoretically have continued to exist indefinitely. After all, geothermal energy is sustainable."
"The war drastically reduced their population and completely destroyed their advanced industry, but at least those surviving Nix citizens could live off the volcanoes."
"But what they didn’t anticipate was that... the intense global radiation also mutated a massive number of native microorganisms. A new type of organism, akin to cyanobacteria, was born in the irradiated ruins. They began to reproduce rapidly, fundamentally altering the biological history of the entire planet."
"That’s right... these mutated bacteria could utilize the ambient heat and atmospheric gases to synthesize organic matter, mass-producing oxygen as a byproduct. The breathable oxygen atmosphere we enjoy on this planet today was entirely generated by them!"
At this point, Professor Hazel sighed deeply. "It feels like a cruel, cosmic joke played by God, deliberately designed to completely eradicate the Nix Civilization, and then... prepare the planet for the arrival of the Federation!"
"The birth of these cyanobacteria flooded the atmosphere with oxygen, completely overhauling the global ecosystem. But for the Nix, who were strictly anaerobic organisms, this oxygen was highly toxic. The environmental damage caused by the bacteria was actually far worse for the Nix than the nuclear bombs! From the ocean floor to the deep subterranean caverns, wherever there was geothermal heat, these cyanobacteria bloomed in massive colonies."
"The surviving Nix, having lost all their advanced industry, completely lacked the capacity to eradicate these widespread microorganisms. They could only watch helplessly as the oxygen content in their atmosphere increased day by day, sinking deeper and deeper into a toxic, suffocating despair..."
"Because they were anaerobic, they simply could not adapt to an oxygen-rich atmosphere."
"This once-glorious civilization lingered in agonizing, suffocating misery for several thousand years before finally perishing completely."
"Most of the native species from that era also went extinct due to the oxygenation event. The planet ushered in a completely new biological cycle, and aerobic organisms began to emerge and dominate."
"The Nix Civilization rose from the crucible of crisis through the power of wisdom, and they perished due to the rot of indulgence and comfort. Perhaps there are deeper sociological reasons waiting for us to explore..." Professor Hazel concluded, her voice hoarse.
"And now, the Federation has arrived on this planet. It has abundant oxygen, and... enough fossil fuels to last us for hundreds of thousands of years!"
"How terrifyingly similar this is to the Nix Civilization’s golden age. Are we simply at the beginning of a new cycle?"
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