There was something strange about the Specter Ship. The ship lacked an "identity," the unusual structure of the starship, the facilities in the core area that were specially prepared for carbon-based creatures, the highly silent starship system, and the fragmented diary left behind by a crew member who might have died a long time ago. These bits and pieces of information gradually led us to a certain answer. But before the final answer was revealed, it was hard for me to imagine who built this spaceship and what happened to this spaceship during its tens of thousands of years of drifting.
Warren Ferd's diary was still being discovered, but because these things were carved on the walls or other surfaces, it was difficult to sort them out in order. We could only slowly sort through the scattered entries and summarize the experience of the servant army commander of the old Empire after he woke up alone in this exile spaceship.
Now, it was confirmed that the spaceship had indeed malfunctioned. Although it sounded unbelievable that something made by the Shiring Apostles had malfunctioned, there was indeed an accident with its awakening system. The awakening system was supposed to be activated after it came into contact with other survivors from the Empire, but only one crew member was awakened. This commander, Warren Ferd, recorded most of what happened after he woke up. In the first few days, he maintained an optimistic attitude. Ten days later, he began to complain and feel negative emotions, but these negative emotions did not affect him for long. From the diary he left behind, it could be seen that he quickly adjusted his mentality.
The next entry was carved on a pillar in the hall, and there were a few more entries that did not seem to be connected in time.
"Warren Ferd's diary, day 32. Completed the routine work and routine chores. Once again, I tried to audit the spaceship's awakening process. This is something I have to do every day. The audit result was the same as before. There was no reason for the premature awakening. Perhaps some of the systems were left behind when the spaceship was attacked. To prevent others from being awakened prematurely, the main release of the awakening process was transferred to two backup systems. The spaceship's mainframe accepted this suggestion. It seems that it also realized that it might have malfunctioned. Today should be a day worth celebrating. This stubborn mainframe has finally compromised with a carbon-based creature. Of course, it's more likely that it has nothing to do with compromise. It's the machine's own logical judgment. Regardless, I should find a way to cheer myself up. "
"Warren Ferd's diary, day 28. I'm not in a good mood. But after reviewing my previous behavior and mental state, my previous training has worked. I discovered my emotional problems in time. It seems that I need to adjust my mood. Loneliness was not a fatal thing. As long as I had enough things to do, my busy life would dispel the feeling of loneliness. I added two daily tasks to myself, including cleaning my main activity area and backing up the radar report to another MDT. The cleaning work was supposed to be done automatically, but I convinced the equipment in charge of this task on the grounds that carbon-based creatures needed regular exercise to maintain their health. It was much more temperamental than the mainframe of the ship. I plan to study food combinations in a few days. The material generator should be able to create more strange things. "
"Warren Field's Diary, Day 44. I've realized that I haven't written in a diary for a long time. It's inevitable. Life is the same every day. Nothing happens here that's different from the day before. The lack of change means that there's no need to record. So, I'll probably write in the diary every now and then. I'll only write down what I think is worth noting. That's a good idea. I don't have to worry about the spaceship's walls. I just hope that when the others wake up, they won't complain that I made the spaceship look like a cave."
"Warren Field's diary, the sixtieth day. The boring days are really unbearable, so I did something risky today: I took the shuttle and flew to the starship city 20 kilometers away. The situation was as expected, it was all over. The damage to the ship was very serious. The people in the starship city and the outer garrisons should have died instantly when the attack came. The bodies of mortals are so fragile. If the people on this ship were all Xi Ling Apostles, the situation might have been completely different. The Xi Ling Apostles would have survived and repaired the ship in a short period of time, then landed in another world and started all over again. But what's the point of thinking about all this? The people on this spaceship are all mortals. After returning to the core area, I reconfigured the energy network of the spaceship, reducing the energy supply to the outer area. I also set up a rule that if there was further damage, the mainframe could decide to abandon the outer area. The mainframe agreed to this plan. I'm starting to think that stubborn AI is actually quite cute. "
"Warren Field's Diary, Day Sixty One. The outer area has been completely pressurized, and the artificial gravity has been turned off. Now, this is the only place on this spaceship where there are living people. The mainframe suggested to concentrate the interference devices in the core area. This greatly improves the spaceship's level of silence. Now, it should be even harder to detect signs of life and thoughts in the spaceship from the outside. Even if there is a Psychic Assault Trooper standing on the shell of the spaceship, he will never be able to detect my thoughts. This makes me feel more at ease."
That's all the diary entries on the pillar. We then looked around the hall, but we didn't find any more words. It seemed that the main records were not here.
Sandora gently stroked the carvings that had been carved for tens of thousands of years. She frowned and said, "Now it seems that this spaceship was really designed for escape. It must have been built after the cataclysm. Time was short. This probably explains why it didn't meet the requirements of a spaceship. Thanks to the special design, it was able to escape even though it was almost destroyed. "
Liliana had given up on searching for signs of life. Under the effect of some sophisticated interference devices, even the Protoss's life senses would be rendered useless, let alone hers. She joined in our conversation. "Then, why are the people on this spaceship only mortals? Aren't the Shiring Apostles stronger than mortals? If they could build such a spaceship, why didn't they escape on their own? "
"Maybe they were all infected, so they could only ask the uninfected vassals to escape." Sandora came up with an answer without much thought. "We have seen such examples many times. The Shiring Apostles of the Old Empire handed the last ship to the uninfected while they were still conscious. In such an emergency situation, of course, as many people as they could escape, regardless of whether they were servants or soldiers of the Empire."
I frowned and thought hard for a long time. I felt that something was not right. When I looked up, I saw a bunch of little crows stumbling in a messy line behind Medivh. It was then that I realized, 'Fleet!'
"This spaceship is a single spaceship." I lifted my head and looked at Shadora. "Be it the Specter Ship that we found or the records that we found here, we didn't find any evidence of the existence of other spaceships. As a fugitive team, isn't this a little too small?"
If a certain sky of the Old Empire had the ability to build this escape spaceship, then they would have the time to build more. To the Empire, it was almost impossible for them to build only one spaceship due to the lack of time. Furthermore, the escape fleet that we found so far was not as small as the Specter Ship. Even the Tree Elves used an entire planet to escape, which carried billions of civilians. But this Specter Ship? There was only one spaceship, a spaceship that was tens of kilometers long. To the spaceships of other civilizations, it would be considered a huge spaceship. However, to the fleets that escaped after the collapse of the Old Empire, it was only a small boat.
Sandora immediately realized this problem. She nodded and said, "That is indeed the case. Warren Ferd's diary did not mention any other spaceships. He also did not think of looking for other spaceships. This means that this spaceship really set off on a single spaceship … Although the scale of the disaster was huge, most of the sky regions only perished after tens or hundreds of years. That was more than enough time for them to release more arks, unless …"
I immediately asked, "Unless what?"
"Unless this escape fleet split up when they set off, and each spaceship took a different route." Sandora spread her hands. "That is also possible. Although the population and resources of a single spaceship would be limited after splitting up, which would make it difficult to rebuild it in the future, it would greatly increase the success rate of escape. It is understandable that some of the emperors of the sky regions would make such a decision."
I nodded and accepted her explanation. Then, I looked around the hall and said, "Then let's look for other diary entries. Warren couldn't have only written these few entries. Most of the entries should be somewhere else, like the workshop or something."
The bunch of little crows instantly scattered again, chirping as they searched for the workshop. It was not difficult to find. After all, the workshop did not need to be hidden like the hibernation center. Soon, we found the passageway leading to the workshop on the other side of the hall.
As soon as we entered the passageway, we saw a new diary entry. It seemed that Warren Ferd had conveniently carved it here.
"Warren Ferd's diary. On the tenth day, I have been thinking about why I was the one who was awakened and not the others. In the end, I realized that it could only be attributed to luck. Fate played a terrible joke on me. If everything is as I predicted, I am afraid that the future that I have to face is not optimistic at all. Today, I was slightly depressed because of this matter. However, when I prepared to start work, my mood improved. At least I can still walk around the spaceship peacefully, breathe, eat, and do my own things. Yes, I am still alive. It is better than those who were killed. If I think about it this way, the thing that I am facing is not the worst. I think I can maintain this self-consolation for a long time, until one day I can get used to this kind of life. If I can really get used to this kind of life. "
We walked along the illuminated passageway and finally came to a corridor with many rooms. On both sides of the corridor, there was a door every ten meters, labeled with the words "observation room," "communication control point," "food production room," and so on. The structure of this corridor was obviously different from a normal Empire starship. It looked like an old-fashioned deep-space spaceship, with all kinds of functional facilities squeezed into a small space (for a spaceship that was dozens of kilometers long, this corridor was really small). Obviously, this was also specially designed. I guessed that there were many such small compartments on the spaceship, so that even if the spaceship was seriously damaged, it could still protect the people inside under normal circumstances. Looking at the miserable state outside the Specter Ship, these specially designed modular spaces were really useful.
"This is prepared for ordinary races." Sandora looked at the functional rooms. Many of the rooms were of no use to the Shiring Apostles, such as the recreation room and the gym. These rooms were self-explanatory. "It seems that when the spaceship was designed, the infection had already spread. The spaceship's creator did not intend to let the Shiring Apostles board this spaceship from the beginning."
"Boss! There is a new diary here! " Liliana ran around with a flock of little crows. Suddenly, she found something on a door not far away. It was the food production room. There was a paragraph written in messy handwriting on the door.
"Warren Field's diary. This is terrible! The food synthesis equipment refuses to provide more subacid hormone drinks! That stupid machine thinks that drinking a few drinks after a meal will affect a soldier's judgment. Is there anything more stupid than this? Well, I have been drinking a little too much recently, but I need this to keep myself energetic! I haven't exercised for a long time. When I looked in the mirror just now, I felt like a savage. If I don't replenish my energy with some refreshing drinks, I will be so depressed that I can't even continue working. I don't know if the so-called work is meaningful. There is nothing in this d * mn place. Who am I writing those reports for? "
We looked at each other. There was no date on the diary, and it was obvious that the person who left the diary had fallen into a state of anxiety and restlessness. For a person who came from a civilized society, when he was so depressed that he broke away from the habits of civilized society, it was a very bad sign.
Liliana was an expert in this field. She frowned and said in a low voice, "He has begun to give up on maintaining his image, which means he is breaking away from the norms of civilized society. It is a slope, and once he slides down, he will not be able to come back."
What we found next confirmed Liliana's worries. There were more entries in the food production room. Some were from the early days of the diary. There were dates, daily work, and records of his mood. However, there was also a lot of nonsense in the middle. Some of the entries only had one sentence, which was completely insane.
"Warren Field, you are the ruler of this small kingdom. You should be happy! Go and declare your sovereignty over those chairs in the activity room! "
"Running naked down a few hundred meters of the corridor to the end, and no one came to stop me. This kind of thing is so relaxing. Maybe I should have tried it earlier. Those idiots lying on the ground would be shocked to see their commander so bold."
"I can't believe I still insist on recording these meaningless things. Fine, I will carve another sentence today."
"I feel a little rancid. I even had a fever yesterday. The medical surveillance drones forcibly dragged me into the infirmary, gave me a bath, and cut off a few kilograms of hair. But those stupid machines don't know what they should be doing. They should have sent me back to the hibernation pod! That thing is stuck. Didn't the spaceship's system notice it? Oh, yes, it didn't notice. The hibernation system malfunctioned a long time ago. "
"Look at what I found. A pool of blood. Oh my god, there was a murder on this spaceship! Haha, Chief Warren, this is your own blood … Damn, it seems that I have to go to the infirmary. Why did I carve these things on the wall? "
This kind of delirious ravings appeared more and more in the normal diary entries. Since most of the entries were undated, we had no idea how to arrange the words. The only thing we could be sure of was that as time passed, this lonely starship commander was gradually losing his sanity.
We scoured several rooms for records left behind by the starship commander, hoping to learn his final fate, but it was difficult to find clues between the gibberish scribbles and the chronologically disordered diaries. The last logic-looking entry we found was from the twelfth year after his awakening:
"Warren Field's diary, day 4,325. Everything is a mess. I woke up in an empty cabin, saw my clothes were disheveled, and my hair was more than a foot long. After a bath, I walked into the workshop naked. Then I remembered that I should go and change my clothes. This has never happened before. Although it happened before, well, I can't remember. Anyway, I am still working, observing … No matter what I am observing, my mind is a mess today. I don't know how many days my mind has been in a mess. It seems that I haven't written a diary for months or a year. Today, I wrote these things on a strong impulse. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe this is just a dream? I am actually still lying in the hibernation cabin, waiting for the spaceship to safely arrive in another world or meet survivors from other heavens. Then I will wake up, walk out of the spaceship, and greet the other starship commanders. Oh, yes, that's it. This should be a dream. The hibernation system designed this dream to prevent long-term sleep from damaging my brain. But obviously, the Shiring Apostles don't understand the physiological characteristics of carbon-based organisms. This dream they designed is terrible. I would rather not … Oh, since it is a dream, then I will continue to work. Warren, Field's diary, day 4,325 … "
It was followed by some indistinct scribbles and symbols that looked like a code, but after deciphering it made no sense at all. This was the last logical and dated record we could find in the work area. Apart from that, there was nothing else but crazy gibberish.
Obviously, the gibberish was written after this entry.
Starship commander Warren Field, on the twelfth year after he woke up alone, completely lost his sanity.
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