hotmtlnovel Chapter 4217 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (24)
Chapter 4217 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (24)
Chapter 4217 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (Twenty-Four)
"Why are you shouting so loudly?" Schiller picked at his ear and hung the cleaned wine glasses back on the shelf.
Strange stood at the bar, glaring angrily at him.
"Would you like something to drink?" Schiller asked, turning to him.
"Is this what you did?!" Strange slammed a tabloid on the bar.
Schiller shook his head and said, "No."
Strange froze. He looked at Schiller with some suspicion. Normally, Schiller wouldn't deny doing something; he might evade the question or change the subject, but he wouldn't deny it so outright. Could it really not be him?
“The report was written by Eddie,” Schiller said. “I saw he had the potential to be a tabloid reporter, so I gave him a chance.”
"So it was your idea after all?!"
"That depends on how you define it..."
"Does Loki know about this?"
"Is this all you care about?"
Strange seemed utterly exasperated. He leaned back with his eyes closed, covered his forehead, rubbed his face vigorously, then sat down at the bar with his cloak billowing behind him, gritting his teeth as he said, "Do you know this might get Thor challenging me to a duel!"
"So you're afraid you can't beat Thor. You don't need to worry about that. Thor won't have time to bother you until Loki returns safely."
"And then what?!"
“Loki is back, he definitely won’t just stand by and let Thor beat you up.”
"Yeah, he'll help Thor beat me up!"
"really?"
Their eyes met. The moment Strange saw Schiller's grey eyes, he turned his head away as if burned.
"Even if this helps Loki get away with it, our reputations will be tied together from then on."
"Oh, I see. You're worried that his reputation will tarnish your image?"
Before Strange could say anything, several condemning glances came from around the bar. He slammed his fist on the table and said, "There's nothing between him and me! I..."
“No wonder Thor disagreed,” Polaris said with a shrug.
Strange covered his forehead.
“It’s just a rumor,” Schiller said. “At the level of the entire economic society, tabloids will write about anyone’s relationship in an ambiguous way, even the Supreme Intelligence and the Skrull Emperor. Nobody will take it seriously.”
“The jury members will be influenced by this because they want to take it seriously. This way they can have an excuse to favor Loki, like shooting the arrow before drawing the target.”
"People might even suspect that this is just a rumor spread by the Intergalactic Court. It would allow them to exonerate Loki while appearing to be forced into it, thus avoiding retaliation from the Skrull Empire. Anyone who pays attention to such rumors is more interested in its political implications than the truth."
Schiller placed a glass of beer in front of Strange, the bottom of the glass clinking against the table. "...Unless someone has a guilty conscience."
Strange took a deep breath and said, "Yeah, if someone wasn't feeling guilty, why would they keep it from Loki?"
“I didn’t hide it from him.”
"You mean he knew about it and agreed to the plan?"
"Whether he knew it before or not, he definitely knows it now. As for whether he agrees or not... since he didn't refute it, he must have agreed."
Strange couldn't help but sigh: "He's in jail now, how can he refute that?!"
“Oh, right. If he suddenly told the jailer now, ‘I have absolutely no connection with the Sorcerer Supreme,’ the Skrull Empire might release him overnight to prevent you from actually storming their capital.”
"Alright, it's come to this now, let's eat first." Schiller handed Strange a steak and said, "If you and Thor get into a fight, I'll definitely help you. Don't worry."
Strange gave a cold laugh, then fell silent and focused on eating. Polaris whispered beside him, "I think they've got something going on."
"Who are you referring to?"
"Everyone and everyone."
“If Batman asked me what intelligence I’ve gathered in this universe, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” the Arkham Knight said. “Every family has its own troubles.”
The Robins who arrived finished their meal here and went to the warehouse at the back to get their equipment. Then, more and more teams came to prepare, and wounded soldiers came to recover.
The injured one is Batwoman Robin. That's right, after returning to her own universe, she also recruited a few assistants. However, they weren't gender-swapped versions of Dick and his crew, but rather two Atlantean girls, a pair of sisters.
Logically, since they were both superpowered individuals, they shouldn't be so easily injured. However, their superpower was water manipulation, and since water is scarce in the universe, their abilities were practically useless. As a result, they were ambushed by the aliens' trap.
The other Robins in the tavern helped the two sisters upstairs. Schiller gave them a healing potion, but perhaps because of their Atlantean bloodline, the potion wasn't very effective, and they would have to wait for it to heal itself.
More teams brought in those black boxes. They were all the same structure, but buried in different locations. As more and more boxes were dug up, Schiller realized that it would probably be necessary to get some professionals to take a look.
As evening fell, a portal appeared at the tavern entrance, and Reed emerged from it.
Schiller didn't waste any words with him and simply placed the pile of boxes in front of him. Reed waved his hand and said, "I'm not interested in this junk. This stuff might affect a mage's portal, but it won't work on mine."
"...Why? Peter said it would interfere with all energy creations."
"My portal is not an energy creation."
"what?"
“I’ve researched it. We can’t use those massive teleportation portals of the Shi’ar Empire. Firstly, the maintenance costs are too high, and secondly, if they were to explode, the entire galaxy would be affected. The security is simply too low. Even the Shi’ar Empire couldn’t protect them, did it?”
"What are you going to do?"
"Drill holes directly in space."
Despite knowing Reed's character all along, Schiller couldn't help but cover his forehead. Reed, however, said confidently, "This is the only way we can use it; it's the safest way."
Schiller gave him a look that said, "Do you want to hear what you're saying?"
“Actually, the old portals also involved making holes in space,” Reed put it another way. He took a napkin from the side, folded it in half, and then used a knife to pierce through both layers of paper. “That’s the principle of a normal portal. You fold two spaces together, make a hole, and you can travel from one end to the other.”
"So where are you going to dig the hole?"
Reed took another napkin, but this time laid it flat on the table, gripped the knife handle, and plunged it down sharply. The bar counter was made of ordinary wood, so after the napkin was pierced, a small hole was also punched in the wood, and the knife just stood there.
Schiller was now somewhat baffled, mainly because this way of expressing things was a bit abstract. He said, "You might as well just state the principle directly."
“We’re going into the antimatter universe,” Reed said. “According to my calculations, the cosmological constant of the antimatter universe is different from our universe. To put it simply, if we move one meter here, it might be one hundred meters there. In reality, the principle is much more complex than that, involving the structure of time and space, but just think of it this way.”
"So where is the safety?"
“The energy of a portal is used to fold dimensions, so once the energy is drained or the structure is destroyed, this folding becomes unstable.” Reed picked up the napkin again, then twisted it gently, causing the two folded sides to move in different directions. The hole he had punched earlier was now misaligned, preventing light from passing through. He continued, “This is the problem with most portals.”
“My method, however, does not involve dimensional folding but directly connects to the antimatter universe. This connection is a one-time event, and the hole will exist even if no energy is subsequently provided. Furthermore, as long as this channel is generated in a specific location and in a specific way, the channel will be extremely stable, indistinguishable from a material creation. No one can interfere with or close it.”
"You mean we make a hole to the antimatter universe, and because the constants there are different from ours, we can travel a short distance there, which is equivalent to traveling a long time here, to reach a much farther place, and then come out through the hole there. Putting aside what's in the antimatter universe, don't you think that's too time-consuming?"
"As I said, this involves the concepts of time and space, not just space, but also time. The time required to travel over there is relatively static here. Furthermore, when our beings travel over there, they don't need to walk on a physical level, but only engage in thought processes. It's like a game loading screen. I don't deny that this might be a little slower than using a normal portal, but the security is greatly improved."
“It sounds incredible,” Schiller couldn’t help but say, unable to imagine what kind of principle it was based on.
"Therefore, we won't encounter anything in the antimatter universe, including those bugs. Because we didn't actually go there; we just used the constant of that universe to convert ourselves. It's a mathematical process. You can think of it as moving files from one folder to another on a phone, but in the process, we borrowed the computing power of a computer..."
“This is getting more and more absurd,” Schiller said. “Okay, even if your process is plausible, how can you guarantee that those bugs from the antimatter universe won’t come rushing over?”
"You still don't understand. We created a channel, but it's not really a channel; it's more like a transcoder. What we're sending isn't the person themselves, so the insect can't get through..."
"Okay, let's stop discussing technical issues. You just need to tell me honestly whether this thing is safe or not."
“I can’t say there’s absolutely no risk,” Reed said, “but I can assure you it’s much safer than existing portals. There’s a slight decrease in efficiency, but a significant increase in stability and reliability.”
"What are the disadvantages?"
"It will consume computing power in the antimatter universe. But I don't think those bugs will mind. There's also an application issue: the number of singularities that can open channels in a certain region is limited, and their locations are relatively fixed."
"You mean we can't choose the location freely, but have to open the portal at a fixed location you calculated?"
“That’s right. This way, the security will be higher. However, the distribution of singularities is relatively uniform, so there’s no problem in building a transportation system within the Milky Way.”
As he spoke, Reed pulled a tablet from his bag, placed it on the bar, and pointed to it, saying, "This is my planned map of the galactic high-speed travel network. What do you think?"
Schiller went over and saw a 3D map of the Milky Way. He walked over and dragged it around briefly, finding that, as Reed had said, the distribution was relatively even, encompassing all the important star systems.
However, upon closer inspection, he noticed a problem. Schiller pointed to one particular spot and said, "Don't you think there's something wrong with the singularity here?"
“There can’t be any problem. I’ve calculated it, twice,” Reed said, shaking his head.
"What if there was something there originally?"
"Could you move it a little?"
Schiller stared at him, a forced smile on his face, and continued to zoom in on the diagram, pointing to the punctuation marks and saying, "Did you check what the name of the planet where this singularity is located was when you were annotating the results?"
"...What is it?"
Reed leaned over for a look, and then he realized that the star system Schiller had magnified looked familiar, and the planet at the location of the punctuation mark was clearly labeled "Earth".