Chapter 76: Ambers of the Long Night (32)
Ever since leaving the Inspection Bureau, Emmanuel had been searching for a way to enter the Lost City and find Tang Mobai and the others.
After the venue was sealed, Opatra issued a strict order forbidding anyone from entering the floating Lost City in the sky. But even without that order, no one could get in anyway — once anyone got close to it, autopilot systems would fail. Emmanuel had once tried having Ment and the others manually pilot a ship toward the city, but that, too, ended in failure.
At just two thousand meters from the Lost City, Ment began to exhibit severe disorientation — though back then, they didn’t know this phenomenon was called Zero Impact.
So, with both autopilot and manual control useless, Emmanuel tried other pilots as well, but all attempts failed. The Lost City, hanging motionless in the heavens, became a phantom — visible yet forever out of reach.
Still, Emmanuel refused to give up. He couldn’t. But after seeing Ment’s ship almost crash, he had to temporarily abandon the idea of manual flight and instead focus on improving the autopilot system.
For that, he needed an expert in aerospace engineering. The first person who came to mind was Dodge. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t reach him. So, with no other option, Emmanuel tracked down Dodge’s home address and went there himself.
Dodge’s house wasn’t far from Maestra University. Because the Lost City blocked most of the sky, this area had been shrouded in shadow for days, dim and gloomy like endless dusk.
When Emmanuel arrived, he saw piles of takeout boxes outside the door — the house hadn’t taken out trash in a long time and reeked like a dump. His heart sank instantly.
He knocked on the door. No response. But he had already checked the surveillance footage: Dodge hadn’t left the house since that day. He should still be inside.
Strangely, no matter how hard he knocked, no one answered.
At that moment, Dodge’s next-door neighbor opened their door, looking annoyed. “Who is it? So noisy!”
“Sorry, I’m looking for Dodge.”
“Dr. Dodge? Ah, you’d better not bother.”
“Why?”
“He’s gone crazy these past few days. Ever since he came back, he’s been acting all paranoid — yelling about how aviation doesn’t exist anymore, locked himself inside, won’t answer anyone. If the food delivery bot wasn’t still working, I’d have thought he’d died in there.” The neighbor snorted. “Honestly, he was always a bit nuts — talking about how nothing exists beyond the sky, how the world’s fake. He quit his perfectly good physics teaching job to obsess over aerospace. Now it’s finally catching up to him.”
Emmanuel opened his mouth but couldn’t find words to defend Dodge.
The neighbor, seeing him still listening, sighed. “Just go home. Give it a few days — he’ll come out eventually.”
Emmanuel smiled and nodded, but he had no intention of leaving. The neighbor, thinking he was just stubborn, shook their head and went back inside.
Once they were gone, Emmanuel pulled out a small card from his pocket and casually swiped it over the door lock. Fortunately, Dodge’s door was a smart lock — and to Emmanuel, any networked smart device was child’s play to hack. The door clicked open, and he slipped inside.
The interior was even more chaotic than expected — clothes and socks strewn everywhere, reeking of sweat and rot. Dirty bowls piled high in the kitchen, attracting flies. Frowning, Emmanuel made his way deeper in until he found Dodge curled up and fast asleep in the corner of his bedroom.
Dodge’s face was unshaven, covered in stubble. When Emmanuel shook him awake, he blinked dazedly, showing no curiosity or alarm at the intruder. “Is it… time to eat?” he mumbled.
Emmanuel sighed. “Eat? Forget that! Listen, Dodge, I need your help — specifically, your expertise in aerospace…”
Before he could finish, Dodge suddenly exploded. “Get out! Go away! Aerospace? Expertise? I don’t know anything about that! Who are you?! Why are you in my house?!”
Emmanuel stumbled back from the sudden shove. “Calm down — it’s me, Emmanuel! We met at the hotel that time, remember? You were asking my teammate all those questions about aerospace—”
That only made things worse. Dodge shoved him even harder. “I remember! Of course I remember! You’re all liars! Get out! Leave my house!”
Emmanuel froze, realizing Dodge must’ve discovered Tang Mobai’s secret about his weakened body. He let himself be pushed out of the room, not daring to provoke the unstable scientist further.
The door slammed shut. Emmanuel stood just outside, separated by a thin wall.
“Dodge,” he said through the door, “you’re right — we hid the truth about Tang Mobai. But we had our reasons. And as for aerospace — you can tell we were never lying about that.”
Silence. Then, after several long seconds, Dodge’s hoarse voice replied, “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters. The sky is fake. Aerospace is fake. Only the end of the world is real. We failed to find a new home. We wasted resources, time, and people’s hopes. I can’t face them anymore.”
Emmanuel’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
Dodge didn’t answer, but from his words, Emmanuel could tell he had recovered his real memories. He tried to press for details, but Dodge said nothing more.
Emmanuel refused to give up. “Dodge, listen to me. I really need your help. The situation outside is critical. The election for the Wise King is happening today, but the candidates are dangerous — if they seize the Super Brain, our entire world will be destroyed! The only ones who can stop them are Tang Mobai and his team. But they’re trapped in the Lost City! I need you — a manned rocket, a shuttle, anything! Just help me get to them, or bring them back!”
A full minute passed. No answer. Emmanuel clenched his teeth, about to force the door — when Dodge finally spoke.
“I can’t. I told you, it’s impossible.”
“Why? Isn’t this your field?”
“There’s no time. Even if we could build a ship, it wouldn’t fly. Why do you think a manned rocket would work? Everything’s under AI control now. And even if it weren’t — we don’t have one. The manned rocket project was canceled two years ago. That’s why I risked everything to support that young engineer. I thought if we could make it work, if we could build a prototype, maybe one day people — and the Super Brain — would see the value of aerospace again.”
He gave a broken laugh. “But I was wrong. Completely wrong. This world doesn’t need aerospace. My research has always been a waste. They were right. Maybe I never should’ve pursued this field at all…”
Emmanuel stood silently, listening to Dodge’s words crumble under despair.
“The stars aren’t humanity’s salvation,” Dodge whispered. “They’re our curse. What’s the point of us scientists? Why did we ever bother holding on?”
Emmanuel couldn’t answer. Dodge’s spirit was completely shattered. Once he remembered the truth — that his life’s work was obsolete, that science couldn’t save anyone — his faith collapsed.
There was nothing Emmanuel could say to fix that.
Time dragged on in silence.
Then Dodge murmured suddenly, “What is that? A star?”
“A star?” Emmanuel frowned. “What star? The Lost City blocks the whole sky — it’s pitch black.”
“No… it’s not a star. It’s flashing… that’s… a signal?”
Emmanuel’s eyes widened. Without thinking, he kicked the door open, knocking Dodge — who’d been leaning on it — flat on his face. But Emmanuel didn’t care. He stared out toward the balcony. In the dark sky beyond the floating city, a tiny light was blinking.
Short bursts, long bursts — alternating like some kind of code.
But Emmanuel knew it wasn’t a joke. It was Tang Mobai — trying to send them a message.
He immediately opened his neural notepad and began recording the flashes, testing different cipher patterns, cryptographic systems — but none of them formed any coherent message.
No… wait. Emmanuel froze. Tang Mobai and his team weren’t from this world — normal ciphers wouldn’t apply. But then what were they trying to say?
He stared hard at the flickering point, racking his brain for any clue from their time together. Nothing came to mind — and the light was fading…
“137.0359992,” Dodge muttered.
“What?” Emmanuel asked.
“The numbers in the flashes — short, long, short — if you convert them to numerics, it reads 137.0359992.” Dodge exhaled. “That’s the fine-structure constant.”
“The fine-structure constant?” Emmanuel repeated. “What does that mean?”
Dodge didn’t answer right away. He stared blankly at the sky, lost in thought.
“Dodge!” Emmanuel grabbed his shoulders. “If you know anything, please — tell me! It’s important!”
Dodge blinked, seeing Emmanuel’s desperate expression. His tone softened. “That number itself isn’t the point. What matters is its inverse — one over 137.0359992 — the fine-structure constant. It determines the fundamental properties and laws of our universe.”
Emmanuel was stunned. “What?”
“You wouldn’t understand — it’s not your field. But in simple terms, it’s a dimensionless constant, defined as the square of the electron charge divided by twice the vacuum permittivity, Planck’s constant, and the speed of light — roughly equal to 1/137. In other words, it ties together the universe’s most fundamental constants.” He paused. “Some even call it the number set by the Creator Himself.”
Emmanuel repeated the number under his breath. But why this number? What was Tang Mobai trying to tell him?
“Do you know anything else about it?” he pressed. “Anything at all?”
“I… let me think.” Dodge rubbed his temples, dazed, as Emmanuel’s anxious face reflected in his eyes.
Meanwhile, inside the Lost City, Yan Wuzhen also looked puzzled. “Why that number? What’s so special about it?”
Tang Mobai was silent for a moment, glanced at the screen, and said the exact same thing as Dodge, “Because it’s the fundamental constant of the universe.”
Yan Wuzhen, utterly unscientific, blinked. “…Huh?”
Seth, however, looked thoughtful. “I see… So you’ve previously exchanged scientific knowledge with this world. That means you’ve confirmed that the fundamental constants of their universe are roughly the same as ours. Otherwise, the laws of physics between our two worlds would be vastly different. After all, if this number were even slightly off, our existing physics would be meaningless. So when Tang Mobai sent out that number, they would recognize it too.”
Tang Mobai smiled. “Exactly. It’s the number that connects different worlds.”
Across different worlds and cultures, truth was what bound them together. The seed sown during their scientific exchanges now blossomed into a vine, unfurling its flowers at last.
“But if you sent that string of numbers,” Yan Wuzhen asked skeptically, “how will it tell them what we actually need? What we need now is the distance from the ground to the Lost City. Where in those numbers does that message show up?”
“Seth remembers the ship’s model and cruising speed,” Tang Mobai explained. “We just need to pilot the ship toward the Lost City—not all the way there, just long enough to bring it into view. Once it’s visible for a while, Seth can calculate the distance. Which means… what we actually need is the ship’s velocity.”
“So where’s the hint about velocity?” Yan Wuzhen asked.
“Heh.” Tang Mobai gave him a look full of intellectual superiority, as if explaining something to an illiterate. “The fine-structure constant represents the ratio between an electron’s velocity in the first Bohr orbit and the speed of light in a vacuum. The equation is ? = e² / (4????c).”
“…What?” Yan Wuzhen’s face was blank with confusion.
“It’s not exactly a vacuum,” Seth added, “but since we’re using light to transmit the message, it corresponds to the speed of light. And the code we sent—the fine-structure constant—implies velocity.”
Yan Wuzhen twitched his mouth. “That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? And how can you be so sure Emmanuel will figure that out?”
“Emmanuel’s clever,” Tang Mobai said confidently. “He knows we’re sending a coded message—and that we wouldn’t use this world’s cultural framework. He’ll go over every detail of our time together, trying to match our logic and decipher what the signal refers to.”
He grinned. “Did you forget how we first met him? That’s a memory no one could ever forget.”
“The explosion?”
“Exactly. And how did we—and they—escape? How did we end up being captured?”
“Spatial-folding technology…” Yan Wuzhen murmured, suddenly realizing.
To be precise, it was a virtual simulation room that used spatial-folding technology. Without that, given the room’s original size, both Tang Mobai and Emmanuel would have been dead for sure.
Later on, all the “participants” were captured because Emmanuel’s team had been using counterfeit spatial-folding devices. Though he’d said their world’s tech couldn’t fully analyze it, he must’ve understood the basic principles. With Emmanuel’s intelligence, and knowing they were trapped in the Lost City, he would definitely infer what they were asking for.
“Velocity…”
On the ground, right after Dodge explained the fine-structure constant’s formula, Emmanuel instantly zeroed in on the concept of velocity.
Velocity… of what? No, wait—if they were sending this message, it wasn’t a cry for help. That meant they needed something done from the ground.
They wanted someone on the ground—no, specifically him—to do something.
What kind of velocity could he, Emmanuel, provide that they needed?
A spacecraft?
Connecting that to the essential spatial-folding technology embedded within the Lost City, Emmanuel took a deep breath, then firmly gripped Dodge’s shoulders. “Thank you, Dodge. Aerospace engineering is useful—more than ever! You were right. The stars will save humanity.”
With that, Emmanuel released him and strode out the door without hesitation.
Dodge stood frozen, stunned. It took a long while before he came to his senses. For the first time, a faint glimmer of light flickered in his once-dull eyes as he turned toward the night sky.
That night, there were no stars and no moon—the shadow of the Lost City blanketed the world. Yet at that moment, Dodge’s gaze seemed to pierce the endless black shroud, reaching all the way to the Milky Way.
Meanwhile, the election ceremony officially began. Traditionally, it should have been a grand celebration, a festival of national joy. But this time, it was the opposite. From the very first assassination attempt, the entire event had been cast under a heavy, unspoken shadow. Public trust in the government had quietly plummeted to a dangerous low.
There were no fireworks, no cheers of celebration. Those who knew—or didn’t know—simply stayed home, glued to their radios. With the network repeatedly failing these past days, all that remained were the most primitive media: radio and print.
And so, everyone prayed in silence. Prayed—and waited—for the final outcome to be born.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
