Age of Cosmic Exploration

Eva’s awakening undoubtedly brought Silewei and her family inmeasurable joy. She knew she was perfectly fine, but she still went to the hospital for a check-up, overwhelmed by her family’s demands. After the hospital confirmed she was healthy, her family finally sighed in relief.

That afternoon, Eva changed into a frilly dress and skipped joyfully as she walked in front of Yao Yuan, Xiao Niao, and Ren Tao. They were at the third floor’s merchant street as per Eva’s demands. In truth, Eva was shopping, while Yao Yuan was paying.

"I know what you guys want to ask..."

Eva licked the ice-cream cone in her hand and suddenly turned towards the three men. "You’re right, it was around the second or third day after we left new planet that my Homo Evolutis awakening occurred. However, since I was the only one on the Hope suffering from a fever, and I didn’t go unconscious but only felt listless and tired, my parents didn’t think I was awakening, so they gave me medicine and had me sleep all day."

Ren Tao, Xiao Niao, and Yao Yuan’s interests were piqued, because everyone’s awakening incurred a coma. When they woke up, they were already a Homo Evolutis, so they had no clue what exactly happened during the awakening, but now standing before them was an exception.

Yao Yuan asked immediately, "Is that so? Then what was it like during the awakening? Can you tell us?"

"Lonely," Eva answered without hesitation like she had been waiting for the question from Yao Yuan. "I was conscious throughout the experience. Both my parents and grandparents had to work, especially my grandfather; he was the busiest of them all. I was lying in bed alone. The fever made me so weak that it was hard to reach for the cup on the bedside table. During that vulnerable period, a surge of loneliness overwhelmed me.

"I felt alone, as if I was the only life form habituating this wide cosmos. Everything around me was so cold, so distant, and so full of danger..."

The trio looked at one another. They knew about all this already. Even though the period of awakening was spent in a coma, Homo Evolutis, as long as they were not Survivors, would remember the feeling of helpless loneliness acutely. The feeling was less pronounced among the Survivors; only a handful of them would retain the memory of experiencing these things.

Ren Tao frowned and pressed, "You were conscious then?"

Eva nodded confidently. "That’s right, I was definitely conscious. I know what you mean, how can a conscious person experience so many vague emotions like it was a dream? The only thing I can say is that I really felt all these things, like I was being hypnotized. It is incredibly hard to explain, but I can guarantee I was 100 percent conscious."

After Eva said that, Yao Yuan asked, "Then what happened next? The next second you just became a Homo Evolutis?"

Eva shook her head with a smile that quickly disappeared. Her tone became unusually serious. "Of course not. After that, it was like a layer of membrane appeared before me..."

"A layer of membrane?"

The three knew this was the information they needed, so they focused to listen to Eva’s every word.

"That’s right, a layer of membrane that was there and also not there. I could feel the membrane enveloping me, giving me warmth and safety, but at the same time, I felt uneasy, like it was constricting my freedom. I wanted to get out of it so badly. Of course, like I said, I was weak from fever. I was conscious but couldn’t perform any giant movements. The membrane was incredibly tough and appeared to be everywhere. This lasted for who knows how long, but when the Hope performed another warp, I realized that the membrane had become thinner, as if it could be broken through with a rough shove..."

"Distance!" Ren Tao, Xiao Niao, and Yao Yuan said in unison.

Indeed, one of the rules for Homo Evolutis Awakening was the further the civilization was from its home planet, the greater the probability of its citizens awakening, and there would be a high chance of awakening Grade S Cosmic Adapters and even Grade SS Cosmic Adapters.

According to Eva, after the Hope’s warp, the ship must have landed further away from Earth. That confirmed the awakening rules for Homo Evolutis because it caused Eva to fully mature into a Homo Evolutis; it was the reason she got out of the membrane. She was already a Level 3 Time Watcher when she awakened.

With the question regarding the awakening out of the way, the next would be the key question the three were most interested in, something that was crucial to the development of the Hope and humanity... the usage and power of the Sage’s power.

"You want to know about the Sage’s power?"

The four of them found a small café and sat down as they questioned Eva on this issue.

Eva used a small, metallic spoon to stir her coffee. She thought about it and said, "The supposed power allows me to see visions of the future. However, most of these visions make no sense. For example, I saw a long corridor and Captain Uncle leading a bunch of people through it, brushing shoulders with a delegation from the space merchants. After that was a vision about you going towards the negotiation center to demand information about the mysterious code that shut down the central mainframe. The group of space merchants suddenly rioted, and even though you managed to kill them all, the one alien that crossed your path earlier had gotten away. After receiving the news, he used a long-range remote to format the Hope’s central mainframe..."

Yao Yuan shuddered. He thought back to the first negotiation with the space merchants. He was indeed on the way to demand information from the space merchants but had slipped on a glass pebble on the corridor. Because of that, he saw the derision in the alien merchant’s eyes, which caused him to change his mind. Instead, he turned to the Academy and Workshop to get the experts to work on cracking the code on the central mainframe.

"That was the vision that I saw. According to this development, even though Bo Li’s alien robot would forcefully hack into the central mainframe to override the space merchants’ influence, by then half of the Hope would have been dead, including my parents and grandparents. That future was too scary, so I had to change it. I tried many ideas, but the only one that could change the future was to let you see for your own the space merchants’ evil scheme."

Yao Yuan narrowed his eyes. "In other words, it was you who left the glass pebble on the floor?"

Eva giggled and pointed at Ren Tao. "It was also me who passed Uncle Ren Tao the baby dragon."

Ren Tao scratched his nose and said, "Uncle...? But I have a question, do you have to use your own eyes to check the future you see? Or is it more spiritual than that? You have not been to the space merchants’ mother ship, so how can you possibly tell the future that happens within it?"

Eva shook her head. "It’s very feeling-based. Honestly, I too am stumped by this prediction power. Many times, it is simply out of my control. For example, I would like to see my parents and grandparents’ futures, but I can’t. This is not a controllable power, or rather not a fully controllable power...

"But I can clearly see the future of every Homo Evolutis on the Hope. If I think about their name and face, then the vision of their future one month from now will appear in my mind. Of course, those appear in isolated visions as well. In fact, the stronger the Homo Evolutis, the clearer my vision. For example, like Captain Uncle here, I can even see what time you’re going to take your shower for every day of the next month."

Little Eva winked at Yao Yuan mischievously. Yao Yuan blushed unexpectedly. He quickly changed the subject. "What about the Survivors?"

"Same thing, but the visions that I have are fewer. Actually, I can see into normal people’s futures as well, but the visions are even fewer."

Ren Tao suddenly asked, "Then why would you go into a coma? According to what you said, you can see into the future whenever you want. If that is the case, you should have gone unconscious many times already, so why go unconscious only for the latest one?"

"Because of the change."

Eva sipped her coffee and frowned. She added three sugar cubes and continued, "Having visions of the future will not cause weakness, but changing the future will. Furthermore, the greater the change, the larger the amount of people affected, and the weaker I will become and the longer my coma will last. At worst...

"I will die."