Suddenly, the discussion rippled, until the place no longer resembled a solemn, serious operations control room, but a bustling university classroom. These PhDs, who had dedicated their entire lives to their chosen fields, now became students with a burning thirst for knowledge, trying to grasp things they might never learn in a classroom. Their professor was taciturn, determined not to use words, simply existing peacefully there—a place most people could never reach.
For the few people who arrived at that place, the remnants of civilization not far from them seemed to be telling the same historical mystery over and over again.
The No. 2 Central Point Exploration Team, led by Luo Yi, docked the manned submersible 20 meters above the "ground", adjusted the directions of several surrounding deep-water searchlights, focused on the top of one of the obelisks in the forest below, and used three cameras at different angles to record the changes non-stop.
As a researcher who had studied the four unidentified objects back then, he was well aware of the unreasonableness, or irrationality, of these special structures.
Theoretically, a civilization would always try its best to leave something behind before it died. Even if it could not be resurrected at some point in the future, it would still use something glorious and great to prove itself. But there was nothing like that here. Perhaps they died too quickly and did not have time to point out the murderer to future generations, or perhaps they had already converted to Buddhism and had nothing to say to future generations - so this was simply impossible. They themselves had fallen into dogmatism.
They preconceived that giant civilizations would leave information on stone, and that obelisks were unique, deliberate, yet primitive creations similar to stone tablets. But in reality, those things were probably nothing special to that civilization; they were probably just part of daily life, a commonplace, convenient product of industrialization.
As the searchlights focused, the operator monitoring the camera feed quickly observed a rise in temperature at the top of the obelisk, leading to a fascinating sight. The obelisk's constituent materials began to disintegrate and slowly rise in height as the temperature rose, like a compressed file, revealing distinct layers and textures within a fixed range. This layering was evident, further emphasized by the peak-and-valley curves plotted on a paper tape from the spectrometer mounted on the side. The higher peaks represented high-purity iron, the lower peaks represented iron oxide, and the blank valleys represented the surrounding hydroxides. Ignoring the valleys, the remaining composition resembled a binary information function.
"Go down a little, we'd better collect some water mixed with those things." Luo Yi gave the order in the silent darkness.
The submersible pilot complied, and the depth gauge increased again. A sampler ejected a vacuum sampling tube with a controllable opening, drawing a portion of the mixed liquid from beneath the submersible. This liquid remained in the tube for only a brief moment before flowing non-stop into several pipes equipped with numerous sensors, leaving behind some undissolved impurities. This convenient analytical method was invented 20 years ago, reportedly inspired by a review of a less-than-successful ocean exploration mission, though the exact circumstances are difficult to ascertain.
The analysis results came out quickly. About ten minutes later, Luo Yi finally understood the real purpose of the obelisk. He then typed a draft of a paper on the computer and titled it "Past Events on Mars."
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