In 2114, people's choices were clearer: some returned to the soil, growing their own natural food; others relied on highly developed artificial intelligence supply chains, enjoying abundant meals precisely formulated by algorithms. People could also choose to "refresh" their bodies at fixed intervals—returning to their twenties every fifty years, or every twenty-five years; some chose not to interfere, letting time etch wrinkles onto their bodies until their end; still others chose to upload their consciousness, becoming a piece of code for quantum immortality.

  Silas's choice was a compromise: he decided to refresh his physical age every forty years, intending to live a long life and witness the arrival and changes of the future.

  Eli did not choose to refresh. He was unwilling to send himself to that cold cloud. For him, immortality was not the goal—some memories were worth preserving, even if it meant being preserved in the wrinkles of time. He chose to hibernate, like pressing the pause button on time, sleeping for hundreds of years, waiting for a future he considered possible.

  The fate some people don't know about is that of Eli and Alea. Fifty-three years ago, Eli met Alea at that grand ceremony, their meeting like echoes from different times colliding. Alea would often vanish and reappear suddenly from the Norvis, taking Eli around the world, discussing novel inventions, seeing unknown monuments, and sharing fragmented yet dazzling moments. Those days were like two parallel rivers occasionally meeting.

  Fifty years ago, at the confluence, Alea truly disappeared—not vanishing into the clouds, nor leaving for a distant land. She and the space she inhabited were erased. Faced with this inexplicable void, Eli chose to traverse time through hibernation: he cryogenically sealed himself within time, awaiting the emergence of answers or hope.

  In 2115, Chloe took Silas to a place. Silas looked up at the cone-shaped building suspended in the air, which had no windows or any other details. From the outside, it was a pure cone. At the entrance of the building, a woman spoke up: 'My name is Eylara, and I am the chief scientist of the hub. Next, I will take you to visit the Dome of the Hub.'. She's also my daughter, not artificial, "Chloe said, and left.

  ......

  Silas and his companions passed through a corridor woven from holographic code, arriving at the very core of the Nexus Dome. There, Silas beheld a sphere of liquid matter, approximately ten meters in diameter, its silvery substance constantly shifting and morphing in shape. "Hello, Silas," a voice greeted him. "Ananda is currently humanity's most advanced AI," Eylara explained. "Its core architecture mirrors the neural network of the human brain, while its exterior consists of a state-of-the-art liquid quantum computation field." Ananda's cognitive capabilities had already far surpassed those of humanity; it was, in every sense, an omnipotent AI.

  Then, Silas noticed that Alaric was there as well. Alaric was utilizing the AI ??to conduct research into primordial particles. "Ananda is assisting me in my research—helping me understand primordial particles," Alaric corrected him gently. "Ananda is my friend."

  Silas mused to himself: *How can Alaric be here? Haven't Heinrich and the Nexus always been at odds?* As it turned out, quantum scientific research had reached an impasse—a critical bottleneck—necessitating a collaboration with Heinrich.

  Rather than becoming a threat to humanity, AI had evolved into humanity's most powerful cognitive instrument. As Eylara had put it, humanity itself—as evidenced by the Nazis of the 20th century—posed a potential threat to its own existence. The surest way to prevent AI from destroying humanity, therefore, was to design it to think like a human—to become a friend to mankind. Just like Ananda, standing right there before Silas's eyes.

  Heinrich's collaboration with the hub brings new hope to the study of primitive particles.

  Time passes by.

  One year, inside a certain building.

  An old man with white hair woke up from the bed.

  The old man turned his head and saw that this was a pure wood classical style building, with a fireplace and a pure wood carved table in the room, without any electronic components.

  A man opened the door and came in. Around the age of 40.

  Eli, he has been dormant for many, many years. This room is equipped with very advanced monitors, and as soon as Eli woke up, Silas came over.

  Eli was slightly moved when he saw Silas.

  Then, Silas led Eli outside.

  What came into view were mostly wooden buildings, with a few futuristic, 600-meter-tall structures clustered on the other side of the bay in the distance.

  The air was fresh, and there was no glaring light pollution.

  Eli: "Where is this? Is this what Xinjing is like now?"

  Silas replied: "This is the Holy Capital. It's 2350 now."

  "Awakening you from your slumber. Now is a great era. Most importantly, you have the opportunity to find Alea."

  "The Holy Capital?" Eli asked doubtfully. "Find Alea?" A classic wooden car floated past Eli. Inside sat two people who looked to be around 20 years old. Eli glanced inside the wooden car; there were no electronic devices, no steering wheel, nothing at all, just some decorations.

  Silas raised his hand; a wooden beaded bracelet was on his wrist. He touched the beads with his other hand. Then, the light in the void before them shifted, and a magical, round, frameless mirror appeared. The image in the mirror wasn't Silas, but Alaric! Alaric in the mirror noticed Eli's astonished expression. "We'll meet there," Silas said.

  Eli asked curiously, "Are people like this now?"

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "Not entirely," Silas replied.

  “Perhaps I should reset my age.” Eli reset his physical age. He traveled back to 2114, to the time Alaea disappeared, to Eli’s age at that time.

  The Holy City. 400 years ago, this place was called the San Francisco Bay Area.

  In 2350, there were no longer any distinct countries in the world. Humanity on Earth had achieved the goals that generations had strived for.

  If Lincoln, Einstein, and others were to travel to 2350, they would feel that life in America in 1900 was not much different from life in 1900, yet it was also different.

  Silas and Eli arrived at a place. Proust’s House. In 2350, the Holy City also had one. Arthur had also built one here.

  Here, Eli met Alaric Hale, the leader of the research on primordial particles.

  Arthur had always wanted to recruit him, but it was difficult. Until the disappearance of Alaea in 2114, Alaric Hale voluntarily joined Arthur. Later, they discovered the primordial particle, this ultimate existence.

  Alaric told Eli that humanity's technology on Earth was now far more advanced, though it wasn't apparent in the Holy City.

  Humanity's utilization of primordial particles had progressed tremendously. They possessed spaceships capable of space travel and had established new homes in other galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

  Then, Eli became slightly excited about what Alaric said next.

  Alaric Hale said that Alea's existence had still not been found throughout the entire universe.

  But then:

  The primordial particle itself didn't actually exist. It was a manifestation of a certain spacetime within our physical universe.

  This special spacetime didn't belong to three-dimensional space, nor to eleven-dimensional spacetime. Rather, it contained both three-dimensional space and eleven-dimensional spacetime.

  It also contained another universe where Alea resided.

  "Another universe?" Eli exclaimed, excited and awestruck.

  It had many names, "Ultimate Dimension," "Beyond Dimension," Silas chimed in, "or, 'Primordial Dimension,'" and so on.

  Alaric Hale preferred to call it the "Primordial Dimension."

  Primordial Dimension!

  "It contains another universe where Alaea resides?" Eli asked, excited and awestruck.

  Alaric Hale explained, "Alaea is very likely not in this universe."

  Alaric Hale pointed to a distant, ellipsoidal metallic object outside the window and said, "Let's take a spaceship for a trip." So Alaric, Silas, and Eli boarded the spaceship and flew out of Earth. After the spaceship had left Earth's orbit, Alaric Hale activated the space travel button. After waiting for thirteen seconds, the sun, Earth, and other celestial bodies disappeared from Eli's sight within 0.1 seconds. Then, three seconds later, the sun reappeared in Eli's sight. And there were three suns.

  They had traveled to a star system far beyond their solar system.

  “The Primal Dimension is inaccessible. No matter how advanced a cosmic civilization is, it cannot reach the Primal Dimension,” Alaric said. “We can only improve our indirect utilization of the Primal Dimension by using Primal Particles, thereby enhancing our technology in faster-than-light travel, space travel, and wormholes. Even traveling to the eleventh dimension is possible.”

  “Currently, our utilization of the Primal Dimension is still very low.”

  Silas, sipping his drink, said, “350 years ago, there was a science fiction author whose science fiction concepts can now all be realized.”

  Eli nodded silently. Finding Alea had become possible.

  He went to rest in his bedroom on the spaceship. He had just awakened from hibernation.

  Alaric and Silas were at the small bar on the spaceship.

  The spaceship was flying automatically.

  In the starry sky where the spaceship was located, no one noticed that the scene subtly changed. The three suns disappeared. In just two seconds, a silver-white cube, five or six times larger than the spaceship, appeared in front of it.

  Soon afterward, Silas and the others noticed this cube.

  They then realized that their spaceship was incredibly far from the three suns they had previously encountered, seemingly beyond the reach of millions of galaxies.

  Then, Silas and his companions flew towards the cube.

  As their spaceship approached the cube, they noticed it grew larger and larger, yet they still hadn't made contact. Finally, they reached it and measured its area, discovering it was the size of a planet.

  It didn't reflect light or electromagnetic waves. So why was it silvery-white? Silas wondered.

  Suddenly, the spaceship automatically flew, passing through the surface of the planet-sized cube.

  They entered a certain space. Their spaceship's detectors malfunctioned. The distant light was blurred.

  Before Silas and his companions arrived, they spoke to them in English.

  It turned out that Silas and his companions had arrived in another universe.

  And these beings were the very ones who had caused Alaria's demise.

  Alaric Hale astutely and intelligently judged that the beings before him possessed a far greater level of indirect utilization of primordial dimensions than humanity on Earth.

  "Those beings said..." Humanity on Earth was the first civilization in that universe to discover the primordial dimension.

  They saw great potential in humanity, which led to Alea's sudden disappearance. Simultaneously, they caused the primordial particles to briefly reappear.

  Eli and his people could take Alea with them, and they could also give Silas and his companions a gift—a gift far more advanced than Earth's technology, and one that would allow Silas and his group to return to Earth.

  However, Eli needed to complete a challenge.

  Eli was inside a perfectly round sphere, 3 meters in diameter. It looked like metal, yet also like stone; it was translucent. Alaric could see inside, and Eli hovered at the very center of the sphere. Alaric wondered what it was made of: "Is this their flying machine?" Eli was to use this sphere to complete a spacetime challenge. Eli wondered, how could it be piloted? It only had a translucent outer shell; there was nothing inside. Suddenly, its translucent outer shell disappeared, and then Alaric saw a transparent membrane covering Eli's entire body, about 5 centimeters away from his skin.

  "How do we begin?" Eli turned his head, about to ask them, but the scene before Eli's eyes changed instantly. Suddenly, Eli dodged with lightning speed, and a black obsidian dagger slashed across his chest. He saw two groups of people fighting, not many in number, dressed in clothes made of animal hides. "Where am I?" Eli nimbly escaped the fighting. Recovering, Eli looked at the plain before him, with only scattered houses built of reeds. Then a voice rang out: "History unchanged, passed." Next, the scene before Eli's eyes changed again. This time, Eli was facing the ground. He stood up, sensing something was wrong with his surroundings. Eli was on the surface of a giant meteorite. The surrounding sky was devoid of the sun; countless light-years away, only sparse nebulae stretched out. He looked up, and directly above him appeared a massive black hole, seemingly neither too close nor too far from the meteorite. Some force was dragging Eli towards the black hole...

  After a series of thrilling and dangerous spacetime journeys, Eli completed the challenge.

  Silas, Alaric, Hale, Eli, and Alea returned to Earth.