戴榕菁
在进行了两年多debugging现代物理学的工程之后，我打算暂停在那方面的探索，稍事歇息，过一阵再重开旗鼓。刚有这个念头就产生了一个想要再写一部长篇科幻小说的欲望，但马上就被自己否定了，因为我知道一部长篇小说意味着至少几个月的全天候的作业。上一部长篇英文科幻小说《The Red Hat》【[1]】花了我从2017年9月底到2018年5月中的整整7个半月的时间。其实，在《The Red Hat》之后我也写了一些短篇或超短篇的小说，其中比较成形的是《New Aliens》（见附录），但事后发现写短片科幻有一些问题，最主要的是为了节省篇幅不容易把自己想要表达的主题刻画清楚，而且写完之后总有一种意犹未尽的感觉，总想着要再写续，从而影响了之后的正常生活情绪。所以，目前我既不能再写长篇的也不打算写短篇的。
但与此同时，因为模糊地有了一些思路，让我又有一种技痒难耐的感觉，所以这里干脆就先把已有的思路做一记录，等以后有机会了再去写相关的小说，短篇也罢长篇也罢到时再说了。
科幻小说《母星的战船》梗概之构想
序幕
场景一. 地球人的战争
银河系太阳系地球纪元的1904年底中国东北某郊外，一排身着灰色军装留着大胡子的俄国士兵举枪瞄准前面地上跪着的被蒙上眼睛的人，枪声一响那些留着长辫子的作为日军奸细的满清平民应声倒下。
画面转到同一天在中国山东的某渔村，一位留着仁丹胡身着黄色军装的日本军曹高高举起他的武士刀，然后刀光一闪，一颗留着长辫子作为俄奸的满清男士的头颅血淋淋地滚到了地上。
场景二. Y星战船启程
银河系太阳系地球纪元的1904年底，距离地球X光年的Y星的一处空旷的场地上一艘三层楼高的银灰色的飞船前面站着一排身着银灰色紧身连体服的Y星战士静听着他们的联邦首脑为这些即将启程前往遥远星球---地球的士兵们的送行致辞：叽里咕噜咕噜叽里，咕噜咕噜叽里叽里。。。
翻译成中文就是：
【。。。你们将要前去的太阳系距离我们Y星有X光年的距离，因此我们之间只有通过虫洞技术保持联络。虽然我们的虫洞技术在过去几十年里取得了快速发展，但是虫洞通讯仍然存在着时间上的滞后与一定的瓶颈问题，因此一旦到达地球，你们将拥有很大的自主性，而无法事事得到Y星的批准，但是我相信你们会严格遵守Y星给你们制定的各项原则和纪律。你们这次队伍中有男有女，因此你们在那里将要生育和抚养你们自己的后代。但是，由于你们这支队伍的初始成员只有几十人，所以在未经Y星批准的前提下，你们必须严格执行不得直接向地球大众公开你们的身份而是要通过控制他们的首脑操弄他们的政治经济来掌控地球的命令。更重要的是，你们绝不允许与地球人发生杂交。任何违背这项命令的人，一经发现必须立即返回Y星，如有抗命，必将给予最严厉的惩处。不过我相信作为Y星培养出来的最优秀的星际远征军人不论在什么地方，在任何时候都会始终忠于Y星，心悬家乡父老。。。你们将是地球的主人和太阳系的主人！】
联邦首脑的话刚停，下面的远征军人们就一阵咕噜噜叽里里地宣誓永远效忠母星。然后就开始登船。
。。。。。。
银河系太阳系地球纪元大约两年后，Y星的母船到达了地球的卫星月球，在那里那支几十人的远征军中绝大多数换乘较小的后来被地球人称为飞碟的适用于在大气中飞行的碟状飞行器飞向那原始落后的蓝星---地球。只有很少数的Y星远征军留在母船上，当他们目送自己的大部队驶向地球后就按照预定的计划将母船驶往太阳系外围的柯伊伯带（Kuiper belt），在那里将母船伪装后躲在了无数个小行星中，作为与前往地球的主力的联络站。
第一章. 背叛
第一节 来自地球的奇怪能量
时间：银河系太阳系地球纪元近两个世纪后；场景：Y星联邦总部所在都市
在Y星远征军当初出发的空地上，那艘当初出发的飞船缓缓降落。从上面走下在柯伊伯带留守在飞船上的几个Y星军人及他们的后代。Y星联邦新首脑正在太空船泊地不远处的豪华楼中等待着他们。
大约两年前，Y星然遭受到了一种奇怪能量的攻击。经分析该能量正是来自他们派出远征军的太阳系。经过与远征军母船的留守人员的查证，知道远征军曾出现严重违反Y星制定的纪律的现象，且不服母船留守人员的管教，随后便发现了来自地球对Y星进行攻击的能量。所以，Y星总部特将远征军母船召回，以便对背叛母星的远征军共同采取惩治行动。
第二节 在地球扎根的Y星远征军
时间：银河系太阳系地球纪元近两个世纪后；场景：地球
经过了近两个世纪的运作布局，当初的Y星远征军早已在地球生根发芽。他们不但掌握了地球人各种主要的语言和相关文化，更是在网络时代到来之后，彻底掌控了整个地球的网络运作，他们可以进入地球人的任何一个伺服器和包括手机在内的任何一部终端智能机器，他们有能力修改有关地球人的经济和政治命运的任何数据，他们甚至成功地主导了人类日用电脑以及AI的硬件和软件的制作规范以及相关的供应文化，使得用户个体不拥有任何软硬件，一切都要向供应商租赁并每月缴纳租金，而且所有数据都存于被地球人称之为云端的公共存储区，这样便非常有利于极少数的Y星人控制整个地球的一切。与此同时，他们早已掌握了操控地球任何一个国家的政府和政治组织的技巧，不论哪个国家出现什么政权更替或出现什么新的有实力的政治组织，他们都能在短时间内予以掌控。
他们甚至能够按照自己的意愿来引导或误导地球人科技的发展从而实现对地球人科技发展进度的全方位的操控。他们不能让地球的科技超越自己，但又必须让地球的科技达到一定的水准，以便在需要的时候让地球人的科技为他们的太空战服务。他们也掌握了操控人类世界尤其是发达国家的文化走向的技巧，并成功地破除了地球人内心深处对于外来人种的排斥与恐惧感。可以说，除了向地球公民们公开他们自己的真实身份之外，他们已经俨然把自己当作了地球的主人。
唯一令他们遗憾的一件事情是他们在地球环境中的自身繁殖率极低，于是他们贸然违禁地开发了与地球人杂交的技术，结果非常成功。但是与地球人杂交的成功和他们对于地球政治经济的成功掌控让他们如同当年开发美洲大陆的欧洲殖民者一样开始朝思暮想地要摆脱Y星而闹独立。
但他们也知道单凭他们远征军的小部队和地球人的实力是难以与科技高度发达的Y星对抗的。不过在他们正煞费苦心地思索着如何才能摆脱Y星的时候，他们发现了一个Y星人之前没有注意到的潜在资源------地球人的意念力。虽然和地球上的基督徒一样，Y星人也信仰创造了宇宙万物的上帝，但是他们发现上帝赋予Y星人的意念力与赋予地球人的意念力并不完全相同，当Y星人和地球人发生杂交之后，居然出现了一种特殊的远程意念力，这种意念力甚至可用来对Y进行一定程度的攻击。
第二章. 母星的战船
第一节．出征
当Y星联邦总部确认了当年的远征军在地球扎根之后背叛母星的罪行之后，很快便决定对地球进行第二次远征，而这次不但征讨的对象是自己的叛徒，而且不再打算以隐蔽的身份到达地球，而是做好了与自己的叛军在地球上大打一场的准备。
过去的近两百年里，Y星的穿越虫洞技术又得到了长足的进步，现在他们可以在短短的几周内到达地球的上空。
于是在一场悲壮的誓师大会之后，数十架体积上两倍于运送第一批远征军的飞船的战船舰队浩浩荡荡地离开了Y星杀奔银河系的太阳系的地球而来。
第二节． 天空中出现的母星的战船舰队
已经地球化的Y星人其实早就注意到了他们留在柯伊伯带的母船的消失，因而预料到了即将到来的母星的征讨。他们花了两年多的时间进行了充分的准备，而且和他们所直接掌控的地球人的政客与军队都打好了招呼。因此当母星的大规模的舰队出现在地球的各个部分的上空时，他们并没有非常意外。
第三章．Y星人的战争
银河系太阳系地球纪元21世纪某一天，Y星人之间在地球的大战终于拉开的序幕，顿时间整个地球电光闪闪，海水沸腾，高山崩裂，人哭狗嚎，比当年日俄战争中丧生的满清人士多出数亿倍的地球人为Y星人的战争献了祭。
。。。。。。
结束语
以上便是关于科幻小说《母星的战船》之梗概的原始构想思路。既然是科幻，就希望读者们不要有任何超出科幻娱乐的联想，同时也欢迎任何对此类题材感兴趣的朋友来实际完成这一构想，将它写成完整的小说，我这里除了保留我自己仍可以按照这里的思路继续完成该小说的权利之外，不设定任何版权要求。任何对此感兴趣的人都可使用这里的思路来创作一部相关的小说。
附录
Rongqing Dai
Prelude
Over the past century, we have been impressed by the hostile aliens in all kinds of fiction movies; they will occupy our planet, enslave our people, and even eat our flesh. But in the real future, the aliens that would attack Earth could very possibly be part of our own……
The Mission of Mining 1
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, “Boom.” Right at the end of the countdown, the blazing flames erupted out of the bottom of the carrier rockets, the colossal body of spaceship Mining 1 steadily ascended into the crisp blue skies, and the audience in the launch site T burst into a loud acclamation. In the meantime, this footage instantly went to all corners of the world.
The mission of the spacecraft Mining 1 was to drag a 300 million ton asteroid, named as XX, into an orbit between Earth and the Moon. Five years ago, an amateur astronomer came across XX. Since then, several members of the International Space Club (ISC) have launched asteroid probes to explore its mineral composition and found that 90% of its mass is rare earth ores urgently needed on Earth. To avoid wars between its member nations for the rare earth minerals of XX, after months of bargaining, ISC made a decision about a year ago that it would send a spacecraft to drag XX into an orbit between Earth and the Moon, so that a mining team of the ISC could easily land on XX later on to conduct regular mining activity for the need of its members according to the agreed quotas.
After a year’s preparation, it finally came to the preselected optimal launch day for the northern hemisphere in 2090. To most viewers in front of the TV screens all over the world, what kind of deals had been struck among the ISC members were not their concern at all; what made them excited at the moment was the prospect that, for the first time, humans could drag an asteroid back into low-earth orbit for the purpose of mining. Major media networks all announced that they would follow the entire story to the end; hence, undoubtedly, this would be one of the hottest topics on dinner tables and social media in the coming months around the world.
The Flying Saucer of the New Martians
Early in the morning of the launch day of Mining 1, a bald eagle was hovering in the skies above a private space base at 500 kilometers away from the launch site T, curiously looking over the gigantic saucer shape craft on the open tarmac. It was the New Aliens, a flying saucer in the color of light blue with a diameter of 100 meters and a height about ten stories. Trucks and luggage carts were busy running between the saucer and the cargo section of the terminal building of the base, loading containers of goods and customer luggage onto the saucer.
The terminal building was at a few hundred meters from the saucer, no boarding bridges extending out of it like in commercial airports. A line of golden lettering “EARTH STATION OF MARTIAN RESIDENTS” was erected on top of the overhang of the terminal’s main gate facing the tarmac.
From the outside, the terminal appeared to be a four-story building, but inside the building there was a seven-story underground castle. This place was originally an abandoned missile silo, and was later built by a real estate developer into a so-called doomsday bunker castle that could withstand a nuclear war. In the middle of the third decade of the 21st century, Donald Marsque, the AI tycoon who led the first generation Earth immigrants to Mars, purchased this bunker as well as the surrounding 100 square miles of desert, and then turned it into a base to accommodate the flying saucers travelling between Mars and Earth.
Over the course of a couple of generations, the elite migrants recruited by Donald Marsque from Earth and their descendants had turned their settlements on Mars into the most advanced tech hubs in the solar system, and the distance between them and Earth had become their best security barrier against the infiltration of earthlings. On the surface, with all that they deliberately showed to the earthlings, they seemed to have kept pace with the development of the Earth civilization, but covertly they had long left the Earth’s people behind in fields such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Accordingly, with the help of the regular visiting engineers from Mars, the underground castle of this Earth Station of Martian Residents had already become one of the most advanced high-tech hubs on Earth.
On this special day when the people across the whole Earth were excitedly celebrating the launch of Mining 1 to catch XX, the flying saucer New Aliens would also complete its last mission of bringing new migrants from Earth to Mars. This was not a sheer coincidence, but intentionally prescheduled. About an hour before Mining 1 was launched, the crew members of the New Aliens and hundreds of passengers began to step out of the terminal building. Some boarded the shuttle bus waiting at the gate of the terminal, and some others rather sauntered together towards the behemoth that was higher than the terminal building.
In the meantime, four men in their early thirties stood in front of a large TV display in the King’s Room at the bottom of the bunker, watching the real time broadcasting of the launch of Mining1. A lanky one of the four was nervously checking his mobile phone from time to time.
As it entered the countdown, a stout man with a thick beard on his face asked, “Is everything fine, Steve?”
“Everything is perfect, Bill,” the lanky man replied.
All four men then began to laugh loudly, with a hint of weirdness in the laughter.
After seeing Mining 1 left the ground, Bill asked, “Elliot, is there anything that we need to worry about before we leave here?”
“The first thing I did this morning was to double check if everything is fine and I don’t see any problem,” the man named Elliot replied.
“Sounds good!… Now we can leave this planet as well.” Bill then said to his bodyguard Jeff, “tell them, we are coming now.”
“Sure,” Jeff responded, and then walked aside to communicate to Bill’s squad of bodyguards on the ground.
Strictly speaking, all these four men were not earthlings although they did carry the genes of earthlings and thus look like earthlings. They were third generation Martians, and all born on Mars. The man named Bill was the grandson of Donald Marsque, the founder and the current king of the Martian kingdom. Both Steve and Elliot were Bill’s personal assistants, and also the best AI masters and top hackers in the Martian kingdom. A few months ago, they came to Earth with two very special missions. The first one was to bring back more new migrants from Earth. Contrary to the previous open selections of new migrants to Mars according to strict intellectual and physical requirements, this time they quietly reached out to the closest loved ones of those who were already Martian residents, and persuaded them to go to Mars. Although they claimed openly that this special invitation was based on humanity consideration, among Bill and those three men, they privately called these potential new migrants as the “last Earth migrants to Mars.” Their second mission would sound much sneakier: hacking into the operating system of Mining 1 to see if they could do something with it…
A few minutes later, Bill and his three men came to the ground, and then the convoy of Bill and his men, including his squad of bodyguards that was waiting on the ground, left the terminal for the flying saucer. When they arrived in front of the New Aliens, the senior management staff of the Earth station had lined up before the boarding stairs to see them off. Bill glanced at the line and wanted to say something, but then changed his mind. He went straight onto the saucer, without shaking hands with those people, including the station director. Steve, who was behind Bill, could not bear to see the station director embarrassed in front of his subordinates, so he walked to shake hands and have some words with him.
“You know how to contact me, right?” Steve asked.
“Of course,” the station director replied with gratitude.
“The most important thing for you is to guard the underground castle carefully. Don’t let spies from outside get into it.”
“Of course,” the director replied.
“I have changed the password to get into the underground, but you can contact me to ask for it if you need to enter it in emergency.”
“I will,” the director replied.
……
Soon after Bill and his entourage all boarded, the flying saucer rose silently and then quickly disappeared into the blue sky…
The End of a Civilization
One and a half months later, Mining 1 finally reached the XX asteroid. For several days in a row, all crew members and passengers on the New Alien were as excited as the billions of earthlings on Earth, watching the astronauts of Mining 1 put a special net onto the entire XX asteroid, and attach it to Mining 1, and then steer Mining 1 towards the direction of Earth and the Moon, in order to settle it onto the designated orbit between Earth and the Moon.
During those days, Bill spent most time watching the broadcast of the event in his King’s cabin with Steve, Elliot and Jeff. When seeing Mining 1 set off its journey of going back, Bill asked Steve, who was nervously checking his mobile phone, “Is everything fine?”
“Everything is perfect,” Steve replied. Then all four men laughed out loud as they did in the bunker of the Earth Station of Martian Residents, and the laughter still sounded weird. . .
……
Another month passed quickly. One day when Bill was about to go to sleep according to the scheduled normal rules on the flying saucer, he heard a knock at the door.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Steve and Elliot want to see you,” Jeff replied outside the door.
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“Send them in,” Bill said, and then added, “You come too.”
“It changed direction and accelerating towards Earth,” Steve and Elliot said in unison as they entered the room.
“Mining 1?”
“Yes,” Steve replied.
“Isn’t it supposed to be tomorrow?”
“There was a minor error in our estimation because we missed an acceleration process that occurred while Mining 1 dragging XX,” Elliot replied.
“When did it start?” Bill asked.
“It should be half an hour ago, but we did not notice it,” Elliot said.
“Excellent,” Bill uttered, his voice filled with excitement.
He rushed to turn on the satellite TV, and a male news anchor from an earth channel appeared on the screen, who was almost screaming, “What the heck is going on here? How could Mining 1 suddenly change its direction and speed up towards us? Is it an alien attack on Earth?”
Bill switched to another channel and saw a discolored anchorwoman speaking in the same frightened tone, “Mining 1 and that 300 million ton asteroid are approaching Earth at a speed of 80,000 miles per hour. It will enter the Earth’s atmosphere in another 30 minutes. Our communication with its crew has been completely blocked mysteriously. At this moment, the leaders of the major powers of the world are holding emergency defense conferences to discuss countermeasures. So far, no country seems to be confident of stopping this sudden attack.”
“So exciting,” Jeff exclaimed.
“Can they stop it?” Bill looked at Steve.
“Not a chance.” Steve replied, “according to our calculations, even if there is a severe combustion when entering the atmosphere, XX will still carry at least 100 million tons of mass at a speed of 60,000 miles per hour. No missile can stop it. ”
“Even not by laser?”
“Neither.” Elliot cut in and explained, “XX is of course traveling much slower than light, but much faster than the search speed of their laser transmitter radar. And even if it is hit by a laser beam, it can’t be destroyed before it hits the ground. What’s more, the shockwave it would produce once entering the atmosphere could destroy all defense facilities on the ground.”
“Wonderful,” Bill said.
“There is one thing…” Steve was about to say something, but stopped.
“What is it?” Bill looked into his eyes.
“I…I received a text from the director of our Earth station asking for the password to enter the bunker,” Steve said.
“What do you guys think?” Bill stared at those three men, but Steve lowered his head, Jeff turned his eyes to Elliot, and Elliot looked back at Bill without saying anything.
“Do you think they would have more chance in the bunker?” Bill asked Elliot.
“It’s supposed to increase their chance of survival if the impact spot is very far.” Elliot explained, “But unfortunately, it seems the impact spot of XX will not be very far from our Earth station.”
“How far?”
“It’s hard to say right now, but will be less than a thousand miles,” Elliot replied. “Besides, even if they could survive the hit when hiding in the bunker, it’s hard for them to survive the aftermath of the hit.”
Bill hesitated for a couple seconds and then said to Steve, “Give him the password and wish him a good luck. That’s it, say nothing else.”
“Sure, I will do it now.” Steve turned to send a message back to the station director.
Bill then uttered to Elliot and Jeff, “at least we give them a chance.”
At that moment, the intercom phone rang. Bill pushed the button and there came the voice of the captain of the saucer, “there is a commotion throughout the whole vehicle, because passengers are all watching the news from Earth reporting that XX is rushing towards Earth at a speed of 80,000 miles per hour. Many women have begun to cry.”
After exchanging glances with the other guys, Bill asked dryly, “What is the situation observed by our own radio telescope on this craft?”
“Our own telescope also confirmed that XX is sprinting towards Earth at high speed,” the captain replied.
“I see,” Bill said, and commanded, “Please broadcast to ask everyone to stay calm and not to panic. In addition, send guards to each deck to maintain order, ten guards on each deck. Tell them not to leave their posts until receiving further orders.”
“Yes. Please consider it as done.”
“Wait.” Bill stopped the captain as he was about to hang up, and then asked, “If XX hits Earth, will it affect this saucer?”
“It should not. We are now 15 million miles from Earth. At most, we may be disturbed by some electromagnetic waves.”
“Okay, you may go now.”
“Yes.”
After hanging up the call, Bill asked, “Anything new?”
“Several spacecraft orbiting to patrol around Earth have tried to go after XX, but none of them can catch up,” Steve replied.
……
Half an hour later, all the channels from Earth went black. Bill hooked up the video to their own radio telescope that was used to watch Earth, and then saw dazzling glow of red light flashing over Earth. . .
After several seconds of silence, he remarked lightly, “a civilization of a few million years is over.”
“Will the king feel sad?” Elliot asked.
“That’s what he wants,” Bill replied. “Now the entire solar system belongs to our kingdom.”
“When are we going back to Earth again?” Jeff asked.
“A few years or a few decades later,” Bill replied. “The dust and radioactivity caused by the impact will not go away soon. Besides, the Earth needs to recover itself. When its natural ecology returns to the state of tens of thousands of years ago, we can move the entire Martian kingdom to Earth; after all, there are more resources than our planet.”
……
Four decades later, thousands of Martian residents in a fleet of flying saucers led by their newly crowned king, Marsque III, arrived in Earth. They landed in a vast green prairie in the northern hemisphere, where used to be one of the most prosperous urban area on the planet, and now there is no trace of the lost last civilization.
Postlude
Hopefully human civilization will not end in this way…
【[1]】 戴榕菁 （2023）《The Red Hat》的写作：一次意想不到的重要训练
