novellhall Chapter 189 The Ghost Never Breaks His Promise! [5000]
Chapter 189 The Ghost Never Breaks His Promise! [5000]
Chapter 189 The Ghost Never Breaks His Promise! [5000]
A prompt appears on the panel:
[Character data detected: Cooper (Interstellar)]
[Should we generate a custom dream instance?]
[Generation Fee: $80 (New User Discount Price)]
[Estimated experience duration: 6-8 hours in real time, dream time covering key life stages of the character]
Chen Xun took a deep breath and clicked "Yes".
My phone vibrated; it was a bank deduction notification.
Eight hundred thousand US dollars just vanished like that.
Before he could even feel sorry for himself, he was overcome by a strong wave of drowsiness, and the living room in front of him began to spin.
He struggled to the bedroom, collapsed onto the bed, and his consciousness quickly sank into darkness.
When Chen Xun opened his eyes again, he smelled the dust.
It is not an adjective.
It's so tacky!
The surrounding air was dry and pungent.
As soon as Chen Xun opened his mouth, he began to cough violently.
He lay on a hard bed, covered with a rough cotton quilt.
Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the blinds, cutting thin strips of light across the floor, within which countless tiny dust particles danced.
Chen Xun sat up and found himself in a room that wasn't very big.
The walls are natural wood color, and in some places the paint has peeled off.
Opposite the bed was an old-fashioned wardrobe, and next to it was a desk with several photos on it.
He leaned closer to look and saw a photo of himself with a woman and two children, a boy and a girl.
"Cooper".
Chen Xun murmured the name.
This is not watching a movie, nor is it acting.
At this moment, he is Cooper.
He could feel the memory of the muscles in this body.
That was a minor strain on my shoulders and back from long-term training. There was an old scar on my right index finger, left from repairing a tractor many years ago.
Chen Xun could sense the body's instinctive emotions.
They worry about the harvest, about the children's future, and about this dying planet.
"dad!"
A little girl's voice came from outside the door.
Chen Xun opened the door.
A girl of about 18 years old stood at the door, with brown hair, big eyes, and wearing a slightly worn but clean plaid shirt.
Murphy.
"My book fell down again, like someone pushed it."
Chen Xun followed her into the room.
Several books were scattered on the floor, one of which was "Apollo 11 Mission Log".
He crouched down, picked it up, and opened the title page. On it was his signature from many years ago: "To Murphy—Always look to the stars, your loving father."
My heart was gently bumped somewhere.
"Ghosts don't push books, Murphy. It's probably vibration or—"
Chen Xun suddenly stopped.
He noticed that the dust on the edge of the bookshelf did have strange patterns, unlike what he had seen naturally falling.
His instincts as a former NASA engineer told him that this was illogical.
But as a father, he first patted Murphy's head: "Don't worry, I'll fix the bookshelf."
In the days that followed, Chen Xun lived the life of a farm owner.
I get up at five o'clock every morning to check the humidity sensor in the cornfield.
The numbers are getting increasingly alarming; wilt disease is spreading from the east.
To repair that old tractor, we needed to buy the parts in town, but half of the shops there were closed.
I explained to Tom how to calibrate the irrigation system, and the boy studied very hard.
But Chen Xun felt bitter inside.
What's the use of learning these things?
Once all the corn has died, the farm will be finished.
Dinner is the most humane time of day.
Tom talked about school, saying that two more teachers left today.
"They went north, saying there's still water there."
Murphy, on the other hand, went on and on about her ghost theory.
How did the book fall? Why did the watch suddenly stop and then start again? Why does the dust in her room always form strange shapes?
As Chen Xun listened, the anxiety in his heart grew thicker and thicker.
He can talk to children about the starry sky, about relativity, and about his experiences at the test flight base, but he can't give them a hopeful future.
The world is slowly aging, and they are trapped on this farm, like the last animals waiting to die.
A sandstorm has arrived.
Chen Xun is repairing a combine harvester in the barn.
The sky suddenly darkened.
A low rumble came from afar, like the earth breathing.
He rushed into the house and saw that Murphy's window was still open, and sand was pouring in.
"Murphy!"
Chen Xun shouted.
The girl is not in the room.
He rushed to the window to close it, but suddenly froze.
The incoming dust formed regular streaks on the floor.
Binary.
Chen Xun began to interpret it almost instinctively.
When he was young at NASA, he could translate this kind of code with his eyes closed.
Coordinates: 34°03′N, 118°15′W.
etc----
Is this Griffith Observatory?
Los Angeles?
"dad?"
Murphy's voice came from the doorway; she was holding a cat, her face covered in dust.
Chen Xun stared at the stripes, his heart racing.
This is not a natural phenomenon.
Absolutely not.
"Change your clothes, we need to go somewhere."
Chen Xun's voice carried a long-lost excitement.
On the drive to the coordinates, Murphy kept asking, "Was it a message from the ghosts?"
"Are we going to find aliens?"
Why didn't Tom come along?
As Chen Xun drove, he felt the surging emotions within him.
For years, I was trapped on the farm, repeating the same desperate labor every day. It felt like I was suffocating.
Now a mystery has suddenly appeared!
This is a direction!
Even if it's nothing at all, it can at least make his life different, and perhaps prove that the world isn't completely dead yet.
Upon arriving at NASA's secret base, you meet Professor Brand and hear about his insane plan.
Wormholes, extraterrestrial intelligence, Plan A and Plan B.
Chen Xun's first reaction was not shock, but anger.
"You knew all along? You knew the Earth was going to die, yet you hid here?"
Chen Xun's tone was full of anger.
I feel like a clown being fooled!
"We're looking for a solution," Brand said calmly. "And we need the best pilot, you, Cooper. You're the best of our generation."
Chen Xun wanted to refuse.
He wanted to say that he has children, a farm, and responsibilities.
But as he was about to speak, he saw the data on the screen.
Global crop failure timeline, population collapse projections, and oxygen content decline curves.
The future is revealed in those charts, and it's incredibly harsh.
He didn't say a word on the way home.
Murphy sensed something was wrong and asked softly, "Dad, are we moving?"
"No!"
Chen Xun hesitated for a moment before speaking, "But Dad might have to go on a long trip."
That evening, he told the children the news.
Tom remained silent for a long time before finally asking, "What about the farm?"
"You can take good care of it," Chen Xun said, "and Murphy too."
"I will!"
The fifteen-year-old boy stood up straight, like a little adult.
Murphy's reaction was more direct.
Her eyes widened, then tears welled up: "You said the ghosts weren't real! But now you're leaving, just like those books falling down—it's all an omen, right? You knew it all along!"
She ran back to her room and slammed the door shut.
Chen Xun stood outside the door, his hand on the doorknob, but ultimately did not push it open.
What could he say?
"Is Daddy going to save the world?"
For a ten-year-old, the world is the farm, home, and Dad coming home for dinner every day.
Saving an abstract human civilization is not as valuable as raising her.
The day of departure arrived quickly.
It was four in the morning, and the sky was still dark.
Chen Xun quietly got up.
He didn't want to face a formal farewell.
He can't stand it!
I put on that old flight jacket, went to the garage, and started the truck.
The engine noise was particularly jarring in the quiet morning.
He looked at the house in the rearview mirror, hoping the children wouldn't wake up.
But Murphy still came.
She rushed out of the house in her pajamas, barefoot, chasing after the truck on the dusty road, shouting something.
The distance was too far to hear clearly, but I could see the words lip-synced: "Dad! Wait!"
Chen Xun gripped the steering wheel tightly.
He has an impulse in his mind right now:
Turn around and go back!
Hug her!
Say Daddy's not leaving!
But he didn't.
Chen Xun stepped on the gas, and the truck accelerated.
The small figure in the rearview mirror grew farther and farther away, eventually becoming a tiny dot and disappearing into the rising dust.
Chen Xun didn't know when the tears started flowing.
When he finally realized it, he couldn't stop crying.
Later, while in space, he recalled that feeling countless times.
It felt like someone had gripped his heart; it was a painful, suffocating feeling.
This is abandonment!
No matter how noble the reasons, to a child, this is abandonment.
Time quickly moved into life on the spaceship.
At first, Chen Xun found the feeling of weightlessness novel, but it quickly became the norm.
The visual distortion during wormhole travel is incredibly realistic.
The real space folds, stretches, and reassembles before your eyes.
Chen Xun gripped the control stick.
His hands were very steady.
This is the pilot's muscle memory.
When the giant wave came on Miller's planet, he was standing in waist-deep water.
A moving wall of water engulfed the horizon, advancing at an incredible speed.
Chen Xun pulled Brand back, the water already up to their chests.
Doyle shouted into the comms channel, "Come back quickly!"
But it was too late.
When the waves crashed down, the world turned into churning white foam and a deafening roar.
Chen Xun felt as if all the air in his lungs had been squeezed out, and his ears were ringing.
He swam desperately upstream and grabbed onto a piece of floating debris.
Back on the Eternity, Romilly said, "You were gone for three hours."
But looking at the clock on Earth: 23 years, 4 months, and 8 days.
This was the first time Chen Xun understood what time dilation was.
The divine saying from a past life, "A day in heaven is a year on earth," has now become a reality.
Looking at the first video log sent by Jizi on the screen.
Tom went from being fifteen years old to thirty-eight years old.
She got married, had a child, and then lost another child, all while she was only gone for three hours.
Chen Xun turned off the screen and floated alone in the cockpit, remaining silent for a long time.
What upset him even more was Murphy's video.
"I'm the same age as you today. According to your timeline, you might have just arrived on Saturn? I don't know, but I believe you'll come back."
"Professor Brand's equations are wrong. I feel like he's hiding something, Dad. If you receive this, please tell me what to do. I'm very scared."
"I discovered something today about that ghost. I think I might have found a way, but I need time."
Chen Xun watched these videos countless times.
He remembered every new wrinkle on his daughter's face and every subtle change in expression.
The stubbornness of twenty, the weariness of thirty, and the resilience of forty.
He could read the unspoken words in her eyes.
Loneliness, uncomprehended persistence, and an unwavering trust in her father.
After each viewing, he would float to the porthole and gaze at the endless dark starry sky outside.
Regret?
If I stay on the farm, at least I can watch her grow up.
But how long can the farm last?
ten years?
Twenty years?
and then?
There is no correct answer.
There are only choices and the costs associated with those choices.
The days passed by.
Until Dr. Mann's betrayal!
The hero they had awakened from his slumber, the theoretically most intelligent person, suddenly sprang into action and smashed Chen Xun's mask when Chen Xun questioned him about the authenticity of the data.
"Survive, Cooper!"
Mann screamed through the hissing sound of his mask tearing apart: "When you're facing absolute loneliness, morality is a joke! I just want to survive!"
Cooper struggled to find the spare mask and fastened it, oxygen returning to his lungs.
He felt not anger, but profound sorrow.
If even someone like Mann has collapsed, then just how fragile is the so-called human civilization?
He struggled back to the Eternity, only to find that Mann was attempting to force a docking, causing the ship to spin out of control.
The alarm blared, and the screen flashed red.
Chen Xun gripped the control stick and used all his strength to stabilize the spaceship.
At that moment, he had only one thought: "I can't die here; I promised to go back!"
Soon another unavoidable problem arose:
Fuel is running out!
The Eternity needs to reduce its weight to reach Edmunds.
At this moment, the simple math problem becomes cruel.
Either everyone dies together, or one person is sacrificed.
Just like the story Chen Xun heard in his previous life about saving people by switching onto train tracks.
On one side is a group of people, and on the other side is one person. How do you choose?
The answer is obvious.
Chen Xun looked at Brand: "You'll continue with Plan A, right? If possible?"
Brand nodded, tears streaming down his face.
"That's good."
Chen Xun tried his best to make his sacrifice meaningful.
The separation process has started.
The Wanderer detached from the Eternity and flew alone toward the black hole.
The feeling of weightlessness returned.
The robot calmly announced, "Prepare to enter the gravitational field, Mr. Cooper."
"It's great to fly with you, Tass."
"Me too, Mr. Cooper."
Darkness swallowed everything.
Chen Xun felt his body extending infinitely in a certain direction.
Strange spots of light began to appear at the edge of my field of vision. Then those spots connected to form lines, the lines formed surfaces, and the surfaces constructed ————
bookshelf!
An endless bookshelf fills the entire field of vision.
Each bookshelf was filled with books, each book glowing faintly, and he could see that the contents of each book were fragments of time.
Murphy's room.
From her infancy to the present, all moments unfold simultaneously, like an infinitely thick pop-up book.
Five-dimensional space.
Chen Xun couldn't understand it at first.
His brain was protesting, and this went beyond the realm of cognition.
Gradually, he realized that he could move.
This movement is distinct from bodily movement.
It's more like a shift in thought, or more accurately, a shift in consciousness.
He can focus on a specific point in time:
For Murphy's fifth birthday, he made her a cardboard space capsule;
When she was ten years old, she saw Saturn for the first time through a telescope;
At fifteen, she won an award at the school science fair.
Then he saw that moment.
Ten-year-old Murphy is in his room, and a book is falling off the bookshelf.
Meanwhile, in another dimension, he is trying to promote those books.
So that's how it is!
So he'd been here all along.
He was there for her at every important moment in her life, but from a different dimension, so he couldn't touch her directly.
Chen Xun began to try to transmit information.
He pushed the books, causing them to fall at specific times, forming a binary dust pattern.
He found the watch he had given Murphy when she was a child and tried to control the swing of the second hand.
Morse code!
A simple repetition: "Stay—stay—"
Time unfolded before him, with the past, present, and future existing simultaneously.
He saw the adult Murphy in a NASA lab, deep in thought, staring at those dust patterns.
She finally noticed the watch was malfunctioning.
Murphy looked up, as if he could see himself in a dimension beyond.
At that moment, the connection was established.
One night when Murphy was forty years old, he suddenly sat up in bed.
She walked to the bookshelf, picked up the old watch, and stared at the second hand for a long time.
Then she laughed, and tears streamed down her face.
"It's you, it's always been you!"
She spoke to the air.
The hypercube began to collapse.
The bookshelf structure folded inwards, making the light dazzling.
Chen Xun felt himself falling, passing through layers of dimensions, and time began to flow linearly again.
Before his consciousness faded, he heard a voice, like Murphy's: "Thank you, Dad. Now go, go where you should be."
When he woke up again, he was in a white room.
Connected to various medical devices, a man in uniform stood by the bed: "You're awake. We found your escape pod near Saturn's orbit. According to records, you've been away from Earth for ninety-one years."
Chen Xun tried to speak, but his throat was too dry to make a sound.
The man handed him a glass of water: "Take your time. You're on Cooper Space Station, named after your daughter. She was one of the founders here."
They put him in a wheelchair and carried him down the corridor.
Outside the window is a circular, artificial world with grass, rivers, simulated sunlight, and children playing.
Everything was in good order and full of life.
Finally, they stopped outside a hospital room.
The man said softly, "She's waiting for you, but time is running out."
Cooper pushed open the door.
Murphy lay in bed, his hair completely white, his face covered in wrinkles, but his eyes were still the same.
Intelligent, stubborn, and full of curiosity.
She saw Cooper and smiled, a smile exactly like the one she had when she was ten.
"I knew you would come back," she said softly. "Ghosts never break their promises!"
Cooper took her hand.
He was very thin, with skin as thin as paper, and you could feel his bones underneath.
He was speechless; all language seemed inadequate at that moment.
"I have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren."
Murphy continued, each word strained: "We built this world, Plan A succeeded, so you can go now. Brand is on Edmunds; she needs help. That's the future."
Chen Xun understood.
She didn't want him to watch her die.
She wanted him to remember what she looked like alive.
He leaned down and gently kissed her forehead.
"I love you, Murphy, always."
"I know, Dad, I love you too."
He left the ward and saw a young woman leading a little girl through the corridor.
The woman said to the girl, "That's Mr. Cooper, Murphy Cooper's father."
The girl's eyes widened: "The person who went through the black hole?"
"Yes."
The girl waved at Cooper.
Cooper smiled and continued walking.
He went to the hangar, found a new Wanderer, and sat in the cockpit.
The screen lights up, the flight path has been set, and we're heading through the wormhole to Edmunds.
He took one last look out the window.
Saturn's rings slowly rotate in the distance, like a giant clock, recording all the times of loss and gain.
Start the engine.
The thruster ignites.
The spaceship slid out of the hangar and flew into the depths of space.