Future Love Contract (GL) - Chapter 22

Zhao Xinyun forced Gresya out of her mind and tried to focus on the task at hand. The entire room was extremely quiet; the only sounds she noticed were the soft whirring of her wrench and the buzzing and sizzling noises from the other people’s tools. Far from distracting her, the combination of sounds actually felt more like background music.

Today’s task was relatively complex, as their training had entered the intermediate phase. Zhao Xinyun frowned, a fine layer of sweat forming on her forehead. She instinctively made a motion to push up her glasses, only to remember that it was a habit from before she time-traveled—glasses were antiques from the 21st century. In this era, thanks to advanced medical technology, nearsightedness no longer existed. But since she had worn glasses before crossing over, she would occasionally still feel the phantom weight of them on her nose.

She still hadn’t found what part was malfunctioning. She continued searching the manual for the next step in the procedure. Just then, Gresya beside her let out a long breath, seemingly nearing the end of her task. That made Zhao Xinyun even more anxious; her palms began to sweat as well. Fortunately, her gloves were made of absorbent, snug-fitting material.

Although she was naturally competitive and driven, for some reason she had never felt the need to compete with Gresya. It was as if she instinctively accepted from the beginning that they were collaborators rather than rivals. Her current anxiety simply stemmed from the thought, “I’m probably working too slowly and need to speed up.”

In fact, the instructors approved of such dynamics. They believed that frequent cooperation would lead to better coordination during real missions. After all, the interstellar expedition was a massive project, and solo efforts were out of the question.

In future training, everyone would be assigned to ten-person teams for group cooperation exercises. Unless someone failed the final assessment and needed to be reassigned, these groupings were considered the official crew structure aboard the spaceship.

The team assignments followed this rule: everyone could form groups freely at first. If some groups ended up incomplete or if someone hadn’t joined a group, the rest would be randomly assigned. The instructors explained that random assignment might group together people with clashing personalities, which would hinder cooperation.

Zhao Xinyun and Gresya discussed it briefly and chose a group. In the end, out of the ten members, Gresya was selected as the team leader. The deputy leader was a young girl from Mars, even younger than Zhao Xinyun.

Actually, Zhao Xinyun had turned down the role of deputy herself. She felt she lacked leadership skills and wasn’t suited for the position. Even after Gresya tried to persuade her twice, she didn’t change her mind, so they let it go.

The crew structure roughly followed a military model, though discipline was not as strict. Three teams made up a squad, and the squad leader was a man from Earth. Zhao Xinyun had seen him a few times during earlier training sessions but wasn’t familiar with him. He introduced himself as Maksim Rubin and appeared to be around fifty years old—fifty in this era, anyway. In Zhao Xinyun’s pre-time-travel perspective, he didn’t even look thirty. He had short, dark red curly hair and seemed like someone who thought through everything thoroughly, with precise and orderly speech and actions.

Zhao Xinyun quickly concluded that although he looked stern, as long as one carried out their tasks seriously and didn’t cause trouble, he wouldn’t be difficult to get along with.

They had a lot to learn. Although the ultimate goal of the mission was to search for possible alien life, it wasn’t just about that. With so many people aboard the ship, they had many important scientific experiments and observations to carry out along the way.

There was no point in testing in a zero-gravity environment anymore—Earth’s and Mars’ orbits were already packed with space stations. Future station plans were already scheduled for Venus. The focus was now on environments beyond the solar system. Even though earlier ships had already returned with a lot of data, technology had advanced rapidly over the years, and there were many new things to research.

There was also one item on Zhao Xinyun’s schedule that didn’t specify any content—only the time was marked. At first, she was curious about what it could be. She asked Gresya, but she didn’t have such an item on her schedule. She asked the instructors—they didn’t know.

She asked the staff—and the only answer she got was: “Classified.” So mysterious! Zhao Xinyun snorted to herself. There wasn’t even an open internet here; even if she knew something in advance, it’s not like she could leak it.

When the scheduled time finally came and she arrived at the designated location, she finally learned the actual content of the program. Although she had already guessed it had something to do with her unique brainwave frequency—since Gresya didn’t have this assignment.

On stage, the instructor explained that this was a device that could only be used by people with special brainwave frequencies like hers. Its purpose, unsurprisingly, was to help humans communicate with alien life. Since no aliens had been discovered yet, they couldn’t conduct real experiments with the device, so for now they could only test it using computer-generated “aliens.”

The manual was distributed to the tablets of several people below the stage, explaining how to operate the device. Zhao Xinyun had always been curious—why, in this high-tech era six centuries in the future, was the training center still using such old-fashioned teaching methods?

In this time, remote learning over the internet was the norm. But for hands-on, crucial, and specialized training like this, experts were still brought in to teach in person. Reportedly, this method was considered more reliable and produced better results.

There was something nostalgic about older methods. For instance, physical books still hadn’t gone extinct. Though mostly collected or used for leisure now, their practical use had diminished.

When it came to reference books and knowledge lookup, e-books were much more convenient. Yet many people still enjoyed the feeling of holding a paper book and spending the entire afternoon with it.

The instructor handed each of them a device. It was small and compact, easily clipped onto one of the many hooks on their spacesuits. Spacesuits were covered in hooks and fasteners to secure all kinds of tools and equipment.

Zhao Xinyun turned the device over in her hands again and again—this little thing lets me talk to aliens? If she were still in the 21st century, it would’ve been unimaginable. Back then, even humans had to learn foreign languages just to talk to each other. And now they could talk to aliens without needing to?

In this era, everyone spoke the same language. The only differences were slight accent variations between Earth and Mars, and even subtler ones between regions on the same planet.

This wasn’t surprising, given how the highly developed internet and online activity had minimized the impact of geographical separation, making regional dialects practically vanish. The distinctions between Earth and Mars were likely due to communication time delays caused by the speed of light.

But even with this universal translator, would aliens understand her? Could they even grasp the concepts she was expressing? For example, if she said, “This is a computer,” would aliens even have a concept of what a computer is?

For them, a device that performs computing functions might very well be a living organism—just like how ancient humans used horses for transportation.

However, her questions were soon answered. The principle behind this device was meaning-based translation. While the phrasing might become long-winded—like briefly explaining the concept behind “computer”—the developers had tried their best to prevent issues where something is technically translated but still incomprehensible.

Time flew by, and the final assessment day finally arrived. Zhao Xinyun felt like the scene was just like last time—she was just as nervous as ever, and Gresya was, as usual, cheering her on. That made her feel a little embarrassed, since Gresya also had her assessment the next day.

Because there were too many components to the final assessment and limited facilities and staff, candidates were split into multiple batches. Zhao Xinyun was scheduled for the second day.

The first part of the assessment took place in orbit, simulating the spaceship’s zero-gravity environment. The second part was back in the training center, simulating gravity on an alien planet.

Zhao Xinyun and several dozen others boarded the spaceship. Most parts of the assessment went smoothly, except during the equipment repair section, where her hand slipped and she almost dropped a component into the ship. Then she remembered—that was impossible.

There was no gravity. She quickly snatched the component before it collided with anything and clipped it to her suit. It was a close call, but in the end, the judges gave her nearly perfect scores, leaving her feeling both honored and a little shocked.

The second part of the test was even easier. Thanks to her prior work experience on Venus and all the recent training, Zhao Xinyun was already very familiar with the procedures and had no issues at all.

Gresya also passed both parts of the exam without trouble. Zhao Xinyun cheered inwardly—next stop: actual alien worlds! Born six hundred years ago, now she had a chance to explore beyond the solar system. Even if, like many before her, she returned without finding any aliens, it would still be a life well-lived. But if she really did find extraterrestrial life… she didn’t even know what to think.