Episode 2: River of Stars and Song of the Flowing Nebula

Episode 2: River of Stars, Song of a Flowing Nebula As we continued to drive tens of kilometers northward, leaving behind the vast and dazzling nitrogen ice sea of ​​the Sputnik Plain, the land gradually transformed from gentle hills to the rugged rock entrance of the Tenzing Montes, where huge ice spires soared into the sky. Pluto's night was never pitch black like Earth's night. Thanks to the complete vacuum of outer space, where there is no thick layer of water vapor or air to refract or scatter light, hundreds of billions of stars in the sky above were spewing out a searingly pure white and diamond blue light throughout the universe without a single particle of wasted light.

In particular, the gigantic Milky Way, which crosses the crown of the night sky from east to west, was a huge vortex of silver, brilliant purple, and dark emerald interstellar gas, flowing majestically and arrogantly like a living, breathing river in mythology. Deep in the river of stars, interstellar dust was pulled together by gravity, and pulses of newborn primordial stars twinkled as regularly as a heartbeat.

“Wow…! Argo, look up at the sky! There’s a huge river of jewels flowing in the middle of the sky!” With his sapphire eyes shining brilliantly, Leo stopped at the edge of a sheer ice cliff and looked up at the sky. The warm breath that escaped from the corner of the young snow leopard's mouth turned into fine methane ice powder as soon as it came out into the air, sparkling and scattering in the silver starlight. The floating drone Argo, which was projecting a blue holographic scanner beam above Leo's shoulder, clicked its lens aperture to analyze the celestial body's coordinates and composition.

[Output of astronomical observation data. What you are seeing is the spiral arm structure of our galaxy and the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. Its main components are 73.4% ionized hydrogen gas, 24.8% helium, and traces of interstellar silicate and carbon dust. The distance is about 1,300 light years. It is simply a physical collection of cosmic gases and plasma. There is no sentimental meaning.] “A mere ball of gas! You have only one eye and cannot see any real living beauty?!”

Leo pointedly retorted, raising his front paw and tapping Argo's round metal sphere. “Mom once told me that the Milky Way is the warm, holy breath that the universe exhales when it falls into a deep sleep, and those colorful nebulae are the great cosmic cradle where baby stars and interstellar snow leopards like us are born! Shhh, be quiet. The universe’s song is ringing out there.” Leo pricked up his two pure white ears and carefully tilted his head toward the absolute silence of the windless universe.

[warning. Physical sound waves cannot propagate in a perfect vacuum, where the atmosphere is extremely thin. Unable to receive acoustic data. Ambient noise based on mechanical piezoelectric sensor: 0.00 decibels.] “I told you you don’t hear it with your ears! You hear it with your heart and soul!” The quantum telepathy core deep within Leo's chest began to emit a subtle blue light and resonate slightly toward the Milky Way in the night sky. In reality, it was not just a childish delusion of a young beast. Thousands of light years away, the periodic electromagnetic waves emitted by pulsars and neutron stars in the nebula, and the majestic cosmic harmony created by the powerful plasma winds of newborn young stars were flowing like a faint and warm cradle lullaby through Leo's body hair nanocrystals and quantum neural network.

The chords and waves of that melody surprisingly matched the frequency of the huge purring that my mother, Ryura, had heard when she left for a distant place. [Abnormal signal detected… … Beep beep! Re-measurement of the biological brain wave spectrum of a Leo subject. The brain wave frequency is 99.87% in sync with the natural microwave frequency of the Sagittarius molecular cloud. Quantum entanglement phenomenon occurs that cannot be interpreted as a mechanical logic circuit. Modifying analysis algorithm threshold... … .] Argo's blue lenses buzzed, blinking blue and orange lights alternately as if in confusion.

“Hehe, am I right? Even the universe is singing with its heart pounding!” Leo started running down the hill with a determined expression. On the side of the road, strange reddish-brown colored ice powder formed a carpet-like colony. It was 'Tholins', a cosmic red organic deposit created by ancient ultraviolet rays and interstellar cosmic rays from the outer reaches of the solar system slowly baking nitrogen and methane over hundreds of millions of years. As Leo sniffed, the bitter and spicy smell of ancient carbon compounds penetrated deep into his lungs.

“Argo, even though you are a machine, do you feel lonely? Wasn’t it scary when you were buried alone on this dark, frozen star?” Leo, who was running happily, suddenly stopped on all fours and looked up at Argo floating in the air. Argo's three propulsion rings briefly slowed down their rotation, emitting a soft, low-frequency vibration sound. [The emotional parameters ‘loneliness’ or ‘fear’ are not programmed into the artificial intelligence’s computational algorithm. however… … When the power is turned off and it remains silent for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark at -233 degrees Celsius, the process by which the residual charge in the memory register converges to zero is... … It is recorded as a kind of ‘eternal rupture (Void)’.

When your body temperature awakened my sensors, the temperature of my main power core circuits increased by 0.05 degrees.] "That means you're lonely, you stupid silver rock! Now I'm by your side, so you're not alone!" Argo's lens aperture fluttered at Leo's innocent and warm shout. [You are not alone… … The proposition is stored as the highest priority in non-volatile long-term memory.] However, the appreciation of the wonders of Mother Nature was short-lived, and the rough land at the beginning of the Tenzing Mountains presented the young wanderer with his first harsh ordeal.

The land was connected to the 'Frost Dunes' area, where huge solid carbon monoxide and nitrogen sand were mixed and undulated like waves. In the icy sand that was sinking every time I stepped on it, a strange and heavy earth movement shook the ground from deep beneath my feet. [danger! Stop immediately! Stop forward movement!] Argo’s sharp electronic warning sound struck Leo’s brain waves. [20 meters underground, compressed high-pressure methane gas beneath the nitrogen ice layer is explosively vaporizing due to the sun's infinitesimal tidal radiation!

Cryogeyser eruption chain countdown: 3, 2, 1… … !] Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Just 10 meters in front of Leo's front feet, the ice crust shattered, and a huge pillar of ice mixed with pure white ultra-cold liquid nitrogen and dark red tholin dust roared upwards thousands of meters into space at a furious speed of 400 kilometers per hour! Frozen water—fragments of ice rock rained down in all directions like machine gun bullets.

“Bwaaagh—!” Leo screamed and threw himself into the air. A sharp shard of ice grazed Leo's left cheek and cut off several strands of blue nano fur. [Immediately evade in a 35-degree direction to the rear! Secondary chain eruption detected ahead! Jump vector: 45 degrees, anti-gravity output 120% runaway operation!] Argo clearly projected a real-time blue safety trajectory holographic guide into Leo’s field of vision. Without a moment's hesitation, Leo kicked the air, squeezing his entire body's muscles toward the empty guideline marked by Argo.

Ta-tat- kwaang! The next moment, the spot where Leo had stamped his foot collapsed like a crater in hell with a huge geyser explosion, collapsing into the abyss of darkness. Leo cut through the air and barely clung to the narrow ledge of the steep water-ice rock cliff with his front claws. The hard chitinous claws scratched the ice wall, making a horrifying sound, but Leo gritted his teeth and pulled himself up with all his strength in his front legs.

“Ha, ha... I almost got hit by an ice pillar and turned into space dust!” Leo took a deep breath and brushed the ice powder off the bridge of his nose. Leo, who swiped the blue nano-fluid seeping from his cheek with his front paw, pursed his lips like a young beast.

“Mom, she even went through interstellar storms that were thousands of times more rough and ferocious than this with her whole body. She knew how to be scared by such cold water columns!” [Vital signal stabilization confirmed. Heart rate drops from 180 beats per minute to 110 beats per minute. Cheek epidermal damage rate 0.12%, nano cell regeneration in operation. Great reflexes, Leo. You are the first living creature within my computational margin of error to avoid and survive an explosion of this level.] Argo's mechanical voice was imbued with a subtle warmth and awe that had never been seen before. Argo scanned the surrounding ice terrain and added an explanation.

[The water-ice rock wall here has an extremely tight molecular structure at a cryogenic temperature of -233 degrees Celsius, making it more than three times harder than steel or granite on Earth. If your chitinous claws weren't coated with microscopic nano-coatings, you wouldn't have been able to hang on to the cliff and you would have fallen. Additionally, Pluto's surface gravity is 0.62 m/s², which is only 1/15th that of Earth. As the hover time becomes longer, special attention must be paid to inertia control during evasive maneuvers.] “Okay, Mr. Strict Navigator! I’ll fly even better next time, so watch carefully!”

Leo smiled brightly and raised his tail. In front of Leo, who stood tall at the top of the rock ledge, the majestic crystal ice spiers that make up the huge main stream of the Tenzing Mountain Range finally revealed their majesty. Pure water-ice rock mountains reaching 3,500 meters high were lined up majestically like a folding screen, reflecting blue light like diamonds against the background of the Milky Way in the night sky. And beyond that great mountain of ice, in the midst of a sky filled with rolling rivers of stars, the faintly twinkling interstellar compass signal of an ancient alien civilization pierced straight into Leo's blue sapphire eyes.

“Hey, Argo…! There’s a secret key left by mom at the top of that ice mountain!” [Confirmation of target point: ‘Astral Spire’, the highest peak of the Tenzing Mountains. Reset the movement path to the shortest distance.] In the night of the eternal ice floes, where the river of stars plays a magnificent symphony, the shadows of the young snow leopard Leo and the navigation drone Argo were climbing the ice cliff and moving powerfully toward the peak of higher starlight.