The stars, but they become the gray wind

However, what Gilfairs did not know at this time was that the Sky Star civilization's achievements in teleporting supermassive objects were far more incredible than he had imagined. Of course, this was something he would only know later when he had the opportunity to see what the world on the other side of the "door" looked like.

Siegfried sat in the central command room, watching the giant screen. It showed that the Vulture City Fortress had activated its warp engines. The light emanating from the fortress had undergone a dramatic redshift. A silver-gray sphere had torn a hole in the subspace channel at the edge of the galaxy, successfully entering warp mode. Gilfias's gaze was fixed on the screen. "3, 2, 1..." As the countdown ended, the silver-gray sphere, equipped with twelve ring-shaped engines, reappeared in a wave of spatial distortion at its destination.

"Success!"

There was thunderous cheering in the bridge and command and control center of the Barbarossa, and everyone watched excitedly as the fortress completed the final stage of testing, which was the long-distance space jump.

Moving and leaping a fortress of this mass was certainly an incredible thing for humans, but for Sky Star on the other side of the "gate", moving and allowing ships of this size to travel at superluminal speeds at distances of tens of thousands of light years was already commonplace. For most people on Sky Star, this was just an insignificant piece of news from another universe. In the eyes of most Sky Star people, the news that a backward civilization from another universe had made insignificant technological progress was not even as important as what some of them had recently done in the galaxy where the planet Kaga Kula was located.

.........

On the planet Kaga Kula, the burrowing owl Kral is exploring a forest he has never been to before. Not long ago, this forest was a place of no return for Kral's tribe. This forest is full of various ferocious large predators that are deadly to the burrowing owls. Even the bravest hunters in the tribe dare not approach here, let alone go deep into this terrible forest.

But now, Klar dared to go deep into the jungle without carrying any weapons because she was lucky enough to be favored by the goddess. A messenger responsible for conveying the goddess's oracle was accompanying her in the forest. Any ferocious predator who dared to approach would be burned to ashes by the messenger's divine punishment.

Just now, several giant lizards who were reckless and wanted to get close to the messenger of God were burned to ashes by the messenger of God. A strange light came out of the white body of the messenger of God, and hit the ashes left when the giant lizards were killed. In Klar's eyes, these messengers of God seemed to almost never speak except when conveying the oracles and orders of the goddess. Klar once asked the goddess this question, and the goddess answered Klar's question while stroking her furry head.

"They are drones, purely tools used to help us accomplish certain things, just like the stone spears and stone axes you use in your daily lives. There is no difference in essence between the two. They are just mechanical tools."

Klar didn't fully understand what the goddess said. She couldn't understand how the respected messenger of God could be compared with the simple stone tools they made. How could the messenger of God who could fly, convey the goddess's oracles to them, and use divine punishment to kill the terrible giant lizards be the same thing as the stone tools they used? Klar couldn't understand.

[It must be that the goddess's oracle is too profound, and my understanding is too shallow... Hmm... That must be the case.] Klar thought.

Klar has always been a burrowing owl who is very curious about the world. Before the goddess came, she had been full of curiosity about the forest near her tribe. However, the elders in the tribe repeatedly warned the young her not to get close to the dangerous forest. This forest is the habitat of monitor lizards and other dangerous predators. Even the bravest and wisest hunters in the tribe were afraid to get close to this forest. But she couldn't resist her curiosity and took the risk several times to observe the forest closely.

The last expedition almost cost her life. The curious underage burrowing owl girl was being observed by the trees at the outermost edge of the forest that were full of fruits. She didn't notice at all that a monitor lizard had approached her from the bushes under the tree. When she discovered the monitor lizard crawling in the bushes, she was already asleep. The monitor lizard pounced on her directly, and she was so scared that she almost ran away. However, the first thing the burrowing owls living on this planet need to learn in their daily survival and growth is that the burrowing owls with only two legs cannot outrun the monitor lizards with four legs. Once they encounter a monitor lizard, the only way to survive is to hide and pray that the monitor lizard does not discover them.

Just when the giant lizard that was chasing him was about to bite his tail with its bloody mouth, Klar witnessed a miracle - the messenger of God appeared, and with a divine punishment that pierced the air, he directly burned the giant lizard that almost took his life into ashes, and then... Klar saw her - the goddess who seemed to Klar to be omnipotent. She looked at Klar with compassion, who was trembling with fear at the time because of the unprecedented scene. She stretched out her arms, which seemed to Klar to be unremarkably smooth, and hugged Klar's body that was trembling with fear. The goddess gently stroked the trembling Klar's furry head. For some reason, Klar, who was frightened to the point of being almost insane and incoherent at the time, actually became inexplicably calm when he talked about his inner emotions under the goddess's touch.

Klar felt that when the goddess held her in her arms and stroked her head, she seemed to inexplicably want to get close to the goddess in front of her. However, looking back now, Klar's reaction when the goddess stroked her seemed a little strange.

.........

If there were other Sky Star people present, they would probably see at a glance that the Sky Star person who was stroking Klar's head had the same expression as one who was happily stroking a cat. The only difference was that the thing being stroked in the Sky Star person's arms was not a cat, but a burrowing owl that was both unlucky and lucky, and extremely curious.

Klar was collecting fruits in the forest that she had never seen before. These fruits seemed very sweet. Apart from the food brought by the goddess, Klar had never eaten such sweet fruits. She packed the fruits she had just collected and stuffed them into the incredible backpack given to her by the goddess.

Although this backpack looks small, it can fit any amount of things in it. Klar opened the silver-white hard lid of the backpack, which was made of an unknown material, and threw all the piles of unknown fruits he had picked that he had never seen before into the backpack. A wave-like ripple appeared at the bottom of the backpack, and all the fruits disappeared into the backpack, but Klar knew that the disappeared fruits were still there. As long as he thought of a certain fruit in his mind, he could take it out from the seemingly empty backpack. Similarly, this was also a miracle that Klar could not understand.

"There is a miniature wormhole transmission device installed in it. Be careful not to pinch your wings when using it." This is what the goddess said when she bestowed this magical object on herself.

Similarly, Kral, the burrowing owl, whose understanding of the world is still very limited, does not know what a wormhole is.

[Wormhole? Are those holes made by bugs everywhere? But what does that have to do with this thing?] Klar, bewildered, accepted the gift from the goddess.

When she was packing the fruits she had collected, another ignorant monitor lizard tried to approach her. But before it could make a move, the divine punishment issued by the white messenger of God turned the monitor lizard's body into ashes on the ground. The little owl playfully stuck out her tongue at the monitor lizard whose ashes had been scattered. Then she saluted the messenger of God who was protecting her and walked out of the jungle with a backpack of fruits.

Kaga Kula, a planet orbiting a star with a mass 1.05 times that of the sun, appears blue from space. This is not because the planet has an ocean that occupies less than half of its surface area, but because of the dense blue vegetation on the planet. These blue vegetation cover most of the planet's surface. The oxygen content of the entire planet's atmosphere accounts for more than 30% of the main components of the planet's atmosphere. At the same time, the carbon dioxide content on the planet is almost 8 times that of the Earth.

On the planet, the fleet from Sky Star discovered the existence of an intelligent creature, a terrestrial bird that looked like a burrowing owl. They had learned to make simple tools with stones and to use fire, which was equivalent to the level of humans in the late Paleolithic period more than 20,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Even a Stone Age civilization is quite rare in a galaxy like ours, where intelligent life is extremely sparse.

Compared to a civilization like human beings, which has accumulated too many baggages in the thousands of years of civilization, an intelligent life like this is still in its early stages and the entire species has not even formed a complete civilization structure. Its plasticity is undoubtedly quite strong. Some sky aliens who are interested in this have come to this galaxy and intend to carry out a small plan.

That is to explore whether the development experience of one's own civilization, which has been guided by humans and has a certain degree of interference, can be replicated in other civilizations.

…………

Klar enthusiastically showed the elders and compatriots in the tribe the fruits she had collected from the forest that she had never seen before. When Klar was obviously too excited about discovering something new, she felt herself being hugged from behind. She looked up and saw not the face of the goddess she was familiar with, but another face of the goddess.

The goddess has many of her kind, a fact she and the others in the tribe only recently discovered. However, one thing is common to Klar: it seems every goddess loves to hold her in their arms and rub her, especially her furry head and belly feathers. Thinking back, she seems to have been rubbed on her belly and head feathers so often by visiting goddesses of her kind lately that she's exhausted.

It seems like goddesses are always interested in their furry appearance.

Feeling the two soft peaks behind her head, Klar was, as expected, held in the arms of a goddess she didn't know and rubbed. However, the appearance of this goddess seemed different from the others. When she was held in the other's arms and rubbed against her, Klar caught a glimpse of something growing on the back and head of the goddess. Curiosity was aroused, Klar opened her big eyes and took a closer look. There seemed to be a strange glowing ring-shaped object floating above the goddess' head, swaying with the goddess' head.

Behind the goddess, there seemed to be some kind of glowing sheet-like object floating in the air without any support. The curious little owl's attention was immediately attracted.

"Do you want to touch it?" Aze could of course also feel the curious gaze of the furry creature in his arms as he rubbed his face against it.

"Eh? Is that really possible? Goddess?"

"Of course, because you are cute." Aze lifted Klar onto his head. Klar stretched out one of her wings and touched the halo above Aze's head with the feathers on the tip of her wing.

Unlike what Klar had imagined, the tips of her wings passed through the glowing ring above the goddess' head without any hindrance, as if the glowing ring did not exist at all.

"Huh?" Klar tried a few more times, and the tip of her wings still passed through the glowing ring without any hindrance. She blinked her cute big eyes, completely confused by this situation.

"Haha, that's interesting, right?"

"Goddess, what on earth is that on top of your head?"

"It's a part of my body, I guess. Its nature is more like a holographic projection. You can see it, but you can't touch it. Although you can't touch it, it can interact with my body to a certain extent."

"Hmm... It's so difficult, I can't quite understand." Klar used his left wing to scratch his head, which had been losing a lot of hair recently.

"It's okay. You and your friends will gradually understand. By the time you understand, our civilizations will probably be the closest of friends."

Aze rubbed his face against Klar's furry head again to comfort her, while a large group of Klar's compatriots who looked like burrowing owls were looking at Klar with envy as she was being held in the arms of the "goddess".

In the eyes of these still primitive burrowing birds, Kral has completely become what they believe to be a "chosen bird" blessed by God.

.........

About the time bridge: Wormholes are usually depicted as tunnels with spherical entrances, like black holes. However, they can also have different shapes, such as flat disks or rings. These are called toroidal wormholes, and they look like portals to another place or time.

How a circular wormhole could become a time machine

A time machine is a device that allows you to travel to the past or future. One way to achieve this is by using a wormhole, which connects two regions of spacetime with different rates of time flow. For example, if one end of the wormhole is near a massive object or moving at high speed, time will flow slower there than at the other end. According to general relativity, if you enter a wormhole from one end and exit from the other, you will find yourself in a different time than when you started.

However, this isn't enough to create a time machine; you also need to ensure the wormhole is stable and traversable. This requires some exotic matter or energy that violates the zero-energy condition, which states that the energy density measured by any observer cannot be negative. Such matter or energy could create a negative gravitational or repulsive force, keeping the wormhole open.

An example of this exotic matter is a cosmic string, an extremely dense line of energy that may have formed in the early universe. A cosmic string can have a negative angle defect, meaning it bends spacetime around it so that the sum of the angles of a triangle is less than 180 degrees. A cosmic string could also act as a source of tension, pulling the two entrances of a wormhole together.

Gibbons and Volkov showed that if you have two flat disks of spacetime surrounded by cosmic strings with negative angle defects, you can glue them together along their edges and easily create a circular wormhole. This wormhole connects two otherwise unconnected flat universes. The presence of cosmic strings makes the wormhole stationary and traversable.

Frolov, Krtouč, and Zelnikov studied the gravitational field of a static source in the spacetime of such a circular wormhole. They found that if you place a flat, thin shell of mass around one entrance to the wormhole, the gravitational field near the other entrance will be affected by the presence of the wormhole. In particular, they found that the gravitational potential near the other entrance will depend on both the radial distance from the entrance and the azimuthal angle around it.

This means that if you have two identical clocks at different locations near a wormhole's entrance, the difference between their readings will grow linearly with time, resulting in a perfect time difference. If this difference becomes greater than the travel time through the wormhole, a closed timelike curve emerges. A closed timelike curve is a path in spacetime that returns to its starting point in both space and time. This means that if you walk along a closed timelike curve, you can encounter your past self or influence your own history.

Chapter 238: On Enlightenment of the Stone Age Natives (6000 words)

As for how a civilization should deal with external interference, Sky Star has different plasticity for civilizations at different stages. When intelligent creatures have not yet clearly formed a sufficiently complete civilization with a clear social structure, their plasticity is often the strongest. However, if it is like humans, which have accumulated too much baggage in the course of thousands of years of civilization development, the plasticity of the entire civilization being reshaped and rewritten will become quite poor.

The burrowing owls on the planet Kaga Kula are in the late Paleolithic period, and their entire civilization is still in its early stages of development. A complex social system with clear structures and classes has not yet been formed. There is no doubt that the burrowing owls are still an intelligent species with extremely strong plasticity at this time.

The Sky People's fondness for the Burrowing Owls is largely because the Burrowing Owls' cute furry appearance stimulates the Sky People's instinct for cute things.

The Sky People have an irresistible instinct for cute or beautiful things. As the sentimental side of the Tree of Life, the Sky People naturally like cute things, and the burrowing owl's appearance undoubtedly strikes a chord with the Sky People's aesthetic sense.

.........

Klaar, who was dazed by the caressing of the "goddesses", was held in Aze's arms and wandered around the burrowing owls' settlement. Burrowing owls generally live in shallow underground caves dug by themselves, or build simple nests and wooden shelters on the surface with branches that are simply processed and collected by stone tools. Unlike most smaller terrestrial birds on the earth, the burrowing owls on Kaga Kula can reach a body length of 50 to 80 cm in adulthood and weigh more than 4 kg. Also due to their weight, the burrowing owls on Kaga Kula are not good at flying. They are better at running and hunting on the ground like ostriches.

"You mean, the monitor lizards they are referring to are not actually some kind of lizard?" In the temporary research station on the surface, Aze gently stroked Klar who was held in his arms, and asked the elf girl in front of him named Noli who claimed to be a conservator.

"Rather than a lizard, it's more accurate to call it a terrestrial crocodile without a tail. The ocean on Kaga Kula is relatively small, and the entire planet's ecosystem relies more on the rivers, lakes, and underground reservoirs that dot the planet's continents. This creature, called a "monster lizard" in the language of the burrowing owls,

It is actually a land crocodile capable of running at high speeds, but it has no tail."

"In order to adapt to the terrestrial environment, this creature's limbs have become longer, and its back and abdomen are covered with solid black scales. At first glance, it does look like a crocodile. This creature is truly the top predator on this planet. Adult monitor lizards can even grow to eight to fifteen meters in length and weigh more than six to ten tons. You have also seen their habitat. This large predator prefers to live in the woods. The special environment of this planet means that places where dense forests can grow must have very sufficient water sources. Therefore, the burrowing owls have also figured out a set of survival rules. Try not to get close to dense forests or woods. Although there will be sufficient water sources there, those places are often the habitats of top predators like monitor lizards. For burrowing owls, which are less than one meter in size, monitor lizards that can generally grow to more than ten meters and have most of their body surface covered with solid scales are difficult to defeat.

"This unlucky child was almost eaten by a giant lizard when I first saw her."

"Hmm? Lady Goddess?" Hearing the two "Ladies Goddesses" seemed to mention her name in the conversation, Klar, who was dazed by being stroked, shook her feathers and woke up.

"Nothing, just chatting about the first time we met."

"Oh! The first time we met! That time the goddess saved me!!"

"That terrible giant lizard almost bit off my tail, and then the goddess's messenger burned it to death with a divine punishment!!!" Klar seemed quite excited when talking about his first meeting with Noli, the "goddess".

"After that, the goddess sent a messenger to go to the forest with me, and I found a lot of delicious fruits in it!!" Klar said with his bright eyes shining.

"Klar, would you like something delicious?" Noli took out a few bright red fruits that had been modified at the cellular level by a molecular printer from a culture tank on the laboratory table, and handed them to the mouth of Karal who was held by Aze.

"It tastes good, try it."

Klar, who always accepted the food given to her by the goddess, stretched out her head, grabbed the fruit in Nori's hand with her beak and swallowed it into her mouth.

"Mmm! So sweet! So good! So soft"

"I used a molecular printer to increase the sugar content in the fruit cells and also adjusted the fruit's skin. The skin of this fruit was originally very sour and unpalatable."

"Hmm? Thank you, Goddess!" Klar enjoyed the delicious food given to her by the Goddess, and did not forget to express her gratitude to Noli. Before the Goddess came, she and other birds in the tribe could not enjoy such delicious food. They were lucky to eat fruits a few times a year, not to mention that those fruits were often sour and astringent. The really delicious fruits grew in the woods, which were generally the habitats of monitor lizards. Going there to look for food was tantamount to seeking death.

"You're welcome, Kral. Are you interested in learning from us?"

Nori leaned down to meet Klar's eyes.

"Knowledge, is it the magic and miracles of the goddesses?"

In the language of the burrowing owls, which is still in the Paleolithic period, the meaning of the word "knowledge" is still unfamiliar to the burrowing pigeons. Klar understood it as the miracles displayed by the goddess that he could not understand.

"Just like the tools you make from stone and wood, there's a process based on principles and experience. These 'miracles' of ours also have a set of rules and principles. Once you learn them, you can use them too."

"Oh! Really? Can I also conjure up endless fruit and rat meat slices like you? Or release divine punishment like the gods' messengers?"

"Okay, but in your case, maybe you need some external assistance?"

"I do! I do! Goddess! When can you start teaching me?" Klar was so happy that she was a little incoherent.

"Don't worry, you're not the only one. Others can learn it later. Before that, I need to do some preparation."

Nori smiled softly and patted Klar's furry head gently.

.........

"What do you mean by preparations?" Aze had a general idea of ​​Noli's idea, but he was not very clear about the specific process. Obviously, what Noli intended to do was not as simple as enlightening a group of burrowing owls who were still in the Stone Age.

"You should take a look at this first."

"Is this... the complete DNA sequence? Kral's?"

"And this… a scan of Kral's brain, a complete image down to the subatomic level."

"Although it's possible to directly teach them our knowledge based on our current foundation, it's obviously quite difficult to expect them to fully understand many things when they haven't even formed the concept of many of them yet."

"Perhaps we can teach them how to operate complex machinery and electronic equipment, but because they lack the concept of these things, they can only know the results but not the reasons. They know how to operate them but not the principles behind them."

"That's fine in the short term, but in the long term it could easily lead to a kind of religious cult disguised as science, or something similar. And religion can easily become rigid in a civilization like this."

"So, compared to directly teaching them knowledge from almost zero foundation, it would be better to first improve their brain capacity and their ability to learn and understand quickly."

"So that's why you often bring that kid, Clare, here?"

"I conducted a very precise scan of her brain and planned a method to improve her brain's comprehension and learning and memory abilities in a relatively gentle way within a short period of time." Nuo said as he opened a small box beside him, which contained a small capsule.

"This is a nanomachine specially tuned for her to enhance her brain intelligence. My plan is to release the specially tuned nanomachines stored within it into her daily environment, including the air she breathes, the food and water she consumes, and so on. Unconsciously, her brain's intelligence, ability to understand various things, and ability to learn quickly will be rapidly improved."

"And you won't feel anything during the whole process; it's completely natural."

"Your manipulation of the bodies of those little human girls from Earth has greatly inspired me."

"We can also use a similar approach to improve the intelligence and brain size of these lovely birds without them even realizing it."

"Of course, this nanomachine has more than just intelligence enhancement. I've also scanned Klar's entire genetic sequence."

"These nanomachines would repair errors that occur during the self-replication process of their cells and could lead to genetic diseases."

"The natural lifespan of burrowing owls is still too short, only about 50 years. If we want to be suitable for the higher-level civilization I'm planning, we must increase our lifespan without delay."

"Nanomachines will repair and improve their genetic sequences while significantly extending their lifespan."

"I see. So Kral is the first one?"

"Well, it's actually already started. You should have noticed that we seem to be subconsciously getting particularly close to that kid, Clare."

"The food I gave her previously contained a mixture of specially formulated nanomachines. These nanomachines are a modified version of the early nanomachines of the Tree of Life cells. While the von Neumann self-replicators that make up our bodies are more versatile, when it comes to biological modification, the early nanomachines that form the basis of the Tree of Life cells still hold considerable advantages."

"The reason we feel close to Kral is because we subconsciously regard her as a being of the same kind as the life forms in our home planet's biosphere."

"The life forms in our home planet's biosphere are naturally closer to us due to the influence of the Tree of Life. Kral's child is in a similar situation now."

"The burrowing owls are currently at a stage that's neither too early nor too late. At this stage, their civilized society is neither fully formed nor rigid. With proper guidance and adjustments at this stage, we can save them a lot of time."

"If we don't intervene, at the rate the burrowing owls are developing, it will take at least 10000 to 20000 years for them to enter a primitive industrial society and initially master the use of automata. This process will likely be extremely chaotic and bloody."

"We can shorten this process to less than 100 years, and the whole process will be extremely gentle, at most one to three generations of humans (birds), and they will grow into a true planetary civilization.

"Uh...won't this cause some problems of forcing things to grow?"

"No, if we simply teach them how to use and understand advanced technologies, their brains' learning abilities will prevent them from truly understanding the underlying principles and manufacturing methods. This is why I need to improve their intelligence first."

"What's improved throughout the process is not just their intelligence, but also their ability to understand various things and new concepts."

"You have to understand that in a civilization that hasn't even invented the wheel, it's obviously impossible to quickly comprehend the principles of universal quantum computers and the concepts of carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle stellar proton chain nuclear fusion technology simply through education. Forcing this on them will likely lead them to view a quantum computer or a protium-hydrogen reaction controlled nuclear fusion reactor as some kind of divine miracle, the birth of religious science."