My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible - Chapter 592 The Truth About The Unobservable Part Of The Universe

Lucy ran the query against the full array catalog.

The processing took longer than any previous query had. Liam watched the display cycle through comparison layers — biological template matching against 847 billion catalogued life-bearing worlds in the Milky Way alone, then expanding outward through the array’s intergalactic records, cross-referencing carbon-based biochemistry, liquid solvent dependency, specific cellular architecture, atmospheric oxygen-nitrogen balance, photosynthetic mechanisms.

The query finished.

“Humans specifically,” Lucy said. “No. The array has no record of a biological lineage with a genetic and biochemical profile matching Homo sapiens anywhere in the catalogued universe. Earth’s human lineage is unique in the array’s record — not merely rare, but without analog. The array has documented carbon-based bipedal forms on fourteen other worlds, but the underlying biochemistry diverges significantly in every case. The surface similarity is convergent evolution producing similar body plans in similar gravitational and atmospheric environments. The biology underneath is not the same.”

Liam said nothing.

“Flora and vegetation-equivalent organisms,” Lucy continued. “The answer is different.”

She shifted the display. Three points appeared, scattered across a galactic map that had expanded far beyond the Milky Way — two in what the array’s notation labeled as a neighboring galaxy cluster, one further out, in a region the display rendered in the notation for extreme distance.

“Three confirmed occurrences,” Lucy said. “Three worlds, in three separate galaxies, with vegetation biochemistry that matches Earth’s photosynthetic organisms at a compositional level the array classifies as non-coincidental. Not similar. Not analogous. The same fundamental architecture — the same chlorophyll-equivalent pigment structure, the same carbon fixation pathway, the same cellular wall composition — occurring in biological lineages that could not have shared an ancestor given the distances involved.”

Liam looked at the three points on the display.

“How far.”

“The closest is approximately 2.3 billion light years from Earth, in a galaxy the array catalogs in a region of the universe approximately 8 billion years older than the region containing the Milky Way.” Lucy highlighted the entry. “The second is 4.1 billion light years. The third is 11.7 billion light years, in one of the oldest regions of the catalogued universe — a galactic cluster the array’s records show has been stable for approximately 9 billion years.”

“What are the worlds like.”

Lucy pulled the planetary data for each. The display organized into three parallel entries.

“All three share the same basic planetary configuration as Earth. Rocky, terrestrial. Mass within 15 percent of Earth’s mass in each case. Liquid water present on the surface. Oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere within a composition range that would be breathable by Earth’s biological standards. Orbital position within the habitable zone of a G-type or K-type star.” She paused. “The array notes that the probability of this specific configuration occurring three times independently, at distances that preclude any shared biological history, in regions of the universe separated by billions of light years and billions of years of developmental time, is not calculable under any standard statistical model the array applies.”

“It flags it.”

“It flags all three as anomalous correlation events. The array’s language for this classification is imprecise in translation — the closest rendering is something between a question it cannot answer and a pattern it cannot explain.” Lucy paused. “The array has been operational for longer than the Earth has existed. It has catalogued more worlds than any civilization in the Milky Way has visited. It does not use the anomalous correlation classification often. I found eleven other uses of it in the entire record.”

Liam looked at the three points. Two billion light years. Four billion. Eleven billion.

The same leaves. The same cellular walls. The same mechanism for turning light into energy, repeated in three places so distant from each other that the universe between them was older than anything in this region of space had time to become.

“The eleven other anomalous correlations,” he said. “What are they.”

“I can render them. They are distributed across categories — physical constants, stellar formation patterns, several in the biological record. None of the eleven involve biological material. The three flora matches are the only biological anomalous correlations in the array’s full catalog.” She paused. “Which makes them the rarest category of observation in a record that spans the observable universe.”

Liam was quiet for a long moment.

“Does the array have any inference,” he said. “Any hypothesis recorded for why this exists.”

“The array records the observations. It does not speculate on causes.” Lucy looked at him. “It is a monitoring system. It watches and catalogs. What the observations mean is not a question it was built to answer.”

Liam looked at the three points on the display for another moment. Then at the eleven other correlations the array had flagged across its full record of the observable universe.

“One last thing, Lucy. See if you can find out anything on the unobservable part of the universe,” he said.

Lucy nodded, closed the current catalogues and started searching through the Array Core’s database for information related to the unobservable part of the universe or parts of the universe where light hasn’t reached yet.

Results populated the holographic screens almost immediately but when she glanced at them, they weren’t what she had expected.

“What the?” She muttered in shock, as her body shivered.

“What’s wrong, Lucy?” Liam asked in concern, then he looked at the massive volume of information on the holographic display.

His eyes narrowed as something caught his eyes, and he read through it slowly. As he read, a frown formed on his face and it became deeper, the more he read.

The array’s survey data for the unobservable regions came in two distinct periods. Before and after.

The before records were ordinary. Dense galactic clusters, civilizational catalogs running into the hundreds of millions across the surveyed regions, resource maps, developmental tier classifications.

The regions beyond the observable boundary were older than the Milky Way by several trillion to quadrillion years and the civilizations there reflected that age, with more of them at higher tiers, more infrastructure, more of the accumulated complexity that billions of years of development produced.

The after records began at a specific timestamp and it corresponded to the period the array’s catalog called the universal war.

The war had ended hundreds of billions of years ago. The array’s survey of the affected regions had begun after that — not immediately after, but in the astronomical sense of after, which meant the survey footage Liam was looking at showed not a crime scene but something worse.

It showed what permanent looked like.

Hundreds of billions of years had passed since the destruction. Nothing had recovered. Nothing had grown back. What the array’s sensors had found when they turned toward those regions was not wreckage in the sense of something recently broken.

It was the settled, final state of spaces that had once contained billions of years of accumulated civilizational development and now contained nothing, and had contained nothing for longer than the Earth had existed, and would contain nothing for longer than anything in the Milky Way had time to become.

Lucy rendered the survey footage the array had captured when it turned its sensors toward those regions in the aftermath.