The Fifth Interface: the Lonely Medical Record of Galactic Civilization

When the brain waves of twenty-three newborn babies cry simultaneously under the fifth-generation brain-computer interface. Humanity finally understood the last heartbeat brought back from deep space by Voyager 1, which set off in 1977. It was not a greeting from an alien civilization, but a medical record for help. The "decoder" of the alien civilization appears in the form of a mathematical baby, showing how a civilization that has been cut off from emotions for 300,000 years is on the verge of exhaustion of meaning. They diagnosed a common problem among most galactic civilizations: loneliness. The only medicine on the prescription is the emotional ability that humans on earth have not yet extinguished. Because humans have been hybrids from the beginning, the genetic descendants of the Decoder Civilization Feelers. But the healing attempt triggered the universe's "Gardener's Protocol." Seventy-two hours later, the two incomplete civilizations must complete an interstellar empathy exchange and teach each other how to feel in a collective dream. The losers will become specimens of eternal perfection, while the winners will transform into unprecedented civilizations. As the stars swirled in the eyes of three-year-old girl Lin Wange, seven billion people around the world closed their eyes. This time, human beings are not trying to conquer the stars, but are trying to use their softest parts to suture the deepest wounds in the universe. Completeness is not perfection, but tolerance of imperfection.