In 2125, the deep space jump test ship "New Athens", carrying twenty-six people, crashed into an unexplainable anomaly.
Navigator Lin Xia found that the navigation readings were unnaturally neat - pi was engraved on the frequency spectrum, and the error was so small that it only made sense if it was "written in by someone". Medical officer Bai Wei is pregnant, and the heartbeat of the fetus in her belly is at the same frequency as the entire ship; the medicine she secretly injects makes the readings better and hides the truth deeper. The bionic scales of the ship's hull curled themselves into an infinity symbol; the file of a laboratory accident twenty years ago matched 99.7% Of the genes of engineer Ares; and at the corner of every touchable memory stood the same observer who had never shown up.
When the whole ship finally confirmed that "they never left the solar system", Star Child Σ-01 was born. Oxygen, liquid water, and an unknown welcome signal suddenly appeared outside the cabin.
This is not a voyage, it is a screening that has eliminated civilizations one hundred and thirty-seven times. Human beings are told: The universe is a petri dish, and any local decrease in entropy must be repaid with lives elsewhere. And at the end of the layers of recursion, at the very bottom of the universe, is the cry of a sleeping baby.
"Echoes of the Star Abyss" - the records left by all civilizations that have been promoted and failed are still spreading in the background radiation.
