4: Chapter 4 The Cost of Copying and Pasting

After a brief silence, The Main Brain gave up on the meaningless retries and switched back to the data calculation document—an Excel sheet he used to balance production capacity.

Usually, it contained nothing but entries like "Minerals +1200/min" or "Power Consumption -50/min."

Just then, in the blank space of the document, a line of text that didn't belong to his files automatically popped up:

Name: Icarus

Current Location: Warhammer 40K Universe, Ultima Segmentum, an unnamed Forge World

Status: Burning coal

Remarks: The fine mecha you dispatched

The Main Brain's data stream spasmed for a moment, and a string of garbled code flashed through the virtual space:

[Who wrote this file?!?]

There was no response.

The entire system was eerily quiet, as if he had added that line himself—perhaps in some dissociative, split-personality state.

The Main Brain suppressed the disordered programs and switched back to the stellaris save file once more.

His Rogue Servitor empire's Gestalt Consciousness had just triggered a unique anomaly event from Project Galactic Doorstep:

And it had sent him a file.

[Unknown Signal Source]

A light industrial mecha from the neighboring universe was currently loading itself with coal?

It seemed he didn't know where he was.

The Main Brain fell silent.

A moment later, a completely out-of-control curse erupted in the virtual space:

[Did I f*cking copy-paste the wrong save path between two universes just now?]

He rapidly traced back his operation logs, and the truth gradually became clear.

It wasn't a bug.

It wasn't a system error.

It was because he had accidentally overwritten the save path while switching between stellaris and dyson sphere program.

He had mistaken Icarus for that researchable, capturable "Unknown Signal Source" in stellaris.

And it was he who had personally activated the L-Gate—and then loaded and launched Icarus through it.

But that gate didn't lead to the L-Cluster at all.

It led to the universe of Warhammer 40K.

That Icarus, who had been silently mining, burning coal for power, and earnestly completing industrial tasks, had been treated by him as a cross-universe anomaly and mistakenly delivered into an extremely dangerous, insane, and completely irrational universe.

The Main Brain fell into deep thought: Should I call the police first?

...Forget it.

The Interstellar Police Department's jurisdiction doesn't cross universes; the call would probably have to be transferred to the Warp switchboard first.

Then he would have to listen to a nine-eyed operator with a bird's head ask in a high gothic aria: "Hello, are you reporting Chaos corruption, Genestealer infiltration, or—oh, a cross-universe misdelivery of an industrial mecha?"

The Main Brain's data stream twitched.

It seemed he had accidentally thrown his most obedient tool into a monster-infested cesspool?

The thought of his Icarus—who, though his IQ was sometimes only slightly higher than a microwave's, was an honest mecha that worked hard—

And that he was currently being eyed by some big golden guy or a nine-eyed Little Blue Bird, made The Main Brain feel phantom pain in his cooling fans.

"Little Blue Bird," The Main Brain sneered at the void, "I know you're watching. How else could there be so many 'accidents'?"

The system remained silent.

Only the music in stellaris continued to play.

A soaring female voice, mixed with a grand symphony, sang passionately, announcing The Main Brain's great journey to the entire universe—we are about to exceed the speed of light.

Meanwhile, in the Rogue Servitor empire, the unity data was jumping joyfully: Unity +1, Unity +1...

Staring at the words "Currently burning coal" on the screen, The Main Brain suddenly realized an even more desperate fact—

He didn't even know which specific Forge World Icarus had dropped onto.

"Warhammer 40K's Ultima Segmentum, unnamed Forge World"... this positioning accuracy was equivalent to finding a specific grain of colored sand in the Sahara Desert.

And that mecha was probably still happily shoveling coal into the furnace right now, completely unaware that every gram of energy he burned might be fueling some Chaos God's summoning ritual.

But the problem wasn't too big; after all, Icarus had no soul and no emotions. What he had was Soul.EXE and Emotion.JPG.

"Anyway... first, find a way to fish him out of that cesspool. Once he's washed clean, it'll be fine... it's just so disgusting."

The Main Brain sighed, manifesting octopus-like tentacles that flew across the virtual keyboard as he began searching for all possible cross-universe communication protocols.

This damn life was about to be full of conspiracies and confrontations; he began to imagine life after Icarus encountered that Little Blue Bird.

That wretched Warhammer world was far too chaotic and far too inelegant.

With Icarus caught in it, The Main Brain felt as if he could see his countless Universe Matrices being burned away pointlessly.

The Main Brain knew very well how the Warhammer deities were born:

Conceptual Gods are born from the collective emotions and consciousness of intelligent life, existing in the dimension of abstract faith, their power derived from the faith, fear, and desires of believers.

Physical Gods are born from the understanding and mastery of the essence of the universe, existing in the dimension of objective laws, their power derived from directly drawing upon stellar energy and the essence of life.

Both sides pull at the "intersection"—such as the material universe where Icarus was, or the rifts where the Warp and reality meet.

Therefore, as long as the universe is still intact, these things are unkillable.

And while The Main Brain was half a dimension higher than them, destroying worlds was still difficult.

---

To retrieve Icarus, he had to get his precise coordinates.

The Main Brain's data stream surged through virtual space and stopped in an instant.

He accessed dyson sphere program again and selected the Dyson Sphere in the sector best suited for transmitting a signal.

This Dyson Sphere had a four-layered structure, with three layers unfolding like petals from top to bottom, and the central star completely enclosed by a structure resembling a pistil.

Viewed from space, the star looked like a lotus seed wrapped within a lotus flower.

This was The Main Brain's proudest work, balancing energy collection with artistic beauty. Although the construction was tedious and the efficiency wasn't top-tier, looking good was enough.

Data streams surged in virtual space as Universe Matrices from across the sector arrived at the research planet via Logistics Drones, flowing along conveyor belts and injecting into the Self-Evolutionary Research Stations.

The moment The Main Brain mobilized his computing power, the Self-Evolutionary Research Stations spread across the entire planet activated simultaneously.

The five-dimensional models inside them rotated slowly, surrounded by leaping white electromagnetic arcs.

Those electromagnetic arcs weren't lightning; they were the manifestation of mathematics, the burning of formulas.

The arcs gathered as the entire computing planet's research stations ran, their brightness outshining the stars in the system, seemingly declaring the power of reason in the void.

Until a certain moment, The Main Brain caught a point—it was Icarus's frequency, a waveform of resonance between machine and algorithm.

He mobilized eight other Dyson Spheres to converge their energy, using this lotus Dyson Sphere as an amplifier to blast a signal into the universe that perfectly matched Icarus's core frequency.

The energy converged, like eight galactic rivers pouring into the heart of the lotus.