Chapter 100: Chapter 100: The Resonance of Memory

The representatives from the Caldwell Empire sat in stunned silence, completely caught off guard by Seraphina Cole’s solitary, cutting interrogation. In truth, when they prepared to enter this project negotiation, every contingency plan they had devised regarding potential disadvantages in the boardroom revolved around the commercial viability of the game: its true market value, its development potential, the leverage within the contract clauses, and profit margins. However, not a single one of them had anticipated that they would hit a wall at the very first hurdle – the artistic design itself.

It could be said that from the very beginning, when they first laid eyes on the hologram presented by Julian Sterling – the very same sequence he had privately shown to Ethan Caldwell – everyone had been compelled to applaud in genuine admiration. From an economic standpoint, games centered on interstellar themes were not absent from the market, yet a product that achieved such a seamless unification of technical prowess and visual fidelity was truly unprecedented. Furthermore, the depth of development in the visual details and the lore of the storyline was uniquely compelling.

No one had truly imagined that this specific aspect would become the threshold they would trip over the moment negotiations commenced. Glancing across the table, the people from Iris Visuals appeared unnervingly calm, so much so that it gave rise to a collective hallucination among the Caldwell delegates. Did every single person at Iris Visuals possess this heightened sensitivity? could they all perceive these fatal flaws with a mere glance, or was this a coordinated psychological tactic?

Just as they were floundering, unsure of how to navigate this unexpected impasse, the youngest member of the project team – who was also their lead person in charge, and rumored in hushed tones to be the spouse of the CEO – began to clap his hands. The applause was slow, rhythmic, and unhurried.

“Director Cole is not wrong.” Julian Sterling said, his voice cutting through the tension: “If one wishes to develop a full-dive holographic virtual reality game centered on this subject matter, the element of emotion is absolutely indispensable. You all felt the biting cold of the universe, the majestic and awe-inspiring grandeur, yet you sensed it lacked the warm, beating pulse of humanity, did you not?”

The people in the room nodded unconsciously. Julian offered a faint smile and moved toward the electronic control console in the room. Once again, the conference room was swallowed by a murky, impenetrable darkness; not a single ray of light was permitted to exist, and even the projection screen overhead faded into blackness.

The hologram materialized once more.

This time, the image of a black hole manifested in mid-air. However, it was not the brilliant, multi-colored spectacle often romanticized in cinema. Instead, it twisted into a distorted, erratic ring of luminescence, with one side burning with blinding intensity and the other fading into a ghostly dimness due to the Doppler effect. It was dark, terrifying, and… realistic to the point of inducing a primal shudder.

“The light in this universe does not behave with the poetic grace that people often paint upon it. It does not possess the vibrant, saturated colors found in those majestic galaxy photographs.” Julian narrated softly: “It is bent by gravity. It is stretched and torn by time. It is a cruel beauty, stained by the harsh laws of reality.”

“We feel the coldness, we feel the terrifying scale of the cosmos, and we feel a sense of bewilderment before the Centaurian Dynasty. All of it evokes in the viewer a sense of emotional void, a lack of connection, akin to watching a high-budget science fiction documentary. One might click their tongue in appreciation, whispering about how magnificent it looks, only to forget it moments later. But what if…”

Julian’s voice slowed, dropping to a murmur. The black hole in the center of the room seemed to dissolve, sucking the observers into a different time and space. The hologram fragmented, breaking into shards before suddenly zooming in on a microscopic speck of dust. Gradually, those specks materialized into the drifting wreckage of starships floating around the Halo of Centaurus. Inside the torn hulls, there were still meals left half-eaten, diaries abruptly cut off mid-sentence.

The skeletal remains of the spacecraft floated weightlessly, seeming to truly merge with the physical space of the meeting room.

“Touch it.”

The command was whispered, soft yet laced with a seductive magic. The people present could not restrain themselves; they reached out their hands, compelled to touch the miniature wreckage being projected before them. They fully expected the sensation of their hands passing through an illusion, the intangible light of a hologram.

But in that fleeting moment, what they received was not emptiness.

A very faint electrical impulse was triggered, and suddenly, they were all submerged into that world. For a split second, they seemed to physically feel the searing heat of a reactor overloading, to hear the soul-tearing shriek of a disaster siren.

Images flashed horizontally and vertically, flickering in staccato bursts, resembling the cruel joke of death that people often speak of. It is said that before dying, a human has seven seconds to review their entire life. They seemed to hear the cacophony of giggling laughter amidst a bustling Centaurian Galaxy, where people lived together in a golden age of peace. They seemed to see the burning ambition to ascend into the cosmos, the unceasing desire to explore the vast unknown of those strangers. And then, they felt the suffocating despair of seeing an unidentified entity appear on the radar, opening its maw to swallow an entire giant civilization whole.

Resentment, mourning, tragic sorrow, agonizing grief…

In those seven short seconds, it was as if they had truly set foot within the vast Centaurian Dynasty, yet at the same time, it felt as though they knew nothing about it at all.

The hologram abruptly extinguished. Everyone snapped awake as if from a vivid dream; the sensation was like the sudden vertigo of missing a step in one’s sleep, leaving them sitting there, dazed and bewildered for several moments. It was a long time before a senior manager from Iris Visuals finally found his voice: “This is…”

“This is the reason the Caldwell Empire wishes to launch this title in the format of a full-dive holographic virtual reality.” Julian explained calmly: “Aside from the objective of leading the market, it is because we want people to experience these emotions in the most flawless way possible.”

“Just as Ms. Cole stated, the knowledge of human civilization only truly holds value when it can assimilate and synchronize with human emotion. The first hologram you saw represents the initial emotion of the player when they first set foot in this world.”

“Cold, cruel, hollow – bringing only a sense of vastness that instills a primal fear in the human heart. But when they inadvertently touch the wreckage of a spaceship, a small doll buried under layers of cosmic dust, or any artifact fallen from the Centaurian Dynasty, they will momentarily live within that memory.”

“It could be the moment of successfully conquering a new galaxy, or perhaps a moment gathered around a family dinner table. Or it could be the sensation of a throat tightening in suffocation, the utter despair of knowing the enemy is approaching, while one can only watch helplessly as an entire era turns into the dust of time.”

“All of this will be triggered when the player makes contact with the conductive artifacts left behind by the Centaurian Dynasty, activating what we call – Memory Synchronization.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep