"Krypton is a star." Injustice Batman said startlingly.
Injustice Superman and Shiller were both stunned.
Injustice Batman was staring intently at a chart.
This was the maintenance room they found on this level of the mine. Evidently, at the point in time from the dream, Krypton had not yet been destroyed. All equipment was operating normally, and the instruments monitoring the activities of the Earth's core were accurately reflecting data.
None of the three could understand the Kryptonian script, but Batman understood various kinds of data better than the others.
Under the unchanging laws of the cosmos and given that all are carbon-based life forms, the fundamental sciences among different civilizations are not that different, especially in terms of data. There is basically only a difference in manifestation, the essence of what needs to be monitored does not change.
"What's wrong?" Shiller looked at him and asked.
Injustice Batman stood there in silence for a long time, seemingly accepting some sort of truth. He looked at Shiller and said, "How credible is the dream?"
"The credibility of a shallow dream is relatively high," Shiller explained, "You can understand it as a memory of Hai'er from the past."
Injustice Batman pointed at the instrument diagram in front of him and said, "This is a fusion reaction monitor. The instrument shows that the energy core active underground is a massive high-energy fusion reactor."
"This kind of chart usually only appears in stars. Either Krypton is a star, or it was meant to become one."
Shiller had only a cursory understanding of professional astronomical knowledge, but he could understand what Injustice Batman meant.
It is well known that the biggest difference between stars and planets is that stars have sustained nuclear fusion reactions inside, whereas planets do not.
So, if a planet has a nuclear fusion reaction within, is it still a planet?
Theoretically, this is impossible. The mass required to trigger nuclear fusion is something no planet can achieve.
Take the Solar System as an example, the minimum mass required to trigger nuclear fusion is approximately 7.5% of the Sun's mass. Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has only about 0.1% of the Sun's mass. Let alone Earth, even if you gather thousands or tens of thousands of it together, it would not meet the minimum reaction conditions.
Krypton is much smaller than Earth, where did it get such a large mass for extreme compression to ignite the fusion fire?
If the mass was that large, then the other planets in this star system should not orbit their Sun, but should orbit Krypton instead.
However, Shiller trusts Batman's judgment. He would not speak nonsense when it comes to scientific matters.
"What do you think could cause such a situation?" Shiller asked.
"Human scientists also have a hypothesis," Injustice Batman said, "In theory, gathering about 80 Jupiters and compressing them could artificially create a small red dwarf star."
"But from the current technological level of the human race, this is absolutely impossible to achieve. However, perhaps other civilizations might be capable, who knows."
Shiller started to ponder. He thought, the cosmos is vast and full of wonders. Within the American Comics Universe, there are countless civilizations. Although the DC side's cosmic civilizations are not very famous, the Little Blue People should be capable of it.
The Three Great Empires on the Marvel side definitely have this kind of technology. They even have artificial cosmic colonies; they create a star and then many planets, forming an artificial star system, deploy military forces in it, somewhat like humans reclaiming land from the sea to build islands.
To avoid entropy increase too quickly, their actions are relatively cautious, but in the Star Area nearby, there are quite a few such artificial star systems that are indistinguishable from the outside.
So, could Krypton also be an artificial planet?
More accurately, an artificial star that somehow ended up becoming a planet?
Injustice Batman certainly also considered the "artificial" possibility. He initially thought it could be the work of the Kryptonians—to facilitate matters, they placed a fusion reactor in the core of their mother planet.
But after thinking about it, he found it didn't make sense: if they could build a fusion reactor, why put it at the Earth's core? It's akin to building a house on a bomb.
Though nuclear fusion is said to be safe and non-polluting, it depends on the mass. The thing at the center of the Kryptonian planet is clearly very unsafe.
How to describe its danger? It's probably that if you present this plan on the US President's desk, he wouldn't dare to sign it.
This was evidently beyond the expectations of the three, and it could very well overthrow all their previous guesses about Krypton.
If this matter wasn't done by the Kryptonians themselves, it implies that some civilization created this planet, which also implies that the Kryptonians might not be a naturally evolving race but an artificial race.
Although it is said that God created the entire cosmos, sons and grandsons are still different.
After reaching this conclusion, many of Shiller's doubts were resolved. For example, why the Kryptonians cannot adapt to the radiation of stars in this universe, why their genetic screening technology is so powerful, and why they perished so easily.
Injustice Batman is evidently more proficient in conspiracy theories. From his expression, it's clear he's scripted tens of thousands of science fiction movies in his head.
"Hai'er knows this," Shiller said, "This scene appearing in his dream indicates that he might have been here, seen these things, and someone explained everything to him."
"Joe El." Injustice Batman said, "He probably knows more than we imagined."
"Looks like you know more than I imagined." Barry said, folding his arms, leaning against the lab wall, watching El busy at the workbench.
El was carefully pouring silver liquid into a mold. Without raising his head, he said, "I'm just an ordinary scientist, not a person from the future."
Barry moved to his other side and said, "What's the deal with your council anyway? They give me a feeling..."
"How do you feel?"
"Like I don't want to live." Barry paused, then described more seriously, "It's like an ongoing apocalypse party, with no thought of the future at all."
"Our race inherently has no future," El added after a moment, "but now it's not necessarily the case."
"I want to know what all this is about." Barry said candidly, "If you don't tell me, I won't be able to sleep."
El had no intention of being the Riddler. As he placed the mold into the cooling machine, he said:
"We are not the first generation Kryptonians, but the second. We call ourselves 'Kryptonians,' while the race originally living in this star system called themselves 'Krynians.'"
"At that time, our star system — the Andromeda Galaxy — had many powerful civilizations. We even formed alliances with other strong civilizations in nearby galaxies, becoming the most powerful alliance in the cosmos, known as the Star Alliance."
"The Star Alliance was primarily established to deal with a terrifying and powerful enemy — the Apocalypse Star at the edge of the Milky Way."
"Most member civilizations of the Star Alliance were advanced and strong, like New Genesis Star, Titan Planet, and Krypton."
"But later, a catastrophic disaster occurred. Numerous advanced civilizations gathered in the Milky Way to fight for a certain treasure, leading to an unprecedented war."
"Wars never have real winners. The treasure was shattered, Titan Planet perished, Apocalypse Star and New Genesis Star entered a cold war, and the Star Alliance, led by the Krynians, was severely weakened by this war until it completely split."
"Due to the extreme consumption of various weapons and resources in this great war, a rapid entropy increase erupted in the universe. The energy of dark matter sharply increased, while stellar radiation sharply decreased, causing the Krynians who relied on stellar radiation as a power source to go extinct."
"Did they create you before their extinction?" Barry asked.
"That was their intention, and they probably succeeded."
"What do you mean by probably?"
"Because stellar radiation had decreased too much, they knew their extinction was imminent. So they wanted to create a race unaffected by stellar radiation."
Barry finally understood and said, "But it seems they backfired."
"To be precise, someone interfered. Someone tampered with it," El adjusted the parameters of the cryogenic machine and continued, "At that time, the Krynians had three great families: the El, the Zod, and the Wicks."
"The El family — my family — mainly consisted of scientists, the Zod family mostly had great generals, and the Wicks family were politicians."
"Since the birth of the Kryptonian race, this tradition has been maintained. You should already know about the El and Zod families. The Wicks family is the one that leads the council."
Barry suddenly realized and said, "Could it be that these guys were the ones who meddled?"
El nodded and said, "Yes. But not just them. I suspect they colluded with other advanced civilizations to alter the Kryptonians' genetic data."
"Did they make you fear stellar radiation?"
"Not only that. They ensured that one day we would die from stellar radiation."
Barry continued to ponder along his train of thought.
No wonder when he first mentioned Krypton's destruction, El didn't show much reaction; turns out he already knew.
The destruction of Krypton was not because of some worker uprising, but because their genes were inherently flawed, doomed to perish at that moment.
Then he recalled that El previously mentioned wanting to build robots, but instead of building machines first, they started with artificial intelligence. Now it seems there's a big issue here.
If the Wicks family, which leads the council, is a traitor, then whatever artificial intelligence they create surely wouldn't be anything good.
No wonder El, from the El family, took in Hai'er. They probably intended to use Hai'er against that artificial intelligence and the Wicks family.
Unfortunately, in the end, the Wicks family succeeded, and Krypton was still destroyed.
No, Barry thought, El's calm demeanor suggests that even if he hadn't come, El would have had other plans.
The destruction of Krypton wasn't entirely a bad thing because if the genes were flawed from the start, this batch of Kryptonians couldn't be kept.
But that doesn't mean a new batch of Kryptonians can't be created. As long as the genes that fear stellar radiation are corrected, the new Kryptonians can inherit all the culture and knowledge of the previous generation without any loss.
But at this moment, Barry was more concerned with one question, he asked, "Why didn't Clark die from the genetic issue's outbreak?"
El seemed to have been waiting for this question for a long time. He straightened his posture, adjusted his collar, cleared his throat, and said:
"Because I — the greatest scientist in Kryptonian history, along with my brother, successfully removed the genetic root cause considered 'impossible to remove.' Karl and Kara will be perfect Kryptonians, without any genetic defects!"
"Then what about Zod?"
El's expression immediately fell.
"Which Zod? Could it be Drew Zod? That bastard is still alive?!!"
"He's not dead," Barry replied, then added silently to himself: but he's worse off than dead.