Professor Nicholas stepped resolutely toward the central console. His fingers, which only a moment ago had trembled with parental regret, now moved with cold, professional precision. His face, illuminated by the flicker of the monitors, seemed carved from stone. He no longer hesitated. His fingers swept across the touch panel, stripping away one security protocol after another.

  ?"We are going all the way, Marcus," he threw over his shoulder without looking back. "Disable all limits. Remove the restrictions on the reactor's output power. I want to see the full depth. Nova, switch the IBGM power system to direct consumption from the complex's main reactor. Ignore the overload protocols. Authorization: Kane-Gamma-One-Zero."

  ?"Authorization confirmed," Nova replied coldly.

  ?Marcus stepped toward the central terminal, watching the frantic spikes in power consumption. His voice was focused and dry:

  "Nova, identify the nearest massive object from the current coordinates of star 'Zero.' Establish a vector scale. We need a reference point to stabilize the scanning depth."

  ?"Initiating visualization," Nova clipped.

  ?The light in the laboratory hall faded, displaced by a heavy, crimson glow radiating from the central matrix. Space shattered into billions of pixels, and from this digital storm emerged a Class M Red Dwarf. Its crimson surface seethed, illuminating the dark silhouettes of twenty-five satellite planets drowning in the bloody haze.

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  ?Marcus slowly took a few steps forward. Suddenly, he felt a strange duality: he knew clearly that his feet were standing on the concrete floor of Goldstone, but his eyes and skin screamed otherwise. He saw himself as a phantom floating amidst the crimson hell. He involuntarily shielded his face with his palm—his skin was scorched by an unbearably real heat.

  ?"Why is it so hot, Nova?" he wheezed. "Why do I see myself there, among the prominences, while physically I am here?"

  ?"You are making an assumption," Nova replied calmly. "This is not a mere image on a screen. The IBGM has shifted the system into a state of quantum superposition. You are currently in a state of phantom resonance. Physically, your bodies remain in the laboratory, but visually and sensorially, you are already there, at the other end of the universe. Between these two points, I have deployed a shared wave function. If it would be clearer to you—in a sense, I am acting as a quantum printer of reality. I am not transmitting light; I am replicating the very structure of that point in space right here, within your perception. You feel the heat of the star because the Numenon portal has annihilated the very concept of 'distance.' You are observers who have become part of that which you observe."

  ?A golden thread flashed across the console, crossing out the schematic of the universe.

  ?"I have introduced a new unit of absolute synchronization into the system—the Numenon," Nova proclaimed. "One Numenon equals 0.001 seconds. It is the pure temporal quantum during which the full materialization of the channel occurs. You are standing at the epicenter of materialized infinity. In one Numenon."