"How could that be possible? I went on that mission only a short time ago!"
Nova shook his head.
"As you very well know, time is relative. APHI and the various delegates of the galactic confederation had guesses long ago on how the origin of our current world came to be. With the help of an important person, they deduced that the blackhole was a collapsed world, and the woman which started all of this was a time-traveling transmigrator."
He held up a hand, stopping Song Jia from opening her mouth.
"I know, I know, stop interrupting me. I'll answer your questions in a while."
Nova clicked his tongue and held up a finger.
"First, how did they deduce it was a time-traveling transmigrator? Simple, because of the knowledge she handed down. It contained some facts which are only exclusive to this galaxy. She existed in the past, so how could she have knowledge of the future?
"As for why we thought she was a transmigrator, it was because she existed in all the histories of the four planets. And in those histories, she seemed to retain her memories, or rather, her knowledge of the future never disappeared.
"In Yueji, she talked about advanced physics developments and artificial intelligence. She even said, quite quoted now in fact, that A.I. systems are very bossy and narcissistic, that's why Yueji never had any dealings with Yujinxiang because of APHI."
Nova held up another finger.
"Third, the other impossibility in this scenario. Transmigrators could go to lower worlds because of astral projection, but they don't warp time that much. At most, because the soul doesn't have much mass and could travel a bit faster than the speed of light, they could go three or four decades past. The time travel we're talking about that you took is not just a matter of decades, but a matter of several millennia."
Song Jia exclaimed, "That's right, several millennia! So what you're saying is impossible."
She abruptly stood up from her seat and looked at him.
"You must have made a mistake in your calculations. This is just impossibility on top of another impossibility. You promised to tell me the truth."
"I am telling you the truth. If you sit back down, I'll tell you more of it. Or did you return back to keeping a blind eye towards everything?"
Song Jia flattened her lips. Without saying anything, she sat back down.
"I know how it sounds. Extreme time-traveling? Most people would scoff and say it's simply a fabled bed time story. I would have scoffed too, except everything seemed to make sense. So I figured out a theory on how a transmigrator could potentially do it.
"Blackholes warp space and time, making it a natural time machine. The problem is, once you go in, you can never go out. But if you fell in and went past the event horizon, you would see light that has been trapped and circulating around this black hole for billions of years. It would seem as if you were watching a motion picture film, detailing the entire history of the black hole, going back to its very origin. [1] And if you went even past that, you'll find a wormhole."
Nova held up his hand again, stopping Song Jia from asking another question.
"This isn't as easy as it sounds, I know. Wormholes are unstable, you'll need negative and positive energy, a special kind of blackhole to even induce a wormhole...various complicated stuff. But see, I have APHI working with me, and the two of us are the most advanced A.I. this galaxy has ever seen." Even while explaining, Nova didn't forget to praise himself. "With the capability of a Type III civilization, is anything impossible for us at this point, if everybody cooperated?
"After we found the transmigrator that we need, and built a special astral pod for her, everything else was easy. We wouldn't even have to worry of her getting trapped inside a blackhole, because blackholes couldn't trap things faster than the speed of light, and fortunately for us, the soul using astral projection is exactly that superluminal thing."
Nova curled the corner of his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his chair backwards.
"I took all responsibility and finally succeeded in creating a special astral pod to take your soul safely in and out of the blackhole. This is why the government allowed a dangerous entity like me to exist and finally gave me the job of overseeing the transmigration department. I'm overwhelmingly excellent."
Song Jia rubbed her forehead. "You're saying that instead of my soul doing only superluminal travel, I also traveled via a blackhole to increase the warpage of space-time even more?"
She paused. "So this is why I'm always isolated alone with my astral pod..."
"You found the blackhole's origin, and you also traveled to the past to various worlds. But time in wormholes are tricky. Imagine that the top of the hill you're standing on is the origin of the blackhole, and you're rolling forward like a ball.
"It would be impossible for you to climb back up, but only steadily roll down. That's why after experiencing Zhao Cheng's world, you can only move consistently forward in time, even if you're still in the past."
Song Jia clutched her aching head. "My brain hurts."
It was like trying to understand the old unsolvable question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Nova shot a mock finger-gun at her.
"My high I.Q. does induce that common side effect towards humans."
Song Jia stopped clutching her head. "Or your low E.Q. just causes other people a headache."
Nova snorted.
"I'd take that insult from anybody else but you."
Song Jia decided to ignore him. The most problematic thing about clueless people was that they didn't even know they were clueless.
"I still have questions, but I'll save them up for later. Zhao...Xu Jinhai might be looking for me."
Nova looked at her. "Are you going to tell him the truth about your real identity?"
Song Jia froze. After a while, she stood up and rubbed her arms.
"He doesn't need to know. In any case, after this mission ends..."
She pursed her lips.
"I'm going to quit my job as a professional transmigrator."
[1] Explanation taken from Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible
A/N:
I know that because of the physics related stuff, it's harder to digest (๑•᎑•๑). But I really love physics, so I couldn't help but incorporate it (along with some modified stuff)~ Jiayou, readers! You can just skip this if it's too much, it doesn't affect the story much ( ᐛ )و