Chapter 397: Collective Hibernation Plan

After reviewing the damage report, Jason immediately stood up and conducted a personal inspection of Deep Space.

Everywhere he looked, facilities were in ruins, with massive sections of armor plating torn away or missing entirely. Beyond the jagged edges of the hull lay the unforgiving vacuum of space.

His on-site inspection revealed a reality far grimmer than he had imagined. If anything, the initial damage report had grossly underestimated the severity of their situation.

The engineering staff would finalize the exact data in a few days, but one thing was already certain: the amount of resources required for repairs would be astronomical.

"Our coolant reserves will run dry within a few years. Relying solely on the ship’s passive cooling arrays will severely throttle our industrial output," Lily noted, standing by his side.

It was just another piece of bad news added to the pile.

Jason stood before a shattered bulkhead, gazing out at the streaks of starlight flashing past. Between him and the infinite void, the structural barriers were practically nonexistent.

Their current predicament mirrored the tragic fate of the Viridians. Stripped of a planetary stronghold and forced into a deep-space exodus, their survival hung by a thread.

"We have to ration whatever resources we have left."

"A thousand light-years away..." Jason muttered, frowning deeply.

The safest and most reliable strategic option was to traverse a thousand light-years to reach the neighboring galactic arm. They could aim for a closer destination, but it would exponentially increase the risk of being intercepted.

The voyage would be unimaginably long, and there was no telling what dangers lurked in the dark. Although the Precursor vault’s resource bays were currently well-stocked, he still felt a profound sense of insecurity.

In fact, during the briefing just hours ago, the senior scientists had collectively proposed a radical, almost crazy contingency plan:

Mass hibernation.

By placing the population in stasis, they could drastically slash resource consumption. If raw materials were scarce, they could simply shut down the artificial coastlines, the massive agricultural sectors, and the biodome forests.

It wouldn’t require the entire population to enter stasis; retaining a skeleton crew would be sufficient to maintain the ship’s automated systems. Many of the senior scientists were willing to remain awake for extended periods to continue their research. As for the issue of biological aging, it could be mitigated using the Perfect Element.

When the proposal was first tabled, it was met with unprecedented, fierce opposition. Jason had rejected it outright, without a second thought.

Mass hibernation? It sounded like a twisted joke.

However, as the heated debate dragged on, many officials slowly changed their tune and began to see the logic.

Stasis actually made a lot of sense.

With their current technological tier, constructing stasis pods was not a significant hurdle. Cryopreservation was already a mature medical science, boasting a success rate of 99.99 percent in clinical trials.

The foundational technology for stasis had been inherited from the Nyx Civilization.

The Nyxians possessed a unique native species known as the "frost frog." Thanks to specific biological compounds, these frost frogs could be frozen solid for thousands of years and still successfully thaw out to resume normal biological functions.

The brilliant Nyxian scientists reverse-engineered this biological mechanism to invent the stasis pod, initially using it to treat severe sleep disorders and slow the aging process. Wealthy Nyxian citizens suffering from terminal illnesses frequently relied on stasis tech, hoping to sleep through the centuries until medical science could cure them.

Unfortunately, those wealthy elites never anticipated that their civilization itself had no future. Ultimately, those terminally ill patients simply died in their pods.

Stasis tech was a mandatory prerequisite for long-haul interstellar travel. Federation biologists had been diligently refining the hardware, preparing for exactly this kind of worst-case scenario.

Back in his private office, Jason muttered softly to himself. "If the majority of the population enters stasis, our resource burn rate will drop to a crawl.

And if everyone does it together, it bypasses the major ethical dilemmas. It’s just like going to sleep... only this time, the nap lasts a few centuries."

"Furthermore, total stasis isn’t strictly necessary. We can establish a rotating thaw schedule. People can wake up in shifts to maintain the ship and raise families, which would allow us to steadily grow our population without crashing our life support systems."

They just needed to give the public time to process the idea.

...

Thus, while frantic repair operations were in full swing across the ship, news of the mass stasis proposal leaked out. It dropped like a thermonuclear warhead on the civilian population.

The contingency plan immediately sparked fierce debate.

The concept of prolonged stasis felt alien to many. Some were morbidly curious and eager to try it, while others found the idea deeply unsettling and vehemently opposed it.

Concerns ran rampant about the potential side effects on child development, pregnant women, and long-term neurological health.

Medical experts went on public broadcasts to reassure the populace, with several prominent figures publicly entering stasis to demonstrate its safety. The initiative caused quite a stir, but public order remained largely intact.

In this new era, the citizenry was highly educated and adaptable, but the Federation leadership had yet to officially rubber-stamp the massive undertaking.

Their resource margins weren’t so critically thin that mass stasis was an absolute, immediate necessity. If they tightened their belts, they could theoretically endure the centuries-long voyage awake.

"It just means living standards will plummet," one analyst noted on a broadcast. "R&D will grind to a halt due to rationing. And that’s assuming the hull repairs on Deep Space don’t bankrupt our stockpiles first."

On the flip side, many argued that sleeping through centuries of boring, empty transit sounded like a blessing. The debates raged on across the residential rings.

"After days of continuous acceleration, we are completely cut off from all external telemetry..."

In the Department of Diplomatic Affairs, Peter sighed heavily.

"In five days, we break the light-speed barrier. Then, the ship has to execute a series of emergency drops to alter our vector, re-accelerate, and rinse and repeat before we lock in our final trajectory toward the Sagittarius Arm.

The voyage is estimated to take over three centuries... Assuming we survive this initial evasion phase, it will be nearly impossible for the enemy to track us."

"I never imagined I’d end up migrating to an entirely different galactic arm! It’s surreal."

Peter stared at the black monitor displaying the external optical feeds. Due to relativistic distortion, the starlight had concentrated into two blinding points at the bow and stern, burning like twin suns.

And that view wasn’t going to change for hundreds of years. Nothing was going to happen, aside from the occasional star streaking past the periphery.

He sighed again. "Once the initial adrenaline wears off, it’s just mind-numbingly boring. Is this what deep-space exploration is really like? It’s not romantic in the slightest. It’s just endless, empty darkness... The universe is simply too big. The transit times are agonizing."

Sitting directly across from him, Cole was enthusiastically mashing buttons on a console, playing the newly released tactical sim, Federation vs. Annihilators.

Capitalizing on recent events, the game had been rushed through development in a mere three days and was already a massive hit across the ship’s networks.

Hearing Peter’s gripes, Cole replied without looking up from his screen, "Honestly, you’re overthinking it. Stasis pods are the standard operating procedure for interstellar travel. It’s literally just a really long nap.

I don’t get why everyone is making such a big deal out of it. The real issue is that our warp drives just aren’t fast enough."

Peter shook his head. "It’s easy for you to say, but sleeping away centuries of history is a hard pill to swallow. I mean, sure, if the entire population goes under together, it prevents massive generational gaps and seniority issues... but still. Hundreds of years. It’s unnerving."

You’re too young to understand, Cole thought to himself. He kept his mouth shut, not wanting to spark another pointless argument with Peter.

"Speaking of which," Peter asked, changing the subject, "what else do you actually know about the Perfect Element? We know it alters biology, making people smarter, stronger, and extending their lifespans. But what else is it good for?"

"If that’s all it does, it doesn’t seem that spectacular. Lifespans naturally increase as medical tech advances anyway, so it shouldn’t be considered some priceless artifact, right? I mean, it’s basically a standard public health benefit for us now..."

"And as for the intelligence boost... don’t neural implants do the same thing? A neural chip is way more effective at processing data than the Perfect Element, right?

Sure, you can stack the two, but still... Does the Perfect Element have some hidden, astronomical value we don’t know about?"

Cole paused his game and finally looked up, his expression serious.

"Yes. Beyond those basic biological buffs, it serves as a highly coveted currency among advanced empires.

It commands an astronomical price on the high-tier galactic markets... But as to what the higher-tier empires actually use it for? I honestly have no idea."