Chapter 2428: Sonia (V)

This work was mainly done by Senators and naturalized citizen technicians from the Remote Survey Department and agricultural sector, with Fangcaodi trainees handling auxiliary work. Given the Senate's habitual penny-pinching nature, appropriations for "public service projects" with no output like the Natural History Museum were naturally "tight." Organizationally, it currently belonged to the Science Department, but the Science Department hadn't added many positions for it. The entire Natural History Museum had not even ten dedicated staff. The rest were all "temporarily seconded"—from Senators to naturalized citizen employees alike.

Currently the museum director was Dr. Zhong. But Dr. Zhong rarely came to the museum. The actual person in charge was Cui Yunhong from the Remote Survey Department, who headed the preparatory team. As for why Cui Yunhong was selected as this executive director, gossip said it was because the preparatory team had several Senators' maids, hence the choice.

Cui Yunhong didn't mind this. However, he indicated that his specialty was actually geological surveying, and at the Natural History Museum he really didn't have much to contribute.

"We're going to hold a natural history training class at the museum, and your star pupil Sonia will be there too. We're currently very short of field survey personnel. You go there and teach them geology courses—have Sonia teach them classes too," Dr. Zhong said.

So Sonia was currently a museum staff member, a training class student, and also a training class teacher. If not for having a baby at home, she would probably have to report to the museum at 7 AM every day. Even so, her daily quitting time basically had to be delayed past 6 PM.

Sonia looked at her schedule for the coming days: no classes. She breathed a slight sigh of relief. Whether lecturing or attending class, both required large amounts of energy. And it wasn't just at the museum—at home she also had to prepare lessons, review, and preview.

Although learning knowledge was a joyful thing, for someone who had become a mother, it wasn't easy at all. If not for Lin Huanyu and the nursery nanny's help at home, Sonia really didn't know how she could have coped with all this.

New materials had already piled up on her desk. These were all reports needing her review after being organized. Some had missing catalog entries needing re-identification; some had damage requiring her to determine whether they could still be preserved and repaired. If they couldn't be saved, they had to be registered for later re-production.

Sonia quickly flipped through the reports—she could now do simple Chinese reading and understand formatted reports. These reports didn't stump her, and for her there was also an advantage: the professional terms of modern biology's various branches were all spelled in Latin, and she had been familiar with Latin works since childhood.

From the reports, another fifteen taxidermy animal specimens needed her identification.

Sonia sighed. In the years she had been on Hainan Island, she had become very familiar with the local climate conditions. During the more than half-year rainy season, items not carefully stored would all get moldy. Insect damage was even more common. Due to limited storage conditions, many specimens had mold and insect infestation problems. And most couldn't be repaired.

If destruction continued at this rate, Dr. Zhong's "Hainan Island Local Exhibition" would soon become impossible.

According to Dr. Zhong's opinion, the Natural History Museum's exhibitions should first emphasize "local character," so the first permanent exhibition's theme was "Nature of Hainan Island." It would mainly display various specimens of Hainan Island's animals, plants, insects, and minerals. Mounting such an exhibition would be relatively less difficult.

But even following this "local character" approach without pursuing "large and comprehensive," the workload was still considerable. When studying at the Remote Survey Department, Sonia learned that Hainan Island under Australian rule had 256 species of wild birds in 56 families of 19 orders; 68 species of mammals in 24 families of 8 orders. The specimens collected by the Remote Survey Department over these years included only 176 bird species and 40 mammal species. A big gap. As for insects and plants, the gap was even larger.

And among these specimens, large amounts had been damaged. To make up for it required re-collection—which couldn't be done in a day or two.

The Remote Survey Team had currently trained four groups, each led by one or two dedicated Senators, adopting a rotation system. Each team conducted three-month carpet-style surveys of the entire Hainan Island in sections. Sonia had participated twice. Each expedition's return yielded rich harvests, but also generated a certain doubt in her: the Hainan Island Natural Overview Series published by Gaoshan Ridge Publishing House collected in the museum clearly recorded all information about this island. Obviously, a group of very knowledgeable naturalists had already conducted detailed surveys of the island. Why organize another group of people with obviously inferior abilities to re-survey?

Such doubts also arose when she surveyed Jeju Island and Taiwan Island.

She had raised this question to Cui Yunhong and others, but everyone was evasive. Either saying "those are old materials from the past, different from now," or "we need more detailed data."

Her gaze turned to the globe on the desk. This was a gift Lin Hanlong gave her when she first arrived at the Lin household: a globe made from high-grade wood pieces joined and polished, with a world map carefully engraved on it. It was one of her favorite Lingao items. Before this, she had never seen such a detailed and precisely proportioned map. What amazed her most was that this globe marked the coordinates and longitude/latitude of many sea regions.

You must know that sailors worldwide at this time were desperately pondering how to position themselves during navigation. One difficulty in positioning was longitude. Scientists had long been able to determine latitude through astronomical observation, but longitude, lacking reference points, could only be estimated using time. And how to accurately measure local time had always been a difficult problem—simple sundial observations produced very rough data.

The telescope was invented in the early 17th century. In 1609, Galileo began making astronomical telescopes. Through telescopes, he observed the moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and other celestial bodies, and discovered Jupiter's four moons. Through observing Jupiter's moons, Galileo discovered that they orbited Jupiter and measured their orbital periods—this powerfully supported heliocentrism. More importantly, Galileo discovered that Jupiter's moons' motion could serve as a clock in the sky. Moreover, the moons' short orbital periods and four moons to choose from made them ideal standard clocks. When Jupiter and its moons eclipsed each other, different regions on Earth could observe it simultaneously. This could calibrate local time differences between different regions, thereby obtaining longitude differences.

But on a pitching ship, it was very difficult to aim a telescope accurately at Jupiter. And each calculation had to wait until an eclipse occurred for precise timing.

To solve this problem, some people racked their brains trying to develop precise timekeeping devices; others took different approaches, using lunar phases to determine time. But neither approach made much progress in the 17th century. Geographic positioning during navigation was rough and imprecise. As a navigator, adventurer, and naturalist, Sonia was no stranger to this.

She immediately thought of the watch her master had given her. Since the Australians could manufacture precise timekeeping devices, they should also be able to manufacture precise marine chronometers.

However, she immediately discovered a strange phenomenon: on the Australians' globe, the 0-degree meridian was actually in England!

Not only was the 0-degree meridian in England, but a small town was specially marked: Greenwich.

Sonia had English blood and had visited her English grandfather and uncles. But she didn't know this place. From its position, it was within "Greater London." She hadn't heard of any observatory or such there.

On the nautical charts Sonia was familiar with, the 0-degree meridian was marked on El Hierro Island in the Canary Islands.

How deep was the Australians' affection for England, for Greenwich, that they put the 0-degree meridian in such a place?

Sonia knew that among the Senate there were not only European Senators who used English, but every Senator at least knew a little English—of course, their English and her English weren't the same thing. But whether it was the same language, Sonia was still capable of judging.

Next, she discovered even more mysterious things on the globe. Although 17th-century geography already knew the earth's general appearance, many details hadn't yet been filled in. The coastlines of continents and inland mountain ranges, river courses, and headwaters were mostly roughly marked; some were completely unknown. Rivers like the Nile and Amazon were certainly very famous, but the areas through which they flowed, their tributaries, and their sources wouldn't be completely figured out until the 19th century.

But on the Australians' globe, such details were simply too numerous—too numerous for her to imagine they were randomly drawn. Someone must have been there, conducted surveys, to draw them on the map.

Sonia didn't know this globe had already been massively "simplified" by the Truth Office. Even so, the "sanitized" globe still gave her tremendous shock.

From that moment on, Sonia developed intense interest in the Australians, in the Senate. Compared to all her past experiences, they were simply too mysterious.

Sonia's interest in this "sense of mystery" about the Senators grew day by day. What interested her most was: where was "Australia"?

According to the Senators—including Lin Hanlong—the Australian continent was located further south of the Spice Islands. But to reach the Australian continent required passing through a stretch of sea with unpredictable weather and conditions. This voyage couldn't use any navigation methods—one could only drift randomly with the current, trusting to luck.

This explanation came out remarkably consistent from each Senator's mouth, which made Sonia develop a certain doubt. She began collecting and investigating information about Australia. When she felt she had collected enough material and summarized certain suspicious points, she once again raised her doubts to Lin Hanlong. But her usually warm and loving master rarely turned cold. Though he didn't scold her, he said a maxim that made her blood run cold:

"The most merciful thing in this world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

The eerie oppressiveness made Sonia feel intense fear. She immediately understood: although the Senators constantly claimed they came from Australia, they absolutely didn't want anyone to understand that place.

She destroyed her notes and buried her doubts deep in her heart. Whatever Australia's true situation was, prying into the powerful's secrets was very dangerous.

(End of Chapter)