Big Rip Series

For many billions of years, humans - having conquered the curse of aging - spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction because the universe is dying a protracted yet inevitable death.

The new heart of the Milky Way is a quasar, enclosed by a huge shell. It will provide energy to humankind for a long time. But then one maintenance probe after another disappears. Is someone trying to manipulate the quasar to destroy our galaxy in a giant explosion? Or is it just a few outlaws who are trying to steal some of the quasar's energy for themselves? Kepler and Zhenyi, with the help of some unexpected friends, discover that the stakes are much, much higher. They encounter new and at the same time ancient foes that they never dreamt of in their worst nightmares.

In the 1980s, physicists at a lab in the Soviet Union find traces of strange data in the cosmic background radiation. Because powerful forces in the military believe these findings can be turned into a weapon for use in the cold war, the information gleaned by the physicists is kept under strictest secrecy. The scientists are limited to primitive 1980s technology, but what they find has roots in much, much older times. They finally try an experiment that they hope will win the world over for communism.