A Different Doraemon World

"This place is still Earth," Doraemon began, trying to steady his voice. "Based on the previous settings of the time machine, even using the emergency propulsion system, we should have still arrived on Earth. There's no way we could have ended up somewhere else."

"Not necessarily," Karen countered. "You said earlier that most of the time machine's functions went offline. We could very well be somewhere else. Earth 500 years in the future wouldn't look like this!"

Doraemon nodded, acknowledging Karen's argument. He turned to inspect the time machine, carefully examining its components. After a while, he spoke again. "The location is Earth, no mistake. While many functions are offline, the spatial locator still works. The temporal locator, however... has completely failed. So, it's not the location that's off—it's the time. Let me check... the logs are still active. The time we arrived is... 1,000 years later? This is Earth, 1,000 years in the future!"

Kelly tilted her head back to look at the sky, then tapped the strange blue ice beneath her feet. Her voice carried a note of confusion. "1,000 years later? Why does Earth look like this? Where's the Sun? Everything is just blue. There's no light, but somehow we can still see. And what is this blue ice-like material?"

"This area is saturated with intense ionizing radiation," Doraemon explained gravely. "Such radiation usually occurs naturally only on surfaces with extreme temperatures, like the Sun's surface. That's because those environments generate constant natural nuclear explosions, which produce this type of radiation. But this place is covered in layers of ice... meaning the radiation here likely stems from an unprecedented nuclear explosion that happened right here."

"Could it be...?" Kelly and Karen seemed to have figured out the cause. Both humans and robots met their tragic end. Although the four of them had quickly returned to the past when they heard that humanity was about to make a desperate stand against the robots, and did not witness the outcome, since Doraemon had mentioned it so explicitly, the events that followed were not hard to guess. The nuclear weapons arsenal from 500 years later could undoubtedly be much more terrifying, and the result of an all-out explosion causing this outcome was inevitable.

"The aftermath of war…" Nobita murmured, his head bowed, each word heavy with sorrow.

"Humans…" Doraemon sighed, reaching into his pouch to pull out a mini telescope and a medium-sized pink TV screen.

"Huh? What are you doing?" Karen asked, puzzled.

"This is a mini cosmic telescope," Doraemon replied, adjusting the device. "Don't let its size fool you—it has impressive capabilities. Its range, however, is limited to observing within 100 million light-years."

"100 million light-years? That's incredible, considering how small it is!" Karen said, intrigued by the compact telescope.

"What's there to observe here? I think we should focus on returning to 500 years ago and helping everyone evacuate!" Nobita interjected, his discomfort with the desolate surroundings evident. He couldn't shake the feeling that this catastrophe was somehow his fault.

Sensing Nobita's unease, Doraemon tried to reassure him. "Don't worry. I promise we'll bring humanity to safety. But first, I need to observe and document this situation to compile a report later."

Karen approached and patted Nobita on the shoulder. "It's not your fault, Father. Doraemon promised to help us find a new planet, so there's no need to blame yourself."

"Yeah," Kelly chimed in with a smile. "We're curious about what happened here too. A little investigation won't hurt."

Hearing their words, Nobita's eyes glistened with tears. He wiped them away, removing his glasses. "Thank you... Thank you, everyone."

Doraemon gave Nobita a comforting squeeze on the hand before returning to his observations. As he looked through the telescope, his cheerful expression gradually turned grim. He adjusted the telescope several times, but his face only grew more alarmed. Suddenly, he cried out, "THIS CAN'T BE!!!" His whole body trembled as the telescope slipped from his hands, clattering onto the blue ice below.

"What's wrong? What did you see?" the three asked, their voices filled with concern as they turned toward Doraemon.

With trembling hands, Doraemon picked up the mini cosmic telescope and pressed a button on its side. A translucent blue screen appeared, projecting the image he had just seen.

The group gathered around Doraemon, staring intently at the holographic screen. All that could be seen on the display was an empty expanse of blue—nothing but a blank, ocean-colored void.

Nobita furrowed his brow in confusion. "Is this supposed to be the sky? It's just… so blue."

Doraemon took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He pointed at the numbers displayed in the corner of the screen and said, "This is a hundred light-years away into space."

"One hundred light-years!? How is that possible?" Kelly snatched the telescope, frantically adjusting it back and forth, extending the range further.

The numbers on the screen continued to change, but the image remained the same. It was still only that mysterious blue color, varying only in shade but revealing nothing else.

"I… This young lady don't get it. What's happening? It's just blue—blue everywhere. Nothing else. What's happened to the universe? Why has it become like this?" Kelly's voice trembled as she spoke, while Nobita and Karen turned pale with unease.

"Doraemon, this telescope must be broken, right? It's only showing blue…" Nobita swallowed hard as he asked Doraemon.

Doraemon shook his head grimly. Karen and Kelly continued fiddling with the telescope, hoping to discover something. The numbers on the screen climbed higher and higher: 1,000 light-years, 1 million light-years, 100 million light-years… Yet the only change was in the intensity of the blue hue.

"This is so strange. Where are we? I've never seen a universe like this…" Doraemon paced back and forth, arms crossed. Nobita was even more alarmed by Doraemon's words. "Even you, beings of eternity, have never encountered a universe like this before?"

Doraemon nodded. "This mini-telescope can observe up to 100 million light-years. Moreover, it contains data on the 14 universes we've discovered. If this were one of those universes, the telescope would automatically synchronize and display corresponding information."

"Could it be that you miscalculated earlier, or the spatial locator function is broken? Maybe we're somewhere else entirely!" Karen said anxiously, running over.

"Exactly! There's no way we're still on Earth!" Kelly exclaimed, waving the telescope around.

Doraemon sighed and explained, "The spatial locator is working perfectly. I can guarantee that. It operates on the principle of folding space, as I mentioned earlier. In time, it functions the same as in space—it connects point A to point B directly. But because of the time difference, we still had to travel through a section of the time tunnel. Once the location is set, we'll always arrive at the specified point, no matter if that place has moved elsewhere."

"We're still on Earth, but the universe… it's been dyed blue. And there are no other planets nearby. Earth isn't in the solar system anymore… It's drifted away! But how could Earth drift like this? Gravitational forces, the laws of physics… everything's in chaos," Karen groaned, clutching her head.

"Drifted away, or was flung out. And flung very far. We don't know how, but this is the only explanation right now," Doraemon said, taking out a red-covered book. He placed it on the icy ground, where it began to automatically record something. Its pages flipped rapidly, and strange characters appeared on the blank sheets.

Kelly took a deep breath and raised her hand to get everyone's attention. "This young lady have a theory. Doraemon once mentioned something about 'the void.' Maybe this is a point at the farthest edge of it. We've gone beyond countless universes and arrived at an empty point. After all, this doesn't resemble a universe at all. This young lady don't know what other universes are like, but they should at least have the basics: dark matter, planets, galaxies… But here, aside from Earth, there's nothing. Just blue!"

"Empty point … or outer-universe. We, people of Përjetësia once hypothesized about such a place. It's an incredibly distant realm, lying beyond the endless cycle of countless universes. It's a place no one has ever reached. The ultimate limit. What exists there? How vast is it? What does it represent? We don't know. We're not even sure if outer-universe exists. But now…" Doraemon trailed off, sitting down and picking up the book, which had stopped recording. He skimmed through its pages, sighed, and put it away, muttering, "Completely inconclusive. Too little data…"

Everyone stood frozen, dumbstruck. After a long silence, Kelly finally spoke, breaking the tension: "Think about it: inside the human body are countless cells, each forming its own cycle. If, by chance, some microorganisms emerged within one cell, those microorganisms would surely believe that cell to be the entire universe. Then, one day, we cough lightly, and those microorganisms are flung out. If they survive, they might feel as lost and bewildered as we do now."