by <unknown>
There were also water pump installations inside the underwater tunnel. This meant that if the situation deemed necessary, the seawater could be drawn out of the tunnel as well as the port.
The entrance by the port was certainly not as convenient as the elevator in Eco Science City. However, the opening of the port represented a more secluded retreating option from the Spire Experimental Base.
On the off chance that Chen Chen accidentally slipped tongue in the future or the Spire Experimental Base became exposed and the Eco Science City became surrounded by armies, Chen Chen could still retreat from the underwater passageway.
After all, it was good to have an option to live to fight again another day. One had to be on the lookout for all possible scenarios and prepare the appropriate alternatives. Although Chen Chen believed that he would never fall to such a point, there was nothing wrong with preparing something for himself to fall back on.
Chapter 285: New Movie Selection |
Over the following period, Chen Chen closely monitored the status of the inertial confinement reactor every day.
Fortunately, with Little X managing the operation, the handful of minor hiccups faced during the operation of the reactor were quickly addressed without resulting in any loss.
After half a month had passed, the final modified version of the inertial confinement reactor had been operating without any fault for 168 consecutive hours. It was at that point when Chen Chen decided to connect the reactor to the power system of the Spire.
The next step was to figure out how to miniaturize the reactor since the most suitable use for the inertial confinement reactor was to function as aircraft engines. Using magnetohydrodynamic generation, the plasma engine could be directly driven to produce continuous propelling force.
However, Chen Chen would at least require his very own laser components assembly line to achieve miniaturization. The complexity involved in this operation should be no lesser than that of the lithography machines. Chen Chen would need intricate planning to set his plans into motion.
Meanwhile, the announcement of Project Xingtian during this period had also incited major responses all across the world.
Xingtian was the prosthetic brand which Chen Chen had announced. The goal was to service the disabled members of society via bionic prosthetic technology. Meanwhile, Project Xingtian stretched further into Chen Chen's strategic timeline as the goal of the project was to prepare for the future when humans would be able to partake in prosthetic head operations.
The current advertised bionic prosthetic was merely an approach to test the waters.
The plan was to start by pushing prosthetic limbs to the public to service the disabled. After that, they would gradually shift to products such as bionic organs and bionic spines, slowly and subtly pushing the bottom line of societal acceptance. This was a wiser approach than immediately launching a head switching technology that essentially transformed the entirety of the human body except for the brain to a mechanical counterpart. A technology like this would surely cause a mass uproar.
Therefore, the slow and steady approach was the best.
To be clear, bionic technology was still in its infancy. When implanting a bionic prosthetic into a disabled person, Neuralink company's lace electrode would also have to be implanted into the brain.
This was the latest brain-machine interface technology introduced by Elon Musk in 2019.
It was general knowledge that there were hundreds of millions of neurons in the brain and the connections between neurons constituted a neural network. The signals on the neurons were mainly transmitted through electrical impulse signals. That was to say, these impulse signals reflect our "actions" and "thoughts". In essence, being able to decipher these impulse signals was the equivalent of reading a person's soul.
This was how the brain-machine interface technology came to be.
The lace electrode developed by Neuralink was a multi-point flexible electrode acting as an interface for the brain. It was thinner than a regular strand of hair, measuring just 27.5 microns.
The thinner the implemented electrode, the lesser damage it may pose to the brain. To help implant this sort of electrode into the human brain, Neuralink had specifically invented an operating machine that inserted the electrode into the human cerebral cortex like a sewing machine. The machine was designed to avoid frisking the arteries during the process and allocated a special location for the electrode, which helped with minimizing the risk.
All of the electrodes would be buried deep underneath the skin layer and shift with the brain structure, alleviating any concerns of harming the brain. It was like embedding hundreds of thousands of strands of "hair" inside the brain. Finally, all of the logged impulse signals would be transmitted across these "hairs" to the sensor.
The sensor integrated into the lace electrode technology was quite peculiar as well as the sensor chips were designed to be lodged into the skull. There were two distinct advantages to this design choice. The first being that it was a solution to anchor the electrode and prevent any accidental dislocation. Secondly, performing the digital-to-analog conversion at the closest distance possible helped with reducing noise.
In the end, the designated algorithm within the chip should convert the brain signals of the host to a functional program, allowing the host to effortlessly control his or her body only by channeling "thoughts". This should result in the bionic prosthetic limbs functioning just as nimbly as actual organic limbs.
To buy the rights to use the lace electrode technology developed by Neuralink, Blacklight Biotechnology shelled out a total of one billion U.S. dollars.
Naturally, Chen Chen could easily recoup the losses here with his other sources of income revenue. At the moment, Chen Chen's bionic prosthetics had yet to receive the stamp of approval of the other countries, therefore, the operations for implanting the prosthetics and brain-machine interface could only be conducted in Eco Science City. In spite of that, it had ushered a new crowd to the gates of Eco Science City. Apart from the people who wanted to restore the glory of their youth, there were also disabled members.
The majority of the disabled community spread across the Earth were still observing from a distance.
After all, this was a brand new technology and without the endorsement of their respective countries, they could only wait and observe if there would be any negative feedback or news coming from the first batch of participants.
No matter how unreliable a technology proved to be, there would always be the first batch of lab rats at the end of the day.
Conversely, if the technology was proven to be as reliable as it claimed to be, news of it would spread sooner or later. There was still plenty of time to make a choice by then.
On the other end of things, Mark Dawson had not been able to complete the newly assigned task ever since designing the M-1 model drone.
A more accurate way of putting it would be that the prerequisite of the task created a major deadlock in the operation.
Back then, Chen Chen had hoped that he could manufacture the aircraft seen in Elysium. He specifically raised the issue with Mark Dawson: if he were to provide a sample of the aircraft, would it be possible to simplify its structure and create a replica?
At the time, Mark Dawson had told him: we would need a customized wind tunnel.
With that, Chen Chen promised that he would put together a large, customized wind tunnel for Mark Dawson to proceed with the research.
However, the materials needed for constructing the customized wind tunnel had given Chen Chen a resentful headache. He also lacked the experience of constructing a wind tunnel and had to resort to finding engineering experts from all across the world who were able to build one. The problem was that such treasured talents proved to be extremely difficult to acquire and Chen Chen's search had not yielded any results even till now.
Still, it was no trouble. If he could not find the suitable talents for the job, the worst that could happen was that
the construction of the wind tunnel would take longer, perhaps several years until completion. Chen Chen could afford the wait.
Moreover, Chen Chen had also birthed a new idea over this period – apart from compensating for his lack of maneuverability by using aircraft which eclipsed the current technological stage of the Earth Federation, he still had other options available to him.
For instance… Sci-fi movies that enabled human teleportation.
The Fly, Doom, Terminator, Gantz, and Star Trek.
These were the five movies that immediately came to mind.
In The Fly, the protagonist Brundle Seth had invented a space-time transmission device, which essentially enabled the seamless teleportation of an item from one point to another.
However, when he was experimenting on himself, something had gone terribly wrong. A fly flew into the experimental cabin which caused the gene of the protagonist Brundle and the fly to fuse. In the end, he turned into a gigantic human-sized fly… It was a horror movie.
Doom was adapted from a video game but the plot was different from its video game variation. It was set in the future when humans had migrated to Mars but they were met with a terrible virus exposure. A rescue team was dispatched and teleported over to Mars to help them. This was also a horror movie.
Terminator and Gantz were both similar and were more or less categorized as horror movies as well.
Four out of the five selected movies were horror movies. There were not many options left…
Chapter 286: The Stubbornness of the USB Drive |
Might as well pull the trigger. Chen Chen had Little X downloaded all the movies ahead of time while he quickly headed over to the nuclear power plant.
The total power generation of the Blacklight nuclear power plant was measured at 2 million kilowatts. Half of that had to be sectioned out to power the Eco Science City, so all that remained for his use was a million kilowatt. Since the first inertial confinement reactor built in the Spire Experimental Base was just the first-generation model and still had plenty of technological deficiencies, its total power was only about 200,000 kilowatts.
The energy consumption of the Spire Experimental Base had to be subtracted as well, along with the power requirements to electrolyze water to extract deuterium and tritium fuel from seawater. After factoring in everything, there was not too much remaining electricity available for use.
That was the reason Chen Chen did not move the charging port of the USB drive to the Spire Experimental Base.
Having said that, a fusion reactor spanning across an area less than 1,000 square meters managed to generate total power nearly equivalent to a full-sized thermal power plant nearly five times larger. The sheer cost-performance ratio displayed by the fusion reactor was a symbol of its reputation.
After arriving at the nuclear power plant again and unplugging the USB drive, Chen Chen first sat in front of the computer and silently thought it over.
To be honest, Chen Chen was still somewhat opposed to the idea of acquiring technical information by entering the dimension on the opposite side of the passage.
This was due to each opening of the passage represented a possible risk of exposure to an unknown source of danger.
Even Chen Chen himself could not guarantee whether the looming threat could be brought into reality by his opening of the passage or not.
Besides, there had been a history of interaction between the Ebola virus from reality and the T-virus from Resident Evil. There was also the case of the three statues from reality and the statues from Elysium that had proven a sort of chain effect with reality. These factors alone were enough to dissuade Chen Chen from opening the passage.
Having said that, it was a stretch to say that these factors would dissuade Chen Chen from ever using the USB drive again. That was impossible…
Just like the NZT-48, once you used it, there would be no turning back. Was the USB drive any different from the NZT-48 at its core?
No, they both brought great joy and unending gratification.
"However, if I'm just instantiating, I can probably only use…"
Chen Chen roughly estimated the accumulated energy within the USB drive. The only one which could be instantiated from was probably the black sphere from Gantz.
After all, the black sphere was the smallest of them all. The teleportation devices from movies Terminator, Star Trek or The Fly were extremely large.
A teleportation device like the black sphere was not without its limitations. At one point in the movie, the protagonist was seen using a grappling gun-type weapon known as the Y-gun. The firearm launched a special rope that locked its target in place.
After that, the bound target would be transmitted to the satellite. Sometimes, only a small part of the target will be transmitted. Either way, it accomplished the task of killing the target.
In that case, would it be correct to assume that these people selected by the black sphere to carry out combat tasks were also transmitted to the outside world through these satellites?
If that was true, then merely instantiating one black sphere alone was not going to cut it.
Besides, there was no guarantee of Chen Chen being able to break down the technology of the black sphere even after instantiating it. There was a greater possibility of him only managing to figure it out on a surface level without getting a handle on its fundamentals.
Therefore, Chen Chen still needed complete documentation of the technology.
However, none of the five films - The Fly, Doom, Terminator, Gantz, and Star Trek - contained a scene that showed the general research details of their respective technologies.
If Chen Chen wanted to acquire the technical documentation, his only solution was to enter the movie's dimension.
Chen Chen begrudgingly shook his head at the circumstances. He silently weighed the potential danger he could face in each dimension against each other. In the end, he settled with the movie, The Fly.
Compared to Star Trek and the other movies which were technologically superior that they were almost an otherworldly civilization, it may appear that The Fly was the safest choice considering the only threat in the movie was a Frankenstein product of a fly instead of aliens or robotic armies.
To be fair, this was only the case when put in a side-by-side comparison with the other movies. If faced with a Frankenstein that could threaten the existence of modern human civilization, it would be not much different from having to face aliens or robot armies.
With this in mind, Chen Chen made a copy of the movie The Fly downloaded by Little X and dragged it into the USB drive.
"Ding!"
However, the laptop emitted a notification indicating a program error.
Chen Chen was immediately taken aback upon realizing that The Fly was rejected by the USB drive…
"WTF…"
Chen Chen frowned. Based on his observation, the world-building of The Fly was considerably simpler than most sci-fi movies. The simpler a movie was, the more it should align with the rules of the USB drive and should be more likely to be accepted by the USB drive.
"The only thing in this movie that dealt with scientific theory is the molecular transportation technology. In this case, does this mean…"
Seemingly understanding something, Chen Chen took a breath and made a copy of the movie Star Trek. Without sparing any further consideration, he dragged it into the USB drive.
"Ding!"
The USB drive had rejected Chen Chen yet again.
Chen Chen was certain that this was not a problem of the integrity of the story structure.
Based on Chen Chen's previous attempts, he had concluded that even if a movie was a part of a large series, it could still be recognized by the USB drive. Even if he had only put one portion of the series, it should still be accepted by the USB drive.
Unless it was a TV show, the entire season had to be inserted to be played.
This meant that the world setting of Star Trek was denied by the USB drive.<
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The way Chen Chen saw it, Star Trek perfectly aligned with the common ideals of a sci-fi universe. Its scientific component was more put together than most sci-fi movies. The only plausible reason that it would be rejected by the USB drive was possibly due to its enormous world background.
After all, the filming of the Star Trek series spanned over more or less fifty-years in total, producing over a thousand TV series episodes and more than a dozen movies. Due to its enormous world setting, there must have been some contradiction somewhere along the lines which led to its world setting being rejected by the USB drive.
"It seems that both of these movies are rejected by the USB drive…"
Chen Chen suddenly heard the voice of Little X. "Sir Godfather, we've already confirmed that Terminator and Gantz can both be contained inside the USB drive, so all that's left is the movie Doom. There's no telling if this movie can be accepted by the USB drive."
"I'm pretty sure I can wager the outcome at this point."
Still, Chen Chen moved his hand and dragged Doom into the USB drive, all the while shaking his head dejectedly. The USB drive once again produced an abrupt "ding".
All three movies were rejected.
"How did you figure that out?" Little X asked, somewhat astonished.
"It's pretty obvious at this point that the problem stems from the teleporter."
Chen Chen said while deleting the three rejected movies from the USB drive, "Did you notice? One thing all three movies rejected by the USB drive had in common was that all of their teleporters applied the so-called theory of particle decomposition. This means that a person is positioned on the teleporter platform while an operator toggles the button on the control panel in the control room. What happens after that is the teleporter targets each atom of the person on the platform and uses its transmission carrier to send these particles to the operator's desired location, where the atoms are reorganized accordingly.
"You can see this in Star Trek when Captain Picard and his crewmates dissolve into a scatter of light before reappearing on a distant planet…"