“I used the electron spin resonance method to test the three sculptures again.”
X-112 said, “According to my calculations, they’re just ordinary stone sculptures made of calcium carbonate and silica. But no matter how I used ultrasonic or electromagnetic waves, I couldn’t scan the internal structure of the sculptures. It’s as if their insides are made of lead blocks.
“Since I can’t discern their internal structure, I simply measured when they were engraved and used the radiation-induced effect as a test method to determine their age. At last, I determined that their engraved age was still within the past one year.”
Chen Chen was astounded when he heard this. In this case, did it not mean that these three sculptures could rejuvenate themselves? Were the sculptures alive?
X-112 continued to report. “But the problem is that these three sculptures were discovered underground in 2111 Basin. They have been buried for at least 15 years. However, Elysium only retains 26,280 hours of its surveillance records, which is equivalent to three years. I’ve checked all the monitored records but I can’t find when the three sculptures were buried here, which means that the sculptures have been buried for at least 18 years.”
As he watched the video sent by X-112, Chen Chen displayed a thoughtful look.
These three stone sculptures reminded him of the maxim of the “three wise monkeys”.
The three wise monkeys comprised three monkeys squatting on the ground, one covering his eyes, one covering his mouth, and the third covering his ears.
Legend had it that the three wise monkeys originated from the Analects: “See no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil.” The implicit meaning was “Don’t see what shouldn’t be seen, don’t hear what shouldn’t be heard, and don’t say what shouldn’t be said”.
However, the three sculptures on the screen were different compared to the adorable, innocent appearance of the three wise monkeys.
The three sculptures were much simpler and cruder than the three monkeys in terms of lines and aesthetics.
Nonetheless, it was because they were too primitive and crude, that they induced an eerie sensation. Whether it was the black gaping eyes or that bottomless abyss of a mouth, it provoked the deepest fears of the human heart.
It was just like 2111 Basin. No matter how one looked at it, the demise of the humans in Elysium was related to these three sculptures…
However, Chen Chen could not imagine how these three sculptures accomplished this. Why did they suddenly activate in 2165 and wipe out all of humankind?
What did the Gross family discover and why did they bury them in 2111 Basin?
Chen Chen carefully pondered the information he had already obtained, but the information was still too scarce to allow further deductions.
After thinking for a while, Chen Chen simply took out a recorder and said into the microphone, “X-112, I’ve received your message. Please follow my instructions.
“First, I permit you to use any means to disassemble the three sculptures and also direct destruction if necessary.
“Second, collect all information on the centuries-long history of the Gross family and send it to me.
“Third, command an aircraft to explore Earth and report all the results of the exploration along with the information on the Gross family to me.”
After some thought, Chen Chen added. “Finally, if there’s no progress in the research on the sculptures, give up on Elysium’s dimension and re-transport your program back to the hard disk. The Black Knight will bring it back to reality.”
After saying all this, Chen Chen handed the recorder to the Black Knight beside him.
Next, this recorder would be thrown into the passage by the Black Knight and transmitted to X-112 on the other side.
After doing all this, Chen Chen felt an involuntary weight in his chest.
He had not felt this when he first used the USB drive, but as he used it with increasing frequency, Chen Chen started to feel a growing sense of unease.
True, it seemed that the USB flash drive only recognized films relating to science and technology, and only movies that conformed to the logic of reality could be stored in the USB drive. However, it was because of this rule that the three horror films in the USB drive worried Chen Chen to no end.
This was because no one knew what these three horror films represented…
At first, Chen Chen had thought that as long as these three horror films were not played, there would be no problems, but the film Elysium had completely overturned Chen Chen’s expectations.
At this point, Chen Chen had only opened the portal to three movies —
Chronicle, Resident Evil, and Elysium.
The corresponding universes of the three movies made Chen Chen think of a sinister implication…
This was because the three dimensions he visited had all suffered from the collapse of human civilization…
Resident Evil was fine since it was a movie about the apocalypse in the first place, but what about Chronicle and Elysium?
A coincidence…
Or an inevitability?
Chen Chen narrowed his eyes. Although he did not want to admit it, at this moment, he was already walking on the edge between life and death. Furthermore, this path was unavoidable.
To ascertain whether all of this was just a coincidence or an inevitability, Chen Chen must open more channels and travel to more dimensions to prove all of this.
However, this sort of behavior was extremely dangerous.
Just like the human civilization in the world of Elysium — although the technology had stagnated due to the severe social polarization, it still surpassed reality by more than a century. Even so, this civilization had quietly perished in one ordinary night…
Even a toad would jump twice before it died, yet an entire civilization of a dimension did not even have the chance to cry out.
The cause of their demise was even more absurd. It turned out to be the doing of three sculptures, whose basic principles were still unknown.
Chen Chen had doubts, for the first time, about the worldview he had firmly subscribed to.
“Is there really something beyond science in this world?”
Chen Chen murmured in a low voice. However, he then sneered, popping an NZT-48 pill into his mouth.
All at once, Chen Chen’s mind was steadied and his once-scattered thoughts settled down.
Countless thoughts flashed across his mind. Chen Chen still remembered that Kelvin, a famous physicist who left an indelible mark upon history, once predicted that airplanes heavier than air would never fly. He also thought that X-rays were a senseless cheap trick, and that radio was useless…
Furthermore, Rutherford, who discovered the atomic structure, believed that humans would never be able to create an atomic bomb.
The great philosopher Comte once predicted that science could never determine the composition of stars because, in that era, it was impossible for humans to travel to other planets to perform a survey.
It turned out that within a few years, scientists could prove that the sun was composed of hydrogen by analyzing the spectrum of sunlight and there was no need to fly over there at all…
As another example, Nobel Prize winner Michaelson once said that there was nothing new to be discovered in physics. Subsequently, four years later, quantum mechanics was born and had now become a main discipline of physics, thus illustrating that it was possible for the laws of physics to change.
These examples all proved without exception that it was not religion and theology that limited the development of science, but the arrogance of using what was known to explain the unknown.
Therefore, was it true that the demise of humankind in Elysium’s dimension did not conform to science… Or was it just not in line with contemporary scientific knowledge?
Chen Chen shook his head and stopped thinking about this.
After Chen Chen finished reading the message X-112 had sent from across the channel, he received an update from Little X again.
“Sir Godfather, I’ve sorted out the information you brought back from the Elysium dimension.”
After Little X spoke, a Black Knight came in lugging a stack of A4 papers that was as thick as a Chinese dictionary.
“This is the technical data from Elysium’s dimension?”
Chen Chen took the information and flipped through absentmindedly.
“No, that’s just the table of contents,” Little X answered.
Chen Chen just flipped through it casually, but his eyes suddenly lit up.
As this stack of data included almost every technology that human civilization could ever come up with, he just had to flip to a page to come across a new method to manufacture an alloy called “high-displacement metal”.
This was just a table of contents, so the description of this technology consisted only of a brief explanation.
“An artificial element, with an aluminum isotope as its main component, is used to fill a large number of neutrons in aluminum atoms, which causes the element structure to shift. Because the neutron content is highly imbalanced, it’s extremely insensitive to energy conduction, so it becomes completely impervious to heat energy below 10,000 degrees. Its metallic strength, durability, plasticity, and tensile strength are far better than any alloy, so it’s known as the hardest substance in the solar system.”
Chen Chen’s heart leaped.
Whether it was used as the core of the vacuum chamber in a tokamak or a stellarator or a de Laval nozzle in a rocket, this alloy was simply an excellent material.
Even if it was used as a drill, cutting into diamonds would be as easy as slicing tofu.
This was just one of the technologies.
Chen Chen turned the page again. When he saw the words on the sheet, he immediately stood up with a “whoosh”!
The data on this page stated: “Normal-temperature Superconductor” in large letters!
“A kind of yttrium barium copper oxide prepared through a complex chemical reaction. Its chemical formula is YBCO. Historically, it was the world’s first superconducting material with a temperature above 77K. Later experiments found that, after the material was irradiated by an infrared laser pulse, a superconducting attribute could be induced at room temperature for a few picoseconds. Based on this principle, 30 years later, a research team led by Obvan Cage successfully developed a room-temperature superconductor. In an environment with a normal temperature below 35 degrees Celsius, the new material can maintain a resistivity of less than 10^-18Ωm…”
After reading this, Chen Chen took a deep breath and tamped down the excitement in his heart.
The emergence of superconductors at room temperature was basically like a new industrial revolution and its impact on humankind would be even greater than the first industrial revolution…
Was this the sort of technology they had in Elysium’s dimension? Erm…
Chen Chen casually turned the page again. Although he was mentally prepared, he still felt a surreal giddiness when he saw the next technology.
This was a complete super tokamak reactor!
As expected, this kind of super tokamak reactor made use of high-displacement metals. With the heat resistance of high-displacement metals and the stability of superconductors at room temperature, the nuclear fusion reaction was as simple as it was inevitable.
According to the data, the Q value of this reactor could reach more than 10,000!
After all, nuclear fusion and nuclear fission were still different. In the real world, humans had only achieved control over nuclear fission so far, resulting in the nuclear fission power station. Chen Chen’s Blacklight Nuclear Power Station was one such example.
However, nuclear fission was not perfect. Whether it was the difficulty of process nuclear waste or the scarcity of nuclear fuel, the long-term development of this technology’s potential was limited.
On the other hand, nuclear fusion was different. The energy released by deuterium-tritium fusion was more than 4 times that of uranium nuclear fission of equal mass. Moreover, at the same mass, the molar mass of uranium-235 was 58.75 times that of helium-4. In other words, even with the same amount of mass, the energy released by the two nuclear reactions differed by as much as two to three hundred times!
In addition, unlike uranium fission that produced radioactive waste, nuclear fusion was truly a clean energy source. After all, the level of deuterium in ordinary water was about 150 ppm, so 1 liter of water contained 0.15 grams of deuterium.
According to calculations by scientists, the energy produced by the fusion of 0.01 g of deuterium was equivalent to the energy released by the total combustion of 100 liters of gasoline. This meant that if the deuterium in 1 liter of ordinary water was fully used for fusion, it would release energy equivalent to the complete combustion of 1500 liters of gasoline.
This was the formidable thing about nuclear fusion.
If the emergence of normal-temperature superconductors would change human society just like when humans first used fire, then the successful development of nuclear fusion devices was equivalent to humans leaping to the production of steam engines just after learning to use fire!
The development of controllable nuclear fusion technology represented endless energy. Electricity would be found everywhere like air. There would be no need to pay any electricity bills. Meanwhile, the production of every item in the world could eliminate the once-necessary cost of electricity.
Furthermore, this was just the beginning of the changes in human lives.
On a broader level, the birth of controllable nuclear fusion technology meant that humans were no longer confined to Earth. Humans could use nuclear fusion engines to reach any planet in the solar system they wanted to. It would be just like boarding a cruise ship to travel across the sea. It might take as little as a few days or half a month at most, to arrive at their destination.
Even voyages beyond the Kuiper belt to other nearby star systems would be possible because the nuclear fusion engine could accelerate the spacecraft continuously to the point of subluminal speed.
Moreover, when humans attained subluminal speed, the wondrous transformations in time and space would automatically raise human physics to another level, creating a virtuous circle.
Chen Chen exhaled and slowly flipped the pages close.
It could not be denied that the risks and rewards were directly proportional. Although he had faced dangers that could destroy human civilization, the benefits he reaped had also earned him a lot of money. As long as he could master these technologies, Chen Chen could even lead humanity to infinity and beyond!
Still, Chen Chen had not forgotten that his initial reason for opening the channel into Elysium was for the Medpod 3000, the fully automatic medical platform of Elysium.
According to the information, this platform could treat every illness because of its use of nanotechnology.
It used a very sophisticated nanorobot. By allowing the nanorobot to enter the body and reverse cell damage to repair the human body, human beings could surpass the Hayflick limit and achieve a lifespan of more than three hundred years.
Moreover, this kind of nanorobot even had the ability to build new cells. It would recombine broken cells, thus reusing the waste to produce living cells.
This was practically a miracle.