Chen Chen shook his head and cast out all of these thoughts. He would not get ahead of himself.
After all, it was still too early. With Chen Chen’s current level of technology, there was no need to consider the lifespan of a brain for at least two to three hundred years. Now, instead of thinking about countermeasures against the end of brain life, Chen Chen should consider technologies that would continue to extend human life.
In any case, whether it was stem cell technology, nano-repair technology or genetic optimization technology, it was not yet the ultimate technology for extending the lifespan of the human body.
After optimizing his body, Chen Chen still did not leave the substation but continued to wait.
After all, in a sealed room at the center of the substation, there was a passage to another world. On the other side of that passage, there was probably a danger that could destroy human civilization…
However, this time, Chen Chen had to wait much longer.
Three days, five days, seven days…
When an entire week had passed, Chen Chen could barely sit still and was about to send a Black Knight to the other side to check on the situation when a new USB flash drive was finally sent over by X-112.
“Sir Commander, I have an important report.”
As soon as Chen Chen played the video, X-112’s voice quickly sounded. “As you ordered, I named the three sculptures Big Ears, Big Mouth, and Big Eyes, then cut them open…”
As X-112 spoke, what Chen Chen saw were three white, glossy objects.
These were three white, glossy brains.
These three brains were white and moist, with gullies over the surface. A dense network of faint red blood vessels could be seen and the brains were still pulsing rhythmically as if they were still functioning…
“This is what I found after cutting the three sculptures apart.”
X-112 said, “According to my calculations, the volumes of the three brains aren’t the same. The largest one has a volume of 1,350 cubic centimeters and the smallest one has a volume of 1,120 cubic centimeters. This is all in the average range of human brains.
“And this is just one discovery…
“After cell sampling, these three brains are confirmed to be human brains. Plus, the cells are active and high-level neurological thinking signals can even be detected. This proves that they aren’t only alive but they also have the ability to think.
“In addition, I found that among the three brains, the occipital pole and the cortex around the rectangular fissure of Big Eyes are highly developed, the brain’s temporal gyrus of Big Ears is highly developed, and most of the joint frontal cortex of Big Mouth is extremely developed…”
At this point, Chen Chen reflexively pressed pause.
Then, he moved to the beginning of the video and watched it again.
Brains?
Living human brains, at that?
It was weird enough that the three human face sculptures could not be penetrated by X-rays. Now that the sculptures were cut apart, it was found that there were three human brains inside?
This had gone far beyond what Chen Chen had expected.
The video continued to play and X-112 said, “After the three brains were extracted from the sculptures, the internal brain cells began to die rapidly. Even so, their death rate was much slower than that of ordinary human brains.
“After four minutes of hypoxia, normal human brain cells will undergo diffused apoptosis but these three brains have prolonged this period by more than ten times…
“After various sampling tests, I still couldn’t explain this phenomenon. Even when I tried to put the three brains back into the sculptures again, the brains were still dying relentlessly.
“Because I didn’t have enough time, in the end, I couldn’t find a way to keep the three brains alive.
“After the three brains had died, I conducted an anatomical investigation on them and analyzed their DNA. The result was…
“The DNA of these three brains all belonged to the genes of the Gross family. Among them, I couldn’t locate the counterpart for Big Ear’s DNA, but Big Eyes and Big Mouth belonged respectively to Gross’ son, Afederer, and Gross’ grandson, Fedal, of the Gross family.
“If my guess isn’t wrong, this is because when Gross died, Elysium had not yet been established, so his genetic files were not collected. Thus, the brain in Big Ears corresponds to Gross himself.”
“In other words, the brains in the three sculptures correspond to Gross, Gross’ son, and Gross’ grandson?”
Chen Chen murmured as his expression became increasingly solemn.
X-112 went on to narrate, “To verify whether the brains in these three sculptures are really the brains of those three men, I consulted all relevant information in Elysium. However, the answer I received was that, out of the three men from the Gross family, Gross’ son and grandson both lived in Elysium, and both suffered from a strange disease, similar to a migraine.
“According to the Gross family, this peculiar illness was a family disease. Gross suffered from this disease when he was alive and eventually committed suicide by shooting himself through the mouth because he could no longer bear it.
“Before his son and grandson died, the Medpod 3000 technology had been born, but this fully automated medical platform still couldn’t treat the strange disease that plagued the two men.
“Finally, the two killed themselves with a gun in the same way, in 2086 and 2122 respectively. The autopsy results showed no anomalies and the bodies were finally cremated.”
Did they all commit suicide by putting a gun through the mouth?
When he saw this was the method they used, Chen Chen’s heart pounded. Putting a gun through the mouth entailed plugging the muzzle into the mouth, against the upper jaw. Once the shot was fired, the bullet would penetrate the upper jaw and directly destroy the brain.
In that future era when euthanasia was extremely popular, these three people still opted for such a brutal method. Could it be that these three men already knew their brains would be stored in the sculptures before they died?
As he thought of this, Chen Chen could not help but laugh at himself. Although there was some coherence to his thinking, it was too illogical.
If someone had told him that a person’s brain would be packed into a sculpture to live for decades or centuries, anyone with an IQ over 80 would not believe it, let alone someone like Chen Chen.
Plus, if the brains of all three men had been destroyed, where did the three intact brains come from?
Endless thoughts flashed through his mind. Chen Chen continued watching the video.
X-112 continued. “This is the only abnormal data in the Gross family. After the death of Gross’ grandson Fedal, no member of the Gross family suffered from any genetic migraine. I’ve stored all these data in the USB drive. You can look through it at any time.
“At the same time, I controlled an aircraft to explore Earth according to your request, but observed only the same scene as Elysium…”
X-112’s words were accompanied by an image of a vast, white stretch.
This was a mountain of corpses much larger than the one in Elysium.
If the corpse mountain in Elysium was just an ordinary mountain, then this corpse mountain was the Himalayas.
The white bones were endless and they filled the screen. The height exceeded more than a few hundred meters and the vastness even extended to the horizon.
“This is the position on Earth that was closest to Elysium.”
X-112 said, “Because Elysium has a geosynchronous orbit, no matter how the Earth rotates, Elysium is always above the city of Los Angeles. In that catastrophe, humans on Earth were also affected by the three sculptures. From all parts of the world, they marched onward incessantly until they reached Los Angeles.
“Even if they were to die, they wanted to die as close to Elysium as possible…
“Of course, only about five hundred million people ended up in Los Angeles. Most of the tens of billions of people on Earth in the Elysium’s dimension died halfway through their journey.
“This was the scene on Earth in Elysium’s universe.”