Chapter 78: Let History Remember Me!

Under these circumstances at that moment,

the entire Negentropy Research Institute naturally remained very active.

Although it was hard to compare with Qin Yu,

talented people from all fields and disciplines kept showing up inside the whole Negentropy Research Institute.

Or rather, researchers who could enter the Negentropy Research Institute were geniuses themselves.

Naturally, except for projects directly involving Qin Yu,

other projects in the Negentropy Research Institute now and then had some new breakthroughs.

Even if they weren’t as big as Strong Artificial Intelligence or the Carbon-based Chip, which suddenly opened the era’s door,

there were still some amazing ones.

Research Institute 011, now also called the Biology and Life Sciences Institute under the Negentropy Research Institute,

after many years in the ‘Human Enhancement Project’,

made more progress in boosting human healing. Using gene methods,

they achieved effects like ‘regrowing lost limbs’ in new people, though it wasn’t perfect yet—it couldn’t grow back a full arm perfectly, but it worked well for healing finger tips or minor damage to inside body parts.

Although in real use, there were other ways, like growing single organs outside the body.

But it was still a great achievement.

And after the ten-nanometer Carbon-based Chip, the Information Denoising Institute worked hard over the years,

improving both the making process and design to make the Carbon-based Chip smaller and better.

Even though it was just a small step on the same path,

the Carbon-based Chip was the base for the Intelligent Era, so its value was clear.

Also,

the Materials Research Institute worked with the Energy and Power Research Institute

on a new wireless power transmission plan for current power issues.

For wireless power, this solution was a lot better than old wireless ones.

They were still working to make it more practical on a larger scale.

The Geological Research Institute teamed up with the Information Denoising Institute,

trying to bring Strong Artificial Intelligence from the Brain Intelligence Project into thinking about earth movements.

This project was also moving ahead now.

What’s more, the Materials Research Institute itself gave some help in chemical rocket fuel work in recent years.

For the Energy and Power Research Institute,

old issues like tritium growing and recycling in reactors were slowly being fixed.

This was already seen in some huge new fusion reactors built in the year 280.

Even listed alone, each of these was a great success.

Of course,

at that time, all the Energy and Power Research Institute and the whole Negentropy Research Institute

were still focusing most efforts on Helium-3 Fusion.

…

For the study of Helium-3 Fusion.

Under Qin Yu’s lead, the Energy and Power Research Institute had two main goals.

The first, naturally, was getting Helium-3 Fusion to work itself.

The second was making fusion reactors smaller.

Starting with the latter,

if a Helium-3 Fusion Reactor stayed as big as current Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Reactors with their power parts,

taking up space like many stadiums, its uses would be very limited.

At that time, Lunar Base and Space Station still didn’t use Controlled Nuclear Fusion power, and this was why.

Before, when Qin Yu got into energy studies,

he not only wanted to fix energy problems but also boost space travel power through energy.

If Helium-3 Fusion Reactors were still as large or bigger than huge Deuterium-Tritium Fusion ones,

how big would flying machines be to hold them?

Even if they didn’t fly inside air, just moving their energy part to space would be hard.

Then,

there was making Helium-3 Fusion work itself.

Compared to the existing Deuterium-Tritium Fusion,

ignoring control issues, even starting the Helium-3 Fusion was way harder.

Just in reaction heat, Deuterium-Tritium Fusion needed a few tens of millions of degrees to react,

while Helium-3 Fusion needed hundreds of millions or even billions of degrees under similar rules.

For Helium-3 Fusion, not just holding the reaction was hard, but getting it started might even be a problem.

And to hit such tough conditions, a Helium-3 reactor would burn huge amounts of energy.

That meant the self-sustain rate of Helium-3 Fusion reactors might be tricky.

These were the problems Qin Yu and the Energy and Power Research Institute faced at that moment.

Building the current Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Reactors had already shown how hard Helium-3 Fusion would be.

Even achieving easier Deuterium-Tritium Fusion was barely done with today’s tech, and to get the Q-value for self-sustain,

the reactors had to be built huge, leaving no wiggle room.

But Helium-3 Fusion was ten times harder to get going.

That meant past skills from Deuterium-Tritium Fusion were not useful for Helium-3 Fusion.

Right now, the tech itself was too far from reaching Helium-3 Fusion.

Getting more specific, on the reactor control side,

after Strong Artificial Intelligence stepped in,

the control system had little room to improve at that stage.

So, to make Helium-3 Fusion work, Qin Yu leading the Energy and Power Research Institute

would probably focus on two areas: materials and Plasma Turbulence Theory.

The turbulence theory part didn’t need explaining—

the Plasma running inside reactors behaved like ‘fluid.’

If they could understand turbulence better, they could lock down Plasma more tightly from the start.

For materials, it wasn’t about ‘heat-proof materials’;

even the best ones couldn’t handle billions of degrees, as Human Civilization had nothing that strong at that moment.

There existed that kind of material; Human Civilization couldn’t process or use it yet.

The main focus was still on ‘coil materials’.

Regarding the current main structure of the Reactor,

a superconducting material with much better performance might be needed.

This would contain the Plasma better and provide and maintain the reaction conditions.

A better superconducting material could also reduce

the auxiliary equipment built just to keep the coils superconducting in the current Controlled Nuclear Fusion Reactor

and shrink the designs needed for that purpose.

For the past two years,

the Helium-3 Fusion research project led by Qin Yu at the Energy and Power Research Institute

was mainly moving in these two directions too.

The research on turbulence, a classic problem in fluid mechanics,

was primarily Academician Qin Yu’s own responsibility.

Occasionally, the Strong Artificial Intelligence from the Brain Intelligence Project offered some help with computing.

For research on superconducting materials, Academician Qin Yu was involved,

and the Materials Research Institute at the Negentropy Research Institute participated too.

The Strong Artificial Intelligence from the Brain Intelligence Project also helped here,

again, mainly by providing computing power.

Although research in materials often felt like luck,

Qin Yu clearly wasn’t one to rely on luck. He preferred starting from the theory,

from the foundation.

To solve this problem, he used Computational Materials Science,

and using Computational Materials Science consumed a lot of computing resources.

The entire research project for the Helium-3 Fusion Reactor

pushed forward much like Qin Yu’s other projects :

Qin Yu handled the main direction, setting clear research goals for each team.

Then, the Strong Artificial Intelligence provided computing support.

The whole research project advanced this way.

For Qin Yu himself, the overall progress of the Helium-3 Fusion Reactor research certainly wasn’t very fast.

But for the researchers at the Negentropy Research Institute, the project itself was progressing quite quickly.

Even though the biggest problem hadn’t been solved directly, Helium-3 Fusion itself was a huge research project, and many significant problems had already been solved along the way.

…

Meanwhile, in the year 280,

while focused on pushing the Helium-3 Fusion research forward under the leadership of Academician Qin Yu at the Negentropy Research Institute,

the same year, elsewhere,

something was also happening in the North American State of the HCC (Human Coalition).

In the north of the North American State, within a private research institute.

The only Researcher, after finishing another frustrating experiment and staring at the results for a while, walked straight out of the Laboratory.

He didn’t care at all about the danger of the special virus left in the Laboratory.

After only a quick wash, he went directly back to his room.

He picked up a bottle of grain alcohol he’d bought the day before, took a huge gulp straight from the bottle,

then lost all interest in the drink. He just collapsed onto the room’s bed, pulled at his hair, looking pained.

The Researcher himself couldn’t quite name the emotions he felt: frustration, bitterness, anger.

Every time he felt this way,

he thought his grandfather was a bastard, his father Jerome was a bastard,

and he himself was an idiot.

He considered himself a leftover ‘relic’ raised in a traditional family structure.

In this era where Collective Social Rearing was the norm globally,

being middle-aged, actually over a hundred years old, and having a father made him a rarity.

Though, he only had a father.

He was gestated in a Human Reproduction Device and grew up with his father,

just as his father had grown up with his grandfather.

He had never met his grandfather; the man died before the Researcher was even conceived.

But he guessed they were probably much alike.

Sometimes, he felt a bit envious of the kids raised through Collective Social Rearing.

True, they were born owning nothing, with nothing to inherit. But they weren’t born shouldering the burdens of the previous generation either.

He was different. He sometimes suspected he was born only as an extension of his father’s will,

someone to carry the hopes his father himself couldn’t fulfill.

Still,

he didn’t hate his father, not even while his father was still alive.

After all, his father had given him a decent childhood.

His father had cared for him deeply and still worried about him moments before dying.

Otherwise, why would he spend most of his life on research that dragged on and on without results?

Wasn’t it because he still wanted to help his father and grandfather achieve the dream they never could?

But they, three generations, were all failures at this specific task.

Sometimes he even envied his father a little.

In this era where most people lived to a hundred and eighty, dying at eighty?

At least his father hadn’t suffered for so long.

After painfully tossing and turning on the bed for a while,

this Researcher, also grown old himself, got up again.

He changed his clothes, suited up in protective gear, and went back to the Laboratory.

Straining his eyes wide behind his goggles, the Researcher stared intently at the virus sample.

It was a special virus that originated from his grandfather.

Reportedly discovered somewhere on the South American Continent and brought here.

While his grandfather worked at the ReasonTech Research Institute, he had studied this unusual virus constantly.

But even when his grandfather died, there were still no real results.

Right until his death, his grandfather insisted that this unique virus held some profound, deeper mystery.

So, his grandfather trained his father.

His father then took over the study of this special virus, similarly wanting to find the deeper-level mystery that his grandfather had talked about.

His father died from this very virus; during the research, he hadn’t done enough protection, or rather, it was an experiment accident.

Then he just passed away.

After that, this special virus was passed into his own hands.

His luck was much better than his father’s, so he lived until now.

But after continuing the research for so many years, he still hadn’t caught any deeper-level mystery.

Sometimes, he even wondered if it was just an illusion that his grandfather had gone mad from a lifetime of failure.

What the hell kind of nonsense mystery was there? This special virus only held enough danger and nothing else!

Now, well, the study of this special virus probably ended with him.

Now that Collective Social Rearing was totally widespread, he would never have children of his own.

Of course, even if it wasn’t fully widespread, he still wouldn’t want kids.

This thing spanning over two hundred years had a historical weight that was far too heavy, heavy to the point of feeling suffocating!

Now, staring at the sample of this special virus, this Researcher, who was also growing old, had eyes starting to redden.

He truly felt deeply unwilling.

Or rather, he refused to accept it—refused to accept that most of his life was spent wasting time on studying this special virus!

Without this historical burden that came from his father, he could have lived the life he wanted.

Even if he hadn’t been so gifted in research, at least it wouldn’t have been this painful.

Had the study of this special virus just ended like that?

Then what had his long life, his father’s life, and his grandfather’s life even been?

It felt like a joke.

Over two hundred years.

For generations—grandfather, father, and son—they had done this research with the idea of making history.

But in the end, all that time amounted to nothing.

This Researcher, who was also a bit old now, almost wanted to laugh at this moment.

What had he himself done in most of his life?

What had his father done in his whole life?

In over two hundred years, through history, they hadn’t even made a ripple.

And they had carefully cherished this special virus, passing it down through three generations.

Now it just ended.

Beyond themselves, no one would ever know what had happened in all those years.

Over two hundred years, nearly three hundred years of silent costs.

Just what were they doing?

Right now, more than himself, he seemed to think more of his father.

His father had also said things like:

When you, or your next generation, crack its mystery, the past story will become an epic.

He also said he believed this special virus truly held some deeper-level mystery.

This equally aged Researcher,

picturing that, let out another laugh.

Finally, the smile slowly faded.

He and his father and grandfather—three generations—had given over two hundred years, such a huge cost, yet with almost no gain.

He wasn’t willing to just hand over this special virus.

Nor was he willing to let it simply vanish right here.

If… when his life was about to end,

at the very least, he should make the whole world remember what happened in those past two hundred years.

At the very least, not let those two hundred, nearly three hundred years feel like a joke.