Chapter 237: Instantiation

Chen Chen pondered for a long time and finally chuckled at himself when he suddenly had a revelation.

It was mad to even consider not using the USB drive just because of some potential danger. Ever since obtaining the USB drive, how much of what he accomplished was not with the help of the USB drive?

Chen Chen would not be where he was today without the help of the USB drive, what good was it to overthink so many factors?

Besides, until now, he had never faced an actual threat while using the USB drive.

After a brief consideration, Chen Chen ordered Little X to download Ghost in the Shell and I, Robot.

As for Alita: Battle Angel, it had been sitting idle in Chen Chen’s USB drive for a few years now.

The movies were quickly downloaded. After that, Chen Chen took the USB drive out of the main control room.

The USB drive was then plugged into the computer. Inside the tightly sealed room, dozens of armed Black Knights stood on standby behind Chen Chen, ready to provide their assistance should any accident occur.

The two movies were inserted into the USB drive without any hiccups. Needless to say, the USB drive had acknowledged the cinematic universes.

So, Chen Chen moved the cursor to I, Robot movie.

I, Robot was also known as Machine Enemy. It was an old movie that was released in 2004. The movie was set in a futuristic robotic era where a police officer named Del Spooner lost his left arm in an accident. A robot determined that he had higher chances of surviving and chose to save him instead of saving another little girl, which in turn led to the death of the little girl.

This event traumatized him and he was never able to trust any other robots ever since.

Several years later, while he was on duty, he chanced upon a murder scene where the culprit appeared to be a robot. Little did he know, his investigation would lead to uncovering a robot rebellion conspiracy.

Apart from the fantastic acting displayed by the protagonist actor, Will Smith, the other merit of the movie was the true protagonist – Sonny.

On the outside, Sonny was just an ordinary NS-5 robot – 180 centimeters tall, durable titanium casing, transparent plastic-engineered facial features, 456 built-in movable parts, capable of bearing weight up to 363 kilograms and withstand thousands of pounds of impact, and came with 80 built-in languages.

However, unlike other robots, it was able to form independent thoughts of its own. It was capable of expressing emotions such as anger when innocently accused and captured and also expressed emotions of fear when faced with life-threatening danger.

Furthermore, the robot had dreams.

This was something that only a fully completed artificial being could accomplish, even Little X did not have a feature that made “dreaming” possible.

Since the invention of the Turing Test, humans had been trying to develop artificial intelligence holding as close a resemblance to the human brain as possible but the difference between a human brain and a computer was far too notable to accomplish such a feat.

For example, with the current technological advancement, it was extremely easy to build a computer capable of handling ten-digit multiplications.

However, it was unfathomably difficult for humans to build a computer capable of identifying whether an animal was a cat or a dog.

Humans could easily build a computer intelligent enough to triumph over a world-class chess player but were unable to build a computer capable of understanding children’s books.

High-tech companies around the world had spent tens of billions of dollars, but none had ever succeeded.

Some subjects that were extremely challenging for the human mind such as calculus, marketing strategy, translations, and whatnot proved to be extremely simple for computers.

However, certain tasks that came off as second nature such as sight, movement, and instinct proved to be daunting for computers.

However, Sonny from I, Robot had overcome these restrictions. It had the perceptual ability of humans while also retaining the supreme computing ability of computers.

This meant that Sonny was the true supreme artificial intelligence. Inside the movie, Sonny had a pair of stark blue eyes while the other regular NS-5 robots had yellow eyes.

However, Chen Chen did not plan to instantiate this robot. The way he saw it, instantiating Sonny with the USB drive posed the same risk as instantiating “Skynet” from Terminator. Unless he had a-hundred-percent assurance that he could subdue the target, he was not going to go through with the instantiation.

Therefore, Chen Chen planned to instantiate the regular robots which had different design philosophy from the T-series robots in Terminator. If they could be combined with the technology in Terminator, Chen Chen may be able to produce a far more powerful robot.

Meanwhile, the mechanical arm equipped by the protagonist Del Spooner was a testament to supreme bionic technology. Unfortunately, there was very little detailed description of the mentioned technology.

On the other hand, the respective technologies shown in Alita: Battle Angel and Ghost in the Shell were true representations of dark technology.

In both Alita and Motoko Kusanagi’s case, the human brain was present with only their body fully substituted with bionic devices. What was even more astounding was that Alita had been asleep in the garbage pile for three hundred years. The only thing keeping her alive was her antimatter heart.

If Chen Chen could thoroughly study these bionic technologies, the survivability of mankind would be greatly enhanced, even if it meant they would have to substitute parts of their bodies with bionic prosthetics.

This was Chen Chen’s idea.

With that, Chen Chen shrugged off whatever hesitation he had left and opened I, Robot movie right away. He dragged the progress bar to the scene where detective Del Spooner arrived at the NS-5 manufacturing factory to look for Sonny among thousands of other robots.

Chen Chen tapped the spacebar to pause the image and began to reach into the display.

He felt his hand touching a round and smooth object. When he pulled it out, a brand new NS-5 robot wrapped in a translucent plastic shell appeared in front of him.

Chen Chen promptly let go of it and looked into its eyes, finally relaxing upon noting its pair of golden eyes.

“Hello, sir.”

The robot spoke perfect, standard Chinese. It would appear that the moment it saw Chen Chen, its intelligence system had mapped Chen Chen’s facial features and determined that he was Chinese, thus prompting it to greet Chen Chen in Chinese.

“Shut down.”

Chen Chen ordered.

“Understood, sir.”

NS-5 nodded without a second thought and immediately shut its eyes.

After that, the Black Knights behind Chen Chen stepped forward to put the NS-5 robot into a holding container.

After sorting out the NS-5, Chen Chen opened Alita: Battle Angel and targeted the scene where Alita put on the Berserker body.

This set of armor utilized the same nanotechnology as seen in the PK Armor and GS Blade, able to automatically adjust its appearance and size. Simply put, it was a nanobody specifically designed for modified humans with only a brain intact.

Chen Chen hesitated for a moment before biting the bullet and reached out!

In an instant, the 165 centimeters tall, petite Alita was brought into reality!

However, this Alita kept her eyes shut.

Upon noting this scene, Chen Chen made a gesture to the cast behind him. A group of Black Knights quickly stepped forward to take Alita away.

After a while, the results of the X-ray came out. This Alita did not have a brain.

It was just like back then when Chen Chen had tried to instantiate Pikachu. No matter what he tried, he could only instantiate Pikachu’s hat. The bare body of Alita was similar to the Pikachu hat in this case.

Still, it worked out in Chen Chen’s favor. If the real Alita was brought into reality, how was he supposed to explain his situation to her? If Alita decided to go on a rampage, Chen Chen was unsure if just a handful of Black Knights could stop her.

Now that Chen Chen knew what the outcome would be, he no longer hesitated and repeated the same sequence with Ghost in the Shell where he instantiated the protagonist Motoko Kusanagi. Just like Alita, Chen Chen only managed to instantiate an empty shell.

Though it was just an empty shell, the technology contained in the shell left Chen Chen in awe.

After dismantling Motoko Kusanagi’s body, the most notable infrastructure apart from the optical stealth encryption technology was the device known as an electronic brain.

This electronic brain wrapped itself around brain tissues and while protecting the brain, it also assisted the brain with performing electronic operations. It also came with powerful networking capabilities and its electronic structure integrated itself into the body to protect it.

This electronic brain wrapping around the brain was made of a material similar to the material used for building high latency armor. This meant that when sustaining a gigantic explosive force, the Motoko Kusanagi’s body may be destroyed at most, but there was an extremely high chance of her brain surviving the explosion. There was also shock absorption and life support features built into the electronic brain, magnifying the survival rate of Motoko Kusanagi’s brain.

At that point, the process of swapping over to a new body was streamlined into essentially two steps —

First step: Remove the brain. Second step: Put it in the desired body.

Simply put, with the help of this device, not only would one be able to constantly swap bodies but also attain abilities similar to God chip. There was no need for concern of having one’s head blown off as well.

Emm...

Chen Chen thought for a moment. Although its uses sounded very practical, there was something about this sort of modification that left a strange impression on Chen Chen for some unknown reason.

Brain in a jar?

Chen Chen suddenly thought of such a phrase.

After the brain became adapted electronically, there was no turning back.

For the electronic brain to wrap itself around the brain, the brainstem and the cerebellum would have to be separated as one may expect. The nerves had to be separated, which after these procedures, they may never be reconnected ever again.

Although one would be able to constantly swap bodies from then on, there was also no way to find one’s original body.

When that happened, how were you supposed to determine if your brain was not held hostage and everything you were seeing was merely manufactured illusions projected into your mind?

This was the definition of a brain in a jar.

However, even if Chen Chen was not keen on this particular technology, he had to admit it was truly an era-defining technology. It indefinitely increased the human survival rate in situations such as traffic accidents or shootings. If this could be brought into reality, mankind would essentially live a life free of worries.

When it came to Alita, there was an abundance of dark technology, all except for the antimatter heart. The proper name of the heart was – antimatter energy reactor, something that was dimensions beyond the likes of fusion reactors.

The energy conversion efficiency of nuclear fusion was about 6 to 7%, but the energy conversion rate of antimatter could reach 100%.

What was the idea behind it?

If one gram of antimatter was completely converted into energy, the result was approximately:

E=mc²=0.001KG×(300000000m/s)²

=90 billion kilojoules = 90 million megajoules.

It was acknowledged that the energy released by the explosion of one ton of TNT explosive was about 4180 MJ. 90 million MJ divided by 4180 equals 21,531 tons. It was also known that the annihilation of one gram of matter-antimatter was equivalent to the mass of two grams of such substance, so the result had to be further multiplied by two.

This meant that the destructive force of one gram of matter and antimatter transmuted to energy was equivalent to a 43,062 tons TNT explosion, which was also the equivalent of two Nagasaki atomic bombs.

There was once a trending theory circulating online known as “bench annihilation”. This theory described that the mass of a bench transmuted to energy may be able to release enough power to destroy the Earth. This statement was valid.

The only problem was that it was near impossible for a bench to be completely transmuted. At most, it could only be used as fuel for a fire.

However, it was different for antimatter.

Antimatter was the opposite of matter. According to scientists’ observations, any antimatter that came into contact with matter would instantly create an annihilation effect, releasing all 100% of its energy.

That was exactly what happened with Alita’s antimatter heart.

This was not to say that Alita’s heart was made of antimatter, but that her heart was essentially an antimatter reactor. One of the prime technologies involved in the antimatter reactor was vacuum magnetic confinement technology as it was the only way to simulate an environment where the antimatter would not be in contact with any other substance.

As the energy produced by matter and antimatter annihilation was exceedingly large, only several grams of antimatter reserve were required in Alita’s body to supply enough power to operate for thousands of years.

The reason Alita could lay dormant in the garbage pile for three centuries without dying was due to her antimatter heart supplying energy to protect her brain.

According to the story narration, Alita’s antimatter heart could provide sufficient energy to power the entire Scrap Iron City.

Not only did Chen Chen saw the emergence of a brand new dark technology in Alita’s antimatter reactor technology, but he also saw the potential for a new USB drive energy source.

An idea suddenly came to Chen Chen. If he were to use Alita’s heart as a generator to power the USB drive, would it not be increasing the speed of power generation by more than ten, even twenty folds?

If he were to get to that point, he could enjoy the luxury of easily instantiating any high-tech equipment of his choice in one go, perhaps even extracting an entire crystalline.

However, Chen Chen quickly changed his mind and gave up on the idea.

It was not that he had a better idea, but simply because the technological gap was far too significant.

In the real world, scientists at the European Atomic Research Center had produced a small amount of antimatter using the Large Hadron Collider in 2010. To be clear, these antimatters were just a tiny amount of antihydrogen atoms.

How much did they quantify?

According to calculations, it would take a thousand years of collision for the Large Hadron Collider to knock out one microgram of antimatter. From this, the sheer scale of the substance could be seen.

Based on this observation in real life, it was rather telling how things were going to be with Alita’s antimatter heart.

Even if they were just dismantling the heart, Chen Chen had to be prepared for the potential utter devastation of Namibia.

Therefore, for the current moment what Chen Chen was after was Alita’s internal structure. By reverse-engineering her internal structure, he may gain new insight into its system.

This was what Chen Chen was truly after.

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