by <unknown>
The advantages of this method were that barring situations like confiscation of property or the devastation of the government due to natural disasters, the safety of the items was all but guaranteed.
Just like the saying, the safest spot for hiding was to hide in plain sight. Even if Chen Chen was hunted down by other forces in the future, NZT-48 would never fall into the hands of others.
After all, who would have imagined that the most valuable items within the two boxes of gold bars in the safe box were the silica gel used to hold the gold bars in place?
Chapter 47: Energy Conversion Ratio |
With this, Chen Chen had addressed two of the possible crises.
Of course, things would be more complicated in real life. Chen Chen repeated the second method and deposited the other part of the NZT-48 into a foreign bank.
This was the reason he had Xia Yin apply for a Swiss passport for him.
He had deposited another portion of the NZT-48 into a Swiss bank. Perhaps a day would come in the future where he would need it desperately.
This was his last resort.
After making these preparations, Chen Chen took out the USB drive again. He started thinking about what to instantiate next.
Chen Chen had no lack of money at the moment. He could simply release VR glasses and had enough money to feed him for the next ten years. Perhaps even enough to help him establish a technological empire. Therefore, the feasible option for the next item had to be something that could help him physically.
It would be great if he could acquire some sort of superpower.
Chen Chen thought deeply.
Pretty much everyone had dreamt of having different types of superpowers while growing up, from soaring the sky to traversing the earth. Compared to the gloominess of reality, superpowers were far more exciting.
Hollywood had plenty of movies related to having superpowers such as Butterfly Effect, Jumper, Hancock, and many others.
No matter where Chen Chen looked, the source of the superpowers in these movies was either genetic mutation, granted by chance or simply something inborn.
The sort of invincible superpowers in movies like Marvel and DC were all based on a fictional world. They could not be instantiated by the USB drive.
At last, Chen Chen went back to his initial decision.
Chronicle.
However, the crystalline in Chronicle did not seem particularly small.
Chen Chen suddenly thought of another problem.
What if a lot more energy was required due to the size of the crystalline?
He pulled out a piece of A3 paper from the bookshelf and rapidly jotted down some calculations.
E=MC2.
1 Joule(J) = 0.2388 Calories(C) = 0.278x10^-6(kW.h).
Even though he was unsure of how much energy was required for the USB drive to instantiate objects, he could find out using mathematical formulas.
After writing out the formula, he scribbled out "E = MC2" after giving it further thought.
Chen Chen figured that the mass-energy equation could not be applied to the USB drive. He had previously determined that the USB drive did not directly transmute electrical energy into substance. It merely used the energy to open up a portal.
Chen Chen chewed his pen and instinctively reached for an NZT-48, preparing to put it in his mouth.
Just as he was about to toss it into his mouth, he hesitated.
The effects of NZT-48 had been slowly subsiding since concluding the previous experiment. Due to his NZT immunity, he did not feel the side effects of the drug subsiding.
He only felt a slight hint of fatigue in his brain.
After a bit of consideration, he decided to put the drug back.
Chen Chen realized that even though he had overcome his physical addiction to the drug ever since taking the immunity shot, there was still a mental addiction present.
Not to say that he had to stop using NZT-48, he just felt that his dependency on the drug was an early sign of addiction as well.
What Chen Chen had to do now was to try to combat his mental addiction and rely on his intelligence to solve problems.
After all, the problem he was facing now was not a difficult one. It was just high school level…
Let us begin with the USB drive's conversion rate to reality.
Assuming X was the value of the total energy in the USB drive after the first instantiation, Y would be the accumulated energy in the USB drive after the second instantiation. Y ] combined mass of the immunity shot + VR glasses.
Y = 200(Kw.h) x 24(h) x 90 x 0.85(cosΦ).
The result was Y = 1.32192E12J.
This meant that extracting an item weighing a gram from the USB drive would consume 4,406,400,000 joules worth of energy, which was the equivalent of 1224kW.
Of course, the actual conversion was higher than 1224kW but it should not exceed 2000kW.
After factoring in X, the result was X [ 2.16E12J.
Where did the 2.16E12 joules worth of energy come from? Was it left behind by the previous owner?
If that was the case, what was his or her motive?
Chen Chen fell into deep thought.
Chen Chen was unable to arrive at a conclusion even after thinking about it for a long time. He began to calculate how much energy it would take to instantiate the crystalline from Chronicles.
In the movie, the crystalline seemed to take on a star-shaped form. It consisted of a core main body section surrounded by eight radial cones.
Judging by the size comparison between the people in the movie and the crystalline entity, the main section was an irregularly shaped entity measuring about 1.2 to 1.3 meters in diameter. Nine crystalline particles were protruding on top of it, each of them was close to 0.5 meters long.
The cones surrounding the main body were approximately 1.5 meters to 2 meters long.
Going off of these estimations, the total volume of the crystalline should be somewhere around 3.5 to 4 cubic meters.
Chen Chen counted silently. He quickly became speechless.
He based his calculation around the standard mass of an ordinary crystal which was 2.66g/cm3. Going at his current pace of charging 200,000kWh into the USB drive per day, it would take him forty thousand days to accumulate enough energy to instantiate the crystalline entity.
It would take more than a hundred years…
The corner of Chen Chen's lips twitched slightly.
It looked like he had to settle with instantiating something minor before he figured out a solution to generate more energy.
Chen Chen crumbled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the trash.
What should he instantiate?
Chen Chen suddenly remembered something. He had got to this point with the help of NZT-48, but there was a drug that was even more advanced than NZT-48.
CPH4 from Lucy.
Back then when he made his first selection, he had thought of that as well. However, the director of the movie had mentioned that CPH4 was just something he had made up. Such a substance could not possibly exist in reality.
Besides, the theory in the movie which stated that humans had only unlocked ten percent of their brain potential was debunked as well.
That was the reason Chen Chen had passed on this option initially.
It was worth a shot now.
A pack of CPH4 weighed nearly the same as a pack of NZT-48, it could be instantiated with the energy accumulated over the past few days.
Naturally, Chen Chen was not going to administer the drug to himself directly. Perhaps he could first research the components of the drug and see if it would lead to a new discovery.
First things first, he had to make sure the USB drive could play the movie.
Considering the fact that the logic of the movie was off in the first place, there was a chance the USB drive could not play it, just like the Marvel movies.
Chen Chen went to his room and snapped his fingers. "X, turn on the computer for me and play Luc
y."
"Alright, Dad."
Chen Chen had never watched this movie before. He had only seen a three-minute movie summary of it on Bilibili.
Movie summaries were a new format of short video content that had emerged over the last fifteen years. Movies that were about ninety minutes long were compressed into three to five minutes long videos to briefly go through the plot of the movie.
Chen Chen was going to watch the movie but had lost interest in it after watching the movie summary.
Imagine watching the first part of The Three-Body Problem while having someone sit beside you rambling:
"The wall breaker of Luo Ji is himself!"
"The droplet destroyed the human-space fleet!"
"It ends with the solar system being obliterated by the aliens!" and such…
Of course, the fault did not lie with the movie summary, but Chen Chen was being nosy.
Right now, he had nothing to do and was not under the effect of the drug. Since he had his assistant handling the tasks, why not take the chance to wind down and enjoy a movie?
Little X turned off the lights in the room unprompted. A large sheet of projector screen rolled down from the ceiling. The projector and speakers behind him began to operate…
"A billion years ago, we were granted life…"
"What did we do with it?"
An oceanic blue backdrop was projected onto the screen. A single cell slowly emerged and began to split.
One turned into two. After that, two to four, four to eight…
LUCY!
Chapter 48: The Origin of the USB Drive |
Lucy was not a lengthy movie.
In just 90 minutes, the director had expanded the creativity of the human mind to a limitless boundary.
Even if all of it was just smoke and mirrors.
However, the moment the movie ended, Chen Chen abruptly shot up from the sofa. His eyes were wide open, fixed intently on the screen!
Having undergone the baptism of the USB drive, NZT, VR glasses, and other items that had surpassed natural logic. From a common poor boy to having a net worth in the range of tens of billions, Chen Chen had achieved the impossible. However, at this moment, Chen Chen felt a chilling sensation all over his body.
What he was feeling now stemmed from a scene in the movie —
After the protagonist had absorbed several computers, a tower-shaped black object with its top shaped like the peak of a mountain was constructed. According to the movie, it was a biological computer from the future.
In the end, the humongous computer became condensed into a ball of black substance.
It was a pitch-black USB drive…
At that moment, Chen Chen thought that he was dreaming!
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The professor acted like he was intentionally teasing Chen Chen. He brought the USB drive in front of the frame and fiddled around with it.
There was no mistaking it. It was the USB drive…
Chen Chen looked down at the USB drive on his arm.
It was far longer than a common USB drive, measuring at twelve centimeters long. Painted pitch black, there were no labels on it whatsoever and it looked just like a carbon rod…
It was the exact same thing!
Chen Chen had the USB drive for nearly a year. He was almost inseparable from it the entire time. Every single detail, its surface, and color were carved deep into Chen Chen's mind.
"A billion years ago, we were given life. Now, you know what to do with it."
Said the protagonist at the ending of the movie.
It was as she whispered it into Chen Chen's ears…
Chen Chen suddenly came to his senses!
There was nobody behind him.
Drops of cold sweat poured down from his forehead. Chen Chen sat in place like this for awhile without making the slightest movement.
"Phew!"
After god knew how long, Chen Chen exhaled deeply. It was as if time resumed flowing after remaining stagnant for some time.
He slowly took out an NZT-48 and tossed it in his mouth without hesitation.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
After about three minutes had passed, Chen Chen lifted his head. His pale cheeks had regained their color.
"Very interesting…"
Chen Chen sat up again. He rested his elbow on the sofa armrest and pressed his right hand to his forehead.
Who would have known that such a discovery would come from watching a movie?
Chen Chen took the USB drive and played around with it while deep in thought.
Why did his USB drive appear in the ending of the movie? Could it merely be a coincidence?
Maybe he was looking too much into it. Perhaps some studio executives had watched the movie and recognized the potential so they bought the copyright to make a spinoff.
The strange thing was that the USB drive which he possessed was not ordinary either…
Then came the problem - was the USB drive in the movie the same as the USB drive in his possession?
If so, why was it here?
Or was it that the USB drive was also extracted from the movie itself?
If that was the case, then it explained why the USB drive had so much energy when he had discovered it.
However, why were there four horror films on the USB drive?
Did its previous owner put them in there?
If so, why did the previous owner give it up?
Or maybe there was no previous owner. The USB drive was just delivering some sort of message to the world?
Was there some unknown secret in these four horror films?
Countless thoughts were racing through Chen Chen's mind. He squinted his eyes and suddenly saw a phrase fixed at the ending of the movie.
"I'm everywhere."
'I'm everywhere.'
"No, there's still a place in which you don't exist. Reality…"
Chen Chen mumbled to himself and an idea suddenly came to him.
At the ending of the movie, the protagonist became an all-knowing being but did she notice this particular thing?
"X, let me ask you something," Chen Chen spoke suddenly.
"Ok Dad, ask away," Little X replied.
"You've been living in a virtual network ever since you were born. Let's assume that you don't know about the existence of reality and one day, you suddenly realized that the universe you're in is a manufactured one. There exists a universe beyond the universe you exist in. What would you do?"
"Of course, I'd try to find a way to enter the wider universe," X answered without skipping a beat.
"That so?" Chen Chen was intrigued.
Perhaps the protagonist in the movie had wanted to leave her universe and enter the real world?
No, she had already lost all forms of desire. Unless her entering the real world was just an act of fulfilling her curiosity for the unknown?
However, you had to understand that the universe which you came from and the real world were incompatible. In your universe, the human mind may be expanded a hundred times but that was not the case in reality.
The moment you came to reality from your virtual world, your powers would cease to exist.
Therefore, since your power was no longer present, you would not be able to break through your universe with your power into reality…
This was a question without an answer.
Chen Chen remembered the three questions of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato:
"Who am I? Where do I come from? Where will I go?"
The three questions could be boiled down to one question: What was the meaning of life?
Did this statement not echo the sentiment of the protagonist's statement in the movie?
"A billion years ago, we were given life. Now, you know what to do with it."
The protagonist's words once again rang in Chen Chen's ears.
"Box theory?"
Chen Chen speculated.
The box theory was a sci
entific theory that first made its appearance in the last century. Due to advancement in computation and artificial intelligence slowly incorporating themselves into part of daily life, some creative people came up with a terrifying prediction —
What if one day, computers gained sentience and began to develop a civilization of their own without knowledge of the existence of the real world? From their perspective, everything in their world was products of nature.
Until one day, computer civilization created computers of their own as well. They began experimenting artificial intellectual life on these computers, manipulating and observing artificial life…
This was the famous box theory.
Simply put, a lot of people pessimistically believed that the world in which they existed was not real. Just like the entities in the computer, this world which we live in was a sealed box as well.
Chen Chen held up the USB drive. The two of them silently looked at each other. It was as if the USB drive could sense Chen Chen's gaze as it emitted a dark light.
It was looking back at Chen Chen.
At that moment, Chen Chen finally understood why he could instantiate objects.
It was a key.
It was the key to bringing life from within the box to the outside world.
Chapter 49: Qian Wenhuan |
Of course, this was all just speculations.
Besides, if the USB drive was the key to the reality outside of the box, then why could it not instantiate living beings?
In the past, Chen Chen had tried to instantiate a cockroach from a movie and failed. He thought it was due to insufficient energy.
Chen Chen had also tried to look for signs of microbacteria on newly instantiated objects. No matter what, he could not find any.
Therefore, Chen Chen had two hypotheses:
The portal formed by the USB drive was not able to transport living beings.
There were no living beings in the world connected to the USB drive.
He only had to do one thing to verify if the USB drive was the USB drive from Lucy.
He could check if the USB drive could hold the movie Lucy.
If it could hold the movie Lucy, then it would prove that the USB drive had nothing to do with the movie. Just like how no matter how strong a person was, he was still not able to lift himself by his hair.
