Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 260: Reward and Time to Leave

It looked like the space merchants really weren’t planning anything sinister this time, or at least it seemed to be so from Yao Yuan's, Ren Tao's, and Xiao Niao’s observations.

The space merchants took fifteen days to transfer a large amount of tech information and details about the cosmos to humanity. After that, the big-brained aliens planned to escape using a small spaceship, abandoning their mother ship and other races. This plan was rejected by Yao Yuan because he was afraid the big-brained aliens were secretly planning a self-destructive sequence on the mother ship, which would blow up the humans on it. Who would the seek compensation from them then?

In the fifteen days, all sorts of technological information was categorized by the Academy to detect their authenticity. This was easy for technology from the 4th revolution and below. The Academy truly shone at this task; they only needed 10 minutes to several hours to differentiate the authenticity of the information and categorize it accordingly. The whole Academy from the highest committee leaders to the smallest interns or even science students from Hope University were busy sifting through the information. Basically, all of the 4th revolution information and below it took only three days to compile.

The keys were still the four types of 5th revolution technology.

The first was the warp drive engine. Even though it was only an engine, it involved two 5th revolution technologies. One was the plasmatic energy concentration point that the team led by Ying came across. Since warp drive required a large amount of energy in a particular unit of time, especially when it entered warp drive, the normal electrical power was no longer enough to satisfy the exhaustion. Therefore, it had to rely on a higher-grade plasmatic energy as fuel. Thus, the first 5th revolution technology was about how to convert electricity to plasma and how to store and use plasmatic energy.

The second was the technology of warp drive itself. This included how to build it nad things to look out for, but the thing that angered the scientists the most was that there was no related scientific explanation. Elaborations like the science behind the warp drive, the formulas, and theories were conspicuously missing!

It was like they were given a computer schematic and all the necessary components but weren’t taught how a computer operates, the purpose of individual hardware, and the programming of software! It was preposterous!

After all, warp drive was more than simple FTL navigation. According to Silewei, this particular technological tree involved technology regarding power, space, and basic knowledge about the great cosmos. In other words, if humanity gained the whole technological tree of the space warp technology, it would be as great as pre-20th century human society gaining the theory of relativity or post-20th century human society gaining quantum theory; it would be a giant push to increase the scientific level on the Hope!

The space merchants only gave humanity the manufacturing guide to the space warp and not its details? The Academy was as angry as humanly possible. Therefore, the negotiation team had no choice but to resume the talks with the big-brained aliens. After more threats, promises, and words, the answer was…

The space merchants only knew the manufacturing method, and even that was traded with a large amount of money. The trade happened more than 6,000 years ago, and as for the actual technological tree, they really didn’t have it…

Naturally, the answer couldn’t satisfy the Academy, but the big-brained aliens were out of ideas as well. They even volunteered to sacrifice half of their clansmen for compensation, but Yao Yuan had no use for the group of aliens that were mixed with retards. In the end, mankind accepted the technology begrudgingly. Thankfully, mankind wasn’t like the space merchants; they could draw inference from the space warp technology itself. With enough time, the Academy believed they could fully dissect the space warp technology…

This carried on for eight days, and the next 5th revolution technology was the technology the Barracks was looking for, energy simulation system!

This was technology found after the peak of the 4th revolution and the beginning of the 5th. It used magnetic fields to focus energy to create multiple combination effects.

The Requiem used by the space merchants was an example of this technology in action. In other words, as long as there was a big enough store of energy, all sorts of Gaussian weapons could be formed using the prepared magnetic program layout.

Of course, this technology wasn’t perfect either. Using the same example, while the Requiem had large damage output, it required at least 10 minutes to charge up, and that was through the large energy supply of the space merchants' mother ship. If the Hope wanted to fire a shot from the Requiem, it would need at least several hours to charge.

The last 5th revolution technology was the nanobot technology that repaired the mother ship earlier.

In actuality, this technology should've been situated between 4th and 5th revolutions, so this technology was the most complete technology among all the five given by the space merchants. This technology also had multiple elements. First was the construction of nanobots, including the chips and materials; second was electromagnetic microwave sensing technology, which allowed nanobots to function as long as they were within the microwave range; third was the creation and control of first level AI.

Of all the technologies given by the space merchants, this was the only one that could satisfy mankind. The Academy, especially the scientists studying AI, were overjoyed when they received this information that was absent from the junkyard civilization’s database. If not for the fact that the big-brained aliens were enemies, they would have hugged and kissed them. The scientists were acting like crazies. According to their statements, after a clear and thorough analysis of this information, mankind would welcome a new technological era!

Fifteen days had passed just to sift through all the technological information. After that would be data and info about the cosmos. The amount of information was about 10 times the scientific information. That was how big the data was. When Yao Yuan was assigning people to look over the information one by one, Ren Tao and Xiao Niao approached him with a warning.

"After a deliberation between the both of us, we believe we should leave this area as soon as possible." Ren Tao and Xiao Niao located Yao Yuan, who was in the middle of a meeting with the negotiation group, and told him thusly before the crowd.

The room went into a riot, protesting the two’s proposal. They cited many reasons, like the space merchants still had plenty of valuable ores and they could even work on assimilating some of the alien races into human society, etc…

In other words, no one was in the agreement with the two.

Compared to the group of representatives who almost lost their minds, Yao Yuan asked them calmly after he silenced the room, "What's your reason? Right now we’re going through our spoils of war, so why should we leave now?"

Xiao Niao replied, "Spoils of war? We already have more than enough, don’t we? Almost all the technological and cosmos information has already been transferred over. What else are we missing? Do you think the Hope still needs those minerals when the Hope is already filled to the brim with rare minerals? Unless we add another few layers to the spaceship, where would we put the minerals? The broken alien mother ship? Do we really need that? Assimilation of the space merchant race that could backstab us at any moment? Why would we need that? What haven’t we pillaged from the space merchants yet that is really valuable?"

Yao Yuan frowned and said, "Indeed, we will never assimilate the space merchant races. Since we already know about the Law of Conservation of Life, adding those weakened races into our own will only slow us down. And you’re right, they are, after all, not of human blood. Who knows what they’ll do when faced with the threat of extinction. However, why should we abandon the mother ship? Admittedly, the internal parts are rather old, but it is still a giant ship. Plus, the deterioration is because the aliens didn’t have the ability to create. If we take over the mother ship, we can easily give it a new life.

"After all, the Hope is too small. It might be enough for our current population, but what about fifty years from now? One hundred years? Or even one thousand years? Since we have a ready spaceship, I really don’t mind accepting it. At most we’ll spend a few years to fit it with anti-gravitational systems and…"

Yao Yuan stopped because he too had realized wherein the problem lied. First was the issue with the anti-gravitational systems. It had been mentioned earlier that the Hope was designed in an elongated shape because that was the limit of mankind’s computational capability. To maintain a balance after fitting the anti-gravitational system, there was a limit to the size, length, and width of the spaceship…

Even with the latest 4th revolution computers, it was impossible to calculate accurately the schematics needed to fit the giant mother ship with correctly-placed anti-gravitational systems. In other words, this would be a mother ship without anti-gravitational systems…

Perhaps it could continue to use centrifugal force to maintain its balance. However, that would lead to problem number two. If they needed to warp alongside the mother ship, then they would have to reassign the energy circuits on the mother ship, every single one of them! Or else it wouldn’t be able to support the high amount of energy needed during warp. Furthermore, the mother ship was humongous. The upgrade would take more than a few months…

The limit was time, and mankind couldn’t possibly stay there and idle for a few years.

This was because the space merchants were a conglomerate and had access to a Shelter. Who knew how big the size of the total space merchant conglomerate was? For example, the last civilization the space merchants mentioned trading with was a civilization that was attacking a Shelter, so that meant it was at least in the 5th revolution, right?

Maybe the space merchants would return to seek revenge using warp drive? If humanity stayed there longer, up to few years, maybe they would end up as space dust before they even realized danger was coming their way… Therefore, as Ren Tao and Xiao Niao said, they had to abandon that part of the cosmos as soon as possible!