After more than a day of preparations, the scan finally began.
They had arranged countless protective measures, placing the most powerful bomb beside the coffin and sealing the entire area with a containment field. Without half an hour to unlock it, no one could get out.
Every safety measure they could think of had been put in place.
Abo and the Shipowner both held their breath.
"Then begin the scan." Abo activated his precious prototype.
Three special force fields began measuring minute data within in an array formation.
These incredibly subtle readings would be detected, then processed through algorithms to calculate the shape of the internal microscopic structure.
Soon, the first batch of data was returned.
But when Abo and the Shipowner saw the data, both wore puzzled expressions.
"Is your machine broken?" the Shipowner asked.
"Impossible. We tested it before, didn't we? The prototype accurately saw every possible position of a proton. It can't be a problem with the machine."
"Scan the stone beside it now. Test it," the Shipowner ordered.
"At its current energy consumption, one use costs a month's profit. Shipowner, you should think this through," Abo reminded him.
This thing was still a prototype. Energy consumption had barely been considered; its guiding principle was simply brute force achieving miracles. Miniaturization and energy conservation would only be considered afterward.
At this stage, it merely had to work. Even a fusion reactor inside a large spacecraft would struggle to power it, and the cost was extremely high.
"Now isn't the time to care about costs." The Shipowner was decisive.
So Abo scanned the stone.
Everything was astonishingly precise. They could practically claim to have caught the exact location of an "electron." It was utterly unimaginable. That was the power of this invention, a scanner capable of advancing a