Soft Pottery

April 2030, Yucatan Peninsula

Dr. James, Michael's assistant, was tall and thin. Not yet 40, he possessed not only a solid academic foundation but was also an energetic doer.

Only a handful of Acebe Space Technology Company's executives and core technical experts had access to Nikola Tesla's Superluminal Wave Theory after signing confidentiality agreements. Dr. James was one of them.

Michael tasked Dr. James with developing a feasible plan for a Superlight Wave Power Station on Mars.

Building a 90,000-kilometer-high space elevator on Tower Island on Earth's equator, and then doubling its height to create a 180,000-kilometer-tall carbon fiber tube structure, which would serve as the so-called Superlight Wave Power Station, was an undertaking of unimaginable difficulty.

The feasibility plan for the Earth's Tower Island power station was rejected by the head of Plan T before it was even completed.

Later, the plan for a Superlight Wave Power Station on Enceladus, utilizing the abundant ice blocks from the Saturn Ring as a natural support structure, was also forced to a halt.

Acebe Company's ultimate goal was to build a Superlight Wave Power Station on Mars, heating its metallic core to return it to a liquid state, thereby restarting Mars' magnetic field. The aim was to transform Mars into another habitable planet in the Solar System, serving as a "spare tire" for Earth.

If building a Superlight Wave Power Station on Earth was fraught with difficulties, constructing one on Mars was practically an impossible mission.

Michael and his team refused to accept any "impossibilities"! Back when they proposed the reuse of heavy rockets, aerospace experts, while pitying the "layman's" ignorance and arrogance, had shouted, "Absolutely impossible!"

However, the difficulties were indeed very real. Although the 180,000-kilometer-long carbon fiber tubes were massive, they could still potentially be transported to Mars using Acebe Company's large-caliber, reusable rockets for multiple trips.

However, the supporting structures required for the stability of a 180,000-kilometer-high Superlight Wave Power Station would be hundreds or thousands of times the mass and volume of the carbon fiber tubes. Processing them on Earth and then transporting them to Mars would require an unacceptable amount of transport capacity and time.

Michael's external brain, VESSEL, provided the answer: "Source materials locally."

This single sentence awakened Dr. James. He suddenly understood that the supporting structures could be extracted and processed from Martian soil. A new problem arose: although Martian soil contained metals like iron, establishing a metal smelting plant on Mars itself was extremely difficult.

The most critical issue was that even if iron could be smelted and turned into steel, its weight would be too great to construct a 180,000-kilometer-high structure. The raw material for the supporting structures needed to have a certain hardness but not too high a density.

Dr. James found the answer: pottery. Making pottery on Mars to serve as structural components for the Superlight Wave Power Station.

Pottery requires clay. Dr. James obtained Martian soil samples from the Bright Country Space Administration. Due to technical limitations, these samples were taken from within ten centimeters of the Martian surface and did not contain suitable clay components.

Launching a dedicated spacecraft to Mars to retrieve deeper soil samples would be both laborious and time-consuming.

Dr. James conceived of an alternative: finding geological structures on Earth with soil compositions similar to those on Mars. If the deep underground layers in such structures contained suitable clay, then Mars might be the same.

Dr. James narrowed down the potential locations on Earth to two areas with surface soil compositions similar to Mars: one was the sedimentary layer in the lake region of the Great Rift Valley in northern Kenya, and the other was an ancient Maya village in southeastern Yucatan Peninsula.

After compositional analysis, the sedimentary layer in the Great Rift Valley lake region did not match the Martian soil. Dr. James placed his last hope on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Recently, he made an astonishing discovery and eagerly informed Michael. Consequently, Michael Max arrived at the soil excavation site near a Maya village in Mexico.

Dr. James excitedly said, "Michael, the soil beneath your feet is almost identical in composition to the Mars samples. Below these components lies a clay layer. My only concern now is whether the consistency of the surface soil composition means there's also clay in the deeper layers on Mars."

"If it were anywhere else, I wouldn't be so sure, but here in the Yucatan Peninsula, I can guarantee your inference is correct."

Dr. James looked up in surprise and asked, "Why are you so certain it's correct specifically in the Yucatan Peninsula?"

"Don't forget my girlfriend Daphne is an astronomer. She believes that Mars experienced an explosion 65 million years ago, and a massive fragment impacted Earth right here," Michael replied.

"What? I always thought it was an asteroid. So, it was a fragment from a Mars explosion that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and the beginning of the Cenozoic Era."

James marveled, finally understanding why Michael was so confident. If what they were standing on were originally fragments from Mars, it would be strange if its soil composition didn't match.

Dr. James opened a wooden box and carefully took out a piece of pottery. Michael had bought it at a charity auction held by Mandy.

He said mysteriously, "Michael, there's more good news. We discovered that the pottery made by the ancient Maya used a special type of clay that can be fired at low temperatures. While having the same hardness, it's lighter and more resilient, making it very suitable for creating support structures."

"It's the so-called Maya soft pottery. I've heard of it before," Michael said, knowing Irene and Mandy were in a nearby village. "I'll take you to see how the Maya make soft pottery."

Mandy's foundation's first indigenous tribal protection program, "Fossils of Civilization," was located in a Maya tribe in Mexico. The village was nestled deep within the dense forests of a river valley extending from a volcanic crater. Not far away lay the ruins of an ancient Maya city-state, complete with palaces, temples, and pyramids built with massive stones.

Irene and Mandy, mother and daughter, warmly welcomed Michael and his entourage. Mandy said, "Michael, I thought you were only interested in rockets and electric cars. Why are you suddenly so interested in Maya soft pottery?"

Michael smiled without answering, instead taking Dr. James's arm and, led by Mandy, heading to the soft pottery workshop.

Dr. James was surprised to find that the Maya villagers did not use the usual potter's wheel. Instead, they directly rolled the kneaded clay into thin ropes and hand-shaped them into pots. On a nearby cutting board were several mold-like components.

Mandy understood the doctor's confusion and proudly explained, "The clay in this region is of excellent quality – fine, sticky, and highly malleable. It doesn't require a potter's wheel. The Maya have always hand-formed it or used molds for mass production."

Michael and Dr. James exchanged a knowing smile. They both understood this was another piece of good news: the clay deep beneath the Martian surface must also be highly malleable. On Mars, using molds for mass industrial production would undoubtedly be an effective way to reduce labor costs.

Michael suddenly remembered something and curiously asked Irene, "It's normal for Mandy to be in this remote village for her foundation's work, but are you here for a leisure trip with her?"

"Of course not, I'm here for work too. Don't forget, I'm a polymer biologist specializing in life sciences. I'm here to study an ancient crop."

"A crop? Aren't you the world's leading diabetes expert? And as far as I know, the main crop in Maya is corn."

"Yes, corn. In Mexico, specifically on the terraced plateaus in this valley, there's an ancient wild corn that can grow up to 10 meters tall. The ears of corn it produces are twice the size of ordinary corn, with plump kernels."

"My goodness, 10 meters tall? There's such corn?"

Life sciences, diabetes, bio-enzymes extracted from corn starch... Michael began to grasp the purpose of Irene's visit.

A freshly fired ceramic pot on a workbench caught Dr. James's attention. He pointed to it and said to Michael, "Look, the pattern on this pot is exactly the same as the one you bought at the auction."

Michael recalled the patterns on both pots; they were indeed identical. He thought to himself that his purpose in buying the pot was to study its composition; he wasn't interested in and hadn't paid much attention to the pattern on it.

"So you didn't know what this pattern on the pot meant? I thought you bid on it because you liked the image," Mandy said.

Michael scratched his head, looking slightly embarrassed. He carefully held the pot, turning it around to examine the pattern on the surface. It depicted a human figure with lush corn leaves and ears growing from its head. He asked, puzzled:

"Who is this figure, and what does it represent?"

Irene glanced at her daughter Mandy and answered first:

"The Corn God, the most revered deity of the ancient Maya."

&

Collected Poems of Chapter Pressing:

Though small in scale, its meaning is profound. Song, Chen Yuyi

My lifelong unfulfilled desires are all gone. Song, Li Mixun

Heaven has gifted me talent, it should be useful. Yuan, Liu E

Lowly, I am not mud; precious, I am not gold. Song, Shi Weiyi