65 million years ago, New Tethys Ocean, Earth, Tower Island
Brahma and his wife, Vinu, followed Maria and the others to Tower Island on Earth. The Tower Island power station had been completed two years earlier. Its enormous supports soared into the clouds, stretching beyond sight.
The structure, 180,000 kilometers tall, received immense amounts of Superluminal wave energy, which traveled through metal conductors buried deep underground and ran through the Earth's crust.
The Indo-Australian Plate plunged deep beneath the Eurasian Plate on the floor of the New Tethys Ocean. In just two short years, Tower Island had "grown" dozens of meters taller, and its area had expanded to more than five times its original size.
The moment Vinu saw her daughter, Cynthia, she rushed forward and hugged her without a second thought. Cynthia had grown into a graceful young woman, her cheeks faintly flushed and her eyes, slightly shy, shining with delight and joy.
Vinu fussed over her, asking after her health and chattering without pause. Cynthia replied with high- or low-pitched calls that sounded like singing. The two different modes of speech seemed to pose no obstacle for mother and daughter, but Tesla and Maria, standing nearby, had no idea what they were saying and couldn't understand a word.
The last time Brahma had seen Cynthia, she had been a baby. As mother and daughter embraced, Brahma, her father, stood a few meters away, unsure what to do. He took a step forward, then stopped. He wanted to speak, but had no idea what to say.
As if they shared an unspoken understanding, Cynthia slipped out of her mother's arms and looked Brahma up and down with her big eyes. Vinu came to her senses, took Cynthia by the hand, and led her toward Brahma, barely able to contain her excitement as she introduced them.
"Cynthia, this is your father."
A smile spread across Brahma's weather-beaten face, and barely visible tears welled in his eyes. Cynthia let out a clear, joyful song like a soprano and ran toward him.
The three of them embraced tightly.
A few wisps of cloud drifted across Tower Island's sky. The setting sun hung over the western sea, where gentle waves rippled with layers of golden light. Everyone sat around a large outdoor table. Everything was so peaceful and beautiful.
Nikola Tesla felt a little dazed. Could life really be this beautiful? After all, the end of the world was near, and the planets of the Solar System would soon face a fiery ordeal.
Tesla took Maria's hand and squeezed it tighter and tighter. If only time could stop here forever. How wonderful that would be!
Abbott emerged from a huge factory building. After greeting everyone, he said to Maria, "The last batch of experimental equipment you requested has been installed. Your lab staff will still need to handle the final testing. When can you start work?"
Maria glanced at Brahma and his wife, then at the large group of volunteers in the distance. "We'll get the equipment ready as soon as we can and start the experiments. After all, the research has been on hold for more than a decade. We shouldn't rush things."
"You're right, Maria. Your experiment is our first choice, but we know that cloning Venusians on a massive scale is an extremely complex and arduous task. We'll all support you and wish you success." Tesla gently patted Maria's arm, showing his understanding.
"First choice? Do you have other backup plans? I thought the cloning project had to succeed; failure wasn't an option. If I fail, is there another way?" Maria asked, puzzled.
Abbott shot Tesla a glare. "Maria, you'd better not fail. The so-called other option is a last resort—in truth, it's no option at all. Don't worry about it for now."
Maria was more confused than ever. Curiously, she asked Tesla, "What is this option, exactly? I want to know what we're dealing with. I've been under so much pressure lately that I can barely sleep."
Nikola Tesla and Abbott exchanged a glance. No longer keeping her in suspense, Tesla explained the backup plan—the option Abbott had called no option at all.
Over the course of billions of years, the planets in the habitable zone of the Solar System had given rise to tens of thousands of species, including plants and animals. They absorbed and metabolized energy, reproducing generation after generation to form a richly varied biosphere.
Every living organism was, in a sense, made of organic matter. And organic matter depended on one chemical element: carbon. That was why the life forms known to Venusians were all Carbon-based.
After electronic computers took off, the internet and Artificial Intelligence greatly advanced Venusian technology and productivity. At the same time, they made people wonder: Did life really have to be Carbon-based? Could it possibly "live" inside Silicon-based chips?
Silicon-based life had long been a hot research topic among Venusian scientists. All sorts of fascinating experimental approaches had sprung up, with Cellular Automata among the best known.
In a computer, one could set up a two-dimensional plane tiled with squares, or even a three-dimensional space built from cubes, and establish simple rules such as moving up or down, or turning left or right. Then virtual balls, line segments, or even virtual "ants" could move continuously through that space.
Something amazing would then happen. After repeated movements, the paths traced by the balls or ants would sometimes become unpredictable and chaotic, while others formed regular, repeating patterns.
The balls' paths could resemble cell division, while the virtual ants seemed to come alive. That was why people called these experiments cellular automata.
The Brain-Computer Fusion Project spearheaded by Nikola Tesla had shown people that Silicon-based survival was possible—not just for cells, but for the consciousness inside the Venusian brain.
Venusian computers used an advanced mixed-radix architecture at their core, offering large storage capacity and high computational efficiency.
Even more astonishingly, the winner of Venus's highest physics award had proposed breaking the rigid rules of standardized industrial hardware production and blurring the boundary between hardware and software, allowing hardware to "grow" on its own and gain the ability to learn and "think."
This achievement had shaken, even overturned, the dominance of mathematical determinism, enabling computers to learn from simulated scenarios in a way that more closely resembled the human mind.
As brain science continued to advance, Brain-Computer Fusion was nothing new on Venus.
If they chose to—or, rather, if they truly had no other option—Venusians could upload the consciousness in their brains to the cloud and achieve Silicon-based survival.
The reason he said "if they chose to" was that most people were unwilling! Anyone who uploaded all the consciousness in their brain to the cloud would lose all signs of life. To put it plainly, anyone who uploaded their entire consciousness would die physically.
If Maria's team could clone human bodies, the consciousness of the Venusians who had uploaded themselves would be stored in the cloud. Once their respective clones had matured, their original consciousness would be downloaded into their bodies, achieving what was essentially "resurrection."
If the process could be carried out perfectly, it would, of course, be the ideal solution. The Venusian clones would be resurrected on Earth.
The option Abbott had called no option at all meant that if the cloning plan failed, there would be nowhere to download the consciousness stored in the cloud. The consciousness of the Venusians would be trapped inside Silicon-based chips, living forever in Silicon-based form like virtual ants. Naturally, this would require an enormous supply of electricity.
After hearing the explanation, Maria shook her head and sighed. "I thought you had some new, exciting method. Compared with running around freely and breathing fresh air, who would want to be trapped inside a Silicon-based chip and turned into strings of digital code?"
As she spoke, Maria suddenly thought of another possibility. "Haven't Bionic robots made great strides? If human cloning fails, could we download our consciousness into robot bodies? They can see and feel, and they can move around freely."
Tesla and Abbott had already considered Maria's proposal. The problem was that manufacturing billions of robots would be an immense undertaking, and neither the time nor the cost allowed for it. Worse still, intelligent robots consumed tens of thousands of times more electricity than ordinary people!
That would create a thorny problem: there wouldn't be enough intelligent "bodies," and the "quotas" would be limited. The consciousness of nearly six billion Venusians would have to compete for a chance at "resurrection" through a lottery.
Even then, there was another major problem. Cloned humans could sustain themselves by getting energy from food, but robots couldn't. They needed huge amounts of electricity. After Mars exploded and the Earth suffered the massive impact, it would be impossible to build power stations large enough in the short term.
Human brains were energy-efficient! That was why cloning human bodies and downloading consciousness into them was the ideal solution.
"I'll do everything I can to make the human cloning work." Maria rubbed her hands together, then clenched her fists. Her voice was quiet but firm. "But even if my experiments succeed, we won't begin cloning until after Mars explodes. We'll need a huge amount of equipment then. Where do you plan to store it?"
"We'll use a spaceship to transport the extracted genes and the hard drives containing the stored consciousness to Titan. Once we've safely waited out the Mars explosion, we'll bring them back to Earth," Tesla said.
"All the equipment and batteries required for cloning can't be transported. Nikola found a suitable place to store them on Earth," Abbott added.
Nikola Tesla brought up a holographic map of Earth and pointed to a blue ocean. "Venusians call this the Pacific Ocean. The land in this ocean is called Atlantis. It's only a few meters above sea level, and it's rapidly sinking as the plates shift. I'll store your equipment inside a sealed structure built from stacks of large batteries."
The continent Tesla pointed to was also called the Mu Continent. It would soon be completely submerged by the Pacific Ocean. The structure, built from batteries shaped like huge bricks, was stable, and the seawater would shield it, allowing it to safely withstand the shock waves the Mars explosion would send across Earth.
The moment Maria saw the design for the structure Tesla had built from batteries, it reminded her of the ruins of Venus's ancient civilization. She exclaimed,
"A pyramid! The batteries will form a pyramid on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, on the Mu Continent!"
A poem assembled from lines of verse:
Where shall I lodge through the long night? — Li Shiming, Ming dynasty
My body is one with a dream. — Shi Zhiyuan, Song dynasty
Life is like a passing flash of lightning. — Qian Zizheng, Ming dynasty
It shines upon the traveler's bewildered heart. — Meng Haoran, Tang dynasty
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