Lottery Draw

65 million years ago, Earth, New Tethys Ocean, Tower Island

To deal with the crisis of Jupiter's approach to the Sun and Venus's significantly slowed rotation, Nikola Tesla devised the Mars explosion plan.

Before the Mars explosion, all Venusians' consciousness would be uploaded to the cloud and stored in supercomputers on Titan. Venusians' genes and tissues would also be extracted.

After safely surviving the Mars explosion and once Earth's atmospheric conditions reached human survivability, Maria's team would revive the Venusians one by one on Earth using cloning technology.

This entire set of unbelievable, insane plans was forced by the habitable zone of the Solar System and the imminent destruction of the Venusians; it could also be called a last resort.

Fortunately, as of now, the feasibility of the plan has been preliminarily confirmed by government departments and submitted to the Alliance Council for review.

The review results are in. Director Diston of the Venus Alliance Office and Speaker Kent announced the council's decision online to Tesla and others.

Abbott, Tesla, and Maria held their breath, listening with solemn expressions. Speaker Kent spoke in a booming voice:

"After intense debate, the council has voted to approve your overall plan."

The Alliance government decided that Dean Abbott would be the person in charge of the Mars explosion plan, Tesla the chief scientist, and Maria the head of bioengineering. Director Diston announced the Alliance government's decision according to the council's legislation.

Dean Abbott scanned Tesla and Maria, sensing that, like him, they felt no joy at the plan's approval. Instead, their expressions grew more somber. This was truly the so-called "enormous responsibility."

The three spoke in turn, unanimously vowing to do their utmost to overcome difficulties and complete this arduous task.

The video conference did not end as the three had expected. Speaker Kent's tense face relaxed, and he said earnestly:

"I know the challenges you face are immense, but aren't we, the lawmakers who create rules and laws, facing them too?"

Maria's heartstrings seemed to be plucked again. Decades of experience had made her deeply realize that the challenges far greater than bioengineering technology were ethical, moral, and legal issues.

Speaker Kent affirmed Maria's thoughts. Even if consciousness uploading and cloning technology could be successfully implemented, how to uphold the principle of fairness and protect the fundamental rights granted by the constitution during this process was a matter over which the council members argued heatedly.

Some council members suggested seeking the opinions of the plan's designers and scientists, as well as listening to the views of ordinary citizens within a certain scope.

Speaker Kent stated that the next agenda item for this video conference was to hear the opinions of the scientific team and citizen representatives on several controversial focal issues. This could be considered a small-scale public opinion poll.

Ordinary citizen representatives were no challenge for Maria; she invited the couple Brahma and Vinu. The questions on the survey form appeared on the screen one by one.

Question 1: Do you agree that citizens under the jurisdiction of the Venus Alliance, on a voluntary basis, have one and only one right to upload their consciousness and clone their bodies?

Abbott and Tesla nodded in agreement to such a simple question. Maria, after confirmation, was informed that the "citizens" mentioned here included legal minors.

Brahma and Vinu were already nervous participating in such a high-level meeting for the first time. After hearing the explanation of the term "citizen," Vinu nervously asked:

"My daughter Cynthia and her companions are Dr. Maria's clones. They don't have citizenship, but they are alive too. Can they be given an equal opportunity?"

Speaker Kent's recent work was overwhelming, and he hadn't really considered the clones exiled to Earth. He quickly jotted down the question in his notebook and promised Vinu it would be submitted to the council for discussion as soon as possible.

Question 2: Due to the shortage of cloning doctors and equipment, as well as Earth's resource limitations, the cloning plan will be divided into many batches. Obviously, the fairest method to determine the batch order is a lottery. Will the lottery number be one per person or one per family?

Everyone had their own choices and began to discuss heatedly, of course, there was no standard answer.

If individuals drew lots, the probability of a family member winning the lottery would significantly increase. However, assigning numbers by family seemed to make it easier to avoid the ethical crisis of a son being born before his father.

Question 3: For a long time, Earth's resources will be limited. If those who are "revived" first have children, they will take up resources and reduce the number of lottery slots for the next batch. Should those who are "revived" first be prohibited from pregnancy and childbirth until the last batch of Venusians are "revived"?

Tesla thought to himself, how different the thinking of natural scientists and humanities scholars is. Whether one can become pregnant and have children is indeed a difficult problem.

If it were prohibited, would accidental pregnancies require forced abortions? If abortions were not mandatory, would people actively try to get "accidentally" pregnant?

Maria instinctively felt that the council members would ultimately choose to prohibit pregnancy and childbirth. What puzzled her was that although procreation was not the sole purpose of the Venusians' existence, it was clearly a fundamental human right that no law should deprive.

Good heavens, an ominous premonition flashed through Maria's mind. Could there be some self-proclaimed "experts" suggesting that the first to be "revived" should be all males or all females?

Question 4: The "revival" quota for each batch depends on the efficiency of Earth's carrying capacity construction. Should those with stronger professional skills and higher work efficiency for Earth's construction be prioritized for "revival"?

Speaker Kent specifically explained that on this issue, the council members had reached a rare consensus. Dean Abbott was authorized to draft a whitelist, allowing scientists and key engineering technicians related to the Mars explosion plan to bypass the lottery and automatically receive the right to be among the first to be "revived."

Efficiency versus fairness, how can one speak of right or wrong? There are only choices, Dean Abbott thought.

For him, he could accept whatever decision the council members ultimately made, unless someone proposed the so-called genetic selection theory, which would exceed his bottom line of tolerance.

Subsequent questions followed one after another. Maria noticed that Brahma and Vinu seemed preoccupied. Regardless of how the questions changed, the couple's focus remained on little Cynthia.

The lengthy and somewhat oppressive survey form was finally completed, and the video conference ended.

Vinu walked over, took Maria's hand, and tears flowed uncontrollably from her eyes. She was choked with sobs and couldn't speak, but Maria knew what she wanted to say.

Nikola Tesla sat in his chair, lost in thought about the string of questions just asked. He suddenly realized that he should use the Lightning Ball to connect to the external brain and see what answers it would provide.

He stood up and walked towards the specially made chair, a thought flashing through his mind.

Tesla's external brain had undergone long-term personalized training and was the best match for Tesla.

Out of curiosity, Maria and even Vinu had sat in the chair and connected to the external brain via the Lightning Ball. The result was that it did not significantly improve their "thinking ability," nor did it cause any incompatible abnormalities.

Whether the clone Cynthia and her companions could be granted the opportunity for another cloning depended first on whether their consciousness could be successfully extracted and uploaded.

Were clones' brainwaves the same as Venusians'? This was the question that suddenly occurred to Tesla.

With the Brahma couple's consent, little Cynthia sat in the chair. Tesla operated the Lightning Ball and simultaneously turned on the brainwave recorder.

Cynthia wore a special helmet. Vinu told her to raise her right hand if she felt any discomfort.

The connection began, and the power of the Lightning Ball gradually increased. The brainwave recorder displayed peaks and troughs, a smooth, winding curve moving rhythmically to the right of the screen.

Vinu hid half her body behind Brahma, one hand tightly gripping her husband's collar. Her eyes were fixed on Cynthia's resting right hand.

For safety, Tesla set the output power of the Lightning Ball to about half of what he usually used. After the voltage reached the set value and stabilized, the external brain computer's display screen received no connection signal.

Huh? What's going on? Maria and Vinu both successfully connected to the external brain with the same power output for the Lightning Ball, so why isn't little Cynthia reacting?

Suddenly, the electroencephalogram recorder displayed multiple chaotic spurious waves, surging up and down. Their wavelength and frequency were clearly different from the main wave, creating strong interference.

"Resonance Wave!" Tesla exclaimed.

At the same time, little Cynthia struggled to lift her right hand, and Tesla quickly shut off the power.

Maria asked Tesla what it meant for a Resonance Wave to appear.

"The brain structure is different. Little Cynthia and her companions' consciousness likely cannot be extracted and uploaded," Tesla said, shaking his head helplessly.

"So, even if approved, little Cynthia and this batch of clones all can't upload their consciousness?" Vinu slumped onto the ground.

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Poem for Chapter Compilation:

Through clear waves, thoughts are hard to grasp, Song, Shi Shaotan Origins and changes flow in several ways. Qing, Tian Wen All things are originally one body, Song, Shi Yiliao Clearly, then, see them as undifferentiated. Song, Wen Tianxiang