The instant Ji Ting stepped into the research institute, a message arrived on the academicians' Communicators.
[Everyone, come to the control center. Now.]
The sudden order jolted the entire Primordial Base awake. After a brief moment of bewilderment, everyone immediately dropped what they were doing and rushed to the assembly point.
As more and more academicians arrived, Dr. Xie stood at the entrance to the control center, so nervous she did not know what to do with her hands.
Academician Chen was hurrying past her when he abruptly stopped. "Xie, what are you doing here?"
"I, I..." Dr. Xie reached into her pocket, her words rattling out like beads on an abacus. "This is a squishy toy. I squeezed it a few times to show the Chief Engineer, and he said something about the fractal compression resistance principle. Then he brought me here."
Academician Chen took the object from her and squeezed it a few times, looking puzzled. Then, at one particular instant, something seemed to go pop inside his head.
These twisted junctions, these irregular protrusions-this was not a perfect crystal structure-
This was... a fractal compression-resistance structure!
A second later, Academician Chen shot off like an arrow loosed from a bow. "Fang! Lin! Get over here!"
When the two academicians hurried over, they found his wrinkled hands clamped around the simple molecular model on the desk, used to work out material structures and already nearly worn out from handling.
He rotated the model at a dizzying speed, flipping its balls and slender rods back and forth. "Do you see it? Do you understand? The Chief Engineer has found a way!"
Dr. Xie tried desperately to keep up with their thinking, but in the blink of an eye, Academician Lin had taken the model and rushed toward