Even though they knew it was very long, Mei Ziqing and Bian Ziyuan were still astonished when the professor told them. It was hard to imagine that this small helmet contained a belt long enough to encircle the entire Milky Way!
"How did it get in there?"
"It's not difficult," the professor said casually. "Just reverse the process. Since you can cut it in half, you can certainly piece it back together. If you cut it 100,000 times, you can piece it back together 100,000 times. That way, it will become a small strip only a few centimeters wide and ten centimeters long again. However, when you piece it back together, it won't be as tight as before, so it will look more like a muscle fiber."
Bian Ziyuan then recalled the comfort he felt during the initial test of the helmet lining; it turned out to be the sensation of muscle fibers made from this special nanomaterial.
The professor tossed the helmet over, as if casually tossing a toy to his child. Bian Ziyuan was startled and quickly reached out to catch it. Holding it in his hands, he felt a sense of reverence he had never experienced before.
He knew that with this, Kro and Book North would become even more perfect.
"Professor, why call it a ' Space Box '?" Bian Ziyuan examined the helmet for a long time. "No matter what it's made of, a Möbius strip is flat, and information storage is also flat, while a box should represent a three-dimensional spatial concept."
Mei Yiqiu said, "You probably think that the length of the Milky Way, which circles twice, is scary enough, right?"
Bian Ziyuan and Mei Ziqing both nodded. "Isn't that enough?"
Mei Yiqiu said, "Your understanding of information length is still not intuitive enough. That's true, none of you have studied astrophysics, so you have no concept of astronomical units. The Milky Way is very large, but it is actually very small on the scale of the universe. Our Dream Guide game is about creating worlds, and the amount of information in a complete world cannot be written down by a band that circles the Milky Way several times."
"Huh?" Bian Ziyuan's eyes widened as he pointed at the helmet in his hand and said, "Could it be... there are a lot of these straps stuffed inside?"
Mei Yiqiu said, "Not many, just two."
"Two?" Bian Ziyuan didn't understand. "Two versus one is just double the amount, isn't it? Even if one contains the information of a Milky Way, it's just two Milky Way."
"I know!" Mei Ziqing raised her hand like a child eager to answer a question in class.
The development of the Space Box was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few members of the Space Management Committee. Even Mei Ziqing, the assistant, had no opportunity to access the core principles until the second-generation product was ready for mass production, at which point she learned about its structure and materials.
She studied neuroscience in college, but after spending several years with the almost omniscient Professor Mei, she gained a comprehensive understanding of various scientific fields. Unlike Bian Ziyuan, who, despite his intelligence, only worked in computer science and knew little about space physics.
"Two Möbius strips joined together along their edges will form a Klein Bottle!"
Mei Ziqing gestured with her hands, "Normally, we can use two identical rings to create a wider ring, but a Möbius strip can't. It's a magical thing! Once a Möbius strip is formed, its area is fixed and won't change. To make it longer, you just need to cut it along its center line, and to make it wider, you can only splice it with itself, at the cost of the ring's circumference decreasing. Two identical Möbius strips cannot be spliced to create a wider strip, but when you splice them along their edges, they become a Klein Bottle."
Bian Ziyuan asked, "What does that mean?"
"That means it can hold more, even infinitely!" Mei Ziqing said. "The key to the Klein Bottle is the breakthrough in spacetime dimensions. When simulating the Klein Bottle in three-dimensional spacetime, we see the neck of the bottle pass through the body and connect to the bottom. But in reality, the neck passes through a four-dimensional space, or a wormhole, so the body of the bottle remains intact and is not broken by the neck. Like a Möbius strip, the entire Klein Bottle has only one surface. An ant doesn't need to pass through any matter or space, nor does it need to climb over any edge of a plane to reach any point on the inner or outer surface of the bottle."
Bian Ziyuan realized. "So, that means two Möbius strips can enclose a complete space, so... that's why it's called Space Box?"
Mei Yiqiu laughed and said, "That's right. When I first saw this idea, the name ' Space Box ' came to mind. Don't you think it's a perfect fit?"
"That's so apt!" Bian Ziyuan exclaimed excitedly. "When two Möbius strips form an independent space, our players can create their own world within that space. Moreover, the information storage capacity of this Space Box is truly infinite, because it has no inside or outside; all space is part of it. Information is like water; you can never fill a Klein Bottle!"
Driven by her keen interest in her research field, Mei Ziqing suddenly had a flash of inspiration. "Could it be... that the human brain's information storage mechanism is also... Klein Bottle?"
Bian Ziyuan was taken aback by her words. Although he wasn't a biologist, he immediately thought of Kronos. Ever since he typed that line of code, Kronosuo's intelligence had exceeded his imagination, even becoming uncontrollable. But he wasn't worried. Even if one day the tables turned and Kronos controlled him, he would accept it willingly.
Natural selection and the replacement of lower intelligence with higher intelligence is an inevitable trend, just as it is natural for mammals to replace reptiles as the dominant species on Earth.
He will only feel honored by this!
He stroked the surface of the " Space Box " in his hand. It didn't feel cold and metallic, but rather warm and comfortable, like touching a young girl's smooth skin.
With this and a deeper understanding of the human brain, Bian Ziyuan felt he had touched the core of artificial intelligence. What's the next step?
Perhaps nothing needs to be done. Kronos is already on the Dream Guide game server. As long as he enters the game with the " Space Box," Kronos can also enter the Space Box.
This was their secret. Kronos wanted to enter the "upper" dimension, to enter the world of the God who created him, but he was just a little short, like being separated by a thin sheet of paper—it seemed so easy, yet he just couldn't break through it.
Bian Ziyuan unconsciously put his finger in his mouth, moistened it with saliva, and stretched it forward—he felt he was almost touching that thin layer of paper...
Mei Yiqiu, amused, watched Bian Ziyuan at his helmet, and took a deep drag on his cigarette. Smoke billowed from his mouth, swirling around his white stubble, slowly rising, passing over his face, and mingling with the frizzy white hair around his head, making him look from a distance like a white Klein smoke bottle that had traversed four-dimensional space...
" Ziqing, how are the preparations for product manufacturing and game release going?" he asked.
Mei Ziqing said seriously, "The production of the first batch of Space Box has been arranged, and the production lines of FSK and HW Company are ready. BFB Group has signed a global distribution agency agreement, while Penguin Group will be the sole distributor in China. According to the plan, we aim to sell ten million units this year, and reach one billion players worldwide within five years..."
Mei Ziqing reported on the work plan and progress as if Mei Yiqiu knew all of this, but he just didn't want to manage those details. Money—that's something only ordinary people worry about.
Having Cat-Killing Order and the Parasitic Panic Crisis, his influence as the chief scientific advisor to the United Nations Space Management Committee is now far beyond what money can shake.
Dream Guide is the most expensive game in history, but he doesn't care. As long as he wants to do it, there will be a steady stream of funding.
One billion people...
What an enormous number!
Anyone who first hears about this plan will think to themselves, "What an old Madman!"
But Mei Yiqiu was not satisfied; he wanted the number to be multiplied by 5, even though it seemed difficult.