Chapter 1445 — A "Great Gift"

"I truly cannot fully understand it," Jenny said frankly. "But from the general description, this seems to be a device with a very sound underlying approach. And if the only purpose is to observe the magic tide oscillations, we needn't fully master its principle—all the construction parameters and technical details are here, and the Noi even sent along many alternative plans for cases where the main plan cannot be realized. We need only build according to the blueprints, and we may hope to complete this observation device. Of course, there will likely be many practical difficulties in implementation—certain components may not match our existing power or data interfaces, and so on—but these are all solvable problems."

"...So there's feasibility in simply building according to the blueprints..." Gao Yang murmured to himself, his expression grave. In an instant his mind weighed a great many things, but for the moment he said nothing of them, turning his attention instead to another pile of materials on the table. "Is that the material relating to the 'Unified Field of Mind'?"

"Yes, this is what has been received so far," Rebecca said at once, handing the thick stack of printed sheets to Gao Yang. "Let me explain—the translation progress on this batch is even slower. The Star Readers have only translated the annotations at the beginning and the general sense of each component blueprint's title, because the Noi keep sending more material over. The Solin listening station has temporarily stopped full translation of the subsequent documents and is now transmitting the raw materials straight here."

Gao Cen nodded slightly as he listened, his gaze already upon the thick stack of materials. He flipped casually through the opening portion and soon noticed something—this thing called the "Unified Field of Mind"... was far larger in scale than he had imagined.

It was not a single device at all—utterly unlike the "magic tide observation device" in the first batch. The "Unified Field of Mind" materials he now held contained a great many "parts" that appeared at a glance to be independent of one another: a vast multitude of terminals called thought connectors, an immense mind-interaction center, a connecting architecture of complex structure, and even... "background material" keyed to a planetary reference blueprint.

Beyond that, the Noi had also sent a large quantity of technical documents that were not blueprints. Those documents were crammed with far too much specialized vocabulary, and the Star Readers had not yet managed to translate them; the bewildering alien script was interspersed with countless numbers and operational symbols, dizzying after only a glance or two.

Gao Yang could only guess at the purpose of those alien technical documents—he guessed that the Noi were probably trying to make the "Loren" understand the principles behind the "Unified Field of Mind."

They really were trying to teach us.jpg.

Gao Yang shook his head, tossing aside the strange feeling that had surfaced in his mind, and turned his gaze back to Rebecca and Jenny: "What do you make of this material?"

"It will take us a very long time to understand this vast, complex system. Its scale... already exceeds that earlier 'magic tide observation device' by more than ten times," Jenny said, her expression serious. "The Noi clearly drew a deliberate distinction when sending the two sets of technical materials. If with the 'magic tide observation device' we need only build according to the blueprints, then with the 'Unified Field of Mind'... they seem to want us to understand its principles as well."

Gao Yang said nothing, though his thoughts churned.

He was trying to understand the Noi's motive for doing this, trying to find the possible trap in it, the uncontrollable factors—but in the end he found that very few factors in this whole affair were controllable at all.

Beside him, Rebecca gave a faint, rueful sigh: "Honestly, when I first heard about this 'Unified Field of Mind' thing, I thought it was one huge piece of equipment, some kind of force-field emitter, something you'd use to make an enormous 'shield' and then have everyone crawl inside when the magic tide came. I really never imagined it was something this outrageous... a global defense system—and it really does defend the whole globe..."

"My first thought was actually much the same as yours." Gao Yun gave a light sigh, his gaze then falling instinctively upon one of the diagrams in the stack.

It was a planet. The Noi used this planet to demonstrate the entire "Unified Field of Mind" in operation—and its true... scale.

Nodes across the world, a network covering the globe: the Unified Field of Mind generator was not a device but a planetary-scale complex of facilities raised from tens of thousands of giant nodes.

No wonder it had taken the Noi fourteen hundred years to build the thing.

Of course, those "fourteen hundred years" surely also had to account for the peculiar course of Noi civilization's development and the influence of their social changes. This was a civilization that had grown up amid the legacy of a precursor race; they had learned the truth of the magic tide while still at a relatively backward stage of technology, and so this grand project had very likely begun in an era of low productive capacity. Back then they might have needed a century to raise a single node, just as the Silver Elves of old needed several hundred years to restore a single power station left behind by the primeval elves.

But in any case, even in the heyday of Talonde, a thing on the scale of the "Unified Field of Mind" could never have been built overnight.

Jenny noticed Gao Yang's grave expression. She plainly understood what worried this ruler of the Empire—it was the very thing that had been worrying her from the start: "To build a thing like this—let us first assume the technical materials the Noi sent are sound, assume every technical hurdle in construction could be overcome in an instant. Merely to build it, the scale of this project would likely consume a full century."

Gao Xi slowly set down the documents in his hand. "And that is still assuming everything goes ideally. The fact is, we first need to understand the principles behind this system, and confirm that it can truly affect the intelligent life on our planet. This undertaking is so astonishing that we cannot rashly pour the full strength of the Alliance into it."

Jenny and Rebecca said nothing, only nodding in silence. Though the technical data sent by the "Noi" had filled them with excitement and delight, they had not let it cloud their judgment; they understood full well that Gao Yang was right.

And what worried Gao You was clearly far more than that.

"We will need more scholars—Typhon scholars, Silver scholars, scholars from the other nations of the Alliance. We need enough clever minds to analyze every technical detail in these documents," he said quietly. "Our 'alien friends' have certainly sent us a 'grand gift' all of a sudden..."

(End of Chapter)