Chapter 286: The Stubbornness of the USB Drive

Might as well pull the trigger. Chen Chen had Little X downloaded all the movies ahead of time while he quickly headed over to the nuclear power plant.

The total power generation of the Blacklight nuclear power plant was measured at 2 million kilowatts. Half of that had to be sectioned out to power the Eco Science City, so all that remained for his use was a million kilowatt. Since the first inertial confinement reactor built in the Spire Experimental Base was just the first-generation model and still had plenty of technological deficiencies, its total power was only about 200,000 kilowatts.

The energy consumption of the Spire Experimental Base had to be subtracted as well, along with the power requirements to electrolyze water to extract deuterium and tritium fuel from seawater. After factoring in everything, there was not too much remaining electricity available for use.

That was the reason Chen Chen did not move the charging port of the USB drive to the Spire Experimental Base.

Having said that, a fusion reactor spanning across an area less than 1,000 square meters managed to generate total power nearly equivalent to a full-sized thermal power plant nearly five times larger. The sheer cost-performance ratio displayed by the fusion reactor was a symbol of its reputation.

After arriving at the nuclear power plant again and unplugging the USB drive, Chen Chen first sat in front of the computer and silently thought it over.

To be honest, Chen Chen was still somewhat opposed to the idea of acquiring technical information by entering the dimension on the opposite side of the passage.

This was due to each opening of the passage represented a possible risk of exposure to an unknown source of danger.

Even Chen Chen himself could not guarantee whether the looming threat could be brought into reality by his opening of the passage or not.

Besides, there had been a history of interaction between the Ebola virus from reality and the T-virus from Resident Evil. There was also the case of the three statues from reality and the statues from Elysium that had proven a sort of chain effect with reality. These factors alone were enough to dissuade Chen Chen from opening the passage.

Having said that, it was a stretch to say that these factors would dissuade Chen Chen from ever using the USB drive again. That was impossible...

Just like the NZT-48, once you used it, there would be no turning back. Was the USB drive any different from the NZT-48 at its core?

No, they both brought great joy and unending gratification.

“However, if I’m just instantiating, I can probably only use...”

Chen Chen roughly estimated the accumulated energy within the USB drive. The only one which could be instantiated from was probably the black sphere from Gantz.

After all, the black sphere was the smallest of them all. The teleportation devices from movies Terminator, Star Trek or The Fly were extremely large.

A teleportation device like the black sphere was not without its limitations. At one point in the movie, the protagonist was seen using a grappling gun-type weapon known as the Y-gun. The firearm launched a special rope that locked its target in place.

After that, the bound target would be transmitted to the satellite. Sometimes, only a small part of the target will be transmitted. Either way, it accomplished the task of killing the target.

In that case, would it be correct to assume that these people selected by the black sphere to carry out combat tasks were also transmitted to the outside world through these satellites?

If that was true, then merely instantiating one black sphere alone was not going to cut it.

Besides, there was no guarantee of Chen Chen being able to break down the technology of the black sphere even after instantiating it. There was a greater possibility of him only managing to figure it out on a surface level without getting a handle on its fundamentals.

Therefore, Chen Chen still needed complete documentation of the technology.

However, none of the five films – The Fly, Doom, Terminator, Gantz, and Star Trek – contained a scene that showed the general research details of their respective technologies.

If Chen Chen wanted to acquire the technical documentation, his only solution was to enter the movie’s dimension.

Chen Chen begrudgingly shook his head at the circumstances. He silently weighed the potential danger he could face in each dimension against each other. In the end, he settled with the movie, The Fly.

Compared to Star Trek and the other movies which were technologically superior that they were almost an otherworldly civilization, it may appear that The Fly was the safest choice considering the only threat in the movie was a Frankenstein product of a fly instead of aliens or robotic armies.

To be fair, this was only the case when put in a side-by-side comparison with the other movies. If faced with a Frankenstein that could threaten the existence of modern human civilization, it would be not much different from having to face aliens or robot armies.

With this in mind, Chen Chen made a copy of the movie The Fly downloaded by Little X and dragged it into the USB drive.

“Ding!”

However, the laptop emitted a notification indicating a program error.

Chen Chen was immediately taken aback upon realizing that The Fly was rejected by the USB drive...

“WTF...”

Chen Chen frowned. Based on his observation, the world-building of The Fly was considerably simpler than most sci-fi movies. The simpler a movie was, the more it should align with the rules of the USB drive and should be more likely to be accepted by the USB drive.

“The only thing in this movie that dealt with scientific theory is the molecular transportation technology. In this case, does this mean...”

Seemingly understanding something, Chen Chen took a breath and made a copy of the movie Star Trek. Without sparing any further consideration, he dragged it into the USB drive.

“Ding!”

The USB drive had rejected Chen Chen yet again.

Chen Chen was certain that this was not a problem of the integrity of the story structure.

Based on Chen Chen’s previous attempts, he had concluded that even if a movie was a part of a large series, it could still be recognized by the USB drive. Even if he had only put one portion of the series, it should still be accepted by the USB drive.

Unless it was a TV show, the entire season had to be inserted to be played.

This meant that the world setting of Star Trek was denied by the USB drive.

The way Chen Chen saw it, Star Trek perfectly aligned with the common ideals of a sci-fi universe. Its scientific component was more put together than most sci-fi movies. The only plausible reason that it would be rejected by the USB drive was possibly due to its enormous world background.

After all, the filming of the Star Trek series spanned over more or less fifty-years in total, producing over a thousand TV series episodes and more than a dozen movies. Due to its enormous world setting, there must have been some contradiction somewhere along the lines which led to its world setting being rejected by the USB drive.

“It seems that both of these movies are rejected by the USB drive...”

Chen Chen suddenly heard the voice of Little X. “Sir Godfather, we’ve already confirmed that Terminator and Gantz can both be contained inside the USB drive, so all that’s left is the movie Doom. There’s no telling if this movie can be accepted by the USB drive.”

“I’m pretty sure I can wager the outcome at this point.”

Still, Chen Chen moved his hand and dragged Doom into the USB drive, all the while shaking his head dejectedly. The USB drive once again produced an abrupt “ding”.

All three movies were rejected.

“How did you figure that out?” Little X asked, somewhat astonished.

“It’s pretty obvious at this point that the problem stems from the teleporter.”

Chen Chen said while deleting the three rejected movies from the USB drive, “Did you notice? One thing all three movies rejected by the USB drive had in common was that all of their teleporters applied the so-called theory of particle decomposition. This means that a person is positioned on the teleporter platform while an operator toggles the button on the control panel in the control room. What happens after that is the teleporter targets each atom of the person on the platform and uses its transmission carrier to send these particles to the operator’s desired location, where the atoms are reorganized accordingly.

“You can see this in Star Trek when Captain Picard and his crewmates dissolve into a scatter of light before reappearing on a distant planet...”

Chen Chen let a frown slip upon noting this. “But when you think about it, does this form of teleportation truly conforms to the concept of teleportation? The principle applied here leans closer to a modern fax machine – wherein the receiving point creates a copy of a person, just like creating a clone. In a similar vein, even we can clone a copy of a person by strictly adhering to the person’s genetic information. This way, we can reproduce a person with matching genetic information, essentially a counterpart of the original body.

“Still, we all know that despite the similarities exhibited by the clone and the original body, there’s zero relation whatsoever between them. Even if both of these entities possess the same memories, they aren’t the same person!”