Chapter 18: Dream Realm: Zero-Level Anomaly

Du Qiu has been fond of studying various mechanical devices since he was young, and later his interest expanded to electronic devices, developing a particular obsession with computer-controlled intelligent machines.

During his junior year in college, after debating with a senior about the gap between domestic and imported CNC machine tools, he conceived the idea of developing a top-tier CNC machining center independently.

While pursuing his master’s degree, the fearless novice Du Qiu started to develop software, as it required a low upfront cost.

Unfortunately, this kind of software is inseparable from hardware, unlike general computer application software.

In fact, domestically, there are already two companies, Central Data and Southern Data, deeply committed to researching this and even enjoying national support.

As Du Qiu’s progress was slow, Central Data launched a high-end CNC software system and began to apply it in military industrial enterprises.

This even sparked a “brain change” campaign, where several military industrial enterprises replaced the imported control software systems in their high-end CNC machine tools with domestic ones.

Since the control software is known as the “brain” of CNC machine tools, replacing the control system software is termed a “brain change”.

Upon learning about this, Du Qiu was not disheartened. After understanding the performance of Central Data’s system, he still spent time continuing his research.

Even when dating Zhang Mingliu, he often neglected her due to his work, adding numerous conflicts to their relationship and sowing the seeds of an eventual breakup.

After more than four years of sporadic work, his software began to take shape. It was only during a project for Huading Group with his advisor that he made significant progress.

Huading Group holds a considerable market share in CNC machine tools in the North, producing many models annually, integrating a variety of domestic and foreign CNC systems.

This provided Du Qiu with the opportunity to learn about the features and uses of various machine tools and to interact with the domestic and imported systems used in these machines.

After gaining an understanding of the hardware characteristics of these machine tools and comparing the pros and cons of similar domestic and imported software, Du Qiu finally completed a prototype of his software system.

Though innovative, Du Qiu was never quite satisfied with the system and chose not to start a business with it upon completing his doctorate, instead, he joined an autonomous driving company to continue researching perception systems.

The main issues with the software were that it couldn’t achieve precision control of the machine tools, with problems stemming from hardware, control algorithm issues, and the precision of machine perception.

Now, however, after studying the program of the super machine gathering module in his dreams, Du Qiu has made great strides in this area.

Today he had just realized his exceptionally fast programming ability, and now he could reference the control program of the super machine.

He believed if he rebuilt his software system and matched it with the corresponding bus interface and perception components, the entire control system could definitely surpass Central CNC.

No, it could surpass all existing CNC systems on the market!

After mastering the control program, Du Qiu grew curious about the hardware part of the gathering module control, as from the program he found the gathering part of the super machine to be a veritable marvel.

Du Qiu, now immersed in the intelligent core of the super machine, easily accessed the operational imagery of the gathering module.

At the top of the 49 massive pipelines lays the super machine’s high-speed excavator, which is actually a composite mechanism.

The outermost layer is a high-energy laser cutter, followed by a high-frequency oscillator, and finally, a high-speed rotating cutter head.

The composite mining mechanism first uses the high-energy laser to cut off large chunks of ore, these are then crushed into smaller pieces by the high-frequency oscillator and turned into powder by the high-speed rotating cutter head.

The powder is sucked away through massive pipelines and enters subsequent processes like ore washing, selection, and then through a primary purification process to obtain the corresponding elemental materials.

Such rough operations would be easy to control on Blue Star, like a coal mining machine in a coal mine.

However, the excavation of this super machine is different; it can precisely control the laser to cut designated areas of ore into standard shapes and sizes.

The high-frequency oscillator also precisely processes these standard-sized blocks into equally sized small chunks.

Finally, they are ground into a fine powder by the rotating cutter head, controlled precisely and progressively.

In short, the processing methods in the dream perfectly embody precision control.

Du Qiu has already mastered the software aspect of this precision control process.

Now, he was eager to continue his research on the hardware, to see what new knowledge he could gain, such as about high-energy lasers, special high-frequency oscillators, and those kinds of rotating tools.

Leaving other things aside, just learning how the tool materials are manufactured is a huge treasure.

Considering the super machine processes thousands of different elements and materials, Du Qiu was very excited.

If he could find a super material and develop it in reality, it would not only prove the authenticity of all the technological knowledge from the dream, but it would also bring a breakthrough in Blue Star technology.

Isn’t the development of human society a history of applying materials?

From the Stone Age to the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age, at one point the most important indicator of a country’s industrialization was its steel production.

As a Ph.D. in the field of mechanical electronics, Du Qiu was very sensitive and concerned about materials.

After an initial investigation of the hardware part of the gathering module, Du Qiu immediately turned to the primary purification module in search of high-performance materials.

He quickly found that the materials synthesized by the super machine were basically composed of two elements, indicating that this machine was merely a basic material producer.

What frustrated him was that in the long task list, he realized he did not have sufficient knowledge.

Discussing single elements, the task list had at least over twenty elements never discovered on Blue Star.

This means that in Du Qiu’s mother tongue there are no corresponding words for these elements, and the words he sees must have been created by the dream in an unknown way according to the rules of his mother tongue’s writing system.

For example, metal elements all have a specific radical associated with them, the reason for the radical on the right side is unclear to Du Qiu.

Du Qiu continued to speculate that this super machine was undoubtedly collecting resources on some planet, and the appearance of these twenty-plus elements in the task list indicates that these elements must exist on this planet.

Du Qiu was curious about what kind of planet could have more elements than Blue Star.

However, he quickly came to terms with it, as he noticed that there were at least thirty-plus elements known to Blue Star that did not appear on this planet.

Indeed, with Blue Star’s technology understanding the universe is still too shallow, even though its telescopes seem to be able to see far.

But in reality, it’s all a bunch of pixels, and many conclusions are inferred by astronomers based on known mathematical or physical formulas and theorems.

Scientists even speculate that the universe has a history of over 10 billion years and have put forth the Big Bang theory.

However, these are just like a frog in a well thinking the sky is only as big as the well opening.

Du Qiu didn’t pay attention to the elements that are not present on Blue Star but looked for new materials with remarkable properties among Blue Star’s elements.

He first filtered through elements that are difficult to purify on Blue Star or those whose purification cost is too high.

Next, he selected two-element synthetic materials, excluding those that Blue Star can already produce in large quantities and choosing those with small yields but wide applications.

Lastly, he sought those two-element materials with special performance parameters.

Du Qiu searched energetically, and whenever he found something he thought could be useful in reality, he would closely inspect the super machine’s purification and production process, memorizing all the control program code of the corresponding functional modules.

The workload was huge, so Du Qiu decided that from now on, he would only check 10 types of materials every night, using his other time to study other functions.

Just like now, Du Qiu was studying the control codes in the common base layer module, discovering that the control codes for the purification program would involve production process parameters.

For instance, what kind of catalyst is added at a certain stage and what the corresponding temperature and pressure values are.

What he found particularly interesting was the molecular replacer, a process that swaps one element in a material for another through a chemical reaction.

Time flew by, and after Du Qiu had mastered the production and purification processes of several materials, he suddenly wanted to try adjusting the production tasks of the super machine.

Because he discovered a two-element material with great properties that had not yet been produced, therefore, there was no available image of the production process.

At the moment, the production task for this material was listed as number 3021 on the list.

Du Qiu tentatively issued a command to prioritize this task to run right after the current one is completed.

As his command was conveyed into the core of the star-sized machine, the task list indeed immediately changed in response.

After a short while, Du Qiu saw the execution of task number 3021 begin.

Just as Du Qiu was pleased that he could manipulate the machine, he suddenly received a message.

“Warning: A zero-level anomaly has occurred!”

Then, he seemed to hear a piercing sound.

Suddenly, Du Qiu woke up.