Chapter 213: Mission Accomplished

In the industrial park on an African island, Du Qiu made another appearance. After more than half a year of diligent effort, the entire design for the mass production process of metallic hydrogen has finally been completed.

Deep below the surface of the sea, 3000 meters down, a brand-new base had been constructed. This location was almost twice as large as the one in the Tanga Federation.

Shortened construction time for this base was possible partly due to increased experience and partly because there were many more construction robots than before.

If anyone were to witness the underground base’s construction, they would undoubtedly be profoundly shocked.

Should someone who suffers from a fear of crowded spaces see this, they would likely faint from the sight.

However, this underground base does not have the complete hemispherical shape like Base One.

Instead, it resembles half a gourd, with one larger and one smaller area.

The larger area serves as a place where humans can live and sustain life, while the smaller is designated as the heavy industrial zone, intended for large equipment manufacturing where humans can freely enter.

Together with the originally robot-exclusive manufacturing area at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, Du Qiu now possessed what could be called an unlimited production capacity.

It was with the support of the resources from the Indian Ocean’s seabed that Dream Technology was recently able to take on the giants of two major industries in the United States, outperforming American companies with superior and affordable products.

For Du Qiu, many products were merely a matter of resource consumption.

And resources were exactly what Du Qiu had in abundance, limited only by energy shortages.

Today, with the mass production process of metallic hydrogen sorted out, all that was left was to complete the manufacturing of the production equipment.

Once the production line was built and operational, the energy issues that troubled Du Qiu would no longer pose a problem, and nothing could stop his rise.

“Star Ocean, the Americans have been completely distracted by the events in Long City lately and haven’t taken new actions against Dream Technology. This is a great opportunity for our expansion.

We need to accelerate the recruitment of scarce-field scientists to various research centers of Dream Technology; those who meet our criteria after screening should be immediately transferred to Base One.”

The voice of Star Ocean responded, “Sir, at present, there are over 3,600 various researchers at Base One and nearly twenty thousand family members.

A small community has formed, but there are many problems. The experiments you want to conduct are bound to fail under current conditions.”

Du Qiu actually had his own ideas regarding the plans for Heaven, but he didn’t want to babysit a group of unambitious people into what might be a brutal space age.

At least so far, humanity’s conception of extraterrestrial civilizations has been cold and merciless.

The rules of interaction that humans can conceive of between cosmic intelligent civilizations are mostly brutally harsh.

For example, the famous Dark Forest Theory advocated destruction upon discovery, a notion dark to the extreme!

What kind of societal system could best harness human creativity, maintain the desire for constant progress, and compete with any intelligent life form without falling behind?

This was an issue Du Qiu consistently pondered.

In his dreams, he had used the Caretaker’s simulation world to run all the social forms that human history had ever seen, and none had satisfied him fully.

Even utopian societies that had never been realized fell apart easily in the simulations.

This made Du Qiu hesitant, leading him to conduct a real-world simulation with the small society formed by the researchers and their families; he wanted to observe the differences between real conditions and the virtual world simulations.

At the same time, Du Qiu presented some of his proposed systems to the entire world through online virtual games.

He was curious to see how these systems would function with the participation of a large number of internet users.

This was all part of Du Qiu’s preparatory work for building Heaven; after all, it would be impractical to discuss the establishment of social systems only after all other environmental constructions were complete.

Therefore, when Star Ocean mentioned the numerous problems in the current small community, Du Qiu was not at all surprised, as he had already anticipated these issues through simulations.

“What kind of problems are there? Tell me about them.”

Nevertheless, he was curious to see how people in reality would behave when faced with sudden isolation and a life of unexpected plenty.

The majority of the more than twenty thousand people were either from Tang Country or Caucasians, coming from Dream Technology’s Magic City research and development center and Dream Technology’s European research and development center respectively.

After their initial curiosity and adaptation period, the researchers didn’t have any issues as they were fully immersed in their assigned topics and had no time for other concerns.

However, the majority being family members who were either elderly, children, or the researchers’ other halves, demonstrated remarkable behavior.

Star Ocean had disrupted geographical and racial boundaries in arranging their accommodations, ensuring there could be no clustering of Caucasians or people from Tang Country based on residence.

With advanced technology, not only did each person have a robot assistant, but they also had a smart identity bracelet, in-ear smart headphones, and smart glasses.

Thanks to the in-ear smart headphones, language barriers no longer existed; any spoken words could be interpreted in real-time.

The in-ear smart headphones could deliver the speaker’s voice in the listener’s native language, enabling smooth communication.

As for reading, smart glasses easily provided synchronous translation.

When communication was no longer an issue, these two groups from different cultural backgrounds began to slowly integrate.

However, since the family members did not need to work and there was no pressure to survive, various conflicts emerged from the abundance of idle time.

Star Ocean displayed these conflicts to Du Qiu through video.

The family of Phinetsk from Germany and the family of Tang Weiyu from the province of Sichuan in Tang Country were neighbors.

Phinetsk’s parents and his wife’s parents, along with their three children, lived in a split-level villa.

Tang Weiyu’s family situation was similar, except they only had two children.

When designing the residence, Du Qiu aimed to prevent the typical metropolis apartment setting where, once doors were closed, neighbors might as well have been strangers their entire lives.

For each floor, he designed communal activity areas for two households, with a drying deck, swimming pool, small garden, and gym.

This way, the two families could interact in the communal areas, unlike current city apartment buildings where people might live close to each other for years without ever really knowing who their neighbors are.

Tang Weiyu’s parents, who came from a rural background, felt restless after initial adjustments and took a liking to the small garden, contemplating growing some vegetables.

You might ask if the base provided seeds.

But don’t underestimate the ingenuity of Tang Weiyu’s parents; when they first heard they would be accompanying their son to Africa for work, they were told that the African soil is very fertile and anything would grow well.

So they brought a variety of vegetable seeds, giving them something to do.

Phinetsk’s in-laws loved growing flowers and were delighted with the small garden, tending to it daily.

One day, they discovered that half of their garden had been leveled and planted with unfamiliar crops.

Upon confronting Tang Weiyu’s family, Tang Weiyu’s parents argued with full conviction, “The communal area belongs to both of our families; since you like planting flowers, you can only have half. Our half is for planting vegetables!”

This laid the seeds of discord between the two families, leading to frequent arguments.

The scenes were quite spectacular.

On one side, a continuous flow of Sichuan dialect; on the other, Bavarian accents clashing vibrantly.

And both sides understood each other perfectly.

The rest of the elders from both families soon joined in the fray, making it all the more lively. Tang Weiyu’s wife’s family spoke the Hunan dialect, which is also quite distinctive.

Phinetsk’s parents were from Frisia, and without smart headphones, they would definitely not understand their in-laws’ Bavarian accents.

There’s a Germanic saying, “Frisians listening to Bavarian dialect is like listening to Tang text.”

This suggests that Germanic dialects are no less significant barriers than those in Tang Country. Now that four dialects from two language families were at odds, the squabble was indeed very heated.

Thanks to the power of technology, the eight individuals knew exactly what insults were hurled at them, making the arguments even more intense.

The daughters-in-law of both families could only persuade continuously. Phinetsk’s wife couldn’t resort to calling the police, a commonly seen Western solution, because there were no police here.

Thus, these arguments often ended only when both parties were too tired or hungry, returning to their own homes for food and rest.

Or else when the children returned home from school.

After the first fight, the elders from both families would initiate an argument every other day, not stopping until utterly exhausted.

Du Qiu watched and laughed until his stomach hurt, “Star Ocean, I guess these eight elders probably consider this their job or a form of entertainment.”

“Sir, there are many more conflicts arising from trivial matters like these, some even resorting to physical altercations. Will you continue to let it go unattended?”

Du Qiu, stroking his chin, replied, “They have been at the base for a month now and have had quite a bit of interaction.

Issue a notice asking all family members to start electing a management committee. The committee will be responsible for establishing rules and regulations; they need to set rules for all these issues you’ve collected.”

“Aren’t we going to intervene?” asked Star Ocean.

Du Qiu shook his head, “Let’s not interfere for now. Let them self-govern. I want to see what they come up with.”