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Chapter 248 Hollow Moon
Chapter 248 Hollow Moon
After seeing Mark off, Joey returned to the "base" he had just purchased, and the first thing he did was to start a major construction project.
The abnormal fluctuations in my own biofield vaguely pointed to one thing: danger was imminent.
The best option is to quickly reconnect with the other end and find a way back.
From a somewhat whimsical perspective, Tony's naming of the AI that came bundled with the drone "Friday" is quite a stroke of genius.
Joey is now like Robinson Crusoe stranded on a desert island, cut off from his way back to the "civilized world," with an inhuman "Friday" by his side.
"objection!"
Upon hearing this, "Friday" immediately flew into a rage:
"I am the most powerful AI in Stark Industries' history! This entire testing ground was basically built by me! What right do you have to talk to me like that!"
"You only handled the materials and paperwork, and you even used my money! I optimized the design myself, I used my own bricks, I twisted the steel bars myself, and I welded the wiring myself. Where exactly are you so smart?"
According to Friday's design, it would take Joey at least half a month to build a communicator strong enough to break through the world barrier and connect to the zombie universe.
As a genius in science and engineering, Iron Man's accompanying design drawings are naturally full of ingenious designs.
Various ingenious microstructures constitute a complete system. The two main modules are integrated into a spherical drone, which is perfectly coupled and has a very high fault tolerance.
As one of the most important subsystems, the communication module is not impossible to reproduce one-to-one with the technology of this world, but it would require a considerable amount of time.
After reviewing Tony's design drawings, Joey, taking a pragmatic approach, made a unique reform of them using the "I think" method.
To reproduce the communication module, who says it has to be remade to the same palm size as before?
From vacuum tubes to transistors, and then to integrated circuits, human computers have become smaller and smaller over the past century, but this does not mean that vacuum tube computers are no longer usable.
The same applies to Tony's machine; the various components required for the entire system don't necessarily have to be measured in nanometers, do they?
Thus, thanks to Joey's extraordinary wisdom and adhering to the principle of "the bigger the brick, the more powerful it becomes," Tony's palm-sized design was enlarged proportionally by Joey into a giant steel spire weighing nearly 10,000 tons.
Friday's assessment of Joey, who single-handedly drove up local building material prices, was:
"The existence of this thing is a desecration and insult to the technological level of Stark Industries."
If the original model built by boss Tony was a masterpiece of industrial excellence, then the thing Joey is making by hand right now is typical industrial garbage.
"You can't reason with an AI that has such a perfectionist mindset."
Joey wasn't ashamed of this assessment; on the contrary, she was proud: "It's not like it's unusable!"
The tower, now several times heavier than the Eiffel Tower and over 100 meters tall, has increased in size and mass by approximately 100 million times compared to the original machine, and its energy consumption level has increased from green level 1 to an off-the-charts level 999 or higher.
However, it does implement at least 99% of the functions, and with just a day or two of debugging, it can be put into operation very quickly.
In this way, Joey doesn't need to spend time researching how to improve the process and materials, saving at least ten days.
On Friday, he didn't forget to remind Joey of the risks involved:
"This giant antenna you built requires at least the energy of ten Arc Reactors, and the probability of overload is as high as 42%. Be careful, the energy overload might just blow you up!"
Having just taken to high altitude, the final base plate and titanium alloy shell were attached to the structure, which is called an iron tower but is actually a trans-cosmic communication antenna.
After working for several hours, Joey finally had a moment to rest and pointed to his steel body:
Are you serious?
This thing only needs to successfully send a message to the other side of the universe to complete its mission. How loud the explosion is after the message is sent is completely outside of Joey's consideration.
The experimental site was surrounded by wasteland. As Superman, if Joey wanted to, the explosion wouldn't affect him or any other innocent people, and wouldn't even harm the plants and flowers in the surrounding area.
The moon was now high in the sky. After a busy night, Joey leaned against the top of the completed spire, took out his phone, and prepared to review the construction method of the Ark Reactor.
"On Friday, try to find a way to order some palladium for me."
The power consumption of this cell tower is astronomical. If it were connected to the power grid, it would drain several surrounding cities. To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, it would be better to have its own power source.
Tony's initial version of the reactor was sufficient, so building a few more would save several days, and there was no need to start from scratch to manufacture the necessary new elements.
Upon hearing this request, Friday immediately understood what Joey wanted to do, and was completely speechless.
"You're really good at making do."
Stark Industries' cutting-edge equipment was a complete waste in the hands of this Kryptonian; the brainchild of one of the 21st century's brightest minds was used in a way that felt like post-apocalyptic punk.
"I'll bring you to court sooner or later for defamation of the Stark Industries—helo???"
After quickly getting the authorization done and placing the order, Friday wanted to argue a bit more, but then he noticed that there was no noise outside. He checked the external camera and found that Joey had already fallen asleep leaning against the top of the spire.
This discovery greatly shocked Friday—so Kryptonians, these purely solar-powered beings, also sleep!
Even the Kryptonians in their steel-bodied form aren't completely without sleep; after all, aren't we all subject to the cycle of revolution and rotation around the sun?
Did it evolve from a planet with alternating day and night?
A stable biological clock that is active during the day and rests at night is beneficial to the survival of the entire species, and the same is true for Kryptonians.
While Krypton was already dangerous enough in its early days, once night fell, as in most other ecosystems, even more deadly nocturnal predators would appear, eliminating those overconfident foragers.
As for how Joey knew?
Then we'll have to ask the enormous leopard-like creature that's currently fighting "him".
Seeing that Joey had been distracted for a moment, the cheetah that was entangled with Joey suddenly leaped to the side and, using its dark fur, disappeared into the night in the blink of an eye.
After a roar that came from an unknown direction, Joey suddenly felt everything go black.
"Grass!"
Death was no longer a strange experience for Joey. After being beheaded without explanation, the anger and frustration made Joey realize once again where his consciousness was.
Ever since awakening his superpowers, Joey, who is always on edge, has rarely had a proper night's sleep, except when he's in bed with someone, gets beaten up, is blown away by a cosmic dump truck, or is exposed to high-purity kryptonite and falls into a coma.
However, this time when he fell asleep, he didn't have a pleasant dream. Instead, he had the same dream as the last time he fell asleep: a memory about the birth of Doomsday.
This time, the spacecraft carrying him was launched at night. As the spacecraft streaked across the sky, Joey could clearly see two moons, one large and one small, overhead.
The spaceship crashed, landing in one of the few oases on the entire planet.
Joey kicked open the flight cabin door and looked up through the not-so-wide canopy above to confirm that the two moons were in the sky, confirming that this was Krypton.
After countless clonings and adjustments, this body is no longer an infant, but has grown into an adult form, and its gene expression has evolved to a level sufficient for normal survival on Krypton.
Boom!Boom!
Heavy footsteps echoed through the woods. Turning his head, Joey saw a massive, armored beast.
The dark green exoskeleton covered almost the entire body, extending to the crown of its head where two long, distinctive horns grew. This creature with a head like a cow was the ancestor of the "Ronde" that Joey had seen in the Kryptonian creature encyclopedia.
Unlike the later subgroups that only eat grass, are bulky, and occasionally have a bad temper that causes one or two unlucky tourists to die, these large Rongde have highly defensive iron armor, a wider diet, and a more natural aggressiveness.
Under the cover of night, having discovered an extra source of food, Ronde charged toward Joey with agile steps that seemed disproportionate to his massive size, and lifted the latter high into the air with one head.
The sheer size and strength difference left Joey helpless. After taking off, he crashed to the ground, and the fall, occurring in Krypton's high gravity environment, rendered him incapacitated on the spot.
In his final moments, Joey could only watch helplessly as the iron hooves of the Rongde beast trampled him, crushing his body piece by piece until he died. This only fueled the nameless rage in his heart.
Consciousness is refreshed once again—
"How many times has this been done?"
Inside the experimental dome, Bertron was no longer young; age spots and wrinkles began to appear on his face. The researchers around him had been replaced by death more than once, to the point that no one remembered how many times this experiment had been repeated.
"I don't know, maybe it's 31415926535 times?"
With the human intervention of Bertron, through repeated deaths and clone rebirths, this baby completed the three-million-year evolutionary path of the Kryptonian ecosystem in thirty years, growing to a level sufficient to survive normally in the Kryptonian ecosystem.
Bertron now calls it "The Ultimate One," and he will use the fundamental law of nature—evolution—to negate another fundamental law of nature—the inevitable death of all things.
"emission."
"die."
"emission."
"This time, the test subjects avoided those wild beasts!"
"The experimental subject died."
"emission."
"This time, the test subject survived for more than thirty days."
"The wild beasts have found it!"
"The experimental subject is dying!"
"It won!"
"It was badly injured."
"Once he's dead, retrieve the body and we'll continue."
Joey didn't know how much longer this cycle would continue, until, after who knows how many launches, before the spaceship even ignited...
Joey then felt a ringing sound in his ear, like the static of a microphone.
This moment instantly pulled Joey back to reality from her dream.
The moment Joey regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was Mark's punch aimed straight at her face.
With a thud, Joey instinctively reached out and precisely caught Mark's massive punch. Ignoring why he was being attacked, the first thing Joey did upon opening his eyes was to look up and check how many moons were in the sky.
He saw a hollow moon whose core had been melted down.