Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 853 "Ice Age"
"All information has been encrypted. Every hunter who returns from the Ring City will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement. I spent a lot of credit points to buy some fragmentary information from... an intelligence dealer." Ke Lan paused and continued, "There is a brain hidden underground... To be precise, it is a large mass of brain cells that divide and proliferate infinitely like cancer cells."
"After I saw the Ark's core brain with my own eyes, I once thought that some of the things found underground in the 'Ring City' and the technologies derived from them should have been applied to the core brain." Ke Lan sighed, "But at that time my focus was not on the core brain and the ring city, so I didn't have time to use my authority to look up relevant information."
"Since the Undead Crew can apply this technology to the core brain of the Ark, then haven't they extracted some valuable information from those 'brain tissues'? For example, how did the Alpha civilization disappear?"
"Maybe, but the undead crew members haven't made it public. I don't know which hard drive in the black well contains these fragmentary information." Ke Lan shrugged regretfully. At this moment, he suddenly envied Ze Luo - if he had the same ability as Ze Luo, perhaps in just a few days, he would be able to move all the information stored in the black well into his own brain.
It's not that Ke Lan had never thought about bringing Ze Luo to the Black Well, but considering that doing so would most likely cause an extreme reaction from the undead crew, he had not taken action yet...To this day, this idea may never be realized.
The topic of "biological computers, ring cities, and the brain" came to an end, and the two continued to walk silently through the hive, carefully looking at this city that exuded irrationality everywhere.
"This factory... um, does it process canned food?" Sanshisan stopped in front of a semi-open factory building and pointed at the piles of empty cans in the corner that had not yet been filled and capped.
"Canned food production line." Ke Lan also walked over there - for a carbon-based biological civilization, food is always one of the most important things. Starting from the clue of food, one can learn a lot of important information about this civilization.
The most crucial point is that in the remains of the Alpha civilization, the Ark hunters have never found any buildings or places related to "eating", including farmland, animal husbandry, food processing plants, vegetable markets, and restaurants. Even kitchen knives and tableware have never been found. As for some containers that look like bowls or cups, their actual purpose is not to hold food and drinks, but to store things that are obviously not for eating.
Up to now, whether it is the academic circle full of experts or the casual conversations of ordinary people after dinner, they all agree that the Alpha people do not obtain energy by consuming food - as for the source of energy for their life activities, there are many different opinions.
Some say that it comes from the nuclear radiation that is everywhere on the surface of Alpha; some say that the skin of the Alpha people contains a substance similar to chlorophyll, which allows them to carry out photosynthesis like plants; others say that the Alpha people also eat, but what they eat is not food in the eyes of humans, but energy crystals, metal ores and the like.
There is even a bolder theory that the total amount of energy in the Alpha's body has been decreasing since the moment it was born until death - just like those children's toys that have batteries installed when they leave the factory and cannot be disassembled or replaced.
Ke Lan remembered the scene he saw in the "Dirac Sea" - hundreds of thousands of Alphas stood on a huge square, with thick lead-gray clouds above their heads and the pale and dim afterglow of the sunset on the distant horizon. One hose after another was inserted three centimeters below their necks, and a light gray viscous substance was slowly pumped into their bodies along the hoses.
If this behavior is the "eating process" of the Alphas... then Ke Lan feels that they are not "eating" but rather like cars using chemical fuels refueling at a gas station.
As for the "civilization" that built Yaguna Tor and the Hive City, it is obvious that they should be closer to humans... After all, the crew on the escaped engineering ship were originally humans from Earth.
Food has always been an important culture passed down from the birth of human civilization to the present day. In many cases, food is not only a means of survival, but also a behavior of spiritual and emotional self-satisfaction: Ke Lan feels that even if he can do it like those cultivators in the "bigu period" in the novels about cultivating immortals who do not need to eat, he will find it difficult to refuse the pleasure brought by eating - plump and juicy pieces of meat that burst out delicious juice when chewed and squeezed by teeth, vegetables and fruits of various flavors and textures, and a variety of staple foods... Even synthetic foods can have a unique flavor with the addition of thousands of seasonings.
Even the two actions of chewing and swallowing alone can bring pleasure and satisfaction to the human brain.
The "canned food production line" in front of the two people uses a semi-manual operation mode. Four huge "capping machines" stand against the wall. There are a lot of leftover cutting scraps on the ground next to them, which are densely covered with holes with the same diameter as the cans. Ke Lan only took a glance and understood how to use this easy-to-operate "capping machine": put the filled cans into the slot in the middle, then cover the can mouth with iron sheet, pull the lever hard, and the circular blade will cut out the lid at the same time, and the welding gun hidden inside the blade will instantly weld the lid and the can together tightly, so that the sealing of the can is guaranteed.
From the perspective of an Earthling living on the Ark, this way of sealing is really, really backward.
Not to mention that sealing cans in this non-sterile environment is not hygienic, and bacteria and dust from the air, machines and the operator's hands will be sealed into the cans. The efficiency alone is enough to be a reason to eliminate these devices.
According to Ke Lan's understanding, the canning production line of "Weijia Synthetic Meat Company" under the Soma Group, one of the fully mechanized assembly lines, can produce at least 150,000 cans if it operates non-stop 24 hours a day, which is about one can every 0.5 seconds.
This assembly line covers the entire process of making synthetic meat, from preparing raw materials, stirring and then solidifying into shape, seasoning, cooking, sterilization, filling and sealing. Except for the empty cans that need to be transported from other places, the entire process is fully automated. The manager of the production line only needs to sit in a small glass room high up and glance at the computer screen from time to time.
According to Ke Lan's conservative estimate, this "canned food production line" in the nest city can only produce two to three thousand cans a day, which is already the maximum output... According to the population size of the upper level, this amount of canned food production is completely a drop in the bucket.
I think canned food can be considered a "luxury" for the residents of the upper-level hive city, right?
If you really want to feed so many mouths, the best solution is protein blocks and synthetic starch. The former is made from various biological waste, farmed cockroaches and even the decomposition of corpses, while the latter is a pure chemical synthetic preparation. In Ke Lan's eyes, these two things are not even "food", but only "things that can be used to fill hunger and replenish energy" - but for the managers of this hive city, the taste and flavor of food are not important at all. The most important thing is to prevent people in the hive city from starving to death.
"What a pity! They are all empty cans." Thirty-three picked up a can and examined it carefully. "If we can find a batch of well-sealed finished cans, we might be able to find out what these guys ate."
"It's been so long, even if there are still some residues in the cans, it would be difficult for us to distinguish the ingredients without the help of the equipment on the Ark." Ke Lan said, "Zero may be able to do it, but deciphering those words is the top priority now. I don't want other things to slow down the deciphering progress."
"This can—" Thirty-three flicked the can wall covered with a thick layer of oxide with his fingernail, "It seems to be made of an alloy with aluminum as the main component."
"aluminum?"
On Earth, the most common material for metal cans is tinplate, which is tin-plated iron, followed by aluminum. However, on the Ark, aluminum cans are almost non-existent. Aluminum is a very important industrial material, and the aluminum ore reserves on Earth are very large, so there are so many things that use aluminum as raw materials in daily life. But on Alpha, aluminum ore is not only scarce, but also very poor. The only aluminum is used in more important places, and the value of aluminum itself has also risen... Using aluminum to make cans, which was common in the old era, seems a bit extravagant today.
Scarcity makes things valuable, this is an irrefutable truth... Judging from the aluminum reserves on Alpha, this thing can basically be equated with precious metals like gold.
"I also find it strange. Aluminum resources are so scarce on Alpha, but they actually use it to make cans." Thirty-three said, "It always makes me feel... it's a waste."
"Wait a minute." Ke Lan suddenly said, and then he walked around the four "capping machines" several times, looking at every corner of the four devices, and then turned his head to Thirty-Three, "I think these cans may not be used to hold food. We have a preconceived notion... When we see this kind of 'canned food', we subconsciously think that it is likely to contain edible things."
"Why do you think so?"
"These four devices are so clean." Ke Lan pointed to the machines that were covered with a layer of dust and some of their steel parts were rusted, but there was no accumulation of stains. "If this is a canning , then according to this operation method, something will definitely spill on the machine. Over time, places like corners and grooves will definitely accumulate sludge-like stains, which cannot be avoided even if they are scrubbed every day. Even if microorganisms eat up the stains cleanly over tens of thousands of years, there will always be some inorganic residues left... But there is nothing in these grooves except dust. Do you think this is a machine used to process food?"
A modern, fully automatic food processing workshop can indeed be dust-free and clean as new, but this canning production line is just a handicraft workshop. Since it is manually operated, mistakes are bound to occur. As long as the hand shakes, the contents of the can will inevitably spill onto the equipment. It is simply not as good as those robotic arms whose movements can be accurate to millimeters.
Unless, the workers who use these devices have brains comparable to super biological computers and body control capabilities comparable to high-end robots...but if they really have such capabilities, how could they put such backward handicraft workshops into use?
"Ke Lan, there seems to be words on the inside of the can."
Thirty-three took out a Nino alloy dagger, cut an empty can open along the side, and then flattened the entire side. Ke Lan saw that at the bottom of the inside, there was a line of small words that were very easy to overlook.
This line of text is engraved , but it is engraved very shallowly and cannot be seen from the outside of the can... Logically speaking, neither product information nor production serial numbers should be engraved in such a difficult-to-find location.
"It's that kind of writing," Thirty-Three said. "Look, this character, and this, this, and this, all match up with some of the characters in the sentence we saw just now on the edge of the lift platform. This is the same language."
"Then it seems we have to wait for Ze Luo..."
As soon as Ke Lan finished speaking, the living armor on his body left his body and fell to the ground, transforming into a girl with a stunning face but no expression.
"The decoding is complete." Ze Luo blinked, and her long eyelashes cast a thick shadow under her eyelids. "The general meaning of that sentence is: People with authority level 'four' and below are prohibited from entering the upper city area of the hive city. This regulation was promulgated in the fourth year of the Ice Age and is effective immediately."
"The upper city of the nest?" Thirty-three repeated, "Are you referring to the third floor below? It seems that this upper city should be the so-called 'noble area'. This place is really very hierarchical."
"No, I'm more interested in the 'Ice Age' mentioned later... Does this mean that there was a period on Alpha similar to the Ice Age on Earth, and this nest city was built as a shelter to avoid the extreme cold on the surface?"
