Chapter 578 - 549: Third Generation Prosthetics Technology with Leapfrogging Advancements

Lille’s side includes the highest degree of prosthetic integration with Michael, who was once an engineer at Cyber Technology Company, also known as the Death Warrior.

This man’s prosthetics, though primitive compared to the second-generation prosthetics using synthetic muscles, are not low in value. They consist entirely of high-power motors and high-strength metal, with manufacturing costs alone exceeding one million US dollars, not including the ammunition.

However, primitive is primitive, and the Death Warrior’s drawback is his rigidity: this is a successful demonstration of a brain-computer interface application, but not a successful prosthetics display.

The designers ruthlessly removed Michael’s skull, disassembled his head and eyes, and forcibly mounted them onto a humanoid robot without any design concerning neural simulation or biomechanics, using a very primitive and inefficient binary system for decoding the brain signals.

Rather than saying a person was fitted with prosthetics, it’s more like a wetware computer was placed on prosthetics, and it’s the kind that’s hardly developed for efficiency.

The impact of complete prostheticization is subtle: Michael has now removed those heavy combat prosthetics and replaced them with synthetic muscles from the International Gene Cooperation Company. He is a provider of cutting-edge prosthetic data and a developer of prosthetics. Lille’s designs for the ’Ranger’ full-body prosthetics for both the Vortex Gang and the Tiger Claw Gang were integrated with his design.

Upon hearing Lille wanted full-body prostheticization, he immediately spoke up:

[Michael: Boss, I can provide you with a plan right now.]

[Michael: Moreover, boss, I know you’re a bit crazy, and I strongly suggest you adopt the third-generation prosthetic experimental technology.]

He knew best which parts could be fully prostheticized, and in fact, he had been thinking about it for a long time.

Having been passively used as a subject in experiments, he lost the opportunity to return to his past life. Prosthetics were cool, but after living with them for so long, he sometimes missed the feeling of a gentle breeze and warm sunlight.

But such fine feedback demands even higher specifications from the equipment, like the third-generation prosthetics in the development plan — precise neural sensors.

Lille took a brief look, and indeed, Michael’s full-body prosthetics plan was stuck at the extreme limit of safety:

Firstly, the limbs would definitely be completely replaced, which is the easiest part to replace, using carbon fiber and alloys instead of bones, and powered by synthetic muscles. There were no irreplaceable parts, and it could enhance both strength and durability.

Next is the torso, which includes significant muscle groups like the abdominal and chest muscles, and inside the cavity, many crucial organs could be replaced, including the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, and intestinal systems...

All would be redesigned and replaced according to the functions of their respective organs, only retaining some glands that produce complex biomolecules and immune cells, pushing prosthetic integration close to 90%.

Above the neck, except for the eyes and the nervous system close to the brain, everything else would be replaced, bringing the integration level close to 70%.

The overall level of prosthetic integration exceeds 80%, which is the safe plan.

The aggressive plan is to completely dismantle the spinal nervous system and rebuild the surrounding neural system with brand-new synthetic nerve fiber cells, including both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems.

If successful, this would significantly enhance Lille’s condition: all his nervous systems, including the brain, having been operating abnormally for a long time, even using Lizard Serum would result in tumors compressing these systems, reducing their computational power as wetware computers.

If it weren’t for Little Octopus, without the marvelous Si Anweisitan capable of carrying critical payloads, and without the two working together to compensate for functional deficiencies through computational power, his performance would significantly decline in combat, including bodily mobility, cognitive ability, and computational capacity.

If completely rebuilt, it means that only the irreplaceable brain might still develop brain cancer—

Although still severe, at least other issues wouldn’t arise.

The problem now is...the reason the aggressive plan is called aggressive is that people don’t know what the consequences of doing so will be.

The research options for reconstructing the nervous system span over a dozen directions, involving hundreds of materials and thousands of potential combinations.

Carbon nanotubes, graphene nanoplates, flexible electrodes, microelectrode arrays, biocompatible conductive polymers, biomimetic collagen fibers, gold nanoparticles...

With so many options and materials, animal testing hasn’t even finished the final phase, and the data is scarce.

[Conners: This is too risky.]

[Michael: Yes, but it’s the best choice, all in one go. The more we integrate prosthetics, the better the life-extension effect. Maybe within a week or two, we will have new breakthroughs.]

[Otto: Or because of the aggressive plan, other side effects might occur...]

[Adrian: This is indeed risky, but it’s also a treatment plan.]

But none of these are reliable plans, as the prognosis to extend life is only a few weeks at best.

In the meeting, Peter and his assistant Gwen, as the youngest researchers, watched Lille face this choice, and it was likely that regardless of his decision, the results would be minimal. They felt so uneasy that they didn’t know what to say.

However, the selection of synthetic nerve fibers, the high-precision and high-standard third-generation prosthetics technology, a vast amount of data—

These were exactly what Lille was about to deal with. Dog Town surely had such technologies, and although Blais and Ryan said that there was definitely technology there that could save his life, he did not like being strung along by other things.

He was now carrying the plan into the next target location, and now he had it.

[Lille: Get ready for the surgery, but I want to design the operation myself—Michael, you did a good job, but I want to decide for myself.]

[Michael: I understand you, boss, we’re all listening.]

[Lille: The surgery might take some time, I will provide the prosthetics design plans in phases, as for the rest...]

[Lille: Other things as usual, I have some industrial data that I will upload to the network later, if there’s time you can all check it out, it also includes some files on controlled nuclear fusion.]

[Otto: Speaking of this, Lille, are you serious?]

[Lille: I never lie, yes, I believe we will make a breakthrough very soon.]

[Lille: Next, there’s been some change in the agreement with presidential candidate Barnes, the latest business strategy needs adjustment.]

Chrysler and General Motors were about to merge into a new vehicle division; they just had not foreseen the financial crisis, but their ability to run the company was sufficient, this part could let them collaborate with Hammond.

And the design data brought by Pepper could benefit many engineers, for example, some of the high-performance thruster designs might give Adrian some new ideas to completely perfect the hovercar engines.

Finally, this so-called business strategy—

Lille needed to decrypt Stark Industries’ corporate network, considering Jarvis might have already become a danger threshold entity and Skye was not yet able to fight AI alone, he had better keep an eye on the work here.

Lastly...

Lastly was the matter of settling his mother.

Lille restarted his artificial heart, regained some color, and got up from the medical bed to leave the ward and talk with his mother about the arrangements.

Honestly, being completely honest with his mother about his physical condition made Lille a bit uneasy; after all, only reporting the good and not the bad had been a long-standing habit of his, hard to break all at once.

But Maya was stronger than he had imagined—

Watching her son being dissected and gutted during examinations, observing various artificial implants on his body, seeing him lying weakly on the bed being sentenced to death...

Maya just wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes, did not cry her heart out, and quietly sat on the sofa waiting for Lille to speak.

As she had told him, she would not interfere with Lille’s decisions and would control herself not to affect him.

Her love for her son was a continuation of her union with her husband, but she would never let this sentiment compromise her respect for Lille as an individual.

Parental love sometimes needs to be restrained, she understood this truth.

It made Lille feel somewhat guilty, not just for making his mother worry and struggle with a fear that seemed like falling into an abyss again, but also because...

His grandfather had risked his life to send his mother out of Latvia, yet he might have to send his mother back there.