Chapter 631 - 602: The Situation Progresses

[Communicator: Frank]

[Hiss—]

[Frank: This is Atlas Group’s First Special Task Squad, Frank Castle. Boss, I’m about to brief you on the situation.]

A signal transmitted from the offshore area was captured by the antenna of Atlas Building in New York. Perhaps due to the distance, as the source of the signal was on the sea surface, the signal was somewhat intermittent.

According to the communications, the ship carrying Vibranium was now very close to New York.

The message being transmitted back was all meaningless noise, and only those holding the encryption key could decrypt and retrieve valid information. Even with a supercomputer brute-forcing the decryption, the amount of time required would surely make the information outdated by the time it was decrypted.

[Frank: Position update: approximately longitude 73 degrees east, latitude 40 degrees north.]

[We are nearing New York and expect to officially reach the port in 7 to 10 days. At the moment, no one is suspicious of this ordinary cargo ship.]

[Cargo is in good condition; the camouflage system is functional.]

[Current sea conditions are good. There’s a patrol boat to the southeast... mmm... nothing too unusual. Frank out.]

Lille disconnected from the signal tower and pinched the bridge of his nose—

The first item on the agenda was to update the position of the Vibranium, and Frank’s report indicated that everything was normal.

With Vibranium, one could start experimenting with what is known as controlled nuclear fusion: whether it was Lille’s own ideas or the engineering blueprints from Tony, the conjectures about the Arc Reactor all needed Vibranium, a unique material that could act as a constraint device to control the fusion elements.

So Lille had to start designing the nuclear fusion reactor: His idea was to set up a large power-generating device, utilizing Vibranium’s property of absorbing energy to create an unprecedented alloy to control the high temperatures and neutron radiation produced by nuclear fusion.

According to this plan, Lille needed to study first how to create the new alloy and then try to increase the volume of the reactor as much as possible, to improve the ratio between energy output and input. Overall, it was a low-cost, high-total-supply scheme, but correspondingly, the size of the reactor wouldn’t be small.

Tony’s approach was, of course, a small nuclear fusion device. He believed one could synthesize a new element by using high-energy lasers between Vibranium atoms, a new element that could only exist within Vibranium and continuously sustain a nuclear fusion reaction.

However, the energy required for synthesis was substantial, and so the energy output-to-input ratio definitely couldn’t match Lille’s plan, though a scaled-down device was clearly more suited for a superhero’s use.

Regrettably, Tony had only begun this concept and the MK armor had just appeared in his brain before he went out of contact; the files contained only Stark Military’s miniaturized designs, such as micro missiles, tracking bullets...

All things that Lille had already played out.

As for what was valuable, the intercontinental missiles could still be taken out for a spin, but Lille also had some knowledge in that area, it was simply a matter of considering where to buy or how to make the inertial navigation, global positioning system, thermal protection system, launch platform, and so on.

Thinking about it, he was actually only missing that super battle suit which would allow one to fly at supersonic speeds without shattering upon impact, when compared to Iron Man.

[Little Octopus: Big bro, when are we taking action against Stark Industries?]

[Lille: Check the news.]

[Little Octopus: Got it.]

The biggest news recently was that Barnes was about to take office as President. For the outside world, this President had given nearly the same level of assistance to both the military industrial complex led by Rocksen Energy and the peace development group led by Atlas Group.

The result was that the power of both sides was surging, and the world was developing rapidly in a seemingly peaceful situation:

In Africa, the scale of Zhu Ya City was growing, with it as the core, each nuclear reactor as a node, high-voltage lines and transport roads fully spread out, acting as branches. Exploration team members and robots were sending back data, mines and factories were being established like bamboo shoots after a rainstorm, and workers and engineers who had undergone brain-computer interface training were pouring in.

Africa was once like loose sand, an undeveloped primitive treasure land, but now, the blood of industry was being injected here. As the supply of basic materials gradually kept up, the products produced by Atlas Group became increasingly popular. Because of actions by Barnes, the President-elect, trade had mostly returned to normal. Only those entities tied to Rocksen would refuse and obstruct these business dealings.

But those weren’t problems.

Because in this world, profit can eliminate all distinctions among people: race, nationality, skin color, thoughts...

People can ignore these differences for sufficient profit, or to put it another way, the tangible things like profit can shatter those illusory things, making them true to their own hearts.

The last column of the news section reported that parades were being held in various states: places like New York were having anti-war parades, while places like Houston were pressuring the next Government to punish African terrorists.

However, in those clearly aligned states, the parades were relatively peaceful.

Atlas Group had old policemen equipped with high-tech prosthetics, new-style police using exoskeletons for security, and they had certain associations with various guilds and parade organizations.

Rocksen Group was more direct: They deployed robots as police, and protestors with ulterior motives didn’t dare to participate, after all, there had been no cases of local Government compensation for being killed by a robot yet.

In places where the political stance was more volatile, the situation was complicated.

[Little Octopus: Two groups of protesters in Pittsburgh clashed, and the scene immediately turned into a street brawl, 14 people died on the spot, 68 people were injured, and the state capital announced plans to introduce new-era urban security technology, but it’s still uncertain whether it will be us or Rocksen, the bid has been submitted.]

[Little Octopus: The state capital of Cleveland was set on fire, but the arsonist was caught within a few steps, reportedly apprehended using our brain-computer interface chips, which are used to frequently learn combat skills.]

[Little Octopus: Norfolk is considering signing a commercial agreement with Rocksen, mainly concerning the oil industry, there’s news, but not much, and the protesting crowd has already reached the city Government.]

[Little Octopus: Also, some good news from Miami, an old building was set on fire by protesters, the building’s fire control system was too old to function, but a young man who volunteered for our second-generation prosthetics human body experiment climbed the building with his bare hands to rescue his mother, as well as a few neighbors.

This issue has garnered a lot of attention, and ctOS has won the bid, so we will deploy resources there next.]

[Little Octopus: And there’s more...]

Of the 50 states, 31 have clearly sided with Rocksen, 14 chose Atlas, and the remaining 5 are wavering, but the political climate no longer supports their indecision.

Overall, these remaining five states are more inclined toward Atlas, especially since those are mostly states with a tepid economic performance or those who can’t hold out anymore. During the financial storm, they are already adjusting or being forced to adjust their industries, aligning more with Atlas with its emerging technology seems to fit their needs better.

Regardless, people could smell gunpowder:

The contradictions were so intense that no one could afford to waver any longer in the imminent storm.

The wise knew that this wasn’t about placing bets, but about choosing what appears to be a sturdy life-saving straw.

[Little Octopus: Big brother, if we didn’t have investments in Africa early on, we might be struggling for breath right now.]

Lille rose from his control room, ending the information summary for the day.

"Let Michael get ready, I’m going to perform surgery for his prosthetics."