Chapter 188: The First Accident of the Mech Era

The 180th day after the document was released, 7:20 AM, a construction site somewhere in Jiang City.

The third phase of the "Jinmao Center" project, a thirty-six-story building, had already been topped out and was undergoing facade curtain wall installation.

Under Tower Crane No. 7, a bright yellow "Construction-Type 1" engineering mech (serial number CJ-043) was conducting its first hoisting operation of the day.

The operator was Liu Gang, thirty-two years old, with ten years of tower crane operating experience, having just obtained his Class II engineering mech license three months ago.

Today was his forty-seventh day at this site, and everything was proceeding as normally as usual.

"CJ-043, prepare to hoist Curtain Wall Unit No. 3, weight 1.8 tons, target height 110 meters, coordinates synchronized," the voice from the command center came over the walkie-talkie.

"Received," Liu Gang responded in the cockpit.

He gripped the joystick, and the mech walked steadily to the storage area.

The hoisting clamp at the front of the mechanical arm deployed, gripping the six-meter-long, three-meter-wide glass curtain wall unit.

"Hoist."

The hydraulic system pressurized, and the curtain wall lifted steadily off the ground.

Liu Gang operated the mech to turn and walk toward the main building.

Every step was very steady, with the pressure sensors on the mech's feet adjusting the center of gravity in real-time, ensuring the balance and stability of the load.

The weather was nice today; sunny, light breeze, good visibility.

A good day for work.

Liu Gang even hummed a tune.

The mech walked to the bottom of the main building, preparing to transfer the curtain wall to the tower crane's hook.

This was the standard procedure: the mech handled ground transport, and the tower crane handled high-altitude installation.

"Tower crane in position, ready for handover."

"Received, docking now."

Liu Gang adjusted the mech's posture, the mechanical arm slowly lifted, and the curtain wall unit rose steadily.

Just as the curtain wall was about to hook onto the tower crane's hook.

"Warning: Right arm joint pressure abnormal," an alarm sounded in the cockpit.

Liu Gang was stunned, looking at the display screen: the pressure reading of the right arm's No. 3 hydraulic cylinder was jumping wildly, soaring from the normal 35 MPa to 50, 60, 80...

"System failure! Right arm out of control!" he reported to the command center immediately.

But before he finished speaking, the mech's right arm suddenly jerked upward uncontrollably!

"Clang—!"

The curtain wall unit shook violently in the air, hitting the scaffolding support column next to it, and the steel frame emitted a harsh twisting sound.

"Emergency brake! Activate emergency brake!" the command center roared.

Liu Gang had already pressed the red emergency button.

According to the design, the emergency braking system should have locked all joints and cut off power output within 0.3 seconds.

But today, it was half a second slow.

It was this half-second that caused the out-of-control right arm, carrying the 1.8-ton curtain wall, to continue swinging upward.

"Boom!!"

The curtain wall unit smashed toward the worker dormitory area at the edge of the construction site!

It was a row of two-story prefab houses, housing over eighty workers; although most people were already at work at this time, there were still a dozen people resting or changing shifts in the dormitory.

At this critical moment, the mech's "last line of defense" was activated.

Just as the curtain wall was about to hit the dormitory, four tow cables suddenly ejected from the mech's back, "whoosh," wrapping around the four corners of the curtain wall unit.

At the same time, the reverse thruster on the mech's left arm fired at full power, forcibly pulling the curtain wall back by half a meter.

"Bang!"

The curtain wall smashed heavily onto the open space in front of the dormitory area, less than three meters away from the nearest prefab house.

But the shockwave still shattered a dozen windows, and glass shards flew everywhere.

Three workers who ran out of the dormitory were scratched by flying glass; although they were all minor injuries, the scene of blood flowing was still very frightening.

The mech, because of the forced reverse braking, had its right arm joint completely destroyed, hydraulic oil sprayed all over the ground, and it lay paralyzed in place.

The entire construction site was dead silent.

Three seconds later, alarm bells, whistles, and shouts exploded.

"Save people! Hurry and save people!"

"Call an ambulance!"

"Seal off the scene!"

Liu Gang lay paralyzed in the cockpit, his face deathly pale, his hands shaking.

Through the panoramic glass, he saw the injured coworkers being helped out, saw the shattered glass, saw the mess on the ground.

And that curtain wall that almost caused a disaster was now right before his eyes.

"I... I..." he opened his mouth, unable to speak.

At 8:10 AM, the news was quickly transmitted to the Longyin Research Institute.

Feng Yan was in the middle of a concept discussion meeting about "lunar mechs" when he received the encrypted communication; his expression darkened instantly as he looked at the information coming through.

"The accident site is in Jiang City, only 200 kilometers away from us," he stood up.

"Li Yang, Chen Guang, Wang Hao, come with me. Zhao Kaiyuan, Zhao Gong, prepare the support team, on standby at any time."

"What accident happened?" Wang Hao hadn't reacted yet.

"A construction site mech went out of control and almost smashed into the worker dormitory," Feng Yan was already walking out.

"Three minor injuries on site, equipment total loss. This is the first serious accident since civilian mechs were promoted."

Everyone in the conference room changed expression.

Three minutes later, a helicopter took off from the institute's helipad, heading straight for Jiang City.

On the way, Chen Guang had already retrieved the "black box" data of the accident mech through the "Torch Dragon" system.

Every civilian mech had a complete data recorder, uploading to the cloud in real-time.

"Data is out," he stared at the tablet.

"Five seconds before the accident, the system log showed an anomaly: two conflicting commands were received at the same time."

"What commands?" Li Yang asked.

"Command one: maintain stability, prepare to transfer the hoisted object. Command two: lift the right arm at full power," Chen Guang pushed his glasses.

"These two commands came from different signal sources, with a time difference of only 0.01 seconds. The system... logic-locked when judging priority."

"Deadlocked?" Wang Hao's eyes widened. "Doesn't our safety algorithm have conflict arbitration?"

"It does, but it was bypassed," Chen Guang pulled up the code snippet.

"To catch up on the schedule, the construction site privately cracked the mech's safety speed limit lock, implanted a backdoor in the system's underlying layer using a cracking program, and bypassed the conflict arbitration layer."

Li Yang's expression was ugly: "Then why was the emergency brake half a second slow?"

"Also because of the cracking," Chen Guang continued to analyze.

"The emergency braking system requires triple confirmation: manual trigger by the operator, automatic judgment by the safety system, and approval by the cloud monitoring center."

"The cracking program interfered with the second layer, causing the system to spend an extra 0.5 seconds on additional verification."

Feng Yan listened silently, finally asking: "What is the root cause?"

Chen Guang was very direct: "When we designed the software, we didn't consider the handling of conflicting commands after malicious cracking. We only assumed that users would follow the rules, but the reality is that there are always people who want to take shortcuts."

The helicopter arrived at the accident site at 9:00 sharp.

The scene had already been cordoned off, and local safety supervision, public security, and medical teams had all arrived.

The injured workers had been sent to the hospital; they were all minor skin injuries and nothing serious, but they were all quite frightened.

The accident mech was still paralyzed in place, its right arm joint completely deformed, and hydraulic oil was all over the ground.

Feng Yan put on a hard hat, walked to the mech, and squatted down to inspect it.

Liu Gang had already been taken aside for questioning, but he was still completely dazed.

The construction site project manager ran over, sweating profusely: "President Feng, this... this was an accident, we..."

"What's going on with the cracking?" Feng Yan asked directly.

The project manager choked.

"If you don't tell the truth, this matter can't be resolved," Feng Yan stood up.

"The ones injured now are your workers, the one damaged is your equipment, and the one facing investigation next is your construction site. You need to think clearly."

The project manager's face turned white and then red, finally gritting his teeth: "It... it was done by our equipment department."

"They said that after cracking, efficiency could be increased by fifteen percent, and I thought about catching up on the schedule, so..."

"Where did the cracking program come from?"

"Bought it online, five thousand yuan for a cracking package."

Wang Hao jumped in anger on the side: "Five thousand? Just to save that little bit of time? Is the safety system I designed worth five thousand?!"

"That's enough," Feng Yan stopped him and turned to the project manager.

"All cracked mechs, stop immediately, and your construction site's mech usage permit is also suspended. Wait until the investigation is over."

"President Feng, the schedule..."

"Is the schedule more important or human life?" Feng Yan stared at him.

"If that curtain wall had really smashed into the dormitory today, it wouldn't have been just three minor injuries. That could have been a dozen, or even dozens of lives. Can you take responsibility for that?"

The project manager didn't speak.

That afternoon, the Longyin Research Institute issued an emergency announcement:

"Due to technical safety hazards, all 'Construction-Type 1' engineering mech commercial operations are suspended, and safety patches must be updated."

"Mechs that have completed the patch update also need to pass third-party testing before they can resume use."

Once the announcement was out, engineering mechs at thousands of construction sites across the country stopped work simultaneously.

The online public opinion exploded instantly. ===== CHAPTER 189 =====