116: Chapter 116 Genius Suicide, Base Implosion

Marcus Lin stood there, frozen in place, his hands hanging at his sides, the rangefinder dropped to the ground.

His eye sockets widened slightly, then became a void, a final void where even the simplest biological instincts had been drained away.

His breathing was rapid at first, then gradually slowed and shallowed, like a machine being slowly disconnected from its power source.

"Physics is wrong... The formulas and theorems are wrong... All of human science is wrong..."

"All observational results are wrong! All scientific research is wrong! Everything is wrong!!"

"Human civilization is all wrong! All of it is wrong!! Ah!!!"

He suddenly drew the Glock issued for laboratory security, shoved the muzzle into his mouth, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The gunshot exploded in the airlock, splashing flesh and blood onto the ventilation duct grille on the ceiling and the edge of the portable screen that was still repeatedly scrolling low-dimensional ranging data.

Everyone in the airlock froze in place.

The sight of someone who had been doing research normally just seconds ago suddenly shoving a gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger severed everyone's reaction circuits.

Marcus Lin's body fell onto the concrete floor, and the blood and bone fragments splattered from the back of his head were slowly retracting into his cranial cavity, following the regeneration mechanism of liquid zero.

No one noticed Victor Strauss.

He stood behind the explosion-proof isolation window, his protective mask hanging around his neck, hands hanging at his sides.

His lips were moving, at first only twitching ever so slightly, as if he were silently reading a paper only he could see.

Then the sound grew louder, the speed of his speech faster and faster,

From reading silently to talking to himself,

From talking to himself to a hoarse, low roar that could only be emitted after despair had crushed all reason.

"All formulas are based on twisted spacetime!"

"Newton's F=ma is wrong, Maxwell's curl equations are wrong!"

"The renormalization group of quantum electrodynamics is also wrong! It's all wrong!"

"None of it holds up! Everything has been... from beginning to end, denied..."

He suddenly bent down, picked up Marcus Lin's Glock, which was still stained with blood foam and saliva, and aimed the muzzle at his own temple, his finger already on the trigger.

His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated, without any hesitation,

This was not the hesitation of a suicide,

It was a scientist who, having calculated all possibilities and found the answer to be zero, was executing the final, meaningless program.

When Musk turned his head and saw this scene, it was already too late to shout for help.

He lunged two steps toward Victor, while simultaneously making an extremely rough pushing gesture to the security personnel nearby.

Several burly retired special forces soldiers pounced from the side,

One knocked the gun out of Victor's hand, while the other two grabbed his legs and waist respectively, pressing his entire body to the ground.

The gun was kicked away, sliding and spinning a few times before hitting the corner of the wall,

And under the suppression of three or four iron-claw-like hands, Victor was still struggling desperately.

His eyes were red, veins bulging on his neck, as he hoarsely roared:

"Everything is wrong!"

"The spacetime that the Solar System occupies is a twisted, erroneous spacetime, and the humans living in this erroneous spacetime are also a mistake!"

"It has no meaning!"

"Human existence has no meaning to this universe! It is just a mistake!"

"Humans cannot calculate any truth! The only thing waiting for humanity is destruction!"

"Ah!!! It's all wrong!!!"

Shouting until his throat cracked, he suddenly stopped, and then began to wail.

This was a man in his forties who had exhausted all his beliefs and even lost the reason to stand, lying on the concrete floor, held down tightly by several burly security personnel, his face pressed against the cold ground, letting out a wail that had been crushed of all self-respect.

These scientists were not madmen.

Quite the contrary, they were the smartest handful of people on this planet.

It was precisely because they were too smart that they could automatically deduce all subsequent logic the moment they saw π=3, and every step of the deduction was quickly verified in their brains.

The result was the same, no matter how they calculated it:

Humanity had only one future, and that was destruction.

Just like one plus one equals two, indisputable and irreversible.

Marcus Lin committed suicide by shooting himself,

Victor Strauss wailed,

They were not crushed by fear; they were crushed by certainty.

If there had been even a shred of uncertainty, even just a shred, they would have clung to it, but now there was none.

Musk looked at the man being held on the ground who was still wailing, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, he didn't make a sound.

Edward stood beside him, his expression calm as usual, but the fingers hanging at his sides clenched and unclenched involuntarily.

Then, he whispered something to Musk.

Outside the airlock, commotion began to rise at the end of the corridor.

Scientists in other laboratories had also seen the formula in the sky at the same time,

Some climbed out of third-floor windows,

Some slit their wrists in their offices with utility knives,

Some crouched in corners with their heads buried in their knees, emitting intermittent sobs.

The entire Starship Base, like a supercomputer that had suddenly had all its core chips pulled out, was collapsing from the inside at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Get all the scientists under control!"

"Bind their hands and feet, and confiscate all guns and sharp objects in any laboratory!"

"Execute it now!"

Musk turned to Brick and gave the order, every word nailing itself into the air of the airlock cleanly.

Then he turned his head and added a sentence to Edward, his tone at least two beats faster than usual, but kept low enough that only the two of them could hear,

"You were right just now."

"Even if they have liquid zero and can resurrect only to commit suicide again, the stock of liquid zero isn't enough for them to mess around like this."

Regarding Edward's suggestion, Musk agreed almost immediately, without hesitation.

What he was really worried about now was the inventory of liquid zero.

There really looked to be a lot of liquid zero, but there were dozens of scientists in the entire Starship Base, and they were throwing themselves toward death one after another.

He turned his head to look into the airlock at Victor Strauss, who was pressed to the ground and crying so hard he couldn't make a sound,

He thought back to when he sat on the ground after the third explosion of falcon 1, looking much the same, only back then there was no one beside him, and he didn't even dare to cry out loud.