190: Chapter 190 Parameter Overload Reveals the Cards, a Laughing Premise is Hidden

Musk smiled as he listened to the banter of his two old friends, slowly setting the soda can in his hand down on the table. His tone was level, yet carried a long-standing caution and a clear sense of propriety:

"That's right."

"I didn't tell you before because, previously, even I myself was trapped in the infighting between the Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction."

"Various assassinations; you guys knew when Walsh died;"

"On the ruins of Hoover Dam, after being blown to pieces by artillery shells and pieced back together with liquid zero, I almost couldn't be pieced back together that time;"

"When Joshua came back to the Starship Base to find me for the first time, he struck a bolt of lightning into the second underground level, and over a hundred special forces soldiers around me were all knocked down within three seconds."

"If I had pulled you into the Long Live Alliance at that time, you might have already been placed on the extermination list by the Longevity Faction."

"That wasn't a good time to drag good friends into the circle."

He picked the soda can back up and took a sip,

then, looking at the three faces before him that had been by his side since the Silicon Valley era, after a quiet pause, his tone turned resolute:

"But now it's different."

"The Senate has already stepped forward."

"The Fifth Archon, Cecilia, arrived in person to announce the rules for Ten Thousand Ship Slash. From now on, any form of internal crossfire between the Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction is forbidden."

"Now that the Tech Faction is pushing technological aid to us on a large scale, bringing you in now is the right time."

"Only then would I be doing right by you."

After listening, Patrick, Samir, and Caroline no longer bantered with each other. They merely straightened their postures somewhat and turned their technical blueprints to a brand-new page.

Prant took a sip of his soda, set his cup down on the table, turned to Musk, and said in a relaxed tone, though his words had already cut straight to the main issue.

"Elon, everyone present is waiting: what on earth did Mr. Joshua give you?"

"What is that thing capable of winning Ten Thousand Ship Slash for the Tech Faction in front of the million-strong fleet of the Grey Aliens?"

Musk stood up and pushed a folder marked "Parameter Overload" right to the center of the table.

When he spoke, his tone was no longer the relaxed one he used while bantering with his old friends just now,

but rather directly cut into the concise, precise, and resolute engineering command rhythm of the pre-launch countdown phase at the SpaceX Control Center.

"The plan given to the Tech Faction by Mr. Joshua is called 'Parameter Overload'."

"The core technology is building 'Protocol Deception Broadcasting Towers'."

"After entering the Solar System, the Grey Aliens must activate the adaptive calibration system to convert all core calculations of the fleet from the correct space-time where Pi equals 3 to the incorrect space-time where Pi equals 3.14159."

"The essence of this adaptive system is a real-time conversion protocol, a software layer situated between the sensors and the core control system."

"We will use the broadcasting tower to send forged parameter packets to that software layer and deceive it."

"Make it allocate fuel compression ratio variables compiled according to the correct firmware of π = 3 to the engines, while simultaneously making the shields bear internal pressure according to the incorrect constants we additionally tampered with."

He brought up a simplified protocol stack schematic on the desktop touchpad.

Along both sides of the long table, assistants handed files marked "Protocol Deception Broadcasting Tower System Architecture" to everyone's hands.

Patrick Colin took the blueprint and flipped to the third page. Those eyes, which had been immersed in the Silicon Valley chip design field for over twenty years, suddenly lit up.

"The instructions for the engines and the instructions for the shields come from the same conversion layer, but are compiled using two sets of mutually contradictory physical parameters respectively."

"The engines compress the fuel according to the correct fuel compression ratio, and the shields calculate internal pressure according to the incorrect constants."

"They are executed simultaneously on the same set of energy pipelines."

"This is a protocol conflict at the very lowest level of the software layer."

Samir Rashid also laid his half-marked blueprint aside, his speaking pace steady and precise:

"Our forged parameter packets pass through the adaptive conversion layer."

"The engines run according to Pi equals 3, and the shields run according to Pi equals 3.1415."

"The energy core of the same flying saucer undergoes internal simulation debugging according to the different physical parameters of both sides."

"When the fuel is compressed to critical density, it cannot find a synchronized and consistent energy exit."

"The system kernels contradict each other, then..."

Caroline von sat beside him, her eyes still fixed on the tablet in front of her—the one filled with architectural sketches covering the entire page—

and then she raised her head, using a calm and precise speaking pace to deduce the final frame of this attack program completely and clearly.

"Then, the engine cores will completely overload."

"The fuel is compressed to critical density, and the direction of energy release bounces back and forth internally, crashing into the inner walls of the shields locked down by the incorrect constants, unable to find any exit."

"Without any external explosion source, every enemy ship will blow up from the inside."

"By then, millions of balls of fire will light up simultaneously."

Musk stood before the conference table, an unmasked appreciation and confidence rising on his lean face.

He nodded continuously, his tone brief and slightly upturned:

"Patrick, Samir, Caroline. You are all as smart as me; you get it at the slightest hint."

Edward Warren slowly relaxed his hands crossed on the table, leaned his back against the chair, and let out a long breath.

Ever since a few months ago in his estate study, clutching the senator badge left behind by his grandfather, he had read out word by word the entire sequence of events where Link personally witnessed the Fourth Prince of the Zeta Star being stuffed alive into a grey bag in the Las Vegas underground parking garage,

that feeling of a giant boulder pressing down deep inside his chest had never left him for a single day.

But at this moment, for the first time, he felt that he could completely rest assured—his son Link would no longer be silenced by the Zeta people.

Prant placed his soda cup back on the table, his tone relaxed and direct:

"The Tech Faction's 'Parameter Overload' is far stronger than the Longevity Faction's 'Gravitational Trap'."

"Mr. Joshua has already told us that the Longevity Faction's plan requires first trapping the Grey Aliens' fleet with a gravitational field before cleaning them up round by round."

"And what about our side?"

"Once the parameter packets are broadcasted and the protocol goes wrong, the Grey Aliens blow themselves up."

"Comparing speed, there is no suspense whatsoever."

Everyone present nodded one after another.

This was a gap visible to the naked eye:

one locked first and then killed, while the other instantly self-destructed.

Obtaining the design logic of the Parameter Overload plan itself saved an entire section of critical time consumption compared to the Gravitational Trap.

Marcus Lin retrieved the "Parameter Overload" document that had been kept close at hand for repeated perusal, flipped to a certain page, and gently tapped a certain line of notes on it:

"The forged parameter packets cannot be sent casually; they need to precisely mimic the handshake protocol of the enemy fleet's adaptive system."

"The encoding method of this protocol far exceeds current human electronic warfare levels, and ordinary chips simply cannot handle the computations."

"We don't have anything in our hands that can run through this amount of calculation."

After hearing these words, the rhythm of the previously lively discussion paused slightly.

However, everyone's gazes immediately shifted back to Musk and Patrick.

Musk turned his face and exchanged a glance with Patrick.

Patrick pulled up the cuffs of his Hawaiian shirt,

both of them looking very calm on the surface.

"In the blueprints given by Mr. Joshua, there is a complete set of chip design documents."

Musk steadily pulled out the folder marked with dedicated signal modulation chips from the stack of files and placed it on the table.

Patrick took over the conversation, his tone still relaxed:

"I work with chips myself."

"There is a two-nanometer pilot production line over in Santa Clara, which can directly draw on production capacity."

"Leave the 'dedicated signal modulation chips' to me, from tape-out to mass shipment."

The document marked with detailed chip design chapters was handed one by one to everyone present by the assisting personnel.

Everyone present began to browse the contents of the document.

After that small chip bottleneck previously pressing on their chests was shattered by Patrick's offhand remark,

the atmosphere in the entire conference room noticeably relaxed somewhat.

Victor Strauss gently pressed his own file and blueprints onto the table, his tone restoring its clarity and caution:

"Then next, it's the turn of the 'Protocol Deception Broadcasting Tower' itself."

"There are two parts in total: the signal processing module and the transmitting antenna array."

"The signal processing module consists of thirty-two dedicated chips connected in parallel inside a cabinet-sized processing unit, with each unit processing one thousand target channels simultaneously."

"The Ten Thousand Ship Slash competition requires eliminating one hundred thousand Grey Alien flying saucers, so one hundred processing units are needed, using about three thousand two hundred chips."

Irene Zhao gently laid down the electronic pen in her hand, which she had been using to record power-to-consumption ratio estimates, raised her head, and compared the organizational chart and component layout details on the file in front of her:

"Assembling all one hundred processing units is a big project."

"It requires a dedicated workshop, material preparation, and testing-and-calibration environment."

"Where will they be assembled when the time comes?"

Samir Rashid took his jacket down from the back of his chair, placed it on his lap, leaned forward slightly, and said casually:

"I have a reclaimed industrial island in Tokyo Bay with an electronics factory on it."

"From the outside, it produces routers, but the interior can be directly converted into a signal warfare equipment assembly workshop with twenty workbenches, each equipped with an ion welding torch and a six-station placement machine."

"From chip soldering to assembled board testing, a single cabinet can be completely finished within a month."

Marcus Lin pushed the blueprints forward by half an inch, turned them in the direction where Samir could see them, and then raised his head to look at Musk, speaking again:

"The signal processing module is solved, and all that remains is the transmitting antenna array."

"This is the real major difficulty."

"The antenna needs to cover the entire inner circle of the Solar System, and the transmission power is extremely high."

"Any active land-based phased array radar or shipborne electronic warfare antenna cannot achieve this."

Everyone's gazes concentrated on Musk.

Musk put the soda can in his hand back on the table, lightly pressed his elbows on the edge of the conference table, and directly admitted:

"My Starlink cannot do it."

"The power required by the Protocol Deception Broadcasting Tower is too high; even if all Starlink terminals are added together, they cannot push to such a distant edge distance."

As soon as his voice fell, Prant pushed his soda cup onto the table, tapped the pile of technical blueprints spread full in front of Musk with his finger, his tone smiling but his logic precise:

"Elon, when you and Patrick exchanged glances just now, Patrick took the bullet for you on a chip. From that expression the two of you had, I knew you still had goods you hadn't brought out. Hurry up and tell us."

Musk burst out laughing.

That laughter sounded exceptionally hearty in this underground compartment completely enveloped by an electromagnetic shielding layer:

"Haha! I originally wanted to build up some more foreshadowing to create a tense atmosphere, but you saw right through it after all."