45: Chapter 45 Eyeball Delivery Research: Clear Strategic Division of Labor

Edward turned his head to look at him, the curve of his mouth faint, but it was indeed a smile.

"When they set out from Nevada, they took the national highway, didn't speed, didn't run any red lights, and didn't alert a single state trooper."

"Your special forces, on the way here from downtown Los Angeles, blared sirens and broke through checkpoints the whole way; the traffic department's complaint emails were still piling up in your personal assistant's inbox this morning."

He signed the electronic signature pad handed over by the security captain, handed it back, then turned to face Musk, his tone leveling off.

One of the many topics they had been repeatedly discussing in this base for the past seven days had now reached the time for a final decision.

"Elon."

"That eyeball... is handed over to you."

He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, his tone not like he was handing over an invaluable treasure, but rather like two friends entrusting each other with a car key.

"My technical resources and scientific research capabilities are not on the same level as yours."

"What I can mobilize in Nevada are aides, lawyers, financial advisors, and some technical personnel specialized in data mining, but I don't have anyone capable of performing molecular-level structural and physiological activity analysis on an alien eyeball."

"You do."

"So, this thing can only achieve its maximum value while in your hands."

Musk did not answer immediately.

His gaze shifted from the iron table and swept toward those few closed, independent laboratory buildings deeper in the base.

He knew what was inside.

When his team evacuated from the Los Angeles coastal industrial zone, Trent stuffed the secret document case containing the translucent small box into an electromagnetic shielding box.

Amidst a hail of bullets, the box was carried personally by one of Musk's tactical team members onto a bulletproof SUV.

Now, that box was locked in an independent laboratory with a Biosafety Level 4 rating.

In an environment where power and radiation were completely isolated, it was monitored 24/7, and any access without Musk's own iris verification would be automatically cut off.

The Grey Alien's eyeball was still suspended in its liquid preservation medium, quietly and slowly rotating; its deep blue iridescence was like a cold light that would never go out in the dark laboratory.

"Trust... just like that, you're giving it to me?" Musk retracted his gaze and turned his head to look at Edward.

The mocking element in his tone was much less than before, replaced by a very low, unadorned sincerity.

"You paid such a huge price, hunkered down in that fishing cabin with your staff for five hours, had the most awkward dinner of your life with Walsh in Washington, and shook hands with a tech capitalist you hate the most in Boca Chica."

"Then you flew to Los Angeles overnight, chased by sniper fire, and ducked into this tin warehouse of mine."

"All this tossing and turning where you nearly lost your life, all for this thing in the end."

"Now you tell me you're giving it to me, letting me take it to research however I want."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure." Edward spat out the word, his tone firm, without any hesitation.

"Although the Long Live Alliance is a joke right now, at least there's this one rule: in everything we do, we must first trust that the other party won't stab us in the back."

"If we don't even have that bit of trust, there's no point in talking about dealing with alien enemies and the Deep State."

"Besides..."

He paused here, tilted his head slightly, looked at the back of his hand in the morning light, and added in a slow and serious tone,

"You have neuro-jammers under your command, former SEAL Team Six members, and data arrays capable of blocking all communication frequencies in the world."

"If I took the eyeball back to Nevada and you really set your sights on it, your people could come and take it away in under forty minutes."

"So, objectively speaking, leaving it with you is the safest option, and it saves you from having to come and steal it."

Musk watched him deliver this cold analysis in the morning light, still wearing that same unchanging negotiator's face he'd had for decades, and said nothing more, just nodded.

This nod had no superfluous sense of ritual, but in its intensity of execution, it was exactly the same as when he once signed the first Falcon rocket extension contract.

"There is a saying in The Art of War..." Edward paused for a moment, tapping his fingertips on the table, as if looking for the most accurate translation,

" 'The skilled warriors of old first made themselves invincible, then waited for the enemy to be vulnerable.' "

"Translated, it roughly means: those ancient generals who truly knew how to fight, if they wanted to win a battle, first had to ensure they could not be defeated, and only then would they wait for the enemy to reveal a flaw that could be exploited."

"Los Angeles is not my territory."

"Everything in California, from City Hall to the highway patrol to real estate ownership, I can't control any of it."

"If I get into another encounter with the Deep State here, I'll die faster than Walsh."

He looked up at Musk, his gray-blue eyes devoid of fear, containing only a cold, steady state derived from calculation.

"But Nevada is different."

"The Warren Family has operated in that desert for over a hundred years; from the backrooms of Las Vegas casinos to the state assembly's budget committee, from the Carson City state police system to the Reno federal district attorney's office, I have my people under every paving stone."

"The first thing I'm going to do when I go back is to turn Nevada into an impenetrable fortress; anyone who tries to make a move against me in that state will be pinned down from behind before they can pull the trigger."

"Only by first ensuring my own invincibility can we qualify to talk about the next step."

"Impenetrable fortress..." Musk repeated the term, his finger slowly tracing the rim of his coffee cup,

"But isn't this 'impenetrable fortress' defense of yours, plainly speaking, just passive defense? You don't intend to actively seek them out and counterattack?"

"Of course it's passive. I don't like being passive either, but at the moment, there really isn't a better way." Edward's voice was calm,

"Those people are hiding in the shadows."

"Eighty years ago, they could crush Kramer's newspaper office until not a speck of dust remained, and eighty years later, they can send five snipers to corner us in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night."

"To this day, we don't even know what their organization is called, where their headquarters is, or who calls the shots."

"Taking the initiative in this situation is just firing shots into the dark; aside from exposing our own position, we won't hit anything."

He walked forward two steps and stopped in front of the array of surveillance screens covering the entire west wall,

He pointed to a real-time surveillance feed on the screen labeled "Eyeball Laboratory," where a mass of black and deep blue light spots floated and slowly rotated in the liquid medium.

"The biggest variable right now is not in Nevada, not in Washington, and not in any secret Deep State bunker."

"It's here with you." He turned around and looked at Musk,

"As long as your research progresses fast enough, and you extract something from this eyeball that makes them unable to sit still—even if it's just a direction, a set of data, or the slightest conclusion that can prove immortality is not unattainable..."

"Those people in the Deep State who want to live like thousand-year-old tortoises will panic."

"Because the reason they can still calmly manipulate everything from the shadows is that they have monopolized the research pipeline for alien technology and the secrets of immortality."

"Once your speed here exceeds their research progress, they will no longer be able to remain calm."

Musk sat on the folding chair next to the iron table, arms crossed over his chest, listening to Edward finish every word.

There was no expression of impatience on his face, but his brows were locked tightly, the vertical crease between them looking as if it had been carved repeatedly by a chisel.

After a long while, he lowered his arms, his voice carrying an unusual, deep tone.

It wasn't the muffled grunt of a businessman thinking about profit, but the unwillingness that an idealist only reveals when forced to temporarily go against their own instincts.

"To be honest," he looked up at Edward, his gaze open but also undisguised in its annoyance, "I really detest researching this kind of thing."

"Immortality... just like you said, thousand-year-old tortoises; they want to be tortoises, they want to be turtles, what does that have to do with me?"

"What I want to build is a spaceship that can take a million people to Mars, not deliver life-extension drugs to a bunch of old monsters hiding in the dark."

He set the coffee cup in his hand heavily onto the iron table, emitting a crisp clatter,

Then he quickly stopped, as if even this action of throwing the cup was only worth giving half his energy.

He turned his head, his gaze passing through the desert outside the lab window, polished bright by the morning light, and waved his uninjured hand, as if shooing away a gnat that annoyed him but which he ultimately had to deal with.

"But after I've scoured all the alternative routes in the world right now, there is indeed only one choice."

"We only have this eyeball on hand right now."

"No spaceship wreckage, no engine fragments, no materials that can help me advance the next stage of the energy equation, only this eyeball packed in a stabilization box."

"So, no matter how reluctant I am, at this current stage, the only thing that can be researched is it, and only the puzzle of immortality."

He retracted his gaze, looking at Edward, his voice gradually returning to its usual rhythm—fast to the point of skipping, not dragging a single word.

"But I can give you a guarantee; I know myself."

"Whether I like it or not, as long as I confirm that something must be done with full effort, I won't lose to anyone."

"Those people in the Deep State might have spent decades on immortality research, but they don't have Starlink's AI computing power, they don't have the latest generation of superconducting quantum interference arrays, and they don't have that AI-driven platform capable of deducing molecular-level structures to femtosecond precision."

"I do."

"So, as long as this eye can still turn, it can churn out enough deep data to make them lose their appetite."

"I bet I'm faster than them, much faster."

After Edward heard everything, he didn't respond immediately.

He tucked his hands into the front of his jacket and slowly scanned the monitoring data of the Eyeball Laboratory locked on the screen.

On another secondary screen, the comprehensive readings of the lab's internal vibration isolation table, temperature controller, and bioelectric monitoring probes were continuously jumping.

The eyeball was still submerged in that layer of almost ancient preservation solution, rotating toward the light source at a slow rate of one revolution every two seconds.

He withdrew his gaze, and for the first time, a look of "this will do for now" appeared at the corner of his mouth.

Just in this brief silence between the two, the large LCD TV hanging on the side wall suddenly lit up.