173: Chapter 173 All Twelve Mirrors Arrive, the Three Million Threshold!

Alien civilization navigation timer, Day 63.

Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, 8:00 AM.

Su Che finished typing the 170th line of the joint debugging script and saved it.

After the system integration module ingested the four major code blocks, no more red alerts appeared at the interface level.

However, full-machine joint debugging wasn't like putting together building blocks; no matter how smoothly the four blocks of code ran individually, stringing them together was another matter.

Especially since the data exchange frequency between the optical path module and the deposition arrangement module differed by an order of magnitude. The optical path output 12,000 frames of wavefront data per second, while the deposition arrangement only processed 8,000 frames per second.

The 4,000 frames in the middle piled up in the cache, and if it ran for too long, it would overflow.

Zhao Mingyuan added an elastic buffer queue last night, pushing the overflowing frames into temporary storage and feeding them back when the deposition module was idle.

It ran all night without overflowing.

But there was an extra 0.3-microsecond delay.

"0.3 microseconds." Su Che flipped through the simulation logs. "Will the timing offset of the deposition landing points exceed the limit?"

Zhao Mingyuan poked his head over from the next workstation, holding half a fried dough stick in his hand, with the other half in his mouth.

"Calculated it."

He chewed twice and swallowed. "The atomic displacement corresponding to 0.3 microseconds is 0.004 picometers, two orders of magnitude smaller than the noise floor of quantum fluctuations—it's as good as zero."

Su Che marked "Confirmed" in the log and turned the page.

His handheld device vibrated.

A message from Academician Sun Qiwen at Jiuquan Launch Base.

"The eighth lens substrate went offline after polishing this morning; the Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics produced five, and Chengdu produced three."

"Additionally, those two devices in Germany were fully activated last week. The first batch of two pieces has been air-freighted to Beijing Customs and is expected to arrive at Pangu Laboratory tomorrow morning; the remaining two will be produced the day after tomorrow."

Su Che forwarded the message to Qin Lan and added, "Don't let Customs hold them up; send them directly through the military green channel."

Qin Lan replied, "Arranged."

Twelve pieces.

Five plus three domestic pieces—eight pieces arrived or in transit; two from Germany arrive tomorrow, and the remaining two the day after.

With four molecular-level polishing devices operating simultaneously globally, the original 25-day cycle was compressed to 16 days.

Dragon Kingdom's international influence was undeniable; Star Sea Glasses were spread across the globe, with two billion users online in the Mirror World. The rental negotiations for those two German devices took only 48 hours.

Su Che updated the lens arrival timeline in the project Gantt chart.

Once all twelve pieces arrive in the next two days.

The system integration debugging of the Sub-nanometer lithography all-in-one machine would also be locked in on the 67th day.

The timing matched perfectly.

...

On the east side of the hall, in the U-shaped array area.

Wen Bo crouched in front of a microwave melting test bench, his enamel mug placed next to his shoes.

A fist-sized quartz crucible was mounted on the test bench, containing 20 grams of simulated lunar soil samples.

A microwave generator was embedded in the side of the bench, with the power knob turned to the third setting.

"Third setting, 2.45 GHz."

He read the frequency meter. "The measured dielectric constant of the lunar soil brought back by Chang'e 5 is 4.7, and the microwave penetration depth covers the entire sample layer perfectly."

Academician Li Zhengyang stood nearby, holding a thermos cup.

"I verified the thermodynamic phase diagram yesterday. The ilmenite in the lunar soil begins to melt at 1050 degrees, pyroxene at 1180 degrees, and plagioclase at 1250 degrees. A three-stage temperature ramp can separate the three components step by step."

"I've written the three-stage temperature ramp program."

Liu Huaqiang walked over from the corner of the U-shaped array. "It's embedded in the industrial control subsystem of Pangu OS; the heating rate, holding time, and cooling curve are all fully automatic."

Wen Bo pressed the start button.

The microwave generator hummed dully.

The off-white powder in the crucible began to change color, with the edges turning dark red first.

The temperature reading climbed.

300 degrees, 500 degrees, 800 degrees.

"Ilmenite is starting to precipitate." Wen Bo stared at the layer of dark crystals forming on the crucible wall.

1050 degrees.

The dark crystals separated from the off-white base material and sank to the bottom of the crucible.

1180 degrees.

The second layer—the pyroxene component—began to melt, appearing dark green and floating above the ilmenite.

1250 degrees.

The top layer of plagioclase liquefied completely, with a light gray melt covering the very top.

Three distinct layers.

Wen Bo turned off the microwave generator and waited for the crucible to cool naturally.

Fifteen minutes later, he used tweezers to pick out the ilmenite crystals from the bottom of the crucible and placed them on an electronic balance.

"Purity is 93.7 percent." Wen Bo reported the number.

"Two points higher than expected."

Academician Li Zhengyang took a sip of water and snapped the lid shut. "Microwave heating has better uniformity than traditional resistance furnaces, and the precipitation efficiency is also higher."

"One test doesn't prove anything." Wen Bo put the crystal sample into a marked bag. "Run at least 30 sets of repeatability verifications."

Liu Huaqiang wrote a number on the whiteboard: 30.

"Thirty sets, 40 minutes per set." Liu Huaqiang calculated. "With two test benches running in parallel, we can finish in two and a half days."

Su Che glanced at the activity on the east side from the master console but didn't walk over.

The breakthrough of the lunar soil resource utilization system.

Today was already the fourth day.

...

Alien civilization navigation timer, Day 65.

10:00 AM.

Qin Lan walked out of the elevator carrying two hard-shell shockproof cases.

The boxes were plastered with customs seals from the Federal Republic of Germany and red labels for the Dragon Kingdom's military green channel.

"The two lens substrates from Germany." Qin Lan placed the boxes on the operating table. "The last two pieces arrive tomorrow afternoon."

Su Che opened the shockproof case.

Embedded in the foam shock-absorption layer was a palm-sized circular transparent wafer, its surface reflecting a faint iridescence under the fluorescent light.

Ultra-high-purity single-crystal substrate, molecular-level polished.

He took out the wafer with anti-static gloves and turned it around under the desk lamp.

No visible defects.

He put it back into the shockproof case.

Counting the eight domestic substrates that had arrived successively and today's two pieces from Germany, ten were in hand.

Two more arrive tomorrow, and all twelve will be complete.

Su Che locked the shockproof case into the constant-temperature storage cabinet.

On the way back to the master console, he swung by the east side to glance at Wen Bo's test bench.

Two rows of marked bags were piled up next to the test bench, each containing a small piece of ilmenite crystal.

"How many sets have you run?"

"Twenty-four sets." Wen Bo crouched on the floor. "The purity fluctuates between 91 and 94 percent, with an average of 93.2. We'll finish the remaining six sets this afternoon."

"What about the Helium-3 byproduct extraction?"

"Dean Liu has finished that side."

He pointed his chin inside the U-shaped array. "The extraction rate is 87 percent, three points lower than expected, but it's enough."

"Lightweight enhancement?"

"We'll do that after the melting separation is finalized. The compressive and tensile strength of the lunar soil building materials must meet the standards, otherwise, the houses built on the moon will be more brittle than tofu."

Su Che didn't ask further and turned back to the master console.

The line count of the joint debugging script had pushed to 320 lines.

The remaining work was to write the environmental parameters for in-orbit manufacturing—zero gravity, vacuum degree, thermal noise baseline—into the simulation boundary conditions.

He opened the Mirror World backend and carved out an independent space inside the virtual Dry Dock to simulate the physical environment of the manufacturing cabin.

The temperature baseline was set to 3 Kelvin.

The vibration baseline was set to zero.

The vacuum degree was set to 10 to the power of negative 12 Pascals.

He dragged the virtual model of the entire all-in-one machine into it.

Light source cavity, twelve reflective mirrors, deposition chamber, quantum field generator, eight sets of auxiliary field sources—all modules were mounted.

Su Che ran a round of no-load self-checks.

All green.

He added a comment at the end of the script: // In-orbit environment simulation passed, full-load joint debugging to be done after physical lens assembly.

2:00 PM.

Wen Bo was handing the final acceptance report of the lunar soil resource utilization system to Dean Liu for signature.

"Thirty sets of repeatability tests all passed. The compressive strength of the lightweight enhancement is 2.3 times that of Earth's concrete. Building houses on the moon will be sturdier than on Earth."

The R&D task for the lunar soil resource utilization system was completed.

In his mind, a mechanical voice popped up.

Su Che quickly reviewed the system notification of the lunar soil task completion and the release of the next lunar side quest in his consciousness.

Redeem what needed to be redeemed, deduct what needed to be deducted—the usual operation.

...

Alien civilization navigation timer, Day 67.

4:00 PM.

The last two German lens substrates arrived yesterday afternoon.

Twelve pieces, neatly stacked in the constant-temperature storage cabinet.

Su Che ran the final test case of the joint debugging script.

Full-load simulation—twelve virtual mirrors fully mounted, 64-atom parallel deposition module, full power output of the optical path.

Terminal light spot diameter: 0.049 nanometers.

Deposition landing deviation: average 5.1 picometers.

Elastic buffer queue: zero overflow.

Full-link delay: 0.3 microseconds.

All indicators were consistent with the sub-module tests; there was no degradation after integration.

Su Che added two words after the version number of the system integration module: Finalized.

Twenty-one days.

From Day 47 to Day 67 of the alien civilization navigation timer, no more, no less.

The Sub-nanometer lithography all-in-one machine, fully finalized at the code level.

The rest was to move this pile of code and the twelve lenses to the Dry Dock that had just been topped out in the sky and assemble them into a real physical machine.

But before that, one thing was still missing.

Quantum ultimate isolation medium.

Without it, the 64 atoms would crosstalk with each other the moment they were deposited in parallel, and the frequency domain isolation scheme would be useless no matter how pretty it looked in theoretical simulations.

Su Che leaned back in his chair.

He called up the balance of the virtual ecological independent point pool in his consciousness.

The number jumped.

2,943,000.

He looked at it for two seconds and closed the panel.

Slower than expected, but only less than 60,000 away.

The daily active users of the Mirror World globally had already exceeded 1.8 billion.

After the new channels in South America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia were fully rolled out, the daily increase in independent points stabilized at around 30,000.

Two days.

Su Che stood up and locked the finalized document of the joint debugging script into the encrypted storage.

He walked back to the master console and sat down.

The space footage in the center of the monitoring wall switched to the interior of the Dry Dock.

After topping out, the lights in the final assembly cabin turned on for the first time.

Industrial white light illuminated the 2,000-meter-diameter cylindrical space. The keel trusses spread out from the base to the dome like the ribs of a giant beast.

Five hundred robots had shifted from outer shell laying to internal equipment installation.

The first batch of core cabin components for the 100,000-ton-class luan bird was being taken out piece by piece from the cargo hold of the luan bird verification ship by robotic arms and sliding along the scheduled tracks into the assembly stations inside the trusses.

The luan bird was starting to fill its skeleton.

Su Che minimized the screen to the bottom right corner.

He opened a blank document and typed a title: "Sub-nanometer lithography all-in-one machine · In-orbit assembly plan."

The cursor blinked twice.

The handheld device in his pocket vibrated.

A message from Jiang Yingxue, containing only one number.

"2 billion."

The global shipment of Star Sea Glasses had officially exceeded 2 billion units.

By mobilizing the strength of the entire country, the production and shipping speed were nearly twice as fast as planned, but the growth rate of independent points left much to be desired.

User emotional value was really hard to grasp, so just let it be! There was no time to come up with new things for the Mirror World now; he would worry about it when skill points were insufficient.

Su Che flipped his phone over on the desk.

The number in the point pool, although slow, was still jumping up every minute.

In less than two days.

The quantum ultimate isolation medium could be redeemed.