Chapter 93: Underground Cloning Base

After Lin Lei paid the rent for the Chaxula Basin, he started the housing construction project immediately. The entire basin had an area of 100,000 square kilometers; housing only 700,000 people made it incredibly spacious.

Lin Lei had these buildings constructed on both banks of the river flowing through the basin, called the “Ruoma River.” Since they would only stay here for about a year, only twenty-five super-high-rise buildings exceeding 500 meters were built, constructed to accommodate one million people.

Each building had a floor area of over 15,000 square meters and 200 floors. Each floor had 200 rooms, with each room precisely set at 50 square meters, including one bedroom, one living room, and one bathroom. There was no kitchen, as food would be supplied for free.

All of this employed technology from Orlantis and used recyclable materials, so although the project for these twenty-five buildings seemed huge, it was completed in less than a week, as if they had grown out of thin air before everyone’s eyes.

Yes, these buildings actually did grow. They used nanomaterials with memory functions. As long as the building blueprints were input beforehand, these materials would automatically start stacking up, growing at a speed of 100 meters per day.

A 500-meter-tall building was grown in five days. The following two days were for the convergence process of the nanomaterials. During this process, the building would become incredibly sturdy, and the surface would become a smooth, matte finish, saving even the basic decoration.

For the twenty-five buildings, each cost Lin Lei less than 100,000 Galactic Universal Currency. In fact, this type of architecture had been eliminated in Orlantis for a long time.

Once the housing was built, Mu Zhe and Lu Daolin, who had already formed a management team, directly began assigning residences. Each building housed 40,000 people, and each floor had two managers, one principal and one deputy, to receive and give feedback on residents’ opinions.

Each building also had a central management center. The person in charge had a very straightforward title: Building Manager.

With 700,000 people, it seemed like a lot, but distributed this way, they didn’t even fill twenty buildings, leaving five empty.

Mu Zhe noticed this result. Logically, Lin Lei shouldn’t have made such a mistake. Building five extra buildings with no one to live in them—wasn’t that a waste of money?

He discussed it with Lu Daolin, and they went to find Lin Lei.

“Hehe, those five buildings also have great use. People will move into them in the future. You two don’t need to worry; just manage the current people well.”

“Right now, we are essentially wanderers. For at least a year, development is out of the question; we have to wait until we return to Earth to discuss that. The mindset of these people needs to change. We must broaden everyone’s horizons and make them recognize the specific situation in the Galaxy. This is your job. As for manpower, you can arrange it yourselves.”

The two guys left, full of doubts, dismissed by Lin Lei. There were still people moving in? All Earthlings were here. If there were more people, they could only be Aliens. They really couldn’t figure out Lin Lei’s thoughts.

After all the Earthlings moved in, Lin Lei notified the Star Alliance to inject body-regulating nanobots for these people. This concerned the physical recovery of everyone, so its importance went without saying.

Of course, during this process, Lin Lei also incidentally obtained a racial gene bank constructed from the genes of these 700,000 people. This was the foundation for cloning.

Lin Lei did this as a last resort. At this critical juncture of racial survival, things like the Star Alliance’s bans and ethics had to stand aside.

He didn’t plan to complete this secretly alone; instead, he called upon Old Xiao, Li Yi, Li Dasong, as well as Mu Zhe and Lu Daolin, to go to a previously contacted biological research company together.

“Leizi, what did you bring us here for?” Li Yi asked puzzledly, voicing everyone’s question.

Lin Lei chuckled and pointed at Old Xiao, saying, “This was Old Xiao’s idea. Ask him.”

“What? My idea? …Young man, you arranged that matter so quickly?” Old Xiao guessed Lin Lei’s intention based on previous information—the clone plan.

“That’s right. This problem is very urgent, so naturally, I have to solve it as soon as possible. Follow me in a moment; just look and don’t speak. If you have questions, we’ll talk when we go back.” Lin Lei didn’t directly answer everyone’s questions but just told them to keep up.

This biological research company looked very shabby on the surface, but after the group was transported underground by a beam of teleportation light, they discovered that this underground base was shockingly large—it was practically an underground city!

The thin old man who had acted as the liaison earlier was already waiting there. Seeing so many people coming with Lin Lei, he complained a bit, “This isn’t a place for sightseeing. Don’t you think you brought too many people?”

“No, they are of the same race as I am, and it is necessary for them to know about the cloning matter. Please lead the way; I have brought the racial gene bank.”

The thin old man swept his eyes over the people following Lin Lei again and said in a tone that wasn’t very good, “Then follow me. Remember, whatever you see along the way, I hope you can keep it secret. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, everyone will face prison, and then the fate of being brainwashed by the Star Alliance.”

“Naturally.” Lin Lei was the first to follow.

Along the way, what everyone saw were rows of transparent culture mediums filled with nutrient fluid, and embryos were gestating inside. A tube was connected to the navel of each embryo, delivering the necessary nutrients for growth.

It was like an artificial movement. The shapes of these embryos covered every stage of intelligent biological development, from a tiny, invisible fertilized egg to a small lump of flesh the size of a thumb where cells had begun initial differentiation, and then to a newborn baby. These were not the most shocking parts. Further on, there were actually toddlers, teenagers, and adults, each sleeping inside a culture medium.

Li Yi and Li Dasong had decent acceptance abilities; at least following Lin Lei had broadened their horizons. Old Xiao, on the other hand, completely ignored these things; he wasn’t interested in them.

But Mu Zhe and Lu Daolin were extremely shocked. The scene before them gave them a huge impact. Here, intelligent life forms were no longer unique; they existed as commodities, no different from pork sold on a butcher’s block.

This truly tested their acceptance, but since Lin Lei had emphasized earlier that they should save their questions for later, they could only endure it.

Finally, the group arrived at a server room. Here were placed a dozen super quantum computers, responsible for regulating genes and establishing various gene templates. Now, the staff here were all ready.

“We have arrived, Mr. Lin. Please produce the racial gene bank you brought. We will build the gene templates here.”

The data of these genes was stored by Lin Lei on an ultra-dense optical storage device, containing tens of thousands of terabytes of information. It included the complete information of the 22 human autosomes and 1 X sex chromosome, with hundreds of thousands of versions for each gene.

Among these versions were some very excellent genes calculated by Lin Lei through the System. Lin Lei had only calculated about twenty-something, but he had marked these genes as key points.

When these genes were fully expressed, the people possessing them would have some special talents, including extremely excellent logical thinking ability, spatial imagination ability, memory, and so on.

If everything went smoothly, a group of geniuses would appear in the next generation of humans!

“Inside, there are some genes I have marked as key points. Yes, those red ones. I hope they can be utilized when constructing the templates, but set to a recessive state in this batch of clones, and only start to become dominant genes after the first generation.”

In other words, this batch of females would only serve as carriers of these excellent genes without expressing the genes’ abilities. This was the result of Lin Lei’s careful consideration.

There was no other reason; there was no need for them to become geniuses, as that would actually make it harder for them to integrate into Earth society.

The thin old man carefully looked at the genes Lin Lei had marked, frowning in thought. After a long while, he turned his head and said, “Your request will be satisfied. The architecture of these genes is perfect, full of harmony. That you could find them shows that your understanding of genes is very profound.”

“It’s just a feeling.” Lin Lei smiled slightly, not offering much explanation.

“Alright, then our company will start constructing human gene templates. As per your request, 4,000 gene templates. Trust me, with the help of supercomputers, this will only take half an hour. But another issue is the 50,000 information templates; this will take time. Fortunately, we have enough time to prepare and can completely perform brain stimulation after the clones mature.”

Throughout the process, only Lin Lei and the thin old man communicated. The others just watched blankly. Now that there was finally some free time, Lu Daolin, who had been holding it in, couldn’t help but urgently ask the thin old man, “Can you explain the issue of information templates? This is very important and relates to the ideology of the entire human society.”

The thin old man turned his eyes and asked Lin Lei with a look, seeking his opinion.

“Tell him. He has the right to know this.” This was also something Lin Lei and the thin old man had discussed earlier.

“Information templates are a series of virtual memories injected into the human brain to give them various perceptions of this world. It determines a clone’s personality, mastered skills, and other things that can distinguish her from others. This makes them unique, no longer just a lump of meat.”

“So what is the basis for the information templates being constructed now? If it’s just virtual, once it is denied by reality, it will definitely produce a backlash, or even lead to extreme situations.” This was also what Lu Daolin was most worried about.

“No, Mr. Lu. I want to explain the construction method of the information templates to you.” Lin Lei took the initiative to explain.

“First, we use supercomputers to construct a virtual Earth society—the Earth from three years ago, before the Layite People invaded. Then we input 50,000 simulated consciousnesses. The core rules of these simulated consciousnesses are extracted from human thinking patterns, so they possess human-like consciousness. Subsequently, the supercomputer will reenact everything that happened from their birth to the three years after the Layite invasion. The mature simulated consciousnesses produced at this time are the information templates.”

The thin old man interjected, “These information templates possess ‘real’ and ‘detailed’ memories that cannot be falsified because the former Earth society no longer exists. So as long as we handle the connection of details between them and reality, they will never discover for themselves that they are clones.”

“As for the issue that people in the Ecological Sphere haven’t seen them, my explanation is that the Layite People constructed another Ecological Sphere for them, in a different location on Mote Planet,” Lin Lei continued to explain.

Lu Daolin let go of some worry and said in a low voice, “I hope that is the case.” Looking at his expression, he still hadn’t completely let go of his worry.

Lin Lei and Old Xiao looked at each other and sighed helplessly. This was really the only solution available!