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Having finished reading the reports, Ryan had barely left the master control room when he spotted Patricia outside the door.
There hadn't been many odd jobs around the base lately, and her complexion looked much better for it.
"Our resident genius. You've finally deigned to leave your dorm!" Patricia was surprised to see him first, then out of pure habit tossed off a jab.
Ryan grinned. "Patricia. What are you doing here?"
"I came to see Professor Marsh and the others about something," Patricia said.
"You, on the other hand. Finished reading those materials I sent you?"
"Read them all. They weren't difficult."
They weren't difficult...
Patricia pursed her lips, remembering that looking at those materials had been like reading a celestial script.
People truly couldn't be lumped into one category. An ordinary person like her could rage all she liked and still not solve a math problem or make sense of those documents.
The longer she spent around Ryan, the more she suspected she was illiterate and useless besides.
Still, she'd long since stopped finding his speed remarkable.
And he'd plainly been researching artificial intelligence not long ago, only to suddenly go tearing off into an entirely new field. What boundless energy.
"So, is it convenient to talk about whether that inspiration of yours has yielded anything?"
"A little, but I'm still a long way from results. When the time comes, I might need you all to help with a few small things," Ryan said.
For the parts inside the micro detector, there was no one to turn to but Aegis Industrial. The various high-precision, cutting-edge components it required weren't the sort of thing you could find on the open market.
The ultrasonic probes needed to receive photoacoustic signals, for instance, or the oscilloscopes needed to display them. All of these things required special customization, and the performance demanded of them was high. With Aegis Industrial's help, the trouble of having them custom-made would be greatly reduced.
"What sort of help?" Patricia asked.
"Manufacturing devices of the oscilloscope and ultrasonic probe variety."
Patricia nodded and made a note of the two items Ryan had mentioned. "So what is it you're researching?"
Ryan made certain there was nobody around before speaking. "What I'm researching at the moment is a photoacoustic signal medical detector."
Patricia's brow furrowed. "And what exactly does it do?"
She didn't understand these technical terms anyway. What was the use of telling her all this?
Ryan realized he'd committed the technical recluse's error again, and hurried to continue. "Put simply, it's a non-destructive detector, something like a radar for the human body. A person only has to stand in front of it, and their body's data gets detected, after which the corresponding images are generated."
"A detection instrument like an X-ray or a CT scan?" Patricia was puzzled. Hadn't instruments of that sort existed for ages?
"Of course not," Ryan said.
"This is a detection instrument that can do very nearly anything. Its body is only the size of a basketball, and it needs a single two-second scan through the open air to acquire the majority of the body's data, generate micrometer-grade images, and even track the movements of a single cell inside the body."
"Track a single cell inside the body?" Patricia's heart jumped, her expression turning grave on the spot. She brought Ryan back to her office before continuing her questioning.
"Can technology like this really be achieved?" The shock and doubt hadn't yet faded from her face.
Even without understanding the science involved, she knew what the technologies Ryan had just described to her meant.
Ryan nodded. "In terms of the underlying principles, technology like this can absolutely be achieved. There's not the slightest problem."
Hearing him say that, Patricia's heart settled at once. Anything he'd ever said had no problem in principle had, in the end, never had a problem.
"Then how do you plan to get this research underway?"
"In a while, Prism will open up a cooperation with your company. We can all discuss the investment then."
This technology's main applications lay in scientific research and medicine. It would be better to let Prism and Aegis do the talking.
Patricia had no objections to this, agreed on the spot, and indicated she'd feed the information up the chain.
Ryan returned to his own dorm and placed a call to his father.
"Dad, I've got a new project over here!"
"What have you gone and cooked up this time?"
"There aren't any results yet. It's only a concept at this stage."
"I want to build a photoacoustic signal detector..."
Ryan repeated to his father everything he'd just told Patricia.
When Ryan's father heard the detector's performance, he took a fright of his own. He stood up from his office desk, shut the office door, and only then continued his questioning.
"You're certain this thing can actually be built? Why does it feel so far-fetched to me?"
He was putting it kindly, at that. What Ryan had just described was on the same science fiction tier as a spaceship.
Ryan didn't hesitate in the slightest. "In terms of the principles, there's nothing wrong with my line of thinking."
He went on. "This device will completely transform medical detection and biological observation the world over. My plan is to have Prism and Aegis Industrial cooperate on it."
Ryan's father thought it over. Research funding for a device like this surely couldn't be managed on anything less than a few billion as a floor.
He had no grasp whatsoever of his son's talent for compressing research budgets. He was simply reasoning by ordinary standards.
Right now the company had places demanding money everywhere.
Mason's above-knee prosthetic. Finch's brain-machine research center. And Hargrove's artificial intelligence research.
Every one of them a place that devoured great mouthfuls of money daily.
The prosthetics research wasn't so bad. It was already nearing success.
But brain-machine and AI had both launched a large batch of new projects only recently. Labor costs alone had to be reckoned in the hundreds of millions per month.
Enormous sums had gone out, and not a shred of return could be seen yet. The company's incoming revenue at present could rely only on Triton-1 and on loans. The cash flow pressure was considerable, and opening yet another research department really was rather difficult.
He told Ryan the situation exactly as it stood.
Ryan felt a touch of embarrassment. He hadn't expected the company's circumstances to be like this.
He had only himself to blame for stretching the battle lines so long before.
Looking at it this way, no matter how low he pushed the research and development costs, the pressure on the company wouldn't be small.
But.
He thought for a moment, then said, "That problem is easy to solve. We just develop a few more new products. I'll handle it. I'll send you the basic materials for the new project, and you go ahead and find someone to prepare for the cooperation negotiations."
Hearing his own son sound this confident, Ryan's father set his mind at ease and said directly, "Then I'll start looking around and see which of my friends knows this area better."
"You get those new products developed as fast as you can on your end."
"Mm."
Ryan hung up and immediately placed a call to Hargrove.
"How has the research center's development been going lately?"
The brain-machine center wasn't going to produce results anytime soon, so he intended to make new products in the artificial intelligence field.
Hargrove's voice on the other end was full of vigor, his mood clearly good. "The research center's development has been going very well lately. After the Argus beta was released to the public, the public's confidence in us has grown a great deal, and cooperation projects are trickling in one after another now."
"At the same time, we're also preparing to push into the AI translation field."
"AI translation? Give me more detail on that." Ryan's interest was piqued.
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