Chapter Fourteen: The Call of the Times

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A vast area had been leveled—formerly the site of the Chongqing Haichang Caribbean Water World amusement park on Nanshan. After the evacuation, the attraction was abandoned, so the base flattened the entire area and covered it with thick black compressed ballast, transforming it into a testing ground for the power systems of giant machines. From the air, it appeared as a gigantic isosceles triangle, each side stretching a kilometer.

The Red Lotus needed to test the joints of its limbs here. The most straightforward way was to have it perform the second set of the national middle school broadcast exercises, “The Era is Calling.”

(The effect was less graceful than “Dancing Youth.”)

“She’s really agile,” Shen Jiang nodded earnestly. “No matter how she moves, our cockpit remains perfectly stable.”

The bipedal walking system was the most challenging part of the power core to conquer. Its inherent instability made its dynamic characteristics exceedingly complex. Shang Lu had some exposure to this, as the Automation Institute had participated in part of the research. The humanoid engineering team gathered all the domestic experts in control theory and engineering, first constructing a ten-meter-tall proportional scale model for validation, then gradually scaling it up.

“Strong coupling, multivariable, nonlinear,” Shang Lu suddenly said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The bipedal walking system under neural system interface control was my master’s research topic,” Shang Lu turned to her. “This giant robot walks steadily because its zero moment point always stays within its foot’s area.”

The girl blinked.

Shang Lu smiled, “I’m reciting my thesis.”

“What’s a zero moment point?”

“The zero moment point, or ZMP, is the intersection on the ground of the resultant vector line composed of gravity, other inertial forces, and ground reaction forces acting on a bipedal robot. It must lie beneath the foot for stable walking. This is the theoretical foundation for all bipedal walking machines,” Shang Lu explained. “Of course, Red Lotus is far more complex than that. It’s controlled by a supercomputer and can perform real-time online gait planning, even doing broadcast exercises on its own.”

Shang Lu knew more about the engineering side and finally had something to show off.

“She’s very intelligent,” Shen Jiang stretched lazily in the zero-gravity buffer fluid, her body slowly rotating with the slight angular momentum. “It’s a pity she can’t think for herself.”

Shang Lu grabbed a handle to steady himself as Red Lotus performed rotational movement tests on its limbs. It could rotate its slender, elegant waist a full 360 degrees—something humans could never do. In terms of four-limb movement, Red Lotus had an unparalleled advantage because it had six limbs.

Regarding the advantage of four arms, Shen Jiang said she could also establish coordinate systems.

Shang Lu asked what that meant.

Shen Jiang demonstrated how to set up a massive spatial rectangular coordinate system: Red Lotus raised one hand straight up—this was the Z-axis. The other two hands opened horizontally and bent at right angles like a traffic cop directing vehicles—these were the X and Y axes. This was the benefit of having four arms—the last arm could serve as the time axis, icT, or stretch diagonally as a world line, capable even of performing Galilean or Lorentz transformations!

“How do you transform?” Shang Lu asked.

Red Lotus kept the pose and took a large step forward.

“Galilean transformation complete,” Shen Jiang said.

Shang Lu observed the outside scene through the cockpit window. He had no idea where the panoramic VR display cameras were installed, but the effect was truly transparent. The pilot inside felt as if they were inside a giant transparent skull, able to see the shoulders and arms on both sides, the chest, abdomen, waist, and legs. When Red Lotus bent over, it felt like falling from fifty meters high—the ground rushing up was more thrilling than a roller coaster. Shang Lu was both terrified and thoughtful: designing in humanoid form was the most complex engineering challenge, but it also offered the highest freedom and more advanced spatial mobility.

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Humans always sought to create things resembling themselves—small ones could be said to replicate themselves, large ones to create gods.

This damned creator complex.

“I’ve always wondered, how exactly do you fight angels?” Shang Lu asked the question he’d long wanted to ask.

“Hm?” The girl turned her head. “Fight angels?”

“It doesn’t sound like angels are monsters that throw punches and kicks. How do you battle them? Four arms flailing wildly to beat the master?” Shang Lu asked.

“You need some concept of four-dimensional space, supervisor,” Shen Jiang said.

“I’m just a supervisor. What concept of four-dimensional space could I have?” Shang Lu gave up.

“The four-dimensional space we’re talking about isn’t the Minkowski spacetime with three Euclidean axes plus time. It has four spatial coordinates. So when things from our world enter that space, they must follow their rules,” Shen Jiang explained. “We all know energy conservation leads to the spherical attenuation law. Whether it’s force or field, it must obey spherical attenuation. But spheres in three dimensions differ from spheres in four dimensions. Generally, four-dimensional spheres have much larger surface areas, meaning spherical attenuation in four-dimensional space is faster than in our universe.”

Shang Lu nodded, somewhat bewildered.

“You mean energy dissipates more during transmission in four-dimensional space?”

“Um… yes, you could say that. Not just energy—the forces too. All long-range forces, including gravity and electromagnetism, attenuate more sharply in four-dimensional space,” Shen Jiang nodded. “You’ve studied Newton’s second law, right? Newton stated that in our universe, force is inversely proportional to the square of distance. The denominator in the universal gravitation formula is r squared.”

Shang Lu nodded.

“But in four-dimensional space, that law doesn’t hold. There, it’s an inverse cube law—force is inversely proportional to the cube of the distance,” Shen Jiang said. “All long-range forces’ effective ranges change upon entering four-dimensional space, including electromagnetic force, which is the main fundamental force composing our material world. You—”

Shen Jiang poked Shang Lu’s chest.

“I—”

She then gestured toward herself.

“And everything around us. The forces maintaining their basic structural stability collapse the moment they enter four-dimensional space. That’s why humanity’s conventional weapons are completely ineffective against angels—anything that touches them shatters into fundamental particles instantly.”

“How do we destroy them then?” Shang Lu’s eyes widened.

“Secret weapon,” Shen Jiang hummed.

“My great-aunt, elder sister, ancestors, what exactly is this secret weapon? Please tell me—” Shang Lu decisively abandoned his dignity.

“Who’s your great-aunt?” Shen Jiang looked disdainful. She turned her head away, then back again. “Honestly, I don’t know either. It’s truly top secret. It’s always transported from the far rear, sealed tightly, and only loaded into Red Lotus’s weapon storage before missions.”

The girl’s expression didn’t seem joking.

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“Commander Ji should know. If you have the guts, ask him and see if he’ll tell you.”

Shang Lu thought about Commander Ji’s face and knew there was no chance.

“I don’t know, don’t ask me.”

Commander Ji’s voice came through the earpiece.

As expected, no luck.

·

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“Ah—headache, so annoying,” Shen Jiang suddenly tapped her helmet visor, frowning. “It’s starting again.”

“What’s wrong?” Shang Lu slowly floated over and steadied her. “Teacher Ji, Shen Jiang says she has a headache.”

“Did you take medicine?” Commander Ji asked.

“Yes,” Shen Jiang said.

“If you took it, then it’s fine,” Commander Ji said absentmindedly. “The giant machine’s power system test is 77% complete. You can rest a bit.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

The girl pushed Shang Lu away, then curled up and closed her eyes—she actually fell asleep.

Shang Lu was amazed; that was an astonishingly fast way to fall asleep.

“Teacher Ji, she… she’s asleep.”

“Oh, I know.”

Shen Jiang curled up slightly in the pale blue zero-gravity buffer fluid, her breathing and data transmission tubes floating like an umbilical cord. Shang Lu dared not touch her, feeling incredulous. Three days ago, he never would have imagined he’d be inside a fifty-meter-high transparent pale blue fluid sphere, with a quietly sleeping girl suspended before his eyes.