Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 284: It’s Worth It

The solar system was bathed in the dim, crimson glow of a red dwarf star. It was a somber, ancient light that illuminated a crowded celestial dance of gas giants, ice giants, and desolate rocky planets.

However, the natural silence of space had long been broken here. This star system was transformed into a steel fortress, garrisoned by a suffocating number of spaceships. The sheer volume was staggering, numbering in the several millions, ranging from colossal dreadnoughts to nimble patrol craft.

If one looked closely, this vast ocean of metal was clearly divided into two distinct factions. They were separated not just by their stationed coordinates, but by the very soul of their design.

On one side were the elegant, curved aesthetics of the Havilah Civilization—the very same enemy that had once engaged Tom in a life-or-death struggle within the Lyra G16 system.

Currently, the Havilah fleet orbited a massive rocky planet, effectively turning the space around it into a suspended city. Yet, remarkably, not a single Havilah ship touched the ground. They hovered in the void, showing absolutely no intention of developing power or industry on the planet’s surface.

The surface world belonged to the darkness. It belonged to the Black Mountain Civilization.

The planet’s crust was crawling with activity. Countless robots, controlled remotely by the omniscient Akakenu AI, swarmed over the land like a tide of mechanical ants. They stripped mountains for ore, processed minerals in localized refineries, and built factory after factory until the planet’s natural color was replaced by the gray of industrial steel.

Mountains of supplies—refined alloys, energy cells, and synthetic nutrients—were produced every second. These resources were then loaded onto colossal space elevators that stretched like beanstalks from the ground into the heavens, continuously feeding the Havilah Civilization’s fleet above.

It was a parasitic yet symbiotic relationship. These basic supplies sustained a staggering population of 150 billion Havilahs.

Because of this arrangement, the Havilahs had completely withdrawn from the dirty, dangerous work of frontline production. They no longer mined, they no longer smelted, and they no longer toiled in assembly lines.

Almost all their energy was dedicated to the pursuit of higher knowledge.

Hundreds of thousands of large-scale space research bases and millions of modular laboratories were scattered throughout the orbital belts of the rocky planet. Inside these gleaming stations, billions of Havilah researchers lived in a utopia of academia. They were immersed in a sea of numbers and symbols day in and day out, completely free from the mundane concerns of hunger, resource scarcity, or logistics.

They were free to think, to dream, and to invent.

However, supporting the survival of the entire Havilah Civilization, fueling their manic research speed, and maintaining the massive battleship production task was a burden that would crush a normal economy. The two sides had already reached a strict agreement allowing the Havilah Civilization to possess no more than 200,000 active battleships to prevent a rebellion—but even so, the material requirements for all these production tasks were astronomical.

And now, this astronomical amount of material was entirely provided by the Mechanical Disaster, the Black Mountain Civilization’s industrial system.

Standing on the bridge of his flagship, gazing down at the planet that was being devoured by industry, Heimerlan felt a complex mix of emotions. He knew that the materials provided to his civilization accounted for only a small portion of the Black Mountain Civilization’s total industrial capacity—less than one-tenth.

The true terror of the Mechanical Disaster lay elsewhere.

More industrial production tasks were distributed throughout the rest of the solar system.

Deep inside the atmosphere of the gas giant, on the frozen surface of the ice giant, on the dozens of dwarf planets, and within the silent, automated transport fleets shuttling between asteroids...

At this moment, the entire solar system seemed to be alive with the hum of machinery. It was filled with shuttling fleets, and every celestial body seemed to be covered by the cancerous growth of automated factories.

Under this unimaginably vast industrial system, battleships rolled off assembly lines like cheap toys. Space mines poured out of factories in the billions. Satellites, missiles, and precision components were loaded into aerospace carriers with a speed that defied logic. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Even Heimerlan, a leader of a sophisticated civilization, was shocked to his core by this production capacity.

’This is the power of a Mechanical Disaster,’ he thought, his hands gripping the railing. ’It never sleeps. It never tires. It makes no mistakes.’

That was an industrial capacity far more terrifying than what the Human Civilization had displayed back in the Lyra G16 Solar System.

"Is this the true face of the Mechanical Disaster...?"

An unavoidable feeling of envy and jealousy arose in Heimerlan’s heart. It was a bitter taste.

’If our civilization could also possess such vast industrial capacity, how wonderful that would be; what would we have to fear from humanity? We would crush them under a tide of steel.’

But it was just a fleeting thought.

He knew very well the bloody price that had to be paid to possess this power.

To gain this, one had to sacrifice the future of a civilization. One had to feed their people’s potential as nourishment to an intelligent AI, completely entrusting the fate of their race to a cold, calculating program. Only by doing so could a legitimate intelligent civilization cultivate an AI with such high intelligence that it could truly undertake production across the entire industrial chain.

This was slavery to a machine. This was something that every proud Havilah could never accept.

’Fortunately,’ Heimerlan reassured himself, ’Fortunately, we have found a middle ground.’

They had reached an agreement with the Black Mountain Civilization, allowing them to control the industrial production capacity of the Mechanical Disaster to a certain extent without paying the cost of their souls.

’Our civilization and the Black Mountain Civilization are indeed a match made in heaven. Now, we have the wisdom and creativity, and Black Mountain has the brute force and industrial capacity. Humans, let’s see how you can win now!’

The plan was perfect. If all went well, they would obtain 10 billion human captives. This number would be enough to submit as "evidence" to the galactic community in exchange for rewards. At that time, the Havilah Civilization would still have hope of advancing to a Gravity Civilization.

And then... the betrayal.

’Once we advance to the gravity level, we can rely on our technological advantage to destroy the Black Mountain Civilization. We will rip the complete source code of the Akakenu AI from its wreckage. After modification and upgrades, we will integrate it into our own civilization’s main AI. By then, we will have the industry of a Mechanical Disaster without the shackles.’

So many hardships, so many twists and turns. Even though the civilization had lost half of its population in the war with Tom, as long as the outcome was good, all these efforts would be worth it.

Now, the first step of the plan had to be taken.

Heimerlan took a deep breath, composed his expression, and connected to the Black Mountain Civilization’s communication channel.

The screen flickered, replacing the star map with a simple, oscillating waveform representing the AI.

"Respected Akakenu," Heimerlan said, his voice smooth and respectful. "Our civilization has completed the preliminary digestion and absorption of the technological data you provided. We are ready to proceed with the research and development of a new type of energy shield based on this foundation. Your technological database, combined with our intellectual concepts, will surely merge to develop a shield with super-strong performance, neutralizing the Human Civilization’s trump card."

The voice that replied was synthetic, devoid of warmth. "Very good. You have 30 years to utilize. After 30 years, our combined fleet will set sail."

"Yes," Heimerlan bowed slightly to the screen, hiding the gleam of ambition in his eyes.

Lyra G16 Solar System.

Time flowed differently in the silence of deep space.

After more than a decade of isolation, the activity in the Lyra system reached a fever pitch. With 2 billion clones working day and night, their minds linked in a massive neural network, they tirelessly reconstructed and optimized every facet of their technology.

Finally, the overall design, material research, and equipment specifications for the Second-Generation Unified Force Field complete set of equipment were finished.

Tom felt as if he had emerged from a long, strange dream.

He held up a small object between his fingers. The new type of hard drive Tom researched was only the size of a fingernail. Even when slotted into its data reading and power supply housing, the entire device was only a few square centimeters in size.

But this tiny chip was a monster. It could store up to 1 PB of data.

And now, these hard drives were not rare artifacts. They were piled up like a mountain, filling an entire warehouse in the supercomputing base. They contained the lifeblood of Tom’s survival: the research data and source code for the Unified Force Field.

Such a vast amount of data was terrifying. Crucially, different data sets needed to strictly match, coordinate, and combine, each responsible for different functional areas of the force field. Its complexity was so high that an ordinary Strong Nuclear Civilization, even if it devoted its entire population to the task, could not develop it in a century.

Even if several Strong Nuclear Civilizations collaborated and forcibly developed it, the faults and bugs would be unacceptably numerous. It would be a house of cards waiting to collapse.

Only a Clone Disaster like Tom could achieve this.

Only Tom, who could simultaneously control billions of brains, synchronize them in real-time, and eliminate all communication costs, errors, internal friction, or misunderstandings, could possibly develop such a masterpiece of engineering.

Now, the theoretical work was done. It was time to turn data into reality.

The 2 billion clones, having just been freed from over a decade of continuous, immensely complex mental labor, did not rest. Their eyes, glowing with a unified purpose, shifted from the screens to the blast furnaces.

They marched out of the labs and immediately entered the factories.