Rafael Leif, the 17th Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, returned to his hometown of Venezuela after he retired. The headhunter hired by Jiang Chen invited him to serve as the Chancellor of Coro University and offered him an annual salary of 4 million dollars.
Since Jiang Chen handed over his “cosmology” public elective course to Mr. Hawking, he, the chairman of the school board, an honorary professor of Coro University, and an honorary chancellor, had rarely participated in university affairs and passed over the tasks to the Ministry of Education of Xin.
Of course, even though he didn’t participate in managing the university, Jiang Chen had never been stingy with the budget. After all, for him, investing in education was more than just a slogan.
Chancellor Leif was also impressive. Under his leadership, Coro University had become a world-renowned institution of higher learning by virtue of its advantages in aerospace technology, bioengineering, and other fields. It had become the preferred university for international students in East and South Asia.
“Chancellor Leif, what’s the matter?” Jiang Chen said in a pleasant tone after he picked up the call
“A scholar from the UA wants to interview you,” Rafael Leif said on the phone. “His name is Frank Dobbin, a professor in the Division of Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is interested in the rise of Celestial Trade and Xin and is researching this topic. I wonder if you’re free in the next few days?”
When Jiang Chen heard someone wanted to interview him, he was slightly caught off guard.
To be honest, he did not like reporters’ attempts to corner him with tough questions, so he naturally did not like interviews.
Just when he was about to refuse, the next words of Chancellor Leif made him unable to refuse.
“If it is convenient, he hopes to write a biography for you through this interview.”
Jiang Chen looked to the door and saw Lilith, who looked at him with eyes of hope.
It was indeed an occasion that was worthy of her to use her expression simulation program.
“Tomorrow. I have something to do today,” Jiang Chen responded after he confirmed he had no arrangements tomorrow.
“Then I will thank you on behalf of Frank Dobbin.” Leif smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
After lunch, Jiang Chen drove Lilith.
He said he would take her to the bookstore.
Although she was a digitalized human, Jiang Chen did not intend to break his promise.
“Have you thought about what to buy?”
“I searched for a book list on the Internet, and based on the description, it looked very interesting.” Lilith expanded her holographic screen, then gently pushed it in front of Jiang Chen as she said with a hint of excitement in her tone.
“…Don’t block my view, I’m still driving. Wait until I get on the maglev track first.”
As he pushed the holographic screen to the side, with the corner of his eyes, he scanned a few familiar names on the book list.
All detective and horror novels?
As expected, because she was an AI, her preference towards novels was based on logic…
Jiang Chen was a little surprised.
He originally thought that Lilith would prefer novels with great plots, or simply fantasy novels that were far away from reality.
…
Just as Jiang Chen drove Lilith to the largest bookstore in downtown, Bris, far away in the Mars colony, was packing his luggage into the trunk of the rover along with the other six astronauts from the UA.
The flight was suddenly delayed some time ago, which disappointed him since he had already packed his luggage. Fortunately, the engine failure of the transport ship had been eliminated. Although he could not make it back for Christmas, he was still very satisfied to reunite with his family.
“Where is Jenny?”
“She can’t go. Celestial Trade does not intend to give up the prosecution of her espionage,” a slightly bulkier-looking man complained in a low voice, “I told her earlier, don’t fool around. This is not Capital. I bet she can’t even find a lawyer.”
“Are we just going to abandon her like this? Leave her here alone?” Another female astronaut looked at the male colleague next to her with disbelief, “She is our companion!”
“It’s not that we gave up her, but she got into trouble herself!” The man who looked silent and hadn’t said a word from the beginning until now said after he put his luggage into the trunk, “Otherwise we might have been able to go back long ago.”
“How can you say that to her!”
The female astronaut’s eyes widened, and she was about to argue with him but was quickly stopped by Captain Bris.
“Enough, don’t argue,” As Bris glanced at the Celestial Marines that were eyeing their direction, Bris said to his companions, “Jenny’s matter will be resolved by the politicians. Let’s not get into this mess since you and I can’t do anything. In addition, I also warned her at the start, but she obviously didn’t listen to me. I’m going to repeat what I said to her at the beginning. Once again, don’t do anything that’s unnecessary! Especially at this point.”
After the female astronaut heard what her captain, said, she also quieted down.
Although she was fighting the injustice for Jenny who was locked up, as Bris said, they couldn’t do anything. Celestial Trade would not listen to their complaints. Those soldiers only obeyed orders and did not even want to look at them for a second longer.
“Let’s cheer up, we will go home soon. When we get back to B City, shots on me.” Bris patted the shoulders of everyone, then squeezed a smile as he was the first one to walk to the opened rover door.
Twenty Mars rovers drove out from the open gate, crossed the steel city wall covered by alloy, left ripples of gray dust on the sand, and headed mightily to the south.
In that distant sky, there was a black line that connected the ground and sky.
Inside the car, Bris opened his eyes bigger.
He recalled that when Ares landed on the surface of Mars, he had never seen this thing before. Unexpectedly, it took less than a year for Celestial Trade to build a space elevator on Mars. The efficiency of the construction was simply astonishing.
What Bris didn’t know was that Celestial Trade had been studying the feasibility of a space elevator at the Mars equator as early as the second half of last year. The project was launched at the end of 2019.
From the beginning of construction to the completion of the main structure, the construction time of the entire space elevator had exceeded one year.
Of course, whether it was the gravitational constant or the orbital height, the difficulty of building a space elevator on Mars was much lower on Earth. With the space elevator below Celestial City as an example to learn from, the construction of this space elevator on Mars was very smooth.
Relying on the large graphite mine found in the crater near the colony, 60% of the materials for this space elevator were manufactured by the Mars colony. The current Mars colony was no longer the child who had to rely on imports from the parent planet. With the opening of fixed flights between Celestial City and the Mars colony, the industrial potential of this city placed above a giant iron ore mine would surpass any city on Earth in the foreseeable future.
This also included Celestial City.
On the twenty Mars rovers, there were not only astronauts from the UA but also 200 Xin researchers that included Dr. Amos. After they completed the inoculation of the Flower of Memory, these researchers, accompanied by nurses, had completed a total of 100 rehabilitation training sessions as they sorted the knowledge in their heads into the database.
Just as Jiang Chen and the others had expected, these Flowers of Memory were not without side effects.
Some people, after they accepted the memory of the Gaia civilization, felt nauseous to all mammalian meats such as pork and beef, but they involuntarily salivated to insects such as snails, earthworms, and even demon worms. Some people even forget how to walk upright, and often used their non-existent tentacles to hit the wall…
