What Lu Zhou did not expect was for Li Gaoliang to be the head of the research test subject team.
Thus, the army unit that he was going to work with was the…
“Li Gaoliang, head of the 1st Airborne Brigade at the Eastern Theater Command—”
Li Gaoliang stood with his back straight and reported himself to Lu Zhou.
“Stop, I’m not your lieutenant, you’re not here for a war, cut the formalities.”
Li Gaoliang awkwardly smiled and scratched the back of his head.
“The two hundred of us came here under military orders. Before we left, we were told to cooperate with Academician Lu and fight the battle of virtual reality technology. You are our commander. We will do anything you say.”
Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “There’s no need to be so serious, the things you guys have to do are simple. I will brief you guys on the project soon and arrange specific tasks.”
Lu Zhou didn’t expect Minister Qin to send 200 people from the Airborne Brigade.
Lu Zhou looked at the over-enthusiastic Li Gaoliang and felt overwhelmed.
But after thinking about it, the Airborne Brigade were the closest troops from here.
They had the ability to travel anywhere on the globe within an hour. The Airborne Brigade was stationed at the Jinling launch site.
Lu Zhou brought Li Gaoliang to a laboratory and gave him a brief explanation of the situation.
Li Gaoliang noticed Professor Lumiere in the laboratory. He paused for a second and asked, “Why is there a foreigner here?”
He was told that this was a confidential project, and normally, foreigners wouldn’t be involved in projects of this kind.
Lu Zhou said, “Lumiere, he’s from Switzerland. The project is divided into two parts, one is the construction of the virtual reality system, which is for civilian use. There aren’t many Chinese talents in this area, so I poached him from the Switzerland Neural Network Science Research Center.
“He won’t participate in anything that involves military hardware and equipment.
“If you think there’s any suspicious activity, just report them to me.”
Even though this was unlikely, almost impossible, it was better to be safe.
Li Gaoliang said in a serious manner, “Don’t worry! I will watch him closely!”
“No need for that.” Lu Zhou patted Li Gaoliang on the shoulder and said, “He’s a good person.”
Professor Lumiere, who was sitting nearby, was secretly listening to their conversation.
Not because he wanted to, but because he happened to hear his name.
Unfortunately, he was sitting too far away. He had no idea what Lu Zhou was talking about with the tall, tanned man.
For some reason, he could feel the tall man staring at him.
When Lumiere made eye contact with the tall man, he felt chills down his spine. He quickly walked away.
When the man left, Professor Lumiere coughed and asked Lu Zhou, “There are a lot of new faces around the research institute today.”
“Yeah.”
Seeing how Lu Zhou didn’t plan on explaining, Lumiere couldn’t help but ask.
“… Who were they?”
Lu Zhou: “Volunteers.”
What the hell are volunteers?
Professor Lumiere continued to ask, “Volunteers? What do you mean?”
Lu Zhou said, “Since we have decided to build a distributed computing system, the more data we have the better… Didn’t you tell me that? Their job is to cooperate with our experiment.”
Professor Lumiere said, “But I feel like they’re from special backgrounds…”
Lu Zhou coughed and said, “You don’t have to worry about that, it’s better to not ask so many questions.”
Seeing how serious Lu Zhou was, Lumiere gulped and nodded.
“Okay then.”
Lu Zhou nodded and changed the subject. “How is your work going?”
Professor Lumiere said, “I’ve already made some progress. I have built a machine learning algorithm framework. Now, we just need a powerful computer, preferably a supercomputer. Then we can conduct the experiments on the volunteers and collect the data we need to form an instruction set architecture.”
Lu Zhou raised his eyebrows and walked next to his computer.
“Let me see.”
…
With the volunteers in place, research on the virtual reality system could finally begin.
Most of the time, scientific research was an interesting thing for Lu Zhou. It was something that made him happy.
But this time was different.
The tedious and boring repetitive work made him feel as if he was not doing scientific research at all. Rather, it was like he was laying bricks.
When he first complained to Professor Lumiere, Lumiere looked at him in disbelief.
“… I can’t believe you think that way.”
Lu Zhou: “You think it’s interesting to work on these algorithms?”
“No, I’m saying… I’ve never thought about scientific research as being interesting. Most research is as boring as laying bricks. And you should be happy that our project is going quite smoothly.”
Lu Zhou shrugged and said, “Most of the time I feel happy… Except for this time.”
Lumiere: “For example?”
Lu Zhou: “For example, when I was researching Riemann’s hypothesis. In the beginning, I tried finding auxiliary lines on the complex plane, but that didn’t work. Finally, I thought back to when I was working on the Navier–Stokes equations, and introduced differentiable manifolds—”
Hearing those mathematical terms gave Professor Lumiere a headache, so Lumiere quickly said, “Okay okay, I get the point. I don’t want to…”
Suddenly, Professor Lumiere stopped.
It was like he had lost his ability to speak.
Lu Zhou looked at him and asked, “What happened?”
“We did it…”
Lu Zhou: “…?”
“I said we did it!” Lumiere said. He suddenly stood up from his chair and said, “Jesus Christ! I just thought of a brilliant idea! It will reduce our workload by 50%… No, at least 70%!”
Lu Zhou wasn’t amused by how excited he was. He spoke calmly.
“I remember someone telling me that scientific research is a boring thing. It seems like the tables have turned.”
“… That’s beside the point.” Lumiere’s eyes flashed with excitement. He said, “We just have to test our hypothesis. I can complete the virtual reality system within three days. We just need to compile a small software to test our system.”
Within three days?
Lu Zhou looked shocked.
In the original plan, they would have to work until next month to complete the entire system
Lu Zhou asked, “How do you plan on testing it?”
Professor Lumiere said, “Easy! We can try to restore a scene in a movie.”
Lu Zhou: “Sounds interesting, what movie?”
Lumiere: “The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Matrix, it doesn’t matter. The more fantasy-like, the better. The scene shouldn’t be too complicated. Although our system is flexible, there is no need to increase the workload for no reason.”
He stared at his screen and muttered, “This is so exciting!
“I never thought I could change the world…”
