Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 344 Another Approach (Eighth Update)
During the in-depth discussion of material recombination technology, Chen Yu revealed to the federal core technology team, especially Spock and Scott, the existence of the "automatic repair STC" and its incredible effectiveness.

He used rigorous technical descriptions, avoiding the religious terminology unique to the Warhammer universe, and emphasized its core feature of "restoring any specified object to its original, perfect state in a very short time, without any apparent input of raw materials."

This description caused a huge stir among the nation’s top scientists and engineers.

Spock’s Wacken logic quickly assessed its implications, commenting: “If described accurately, this suggests a macroscopic reversal of the entropy increase process of matter, as well as the ability to anchor and reproduce specific quantum states across time.”

This has already touched the boundaries of our current physics theories, and may even have surpassed them.

Scott expressed the engineers' amazement more bluntly: "My God! No need to replace parts, no need to wait for printing, just press a button to repair a starship? This is simply every chief engineer's ultimate dream!"

Chen Yu noticed the mixture of shock and intense curiosity in their eyes, and then put forward his idea: "Completely replicating this ancient technology is perhaps unrealistic given our current understanding and resources."

However, I believe that based on our current understanding of the principles of matter recombination, combined with my limited data on the energy field characteristics of that system, we may be able to try to develop an alternative technology with similar functions, even if its efficiency is somewhat inferior.

This is not about replicating miracles, but about building a bridge to understanding them.

This pragmatic yet challenging proposal immediately received a positive response from the federal technology team.

One of the core driving forces of the Interstellar Federation, especially its science department, is the exploration of the unknown and the pursuit of knowledge.

The allure of participating in the analysis or even partial reproduction of a technology so far beyond current understanding is irresistible.

With special permission and resources from the federal government, a highly confidential joint research project was officially launched.

Spock's theoretical team is responsible for building mathematical models that attempt to link the "phenomena" exhibited by the STC to the Federation's quantum physics and spacetime theory.

Scott's engineering team is responsible for providing support for the implementation of the technology path, including high-precision sensor arrays, ultra-large energy capacitors, and material storage/control systems.

Chen Yu was at the core of the discussion, providing information on the unique energy spectrum and subtle changes in spacetime curvature recorded during STC activation, as well as his long-standing speculation that the "repair" process is not creation but a "return."

He combined the Federation’s rigorous, systematic research methods with fragmented, miraculous clues he brought from another pinnacle of human technology.

The research was conducted in a highly focused atmosphere.

They did not aspire to achieve instant success, but instead set phased goals: first, to attempt, at the microscopic level, to achieve repeatable, quantum information-based "self-repair" of a simple alloy with a known structure, even if it is just repairing a tiny crack.

This first step involves an unprecedented deep scan and storage of information about the object's "intact state," and how to guide energy to precisely "reverse" the local damage process without completely disintegrating the object.

Chen Yu was immersed in data, formulas, and experiments.

He knew it was a long road ahead, but the technology and resources provided by the Federation, as well as the wisdom of these top peers, made him realize for the first time that the dusty STC represented perhaps not only a miracle of the past, but also a power that could be mastered in the future.

Every fine-tuning of the theoretical model and every optimization of the experimental parameters made him feel as if he were standing on the stairway to that once unattainable miracle.
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The joint research project quickly touched on the core challenges.

The theory brought by Chen Yu clearly points out that the ancient STC's operating mechanism deeply involves a field that is almost completely unfamiliar to federal scholars—the local manipulation of time factors.

While the Federation's technology has made breakthroughs in space jumps (warp drive) and macroscopic time travel (gravitational catapults), these are largely "hitchhiking" by utilizing the physical phenomena of the universe itself (such as gravitational fields). Truly manipulating the local flow of time with precision and reversing the entropy increase of specific objects is a completely new and almost taboo field of knowledge for them.

Even Spock, with his vast knowledge, admitted that his theoretical reserves in this area were almost zero.

The only instance of close contact with the related effects was when Kirk and others witnessed Chen Yu using a stasis grenade, but that was more like a packaged "application" than an understandable and reproducible technical principle.

Therefore, when Chen Yu began to explain core theories involving time anchoring and quantum state backtracking, the Federation's scientists and engineers encountered enormous obstacles to understanding.

These knowledge systems are so different from the frameworks they are familiar with that they will take a long time to digest and absorb, and may even trigger a disruptive reconstruction of fundamental physical concepts.

The project's progress inevitably hit a theoretical bottleneck.

Faced with this dilemma, Scott proposed a pragmatic and creative alternative: "Perhaps we don't need to launch a full-scale attack on the hardest fortress of time manipulation from the outset."

Chen Yuxian mentioned that the STC system needs to know the 'intact' state of the object.

Why don't we try a different approach? What if we scanned and stored a complete 3D structural blueprint of the object or system that needs repair, with molecular-level precision, in a device database beforehand?

Spock immediately grasped the logic, adding, "This is a solution that aligns with existing technological approaches. When repair is needed, the device scans the damaged area with the same precision, comparing the data on the damaged state point by point with the 'intact blueprint' stored in the database to accurately locate missing, misaligned, or damaged molecular structures."

Subsequently, the repair process did not involve time reversal, but rather relied on the replication technology principles we had mastered: using a concentrated energy field to precisely decompose the molecular structure of the damaged portion into basic particles, while simultaneously drawing upon reserve materials and energy to meticulously reconstruct the molecular-level structure at that location according to the 'intact blueprint.'

Chen Yu listened to the proposal and quickly evaluated it.

This is indeed a roundabout path, abandoning the direct, efficient but extremely difficult time manipulation, and instead using the "scan-compare-decompose-reconstruct" process that the Federation is already good at to achieve a similar "repair" effect.

It cannot truly "reverse time and make the wound disappear" like the original STC. Instead, it is more like an extremely precise microscopic surgery that "replaces the damaged part".

“A logical compromise,” Chen Yu’s synthesized voice finally rang out, with a hint of approval, “It circumvents the theoretical obstacles that we cannot currently overcome and makes full use of the advantages of existing technology.”

While its efficiency and application scope may not be comparable to the original STC, it has high value as a preliminary, achievable verification platform. We can take this as the first phase goal of the project.

This pragmatic shift was unanimously agreed upon by the team.

The research focus was adjusted accordingly.

Federal engineers began to focus their efforts on developing high-precision, high-efficiency molecular-level scanning and alignment algorithms, as well as technologies for local, non-destructive decomposition and in-situ reconstruction of complex structures.

Chen Yu provided more information about some non-temporal parameters that STC may involve in "identifying" damage and "defining" the intact state, as a reference for optimizing the alignment algorithm.

The project has returned to a path that Federal Technology is more familiar with. Although the goal remains challenging, at least the path has become clearer.

Chen Yu was also pleased to see this progress. After all, a device capable of achieving precise microscopic repairs, even if based on a different principle, would be an invaluable breakthrough for his future flagship.

(End of this chapter)