Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"Communication?"

"no"

The ship's communication system is in good working order, but Lao Xia hasn't even figured out all the buttons. Expecting to send signals with this thing is pure nonsense. Nobody knows what kind of thing will arrive.

"So, what are you going to do with this next?"

"Just throw it in a museum for exhibition," Old Xia said nonchalantly. What use is this thing other than being displayed in a museum? If it weren't for that final impact, it could be used as a large flying transport ship.

"There's no recyclable part?"

"That reactor that has been dormant for tens of thousands of years and is still usable can be recycled, but I don't understand its principles, and besides, there's no technical maintenance manual." The idea that the reactor outlives its maintenance manual seems like a lame joke.

"The energy output interface isn't a big problem; the design of that part of starships is pretty much the same. The real trouble is the control system. If you're really short on power, I can design an adapter for you to use to generate electricity. I estimate it can be equivalent to seven or eight Originium power plants."

"It can only be used for display?"

“It’s not that you can’t open a shop in there,” Old Xia said, spreading his hands. “By the way, as for the engine, it’s very old. These things are actually quite similar. Perhaps there are big differences in materials, working fluid selection, and various parameters, but the general structure is the same. Just as I judged, the upper limit of this engine’s structure is a round trip between Earth and the Moon. Beyond that, the working fluid required is beyond its body to carry.”

"However, I am more interested in its synthetic fuel system, which is remarkable that it can still be used for such a long time." This is the limit of liquid-fueled rocket engines; for longer-distance flights, it is best to switch to something with greater output.

After Lao Xia's more precise trace scanning, it can be confirmed that Kal'tsit's conjecture is roughly correct. "This creature, according to my reconstruction, looks something like this," Lao Xia said, pushing over a computer reconstruction image.

"Since there were too few traces and no skeletal remains were obtained, the reliability is only about 20%. Use it as a reference only."

This creature is about 3 meters tall when fully upright, with a snake-like tail as its lower body. It can be preliminarily determined that it has arms, because if it did not have arms to grasp, there would be no need to design unique tools such as door handles.

This part is considered more credible. The rest is purely speculative reconstruction, such as the body surface possibly being partially covered with scales, the head being that of a snake, etc. In short, Lao Xia named this scaleless or sparsely scaled creature "naked snake" in a very simple way.

"Oh right, I forgot to mention, because we detected dust residue on the fabric, we can't be sure whether they're wearing clothes or not." Old Xia added a few more pictures, showing them dressed, but all with a distinctly human style.

"Then why are their spaceships on the seabed?"

"What's the point of asking me this question?" Old Xia was also completely bewildered. "I'm not from around here."

"That's true... So, if it were you, under what circumstances would you abandon the spaceship?"

"It's a malfunction, what else could it be? A ship costs at least several hundred thousand, right?"

Buying the hull of a decommissioned naval ship due to an accident costs over 200 million. A naval ship due to an accident is one that was severely damaged during a mission and is beyond repair, but can still be operated with difficulty. After the weapons and redundant structures are removed, it is sold as a second-hand ship, and the price is generally very low. A destroyer can be bought for less than 300 million.

As for the question of how many days you can drive it after buying it, it's like asking when a mining card will break down. The seller can't give you a guarantee. Therefore, people who buy these second-hand boats usually need to take them to a shipyard for modifications, repairs, paint jobs, and equipment upgrades.

For affiliated companies that urgently need large spacecraft but failed to secure a license plate through the lottery system, the desire to purchase such spacecraft remains strong.

"However, the ship does not have... serious malfunctions."

"That's even simpler. If the mission is over and I have urgent business, I don't need this ship anymore. I'll just take another ship and leave." Old Xia said that it's just a spaceship. Large spaceships are limited by the shipyard's manufacturing capacity and require a lottery system, but for small spaceships like this, as long as you have some money at home, it's easy to buy one.

"Let me give you an example. If this civilization isn't too far removed from our level... well, it's roughly the size of a family SUV, the kind... well, the kind a family drives when they go on a trip. It might be a relatively high-end SUV, but that's about it."

"So, if you break down or something unexpected happens on the road, it's normal to find a place to stop, call a tow truck, and then get on another ship and leave, although the breakdowns that require a tow truck are generally not that common in the universe."

“There’s another possibility…” Old Xia thought for a moment. Although this was also a possibility, it was even less sophisticated. “For example, a family might happily go on vacation to some undeveloped planet, park their spaceship in a certain area, shut down the engines, put it into hibernation mode, and then happily start a barbecue in a tent.”

"And then?" the doctor asked, nodding with interest.

"Then their family was attacked by unknown local native creatures. The whole family was wiped out. Since it was an undeveloped planet, if they hadn't reported their route before setting sail..." That's when the treasure ship was left for the destined person.

"Considering that this might be some kind of scientific research spaceship, it is more likely that the other side's scientific research team landed on Terra to collect data, and then the entire team was wiped out. Then the personnel left behind went to rescue them, and they were also wiped out. After that, the ship was left in a dormant or shut-down state and forgotten in the same place."

"Besides that, there are some low-probability events, such as smuggling spaceships and getting caught during the rendezvous, so the spaceship docked here never gets to meet its customer."

Old Xia scratched his head and said, "In short, as long as you don't let the fancy term 'spaceship' blind you, and think of it as a slightly more advanced family car, then it's perfectly normal to find an abandoned car on the roadside that can be repaired or even driven. There are many possibilities."

"Ah, this is based on the premise that no weapons were found on it, at least not any weapons I recognize. If it were a warship with weapons, then the problem would be very serious, but... well, not extremely serious, provided that its level of civilization is at that level."

"Are spaceships so common where you are?" "It depends on what kind of spaceship you're talking about," Old Xia thought for a moment. "Although by layman's standards these are all called spaceships, in reality, strictly speaking, spaceships or starships are not common."

"Just like the cargo bay of the rocket I launch, theoretically it could be considered a type of spacecraft, but according to our latest 'Aerospace Equipment Classification Management Law,' it is classified as a civilian unmanned powered loading unit, or to put it simply, a powered cargo container."

"The standards for starships are much stricter. If we're being really strict, if it doesn't have the ability to travel freely between stars, then the starships you've built can only be considered half a starship. If we're not too picky, then it can still be considered a starship. And this spaceship... in terms of classification, it's, well, a dual-purpose orbital vehicle. It's considered a spacecraft and is subject to management, but strictly speaking, it can't be called a spaceship." Old Xia gave the doctor a brief explanation of this aspect.

Are these kinds of aircraft common?

"Then it will be very common." Just like tanks may not be very common, but bicycles are definitely very common. "Basically, whether it's for transportation or holiday travel, it's normal for families with the means to buy one or even more. It's just that helipads are not so easy to find..." Just like buying a car is easy, but finding a parking space is not so easy.

"Oh, the application for the space route is also quite troublesome. Some unlucky guys can't get a number in the lottery and end up having to take public transportation and the rail elevator to work, which is a waste of the hundreds of thousands of star coins spent on the number on the ship." Old Xia is the kind of person whose whole family lives on the space station, so he doesn't have this experience, but that doesn't stop him from watching this kind of joke.

"However, the spaceships used for this purpose on our side are not that big, so the level of this civilization should be one or two levels lower. Therefore, it is unlikely that this is an SUV for a family gathering. I am more inclined to believe that their research team had a problem, which led to the annihilation of the entire team, and this research vessel just lost contact here."

Something that's 65 meters long can't fit in anyone's yard, even though the Star Alliance has a small population and large yards.

"So, like I said before, don't think of it as something too lofty. Just like what your ancestors worshipped and imagined eight hundred uses for in your time, wasn't that quite common?"

“That’s true,” the doctor nodded in agreement. For example, the sarcophagus in Chernobog was really just a home medical device. In the whole of Terra, only he and Old Xia were able to easily break free from this kind of prejudice.

"However, I believe that the value of this construct still needs to be utilized."

"You mean..." Old Xia's expression gradually turned serious, "...to make it part of our space program?"

"At the very least, it lets our partners know that it's part of the plan. Besides, nobody knows whether it was created by the early inhabitants or a fourth party, right?"

"Hmm... as long as the Agorians don't spread rumors."

"They won't talk nonsense."

Chapter Thirty: This is Art~

-------------Chapter Dividing Line---------------

In the Kazdel Desert, a solitary building stands in this dust-shrouded region. This is the research center for the Sealings, where researchers from the Agor, Iberians, and Kazdel people work together, and dozens of deep-sea hunters reside here.

Here, the nearest water source is thousands of kilometers away. For monsters like Hai Si, nothing is more suitable than a hell made of quartz sand.

"Are these the recovered serum and Seaborne substances?" Rows of test tubes were sealed in the experimental area. These were things that Kal'tsit and the others had recovered from the Abyss Laboratory, and some of them were obtained in the fallen city of Agor.

Recovering these items took a lot of effort and resulted in the loss of many hunters, but the effort was worthwhile.

"Yes, and the behemoth substance too. Are you ready?" Godia pulled out a test tube and filled it into a syringe, looking at the unconscious body fixed to an alloy steel frame. "Are you ready to witness the truth of the deep sea?"

"A sea monster?"

"Hmm~" Grandia approached the test subject and forcefully plunged the syringe in her hand into the vicinity of his spine. "Hai Si is a synthetic life form. It was originally planned to be a synthetic organism used for service on the space station. After we discovered the giant beasts of the deep sea, we realized that we might be able to use the giant beasts as its carriers, as a biological host to control these Netherworld fluids." The dark red giant beast tissue fluid flowed into the test subject's body little by little, and nothing seemed to happen.

"Then, in order to better control the behemoth, we combined the behemoth's tissues with those of humans, and then connected the two through the Netherworld Mark. As you know, we did not create the sea god; we merely released it from the cage that imprisoned it." Next came the sea monster serum, and soon obvious subcutaneous bleeding points began to appear on the test subject's body.

"Initially, the fusion subject's body cells will disintegrate, hemoglobin will decrease, and the blood will turn egg-white-colored. Then, the pores will begin to expel dissociated biomass. At this stage, it indicates that the fusion subject has initially accepted the Haizi cells." The experimental subject's body is gradually enveloped by black substance and blue mucus that continuously seeps from the pores. "A 'cocoon' will wrap around the flesh, and when the cocoon completely breaks..."

"Roar!" The twisted sea monster struggled on the restraints, trying to break free of its restraints and tear open the skin that emitted the scent of its kin. "The fusion of sea monsters is born. So, what if the largest and oldest behemoth, the core of the behemoth ecosystem, is infected?"

"This is the truth about the sea god." Goredia pressed the destroy button, and a jet of ions at tens of thousands of degrees instantly filled the entire test area, destroying and evaporating into metal vapor along with the fixture.

“So, we’ll have to rely on Mr. Xia’s abilities from now on.” Although Goredia is the scientific governor, to be honest, she still thinks that Mr. Xia should take the lead in this area of ​​technology.

"Well, I'll take a look. But this therapeutic serum isn't easy to develop. It'll take decades to perfect," Old Xia said sincerely. Even with the equipment from the Tree of Life Company, this is a slow and painstaking process that can't be rushed.

“The Agorians have waited for hundreds of years, a little more time won’t make a difference,” Goredia said, indicating there was no need to rush. “As stated in the agreement, the Deep Sea Hunters are now under your command!” Three thousand hunters would be more than enough to make the next polar expedition go smoothly, especially with the equipment and technical data recovered from the Agor cities.

"May I ask what your scientific research attitude is like?" Old Xia hesitated for a moment before asking, "Why did you come up with the idea of ​​triple or even quadruple biological fusion?"

"Is there... a problem?"

"No, it's fine to use it purely for research and observation." Indeed, it's fine. After all, this is often the case when researching and applying real-world problems. If everything were clear and foolproof, what would be the point of researching?

Those who advocate for rationality always like to question the necessity of scientific research, thinking it's suicidal—but the problem is, if I knew what the consequences and phenomena would be, I could just publish reports and papers and start publishing in low-quality journals, why would I spend money on research? It's precisely because we don't know what will happen that we conduct research.

"I'm not questioning the necessity or safety of your research. In fact, no cutting-edge scientific research is safe. It's not the first time that those crazy people in high-energy physics have accidentally created miniature black holes. Fortunately, they're all the Schwarzschild radii, which are only a few millimeters in size, and they evaporate on their own in a short while."

Old Xia carefully considered his tone, "But research is research, so why did you dare to use this biological achievement on a large scale without having made any progress at all?"

From cutting-edge research to divergent research, then to applied development, to the formulation of technical standards and safety rules, to pilot production, to the formulation of relevant safety regulations during the pilot production process, and finally to full commercial mass production and implementation, this is a very long and rigorous process.

"And... why don't you keep a diary?" At least three biological entities have merged. If you don't keep a research log, how are the people who take over supposed to develop the serum? Three completely different DNAs are stuck together like glue. How are you supposed to manage this?

"You wrote it? Wasn't it in the retrieval data?"

"I'm not talking about that, I've already seen that. I'm talking about why, when you're doing genetic fusion experiments, you don't insert unexplained segments at the ends of the double helix to indicate what this artificial DNA segment is for?"

What's the difference between this and programmers who don't write documentation or comments, who went through three different programmers and product managers, cobbled together code from at least three forums, and now that there's a bug, asking people to fix it and optimize the program?

At least computer programs don't compile and modify themselves, but biological things aren't so stable. They change their characteristics and absorb more fragments to insert into their genetic information as the environment changes.

In particular, these Agor people have turned something that was almost a closed source into an open source—to put it bluntly, biological evolution is a long process, and the absorption of other genetic material fragments is mostly a random event caused by microscopic activities such as viruses, not an active absorption, but still a passive evolutionary process.

However, they made it open source, so that organisms can actively release their own genetic material chains, actively disassemble their structures, and actively send out transfer proteins to cut and paste the genetic information of other organisms based on environmental stimuli.

For Lao Xia, it was like a software engineer seeing a mountain of garbage with no comments, no self-check parameters, and instead of looking for bugs in the code, he was looking for code in the bugs. And this collection of bugs was constantly scraping new code from the internet and pasting it in.

First, let him write a code patch for this mountain of shit, so that this mountain of shit is no longer a mountain of shit, and roll back to the beginning. That's roughly the level of difficulty of the task.

Of course, a mountain of excrement is a mountain of excrement. After all, as a scientific research project, people are still very interested in studying this kind of mountain of excrement—to see what strange and wonderful things will ferment out of this stinking stagnant water to broaden everyone's horizons.

After all, biological research is full of uncontrollable factors. Even if interference is eliminated as much as possible through various means, it is common for various cell missiles to miss their target when it comes to implementation. It is also common to knock on the wrong thing.

But why are you so confident in promoting this mountain of shit?

"Logically speaking, you should not only write a note, but also use a limit device, using a section of protein structure to block certain key positions, to prevent the other party from opening up endocytosis, forcibly fusing with other cells and dismantling their genetic information to incorporate it."

"Not only that, you should also prepare countermeasures. Even if you don't develop an antidote in advance, at the very least you need to install a self-destruct code. When the target is copied too many times, the protein misalignment will trigger, automatically disintegrating the gene chain and causing the out-of-control individual to self-destruct."

"Uh, I have no experience," Goredia could only attribute the problem to her lack of experience.

"No experience, yet so bold?" Old Xia was shocked. There are plenty of people who are bold but inexperienced, but it is rare to be so bold as to promote something without any preparation.

"Because the giants don't like us exploiting the resources on the seabed, nor do they like our cities, do you understand? If we can't find a way to coexist with them, then the Agorians will be completely unable to develop."

"So that's how they came up with this?" Old Xia fell silent. "Forget it, there's no point in pursuing this now. However, I can't guarantee that this developed serum will be useful, because while we're wasting our time, they're still evolving."

"As a professional, my advice is that bombarding with the most powerful weapons at your disposal is more effective than anything else." "And what about vaccines? Vaccines to prevent humans from eating the Terrorfish or being fused with the Sea Spirit?"

"Hmm, we can think of a way to do that." We can indeed think of a way to do that. At least it's much more reliable than the treatment serum that was initially proposed. A vaccine that enhances the patient's resistance to prevent infection by Haisi is relatively easier to develop.

"And the antidote to cure those with initial infection..."

“That’s relatively simple,” Lao Xia nodded. “Or this part is the simplest.” Because all that’s needed is to develop a targeted drug that kills everything except those on the whitelist—if absolutely necessary, you can remove the first half of the sentence and change it to a drug that kills everything to achieve the same effect.

"If it's just about blocking the transmission, it's not a big problem. But some people aren't infected; there's something wrong with them." Old Xia pointed to his head. Genuine infected people are fine, but those people misled by the Deep Sea Cult aren't necessarily patients.

"So, what's a way to purify the cells of the tarantula?" "There is a way, but we need to research it." Indeed, there is. As long as the inactivation is thorough enough, it's possible to catch and eat the tarantula. As long as Lao Xia develops a sufficiently powerful disinfectant and inactivating agent. "Then I'll leave it to you."

"No, I have other work to do. I'll organize the data in a bit and give you Agers a start. You can study the rest yourselves." The main problem is that this part is really a time-consuming and laborious process, and Old Xia doesn't have the time to waste here.

"That's also possible." After all, the Agorian researchers haven't all died out. With data and a clear direction, researching this kind of thing is just physical labor, especially laboratory research in the four major pits of biochemistry, environmental science, and materials science. With clear theoretical data, research direction, and objectives, it really is physical labor.

Some graduate students spend several years in the lab, and the thing they do most often and are most skilled at is... washing bottles. How much they learn depends on how supportive their supervisor is, and whether the supervisor has seven or eight projects on their plate.