Fort Harrison, third floor of the Research Tower, Andy's private workshop.
Andy sat at his workbench, frozen in a pose holding a pair of tweezers. He hadn't moved for a full two hours.
In front of him lay the finished product that had just been spat out by the "Alien Technology Analysis Station"—the [High-Frequency Oscillating Particle Module].
It was a rectangular black box, roughly the size of two stacked bricks. Its surface possessed a despairingly smooth finish; not a single screw could be found, there wasn't a single seam, and even the data interfaces were hidden induction touchpoints.
It had to be said that the design philosophy of the Golden Age was advanced, but sometimes utterly infuriating.
For an end-user, or a soldier who just wanted a weapon to kill enemies, this extremely sealed "black box" design was undoubtedly perfect. It was dustproof, waterproof, fool-proof, ready to use right out of the box, and meant to be thrown away when broken.
But for an engineer like Andy, who was trying to rebuild an industrial system, this design was nothing short of a disaster.
Excessive fool-proofing meant technological shielding.
The nano-constructs had consumed the biological scythe of the Rais, and after a complex digestive process completely hidden from Andy, they spat out this standardized module. They essentially told Andy: Take it, install it on your machine, and you'll get high-frequency oscillation capabilities.
As for the underlying principles? The layout of the internal structure? The path of the energy circuits?
None of your business! Access denied!
Experiencing this firsthand, Andy instantly understood the plight of human technological development.
The direct destruction caused by the Iron Men rebellion was actually secondary.
This state of knowing the what but not the why was the root of all evil causing the regression of human technology!
It was precisely because the Tech-Priests held nothing but these unopenable black boxes that they were forced to resort to Machine Spirit worship. Aside from praying, there was truly nothing else they could do. Once a black box broke and the corresponding STC was lost, the technology suffered a complete generational rupture.
Andy would never allow Deep Space Industries to fall into such a predicament.
Being controlled by others—even if it meant being controlled by the machines in his own hands—was unacceptable.
He had to figure out what was inside.
"Since you won't let me look, I'll just tear you apart!"
Andy set down the tweezers and snatched up a nearby laser cutting pen.
Although this module had been converted by consuming a precious alien specimen, a violent disassembly carried a high probability of ruining it entirely, and might even trigger a sympathetic detonation of its internal energy source.
But in Andy's eyes, the value of the principle far exceeded that of the sample itself.
As long as he understood the principle, he could manufacture ten thousand of them using the materials at hand. Without understanding the principle, this thing was just a disposable toy that could break at any moment.
He could not follow in the footsteps of the Tech-Priests!
"Bzzz—"
The laser beam contacted the surface of the black box.
Andy wasn't cutting blindly; he was currently mobilizing the STC database deep within his brain.
Although the module before him was sealed, he could reverse-engineer its internal structure by comparing it against descriptions of "high-frequency oscillation" technology within the database.
This was a high-stakes gamble of reverse engineering.
As the outer shell was carefully peeled away, an breathtakingly precise crystal array and coil structure were revealed inside.
Andy's electronic eyes flashed frantically. Countless data streams flowed across his retinas, overlapping and comparing with the schematics in the STC database.
"Piezoelectric ceramic array... transducer... resonant cavity..."
Andy's movements grew faster and faster. More and more parts were disassembled and neatly arranged on the workbench.
Until the final core crystal was removed, the originally complete module had transformed into a pile of components.
Andy leaned back against his chair and let out a long breath that didn't actually exist.
He understood it now.
The "high-frequency process" in the engineering field of the Golden Age was an entirely different beast compared to that of the 21st century.
Within the technical definitions of the STC, this could not be simply classified as "vibration."
Rather, it was a microscopic physical technology that utilized particle waves of specific frequencies to interfere with the intermolecular forces of matter. It produced no high temperatures and did not rely on the sharpness of a blade; instead, it separated or combined matter at the level of physical laws.
The application prospects of this technology were boundlessly vast!
Looking at the pile of parts on the table, Andy could already visualize several core application scenarios capable of overturning the existing industrial system.
The first thing he thought of was ultra-low-loss precision machining.
Just look at how the current Empire machined parts.
They either used plasma cutters, where high temperatures melted the edges of the metal, creating a massive heat-affected zone that caused the material to anneal and soften, yielding atrocious precision.
Or they used massive mechanical saw blades that sent sparks flying and made deafening noise, leaving behind a floor full of metal shavings and burrs after cutting.
To eliminate these errors, artisans often had to spend hundreds of hours using files to manually polish pieces bit by bit. A significant portion of them even required applications of sacred oils and incense prayers, making the efficiency appallingly low.
This was exactly why master-crafted power armor was so expensive—it was an artwork built purely out of human lives and time.
But the high-frequency process was entirely different.
By adjusting the oscillation frequency, it could resonate with the frequency of the molecular bonds of the target material.
When the tool cut into a steel plate, there would be no ear-grating friction sounds, nor any sparks.
On a microscopic level, the metal atoms actively "stepped aside."
The cut would exhibit an atomic-level smoothness, reaching a mirror finish directly without requiring any post-processing polishing.
Even more terrifyingly, this kind of cutting involved almost zero loss!
If the cut scrap material was pushed back into place, it could restore perfectly without a single seam, a gap so small not even water molecules could pass through.
In the Golden Age, this was the most common machining method for manufacturing core components of starship engines and ultra-high-precision sensor lenses.
The hull of the ship New State appeared entirely seamless; it was highly likely that its armor plates were also cut using this technology.
Though it probably wasn't an original Golden Age technology and used inferior materials, it had at least achieved a degree invisible to the naked eye.
Organizing his thoughts, Andy casually checked the STC technology tree.
"Holy hell!"
[Atomic Fusion Technology] was now completely unlocked as well!
The Empire's welding technology was still stuck in the primitive stage of "melting things to stick them together."
Welding torches generated high temperatures to melt the edges of two pieces of metal, then filled them with solder.
The weld seams were ugly and fragile, riddled with air bubbles, slag, and stress concentration points. Under a massive impact, the weld seam was often the first place to snap.
The ships and tanks of the Empire always looked crude, heavy, and covered in rivets and patches because they had to use thicker armor to compensate for the structural weaknesses at the joints.
With the high-frequency process, Andy could achieve "cold welding."
He could manufacture a special press head, utilizing high-frequency oscillations to excite the atoms on two metal surfaces, breaking through the surface oxide layer and allowing the electron clouds to intertwine.
Then, under immense pressure, the two separate pieces of metal would fuse into one the instant they touched.
The two metal blocks instantly became a single piece of metal. No weld seams, no thermal stress, and a strength identical to the solid material itself.
Atomic fusion!
In the Golden Age, those kilometers-long starship keels that looked as though they had been cast in one piece through divine power, as well as Fort Harrison's Research Tower, were actually constructed from tens of thousands of parts joined via this very process.
[Planetary Terraforming Technology] had also lit up a small section. Though it wasn't much, Andy was already very satisfied.
Once again, he dragged the Empire out for comparison.
How did the current Imperial mining industry extract ore?
They blasted mountains with high explosives and drilled hard with super tunnel boring machines.
The commotion was loud enough to trigger earthquakes, filling the sky with dust, and it easily caused cave-ins while destroying the surrounding geological structures.
It was inefficient and caused extreme environmental damage.
In contrast, the mining ships of the Golden Age utilized large-scale high-frequency resonance field generators.
Essentially, an scaled-up version of the core crystal Andy had just disassembled.
By firing oscillation waves of a specific frequency at a rock stratum, the hard granite would instantly lose its cohesion, turning into fine, flowing sand that could easily be siphoned away by a vacuum tube.
This explained why the underground structure of Fort Harrison was so orderly and why it hadn't damaged the foundations on the surface during construction.
It wasn't hard to imagine that this technology could also be used to carve out massive underground cities deep within the earth like a scalpel without disrupting geological structures, or even drill straight through the planetary core for geothermal energy extraction.
Having figured all this out, Andy felt entirely refreshed.
This was the technology tree he wanted; this was the technological barrier Deep Space Industries ought to possess.
"Get to work!"
Andy immediately cleared an open space on the workbench.
He didn't attempt to reassemble the torn-apart alien module; that thing was already useless.
He was going to build a new one.
A "High-Frequency Process Mother Machine" belonging to humanity, based on the standard industrial architecture of the Golden Age.
Of course, limited by the materials on hand—the Rais scythe had already been used up—he couldn't build that kind of large-scale industrial equipment for the time being.
He could only rub together a small prototype first, meant for machining precision parts and integrating as many other functions as possible.
Andy retrieved the best servo motors from the warehouse and produced a batch of high-purity piezoelectric ceramic crystals.
After finishing all this, Andy's fingers turned into an absolute blur over the next few hours.
Assembling, soldering, debugging circuits.
Though the process was tedious, watching the machine take shape piece by piece was still highly satisfying.
Finally, an oddly shaped machine appeared on the workbench.
It looked like an—indescribable—oversized microscope. The bottom was a work table, and suspended above was a sharp probe head surrounded by complex cooling lines and control circuits, with a few structures resembling mechanical arms integrated around it.
This was the first prototype of Deep Space Industries' "High-Frequency Process Mother Machine."
A thought suddenly flashed through Andy's mind.
He instantly understood why the Rais were so keen on biological engineering instead of developing their psychic talents.
With this level of biological oscillation technology, who would bother painfully training psychic abilities?
Psychic power was far too unstable; it backfired at the drop of a hat, and one had to worry about being targeted by Warp daemons!
Whereas this high-frequency oscillation based on physical laws was stable, efficient, and immensely powerful!
For instance, that previous biological scythe was essentially a living high-frequency oscillation generator.
When a Rais swung the scythe, the blade wasn't cutting; it was vibrating at a frequency of tens of thousands of times per second, directly "shaking apart" the ceramite armor plates of power armor.
Absolute destructive power at the physical level was far more reliable than any psychic lightning!
With this in hand, what more could one ask for?!
Yet the complexity within it still left Andy puzzled.
There was still one piece that didn't fit.
Since the Rais mastered this technology, why did they strictly follow a purely biological route?
The crystal lattice structure of metal was obviously more stable and had better tolerances than biomass.
If high-frequency oscillation technology were applied to metallic weapons, their power would be at least ten times greater, and they would be far more durable.
Why did the Rais go through the immense trouble of cultivating biological weapons that were easily injured and required feeding?
Behind this, there had to be some reason Andy didn't yet know.
The logic loops of aliens truly couldn't be measured by common sense.
"Forget it, not thinking about it."
Andy shook his head, tossing those questions to the back of his mind for now.
No matter what the Rais thought, this technology belonged to the name Andy now.
He picked up a random piece of composite armor plate nearby—one salvaged from a destroyed Leman Russ tank. It was a full five centimeters thick with a ceramic layer sandwiched in the middle. Its hardness was extremely high, and a normal cutter would have a miserable time trying to slice it.
Andy placed it on the mother machine's work table and secured it with clamps.
"Start up."
Andy pressed the power switch.
"Hum—"
An extremely faint humming sound echoed, at a high frequency nearly imperceptible to the human ear.
The probe head above the work table began to vibrate, its frequency instantly skyrocketing into tens of thousands of hertz.
Manipulating the handle, Andy lowered the probe head slowly until it contacted the surface of the armor plate.
No sparks.
No piercing noise.
No metal shards flying all over the sky.
Like a hot knife cutting into butter, the probe sank into the hardened armor plate without a single hitch.
Andy gave his wrist a gentle flick.
The armor plate parted into two halves soundlessly.
The cut was smooth as a mirror, cool, and seamless. Not a single burr could be felt, and it even reflected Andy's expressionless metallic face.
This was... incredibly satisfying!
A replacement technology for photolithography and etching—wasn't it right here?