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The next day.
Ryan went looking for Patricia and ran into Kyle on the way.
Kyle had obviously heard the news about the Crimson Typhoon project. He spotted Ryan's back from a distance and hurried over, two steps at a time.
"Ryan. That Crimson Typhoon project that was announced online yesterday. Is that going to be done here at our base too?" Kyle clutched the bag holding his laptop, intensely interested in the project.
"What's up?"
"You wouldn't believe it. Everyone at the base is discussing it during their breaks. People are extremely curious about the project."
"It is here," Ryan said. "There'll be another large base built near Dome Base. Construction should start soon."
Kyle got even more excited. "Then can I apply to join the project? That big mech is going to use neural connection too, right?"
"Adding you to the project wouldn't be a problem. But can the firefighting mech team spare you?" Ryan thought well of Kyle. He was only a graduate student, but he had genuine talent for neural connection work and put in honest effort.
"It's fine. The main remaining issues on the firefighting mech are structural. There won't be any major changes to the neural connection system."
Ryan agreed readily. "Then go put in a request with Marsh. If he approves it, come find me."
"You got it." With Ryan's answer in hand, Kyle grinned ear to ear, clutched his bag, and took off like a sprinter clearing a hundred meters.
Ryan walked to Patricia's office and knocked. A "Come in" came from inside.
He pushed the door open. Patricia's body was hidden behind her computer. She poked her head out for a look.
"Oh, it's you. One moment."
She set down the work in her hands and led Ryan to a concealed door in her office. "This is a secure conference room. You can hold today's symposium in here."
She walked him inside. The space wasn't large, but it was well-lit. The air was a little stagnant.
Ryan didn't mind any of that.
He was here today to hold the project symposium. Every technical and engineering problem for the Crimson Typhoon project would be resolved in this meeting. The meeting couldn't be finished in a single day. It would take several.
Ryan had held meetings like this a few times during the feasibility study, but one session couldn't resolve every problem.
Patricia switched on the projector, the camera, and the conference laptop the room was equipped with.
"The AC remote is here. Set a temperature yourself, don't make it too cold. I'm going back to work." With that, Patricia left the conference room, pulling the door closed behind her.
The screen soon showed people connecting. Once everyone was online, the meeting began.
The people appearing in the meeting were divided into three groups. Anyone with a working knowledge of the country's scientific and engineering communities could easily recognize most of them as familiar faces.
They spanned numerous disciplines: deep-sea materials research, energy and power systems, engineering construction, and more.
"Good morning, everyone," Ryan said, greeting them first.
The others on the call looked at Ryan's still somewhat youthful face on their screens, with the firm, mature eyes set within it, and felt a quiet stir of admiration.
"Heroes really do emerge young. When I was your age, I hadn't even started college yet."
"When you first appeared, I genuinely thought you were a little con artist for a while. Thinking back, it's a good thing I didn't speak up. I'd have been the bird that sticks its head out and gets shot." Someone said it as a joke.
"That would never happen," Ryan said with a laugh.
Though, honestly, if some scientific heavyweight had stepped up back then, the Crimson Typhoon project's progress might have moved a little faster.
"All right. Time is limited. Let's get started on today's agenda." Someone stepped in to cut off the chatter.
Everyone's expressions turned serious, and they began working through the agenda items that had been established beforehand.
When the meeting discussed an agenda item, it used a group-based connection method. Only the group members relevant to the item could enter the discussion. The others waited silently in the conference room.
The first group was deep-sea materials research.
The first person to speak was extremely animated, his tone surging, the glasses on the bridge of his nose nearly falling off.
"That new type of titanium alloy you envisioned in your documentation, we've already produced a sample in the lab. Its parameters for compression resistance and corrosion resistance are far better than the mainstream titanium alloys in use today. It's an ideal pressure-resistant structural material, extremely well-suited for the pressure hulls of submarines or deep-submergence vehicles."
The other members of the group could hardly hide their excitement either. They discussed the new titanium alloy and the underwater seal technology with Ryan.
They were responsible not only for materials. Some of them were experts in underwater seal technology as well.
The underwater seal technology in Crimson Typhoon was likewise excellent, unquestionably in an advanced position worldwide.
"If the concepts you laid out in the documentation can really be realized, then we may need to start preparing the country's first titanium-alloy submarine." As the discussion neared its end, someone marveled aloud.
Until now, titanium-alloy submarines had been the domain of a single former superpower's navy. Their diving depth had reached below a thousand meters, twice that of a conventional nuclear submarine. To this day, no nation's submarine had broken that record.
To build a submarine like that, beyond the materials, the most critical technology was the deep-sea high-strength titanium-alloy pressure-hull fabrication process. Foreign capability in that area was far ahead, and the country was still struggling to catch up. The Pioneer's titanium pressure hull had been fabricated with the help of a foreign manufacturer.
But all of that might change after Crimson Typhoon.
The titanium alloy on Crimson Typhoon was, if anything, stronger than the former superpower's material. Ryan had also proposed concepts for the deep-sea pressure-fabrication process for this material. If the fabrication process held up, they only needed to apply it to the pressure hull to produce a qualified seven-thousand-meter pressure hull.
Add in the underwater seal technologies Ryan had conceived.
A submarine fitted with that kind of pressure hull would have terrifying deep-submergence performance. It could probably extend a dozen tentacles several thousand meters underwater and play the part of a sea monster without any trouble.
The thought made everyone more and more excited.
The first group's session ran for nearly two hours before the second group was brought in. This group discussed engineering problems.
That agenda was much easier. Ryan only needed to lock down the various time milestones, and the group would arrange the engineering work to match the timeline he set.
The third group was the energy and power group, responsible for the mech's power supply. Their problems were the most difficult of all.
By the time every problem had been resolved, the afternoon had arrived.
Rubbing his empty stomach, Ryan headed for the cafeteria.