Chapter 1404: Transferring Disaster
“Weather Weapon,” Gerrard continued after he flicked off the soot from his cigar, “Before 2150, it was used as a North American climate control device to respond to natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and snowstorms. After 2150, it was given a new mission. Its purpose was no longer just limited to nature, but also our rival.”
“Rival?” Jiang Chen asked.
“Yes, Soviets, Pan-Asia Cooperation… All centralized empires that were against free will were our nemeses,” Gerrard raised his head, watched Jiang Chen, and said calmly, “Twenty years ago, the weather weapon was activated, and has been on till this day.”
It has been on till this day.
Somehow, after Jiang Chen digested Gerrard’s words and connected them to the climate difference of the West Coast, a terrifying idea suddenly popped into his head.
If the weather weapon continued to be activated from before the war to now, then the abnormal climate of the Pan-Asia continent was likely not only because of the nuclear winter…
“That’s all I know, I have already told you everything.” Gerrard looked at Jiang Chen.
“Thank you for your cooperation.” Jiang Chen stood up, smiled, and extended his right hand. “In order to express my grat.i.tude, I will order someone to move you to a room with windows in a moment.”
When Gerrard heard those words, he was taken aback.
A room with windows was naturally outside the dungeon. He didn’t understand why Jiang Chen wanted to do this. He had nothing else to confess, and he didn’t expect that he would be able to get such preferential treatment now that he has lost all his value.
After Jiang Chen left the dungeon, he fulfilled his promise and ordered someone to arrange a clean room for Gerrard.
Not only that, Jiang Chen even ordered to replace his daily meal from two tubes of nutrient supply to a bento box with two dishes and one soup, as well as unlimited rice. Other than the fact he was still not permitted to communicate with other prisoners, he could even get two hours of fresh air outside the room.
Jiang Chen never treated obedient prisoners badly. He always believed in one point and that was, torture could never pry open someone’s mouth while a reason to be loyal to himself could.
For example, he could let him live a good life that even the great “America” did not give him.
Fortunately, it was too simple to corrupt a person in the wasteland where supplies were scarce.
A box of canned beef and two cigars could buy the loyalty of a desperado. Soldiers on the Obama Aircraft Carrier were well-trained, and their psychological price could be slightly higher, but they won’t be much higher. Compared to Jiang Chen’s a.s.sets in the modern world, the amount would be so insignificant.
These materialistic benefits were not only provided to Gerrard, but they were meant to set an example for other prisoners. Zheng Shanhe who attacked the theatre from the front also captured several prisoners. Although their rank was not as senior as Captain Gerrard, they were still officers in the military.
Jiang Chen was certain that as long as the return of betrayal was generous enough, even if he didn’t ask any questions, someone would take the initiative to share some interesting information with him…
Jiang Chen ordered the arrangements made for Captain Gerrard to Han Yue, who was the supervisor, and then headed back to the Governor’s Mansion.
He didn’t have time to eat at noon and also did quite a lot in the afternoon. Although it was not even four o’clock yet, his stomach had already started to growl.
Jiang Chen didn’t wait for the canteen to open, and directly took a self-heating lunch from the storage dimension, then he opened a can of beer and quickly finished the simple but enviable dinner of countless survivors.
After a good meal, Jiang Chen threw the lunch box and the empty can into the trash can. After a satisfied burp, he skillfully activated the interdimensional communication chip on his watch and called the busy Lin Lin in the research inst.i.tute.
Communication between North America and Pan-Asia was still blocked, but the Klein particle wave emitted by the interdimensional communication chip was not affected in any way.
During the video call, Jiang Chen briefly talked to her about the situation in North America and asked her to tell Sun Jiao what happened during dinner, and then asked her about the weather weapon. Jiang Chen didn’t expect that as soon as he said the words “West Coast Meteorological Monitoring Center”, Lin Lin would turn serious immediately.
“West Coast Meteorological Monitoring Center, where did I see this name before,” Lin Ling paused, thought for a moment, and then said, “Um… it should be in my father’s memo. That memo, along with the project plan for the Garden of Eden, as well as the project plan for Fallout Shelter 005’s Advanced Artificial Intelligence were placed together. If I remember correctly, the ident.i.ty of this meteorological monitoring center in the desert… should be NATO’s weather weapon.”
For a digitalized human with a large number of chips implanted in her brain, it was impossible for her to remember anything incorrectly.
“I don’t quite understand.” Jiang Chen frowned. “If this weather weapon is located on the West Coast, how does it affect Pan-Asia on the other side of the Pacific?”
“It can affect anything anywhere,” Lin Lin shook her head. “I will give a very simple example, imagine the gas flowing around us as countless tightly arranged b.a.l.l.s. Then no matter what I do now, some will be affected, but the impact of my behavior on the entire system is not just as simple as changing the motion of a few small b.a.l.l.s, but it will eventually be reflected by the sum of changes in the total motion vectors of all the b.a.l.l.s.”
“You mean… the b.u.t.terfly effect?” Jiang Chen suddenly gained some clarity.
“It can be interpreted this way. This is what the so-called weather weapon is all about,” Lin Lin nodded approvingly in response to Jiang Chen’s epiphany. “In a system, any small change may lead to a long-term and huge chain of responses on the entire system., and the West Coast Meteorological Monitoring Center, is using tiny ‘variables’ on the Pacific Rim monsoon, guiding the power of nature itself to amplify the variables infinitely, and ultimately interfering with the global climate.”
Quality and energy are always conserved, and the input is always proportional to the output. For human power, it is absolutely impossible to create snow out of thin air, or to drop the temperature of a certain city by ten or even twenty degrees in a certain winter, let alone to freeze the entire Pan-Asia.
The weather weapon did this not because of its amazing power, but its clever use of technology to transfer the blizzard that should have fallen on North American survivors to the other side of the Pacific, on the heads of the struggling Pan-Asia people.
“Its core is a quantum computer,” Lin Lin continued, “With the advantage of absolute computing power, naturally there is no secret in front of it. It only needs to collect a small number of parameters, and it can determine all variables using a specific algorithm, and then interfere with the variables through special means.”
“In other words, the heavy snow in w.a.n.ghai is not exactly all because of the nuclear winter…”
“Correct,” Lin Lin snapped her fingers and said, “Or to put it another way, we are not just bearing the share that belongs to us, but also the share that originally belonged to the other side of the Pacific Ocean.”