Chapter 284: The Last Great Sage
When energy was abundant and uranium was incredibly easy to extract, no one was willing to spend the massive amounts of money and effort required to research controllable nuclear fusion, even though they knew it might be necessary in the distant future.
By the time energy grew scarce and their entire economic foundation teetered on the brink of collapse, the Nix Civilization suddenly realized that controllable nuclear fusion was still hopelessly out of reach. In fact, they hadn’t made any real progress at all!
The project required an astronomical amount of energy and capital, far beyond what their stagnant civilization could bear. Even if the entire world pooled its remaining resources, the project simply couldn’t be completed in time. What could they do?
It was a paradox! An impossible mission!
Even in its final, desperate days, the Nix Civilization never knew if controllable nuclear fusion could actually be achieved... Did controllable nuclear fusion even exist as a viable engineering reality?
This wasn’t just a question for the doomed last generation of the Nix. It was a question echoing in the hearts of every human present in the conference room.
Humanity had seen evidence of advanced interstellar civilizations, and everyone subconsciously assumed those aliens possessed fusion reactors. But... no one had ever actually seen one. Who really knew for sure?
The conference room was dead silent. There wasn’t even a whisper of discussion.
Was this the terrifying truth behind the Great Filter?
Everyone sat frozen in silence, their faces pale and ashen. Even humanity had no answer to this problem! The room temperature was a standard 24 degrees Celsius, but everyone felt an unbearable, bone-chilling cold creep into their hearts.
Eventually, quiet whispers broke out across the aisles. The nuclear physicists in the room wore especially grim expressions as they fielded anxious questions from their peers.
"If controllable nuclear fusion is truly impossible, it will be a catastrophic disaster for our future industrial growth. Interstellar travel will remain nothing but a distant dream."
Looking back at human history, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated in 1952, and the first magnetic confinement device was built in 1954. The theoretical concept of "magnetic confinement fusion" had existed since the 1950s!
Yet, humanity had been researching this technology for nearly a century without even achieving basic energy break-even, let alone stable, sustained fusion.
Fifty years ago, experts promised that fusion power would be a reality within fifty years. Now, fifty years had passed, and the scientific community was still saying the exact same thing: just give us another fifty years.
It was the infamous "eternal fifty years" curse.
How could such a theoretically sound project fall into such an embarrassing state of stagnation? Was the science inherently flawed?
Throughout human history, mastering nuclear fusion had proven to be the most difficult engineering challenge ever undertaken, far more complex than the Apollo program or building the first lunar bases. In the past, massive engineering hurdles were gradually overcome with time. Whether it was launching the first satellites or landing on the moon, scientists slowly accumulated experience and technology until they cracked the problem.
Never before had a project spanned nearly a century without producing a single commercially viable result... A hundred years! In all that time, had humanity’s fusion technology truly advanced by even one percent?
Faced with the questioning gazes of the crowd, Professor Hao Yu shook his head dejectedly. As a leading nuclear physicist, he understood the despair of this bottleneck better than anyone.
In essence, humanity had made very little real progress in developing controllable nuclear fusion. In fact, Professor Hao Yu still couldn’t believe that this specific technology had become the Great Filter of the universe!
It was utterly baffling! Was it truly physically impossible to build a working reactor?
Professor Hao Yu subconsciously tried to rationalize it. He told himself it was just a matter of insufficient investment... Yes, it was just a lack of funding.
But honestly, had humanity’s fusion project made any real leaps forward? Not a single bit. Or rather, they had generated mountains of experimental data, amounting to perhaps 0.1% of the required progress. Professor Hao Yu shook his head in deep frustration.
The two main stars in the alien sky gradually set, signaling the arrival of a pitch-black night...
It was a pitch-black night in the historical records, as well.
Baxter, the contemporary Great Sage of the Nix, and his wife, the mathematician Judith, were hosting more than eighty guests at their sprawling estate. Half of the attendees were scientists, while the rest were wealthy elites and a handful of high-ranking government officials with whom they had close personal ties.
It was a grand banquet filled with fine dining and heavy drinking. The food was exquisite, prepared by a top-tier chef, and even the guests with typically small appetites ate their fill.
By this point in history... they were far removed from the era of Oppenheimer, the genius who had proposed the mass-energy equivalence equation. It had been over seven hundred years since that Great Sage’s death.
Seven centuries had passed, and Oppenheimer’s descendants still hadn’t cracked controllable nuclear fusion.
Resources were being consumed at a terrifying rate, and the Nix population had swelled to an unprecedented five billion! At their current pace of consumption, all accessible uranium would be completely depleted within a century, triggering a catastrophic energy crisis.
If they lost nuclear power, the global grid would collapse. Only a few megacities built directly over active volcanic craters would retain any electricity. Without nuclear energy, the Nix would be forced back into the dark ages, relying solely on raw magma. Over 90% of the population would starve to death, as geothermal heat alone could never sustain five billion people.
It was a stark life-or-death crisis!
However, it unfolded slowly, like a frog being boiled alive in slowly warming water. Everyone theoretically knew it was going to happen, but... it still felt too far away. Because society as a whole hadn’t felt the immediate sting yet, the average Nix citizen believed their comfortable lives would continue indefinitely.
It was an era of unchecked capitalism and mindless entertainment, but it was no longer an era of science. The decline of the Great Sage class was an undeniable reality.
Over seven hundred years ago, during the Oppenheimer era, more than 80% of students, from primary school to university dreamed of becoming a Great Sage. Back then, the Nix possessed a fanatical reverence for scientific discovery.
But the world had remained at peace for seven solid centuries. A mindset of cultural inertia and deep-seated hedonism had permeated their society for far too long.
A scientist? Does that even pay well? If it doesn’t make you rich, why would anyone want to do it!
Studying science was grueling and mentally exhausting. It was far more practical to become a corporate executive or an entertainer. A pop star could make more money singing a single song than a brilliant researcher could earn in a lifetime of hard work.
These societal shifts were like a massive, unstoppable tidal wave. Faced with this overwhelming cultural trend, no individual could turn the tide.
"I don’t understand nuclear physics... I’m only a biologist," Baxter addressed the room during his dinner speech. "But I hope that everyone here tonight can brainstorm a solution. I also hope the government will finally allocate more financial support... We cannot delay any longer. The energy crisis is right on our doorstep."
"We haven’t discovered any new uranium deposits in a very long time, which means... there’s simply not much left on the surface."
As the most intelligent demographic among the Nix, the scientists in the room keenly sensed the impending doom that awaited them a century down the line. Baxter firmly believed that society needed to react immediately to avoid being boiled alive in their own complacency.
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