The Memoirs of Cultivating Immortals

Chapter 524
Thanos' tall and burly body was originally very oppressive, but with the sharp suit on his body and the gold-rimmed glasses on Bilian, he looked a lot more refined and easy-going.

He nodded, walked into the meeting room and greeted his colleagues,

Then he took out a stack of paper documents from the briefcase and distributed them to other members of the project management committee (Titan star executives still advocate the use of paper documents instead of electronic documents when holding meetings to prevent information leakage),
Everyone spread out the document and glanced at it. The content of the document was divided into two parts. The first part was roughly the breakthrough in the research and development of the superluminal engine. In a very short period of time, the superluminal interstellar ship belonging to Titan could be developed. ,
There is no doubt that this is definitely great news for the universal celebration,

The successful research and development of the superluminal engine is beneficial to the nation, the country, and even the entire civilization.

It not only means that the interstellar colonization plan has obtained the most critical piece of the puzzle, but also means that the territory of the Titan civilization will be greatly expanded in the future, and its achievements will benefit the future.

Just after reading the first part of the document, the high-level executives of the space agency who participated in the meeting were already full of emotions. They wished to immediately throw some peace awards and lifetime achievement awards at the Thanos team, let him be canonized immediately, and directly pushed him to the altar ,

Considering the historical significance of hyperdrive, this kind of treatment is not excessive.

Just when the hearts of all the participants were beating wildly and they couldn't restrain themselves, Li Ang raised his hand to signal everyone to continue reading the second part of the document.

"Immediately start the colonization project of KTX-456134 planet?"

The deputy administrator of NASA read the title of the second part of the document, looked up in bewilderment, and glanced at Thanos, "What's going on here?"

In the second part of the document, Thanos explained the necessity of immediately launching the interstellar colonization plan in a very serious tone,
The warning between the lines means that if Titan cannot colonize the outer planets within 100 years, it will be destroyed instantly, just like the country and its species.

Everyone raised their heads from the document and looked at each other, not knowing what to say for a while.

The deputy chief executive glanced at Li Ang, who was sitting in the chief seat, seeing the latter's closed eyes and contemplation, so he coughed lightly, and said to Thanos,
"Thanos, first of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you on behalf of myself, my colleagues in the space agency, and all the people of Titan, for your efforts in the development of the superlight engine research and development project, but..."

No matter what race, civilization, or language family you are in, once the word "but" is blurted out, it means that the first half of the sentence can be invalidated, and it is the second half that really plays a decisive role.

"However, is the interstellar colonization plan you proposed too urgent?"

The deputy chief executive said hesitantly: "The star region where Titan is located is quite barren, even the closest habitable planet to us, KTX—planet 456134, is hundreds of light-years away.

The project of colonizing alien planets, which works in the present and benefits in the future, is undoubtedly second to none.

But it takes time to build a FTL engine, it takes time to build supporting spaceships, it takes time to train the crew, it takes time to convince the government and the public,
What's more, before sending out the colony spacecraft, we still need to send unmanned and manned scientific research ships to conduct a comprehensive investigation.

Every job requires a lot of time, and it doesn't matter if you are in a hurry. "

The deputy chief executive shook the document on his hand, and said softly: "Everyone here has worked step by step from the grassroots, and no one is a layman.

Everyone knows that even if there is a superluminal engine, the KTX-456134 planetary colonization plan will take 300 years to plan, at least 200 years at least,

And in your plan, you keep emphasizing that more than 70% of Titan’s population must be transferred to KTX—the planet 456134 within a hundred years.”

The deputy chief executive picked mild words as much as possible, and said to Thanos, the unprecedented great engineer, with a pleasant face, "Isn't this a bit unrealistic?"

If someone else had come, the deputy chief executive would probably have sprayed him bloody, how could he be so polite.

Thanos took a deep breath, and said calmly and firmly: "I know that my request is quite excessive, but there are legitimate reasons for these—our planet has reached the brink of collapse."

No one said anything. In recent years, among the hive cities of Titan Star, there has been a lot of talk about collapse. A small group of people think that Titan Star will face a huge political and economic crisis sooner or later, and it will collapse completely.

There are a lot of data reports behind this theory, and even professionals cannot find obvious laws from those cumbersome numbers, so the market for the theory of collapse is not large-usually concentrated on those cynical people.

Everyone in the meeting room is an elite with a higher education, and they don’t buy much into the so-called collapse theory—most people believe that the current stage of Titan Star has entered a new era in history, and the overall situation is extremely stable. To say it is completely ridiculous.

Feeling the silent atmosphere, Thanos looked around the room and said slowly: "Since the birth of human society, human society has always faced a dilemma: the contradiction between the poverty of material life and the requirements of human reproduction.

To put it simply, the power of population proliferation is greater than the power of land to produce human living materials. The ever-increasing population will exceed the upper limit of land carrying capacity, and this extra population will be eliminated in some way.

There are many manifestations of this method, such as plague, famine, and of course the most common is war-war can not only solve the population problem, but also generate a lot of material resources.

Before the Titans developed a controllable nuclear fusion reactor, we struggled in the quagmire of war for thousands of years. Until now, we thought that the energy we produced could help us jump out of this trap.

On the face of it, we've succeeded, with fusion reactors pumping out an almost inexhaustible stream of energy,

We have enjoyed thousands of years of peace, and the word war has never been so far away. "

There is nothing new under the sun, and the problem pointed out by Thanos is the Malthus trap-of course, on Titan, this theory has a different name.

The Deputy Chief Executive interrupted: "Sorry, Dr. Thanos, what do you want to explain?"

Thanos glanced at him, and said slowly: "We were wrong.

Although controllable fusion reactors provide inexhaustible energy and delay the onset of population traps, problems are problems,
It is like a pustule, hidden under the healthy skin. As time goes by, this pustule, which looks no different from other skin, will continue to accumulate highly toxic pus until the time comes, when it suddenly explodes, damaging the entire living organism Deals fatal damage. "

Everyone in the conference room still didn't have much expression on their faces. They had heard too many threats like this, and their ears were almost callused, and they couldn't produce any touch at all.

Thanos was not angry, he said calmly: "I know this sounds absurd, the Titan civilization is rich and strong, and its technological strength is sufficient to provide sufficient material resources to support many hive cities,

Even if the population is too crowded, we can still come up with the idea of ​​sending people to the space station, and maintain all the elements in a balanced state. Even if the people feel a little bit dissatisfied, they will not cause any disturbance to society due to the excessive pressure of survival. mind of order.

However, we seem to forget one thing, that is the speed of technological development. "

There are many talented people in the meeting room. Hearing this, his face changed slightly, but Thanos continued: "Since the invention of the controllable nuclear fusion reactor, we have enjoyed a thousand years of peace.

The continuous development of science and technology has transformed technological power into productivity and suppressed the contradiction of population issues.

However, the development of this technology is entirely based on the unified theory of physics thousands of years ago.

In the past 1000 years, we have only added bricks and tiles to the unified theory, but we have never made breakthroughs. If we zoom out to the millennium, it is easy to find that the iteration speed of scientific theories and technologies is constantly slowing down.

Right now, the population problem can still maintain a balance, but when the development of science and technology completely stagnates, the ever-expanding population cannot be erased by war,

It's like a pressure cooker that is becoming unbalanced inside and out. When the pressure is increased to the limit, the pressure cooker will become a bomb.

I can guarantee here that if within a hundred years, we cannot transfer most of the population to alien planets,

At that time, the population will grow logically to the limit, the unprecedented pressure of survival will be overwhelming, and our civilization will collapse in an instant. "

The tone of Thanos is sincere and serious, and even the bureaucrats of the space agency have to start thinking about this issue seriously.

Someone frowned and said, "Why do you say that population issues will overwhelm everything?
The plan to transfer the population to the space station has been repeatedly discussed and studied by think tanks many years ago, and it can perfectly relieve social pressure.

Coupled with the macro-control of the Titan government to guide public opinion, I don't think there will be any unexpected incidents. "

Thanos nodded and said: "The think tanks only considered the situation at the time, but they underestimated the chaos of human nature.

I took an emerging course in college called 'Psychohistory' which is also known as 'Social Physics',
That is to say, the movement of human beings as a whole is regarded as the change of the material itself, and social factors such as politics, economy, culture, and military affairs are considered comprehensively, combined with public psychology, to speculate on the future development direction of society to a certain extent,
In short, this is a science similar to "big data derivation". As long as enough information is collected and a suitable algorithm is added, the history of mankind can be predicted. "

After all, Thanos took out his personal information terminal, clicked on it twice, and projected a huge and extremely cumbersome calculation formula in the air.

Everyone was stunned, even though they had heard of the emerging branch of sociology called "Social Physics", they still couldn't accept it when Thanos said the words "predicting history".

"Ridiculous! Nonsense!"

The highly educated space agency elites were a little annoyed, they regretted why they wasted time, but when they glanced at the icon roughly, they were surprised to find that behind those cumbersome algorithms, there were wonderful mathematical laws.

Everything in psychohistory seems to be a matter of time, and it seems that it can really form self-consistency.
More importantly, the future deduced by those formulas is not very pretty
"A hundred years later, the self-destructive tendency of the Titans reached its peak, abandoning the sense of social responsibility, contempt for the authority of the Titan star government, cruelty to others and themselves,
It will make people mutually exclusive and even hostile, abandon the great unified situation, and divide the group again according to region, nationality, civilization, and skin color. Religion surpasses science, and fanatical personality worship surpasses democracy and freedom.

In the end, the entire Titan star will fall into unprecedented civil strife. People who are divided into countless groups will attack each other, and they will no longer be able to form a whole. Technology will be reversed for hundreds of thousands of years, and the natural environment and material resources will be destroyed unprecedentedly.
And the Titans who can never figure out the alien colonization technology can only be trapped on the surface of the planet forever."

Thanos said quietly: "This is the future deduced by social physics, have you heard of the big filter theory?
In the process of transitioning from an intermediate civilization to a high-level civilization, it will inevitably face a test. One of the contents of this test is to break through the population trap. "

The meeting room fell silent again, and the elites were a little skeptical—I have to admit that what Thanos said seemed to make sense.

".What do you want us to do?" Someone asked softly.

Thanos took a deep breath, and said calmly: "It's very simple, I have developed a superluminal engine, and all you have to do is to support my interstellar colonization plan on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
As long as the population is transferred to that KTX-456134 planet within the time limit, and an extraterrestrial colony is built, everything will still have a chance to be restored. "

Everyone in the meeting room was silent, and they turned their attention to Li Ang, the chief.

Leader, what do you think?
"."

Li Ang's fingers tapped back and forth on the wooden tabletop, he closed his eyes and thought for a while, and said unhurriedly: "Yes, your request will be satisfied,
However, you have to promise me one condition. "

Li Ang opened his eyes, he looked at Thanos, and said calmly: "In your theory, the change trend of per capita resource possession is the most fundamental factor that determines the social form.

War and peace, beauty and ugliness, everything can be attributed to the contradiction between limited resources and unlimited population.

You want peace right?Peace without war, without chaos, without humanitarian tragedy,

Then, don't take this interstellar colonization plan as the end, I hope you can continue this experiment, study deeply, and find a solution to the final contradiction. "

In a strange way, Thanos nodded.

So, that's how it happened.

The Titan Space Agency vigorously promoted the interstellar colonization plan. Within a hundred years, most of the people on Titan went to new planets to open up colonies in batches, and the population problem was alleviated.

A few years later, Thanos entered politics and was successfully elected as the chief executive officer of Titan.

On behalf of the Titan civilization, he participated in this star sea competition, and gained a certain right to speak in the star area through the foreign exchange model based on peaceful diplomacy and supplemented by the threat of war.

A hundred years later, under the slogan of "inclusiveness, harmony and diversity" as the slogan, Thanos assimilated the civilizations of the surrounding star areas into the Titan civilization and established the Star Sea Federation.

In the same year, a breakthrough was made in genetic medicine, and Thanos, who entered his later years, was able to continue his life and continue to lead the nascent Star Sea Federation as the chief executive officer.

Thousands of years later, the ever-expanding peace negotiations of the Star Sea Federation divided the last resistance forces. So far, the forces of the Star Sea Federation have spread all over the galaxy.

So far, Thanos, as the chief consul, issued a decree, on the one hand to implement the family planning policy, to regulate the population in a peaceful and orderly manner, and on the other hand to send probes to other galaxies for external exploration.

The Milky Way, which has increased revenue, reduced expenditure, and balanced the amount of resources per capita, has finally entered a new era of overall peace.

----

As the founder of the new era and the actual ruler of the Milky Way, the house where Thanos lived seemed a bit shabby.

The low thatched house was built on the hillside. From the old firewood door, you can clearly see the green mountains, green waters, and farmland.

Thanos was sitting on the rocking chair in the front yard of the thatched house reading a book. His burly body had long been hunched due to the erosion of the years, and his deep purple skin was also covered with wrinkles. Even his pair of once sharp eyes His eyes were cloudy as if stained with dust.

In the eyes of those who like him, Thanos is a savior, a god, a wise and deep leader, a courageous hero, and a messenger who brings peace to the world.

In the eyes of those who don't like him, Thanos is a dictator, a lunatic, a war madman, and a thief who uses peaceful lies to cover up the truth of dictatorship.

But one thing is indisputable-whether they are admirers or detractors, what they enjoy now is the peace created by Thanos.

Thinking in this way, Thanos turned over a page of the book. His wife, daughter, old friends and old acquaintances have already been taken away by the years. Apart from the huge empire he created, he has no ties to this world.

He has fulfilled his long-cherished wish and has no regrets.

Suddenly, as if he felt something, he stopped turning the pages of the book, raised his old head, and looked at the old door.

squeak-

The door was pushed open, and Li Ang's figure flashed out from behind the door, still in the iconic white coat.

According to the memory and historical records of Thanos, as the former director of the space agency, Li Ang died of illness after completing the KTX-456134 interstellar colonization plan, and history’s evaluation of him is limited to "the former boss of the Thanos Consul" .

A person who had been dead for thousands of years suddenly appeared in front of him, and a slight suspicion flashed in the eyes of the old Thanos—his experience was enough to keep him calm in the most incredible situations.

"How does it feel to fulfill your long-cherished wish?" Li Ang asked.

".Very good." Thanos said peacefully: "I have never been so calm as I am now."

"Since you have no regrets, then come with me." Li Ang said with a smile, "It's time to wake up from the dream."

(End of this chapter)