Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Hiring these professionals to do professional things was a good idea. Developing a robot involved a series of complex tasks, such as the making of electric devices, integrated circuits and chips, fabricating parts, and wireless control, etc. Chen Jin was a layman in this field. It was all Greek him. He had given everything that he’d learned in school back to his professors. Surely, he could start over and learn as he went, but it would take him years before he became a professional.
Each of the team members that he had employed had at least six years of experience in this field; they had built hundreds of robots in their lives, repairing and operating countless of them. Every single one of them had their own specialty and advantages in various cases: The captain, Su You Jie, excelled at hardware programming, taking charge of almost all of the bottom layers of procedures; The deputy captain, Zhou Kun, was second to none in the field of integrated circuits, and could cover everything that needed to be done on the motherboards all on his own; Team member Wu Lei, who was an expert in operating machines like CNC machine tools, press machine tools, and so forth, was in charge of fabricating all of the essential parts; Zhang Zhi Wei, who was also a valued member of the team, was the best at modifying and operating robots, and an excellent tester. The remaining two female members included one who was brilliant at designing blueprints and circuit diagrams, while the other excelled in encrypting communications and securing important data.
In short, everyone had an important role to play in this team. Having officially made a decision on the project development, everyone was fully engaged in their designated tasks to fulfill the needs and realize the schemes of their goals.
Chen Jin never asked them to work overtime, yet they still buried themselves in work; on average, they worked 11 hours a day, six and a half days a week. To them, developing a robot was like inventing a toy; the process might be challenging and require a considerable amount of time and effort, but it was fun and brought them great joy. The workload was heavy yet pleasurable. No other job in the market could possibly bring them the kind of fulfillment and happiness this job did.
As the owner of the company, Chen Jin also participated in their discussions, communicating with one another. In the process, he learned like a sponge, absorbing lots of knowledge in the field as he worked with the team. For example, he learned from Su You Jie about hardware programming and had tried to write a few lines of code, which gave him a deeper understanding of computation. Apart from that, he had also practiced integrated circuits with Zhou Kun. However, all the messy circuits on the motherboard soon changed his mind and made him give up on the lessons that puzzled and frustrated him.
“Nah, forget it. It is way over my head. It’s too complicated. I give up.” Chen Jin shook his head as he surrendered to this complex concept.
“Mr. Chen, you are very good with your hands, and your blueprints are great too, which shows that you have the potential to become a mechanical designer. I will walk you through it, step by step. Not all the integrated circuits are hard to comprehend, there are some easy ones that you can quickly grasp and master.” Zhou Kun was greatly impressed and noticed that his boss was a diamond in the rough. He had the ability to manipulate the complicated mechanical structures in a skillful manner and remain focused when working, allowing him to finish the task without any mistakes or missing parts.
Moreover, Chen Jin was also able to fabricate some parts that had simple structures that also met the standards, after learning how to operate the CNC machine tool from Wu Lei. In a few words, Zhou Kun thought it would be a total waste if he didn’t polish this diamond; it was as if Chen Jin’s whole existence was made for these robots.
Little did Zhou Kun know, however, that Chen Jin acquired the excellent skills with his hands from assembling dozens of anime figures. As for the blueprints, he drew it on a piece of paper following the outline of the 3D image A.I. Alice projected. There really wasn’t much talent in it. “Forget it, really. I can’t do it. I’ll try something else. The integrated circuits just give me headaches.” Chen Jin waved him off, turning down his kind offer.
At the end of the day, he was the owner of the company; all he had to do was to make sure the team was going in the right direction. Perhaps he’d learn a thing or two along the way, but essentially, the R&D personnel should do the job that he hired them for. Just like Jobs, the founder of the famous Fruit company, who didn’t know anything about coding, yet he created a legend. And it was Chen Jin’s goal to become someone like him.
And then, thanks to the superb team that they were, their first prototype robot “Wa-Wah” was born in less than a month’s time. Soon, they would be able to do the prototype testing.
…
At the base of operation on Planet Haierfa, Chen Jin hadn’t spent much time there recently, as he had been busy with the development of the robot vacuum cleaner on Earth. He decided to come to take a look tonight as a matter of routine.
“Master, major discovery! Our expedition team found something magnificent on the west side of the base yesterday!” Robot Da Li quickly came over to Chen Jin to report this great news.
“What? What did you find?” His eyes widened upon hearing this news.
“Our expedition team found a military base 380km to the west of our base!”
“A MILITARY BASE?” Naturally, Chen Jin was exhilarated by the news. In fact, he had already learned the situation around their base of operation after having found the maps of “Melica,” the powerful country, before it was wiped out. He had even gained a rough understanding of the geographical features around the planet.
A.I. Alice had kept an extremely precise digital map that covered even the small towns that had a population of over 100 after the super calculator was restored, including some mysterious military bases and facilities. Theoretically, all the airports, cities, and quarries in Melica could be easily found as long as you followed the labels and dimensions on the digital map.
Sadly, though, everything on Haierfa was buried in thick, yellow sands after the war broke out, and the long, nuclear winter lasted 20 years; the entire planet was utterly unrecognized, as a large scale of the land got threatened by desertification. The only thing you would find with the map was an endless sea of deserts.
However, there was no doubt that the team did find a military base on the west side of their base of operation. And it was a massive one! For sure, it showed up on the digital map. On the other hand, there had to be a reason why there was a large valley battlefield covered in thousands of robot wreckage 30km to the northwest of their base.
Moreover, even for high-efficiency batteries, it was very unlikely for the robots to last longer than 500 kilometers; therefore, there must be a “base camp” within 500km where the robots could repair, recharge, and refill. It would be almost impossible for them to reach anywhere further than 500km otherwise.
Chen Jin sent the expedition team out to the desert west of their base three months ago in search of something like this; finally, the team did not disappoint, and proudly returned with their mission accomplished.
“Alice, put the operation in Fort Worth City on hold, and allocate 100 robots and 20 transporters to the military base – fully charged, please, and bring three extra sets of batteries!”
And let the plundering begin!
“Yes, Master,” Alice answered.