Chapter 22: Brain Quality
"Twenty-one thousand..."
Li Qingsong muttered the number to himself and sighed softly.
Under his control, the Clones had no internal friction or communication costs. They could work and think at peak efficiency. But even so, at best, his twenty-one thousand Clones could only exert ten times the productive and developmental capacity of an ordinary group from the Human Race.
By that calculation, his current total productive and developmental capacity was roughly equivalent to a group of 210,000 ordinary people.
210,000 might seem like a large number, but compared to the massive scale of an industrial society, it was still completely insignificant.
Even with a complete industrial system, that number of people could only meet the production demands for a specific product in a niche field of a single major industry.
In the automotive industry, for example, that many people would be lucky just to handle glass production.
And that was assuming a high degree of automation.
But as it stood, his overall technological level was only roughly equivalent to that of Human Civilization during the Second Industrial Revolution.
As a result, the productivity these 21,000 Clones could exert was even lower.
Several years ago, after first sensing the existence of a "consciousness limit," he had been constantly thinking and experimenting on the matter, trying to better understand and master this special ability of his.
Although he hadn’t made much progress, he had made some peripheral discoveries.
For example, Li Qingsong now clearly understood that the conscious link between him and his Clones also had a speed limit.
Its information transfer speed was the same as the speed of light: 300,000 kilometers per second.
When the distance increased—for instance, to a Clone on the opposite side of Ceres—he would experience a delay of about 6.7 milliseconds, as the distance between them was approximately 2,000 kilometers.
But as for what the carrier for this information transfer was, Li Qingsong didn’t know yet.
However, he could at least confirm at this stage that it wasn’t electromagnetic waves. If it were, some Clones in special locations, like those underground, would have lost their connection with him long ago.
At the same time, this special ability of his seemed to be closely related to the "quality" of his brain.
Even though they were all his Clones, created using the same gene-editing protocols and incubation tank methods, the cultivation process always had minute variations. This resulted in tiny differences between the individual Clones.
Some Clones’ brains might be a little smarter—that is, of a higher "quality"—possessing slightly superior logical thinking, reasoning, association, and data processing abilities, while other Clones were a bit inferior.
’Perhaps the higher the quality of the brain, the more Clones I can control simultaneously?’
With this speculation in mind, Li Qingsong didn’t stop cultivating Clones, even though his number of connections was already approaching its limit.
And so, six months later, the latest batch of 2,000 Clones was cultivated.
After trying to connect again, Li Qingsong discovered that he had indeed reached his connection limit.
Including the main body where his consciousness resided, he could connect to a maximum of 21,155 Clones.
The remaining thousand or so Clones could not be connected, like a vehicle that could no longer carry any more weight.
Li Qingsong decisively transferred his consciousness to another Clone and tried to connect again.
This time, the number of Clones he could connect to had indeed changed. It was now 21,159—four more than with the previous body!
He switched bodies again and tried to connect once more. Li Qingsong found that this time, the number he could connect to was 21,006, which was 153 fewer than the last one!
After a round of experiments, Li Qingsong discovered that the number of other Clones each Clone body could connect to was different, with minute variations between them.
The difference between the highest and lowest count was a full 800-plus!
So, Li Qingsong selected four representative Clones, brought them to a room, and placed an extremely complex cognitive ability test in front of them.
Then, Li Qingsong first entered the body of the Clone with the lowest connection count. Relying solely on that Clone’s abilities, he began the 500-question test. He then moved to the second body and did the same, again relying on it alone.
After completing the test with all four bodies, the final results were laid out before Li Qingsong.
The body that could control the fewest Clones, relying solely on its own brain, scored an 85 on the test. The other three Clones scored 85.2, 85.5, and 85.9, respectively!
Just as he’d thought!
At that moment, his earlier speculation was completely verified.
Thus, the solution for how to raise his connection limit became clear.
By cultivating higher-quality Clones, he would be able to control more bodies and brains at once!
At the same time, he realized it probably wasn’t enough to cultivate just one or two high-"quality" Clones.
First, if that high-quality Clone were to die in an accident, he would be forced to transfer to another Clone. The drop in quality would mean he’d suddenly be unable to control Clones he previously could, which would be a disaster.
Second, the brains of the Clones were also his own. The higher the quality of each Clone’s brain, the greater his own abilities became.
All things considered, he still had to improve the brain quality of all cultivated Clones as much as possible.
This way, not only would his overall abilities be greater, but if he were forced to transfer due to an accident, he wouldn’t suddenly lose control over a large number of Clones.
’To cultivate high-quality Clones... I’ll need sufficient biotechnology.’
And biotechnology was clearly related to his overall technological level.
Chemistry, medicine, mathematics, physics, computer science—not a single major discipline could be neglected.
To try and develop biotechnology in isolation, divorced from a foundational level of overall technology, was practically impossible.
’Fortunately, at this stage, I don’t have to rely on advancing my overall technology to improve my biotechnology. The Deep Space Spaceship has sufficient foundational biological theory, as well as gene-editing equipment. With these, it should still be possible to optimize my genes and design a genetic blueprint for Clones with higher-quality brains at this stage. As long as the incubation tank technology can catch up, there should be no problem actually cultivating high-quality Clones. The only problem is, I can’t build such precise incubation tanks at my current stage.’
Li Qingsong felt a slight headache coming on.
He hadn’t forgotten that his first Clone incubation tank was modified from livestock cloning facilities. The second through fifth sets were cobbled together from equipment used to cultivate small animals. The tanks he built himself after that were even more rudimentary.
To cultivate high-quality Clones, he couldn’t afford to be so makeshift anymore.
’I have to build them, even if I think I can’t. For the time being, I’ll prioritize tackling the incubation tank technology.’
He made up his mind.