Chapter 23: Troubles
He was determined to make a breakthrough, but it was clear this wouldn’t happen overnight.
Li Qingsong could only be patient, conducting his research and accumulating knowledge bit by bit.
Although the number of Clones he could control had reached its upper limit, Li Qingsong still hadn’t stopped producing new ones.
At present, Li Qingsong had scheduled a workday of 16 consecutive hours. This included time for bathroom breaks, meals, and short rests. The remaining eight hours were for sleep.
And Li Qingsong didn’t need to control them while they slept.
Li Qingsong had divided the total of 21,000 Clones into three shifts. At any given moment, only 14,000 Clones were working, while 7,000 were always asleep in the communal dormitories.
To Li Qingsong, these 7,000 unused control slots were an intolerable waste.
To fill these 7,000 empty control slots, he needed more Clones. However, those new Clones would also need to sleep for eight hours a day, creating yet another gap to fill. Therefore, Li Qingsong planned to produce another 14,000 Clones in total.
This way, while some individual Clones wouldn’t be working to their absolute limit, he could ensure that 21,000 Clones were active at all times.
The resulting surplus of available work hours could be distributed among the other Clones, giving each one a little more rest. This not only improved fault tolerance and simplified scheduling, but also slowed the aging process of their bodies.
In this way, Li Qingsong would command a total of 35,000 Clones.
Several years later, this goal was achieved.
The Ceres base was now truly flourishing.
Within the several newly constructed large-scale communal dormitories, over ten thousand beds were fully occupied every day.
Dozens of massive cultivation centers—for crops, livestock, aquaculture, fungi, and fruit—produced enormous quantities of food daily. This food was transported by train to a central kitchen, where hundreds of Clones working as chefs processed it into finished meals. The meals were then distributed back out to every factory, cafeteria, and facility, delivered into the hands of each Clone.
Hundreds of different factories hummed and roared day in and day out, all operating at full capacity. Under Li Qingsong’s unified planning, they were integrated into a seamless whole. There were never instances of one production line having a surplus while another faced a shortage.
At every moment, large numbers of Clones would awaken. They would efficiently leave their dorms, don their assigned gear, and head to their designated posts according to Li Qingsong’s master plan.
And at every moment, just as many Clones would finish their day’s work. They would take various forms of transportation back to the communal dormitories and fall asleep without a moment’s delay.
Under Li Qingsong’s unified control, every one of these Clones was a "jack-of-all-trades."
Each Clone had mastered every skill required for the base’s operation.
A Clone might be cooking in the kitchen one day and driving a train the next. The day after, they could be operating machinery in a foundry, and the day after that, harvesting wheat in a cultivation center. A day later, they might be in a chemistry or metallurgy lab, running experiments, observing material properties, optimizing mechanical designs, and driving overall technological advancement.
The job each Clone performed upon waking depended entirely on Li Qingsong’s plan for the day and the needs of the base.
Under these conditions, the work efficiency of the tens of thousands of Clones across the entire base was pushed to its absolute limit.
As a result, Li Qingsong’s overall technological level, though advancing slowly, was doing so steadily.
Even with these scheduling optimizations, Li Qingsong’s control capacity for his Clones had hit its ceiling.
If he produced any more Clones, they would truly have nothing to do but lie in bed all day like comatose patients.
But Li Qingsong still didn’t stop producing them.
The number of Clones continued to increase at a rate of 4,000 per year. By now, the total number of Clones under his command had surpassed the one-hundred-thousand mark, reaching 101,600.
Yet, at any given time, the number of Clones he was actively controlling and putting to work remained at just 21,000.
’I can’t control them for now, so I’ll just keep them in reserve,’ Li Qingsong thought. ’Who knows, I might have a breakthrough in biotechnology at any moment. My control capacity could skyrocket instantly, and then I can put all these Clones to use right away, saving me the trouble of having to produce them slowly.’
But he couldn’t just let these surplus Clones lie in bed all day.
Lying down for extended periods would not only cause bedsores and other illnesses, but their muscles would also atrophy.
He had no choice. Li Qingsong had to drastically reduce the working hours for individual Clones and rotate control among them. This way, every Clone could work for a short period each day, if only for the physical exercise.
Under this new system, an individual Clone’s daily work time dropped to an unprecedented low of less than six hours. As the Clone population continued to grow, it fell even further, to a mere four hours.
The rest of the time, they were either sleeping or lying idly in bed.
This, in turn, placed immense pressure on his logistics.
Even lying motionless, they still needed to eat, drink, breathe, and use the toilet.
Left with no other option, Li Qingsong had to build several more enormous agricultural bases, raising quarterly wheat production to 14,000 tons just to meet the current demand.
’The number of Clones has reached 150,000... I can’t make any more.
Any more than this, and the 21,000 Clones I can control will have to stop everything else and just work on the farms, raising pigs and growing crops.’
Li Qingsong reluctantly halted the operations of the cloning facilities.
Glancing at the newly constructed dormitory towers, Li Qingsong sighed.
Each of these dormitory towers stood ten stories high. Every floor contained 100 rooms, and each room held five triple-decker bunk beds, sleeping a total of 15 people.
That was 1,500 people per floor, or 15,000 per building.
Li Qingsong had built nine of them, and they were all filled to capacity.
’I never thought I’d see the day I was stressed out about having too many Clones,’ he mused. ’This is really...’
A glance at the biology lab only made Li Qingsong more frustrated.
A breakthrough in biotechnology was still nowhere in sight.
There was no helping it. Without an increase in his overall technological level, trying to advance biotechnology alone was twice the work for half the reward.
Just as Li Qingsong was resigning himself to focusing on fundamental sciences, the mental link to one of his Clones—this one at Iron Ore Base 45—suddenly severed.
’What’s going on?’
Li Qingsong immediately took control of a nearby Clone, making it raise its head to survey the area.
The next moment, Li Qingsong gasped.
’What the hell is that...?’